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Afghan Airline Ferried Opium, U.S. Alleges
By MARIA ABI-HABIB January 25, 2013, 4:09 a.m. ET The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—The U.S. military has blacklisted Afghanistan's largest private airline, alleging it is smuggling "bulk" quantities of opium on civilian flights to Tajikistan, a corridor through which the drugs reach the rest of the world.
Kam Air was barred this month from receiving U.S. military contracts by U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. James Mattis, according to U.S. military officials.
"The U.S. will not do business with those who fund and support illicit activities," U.S. Army Maj.-Gen. Richard Longo, the commander of Task Force 2010, a coalition anticorruption unit, said in an interview. "Kam Air is too large of a company not to know what has been going on within its organization."
Kam Air, which denied the charges, is the first major Afghan company to be penalized by the U.S. military over drug allegations. It wasn't clear how much U.S. military business the company stands to lose.
The move underscores growing concerns among Western officials that the drug trade in Afghanistan is not only resurgent, but is also taking an increasingly open role in the country's economy. In the past month, Kam Air has engaged in talks to merge with Afghanistan's state-owned flag carrier, Ariana Afghan Airlines, both sides have said. The deal could see the Afghan carrier absorb Kam Air's debts, say people familiar with it.
Gen. Longo confirmed that his task force had conducted an investigation into Kam Air but said details were classified. Other U.S. officials said the decision to bar the airline from U.S. contracts was made because of evidence of Kam Air's widespread involvement in the drug trade.
"I totally deny the allegations," the airline's president and founder, Zamari Kamgar, said after being told of the U.S. decision. It would be impossible to fly drugs out of the country as the airline is subject to thorough security checks at Afghan airports, he said, adding that the allegations were likely a conspiracy perpetrated by his competitors.
Mr. Kamgar said he expects the Kam Air-Ariana deal to go through and that his management team would take over the combined entity, which he said would plan to open direct routes to U.S. and European airports. A spokesman for Afghanistan's Transportation Ministry, which runs Ariana, said he was "not aware of the smuggling of drugs by Kam Air" and wasn't aware of the U.S. investigation.
The U.S. action underlines how deeply the drug trade is entrenched in Afghanistan, which the United Nations has said provides more than 90% of the world's illicit opiates. While the U.S. and allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have fiercely engaged the Taliban over the past 11 years, the coalition has failed to cut away at the opium trade that helps finance the insurgency.
Opium cultivation spread in recent years to provinces once considered "poppy free." While blight and poor weather in recent years have cut into Afghanistan's opium and heroin exports, poppy cultivation rose 18% in 2012 from the previous year, according to the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime.
"Export earnings from Afghan opiates may be worth $2.4 billion—equivalent to 15%" of gross domestic product, the UNODC said in a report last year.
As the U.S. and allies prepare to withdraw military forces in 2014, officials of coalition countries have expressed concerns that Afghanistan will become a narco-state where legal business activities and government institutions are intertwined with the drug trade. Some Western officials fear that the narco-trade and associated corruption will pose a greater threat to stability after 2014 than the Taliban, who also derive a large portion of their revenues from narcotics.
"The corruption, crime and impunity the narcotic problem causes on the society, governance and more specifically, families and individuals, is not only devastating for Afghanistan but equally to many of the surrounding countries," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Afghanistan representative of the UNODC.
The U.N. estimates that Afghan opiates kill 10,000 people a year in the U.S. and other NATO countries, compared with some 400 coalition soldiers killed last year by the Taliban.
The latest move follows two separate U.S. investigations, reported last year by The Wall Street Journal, into allegations that the U.S.-funded Afghan Air Force was smuggling drugs and weapons around the country. Kabul denied those allegations.
The investigations, led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the military coalition, have stalled because of lack of cooperation from Afghan authorities, according to U.S. officials.
The Afghan government says the Afghan Air Force is clean and that it would cooperate with any U.S. narcotics investigation into the force if presented with sufficient evidence.
The investigation by Task Force 2010 was likely spurred last fall, Gen. Longo said, after Kam Air bid on a contract tendered by the international military coalition in Kabul.
"An organization such as Kam Air exposes itself when it bids on a U.S. contract," said Gen. Longo. "They are subject to scrutiny."
Kam Air operates a fleet of some 16 planes, including Boeing 767 and 747 aircraft and Antonov cargo planes. The task force believes that domestic passenger routes have been used to ferry opium around the country, according to a U.S. official in Kabul. But the investigation is focused on Central Asia, the official said. "Kam Air is flying out bulk quantities of opium," the official said.
Kam Air flies cargo to many destinations. But its only scheduled Central Asian passenger route is between Kabul and Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
The poorest former Soviet republic, Tajikistan suffers from political instability and porous borders. High-level government protection for drug smugglers has made the country a trafficking route for Afghan opium to reach the world, Western law-enforcement officials have said.
A spokesman for Tajikistan's National Security Committee declined to comment, as did the Foreign Ministry in Dushanbe.
Kam Air's Mr. Kamgar said the company has provided logistic services to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan but said he couldn't immediately characterize the scope of the business. U.S. military officials were unable to provide details of any contracts given to Kam Air.
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan currently has no contracts with the airline, though it has been on its list of authorized cargo carriers, an official said.
Following Gen. Mattis's designation, all U.S. Department of Defense entities are forbidden from working with the airline. The decision doesn't directly affect civilian U.S. agencies. Coalition partners in Afghanistan have tended to follow the U.S. lead in blackballing companies, including trucking firms, seen to be corrupt.
—Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared January 25, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Afghan Airline Ferried Opium, U.S. Alleges.
John Kerry uses Senate hearing to warn Afghanistan over elections
Secretary of state nominee says second tainted presidential contest will cause abandonment by west after 2014 withdrawal
Guardian.co.uk By Chris McGreal Thursday 24 January 2013
John Kerry, who is shortly expected to be confirmed as the next US secretary of state, has warned that Afghanistan must hold a legitimate presidential election next year or risk being totally abandoned by western governments after the withdrawal of foreign combat forces is complete in 2014.
Kerry said in his nomination hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee that he had played a role in helping Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, hold on to power despite a tainted election victory, and that it could not be allowed to happen again.
In a broad-ranging, three-hour hearing, Kerry also warned that "China is all over Africa" and said that the US needed to exert new influence on the continent. He spoke passionately about the need for international cooperation to battle climate change, saying that countries should not be afraid of responding to it, but of not doing so. Kerry also warned that battles between the president and Congress over debt, budgets and other finances were damaging the US's standing in the world.
"Foreign policy is economic policy," he said. "It is urgent that we show people in the rest of the world that we can get our business done in an effective and timely way."
Most senators on the foreign relations committee were fulsome in their praise of Kerry, who is himself a senator and more usually chairman of the same committee. Leading Republicans, such as John McCain, endorsed his nomination and said they expected he would be swiftly confirmed as secretary of state by the full Senate.
Kerry was asked several times about the looming US military withdrawal from Afghanistan – although the largest American civilian overseas operation will remain – and what can be done to create stability. He warned that "there cannot be an effective peace" without hanging on to "the gains" which include constitutional government, the rights of women and girls and their role in Afghan society.
Kerry said that a central factor in stabilising Afghanistan would be ensuring that next year's presidential election is legitimate, after the tainted process which put Karzai back in power.
"Having an acceptable election – it's not going to be perfect, we're not going to be able to have perfection in this process for a lot of different reasons – but having an election that passes muster and is acceptable according to international standards and observers will be critical to our ability to have the kind of transition we want to have, and to have confidence that the government that succeeds in 2014 has legitimacy," he said.
"If it doesn't have legitimacy, if we don't succeed in that effort, it's going to be very, very difficult to convince the American people, and to convince our allies in ISAF and beyond, to stay engaged in this effort."
Kerry acknowledged that he had helped win recognition for Karzai's questionable victory in the last presidential ballot.
"I went through this personally with President Karzai in the last election where there were serious questions about the propriety of the process and we had to sort of strike a compromise about it," he said. "I don't think they'll be room for a compromise in the aftermath here. I will certainly make sure that we're riding herd on it very very closely."
Kerry said that in the face of budget cuts in the US, it was important to maintain funding for overseas policies that strengthen the American economy. He flagged up the rapidly growing influence of Chinese businesses in Africa.
"China is all over Africa," he said. "I mean all over Africa. And they're buying up long-term contracts on minerals, you name it. There are some places where we're not in the game, folks. I hate to say it. We've got to get in it. But it takes a little bit of resourcing. Believe me, somebody's paying for those folks [the Chinese] to be over there, investing in their investment of time.
"We have to be prepared because I think that what we bring to the table is frankly a lot more attractive than what a lot of other countries bring to the table. People like to do business with American businesses. They think we're open, we're accountable, we have freedom of creativity.
