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Taliban Execute 16 Abducted Afghan Soldiers
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan March 6, 2013
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan -- Afghan officials say Taliban militants have executed 16 Afghan soldiers in the country’s northeast.
Badakhshan Provincial spokesman Abdul Maruf Raskh told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that the Afghan National Army soldiers were abducted by the Taliban on March 4.
He added that the abductors killed the soldiers in the Warduj district of Badakhshan on March 5.
Raskh said village elders and clerics were able to negotiate the release of another seven soldiers from the same district.
The mountainous, remote Badakhshan Province is generally considered immune from Taliban violence, which is concentrated in the eastern and southern regions along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
U.S. not to leave Afghanistan: Ambassador to Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, March 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Olson, on Wednesday said that the United States will not leave Afghanistan and will not repeat the mistake of late 80s, local media reported.
"Let me be clear, the United States is not leaving Afghanistan. The terms of engagement might change, but the commitment will not, "the envoy said in a speech at a conference on the situation in Afghanistan post-2014 at the National University of Modern Languages.
The former Soviet troops had withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989 after a 10-year invasion of the Muslim nation.
Afghanistan had spilled into a civil war shortly after the United States and its western allies turned back at the region, which led to Taliban rule in 1996. The United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 after the attacks in New York and Washington that were blamed on al-Qaeda.
"I must unequivocally dispel what I fear is a widespread, but wildly incorrect analogy: 2014 is not 1989. We recognize the mistakes of the past. The United States will not disengage from the region," Ambassador Olson said.
He said that as the U.S. mission changes and Afghan forces grow in capability and experience, international troops will continue to train, advise, assist the Afghans, and fight alongside them when needed.
"In that capacity, we will no longer be leading combat operations, but instead shift to a supporting role as Afghans have demonstrated their increasing capability to lead combat operations across the country."
In order to facilitate a negotiated peace, he called for the United States and Pakistan to work together with purpose, noting, "For the sake of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region, Pakistan' s full support to an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process is needed now."
"The U.S. role is to help advance such a process, including by supporting an office in Qatar, where negotiations can take place between the Afghan High Peace Council and authorized representatives of the Taliban."
He referred to recent remarks by President Obama who reiterated this message in the State of the Union address, in which he said, "We will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America."
Ambassador Olson noted that, "The international community's financial and political commitment, and the nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars in pledges for security and development assistance that have already been made through 2024, stands out as a defining difference between 2014 and 1989. The United States, and nations across the globe, have unambiguously committed to Afghanistan's future."
"As President Obama and President Karzai agreed in Washington, Afghan-led peace and reconciliation is the surest way to end violence and ensure the lasting stability of Afghanistan and the region," Ambassador Olson recalled.
General Says 20,000 Troops Should Stay in Afghanistan
New York Times By THOM SHANKER March 5, 2013
WASHINGTON - The American commander in the Middle East said on Tuesday that he had recommended that 13,600 United States troops remain in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends in 2014, a number slightly higher than the one being considered by NATO and Pentagon officials.
The officer, Gen. James N. Mattis of the Central Command, revealed his recommendation during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he also said that a NATO contribution to an enduring mission in Afghanistan could equal half of the American deployment, for a total alliance troop presence of 20,000 under his proposal.
President Obama has not decided on the size of any troop deployment after 2014, which would also require agreement with the government in Kabul.
During a session of NATO defense ministers last month, alliance officials discussed a proposal for training, support and counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan after 2014 that envisioned a force of up to 9,500 American troops and up to 6,000 more from other coalition nations.
George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, said those talks focused on a smaller range of 8,000 to 12,000 troops over all, including American and allied contributions. There are about 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan today, with that number to drop to 32,000 by early next year.
Discussing Syria, General Mattis told the Senate that providing weapons and other lethal aid to rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad was complicated, and potentially self-defeating, since the situation was so chaotic that the arms could end up in the possession of militants linked to terrorist organizations.
His assessment of Iran’s nuclear program is that Tehran is enriching uranium at a pace far beyond any peaceful purpose, but that he fully supports economic sanctions. General Mattis warned Iran not to view reductions in American deployments in the region as a sign of weakness; they were brought on by budget cuts under the sequester.
In particular, he noted that he had other combat assets to make up for the decision to deploy just one aircraft carrier in the region, rather than two. “I have what it takes to make it the enemy’s longest day and their worst day,” General Mattis said. “And we’ll get the other carrier out there quickly to reinforce.”
General Mattis testified alongside Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the Special Operations Command, who also was questioned on the impact of the sequester on his ability to carry out training and missions.
Admiral McRaven said the sequester cut of $900 million per year for the Special Operations Command would be made even worse by reductions in money to the various armed services that support his organization and its personnel.
“So the service cuts that they take compound the problem of Special Operations support,” he said. “I get a tremendous amount of my support from the various services, and that will absolutely affect the Special Operations capability of this nation.”
