[Afghan News] January 29, 2013

[یاسمینه]

Afghan Police Locked Out of Own $7.3M Facility: Report
By LEE FERRAN | ABC News
After the U.S. government spent $7.3 million on a 12-building compound for the Afghan police, American investigators have found that the compound sits largely unused and the few policemen who are housed there don't even have the keys to most of the buildings.

According to a report released today by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the Imam Sahib Border Police Company Headquarters in the Kunduz Province in Afghanistan was meant to service 175 police officers when it was given over to Afghan authorities in September 2012. When SIGAR investigators visited the facility two months later, however, only "about" 12 officers were there and they said they were unaware of any plans to move any additional staff over.

In addition, the investigators were only able to actually get inside three of the 12 buildings because those Afghan officers didn't have the keys to the others. The investigators resorted to peeking through windows to try to evaluate the interiors of those buildings.

The SIGAR inspectors said that plans to use some of the facilities were also unclear and one building that was meant for administrative work was being used as living space. The barracks, which were designed to house the police officers, were unoccupied. The facility also had no back-up electricity, the report said.

"The site is fairly new, largely unoccupied, and, to date, has had little need for operation and maintenance support," the report says.

In the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan's response to the SIGAR findings, which was included in the report, officials explained that the Afghan staffing requirement had changed from 175 people for a "combined battalion and company headquarters" when the facility was planned to a 59-person company headquarters by the time it was completed. "Due to dispersed daily operations," the report said, "facilities would rarely be at full capacity."

Taking this facility as a lesson, the SIGAR recommended, among other things, that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) review other construction plans for Afghan Border Police facilities to make sure they are being built with operational requirements in mind. The USACE concurred with a majority of the recommendations and plans to review other facility plans.


Karzai Warns Of Foreign Interference In Peace Talks
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan January 29, 2013
KABUL -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai says peace efforts with the Taliban should go through the High Peace Council set up by the Afghan government.

On January 29, Karzai warned his political opponents not to engage in negotiations that bypass the government.

He claimed foreign powers have approached some Afghan opposition power brokers and political groups to hold talks with the Taliban via side channels.

Karzai urged them to refuse such offers. He said the peace process will only have a good outcome when the country is unified.

Karzai also said foreign powers, including the United States, Western countries, and Afghanistan's neighbors, should not try to interfere with Afghan peace talks.

The High Peace Council was established in 2010 to lead efforts to negotiate with the Taliban.


US, Afghanistan to hold new talks on security deal
AFP 28/01/2013
WASHINGTON - The United States and Afghanistan this week launch a third round of talks to try to reach an elusive bilateral security deal as Washington steps up its troop withdrawals, a US official said Monday.

The negotiations come after Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited earlier this month and held talks with US President Barack Obama, during which the two men appeared to have hammered out some of the main sticking points.

"We're obviously hoping that we can make some progress following up on the meeting of the two presidents," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told journalists, adding they were trying to agree on "the legal basis for our security support after 2014."

"But we've also made clear that we expect that this is going to be a negotiation that's going to go on throughout the year," she said, adding that she did not believe an agreement was imminent.

After their White House talks, Obama said NATO forces would have a "very limited" role in the country after 2014, at the end of more than 13 years in the country where US-led forces toppled the Taliban leadership in 2001.

But Obama warned that Karzai, with whom he has had a somewhat testy relationship, would have to accept the security agreement still under discussion granting legal immunity to US troops who remain behind.

The lack of an immunity deal with the Iraqi leadership eventually killed an agreement on stationing US troops in the country after the US pullout in December 2011.

For his part, Karzai has stressed that from spring this year "Afghan forces will be fully responsible for providing security and protection to the Afghan people."

Karzai announced progress on another sticking point between the sides, saying the leaders had agreed to a complete return of detention centers and terror suspects to Afghan control, starting soon after he returns home.

But he would not be drawn on the size of the foreign troop garrison he believes is necessary to support Afghan forces, once NATO-led troops leave Afghanistan at the end of 2014.

The talks, which could start before the weekend, are being led on the US side by Ambassador James Warlick, who said at a press conference in Kabul in December that it was not strictly true to refer to an immunity deal.

"I don't think we should be talking about immunity, because it's not immunity. If someone has committed a crime, we want them held accountable for that crime. There's no question of someone getting off," he said.

"The question is one of jurisdiction and how we can see fair justice served."


FEATURE-Afghan female artist beats the odds to create
Reuters By Miriam Arghandiwal Jan 29, 2013
KABUL/KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Charred bodies lie scattered against blood-stained walls and debris covers the ground. For Afghanistan, the only unusual thing in this gruesome scene is that the blood is red paint - and part of an art installation.

It's a work by 23-year-old Afghan artist Malina Suliman, who risks her life, sometimes working by flashlight after dark, to create art in southern Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban and still one of the country's most dangerous areas.

Her pieces, which range from conceptual art to paintings and sculpture, are bold representations of the problems facing her generation and have drawn praise from top officials in Kandahar, making her exceptional in a place where women face even greater restrictions than in other parts of the country.

"Many people had never seen an art installation... Some were offended and others were hurt because they'd experienced it before," Suliman said of "War and Chaos," which was in an exhibit last year and depicts the aftermath of a suicide bombing, an all too common event in Kandahar.

Her haunting, powerful pieces earned her an invitation last year to President Hamid Karzai's palace in Kabul, where she showed her art to the Afghan leader, who is also from Kandahar.

Suliman's artwork is now making waves in the Afghan capital of Kabul, where she lived after fleeing the violence of her native province as a child. In December, she had two exhibits there, a highlight of which was a sculpture of a woman in baggy clothing with a noose tied around her neck.

An exhibit in Kandahar, where the Taliban and tribal elders dominate public opinion, was the first there in three decades. She drew a mostly male crowd of around 100, including Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa and some of Karzai's relatives.

"I was taken aback by her work. I had only seen great art abroad, but never here," Wesa later told Reuters, recalling the exhibit, which featured a painting of a foetus in the womb suspended from a tree and being pulled in different ways. "I hope it persuades more women to do the same."

Suliman said this piece, called "Today's Life", reflected the frustrations of her generation.

"Before a child is born, the parents are already thinking that a son can support them and a daughter can be married off to a wealthy suitor. They don't stop to think what the child may want," she said.