"I think that if we can organise ourselves in this sector we can win. And when I say win, I don't mean win on Cold War terms. I mean win in terms of business contracts, business opportunities, jobs for Americans, ability to export."
Kerry was asked about a range of Middle East issues. He said the US was working on how to hasten the fall of President Bashar Assad in Syria.
"We need to change Bashar Assad's calculation," he said. "Right now President Assad doesn't think he's losing and the opposition thinks it's winning. That is not an equation that allows you to reach some accommodation for transition. The goal of the Obama administration, I think the goal of the international community, is to effect some kind of orderly transition.
"We have to increase the readiness of president to see the die is cast, the handwriting is on the wall, to be willing to make a judgement here that will save lives and hold the state together in a transition."
Kerry mostly repeated the administration's line on Iran's nuclear programme and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He warned the Palestinians against taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. In recent days, the Palestinian leadership has said it will ask the ICC to investigate whether Jewish settlements in the West Bank breach the laws of war, if Israel continues to expand its colonies in the occupied territories.
Republican senator for Kentucky Rand Paul pressed Kerry on why the US is still sending weapons to Egypt after its first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was revealed to have said that Jews are descended from apes and pigs.
Kerry said Morsi's comments were "reprehensible, degrading and unacceptable" and said he should apologise. But Kerry added that it was important to maintain good relations with the Egyptian leader, in part to help preserve the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord.
Paul also challenged Kerry on whether the president has the authority to unilaterally make war, as Barack Obama did in Libya, noting the nominee's opposition to the US bombing of Cambodia ordered by President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam war. In 1971, Kerry gave evidence to the Senate foreign relations committee after returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
Paul said the constitution did not give the president the power to make war. Kerry responded that congressional approval "just doesn't work in some instances". "There are occasions where the president of the United States has to make a decision immediately," he said.
Kerry cited the invasions of Grenada and Panama, saying he supported both military interventions although they appeared to be poor examples as neither required an urgent decision by the president that required him to bypass Congress.
Paul pressed Kerry on whether there was a difference between Nixon's bombing of Cambodia and Obama ordering the assault on Libya. Kerry said Cambodia was different.
"It is because it was an extension of a war that was prosecuted without the involvement of Congress after a number of years," he said.
Afghan police: Suicide bomber misses NATO, kills 5
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan police say a suicide car bomber has killed five civilians and wounded another 25 in a botched attempt to hit a convoy of NATO supply trucks in eastern Afghanistan.
Gen. Faziluddin Ayar, who is responsible for the east, says the bomber missed the convoy, which suffered no damage. The attack took place Friday in the Tagab district of eastern Kapisa province.
The Ministry of Interior says in a statement that the bomber instead rammed into a residential home, killing those inside. It says four of the dead were from the same family.
The Taliban claimed responsibility in a text message sent to news media.
Afghan Torture Allegations Shine Spotlight On Prisoner Transfers
By Frud Bezhan January 24, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
International pressure is mounting on the Afghan government to take action against widespread torture, mistreatment, and sexual abuse in detention facilities.
The calls for reform have grown louder since the release on January 20 of a damning UN report that says a growing number of prisoners are being tortured in government custody. The report lists electric shock, genital twisting, beatings with pipes, and threats of execution and rape among the methods used.
The findings of the report, issued by UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), have raised serious concerns for Afghanistan's Western allies as NATO transfers hundreds of its detainees to Afghan control. Possible disruption of the prisoner transfers, which is a key part of the security transition, could complicate the expected withdrawal of NATO-led forces next year.
A similar UN report in 2012 that claimed hundreds of detainees had been tortured in Afghan intelligence and police detention centers led NATO to halt transfers to several Afghan jails. This year's report concluded that almost one-third of all NATO detainees recently transferred to Kabul have been abused.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, says the findings could once again complicate the handover process. That includes the transfer of detainees still held by the U.S. military at Bagram prison, a huge detention center on the grounds of an American military base.
Handovers In Doubt?
Kugelman says claims of torture will make it difficult for the NATO-led coalition to hand over prisoners. He suggests the coalition may enforce stricter preconditions for transfers as a result.
"What could happen is that NATO may decide to condition the Bagram transfer on assurances and guarantees from the Afghan government that it will actually investigate these allegations and assuming that they're true -- which I'm sure they are -- that they then act and do something," Kugelman says. "NATO can't just let this go; these [allegations] are really serious."
Kugelman says the findings of the report could also disrupt foreign aid to Kabul. He says that under U.S. law no economic assistance can be provided to a country that is known to be involved in torture and has shown little intent in addressing it. That would raise serious concerns for Kabul, which is heavily dependent on outside assistance.
Legal issues could also derail the prisoner transfers. The International Convention Against Torture, which the United States and other NATO countries have signed, prohibits countries from transferring detainees to another state's custody where a credible risk of torture exists.
The UNAMA report found that over half of the 635 detainees it interviewed had been tortured. The interviews took place between October 2011 and October 2012.
The findings reveal an increase in the number of torture claims at police jails in the past year. The report also warns that the country's intelligence service created secret prisons and sometimes hid detainees from international observers.
Evidence Of Torture
Kabul has rejected the report, titled "Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On," as "exaggerated." The Afghan government has since assigned a team to investigate the claims.
Among the 34 Afghan jails where UN investigators are believed to have found evidence of torture and ill-treatment is Afghanistan's notorious Pol-e Charkhi prison, the largest in the country.
Detainees there have long alleged torture and abuse at the hands of prison officials. Those allegations resurfaced after prisoners staged a four-day hunger strike on January 14 and sewed their lips together in protest of what they called widespread mistreatment, including physical and mental abuse, food deprivation, and extortion.
One of those protesting was Mohammad Hakim, a prisoner who spoke by telephone to RFE/RL on January 18. Hakim, who did not say why he had been imprisoned or for how long, said at least 35 inmates took part in the strike.
"Prison officials don't let us have Korans and we don't have enough clothes to wear," Hakim said. "[We are getting sick because] our cells have open toilets. The prison officials are placing severe restrictions on what we are allowed to do."
Hadi, another prisoner at the facility, says inmates who have served their sentences are being denied release, while others eligible to have their sentences reduced under a presidential decree are being forced to pay prison officials bribes of up to $2,000 to secure their freedom.
"Those prisoners that pay walk free," Hadi says. "Those of us who say we don't have money are told by prison officials that our personal dossiers have been lost."
'Culture Of Impunity'
The Attorney General's Office has launched an investigation into the allegations at Pol-e Charkhi, which is run by the Afghan government and houses more than 3,000 inmates, including ex-Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, convicted murderers, and drug smugglers.
The increase in the number of torture cases in Afghan jails comes despite a coordinated attempt by Kabul and NATO to stop it. Afghan intelligence and police officials have been trained in interrogation techniques that respect human rights. There have also been efforts to closely monitor detention facilities.
But Chris Rogers, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Foundation who works on civilian casualties and conflict-related detentions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says only accountability measures will stop and prevent torture from occurring.
Rogers says the Afghan government has so far resorted to shuffling guilty individuals within the system rather than punishing them.
"The top priority has to be addressing a culture of impunity and making sure those individuals who have been found to be responsible for abuse or abuse was going on under their watch are held accountable," Rogers says. "A message needs to be sent throughout the Afghan judicial, intelligence, and security system that abuse will not be tolerated, at the highest level."
With additional reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
News Analysis: Peace in Afghanistan remains elusive amid continued Taliban attacks
Xinhua By Abdul Haleem Jan. 24, 2013
KABUL - The successive deadly attacks in the fortified Afghan capital Kabul over the past weeks which the Taliban has claimed responsibility has dashed hopes for peace and national reconciliation in the country, local observers here said.
The brazen attacks occurred despite the government's decision to release Taliban detainees from Pakistani jails.
The government was also able to take control of Bagram prison from the U.S. military as part of its efforts to bolster the peace process and bring the armed militants into the political mainstream.
Afghan analysts said that "one-sided efforts for peace" would never yield the desired results, adding that the two bold attacks in Kabul over the past two weeks only illustrate that the Taliban does not believe in the peace process.
"Consecutive bold attacks on security apparatus in Kabul demonstrate security lapses on the part of the government," a political analyst Jawed Kohistani said in a television panel discussion.
Releasing more Taliban detainees from Afghan, U.S. and Pakistani jails, according to Kohistani, would only further boost the Taliban morale to carry more attacks.
He said this was what happened when Mullah Samad Achakzai was released because the freed Taliban leader is now reported to be commanding the insurgent fighters in Spinboldak, in the province of Kandahar.
Another political observer and parliamentarian Arif Rahmani warned that "anyone who kills our people and destroy our country is our enemy, no matter if he is our brother or if he belongs to our clan and tribe."
President Hamid Karzai has time and again called on Taliban militants to give up fighting and join the government in the rebuilding process of Afghanistan.