Afghanistan to have transparent elections: President Karzai
KABUL, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday assured his countrymen of having free and fair presidential elections scheduled for April 5, 2014.
Inaugurating the third legislative year of Afghan parliament, the president pointed out, "I am in favor of holding free and fair elections and believe that fair and transparent elections certainly take the country towards durable peace and stability".
He made these remarks in the wake of calling by certain circles at home and abroad to have transparent elections in Afghanistan in 2014 when the NATO-led forces leave the conflict-ridden country.
"Next year elections are your opportunity to chose the future you want that is your sovereign rights, it is your sovereign role and it is your sovereign responsibility whether these elections are inclusive and that its process and outcome are acceptable to Afghan people," NATO's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a joint press conference with Karzai during his visit to Afghanistan two days ago on Monday.
Political oppositions at home have leveled allegations that president Karzai has been attempting to monopolize the election body and ensure his supporters' success in the next presidential polls.
Allaying the concerns of critics, Karzai stated, "I like to be a person with good reputation after quitting the office and I am supporting a free and transparent elections to enable people elect their next president".
Defending his government's achievements over the past decade, the Afghan leader noted that the country's economy has been stabilized and today Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserve reaches 6.5 billion U.S. dollars.
He also said that the security transition process from NATO- led troops to Afghan national forces is on track and presently the security of more than 77 percent of the country's population is covered by national forces. Karzai also called on Taliban militants to give up fighting and play their role in the rebuilding process of Afghanistan.
The Afghan president also called on security organs of his government to respect human rights and dignity of citizens as envisaged in the constitution.
In part of his address, the president confirmed that talks on security pact between Kabul and Washington are going on.He also said some of the troops countributing nations within ISAF want to remain in Afghanistan after 2014 pullout of NATO-led ISAF from the country.
Afghan dynamics altering U.S. efforts to wind down war
An order barring elite troops from Wardak province over a slaying jeopardizes a model for a reduced U.S. troop presence. Some see political factors at play.
Los Angeles Times By Shashank Bengali, Hashmat Baktash and David S. Cloud March 5, 2013
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan - The story was gruesome: A university student, captured in a U.S. special forces raid, was found decapitated and with his fingers sliced off.
Amid a groundswell of public anger, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office cited that incident, as well as reports that nine villagers had been abducted from their homes, when he decided last week to bar the elite U.S. troops from a volatile province at the doorstep of Kabul, a move that could one day put the capital at risk.
But the account of the young man's death was wrong, U.S. and local Afghan officials say.
He was snared by armed men, not U.S. forces or their Afghan allies, according to Afghan law enforcement officials. In police photos of the body, he has one finger chopped off and a gash on one side of his neck, but he wasn't beheaded.
Crucially, say Afghan officials who investigated the slaying, the bearded veterinary student known as Nasratullah was a Taliban facilitator whose brother is serving time for planting so-called sticky bombs — explosives that attach with magnets. They believe that Nasratullah was killed in a power struggle between the Taliban and another Islamist faction in insurgent-ridden Wardak province, and that tribal elders here, perhaps coerced by militants, blamed Americans to fuel an outcry against U.S. troops.
If that was the case, it worked. On Feb. 24, Karzai ordered U.S. special forces to leave Wardak within two weeks.
The decision has jeopardized a counter-terrorism campaign seen as a model for a much smaller American military force that is expected to remain in Afghanistan after most U.S. troops withdraw by late next year. Commanders say the post-2014 mission is likely to rely heavily on special operations troops mentoring Afghans and carrying out operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.
American officials are trying to persuade Karzai to reverse the order. "Obviously we would be reluctant to see our forces not able to operate there right now," Marine Gen. James Mattis, who heads U.S. Central Command, told a congressional hearing Tuesday.
The episode also illustrates how U.S. efforts to wind down the 12-year war are being altered by local politics and an increasingly assertive Karzai, who in recent weeks has issued orders to limit coalition airstrikes and bring under Afghan control the various unofficial militias recruited by coalition forces. By pressing the U.S., the Afghan leader may be courting new alliances, including with the Taliban, while attempting to squeeze concessions from the Obama administration.
Provincial leaders in Wardak believe that the latest claims of murder and abuse by Americans and Afghans under U.S. control are being fed by the Taliban and the militant Hezb-i-Islami party, insurgent groups that have been battered by the elite U.S. forces. The Wardak leaders say Karzai acted without consulting police and intelligence officials who were deeply skeptical of the villagers' allegations and were as blindsided by the decision as American officials.
"It made me very upset," Haji Abdulrazaq Quraishi, the deputy police chief in Wardak, said in his office in this small, mountain-ringed provincial capital 20 miles from Kabul.