SLOW PROGRESS FOR ART

Thirty years of war and conflict, starting with the Soviet invasion of 1979, effectively shelved Afghanistan's art scene. The austere 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban then banned most art outright, declaring it un-Islamic.

Since the Islamist group was toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces almost twelve years ago, large Afghan cities have resurrected something of an art movement, but progress is slow.

Herat city, in the country's west, now has art studios for rent, while Mazar-e-Sharif in the north has an artist collective and a lively graffiti scene.

Suliman, who is self-confident and energetic with almond-shaped eyes, joined the Kandahar Fine Art Association, a relatively new, all-male group whose goal is to support and exhibit local art, one year ago.

The small collective of 10 artists caught the eye of the Ministry of Information and Culture, which funded and last year opened Kandahar's first art gallery, where Suliman has exhibited. Since she joined the collective, several more Kandahar-based female artists have come on board.

But the stakes remain high.

"One of our biggest fears is that people will mistake us for creating art for foreigners or working with NGOs. People who work with NGOs get shot without question in Kandahar," she said.

Despite her success, Suliman has received threatening phonecalls warning her against attending her own exhibits, and the Taliban have spoken out against her.

Even creating her art must take place away from public view. She often waits until after dusk, working with a dim flashlight.

Suliman recalls her first exhibit in Kandahar last year, and how she trembled as she made her way towards the gallery, in fear of it being bombed.

"I was so scared... Whenever there is a gathering of government officials it becomes a target," she said.

But one of Suliman's greatest challenges lies at home.

"The night of my first exhibit my family told me 'if you go, don't come back'," she said with a wry laugh.

While her sisters and mother now support her ambition and passion, her brothers and property developer father remain fiercely opposed -- attitudes typical for Afghanistan.

She is now looking to expand Kandahar's budding art scene to nearby Helmand, hoping to secure locally-sourced funds for workshops and training.

When asked if she is scared, she mentions her sculpture of the hanged woman and smiles.

"That's what happens to women when they ask for their rights in this country," she says, impudently. (Reporting by Miriam Arghandiwal, additional reporting by Sarwar Amani, Editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Elaine Lies)


28 militants give up fighting in N Afghan province
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- More than two dozen anti-government militants gave up fighting and joined the government-backed peace process in Baghlan province 160 km north of Kabul on Tuesday.

"Today 28 dissident brothers who were active against government in Baghlan-e-Markazi district laid down arms, joined the peace process and resumed normal life," provincial police chief Assadullah Shirzad said in a ceremony here to welcome the former militants.

The former fighters, had association with the radical group of Islamic party the Hizb-e-Islami, Shirzad said, saying with joining these people to peace process the security will be further improved in Baghlan province.

Meantime, the Hekmatyar-led Hizb-e-Islami which has been supporting Taliban war against Afghan and NATO-led troops has yet to comment.


School Support Grows Even Under Specter of a Taliban Return
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN Marja Journal January 28, 2013
MARJA, Afghanistan - The headmaster of the boys’ school in this corner of southern Afghanistan has savored the past three years, a rare run of uninterrupted school terms that filled his classrooms and drew students from miles away.

But experience has taught him not to count on the good times lasting long.

Over just 12 years, Abdul Aziz, 50, has seen at least two anti-education governments come and go. He opens his school’s doors when the local politics allow it, but with all the volatility he cannot attract good teachers or even wheedle the provincial education department to send him enough books. His school is cold in winter, scorching in summer and ill-supplied year round, but at least it is open.

“When the Taliban came to power in the 1990s we lost a lot of students and a lot people left Marja,” he said. “Then in 2002 after the Taliban fled, people came back and the schools reopened until the Taliban came back again in 2006, and then the schools closed. Then we reopened in 2010 when the Marines came.”

His school stands as an example of how the American troop surge in Helmand Province improved people’s lives in places like Marja, once a stronghold of the Taliban. It also, however, shows the limitations of what can be achieved in rural southern Afghanistan, even with the West’s vast resources at work.

A combination of insecurity, logistical hang-ups and corruption most often keeps the schools that do manage to open their doors from being adequately equipped or organized, and many parents are still wary of sending their children to them.

“This is not only the story of Marja — this is the story of all of rural Helmand,” said Nasima Niazi, a member of Parliament from Helmand, who taught for years in the province’s schools before she ran for office.

Still, there are now 140,000 children registered in the province’s schools, according to the provincial education department, which is an astonishing number given that in 2002, when Ms. Niazi started teaching again, there were just 75 students in the high school in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

The situation in Marja is counted as a success, too, though a tenuous one. With 9 out of 15 schools open and 5,000 children attending class, there is no comparison to three years ago. But families here are always ready to pull their children out of class because of ingrained fear of reprisal from the Taliban. That fear lives on despite an effort by some Taliban to improve their image by allowing boys’ schools to stay open in several areas of Helmand, said Mohammed Nasim Safi, the head of the provincial education department.

Often, now the barrier is the entrenched anti-education biases among the rural population, Mr. Safi said. Helmand, which is steeped in conservative Pashtun culture, has among the lowest literacy rates in the country with 8 percent of men and far fewer women able to read in contrast to a 43 percent literacy rate for men nationwide, according to rough statistics used by the American military in Helmand.

“Most of the closed schools are either in the areas where the government presence is zero or in areas where people are not interested in education and sending their children to school,” he said, noting that of the 336 schools in the province, 185 are open.

State-run education in rural Afghanistan has had a troubled history after a slow and cautious start in the 1950s under the rule of Prime Minister Sardar Mohammad Daoud Khan and Mohammad Zahir Shah, the former king. When the Communists came to power in 1978, they aggressively pushed an education campaign that aroused the wrath not only of country dwellers, but of the mujahedeen, who saw state education as an anti-Islamic, foreign import.

The mujahedeen burned thousands of schools in the 1980s and early 1990s and killed thousands of teachers, according to a report on the development of the Taliban’s education policy by the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research group in Kabul.

When the Taliban came to power in 1996, they violently discouraged both boys and girls from attending school. In 2001, after the invasion by American and allied forces, a renewed emphasis on education again met with derision from rural Afghans, but slowly that has changed. Many parents now desperately want their children to learn to read and write and do math so that they can better help support the family.

The headmaster, Mr. Aziz, runs the Block 5 school in Marja, which stands at the intersection of two dirt roads. Its oblong one-story buildings face each other across a weed-ridden yard with a rusted seesaw and swing set. In early winter, a chilly wind rustled through the grass and swept past the open doors of the classrooms where the children shivered at ancient wooden desks.