However, the olive branch has been repeatedly rebuffed by the Taliban branding it as "trick to divide" tactic of the government. They said that there will be no talks with the government as long as there are foreign troops in the country.
The Taliban had in fact demanded the immediate pullout of NATO- led coalition forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for any dialogue with the government.
It is almost six years now since the Afghan government called on the Taliban to sever ties with al-Qaida, accept the country's Constitution and join the peace process.
Despite the peace overtures of the Karzai administration, no ranking Taliban military or political leader has switched side to the government.
More than two dozen Taliban detainees, including senior commanders Mullah Nurudin Turabi and Anwarul Haq Mujahid, have been released from Pakistani jails over the past few months but none has joined the government in Kabul and no one knows their whereabouts now.
Reports said that the released Taliban, instead of joining the peace process have rejoined their comrades and are playing key roles in the group's protracted war against the Afghan government and NATO-led troops based in Afghanistan.
The brazen attack by the Taliban against the police in Kabul on Jan. 21 had left eight people dead, including five suicide attackers and three traffic police, and injured over a dozen others.
In the previous attack in the compound of the National Directorate for Security (NDS), the country's intelligence agency, which occurred on Jan. 16, six people, presumably all attackers, were killed and 30 others, all civilians, were injured.
The militant group also critically wounded the head of intelligence Assadullah Khalid in a suicide bomb attack in his highly protected guest house in Kabul about a month ago.
According to observers the prospects for peace in Afghanistan appears to be dim after the government failed to win the support of any Taliban leader with only a year before the pullout of U.S.- led NATO forces in 2014.
Afghanistan's new generation: Modern, ambitious ... naive
Some are too young to remember life under the Taliban and wave off the idea of a return to civil war. Others are all too aware of the potential dangers that await after foreign forces leave.
Los Angeles Times By Alexandra Zavis January 24, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Behind the thick walls of one of Kabul's newest districts, Tooba Hotak practices driving her parents' Mercedes in a parking lot lined with cream-colored apartment buildings.
The car lurches as she tries shifting gears, but the 16-year-old drives on, past a cluster of stores and a playground full of children chasing one another in the snow.
Later, she slips into a pair of fluffy slippers for a chemistry class in her family's plush living room.
Tooba is being home-schooled in the British education system. She hopes to go to college and become an engineer. Marriage, children — "that's not so important," she says.
Like many middle-class Kabul residents of her generation, Tooba lived most of her life abroad. She wasn't born yet when Soviet forces pulled out of the country in 1989, unleashing a civil war that eventually gave rise to the Taliban and drove her family into exile in China.
They returned after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 to a city that had shaken off the most rigid strictures of the Islamic militants' rule, which denied girls an education and kept them largely confined to their homes.
Although large parts of the population still struggle to survive in overcrowded slums, these teens and young adults live in modern apartments, shop at Western-style malls and supermarkets, swap text messages on their cellphones, celebrate weddings at neon-decked halls and are connected to the world through television, movies and the Internet.
Tooba doesn't worry about what her life might look like after the departure of most U.S. and allied foreign troops next year.
"It will be the same," she says, nibbling a date. "This is a dangerous place for Americans, but not for Afghans."
Her tutor, Naela, looks up from her laptop. "You think you will be driving after the Taliban come?" snaps the teacher, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.
"They will kill you," she says, running a finger across her neck.
Young Afghans such as Tooba belong to a small but growing class of professionals, business owners and civil servants, a manifestation, in part, of the influx of foreign aid, investment and personnel that has accompanied Western military intervention.
Educated and ambitious, they may represent their nation's best hope for a stable future.
Those too young to remember the Taliban may exhibit a blithe confidence, but others are worried, some to the point of making plans to leave, all too aware of the dangers that lie ahead.
Aria City, the north Kabul district where Tooba lives with her parents and two sisters, is one of several gated communities catering to white-collar Afghans, offering such prized amenities as central heating and air conditioning, round-the-clock running water and private guards.
Beyond the quiet, tree-lined lanes where Tooba practices driving, honking cars jostle for space on rutted, muddy streets with armored convoys, rickety bicycles, donkey carts and vendors. Designed to be largely self-sufficient, the housing development has its own playground, school, stores, restaurant and mosque.
Hazhir Hoshan, 17, and his high school pals escape the fray and settle into the men's section of the Aria City restaurant. They order a round of chicken burgers and Mountain Dew.
The boys laugh off any thought of another all-out civil war.
"There are many modern men here in Afghanistan," Hazhir says, "so I don't think the war will begin again."
His friend Abdullah Hakimi, also 17, nods. "The Taliban just come with big turbans and long beards," he says between bites. "I think they look funny. They are not as strong as people think."
Abdullah admires the NATO-trained Afghan army and wants to be a military doctor.
"He likes guns!" Hazhir teases.
No, Abdullah says, "the military needs doctors. The civilian doctors are fleeing from the war zones."
The afternoon stretches before them. They think they might drive over to Gulbahar Center, a downtown shopping mall where young men in skinny jeans and gel-sculpted hair go to catch a movie, play video games or challenge one another on a bucking bronco machine.
Afghanistan is "like a new child," Hazhir says. "It's good now. We go to school, play football. We can have fun together."
The mall, which opened four years ago, is a mash-up of brash Western styles and more conservative Afghan tastes. Fashion-conscious customers browse through aisles of short, strappy dresses, expensive cosmetics and the latest high-tech gadgetry. There is even a tattoo parlor.
Tucked into a corner on the third floor are two new shops, one selling modest black robes and head scarves, the other lingerie in delicate floral and camouflage prints.
Omid Mesrabi, 23, opened the businesses last month with money he saved while working at an embassy for six years. He runs the Islamic dress store, and his sister Muzhda, 18, takes care of customers in search of more intimate apparel.
Both shops are doing well, he says, and he is already thinking of expanding. "My plan is to be a really successful businessman, not [just] a shopkeeper."
His family never left Afghanistan and he remembers all too well the days when rival Islamic militias rained rockets down on Kabul's neighborhoods. Mesrabi is excited about the changes.
"Things are getting better day by day," he says. "We didn't have good roads, buildings or centers like these. But now we have them."
He adds with a sardonic smile: "Even the suicide bombers are improving. They are killing more people."
An ambulance packed with explosives was detonated outside the mall during a high-profile assault on the city center in 2010. Visitors are asked to check their guns at the entrance and submit to a thorough search.
"We suffered 40 years of war, and after this, maybe war will come back," Mesrabi says. "But it's not something to worry about. We are used to it."
He is more concerned about the economic fallout from the departure of foreign forces and their consultants and contractors. Mesrabi says his best customers are people who work for foreign businesses and nonprofits, many of which are already scaling back.
But he says he won't be joining any rush for the exits.
"Afghanistan needs me," he says. "I want to be an example. I brought my sister here to work. Brothers never accept that. We are the people to change others' minds."
With her spiky heels, can-do attitude and successful television career, Zarlasht Baiza, 23, would seem to epitomize the opportunities that have become available to urban Afghan women in the last decade. But she is the first to point out her special circumstances.
"Most families are not allowing girls to work for a TV station," she says over a smoothie at one of the city's smart new cafes. "My parents died [of cancer] when I was little. I have a brother and a sister. But they are younger than me, so they can't stop me."
Baiza was just 16 when she started working at the private Ariana Television Network. It was several years before the station agreed to put her on the air. She has made enough money to pay off the debt on her parents' house and provide for her siblings.
She has a loyal following among Afghan homemakers because of a regular feature she does on the latest trends in decor, fashion and cosmetics. But she has also attracted the attention of anonymous callers who tell her that women have no business being on television.
"Instead of showing yourself on camera, go beg in the streets. It's better," one menacing voice told her.
Several times the callers informed her they were outside her home. Then the siblings would hear loud banging at the gate.
"All three of us would cover ourselves with blankets, so we wouldn't hear the banging," Baiza says.
She reported the calls to the police, but no arrests were made.
"We will talk after 2014," the threatening voice on the phone told her.
There has even been pressure from the current government, which last year asked female TV presenters to wear head scarves and avoid heavy makeup.
"Sometimes I wonder what will happen if the Taliban take over again," Baiza says. "Although we say there has been a lot of progress in the last 12 years, as we move closer to 2014, the situation is getting more restrictive for women because they are worried about what is going to happen."
She says she knows several women who have quit their TV jobs because of family and public pressure.
"I love my job as a producer and reporter," she says. "But maybe before the end of 2014, I will leave [Afghanistan] for a few months and see what happens."
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash and Times staff photographer Carolyn Cole contributed to this report.
America's non-committal relationship with Afghanistan
Foreign Policy (blog) By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Wednesday, January 23, 2013
"A decade of war is now ending," the president announced in his inaugural address Monday, even as soldiers continue to prepare for nine-month deployments to destinations including Uruzgan and Kandahar.