"This was not a decision based on facts," he said. "It was a decision that will help our enemies. And it was a decision made without asking all the security sources in the province whose job it is to investigate."
Two U.S. officials said a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation had not found evidence supporting the villagers' accusations of mistreatment by American soldiers and allied Afghan militias.
"I am confident in saying that we didn't cut anyone's head off and we didn't kidnap anyone," said an American official briefed on the inquiry, which is expected to be finished within days. He requested anonymity in discussing the investigation, which has not been completed.
Four of the nine men that Kabul said had "disappeared" were taken prisoner in joint raids in November and December by U.S. and Afghan special operations troops, he said. They are suspected of involvement in insurgent attacks and are being held at the Parwan prison north of Kabul, the official said. The U.S. had no contact with the other five men, the official said.
Karzai demanded that the elite U.S. troops, who reportedly operate in at least three districts in Wardak even though their activities are officially classified, leave the province by Sunday. Wardak has been one of Afghanistan's most contested provinces; in 2011, Taliban fighters here shot down a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan troops, including 17 Navy SEALs.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan have been accused of abductions and abuses before, particularly the special operations forces, whose nighttime raids on suspected insurgents' homes have long vexed Karzai. With an election for his successor due next year, analysts believe the Afghan president is facing pressure from Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami sympathizers in his government.
Ridding Wardak of special forces, the analysts argue, could represent an effort to appease the insurgents and draw them into peace talks with Kabul. Karzai recently pledged to send delegates to meet Taliban representatives in Qatar to explore talks, and a U.S. official said that Hezb-i-Islami had recently been in quiet negotiations with Kabul.
"To boost the morale of the insurgents, this decision really works," said Abdul Rahim Khurram, deputy director of the Liaison Office, an independent research organization in Kabul. "They will feel very close to victory at least in one important place."
Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, rejected assertions that politics played a role in the decision, saying that the presidential palace had been receiving complaints about U.S. forces in Wardak for months.
"It's not just one or two allegations," Faizi said. But he did not deny the possibility that villagers had been coerced into making accusations. "With the absence of the special forces, if something happens of the same nature, we will know who is responsible," Faizi said.
A coalition official familiar with the Wardak investigation said the complaints primarily came from members of Hezb-i-Islami, a militant group loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who once aligned with Osama bin Laden. U.S. military officers met last week with villagers who complained about mistreatment and determined that many were Hezb-i-Islami loyalists.
The insurgent group is under pressure not only from U.S. and Afghan special forces but also from the Taliban and fighters loyal to insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani moving into Wardak, the official said.
Villagers and Karzai's office have provided conflicting stories about the alleged abuse, in some cases blaming U.S. commandos while at other times accusing Afghans who work for the Americans. The identities of those Afghans have not been made clear, although U.S. special operations forces and the CIA over the years have secretly recruited a tangle of local militias to fight insurgents and provide security.
Human rights advocates say these groups sometimes operate as vigilantes beyond the control of their American paymasters. But officials say they have never seen them carrying out such abuse.
"Beheadings, cutting off people's hands and legs — this is what we see from the Taliban," said Ramazan Ali Rasouli, a member of the Wardak provincial council, an elected advisory body.
It isn't the first time that Afghan officials in Wardak say they have faced a misinformation campaign from militants.
About three months ago, for example, the Afghan army set up seven checkpoints along a roughly 13-mile stretch of highway that was notorious for roadside bombs. Soldiers seized more than 400 bombs in the first several weeks, said Quraishi, the deputy police chief, before tribal leaders in nearby districts began accusing Afghan soldiers of shooting civilians.
Families contended that 51 people were killed, but police found no evidence of the deaths. Still, officials in Kabul ordered the checkpoints removed. The road remains dangerous.
In January, after 17 people were killed and 21 wounded in heavy fighting between coalition forces and Taliban fighters holed up in a mosque, some tribal elders reported that North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes had killed civilians. Villagers later told police that there were no airstrikes and that all the dead were members of the Taliban or relatives fighting alongside them, but that insurgents had forced them to claim otherwise, Quraishi said.
"Most of these stories come from very poor people who can't stand up to the Taliban," said Mohammed Hussain Fahimi, secretary of the provincial council. "The special forces are putting pressure on the Taliban, so they are putting pressure on the villagers."
Officials worried that security would deteriorate once insurgents no longer faced the threat of special forces operations. Sitting inside the shrapnel-pocked police headquarters, Quraishi motioned through his window toward the capital barely half an hour's drive away.
"If the special forces leave here," Quraishi said, "the Taliban will reach the gates of Kabul."
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
david.cloud@latimes.com
Times staff writer Bengali and special correspondent Baktash reported from Maidan Shahr and staff writer Cloud from Washington.