The boys — there are no schools for girls in Marja — all lack something. Some have a notebook but no school bag or shoes; others have shoes but no notebook.

“We have books for first, second, fourth and sixth grade, but not enough for third grade,” Mr. Aziz said.

Amanullah, 12, who was wearing a wool hat pulled over his ears and a jacket that was too large for him, watched as his teacher, a gray-bearded man wearing a hearing aid, spoke loudly to the students. In the next classroom, there was a fierce instructor teaching the Pashto language with the aid of a switch, which he periodically whipped through the air in a menacing fashion as the children watched him nervously.

“I’d like to be a doctor,” said Amanullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, and then added, “or an engineer.”

Both are remote possibilities for a boy from rural Helmand, but he does not lack for perseverance. He rises before dawn to help his father with chores and then walks two hours to school and two hours back each night. His father has taken on Amanullah’s share of the work in the fields so that he can go to school.

Mr. Aziz said he was angry that the Marines had not done more to help them.

“The kids should be a priority,” he said. “The foreign soldiers have all the facilities at their disposal, they have air-conditioning 24 hours a day, seven days a week in their rooms. These kids? Look at their feet, some are not wearing anything on them.”

In fact, between 2009 and 2012, more than $22.4 million poured into Helmand’s education system through the provincial reconstruction team from a Danish aid organization, U.S.A.I.D. and the United States military’s commander emergency response program. Another $9.4 million is budgeted for 2013, but many teachers in the countryside say the aid does not reach them.

“Some children come from very remote villages. The Marines provided students in another school with some bicycles, but they didn’t give my kids anything — my kids were very disappointed,” Mr. Aziz said.

The children come. The zeal for education is among the most moving developments in this poor area, and perhaps more than anything else a sign of hope that even if the Taliban return, they will not be able to fully dismantle the education system now that it has popular support.

On the chilly winter day in Marja, even the school guard, Koko Jan, spoke about how important it was to have an education. He can write only his name.

As he watched a reporter take notes at the school, he looked wistful and said, “I wish I could write as fast as you.”

Habib Zahori contributed reporting.


In Afghanistan, the U.S. Is in the Most Difficult of Maneuvers
TIME By Nate Rawlings Jan. 28, 2013
Forward Operating Base Altimur, Logar Province - This is the second in a series of dispatches on Afghanistan in retrograde, stories documenting the logistical withdrawal of U.S. forces and matériel from the war-torn country. Retrograde is a military term for the dismantling of installations.

Throughout history, one of the most difficult maneuvers to pull off in combat has been the fighting withdrawal. It’s an aspect of war that plagued battlefield commanders from Napoleon to Lee to Bradley. Getting into a fight is easy; getting out usually presents a challenge and particular dangers.

Every infantryman and combat soldier knows the concept of breaking contact. It is a battle drill practiced over and over: one part of the unit fights on while the other part pulls back, and in a carefully coordinated (though often chaotic) leapfrog, the soldiers extract themselves from harm’s way.

That’s how it has worked historically, at least, when armies met in uniforms on actual fields. After nearly every such battle, one could usually declare a winner and a loser. But today’s asymmetrical wars are messy, and for some time now, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has shifted from a counterinsurgency fight to a partnership, preparing Afghan forces for when American troops go home. But as U.S. units break contact, a large component of leaving the battlefield is bringing back the myriad pieces of equipment the Pentagon has pushed out to small outposts over the past few years.

In eastern Afghanistan, no one knows this mission better than Bull Battery, an airborne field artillery unit in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. During previous rotations in Afghanistan, Bull Battery’s troops fired big guns in support of maneuvers, and they often conducted counterinsurgency missions themselves. Then early in this tour, the battery established its reputation as the unit that can accomplish retrograde, the missions that are the heart of overall U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

For the past month, the soldiers of Bull Battery have been working to hand Forward Operating Base Altimur over to the Afghans. A hunk of land on the slope above a wide desert valley, deep in Logar province, Altimur looks out on craggy, snow-sprinkled mountains that wouldn’t look out of place in Utah or southern Idaho. Originally the size of about three football fields, Altimur was home to roughly 300 soldiers before they began “descoping” the base, pulling out the majority of the American equipment and drawing down to a size that’s manageable for the Afghan unit that will take it over.

It is the first of those tasks that now takes up most of Bull Battery’s time. As bases go in Afghanistan, Altimur is somewhere in the middle in terms of size. It is far smaller than Forward Operating Base Shank, the logistics hub for Logar province, but bigger than the outposts where many of the units lived until a short time ago. Like many bases in Afghanistan, of all sizes, Altimur was packed with equipment, mainly so that troops could fight from there when being resupplied was difficult.

“If you look at how challenging Afghanistan can be in the winter, how challenging transportation can be, every node, in some way, has to become its own little repository of supply,” says Lieut. Colonel Kelly Webster, commander of 4-319 Airborne Field Artillery Battalion, Bull Battery’s parent unit. Having copious supplies allowed units “to be able to weather over periods where you can’t get resupplied,” Webster explains. But now that the troops are leaving Altimur, getting that equipment from Altimur to larger bases, and on the way out of the country, becomes a big, complicated operation.

Webster chose Bull Battery to handle the main part of that push because they had already done it in smaller, but much more hostile conditions. Last year, Bull Battery moved out to Combat Outpost Garda, a horseshoe-shaped scrap of land in a hotly contested area in Wardak province. Soon after, they got the mission to close the outpost and move everything to a bigger base.

Captain Thomas Feeney, Bull Battery’s commander, started by figuring out what could go immediately. “We identified what is mission essential, and when you really break it down that’s not a whole lot of stuff,” Feeney says. “It’s food, bullets, water, and most of the other stuff can go.”

During the first few times convoys left the base, rocket-propelled grenades came flying from insurgents, and the troops soon started mixing up departure times. Sometimes, a convoy would pull out just after sunset; other times, one would leave at 3 a.m. The troops still did joint patrols with Afghan government units, so often they would patrol by day and retrograde by night, sling-loading equipment onto helicopters in the darkness so the birds were harder targets for insurgents.

The enemy attacked Garda often, forcing the troops to fight one minute, then go back to the mundane tasks of inventorying and packing equipment the next. “It’s really stressful, and it’s actually really tiring,” says Sergeant Mario Diaz, one of the noncommissioned officers who oversaw much of the retrograde tasks. “That flip-flopping back and forth, it gets aggravating. You get real irritated real quick.” After more than a month of a fighting retrograde, few troops from Bull Battery were disappointed to see Combat Outpost Garda in their rearview mirror.