The White House has long talked in the abstract about bringing a ‘responsible' end to the war President Obama once called the fight ‘we have to win.' What has been less clear is what the U.S. government has in mind regarding the very critical details concerning its commitment to Afghanistan post-2014. Among the central questions: how many U.S. troops will remain on in Afghanistan, and what size Afghan force will the U.S. push for and fund?
"I can't, sitting here, tell you whether I believe that this administration is actually committed to trying to make the Afghan Army as good as it can be in the next two years or whether we're simply trying to look for a decent interval while we dump that," former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann recently said at the Brookings Institution.
"The fact is we have a policy. What we are not clear about is whether we're serious about that policy and what the policy requires," Neumann said. "We need a discussion that is more articulated about missions, both military missions and others, and one can take different positions on whether you should advise in the field or not, or whether you're going to provide air support and some other key things, at least for a limited period while the Afghans finish development of those."
The American people, for their part, seem to have amnesia when it comes to recent conflicts. Iraq is a faint though bloody memory, and only for a fighting sliver of our country is Afghanistan a war that is still being fought.
Even as the battle in Afghanistan begins its slow wind down, America and its leaders still struggle to engage with it in a serious way.
That is why it is not terribly surprising to see Zero Dark Thirty disturb so many. It was not a glorification of torture, or a justification of its horrors and the consequences of it. Instead the film offered a well-lit snapshot of a fight and a war that few in this country have acknowledged more than momentarily, let alone debated. The film reminds viewers of battles most have not wanted to see or speak of beyond perfunctory praise for America's troops fighting and dying in places their countrymen will never know.
When war does not intrude on Americans' daily life, even in news headlines, it is easy to understand why colliding with the brutality of its reality is shocking. America has forcefully avoided engaging with a war fought by less than one percent of its population, and its leaders have shrunk at explaining either the stakes or the mission at hand in Afghanistan. The closest that many have come to reading about the Afghanistan war of late is probably coverage of the scandal surrounding former Gen. David Petraeus' resignation.
With Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington earlier this month comes another step on the path to closing out this war with which Americans long ago grew tired. Multiple U.S. troop deployments, deadly ‘green on blue' attacks on American soldiers, and Afghan government corruption account for much of the exhaustion. But a lack of leadership from Washington is also worth noting.
In his book tour interviews former Gen. Stanley McChrystal nearly pleaded with the American public to care about its longest-ever war. He also argued that not all is lost.
"I believe Afghanistan can be stable," McChrystal said on CBS. "I think they must take responsibility for their security, the vast lion's share, but I think the strategic partnership that President Obama offered to President Karzai is critical. Not just physically. It's not how many troops and how much money, it's the idea in the minds of Afghans that they have a reliable partner."
And as former Sen. Chuck Hagel seeks to become Defense Secretary Hagel the details and durability of that partnership is on the minds of others who have served in Afghanistan on the diplomatic side.
"We have the structures in place, both bilaterally, through our strategic partnership agreement that carries on to 2024, and internationally, through the Chicago agreements to fund Afghan security forces into the out years, as well as the Tokyo ministerial from July that pledged the international community to something like $16 billion in economic support on terms of conditionality, again over the next three to four years. So the architecture is there," said former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker last month. "What is critical is American will -- because again, let me tell you something learned through hard experience: If we don't lead, others are going to wander away too, and those pledges will vanish like smoke. Absolutely guarantee it."
Crocker argued for an American wallet that remains open to support Afghan forces and a fledgling civil society.
"We will wind up paying about $2.5 billion a year to support -- as our share of support for Afghan security forces totaling 230,000. That sounds like a lot of money until you consider that we're paying about $110 billion a year now. So this is pretty cheap insurance," Crocker said. "And I have argued and will argue, that support for Afghan women, for civil society, for social and economic development is also pretty cheap insurance to prevent a spirit of hopelessness from taking hold among the general population that makes it easy for the Taliban."
Unfortunately, a spirit of hopelessness already has taken hold among the American public.
Whether the country's leaders decide to challenge that despair and dig into the details of and the rationale behind America's involvement in Afghanistan after next year remains an unanswered question. But the past few years leave little reason to think that Washington will soon open up and start talking about the war and its goals. And an exhausted American public is unlikely to push them to do so.
For America the war may be over, but men and women in uniform continue to fight it.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.
MOI Downplays Security Forces Joining Insurgents
TOLOnews.com By Yama Ahmadi Thursday, 24 January 2013
The Ministry of Interior Thursday acknowledged that a number of Afghan troops have deserted to join the Taliban in the past four months, but said this will have no impact on the morale of the country's security forces.
Desertion to the Taliban is regarded by some analysts to be a reaction to the impending withdrawal of the international forces led by the US.
However, the Ministry of Interior spokesman downplayed its impact in an interview with TOLOnews saying they were likely to be identified as Taliban sympathizers, and discharged.
"Consider its quantity – the Afghan National Police has a large quantity. Consider its power – today it has a demonstrable power. Most of the areas, 86 percent of Afghanistan, is secured by Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. So these ten, twenty, or thirty who have left for different reasons were those who would have been definitely identified and dismissed one day," Sediq Seddiqi said.
"Now that they have left by their own decision, it cannot have any effect over the morale, motivation, or strengthen the ranks of the opposition," he added.
His comments come after four Afghan police on Wednesday took a police vehicle, some weapons and joined insurgents in Nimroz.
Military analysts are disturbed by the rate of desertions – said to be as high as 25 percent per year – and more so the reports of Afghan troops joining insurgents.
"The region's intelligence agencies, and especially that of Pakistan, have been capable of placing its own people in the ranks of our security sectors. The reality of this issue is the lack of care taken by security sector itself," Amrullah Aman told TOLOnews.
"Wherever they [the security forces] send their people, there is no background checks, the salaries are not given on time, and they haven't been capable of providing them with necessary weapons and facilities to defend themselves, therefore they exchange their relations for the sake of survival," he added.
IEC Decision on Old Voting Cards Faces Backlash
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Thursday, 24 January 2013
Afghan political parties Thursday strongly rejected the decision of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to use the old registration system for the 2014 presidential election, warning of a political crisis if the election is fraudulent.
Political groups said that the government's intervention in the IEC's work is a cause of serious concern.
"The government illegally intervened in the commission's affairs and the commission is not capable of working independently without government intervening, so it is a concern for us," National Coalition spokesman Sayed Aqa Fazil Sancharaki said Thursday, adding that the coalition will fight the decision.
The IEC Wednesday announced that it will support the government stance that registration cards from the last presidential election will be valid for 2014, despite it previously pushing for a new registration of all voters countrywide citing fraud concerns.
The excuse given by President Hamid Karzai himself for the government unwillingness to have a new registration process was because there was insufficient budget.
"The issue of money is not a reason," National Front spokesman Faizullah Zaki said. "It is a deceiving line from the government. The government's aim is an election with fraud."
The Right & Justice party said there can be no hope of a transparent election if the old voting system and cards are used.
"The last statement by the election commission on the use of the old cards is an indicator of the government's influence that it cannot guarantee a fair and transparent election," party spokesman Abass Noyan said.
Meanwhile, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan called for the IEC to clearly explain how it will ensure a fair election with the use of the old cards, given that until yesterday the IEC said it was not possible.
FEFA Executive Director Jandad Spinghar said the IEC should be summoned by Parliament on this matter because the current system allows people to vote at least twice.
The IEC retreated from its previous demands of a new registration for all Afghan voters after its previous drafts on how this will to happen were rejected by the government, twice.
New registration and electronic cards will only be issued to those citizens who are not already registered and who have qualified to vote since the last election.
World Bank Funds Further $250m for Rural Rehab
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Thursday, 24 January 2013
The World Bank has agreed to fund $250 million for the third phase of Afghanistan's National Solidarity programme, the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) said Wednesday.
The minister said this third phase will cover more than 12,000 villages in the country which have not benefited previously.
"National Solidarity is currently in its third phase whereby we want to cover 12,000 villages where we have never been to, and also help another 12,000 villages that have completed their tasks and spent their funds, and who will receive funds for a second term," MRRD minister Wais Barmak said.
World Bank country director for Afghanistan, Robert Sam, said at the signing ceremony that the funding represented the bank's continued commitment to the war-ravaged nation beyond the power transition of 2014.
"The National Solidarity programme has demonstrated great success for ten years, and they have this great success to build on for many more years of success and sustainability," he said.
"Through these community development councils, one of the issues going forward would be the opportunity to sustain the gains that have been met in infrastructural cohesion and other community benefits including on the gender and work within the community," he continued, adding that the bank looked forward to working with Afghans throughout the transition period and beyond.
The Afghan minister said that over the past decade, more than 30,000 of up to 40,000 villages in the country have received benefits from the National Solidarity programme.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By MARIA ABI-HABIB January 25, 2013, 4:09 a.m. ET The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—The U.S. military has blacklisted Afghanistan's largest private airline, alleging it is smuggling "bulk" quantities of opium on civilian flights to Tajikistan, a corridor through which the drugs reach the rest of the world.