Coalition will no longer publish Taliban attack figures in Afghanistan
Associated Press Tuesday, March 5, 2013
WASHINGTON - The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan said Tuesday it will no longer publish figures on Taliban attacks, a week after acknowledging that its report of a 7 percent decline in attacks last year was actually no decline at all.
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, Jamie Graybeal, said Tuesday that its reporting on the number of attacks will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan forces move further into the battlefield lead.
“Because (Afghan forces) are now conducting an increasing number of successful unilateral operations, often beyond the view of ISAF, we have determined that our databases will become increasingly inaccurate in reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated attacks,” Graybeal said in a written statement.
“Additionally, we have come to realize that a simple tally of (attacks) is not the most complete measure of the campaign’s progress,” Graybeal said. “At a time when more than 80 percent of the (attacks) are happening in areas where less than 20 percent of Afghans live, this single facet of the campaign is not particularly accurate in describing the complete effect of the insurgency’s violence on the people of Afghanistan.”
The Taliban have been pushed out of many population centers and have failed to regain territory they held before the surge of U.S. troops in 2010. But they are expected to test Afghan forces as U.S. and allied troops withdraw over the coming two years. All foreign combat forces are to be gone by Dec. 31, 2014.
Coalition officials, including Obama administration officials, had previously cited the reported 2012 drop in Taliban attacks as among a number of signs that the insurgency was in decline and that the Afghans could take on more of the fighting burden.
Last Tuesday, on his final day as defense secretary, Leon Panetta indicated, after The Associated Press revealed that ISAF had incorrectly reported Taliban attack figures for 2012, that he was disappointed about the error.
The error came to light after ISAF removed from its website a set of statistics that included its tally of “enemy initiated attacks,” which it had said declined by 7 percent over 2011 levels. When the AP inquired about the missing figures, ISAF said they had been removed because they contained errors. It blamed the mistake on a failure to include Afghan-provided attack figures.
Graybeal said Tuesdsay that the corrected 2012 figures will not be published.
Karzai Announces Key Afghan Prisoner Transfer
March 6, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has announced the final handover of a U.S.-run prison to his administration's control within days.
The development signals a breakthrough in a long-running dispute with Washington over the control of Bagram prison near Kabul.
Addressing parliament on March 6, Karzai said that his administration's long efforts for the transfer of the U.S.-run prison have eventually paid off and next week the transfer will take place.
"We know that many innocents are languishing in this prison. Despite all the expected criticism, I will order the release of innocents so they can go to their homes," Karzai said. "But people who are involved in killing Afghans by shooting them or bombing them will meet their punishment."
Last year, Karzai accused the U.S. of violating an agreement to transfer more than 3,000 detainees from Bagram prison to Afghan custody.
Afghans consider the issue sensitive for their sovereignty.
Karzai on March 6 also called on his security forces to end incidents of torture and abuse of their countrymen.
"Today, I want to promise the people of Afghanistan that they are safe inside their houses," Karzai said. "The law should take its course only in relations to the criminals. I call on their parliament to raise their voice and react strongly to cases of abuse, if they hear about it. As long as we do not end abuse and torture in our own institutions, we cannot stop others."
An investigation by the government last month unveiled widespread abuse in prisons run by Afghan forces. The findings backed a recent United Nations investigation that Kabul initially rejected.
Western diplomats have urged Kabul to look into allegations of abuse by Afghan troops.
Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
Afghan Ambassador Renews Push for Clerics Conference
TOLOnews.com By Shakila Abrahimkhil Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Afghanistan's Ambassador to Pakistan Tuesday will renew attempts for a conference between religious leaders of the two countries, saying he will ask Pakistan to replace its previously designated leader Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi who recently suggested suicide attacks were permissible under Islam.
"I will have a meeting with the Pakistani foreign ministry today or tomorrow and I will ask them to have the clerics council start everything again because of the importance of this conference," said Omar Dawoodzai told TOLOnews in a telephone interview.
"My suggestion is to remake the team which was headed by Mr. Ashrafi and to introduce new members to us," he said.
Pakistan has distanced itself from Ashrafi's comments in a letter from its embassy in Afghanistan stating that the cleric's viewpoint was nothing but personal opinion and not one supported by the government.
Ashrafi was appointed by Pakistan's foreign ministry to head the country's delegation for the planned regional conference of Islamic clerics. Last week, he stated that Pakistani clerics will not attend the conference in Kabul, saying that Taliban clerics should have been invited.
One of the conference's aims was to have a joint decision made by both countries' religious leaders declaring suicide attacks as Haram – prohibited under Islam.
On Friday, Ashrafi stoked the fire when he answered TOLOnews' questions on whether suicide attacks were legitimate saying that sacrificing one's life for Allah was permissible because Muslims did not have the atomic bomb and Afghanistan was occupied by the US.
Afghanistan's National Security Council deputy Rahmatullah Nabil said Sunday that just as the US and international community blacklist terrorists, so to it should blacklist people who support terrorists or provide the means for them to act.