In Altimur, every day for the past month, the paratroopers of Bull Battery have been doing the hard slog of moving thousands of pieces of equipment on hundreds of trucks, to Forward Operating Base Shank across the desert valley below. Every morning, a sergeant rouses dozens of Afghan truck drivers from a yard beside the base. Though they have a small shack, many sleep in their trucks to keep the engines running throughout the night, as they often fill the radiators with water and don’t want the engines to freeze.

Throughout the day, the troops and a few civilian contractors load truck after truck with T-walls — 2.4-m-tall slabs of thick concrete that surrounded most buildings when the base had to accommodate the American contingents. (A few T-walls will be left to help protect the smaller Afghan army base.) The drivers can fit four of the walls on the flatbed of their trucks, or two 6-m metal containers, or four heaping pallets of 3-m-long lumber. Load by load, the base grows smaller, and soon it will be about a quarter of its original size.

The equipment that leaves Altimur is starting a long journey that, depending on the equipment, could end up in any number of places. But for now, every load is a small victory, because as it rolls out the gates, the troops are one step closer to leaving Afghanistan. “Guys seem to be motivated to close this place down,” Feeney says, “because they know the faster they shut down Altimur, the faster they can go home.”


Afghan forces handle civilian casualties poorly, report claims
Washington Post By Kevin Sieff January 28, 2013
KABUL - A report released Monday accuses Afghanistan’s army and police of failing to address civilian casualties as the country’s newly built forces assume responsibility for security during NATO’s military withdrawal.

The Center for Civilians in Conflict, a Washington-based research organization, said in its report that “the capacity of the Afghan government and security forces to prevent and respond appropriately to civilian casualties is woefully underdeveloped.”

The killing of civilians in Afghanistan has been a long-standing source of tension between U.S. military leaders and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has complained that foreign troops don’t take sufficient precautions to prevent collateral damage.

According to the United Nations, civilian casualties caused by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have declined over the past two years. While historically Afghan forces have caused fewer casualties than the ISAF, the report suggests that as Afghan soldiers and police take control of the country’s security, they will “likely cause increased civilian casualties as they conduct more combat operations on their own.”

The report also alleges that Afghan institutions have often failed to award condolence payments to victims’ families or to properly investigate incidents in which civilians were harmed.

Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for Karzai, said Afghanistan’s military lacks the air force and weaponry that typically cause large-scale civilian casualties. When Afghan forces do cause civilian casualties, he said, the government acts promptly.

“When there are such cases, it’s our responsibility to provide help to the families of the victims. We are doing that,” he said.

But the report contends that “assistance from the Afghan government is rarely offered to civilians harmed by the ANSF,” or Afghan National Security Forces.

Although each branch of the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces has a protocol used to handle civilian casualties, the report, which cites a number of examples, says those policies are poorly implemented.

“Urgent reforms are needed to ensure a more effective and comprehensive Afghan response to civilian harm,” the report says.


Pakistani army to begin training Afghan security forces
By Meena Haseeb - 29 Jan 2013, 11:54 am Khaama Press
Islamabad and Kabul are close to signing a deal that will allow the Pakistan Army to train Afghan national security forces, in the latest sign of improving ties between the neighboring nations, The Express Tribune reported.

Visiting Afghan Defense Minister General Bismillah Khan Muhammadi on Monday held talks with Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and discussed defense cooperation.

The Afghan defense minister, leading a six-member high-level defense delegation, arrived in Pakistan on Sunday for talks on defense cooperation and border coordination to boost anti-terror cooperation between the two countries.

The two sides discussed matters of professional interest, with particular focus on enhancing mutual defence cooperation and measures that Afghan and Pakistan forces intend for an enduring training relationship, according to a statement released by the Inter Services Public Relations.

Operationalization of the recently concluded agreement on Tripartite Border Standing Operating Procedures was also discussed in detail.

The agreement is aimed at improving existing security cooperation and intelligence sharing mechanisms, on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border.

Pakistan has long been offering Afghanistan to train its army but, until now, Kabul had shown little interest, largely due to the trust deficit between the two countries.

General Kayani told the Afghan defence minister that Pakistan would make all-out efforts for a “peaceful, stable and united Afghanistan”.

Kayani maintained that the release of Taliban detainees was part of Pakistan’s ‘sincere efforts’ to help the Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process.

He also assured the Afghan delegation of full support to bring normalcy to the border region, which “should have a direct and positive effect on the stability in Afghanistan so that situation could become ripe for the drawdown of Isaf forces in 2014”.


Pakistan Changing Policy Towards Afghanistan: MOD
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian Monday, 28 January 2013
Pakistan changing its policy towards Afghanistan, opting for a more favorable approach to its neighbour, Afghan Ministry of Defence officials (MOD) said Monday.

After meeting with Pakistani defence officials in Islamabad, MOD officials said they noted a shift in their Pakistani counterparts viewpoints on the battle against insurgency and Afghanistan's path to peace.

"In the recent times, we have seen a great change among Pakistan's officials views towards Afghanistan, so Pakistan's policy is changing regarding the insurgency and Afghanistan peace process," MOD spokesman Gen Zahir Azimi said.

MOD Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi is with a delegation visiting Islamabad this week to discuss security cooperation.

Afghanistan's Ambassador to Pakistan Omar Daoudzai said that visit is an important step towards increasing mutual cooperation in the areas of military and security.

"This trip is unprecedented," he told TOLOnews. "The aim of the trip is to boost military and security cooperation between countries."

Although Afghan officials are optimistic about a change in Pakistan's policy of working with Afghanistan, others are more cynical.

"Pakistan is now trying to salvage itself from an internal crisis. Pakistan is not able to fight insurgency," civil society activist Ajmal Balochzada told TOLOnews.

"The Afghan government should try to achieve lots of benefits [for itself] otherwise Pakistan will probably do the same thing," analyst Idris Rahmani said of the peace process.

High-ranking Afghan, Pakistani and Britain officials will meet in London next week with the purpose of discussing peace efforts and negotiation with the Taliban.