Kam Air was barred this month from receiving U.S. military contracts by U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. James Mattis, according to U.S. military officials.
"The U.S. will not do business with those who fund and support illicit activities," U.S. Army Maj.-Gen. Richard Longo, the commander of Task Force 2010, a coalition anticorruption unit, said in an interview. "Kam Air is too large of a company not to know what has been going on within its organization."
Kam Air, which denied the charges, is the first major Afghan company to be penalized by the U.S. military over drug allegations. It wasn't clear how much U.S. military business the company stands to lose.
The move underscores growing concerns among Western officials that the drug trade in Afghanistan is not only resurgent, but is also taking an increasingly open role in the country's economy. In the past month, Kam Air has engaged in talks to merge with Afghanistan's state-owned flag carrier, Ariana Afghan Airlines, both sides have said. The deal could see the Afghan carrier absorb Kam Air's debts, say people familiar with it.
Gen. Longo confirmed that his task force had conducted an investigation into Kam Air but said details were classified. Other U.S. officials said the decision to bar the airline from U.S. contracts was made because of evidence of Kam Air's widespread involvement in the drug trade.
"I totally deny the allegations," the airline's president and founder, Zamari Kamgar, said after being told of the U.S. decision. It would be impossible to fly drugs out of the country as the airline is subject to thorough security checks at Afghan airports, he said, adding that the allegations were likely a conspiracy perpetrated by his competitors.
Mr. Kamgar said he expects the Kam Air-Ariana deal to go through and that his management team would take over the combined entity, which he said would plan to open direct routes to U.S. and European airports. A spokesman for Afghanistan's Transportation Ministry, which runs Ariana, said he was "not aware of the smuggling of drugs by Kam Air" and wasn't aware of the U.S. investigation.
The U.S. action underlines how deeply the drug trade is entrenched in Afghanistan, which the United Nations has said provides more than 90% of the world's illicit opiates. While the U.S. and allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have fiercely engaged the Taliban over the past 11 years, the coalition has failed to cut away at the opium trade that helps finance the insurgency.
Opium cultivation spread in recent years to provinces once considered "poppy free." While blight and poor weather in recent years have cut into Afghanistan's opium and heroin exports, poppy cultivation rose 18% in 2012 from the previous year, according to the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime.
"Export earnings from Afghan opiates may be worth $2.4 billion—equivalent to 15%" of gross domestic product, the UNODC said in a report last year.
As the U.S. and allies prepare to withdraw military forces in 2014, officials of coalition countries have expressed concerns that Afghanistan will become a narco-state where legal business activities and government institutions are intertwined with the drug trade. Some Western officials fear that the narco-trade and associated corruption will pose a greater threat to stability after 2014 than the Taliban, who also derive a large portion of their revenues from narcotics.
"The corruption, crime and impunity the narcotic problem causes on the society, governance and more specifically, families and individuals, is not only devastating for Afghanistan but equally to many of the surrounding countries," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the Afghanistan representative of the UNODC.
The U.N. estimates that Afghan opiates kill 10,000 people a year in the U.S. and other NATO countries, compared with some 400 coalition soldiers killed last year by the Taliban.
The latest move follows two separate U.S. investigations, reported last year by The Wall Street Journal, into allegations that the U.S.-funded Afghan Air Force was smuggling drugs and weapons around the country. Kabul denied those allegations.
The investigations, led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the military coalition, have stalled because of lack of cooperation from Afghan authorities, according to U.S. officials.
The Afghan government says the Afghan Air Force is clean and that it would cooperate with any U.S. narcotics investigation into the force if presented with sufficient evidence.
The investigation by Task Force 2010 was likely spurred last fall, Gen. Longo said, after Kam Air bid on a contract tendered by the international military coalition in Kabul.
"An organization such as Kam Air exposes itself when it bids on a U.S. contract," said Gen. Longo. "They are subject to scrutiny."
Kam Air operates a fleet of some 16 planes, including Boeing 767 and 747 aircraft and Antonov cargo planes. The task force believes that domestic passenger routes have been used to ferry opium around the country, according to a U.S. official in Kabul. But the investigation is focused on Central Asia, the official said. "Kam Air is flying out bulk quantities of opium," the official said.
Kam Air flies cargo to many destinations. But its only scheduled Central Asian passenger route is between Kabul and Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.
The poorest former Soviet republic, Tajikistan suffers from political instability and porous borders. High-level government protection for drug smugglers has made the country a trafficking route for Afghan opium to reach the world, Western law-enforcement officials have said.
A spokesman for Tajikistan's National Security Committee declined to comment, as did the Foreign Ministry in Dushanbe.
Kam Air's Mr. Kamgar said the company has provided logistic services to the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan but said he couldn't immediately characterize the scope of the business. U.S. military officials were unable to provide details of any contracts given to Kam Air.
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan currently has no contracts with the airline, though it has been on its list of authorized cargo carriers, an official said.
Following Gen. Mattis's designation, all U.S. Department of Defense entities are forbidden from working with the airline. The decision doesn't directly affect civilian U.S. agencies. Coalition partners in Afghanistan have tended to follow the U.S. lead in blackballing companies, including trucking firms, seen to be corrupt.
—Ziaulhaq Sultani contributed to this article.
Write to Maria Abi-Habib at maria.habib@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared January 25, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Afghan Airline Ferried Opium, U.S. Alleges.
John Kerry uses Senate hearing to warn Afghanistan over elections
Secretary of state nominee says second tainted presidential contest will cause abandonment by west after 2014 withdrawal
Guardian.co.uk By Chris McGreal Thursday 24 January 2013
John Kerry, who is shortly expected to be confirmed as the next US secretary of state, has warned that Afghanistan must hold a legitimate presidential election next year or risk being totally abandoned by western governments after the withdrawal of foreign combat forces is complete in 2014.
Kerry said in his nomination hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee that he had played a role in helping Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, hold on to power despite a tainted election victory, and that it could not be allowed to happen again.
In a broad-ranging, three-hour hearing, Kerry also warned that "China is all over Africa" and said that the US needed to exert new influence on the continent. He spoke passionately about the need for international cooperation to battle climate change, saying that countries should not be afraid of responding to it, but of not doing so. Kerry also warned that battles between the president and Congress over debt, budgets and other finances were damaging the US's standing in the world.
"Foreign policy is economic policy," he said. "It is urgent that we show people in the rest of the world that we can get our business done in an effective and timely way."
Most senators on the foreign relations committee were fulsome in their praise of Kerry, who is himself a senator and more usually chairman of the same committee. Leading Republicans, such as John McCain, endorsed his nomination and said they expected he would be swiftly confirmed as secretary of state by the full Senate.
Kerry was asked several times about the looming US military withdrawal from Afghanistan – although the largest American civilian overseas operation will remain – and what can be done to create stability. He warned that "there cannot be an effective peace" without hanging on to "the gains" which include constitutional government, the rights of women and girls and their role in Afghan society.
Kerry said that a central factor in stabilising Afghanistan would be ensuring that next year's presidential election is legitimate, after the tainted process which put Karzai back in power.
"Having an acceptable election – it's not going to be perfect, we're not going to be able to have perfection in this process for a lot of different reasons – but having an election that passes muster and is acceptable according to international standards and observers will be critical to our ability to have the kind of transition we want to have, and to have confidence that the government that succeeds in 2014 has legitimacy," he said.
"If it doesn't have legitimacy, if we don't succeed in that effort, it's going to be very, very difficult to convince the American people, and to convince our allies in ISAF and beyond, to stay engaged in this effort."
Kerry acknowledged that he had helped win recognition for Karzai's questionable victory in the last presidential ballot.
"I went through this personally with President Karzai in the last election where there were serious questions about the propriety of the process and we had to sort of strike a compromise about it," he said. "I don't think they'll be room for a compromise in the aftermath here. I will certainly make sure that we're riding herd on it very very closely."
Kerry said that in the face of budget cuts in the US, it was important to maintain funding for overseas policies that strengthen the American economy. He flagged up the rapidly growing influence of Chinese businesses in Africa.
"China is all over Africa," he said. "I mean all over Africa. And they're buying up long-term contracts on minerals, you name it. There are some places where we're not in the game, folks. I hate to say it. We've got to get in it. But it takes a little bit of resourcing. Believe me, somebody's paying for those folks [the Chinese] to be over there, investing in their investment of time.
"We have to be prepared because I think that what we bring to the table is frankly a lot more attractive than what a lot of other countries bring to the table. People like to do business with American businesses. They think we're open, we're accountable, we have freedom of creativity.
"I think that if we can organise ourselves in this sector we can win. And when I say win, I don't mean win on Cold War terms. I mean win in terms of business contracts, business opportunities, jobs for Americans, ability to export."