Meanwhile, at a convention in Kabul Tuesday of Afghanistan's social organisations, the convention's spokesman and head of the Heirs of Martyrs Social Foundation called the Afghan government to take clear action on the Pakistan Ulema Council chief's comments.
"The convention of the national coalition of Afghanistan's social organisations asks the clerics of country and especially the new clerics to religiously react against the political fatwa of the Pakistani Ulema Council behind which that country's intelligence hands are working," said Murteza Nikzad.
Nikzad backed Nabil's statement and called on Pakistan to send Ashrafi to court for his inflammatory statements.
Head of the Afghanistan Council of Victims Ayamuddin Watandoost also called for him to be charged: "We want the government of Pakistan to take these people to court."
Taliban prisoners seize control of British-funded prison in Helmand
Taliban prisoners have seized control of parts of a £4.3 million British-funded prison in Helmand and taken hostages, triggering an armed siege at the flagship aid project.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 05 Mar 2013
Lashkar Gah - Afghan police and soldiers have been surrounding Helmand central prison for more than two days, after a weekend protest in a wing housing insurgent prisoners spread and erupted in violence.
Inmates seized two prison guards and their assault rifles during the unrest. Other prison guards opened fire, wounding six inmates, but were unable to recover their colleagues.
Naeem Baloch, Helmand's governor, was on Tuesday leading negotiations to end the stand-off and it remained unclear how much of the prison was under government control.
Prison sources told The Daily Telegraph inmates had broken down doors and walls and roamed free in much of the prison, smashing security cameras and furniture and holding security forces at bay with their captured weapons.
British officials described the situation as confused and "ongoing" though stressed Afghan forces had contained the violence and no international staff were injured or caught up in the unrest.
The prison in Lashkar Gah was built with British aid and is a centrepiece of Britain's development effort in the province.
The prison is considered well-run and progressive compared to most of Afghanistan's squalid, overcrowded jails. Inmates are offered training courses ranging from motorbike maintenance to computing.
The violence began on Sunday morning when prisoners held in a wing reserved for captured insurgents began protesting at their lack of exercise. Local media reported inmates were also angry many prisoners had been able to gain their freedom through bribery or family connections. Other inmates soon joined the disturbances and at one point around 1,200 prisoners were involved, sources said.
The governor declined to comment on the unrest, though officials claimed by Tuesday evening it had been confined to a small section of the prison.
ISAF: No More Data On Taliban Attacks
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan March 5, 2013
The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan says it will no longer publish figures on Taliban attacks.
The announcement about the decision comes a week after the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan admitted that its report of a 7 percent decline in Taliban attacks during 2012 was wrong and that there actually had not been any decline in Taliban attacks.
General Gunter Katz, a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF, told RFE/RL that the mistake was made because ISAF is now in the transition process of handing over the leadership of all security responsibilities and combat operations to Afghan government forces.
"Many of those operations that the Afghans are conducting are actually unilateral operations," Katz said. "Therefore, it is more and more difficult for ISAF to get the right database and our current database becomes more and more inaccurate."
Coalition officials -- including members of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration -- had previously cited the reported drop in Taliban attacks during 2012 as a sign that Afghanistan’s insurgency was in decline and that the Afghans could take on more of the fighting burden.
Last week, on his final day as U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta indicated that he was disappointed about the error.
ISAF spokesman Jamie Graybeal said ISAF expects that its reports on the number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan forces continue to expand their leadership role in the battlefield.
He said that is because Afghan forces are carrying out “an increasing number of successful unilateral operations” that often are beyond the view of ISAF.
Graybeal also said that the corrected 2012 figures on Taliban attacks will not be published.
He said ISAF has come to realize that a simply tally of the number of attacks is “not the most complete measure of the campaign’s progress.”
He said about 80 percent of the Taliban’s attacks are now happening in areas where less than 20 percent of the Afghan population lives.
Taliban militants have been pushed out of many of Afghanistan’s population centers and have failed to regain territory they held before the surge of U.S. troops in 2010.
But the Taliban is expected to test the abilities of Afghan government forces as U.S. and allied combat troops are withdrawn during the next two years.
All foreign combat forces in the U.S.-led military coalition are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
With reporting by AP and AFP
Female Afghan boxers could miss UK bout
The three women were due in London on International Women's Day but have been stuck in Delhi waiting for paperwork
The Guardian By Amelia Hill Tuesday 5 March 2013
Three young Afghan women boxers risk missing an official invitation to train and fight in the UK because of "excessive" red tape.
Sadaf Rahimi, Fahima Mohammad and Shabnam Rahman have overcome a host of cultural and financial barriers to pursue their sport in Kabul.
They were due to visit London for their first bout with UK rivals as part of International Women's Day on Friday. Instead, they have been forced to wait for days in Delhi for paperwork that has already been approved to be "officially processed".