The Afghan end: Three lousy options, pick one
After American forces pull out next year, Afghans will be faced with three grim prospects.
Aljazeera 28 Jan 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan - Compromise, conflict, or collapse: ask an Afghan what to expect in 2014 and you're likely to get a scenario that falls under one of those three headings. 2014, of course, is the year of the double whammy in Afghanistan: the next presidential election coupled with the departure of most American and other foreign forces. Many Afghans fear a turn for the worse, while others are no less afraid that everything will stay the same. Some even think things will get better when the occupying forces leave. Most predict a more conservative climate, but everyone is quick to say that it's anybody's guess.

Only one thing is certain in 2014: it will be a year of American military defeat. For more than a decade, US forces have fought many types of wars in Afghanistan, from a low-footprint invasion, to multiple surges, to a flirtation with Vietnam-style counterinsurgency, to a ramped-up, gloves-off air war. And yet, despite all the experiments in styles of war-making, the American military and its coalition partners have ended up in the same place: stalemate, which in a battle with guerrillas means defeat. For years, a modest-sized, generally unpopular, ragtag set of insurgents has fought the planet's most heavily armed, technologically advanced military to a standstill, leaving the country shaken and its citizens anxiously imagining the outcome of unpalatable scenarios.

The first, compromise, suggests the possibility of reaching some sort of almost inconceivable power-sharing agreement with multiple insurgent militias. While Washington presses for negotiations with its designated enemy, "the Taliban", representatives of President Hamid Karzai's High Peace Council, which includes 12 members of the former Taliban government and many sympathisers, are making the rounds to talk disarmament and reconciliation with all the armed insurgent groups that the Afghan intelligence service has identified across the country. There are 1,500 of them.

One member of the Council told me, "It will take a long time before we get to Mullah Omar [the Taliban's titular leader]. Some of these militias can't even remember what they've been fighting about."

The second scenario, open conflict, would mean another dreaded round of civil war like the one in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union withdrew in defeat - the one that destroyed the Afghan capital, Kabul, devastated parts of the country, and gave rise to the Taliban.

The third scenario, collapse, sounds so apocalyptic that it's seldom brought up by Afghans, but it's implied in the exodus already underway of those citizens who can afford to leave the country. The departures aren't dramatic. There are no helicopters lifting off the roof of the US Embassy with desperate Afghans clamouring to get on board; just a record number of asylum applications in 2011, a year in which, according to official figures, almost 36,000 Afghans were openly looking for a safe place to land, preferably in Europe. That figure is likely to be at least matched, if not exceeded, when the UN releases the complete data for 2012.

The memory is still fresh... for Afghans

In January, I went to Kabul to learn what old friends and current officials are thinking about the critical months ahead. At the same time, Afghan President Karzai flew to Washington to confer with President Obama. Their talks seem to have differed radically from the conversations I had with ordinary Afghans. In Kabul, where strange rumours fly, an official reassured me that the future looked bright for the country because Karzai was expected to return from Washington with the promise of American radar systems, presumably for the Afghan Air Force, which is not yet "operational" (he actually returned with the promise of helicopters, cargo planes, fighter jets, and drones). Who knew that the fate of the nation and its suffering citizens hinged on that? In my conversations with ordinary Afghans, one thing that never came up was radar.

Another term that never seems to enter ordinary Afghan conversation, much as it obsesses Americans, is "al-Qaeda". President Obama, for instance, announced at a joint press conference with President Karzai: "Our core objective - the reason we went to war in the first place - is now within reach: ensuring that al-Qaeda can never again use Afghanistan to launch attacks against America." An Afghan journalist asked me, "Why does he worry so much about al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? Doesn't he know they are everywhere else?"

At the same Washington press conference, Obama said, "The nation we need to rebuild is our own." Afghans long ago gave up waiting for the US to make good on its promises to rebuild theirs. What's now striking, however, is the vast gulf between the pronouncements of American officialdom and the hopes of ordinary Afghans. It's a gap so wide you would hardly think - as Afghans once did - that we are fighting for them.

To take just one example: the official American view of events in Afghanistan is wonderfully black and white. The President, for instance, speaks of the way US forces heroically "pushed the Taliban out of their strongholds". Like other top US officials over the years, he forgets whom we pushed into the Afghan government, our "stronghold" in the years after the 2001 invasion: ex-Taliban and Taliban-like fundamentalists, the most brutal civil warriors, and serial human rights violators.

Afghans, however, haven't forgotten just whom the US put in place to govern them - exactly the men they feared and hated most in exactly the place where few Afghans wanted them to be. Early on, between 2002 and 2004, 90 percent of Afghans surveyed nationwide told the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission that such men should not be allowed to hold public office; 76 percent wanted them tried as war criminals.

In my recent conversations, many Afghans still cited the first loya jirga, an assembly convened in 2003 to ratify the newly drafted constitution, or the first presidential election in 2004, or the parliamentary election of 2005, all held under international auspices, as the moments when the aspirations of Afghans and the "international community" parted company. In that first parliament, as in the earlier gatherings, most of the men were affiliated with armed militias; every other member was a former jihadi, and nearly half were affiliated with fundamentalist Islamist parties, including the Taliban.

In this way, Afghans were consigned to live under a government of bloodstained warlords and fundamentalists, who turned out to be Washington's guys. Many had once battled the Soviets using American money and weapons, and quite a few, like the former warlord, druglord, minister of defence, and current vice president Muhammad Qasim Fahim, had been very chummy with the CIA.

In the US, such details of our Afghan War, now in its 12th year, are long forgotten, but to Afghans who live under the rule of the same old suspects, the memory remains painfully raw. Worse, Afghans know that it is these very men, rearmed and ready, who will once again compete for power in 2014.

How to vote early in Afghanistan

President Karzai is barred by term limits from standing for reelection in 2014, but many Kabulis believe he reached a private agreement with the usual suspects at a meeting late last year. In early January, he seemed to seal the deal by announcing that, for the sake of frugality, the voter cards issued for past elections will be reused in 2014. Far too many of those cards were issued for the 2004 election, suspiciously more than the number of eligible voters. During the 2009 campaign, anyone could buy fistfuls of them at bargain basement prices. So this decision seemed to kill off the last faint hope of an election in which Afghans might actually have a say about the leadership of the country.

Fewer than 35 percent of voters cast ballots in the last presidential contest, when Karzai's men were caught on video stuffing ballot boxes (afterward, President Obama phoned to congratulate Karzai on his "victory"). Only dedicated or paid henchmen are likely to show up for the next "good enough for Afghans" exercise in democracy. Once again, an "election" may be just the elaborate stage set for announcing to a disillusioned public the names of those who will run the show in Kabul for the next few years.