Kerry was asked about a range of Middle East issues. He said the US was working on how to hasten the fall of President Bashar Assad in Syria.
"We need to change Bashar Assad's calculation," he said. "Right now President Assad doesn't think he's losing and the opposition thinks it's winning. That is not an equation that allows you to reach some accommodation for transition. The goal of the Obama administration, I think the goal of the international community, is to effect some kind of orderly transition.
"We have to increase the readiness of president to see the die is cast, the handwriting is on the wall, to be willing to make a judgement here that will save lives and hold the state together in a transition."
Kerry mostly repeated the administration's line on Iran's nuclear programme and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He warned the Palestinians against taking Israel to the International Criminal Court. In recent days, the Palestinian leadership has said it will ask the ICC to investigate whether Jewish settlements in the West Bank breach the laws of war, if Israel continues to expand its colonies in the occupied territories.
Republican senator for Kentucky Rand Paul pressed Kerry on why the US is still sending weapons to Egypt after its first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was revealed to have said that Jews are descended from apes and pigs.
Kerry said Morsi's comments were "reprehensible, degrading and unacceptable" and said he should apologise. But Kerry added that it was important to maintain good relations with the Egyptian leader, in part to help preserve the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord.
Paul also challenged Kerry on whether the president has the authority to unilaterally make war, as Barack Obama did in Libya, noting the nominee's opposition to the US bombing of Cambodia ordered by President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam war. In 1971, Kerry gave evidence to the Senate foreign relations committee after returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam.
Paul said the constitution did not give the president the power to make war. Kerry responded that congressional approval "just doesn't work in some instances". "There are occasions where the president of the United States has to make a decision immediately," he said.
Kerry cited the invasions of Grenada and Panama, saying he supported both military interventions although they appeared to be poor examples as neither required an urgent decision by the president that required him to bypass Congress.
Paul pressed Kerry on whether there was a difference between Nixon's bombing of Cambodia and Obama ordering the assault on Libya. Kerry said Cambodia was different.
"It is because it was an extension of a war that was prosecuted without the involvement of Congress after a number of years," he said.
Afghan police: Suicide bomber misses NATO, kills 5
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan police say a suicide car bomber has killed five civilians and wounded another 25 in a botched attempt to hit a convoy of NATO supply trucks in eastern Afghanistan.
Gen. Faziluddin Ayar, who is responsible for the east, says the bomber missed the convoy, which suffered no damage. The attack took place Friday in the Tagab district of eastern Kapisa province.
The Ministry of Interior says in a statement that the bomber instead rammed into a residential home, killing those inside. It says four of the dead were from the same family.
The Taliban claimed responsibility in a text message sent to news media.
Afghan Torture Allegations Shine Spotlight On Prisoner Transfers
By Frud Bezhan January 24, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
International pressure is mounting on the Afghan government to take action against widespread torture, mistreatment, and sexual abuse in detention facilities.
The calls for reform have grown louder since the release on January 20 of a damning UN report that says a growing number of prisoners are being tortured in government custody. The report lists electric shock, genital twisting, beatings with pipes, and threats of execution and rape among the methods used.
The findings of the report, issued by UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), have raised serious concerns for Afghanistan's Western allies as NATO transfers hundreds of its detainees to Afghan control. Possible disruption of the prisoner transfers, which is a key part of the security transition, could complicate the expected withdrawal of NATO-led forces next year.
A similar UN report in 2012 that claimed hundreds of detainees had been tortured in Afghan intelligence and police detention centers led NATO to halt transfers to several Afghan jails. This year's report concluded that almost one-third of all NATO detainees recently transferred to Kabul have been abused.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, says the findings could once again complicate the handover process. That includes the transfer of detainees still held by the U.S. military at Bagram prison, a huge detention center on the grounds of an American military base.
Handovers In Doubt?
Kugelman says claims of torture will make it difficult for the NATO-led coalition to hand over prisoners. He suggests the coalition may enforce stricter preconditions for transfers as a result.
"What could happen is that NATO may decide to condition the Bagram transfer on assurances and guarantees from the Afghan government that it will actually investigate these allegations and assuming that they're true -- which I'm sure they are -- that they then act and do something," Kugelman says. "NATO can't just let this go; these [allegations] are really serious."
Kugelman says the findings of the report could also disrupt foreign aid to Kabul. He says that under U.S. law no economic assistance can be provided to a country that is known to be involved in torture and has shown little intent in addressing it. That would raise serious concerns for Kabul, which is heavily dependent on outside assistance.
Legal issues could also derail the prisoner transfers. The International Convention Against Torture, which the United States and other NATO countries have signed, prohibits countries from transferring detainees to another state's custody where a credible risk of torture exists.
The UNAMA report found that over half of the 635 detainees it interviewed had been tortured. The interviews took place between October 2011 and October 2012.
The findings reveal an increase in the number of torture claims at police jails in the past year. The report also warns that the country's intelligence service created secret prisons and sometimes hid detainees from international observers.
Evidence Of Torture
Kabul has rejected the report, titled "Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On," as "exaggerated." The Afghan government has since assigned a team to investigate the claims.
Among the 34 Afghan jails where UN investigators are believed to have found evidence of torture and ill-treatment is Afghanistan's notorious Pol-e Charkhi prison, the largest in the country.
Detainees there have long alleged torture and abuse at the hands of prison officials. Those allegations resurfaced after prisoners staged a four-day hunger strike on January 14 and sewed their lips together in protest of what they called widespread mistreatment, including physical and mental abuse, food deprivation, and extortion.
One of those protesting was Mohammad Hakim, a prisoner who spoke by telephone to RFE/RL on January 18. Hakim, who did not say why he had been imprisoned or for how long, said at least 35 inmates took part in the strike.
"Prison officials don't let us have Korans and we don't have enough clothes to wear," Hakim said. "[We are getting sick because] our cells have open toilets. The prison officials are placing severe restrictions on what we are allowed to do."
Hadi, another prisoner at the facility, says inmates who have served their sentences are being denied release, while others eligible to have their sentences reduced under a presidential decree are being forced to pay prison officials bribes of up to $2,000 to secure their freedom.
"Those prisoners that pay walk free," Hadi says. "Those of us who say we don't have money are told by prison officials that our personal dossiers have been lost."
'Culture Of Impunity'
The Attorney General's Office has launched an investigation into the allegations at Pol-e Charkhi, which is run by the Afghan government and houses more than 3,000 inmates, including ex-Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, convicted murderers, and drug smugglers.
The increase in the number of torture cases in Afghan jails comes despite a coordinated attempt by Kabul and NATO to stop it. Afghan intelligence and police officials have been trained in interrogation techniques that respect human rights. There have also been efforts to closely monitor detention facilities.
But Chris Rogers, a human rights lawyer at the Open Society Foundation who works on civilian casualties and conflict-related detentions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says only accountability measures will stop and prevent torture from occurring.
Rogers says the Afghan government has so far resorted to shuffling guilty individuals within the system rather than punishing them.
"The top priority has to be addressing a culture of impunity and making sure those individuals who have been found to be responsible for abuse or abuse was going on under their watch are held accountable," Rogers says. "A message needs to be sent throughout the Afghan judicial, intelligence, and security system that abuse will not be tolerated, at the highest level."
With additional reporting by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
News Analysis: Peace in Afghanistan remains elusive amid continued Taliban attacks
Xinhua By Abdul Haleem Jan. 24, 2013
KABUL - The successive deadly attacks in the fortified Afghan capital Kabul over the past weeks which the Taliban has claimed responsibility has dashed hopes for peace and national reconciliation in the country, local observers here said.
The brazen attacks occurred despite the government's decision to release Taliban detainees from Pakistani jails.
The government was also able to take control of Bagram prison from the U.S. military as part of its efforts to bolster the peace process and bring the armed militants into the political mainstream.
Afghan analysts said that "one-sided efforts for peace" would never yield the desired results, adding that the two bold attacks in Kabul over the past two weeks only illustrate that the Taliban does not believe in the peace process.
"Consecutive bold attacks on security apparatus in Kabul demonstrate security lapses on the part of the government," a political analyst Jawed Kohistani said in a television panel discussion.
Releasing more Taliban detainees from Afghan, U.S. and Pakistani jails, according to Kohistani, would only further boost the Taliban morale to carry more attacks.
He said this was what happened when Mullah Samad Achakzai was released because the freed Taliban leader is now reported to be commanding the insurgent fighters in Spinboldak, in the province of Kandahar.
Another political observer and parliamentarian Arif Rahmani warned that "anyone who kills our people and destroy our country is our enemy, no matter if he is our brother or if he belongs to our clan and tribe."
President Hamid Karzai has time and again called on Taliban militants to give up fighting and join the government in the rebuilding process of Afghanistan.