The team from Kabul has "invited status" and support for sports visas, but visitors from Afghanistan must get paperwork in India before they can travel to the UK.
Margaret Pope, founder of the Women in Sport Foundation which had worked to bring the Afghan boxers to the UK, said of the delay: "It is a frustrating, 11th-hour development to a groundbreaking initiative to bring the women to the UK and equip them with skills and experience to take back to Afghanistan.
"One of the justifications for the UK military involvement in Afghanistan was to help improve the terrible situation for the country's women," she added. "It is therefore a bitter irony that when there is a clear opportunity to assist some of the bravest, talented and most inspiring young Afghan women, bureaucratic delays are quashing their dreams."
Former aid worker Melanie Brown said: "Making Afghans who request visas travel to a third country in order to receive them and then wait weeks to hear if they have been successful could cynically be seen as a way of discouraging all those but the very wealthy from visiting the UK.
"This is extremely frustrating, there is the considerable cost and the impracticality of staying in Delhi for weeks at a time while waiting for paperwork to be rubberstamped."
Rahimi, Mohammad and Rahman are due to train and attend a charity auction in London to raise money for their gym in Kabul, then travel to Bristol to be coached by Britain's first officially licensed female boxer, Jane Couch MBE.
Couch is no stranger to struggles with authorities – in 1998 she persuaded an industrial tribunal to overturn a British Boxing Board of Control ruling that had denied her a licence. The BBBC had argued that premenstrual syndrome made women too unstable to box.
After years of lobbying from British women fighters, women's boxing was officially recognised as an Olympic sport on 14 August 2009. At London 2012 there were women boxers from Kazakhstan, North Korea and Turkey, while British boxer Nicola Adams became the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold.
Kabul's Frustrations With Pakistan Boil Over
By Frud Bezhan March 5, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Pakistan's checkered role in Afghanistan has long attracted the anger and mistrust of Afghan officials. But while some might go so far as to privately accuse Islamabad of orchestrating violence in their country, such sentiments were routinely suppressed.
That all changed this week, when high-level Afghan officials publicly accused Islamabad and its notorious intelligence service, the Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), of covertly supporting the Taliban and other extremist groups working against the government in Afghanistan.
First came Afghanistan's ex-spy chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, who on March 3 took the unprecedented step of calling for the United Nations to place the ISI on its global list of terrorist groups.
"A terrorist is blacklisted, but the person who issues the fatwa for them to act or who provides them with safe havens is not blacklisted. Any entity that gives support and shelter to terrorists must be blacklisted," Nabil said.
Nabil, who is deputy chairman of Afghanistan's National Security Council, also said Pakistan should not be allowed to participate in negotiations to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban.
"The Afghan government and people have done their outmost to forge a good relationship with Pakistan so we could, as Muslim neighbors, live together and create peace in Afghanistan and in the region," Nabil said. "But, unfortunately, we have never seen any positive steps from Pakistan. Instead, they fire rockets that shell our people and land while our clerics, tribes, and children are martyred by their terrorists."
Then came President Hamid Karzai, who issued similarly robust remarks on March 4.
Speaking to reporters alongside NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Kabul, Karzai said Pakistan has taken "no practical steps" to help Afghanistan fight terrorism. The Afghan president also criticized recent statements by influential Pakistani cleric Tahir Ashrafi, who reportedly said suicide attacks in Afghanistan were justifiable because they target foreign occupiers.
Raised Political Stakes
For Kabul to formalize Nabil's calls for the ISI to be blacklisted by the UN, Afghanistan would have to make a request to the Al-Qaeda and Associated Individuals and Entities Committee, also known as the "Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee."
The committee, which is chaired by Australia's ambassador to the UN and includes representatives from all 15 members of the Security Council, would then have to decide by consensus to add the ISI to its blacklist.
Much of the anger in Afghanistan appears to be directly related to Ashrafi's legitimization of terrorist acts in Afghanistan.
Former Afghan spy chief Nabil initially charged that Ashrafi's statement represented the views of the Pakistan government and intelligence services. Ashrafi has since backtracked and said his comments were taken out of context by the Afghan media.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, suggests that the recent criticism could be a sign of Kabul's frustrations with its efforts to reach a peace settlement with the Taliban.
Kabul has secured the releases of dozens of Taliban officials held in Pakistani prisons over the past few months, but the move has not led to any breakthroughs. Instead, there have been media reports that many of those released are now back on the battlefield.
Kugelman also leaves open the possibility that the strong reaction by Nabil could be driven by political considerations, with presidential elections scheduled to take place in Afghanistan in 2014.
"This strong comment from Kabul could betray this sense of anger about how things aren't really progressing very well. Given the elections aren't too far off, someone like [Nabil], a possible candidate, could be trying to make a political statement that would appeal to public opinion. Particularly given how hostile many Afghans are toward Pakistan, but in particular the ISI," Kugelman said.