Kabulis might live with that, as they've lived with Karzai all these years, but they fear power-hungry Afghan politicians could "compromise" as well with insurgent leaders like that old American favourite from the war against the Soviets, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who recently told a TV audience that he intends to claim his rightful place in government. Such compromises could stick the Afghan people with a shaky power-sharing deal among the most ultra-conservative, self-interested, sociopathic, and corrupt men in the country. If that deal, in turn, were to fall apart, as most power-sharing agreements worldwide do within a year or two, the big men might well plunge the country back into a 1990s-style civil war, with no regard for the civilians caught in their path.

These worst-case scenarios are everyday Kabuli nightmares. After all, during decades of war, the savvy citizens of the capital have learned to expect the worst from the men currently characterised in a popular local graffiti this way: "Mujahideen=Criminals. Taliban=Dumbheads."

Ordinary Kabulis express reasonable fears for the future of the country, but impatient free-marketeering businessmen are voting with their feet right now, or laying plans to leave soon. They've made Kabul hum (often with foreign aid funds, which are equivalent to about 90 percent of the country's economic activity), but they aren't about to wait around for the results of election 2014. Carpe diem has become their version of financial advice. As a result, they are snatching what they can and packing their bags.

Millions of dollars reportedly take flight from Kabul International Airport every day: officially about $4.6 billion in 2011, or just about the size of Afghanistan's annual budget. Hordes of businessmen and bankers (like those who, in 2004, set up the Ponzi scheme called the Kabul Bank, from which about a billion dollars went missing) are heading for cushy spots like Dubai, where they have already established residence on prime real estate.

As they take their investments elsewhere and the American effort winds down, the Afghan economy contracts ever more grimly, opportunities dwindle, and jobs disappear. Housing prices in Kabul are falling for the first time since the start of the occupation as rich Afghans and profiteering private American contractors, who guzzled the money that Washington and the "international community" poured into the country, move on.

At the same time, a money-laundering building boom in Kabul appears to have stalled, leaving tall, half-built office blocks like so many skeletons amid the scalloped Pakistani palaces, vertical malls, and grand madrassas erected in the past four or five years by political and business insiders and well-connected conservative clerics.

Most of the Afghan tycoons seeking asylum elsewhere don't fear for their lives, just their pocketbooks: they're not political refugees, but free-market rats abandoning the sinking ship of state. Joining in the exodus (but not included in the statistics) are countless illegal émigrés seeking jobs or fleeing for their lives, paying human smugglers money they can't afford as they head for Europe by circuitous and dangerous routes.

Threatened Afghans have fled from every abrupt change of government in the last century, making them the largest population of refugees from a single country on the planet. Once again, those who can are voting with their feet (or their pocketbooks) - and voting early.

Afghanistan's historic tragedy is that its violent political shifts - from king to communists to warlords to religious fundamentalists to the Americans - have meant the flight of the very people most capable of rebuilding the country along peaceful and prosperous lines. And their departure only contributes to the economic and political collapse they themselves seek to avoid. Left behind are ordinary Afghans - the illiterate and unskilled, but also a tough core of educated, ambitious citizens, including women's rights activists, unwilling to surrender their dream of living once again in a free and peaceful Afghanistan.

The military monster

These days Kabul resounds with the blasts of suicide bombers, IEDs, and sporadic gunfire. Armed men are everywhere in anonymous uniforms that defy identification. Any man with money can buy a squad of bodyguards, clad in classy camouflage and wraparound shades, and armed with assault weapons. Yet Kabulis, trying to carry on normal lives in the relative safety of the capital, seem to maintain a distance from the war going on in the provinces.

Asked that crucial question - do you think American forces should stay or go? - the Kabulis I talked with tended to answer in a theoretical way, very unlike the visceral response one gets in the countryside, where villages are bombed and civilians killed, or in the makeshift camps for internally displaced people that now crowd the outer fringes of Kabul (by the time US Marines surged into Taliban-controlled Helmand Province in the south in 2010 to bring counterinsurgency-style protection to the residents there, tens of thousands of them had already moved to those camps in Kabul). Afghans in the countryside want to be rid of armed men. All of them. Kabulis just want to be secure, and if that means keeping some US troops at Bagram Air Base near the capital, as Afghan and American officials are currently discussing, well, it's nothing to them.

In fact, most Kabulis I spoke to think that's what's going to happen. After all, American officials have been talking for years about keeping permanent bases in Afghanistan (though they avoid the term "permanent" when speaking to the American press), and American military officers now regularly appear on Afghan TV to say, "The United States will never abandon Afghanistan." Afghans reason: Americans would not have spent nearly 12 years fighting in this country if it were not the most strategic place on the planet and absolutely essential to their plans to "push on" Iran and China next. Everybody knows that pushing on other countries is an American specialty.

Besides, Afghans can see with their own eyes that US command centres, including multiple bases in Kabul, and Bagram Air Base, only 50 kilometres away, are still being expanded and upgraded. Beyond the high walls of the American Embassy compound, they can also see the tall new apartment blocks going up for an expanding staff, even if Washington now claims that staff will be reduced in the years to come.

Why, then, would President Obama announce the drawdown of US troops to perhaps a few thousand special operations forces and advisors, if Washington didn't mean to leave? Afghans have a theory about that, too. It's a ruse, many claim, to encourage all other foreign forces to depart so that the Americans can have everything to themselves. Afghanistan, as they imagine it, is so important that the US, which has fought the longest war in its history there, will be satisfied with nothing less.

I was there to listen, but at times I did mention to Afghans that America's post-9/11 wars and occupations were threatening to break the country. "We just can't afford this war anymore," I said.

Afghans only laugh at that. They've seen the way Americans throw money around. They've seen the way American money corrupted the Afghan government, and many reminded me that American politicians like Afghan ones are bought and sold, and its elections won by money. Americans, they know, are as rich as Croesus and very friendly, though on the whole not very well mannered or honest or smart.

Operation Enduring Presence

More than 11 years later, the tragedy of the American war in Afghanistan is simple enough: it has proven remarkably irrelevant to the lives of the Afghan people - and to American troops as well. Washington has long appeared to be fighting its own war in defence of a form of government and a set of long-discredited government officials that ordinary Afghans would never have chosen for themselves and have no power to replace.