However, the olive branch has been repeatedly rebuffed by the Taliban branding it as "trick to divide" tactic of the government. They said that there will be no talks with the government as long as there are foreign troops in the country.
The Taliban had in fact demanded the immediate pullout of NATO- led coalition forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for any dialogue with the government.
It is almost six years now since the Afghan government called on the Taliban to sever ties with al-Qaida, accept the country's Constitution and join the peace process.
Despite the peace overtures of the Karzai administration, no ranking Taliban military or political leader has switched side to the government.
More than two dozen Taliban detainees, including senior commanders Mullah Nurudin Turabi and Anwarul Haq Mujahid, have been released from Pakistani jails over the past few months but none has joined the government in Kabul and no one knows their whereabouts now.
Reports said that the released Taliban, instead of joining the peace process have rejoined their comrades and are playing key roles in the group's protracted war against the Afghan government and NATO-led troops based in Afghanistan.
The brazen attack by the Taliban against the police in Kabul on Jan. 21 had left eight people dead, including five suicide attackers and three traffic police, and injured over a dozen others.
In the previous attack in the compound of the National Directorate for Security (NDS), the country's intelligence agency, which occurred on Jan. 16, six people, presumably all attackers, were killed and 30 others, all civilians, were injured.
The militant group also critically wounded the head of intelligence Assadullah Khalid in a suicide bomb attack in his highly protected guest house in Kabul about a month ago.
According to observers the prospects for peace in Afghanistan appears to be dim after the government failed to win the support of any Taliban leader with only a year before the pullout of U.S.- led NATO forces in 2014.
Afghanistan's new generation: Modern, ambitious ... naive
Some are too young to remember life under the Taliban and wave off the idea of a return to civil war. Others are all too aware of the potential dangers that await after foreign forces leave.
Los Angeles Times By Alexandra Zavis January 24, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Behind the thick walls of one of Kabul's newest districts, Tooba Hotak practices driving her parents' Mercedes in a parking lot lined with cream-colored apartment buildings.
The car lurches as she tries shifting gears, but the 16-year-old drives on, past a cluster of stores and a playground full of children chasing one another in the snow.
Later, she slips into a pair of fluffy slippers for a chemistry class in her family's plush living room.
Tooba is being home-schooled in the British education system. She hopes to go to college and become an engineer. Marriage, children — "that's not so important," she says.
Like many middle-class Kabul residents of her generation, Tooba lived most of her life abroad. She wasn't born yet when Soviet forces pulled out of the country in 1989, unleashing a civil war that eventually gave rise to the Taliban and drove her family into exile in China.
They returned after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 to a city that had shaken off the most rigid strictures of the Islamic militants' rule, which denied girls an education and kept them largely confined to their homes.
Although large parts of the population still struggle to survive in overcrowded slums, these teens and young adults live in modern apartments, shop at Western-style malls and supermarkets, swap text messages on their cellphones, celebrate weddings at neon-decked halls and are connected to the world through television, movies and the Internet.
Tooba doesn't worry about what her life might look like after the departure of most U.S. and allied foreign troops next year.
"It will be the same," she says, nibbling a date. "This is a dangerous place for Americans, but not for Afghans."
Her tutor, Naela, looks up from her laptop. "You think you will be driving after the Taliban come?" snaps the teacher, who, like many Afghans, uses one name.
"They will kill you," she says, running a finger across her neck.
Young Afghans such as Tooba belong to a small but growing class of professionals, business owners and civil servants, a manifestation, in part, of the influx of foreign aid, investment and personnel that has accompanied Western military intervention.
Educated and ambitious, they may represent their nation's best hope for a stable future.
Those too young to remember the Taliban may exhibit a blithe confidence, but others are worried, some to the point of making plans to leave, all too aware of the dangers that lie ahead.
Aria City, the north Kabul district where Tooba lives with her parents and two sisters, is one of several gated communities catering to white-collar Afghans, offering such prized amenities as central heating and air conditioning, round-the-clock running water and private guards.
Beyond the quiet, tree-lined lanes where Tooba practices driving, honking cars jostle for space on rutted, muddy streets with armored convoys, rickety bicycles, donkey carts and vendors. Designed to be largely self-sufficient, the housing development has its own playground, school, stores, restaurant and mosque.
Hazhir Hoshan, 17, and his high school pals escape the fray and settle into the men's section of the Aria City restaurant. They order a round of chicken burgers and Mountain Dew.
The boys laugh off any thought of another all-out civil war.
"There are many modern men here in Afghanistan," Hazhir says, "so I don't think the war will begin again."
His friend Abdullah Hakimi, also 17, nods. "The Taliban just come with big turbans and long beards," he says between bites. "I think they look funny. They are not as strong as people think."
Abdullah admires the NATO-trained Afghan army and wants to be a military doctor.
"He likes guns!" Hazhir teases.
No, Abdullah says, "the military needs doctors. The civilian doctors are fleeing from the war zones."
The afternoon stretches before them. They think they might drive over to Gulbahar Center, a downtown shopping mall where young men in skinny jeans and gel-sculpted hair go to catch a movie, play video games or challenge one another on a bucking bronco machine.
Afghanistan is "like a new child," Hazhir says. "It's good now. We go to school, play football. We can have fun together."
The mall, which opened four years ago, is a mash-up of brash Western styles and more conservative Afghan tastes. Fashion-conscious customers browse through aisles of short, strappy dresses, expensive cosmetics and the latest high-tech gadgetry. There is even a tattoo parlor.
Tucked into a corner on the third floor are two new shops, one selling modest black robes and head scarves, the other lingerie in delicate floral and camouflage prints.
Omid Mesrabi, 23, opened the businesses last month with money he saved while working at an embassy for six years. He runs the Islamic dress store, and his sister Muzhda, 18, takes care of customers in search of more intimate apparel.
Both shops are doing well, he says, and he is already thinking of expanding. "My plan is to be a really successful businessman, not [just] a shopkeeper."
His family never left Afghanistan and he remembers all too well the days when rival Islamic militias rained rockets down on Kabul's neighborhoods. Mesrabi is excited about the changes.
"Things are getting better day by day," he says. "We didn't have good roads, buildings or centers like these. But now we have them."
He adds with a sardonic smile: "Even the suicide bombers are improving. They are killing more people."
An ambulance packed with explosives was detonated outside the mall during a high-profile assault on the city center in 2010. Visitors are asked to check their guns at the entrance and submit to a thorough search.
"We suffered 40 years of war, and after this, maybe war will come back," Mesrabi says. "But it's not something to worry about. We are used to it."
He is more concerned about the economic fallout from the departure of foreign forces and their consultants and contractors. Mesrabi says his best customers are people who work for foreign businesses and nonprofits, many of which are already scaling back.
But he says he won't be joining any rush for the exits.
"Afghanistan needs me," he says. "I want to be an example. I brought my sister here to work. Brothers never accept that. We are the people to change others' minds."
With her spiky heels, can-do attitude and successful television career, Zarlasht Baiza, 23, would seem to epitomize the opportunities that have become available to urban Afghan women in the last decade. But she is the first to point out her special circumstances.
"Most families are not allowing girls to work for a TV station," she says over a smoothie at one of the city's smart new cafes. "My parents died [of cancer] when I was little. I have a brother and a sister. But they are younger than me, so they can't stop me."
Baiza was just 16 when she started working at the private Ariana Television Network. It was several years before the station agreed to put her on the air. She has made enough money to pay off the debt on her parents' house and provide for her siblings.
She has a loyal following among Afghan homemakers because of a regular feature she does on the latest trends in decor, fashion and cosmetics. But she has also attracted the attention of anonymous callers who tell her that women have no business being on television.
"Instead of showing yourself on camera, go beg in the streets. It's better," one menacing voice told her.
Several times the callers informed her they were outside her home. Then the siblings would hear loud banging at the gate.
"All three of us would cover ourselves with blankets, so we wouldn't hear the banging," Baiza says.
She reported the calls to the police, but no arrests were made.
"We will talk after 2014," the threatening voice on the phone told her.
There has even been pressure from the current government, which last year asked female TV presenters to wear head scarves and avoid heavy makeup.
"Sometimes I wonder what will happen if the Taliban take over again," Baiza says. "Although we say there has been a lot of progress in the last 12 years, as we move closer to 2014, the situation is getting more restrictive for women because they are worried about what is going to happen."
She says she knows several women who have quit their TV jobs because of family and public pressure.
"I love my job as a producer and reporter," she says. "But maybe before the end of 2014, I will leave [Afghanistan] for a few months and see what happens."
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash and Times staff photographer Carolyn Cole contributed to this report.
America's non-committal relationship with Afghanistan
Foreign Policy (blog) By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Wednesday, January 23, 2013
"A decade of war is now ending," the president announced in his inaugural address Monday, even as soldiers continue to prepare for nine-month deployments to destinations including Uruzgan and Kandahar.