Whatever the case, Kugelman said, the strong reaction from Kabul does not bode well for Afghan-Pakistani relations. And this comes at a particularly critical time, he says, with Kabul in need of Islamabad's support as it prepares to take over security responsibilities as international forces prepare to withdraw.
"Afghanistan-Pakistan relations are volatile and not good. They seem to have improved over the last few months. But anytime you have a high-level official make a comment as strong as Nabil did about the ISI, that risks not endangering but definitely harming the relationship -- in the sense that to have such a strong statement come from so high up in the government against such a significant and powerful organization such as the ISI," Kugelman said.
Kabul Bank: A bank that defaulted on trust
Sentencing of two ex-top executives brings spotlight back on nation's first private bank that was felled by greed.
Aljazeera By Ali M Latifi 05 Mar 2013
Afghanistan's Kabul Bank is back in news, with the sentencing of two of its top executives to five years in prison for fraud. But being in the limelight - for good or bad - has been part of the bank's saga since its inception in 2004.
Billed as "the bank for everyone", the bank's advertisements featured on international television channels showcased a lifestyle that few Afghans could resist. It evoked both trust and awe as its ads constantly showed images of houses, cars and even gold bars it purported to give away.
Suddenly, Afghans who had been distrustful of banks took money they had stored in their homes for decades and opened accounts at the financial institution. The aspirational promises quickly drew in more than one million depositors.
But by summer 2010, the rumblings of something amiss at the nation's first private bank became too loud to ignore.
Indebted and embarrassed
On August 29, 2010, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, then head of Afghanistan's Central Bank, convened a meeting of Kabul Bank's shareholders to discuss what had brought an institution seen as an overwhelming success by Afghans and foreigners alike to the verge of collapse.
The bank has since been replaced by the New Kabul Bank, with the government investing more than $800m. But the fallout of the collapse of the first bank is still being felt.
Nearly three years later, a series of investigations detailed how massive off-book loans, lavish purchases and 114 rubber stamps used for fake companies helped contribute to the embezzlement of more than $900m from Kabul Bank.
The image of the "bank for everyone" was quickly replaced with one of "crony capitalism" forming a "Ponzi scheme" that affected nearly everyone in the Central Asian nation.
The scandal left Jawed Rassool, an operations manager at a construction company, broke and indebted. The 27-year-old said the media coverage of the corruption soon locked his employer out of access from its accounts. As a result, "I wasn't paid for four months", he told Al Jazeera.
"I am not a very wealthy man. I cannot afford not to have money to feed my family for one month, and never four months I borrowed 7,000 afghanis [$136] to pay for electricity, firewood and other expenses."
While the bank's CEO was reported to have gone on shopping sprees at Louis Vuitton and Versace with money from the bank, Rassool languished.
A November 2012 report, published by the Independent Joint Anti-corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), found that 92 percent of the bank's loans, or $861m, was extended to just 19 individuals and businesses.
The bank collapsed
Seema Ghani, executive director of the MEC, said that along with a loss of faith in the banking industry, the Kabul Bank scandal left many people without essential services.
"Kabul Bank was a trusted institution that millions of Afghans relied on to receive their salaries and secure their savings The fact that the government stepped in with an $825m infusion of funds has simply meant the cost of the fraud has been dispersed to all Afghans," Ghani told Al Jazeera.
Sophisticated smuggling
In interviews with Al Jazeera, researchers, bank officials and journalists said a combination of low capacity, lack of due diligence and political influence allowed the Kabul Bank to perpetrate its fraudulent activities for more than five years.
Kabul Bank also had timing on its side: an influx of international aid, expanded public services and new entrepreneurial businesses after the fall of the Taliban all increased the need for banking services.
This growth in demand for financial services "drastically outstripped the capacity to effectively regulate and supervise the industry, resulting in vulnerabilities that were [further] exploited by participants in the Kabul Bank fraud", said Ghani.
"The scale and level of sophistication of the scheme in Kabul Bank was quite astonishing," Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analyst Network, told Al Jazeera.
This sophistication included innovative plots to smuggle $861m into banks in 28 countries. The 2012 report by the MEC cited the use of 10 pilots at Pamir Airways, which the bank had a stake in, who were paid annual salaries of over $300,000 to transport money through the airline's food trays. These costs, dated from March 2008 to November 2010, were categorised as "pilots of cash delivery".
A further $66.2m was used for the purchase of 250 cars and motorcycles, false deposits, and payments to employees either unqualified for their positions or who simply did not work for the bank.
And a 2009 report by the Afghan spy agency found that Kabul Bank funds were being used to build a property portfolio in Dubai whose value was estimated at $151m.