In the early years of the war (2001-2005), George W Bush's administration was far too distracted planning and launching another war in Iraq to maintain anything but a minimal military presence in Afghanistan - and that mainly outside the capital. Many journalists (including me) criticised Bush for not finishing the war he started there when he had the chance, but today Kabulis look back on that soldierless period of peace and hope with a certain nostalgia. In some quarters, the Bush years have even acquired something like the sheen of a lost Golden Age - compared, that is, to the thoroughgoing militarisation of American policy that followed.

So commanding did the US military become in Kabul and Washington that, over the years, it ate the State Department, gobbled up the incompetent bureaucracy of the US Agency for International Development, and established Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in the countryside to carry out maniacal "development" projects and throw bales of cash at all the wrong "leaders".

Of course, the military also killed a great many people, both "enemies" and civilians. As in Vietnam, it won the battles, but lost the war. When I asked Afghans from Mazar-e-Sharif in the north how they accounted for the relative peacefulness and stability of their area, the answer seemed self-evident: "Americans didn't come here."

Other consequences, all deleterious, flowed from the militarisation of foreign policy. In Afghanistan and the United States, so intimately ensnarled over all these years, the income gap between the rich and everyone else has grown exponentially, in large part because in both countries the rich have made money off war-making, while ordinary citizens have slipped into poverty for lack of jobs and basic services.

Relying on the military, the US neglected the crucial elements of civil life in Afghanistan that make things bearable - like education and health care. Yes, I've heard the repeated claims that, thanks to us, millions of children are now attending school. But for how long? According to UNICEF, in the years 2005-2010, in the whole of Afghanistan only 18 percent of boys attended high school, and 6 percent of girls. What kind of report card is that? After 11 years of underfunded work on health care in a country the size of Texas, infant mortality still remains the highest in the world.

By 2014, the defence of Afghanistan will have been handed over to the woeful Afghan National Security Force, also known in military-speak as the "Enduring Presence Force". In that year, for Washington, the American war will be officially over, whether it's actually at an end or not, and it will be up to Afghans to do the enduring.

Here's where that final scenario - collapse - haunts the Kabuli imagination. Economic collapse means joblessness, poverty, hunger, and a great swelling of the ranks of children cadging a living in the streets. Already street children are said to number a million strong in Kabul, and 4 million across the country. Only blocks from the Presidential Palace, they are there in startling numbers selling newspapers, phone cards, toilet paper, or simply begging for small change. Are they the country's future?

And if the state collapses, too? Afghans of a certain age remember well the last time the country was left on its own, after the Soviets departed in 1989, and the US also terminated its covert aid. The mujahideen parties - Islamists all of them - agreed to take turns ruling the country, but things soon fell apart and they took turns instead lobbing rockets into Kabul, killing tens of thousands of civilians, reducing entire districts to rubble, raiding and raping - until the Taliban came up from the south and put a stop to everything.

Afghan civilians who remember that era hope that this time Karzai will step down as he promises, and that the usual suspects will find ways to maintain traditional power balances, however undemocratic, in something that passes for peace. Afghan civilians are, however, betting that if a collision comes, one-third of those Afghan Security Forces trained at fabulous expense to protect them will fight for the government (whoever that may be), one-third will fight for the opposition, and one-third will simply desert and go home. That sounds almost like a plan.

Ann Jones is the author of Kabul in Winter: Life without Peace in Afghanistan (Metropolitan 2006) and more recently War Is Not Over When It's Over (Metropolitan 2010). She wants to acknowledge the courage and determination of all her friends in Afghanistan, especially the women, and the men who stand beside them.


Feature: Displaced Afghans continue to suffer in freezing weather
By Faird Behbud
KABUL, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- Aside from economic woes, thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) continue to suffer in the freezing winter across the insurgency-hit Afghanistan.

In Charahi Qambar area, a 30-kilometer drive from this capital city, around 1,000 families, mostly from the southern province of Helmand, live in a makeshift camp with each family consisting of 10 members. Children in the camp are trembling because of the cold weather with wood as the only source of heating.

"We do not have enough food and winter clothes here. During winter our living condition gets worse. We are in urgent need of help," Mohammad Tawous, the head of the camp, told Xinhua recently.

To escape the ongoing conflict in most parts of southern Afghanistan's Helmand province, hundreds of families have been forced to leave their hometowns to find safer areas near Kabul.

"We have been living here for six years. Several displaced persons, particularly children and older people, have already died due to cold weather," Towuos said.

Over the past two weeks, at least 17 people, 11 of them children, have died because of cold-related diseases in Afghanistan's resettlement areas, according to media reports.

As of the end of June 2012, the number of IDPs reported in Afghanistan was estimated to be over 90,000 families or more than 400,000 individuals. Kabul alone houses up to 35,000 displaced people in 30 slum areas around the city.

Notorious for growing poppy and militancy, the Helmand province, some 555 kilometers south of Kabul, has been branded as a Taliban stronghold.

Afghanistan has been facing enormous challenges, ranging from security problems to graft and corruption as well as how to resettle millions of Afghan refugees waiting to return home. Some 3 million Afghans are still living as refugees in Afghanistan's neighboring states, especially Pakistan and Iran. They are reluctant to return home because of poverty and security problems in their homeland.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) has estimated that there will be 700,000 IDPs in Afghanistan by the end of 2013.

The displaced communities are largely dependent on humanitarian aid agencies.

In the makeshift camp in Charahi Qambar, the only source drinking water for the settlers is an artesian well where men and children take turns to pump water. There are no sanitary facilities in the camp.

With few jobs or other sources of income in the camp displaced families do not have the means to buy their own food and fuel.

"This winter we only got 35 kg of coal. This is not enough to last for the long winter," Tawous said.

The suffering of these displaced persons has compounded the problem of the insurgency in Afghanistan with civilian casualties still on the rise.

More than 3,400 civilians had lost their lives in conflicts in 2012 in Afghanistan while up to 3,021 civilians had been killed in 2011, according to a report released recently by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.


IEC Defends Decision to Use Old Voting System
TOLOnews.com By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil Monday, 28 January 2013
Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) Monday sought to address the backlash over its decision to use the old voter registration system and voting cards, saying that it had no other choice but to bow to the government's demands.

After repeatedly pushing for new voter registration and voting cards, the IEC caved last week to pressure from the government, revealing that it will use the old system and cards in next year's presidential election.

Previously, the IEC had argued that the old system will pave the way for fraudulent voting.