The White House has long talked in the abstract about bringing a ‘responsible' end to the war President Obama once called the fight ‘we have to win.' What has been less clear is what the U.S. government has in mind regarding the very critical details concerning its commitment to Afghanistan post-2014. Among the central questions: how many U.S. troops will remain on in Afghanistan, and what size Afghan force will the U.S. push for and fund?
"I can't, sitting here, tell you whether I believe that this administration is actually committed to trying to make the Afghan Army as good as it can be in the next two years or whether we're simply trying to look for a decent interval while we dump that," former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann recently said at the Brookings Institution.
"The fact is we have a policy. What we are not clear about is whether we're serious about that policy and what the policy requires," Neumann said. "We need a discussion that is more articulated about missions, both military missions and others, and one can take different positions on whether you should advise in the field or not, or whether you're going to provide air support and some other key things, at least for a limited period while the Afghans finish development of those."
The American people, for their part, seem to have amnesia when it comes to recent conflicts. Iraq is a faint though bloody memory, and only for a fighting sliver of our country is Afghanistan a war that is still being fought.
Even as the battle in Afghanistan begins its slow wind down, America and its leaders still struggle to engage with it in a serious way.
That is why it is not terribly surprising to see Zero Dark Thirty disturb so many. It was not a glorification of torture, or a justification of its horrors and the consequences of it. Instead the film offered a well-lit snapshot of a fight and a war that few in this country have acknowledged more than momentarily, let alone debated. The film reminds viewers of battles most have not wanted to see or speak of beyond perfunctory praise for America's troops fighting and dying in places their countrymen will never know.
When war does not intrude on Americans' daily life, even in news headlines, it is easy to understand why colliding with the brutality of its reality is shocking. America has forcefully avoided engaging with a war fought by less than one percent of its population, and its leaders have shrunk at explaining either the stakes or the mission at hand in Afghanistan. The closest that many have come to reading about the Afghanistan war of late is probably coverage of the scandal surrounding former Gen. David Petraeus' resignation.
With Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington earlier this month comes another step on the path to closing out this war with which Americans long ago grew tired. Multiple U.S. troop deployments, deadly ‘green on blue' attacks on American soldiers, and Afghan government corruption account for much of the exhaustion. But a lack of leadership from Washington is also worth noting.
In his book tour interviews former Gen. Stanley McChrystal nearly pleaded with the American public to care about its longest-ever war. He also argued that not all is lost.
"I believe Afghanistan can be stable," McChrystal said on CBS. "I think they must take responsibility for their security, the vast lion's share, but I think the strategic partnership that President Obama offered to President Karzai is critical. Not just physically. It's not how many troops and how much money, it's the idea in the minds of Afghans that they have a reliable partner."
And as former Sen. Chuck Hagel seeks to become Defense Secretary Hagel the details and durability of that partnership is on the minds of others who have served in Afghanistan on the diplomatic side.
"We have the structures in place, both bilaterally, through our strategic partnership agreement that carries on to 2024, and internationally, through the Chicago agreements to fund Afghan security forces into the out years, as well as the Tokyo ministerial from July that pledged the international community to something like $16 billion in economic support on terms of conditionality, again over the next three to four years. So the architecture is there," said former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker last month. "What is critical is American will -- because again, let me tell you something learned through hard experience: If we don't lead, others are going to wander away too, and those pledges will vanish like smoke. Absolutely guarantee it."
Crocker argued for an American wallet that remains open to support Afghan forces and a fledgling civil society.
"We will wind up paying about $2.5 billion a year to support -- as our share of support for Afghan security forces totaling 230,000. That sounds like a lot of money until you consider that we're paying about $110 billion a year now. So this is pretty cheap insurance," Crocker said. "And I have argued and will argue, that support for Afghan women, for civil society, for social and economic development is also pretty cheap insurance to prevent a spirit of hopelessness from taking hold among the general population that makes it easy for the Taliban."
Unfortunately, a spirit of hopelessness already has taken hold among the American public.
Whether the country's leaders decide to challenge that despair and dig into the details of and the rationale behind America's involvement in Afghanistan after next year remains an unanswered question. But the past few years leave little reason to think that Washington will soon open up and start talking about the war and its goals. And an exhausted American public is unlikely to push them to do so.
For America the war may be over, but men and women in uniform continue to fight it.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.
MOI Downplays Security Forces Joining Insurgents
TOLOnews.com By Yama Ahmadi Thursday, 24 January 2013
The Ministry of Interior Thursday acknowledged that a number of Afghan troops have deserted to join the Taliban in the past four months, but said this will have no impact on the morale of the country's security forces.
Desertion to the Taliban is regarded by some analysts to be a reaction to the impending withdrawal of the international forces led by the US.
However, the Ministry of Interior spokesman downplayed its impact in an interview with TOLOnews saying they were likely to be identified as Taliban sympathizers, and discharged.
"Consider its quantity – the Afghan National Police has a large quantity. Consider its power – today it has a demonstrable power. Most of the areas, 86 percent of Afghanistan, is secured by Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. So these ten, twenty, or thirty who have left for different reasons were those who would have been definitely identified and dismissed one day," Sediq Seddiqi said.
"Now that they have left by their own decision, it cannot have any effect over the morale, motivation, or strengthen the ranks of the opposition," he added.
His comments come after four Afghan police on Wednesday took a police vehicle, some weapons and joined insurgents in Nimroz.
Military analysts are disturbed by the rate of desertions – said to be as high as 25 percent per year – and more so the reports of Afghan troops joining insurgents.
"The region's intelligence agencies, and especially that of Pakistan, have been capable of placing its own people in the ranks of our security sectors. The reality of this issue is the lack of care taken by security sector itself," Amrullah Aman told TOLOnews.
"Wherever they [the security forces] send their people, there is no background checks, the salaries are not given on time, and they haven't been capable of providing them with necessary weapons and facilities to defend themselves, therefore they exchange their relations for the sake of survival," he added.
IEC Decision on Old Voting Cards Faces Backlash
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Thursday, 24 January 2013
Afghan political parties Thursday strongly rejected the decision of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to use the old registration system for the 2014 presidential election, warning of a political crisis if the election is fraudulent.
Political groups said that the government's intervention in the IEC's work is a cause of serious concern.
"The government illegally intervened in the commission's affairs and the commission is not capable of working independently without government intervening, so it is a concern for us," National Coalition spokesman Sayed Aqa Fazil Sancharaki said Thursday, adding that the coalition will fight the decision.
The IEC Wednesday announced that it will support the government stance that registration cards from the last presidential election will be valid for 2014, despite it previously pushing for a new registration of all voters countrywide citing fraud concerns.
The excuse given by President Hamid Karzai himself for the government unwillingness to have a new registration process was because there was insufficient budget.
"The issue of money is not a reason," National Front spokesman Faizullah Zaki said. "It is a deceiving line from the government. The government's aim is an election with fraud."
The Right & Justice party said there can be no hope of a transparent election if the old voting system and cards are used.
"The last statement by the election commission on the use of the old cards is an indicator of the government's influence that it cannot guarantee a fair and transparent election," party spokesman Abass Noyan said.
Meanwhile, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan called for the IEC to clearly explain how it will ensure a fair election with the use of the old cards, given that until yesterday the IEC said it was not possible.
FEFA Executive Director Jandad Spinghar said the IEC should be summoned by Parliament on this matter because the current system allows people to vote at least twice.
The IEC retreated from its previous demands of a new registration for all Afghan voters after its previous drafts on how this will to happen were rejected by the government, twice.
New registration and electronic cards will only be issued to those citizens who are not already registered and who have qualified to vote since the last election.
World Bank Funds Further $250m for Rural Rehab
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Thursday, 24 January 2013
The World Bank has agreed to fund $250 million for the third phase of Afghanistan's National Solidarity programme, the Afghan Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) said Wednesday.
The minister said this third phase will cover more than 12,000 villages in the country which have not benefited previously.
"National Solidarity is currently in its third phase whereby we want to cover 12,000 villages where we have never been to, and also help another 12,000 villages that have completed their tasks and spent their funds, and who will receive funds for a second term," MRRD minister Wais Barmak said.
World Bank country director for Afghanistan, Robert Sam, said at the signing ceremony that the funding represented the bank's continued commitment to the war-ravaged nation beyond the power transition of 2014.
"The National Solidarity programme has demonstrated great success for ten years, and they have this great success to build on for many more years of success and sustainability," he said.
"Through these community development councils, one of the issues going forward would be the opportunity to sustain the gains that have been met in infrastructural cohesion and other community benefits including on the gender and work within the community," he continued, adding that the bank looked forward to working with Afghans throughout the transition period and beyond.
The Afghan minister said that over the past decade, more than 30,000 of up to 40,000 villages in the country have received benefits from the National Solidarity programme.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com