"If our previous plans were accepted, as we promised, we could guarantee the transparency of the election but we didn't have any other alternative," IEC chief Fazil Ahmad Manawi told TOLOnews.

"We have some other measures that can guarantee transparency, but one thing is clear: we cannot implement our programmes [as we want] and we don't want to be fighting with the government. We want go forward in harmony and the election should be held in a transparent environment," he added.

Manawi dismissed rumours that he was not part of the IEC decision to declare the old voting cards will be valid.

"This is an institution and as a institution, it decided. I was on a trip [abroad] but all the matters were discussed with me and there was nothing done in opposition in my absence," he said.

President Hamid Karzai last fortnight spoke out against the IEC demand for a new voter registration saying there was not enough budget – and possibly not enough time – to implement the plan.

The draft election law has also been stalled since lawmakers and senators differed over the presence of international commissioners on the board of the Electoral Complaints Commission.


Police Arrested in Baghlan Kidnapping Case
TOLOnews.com Monday, 28 January 2013
Three police officers are part of a five-member group arrested Sunday night for a recent kidnapping in northern Baghlan province, local officials said.

The Afghan security forces launched an operation in the Rubatak area of Baghlan to rescue a fuel-tanker driver and his colleague kidnapped by the group two days ago, provincial police chief Asadullah Shirzad said.

"The operation was launched about 2:00am last night and the group has been arrested by security forces. The security forces released the driver of the fuel tanker and his colleague who were kidnapped two days ago," he told TOLOnews Monday.

"The men were found with their hands and feet tied," he added.

The police arrested the five kidnappers, three of whom were policemen from Baghlan and neighbouring Samangan province, he added.

"We have started investigations and if there were others involved in the group, we will arrest them," Shirzad said.

During the operation, the forces seized weapons and two vehicles, he added.

It comes amid more frequent reports of kidnapping in the north of Afghanistan and Kabul city.


Karzai Meets Iranian Energy Minister
TOLOnews.com Monday, 28 January 2013
President Hamid Karzai met with the Iranian Energy Minister Majid Namjoo Sunday afternoon in Kabul to discuss relations between the two countries, Karzai's office said.

"President Karzai and Majid Namjoo discussed the economic cooperation between the two countries," the office said in a statement.

Earlier, Namjoo met the Afghan Minister of Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan and inaugurated the installation of two power generators in Kabul city which were gifts from Iran.

The generators have the capacity to produce 50 megawatts of electricity per hour and consume 18,000 litres of fuel per hour.

The Afghan minister said that the generators will only be used in emergency situations.

Ismail Khan further revealed that the Iranian government has agreed to increase the level of electricity imported to western Afghanistan from Iran from the current 90 megawatts to 140 megawatts.

Namjoo said he was invited by the Afghan government to talk with energy officials on how to increase the level of electricity imported to western Afghanistan from his country.


Party Leaders Endorse Noor as Possible Presidential Candidate
TOLOnews.com Monday, 28 January 2013
Political party leaders endorsed Balkh provincial governor Ata Mohammed Noor as a possible presidential candidate Sunday while warning of a looming political crisis if more is not done to prevent fraud in next year's presidential election.

At a conference hosted by Noor, the leaders said they would support him if he ran as a candidate in the 2014 presidential election.

"Mohammad Noor is young and has the talent for it," National Islamic Movement chief Gen. Abdurrasheed Dostom said.

Others present at the conference included National Front head Ahmad Zia Massoud, Islamic Unity Party leader Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, and former intelligence chief Amrullah Salih.

"We are in contact and agreed for every issue related to the nation. We assure that Afghanistan's National Front will fight for people's rights to the very end," Massoud said.

When asked if he will nominate himself for the 2014 presidential election, Noor told TOLOnews, "We will see. If Afghanistan goes towards more problems, the candidates are not from the people, if they don't have a social base, or if they fail to resolve people's problems, in that case I will nominate myself."

The political leaders emphasised that a fair and transparent election was paramount and any perceived fraud could destabilise the entire government. They called for reforms to the election structure and, specifically, for the old voting cards and registrations to be annulled and new cards distributed.

"We are in a phase of history in which those in power have a very sensitive role in fate of the people of Afghanistan," party chief Ahmad Zia Massoud told those at the conference. "They (the government) shouldn't deceive us. They should let people of Afghanistan elect their political leader by their votes."

Islamic Unity Party chief said that people will not accept any fraud.

"Everybody is concerned that if the elections are not acceptable by the people of Afghanistan, there will be no peace in the country. A fraudulent election will not be accepted by the people and it will lead to lack of security and no sustainability," Mohammad Mohaqqeq said in his address.

Dostom joined the two leaders in calling for transparency.

"God willing, we hope there will be security, peace, and grounds ready for a transparent election," he said.

Noor and Dustom also addressed accusations against them of land-grabbing, saying that people in the government were spreading these things to politically undermine them.

"We didn't expect this from the government. We yelled so hard saying give (your votes) to Mr. Karzai. We told Pashtuns, Uzbeks, and Kandaharis to vote for Mr. Karzai, but we didn't expect him to accuse us of a betrayal to the nation," Dostom said.

The leaders also said that the government's "surrender" towards the Taliban has led to an increase of insecurity everyday which might cause problems in carrying out the elections.


Afghan Film Wins Sundance Screenwriting Award
TOLOnews.com Monday, 28 January 2013
Afghan film Wajma (An Afghan Love Story) Sunday won the 2013 Sundance Award for screenwriting in the World Cinema, Dramatic category.

Directed by Barmak Akram, the drama film plots the story of the relationship between an Afghan waiter Mustafa and a woman Wajma who struggle with their love that seems to contradict Afghan culture and customs.

After Wajma falls pregnant to Mustafa, the film explores the cultural pressures on Wajma's family, namely her father, to uphold the family honour.

Film director and producer Barmak Akram, born in 1966 in Kabul and now based in France, wrote the screenplay and was also involved in writing the score. He has made numerous short films and features, amid his other work as a musician and songwriter, while crossing between his two worlds of Paris and Afghanistan.

The grand jury prize – or best film - for World Cinema, Dramatic went to a Korean film Jisuel which was set during the 1948 Jeju Massacre in Korea, and tells the story of some 120 villagers who hid in a cave for 60 days from soldiers who were under shoot-to-kill orders.

Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17-27. It has been held since 1991 in Park City, Utah with the aim of supporting independent filmmakers.

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