These details depicted what van Biljert called "a group of people who found it completely normal that their connections and wealth would earn them [no interest] loans or gifts". Among those accused of receiving loans are the brothers of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, and First Vice President Marshal Fahim.
Protecting itself
Tuesday's sentencing of Sher Khan Farnoud, the bank's founder and chairman, and Khalilullah Ferozi, chief executive of the bank, has done little to restore faith in what they see as a corrupt system.
Shamsul Rahman Shams, head of the special tribunal investigating the bank, said Karzai's and Fahim's brothers still owe $9m and $3m, respectively.
Neither Mahmoud Karzai - the bank's third-largest shareholder - nor Hassin Fahim has been formally charged with wrongdoing.
"It's not as simple as the president and vice president protecting their brothers. It's the system protecting itself," said van Bijlert.
Nor are they the only ones allegedly involved. Kabul Bank reportedly made contributions to between 30 and 40 members of parliament. "Many people are somehow implicated," said van Bijlert.
The response to the scandal has been plagued by delayed or inadequate investigations, and reluctance to pursue the routes that money took out of the country and prosecute those responsible.
This, says van Bijlert, illustrates how the entire process has become "an exercise in containment", to limit the blame to a carefully chosen group.
This highlights a perception among the general population that the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the Kabul Bank fraud have not been properly investigated and that decisions to indict were not made transparently - a view the MEC shares.
With the bank's bailout, funded by international donors, amounting to nearly six percent of the nation's GDP, Dawood Azami, an Afghan Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, said "the Kabul Bank crisis should be a big enough shock for the whole governance structure in Afghanistan to wake up and respond to challenges on time".
But Noorullah Delawari, governor of the Afghan Central Bank, said Kabul Bank is not an entirely unique situation. "The whole world is facing massive banking issues and each country has had difficulty dealing with it." Though he agrees with the findings of an audit prepared by the Kroll investigative firm that the bank was "a well-concealed Ponzi scheme", Delawari says Da Afghan Bank is working with a receivership to recover as much of the lost funds as possible.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Delawari said that within the "next few weeks" the total amount recovered by the receivership will total $225m, which he cites as a major improvement over his predecessor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, who fled to the United States in June 2010, saying the investigation was putting his life in danger.
"Only $20m had been recovered when I came on board" in November 2011, Delawari said.
Still, the sting of the scandal continues to reverberate in Afghanistan and abroad. "Although the public and investors got their money back after it was seized by the authorities, many people think twice before depositing their money in the banks," said Azami.
For Ahmad Barak, the initial corruption and the mishandling of the subsequent investigation into Kabul Bank are indicative of an unchanging fact of life in modern Afghanistan.
"This is Afghanistan. You are an idiot if you do not steal money."
Afghan Region Makes Name For Drug Mules, Tragedy
By Frud Bezhan and Dayan Ahmadi March 5, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
TAKHAR -- Residents of this remote district of northeast Afghanistan are finding that desperate times call for desperate measures.
With few options to make an honest living, many locals in the Kalafgan district of Takhar Province are taking jobs as drug mules for local drug cartels. As couriers, locals smuggle packages of illicit narcotics to neighboring Tajikistan and Iran.
The work is high-risk and often rewarded with prison or even death.
Those dangers hit home recently as locals buried the bodies of 10 men from Kalafgan who were hanged in Iran, reportedly for drug smuggling. Residents say that in the past six months they have buried 80 villagers who were executed in Iran. As many as 400 other residents, locals say, are serving lengthy jail sentences in the Islamic republic.
Work, Passports 'In A Week'
The high concentration of drug couriers in Kalafgan has forced a light on the booming illicit drug trade in the area. When funerals for the 10 men were held on February 23, hundreds of mourners marched through the streets calling on the provincial government to improve economic conditions and to apprehend smugglers in the area.
Hamidullah's brother was among the Kalafgan residents recently hanged in Iran. He says his brother, whom he does not name, spent years taking menial jobs on either side of the Afghan-Tajik border, the crossing point for one-fifth of Afghanistan's illegal narcotics exports.
One day, Hamidullah says, his brother told him he had had enough. His brother approached a drug dealer in the district for work and within two weeks had been sent to Iran, where Hamidullah says he was apprehended by border police.
Hamidullah says that, like other locals, his brother was wooed with promises of money and the prospect of a job upon his arrival in Iran.
"Drug smugglers pay local passport officials in Takhar 20,000 afghanis (around $400) to get couriers passports," he says. "In just a week, they secure visas for their mules to go to Iran. After they get their papers they hide drugs inside their bodies and go to Iran."
Easy Pickings
Hamidullah blames his brother's death on local officials in Takhar, who he says provide protection to the smugglers for a share of the drug profits.
"The officials and police are offering [drug smugglers] protection. Everybody knows about their presence but they don't do anything about it," Hamidullah says. "The smugglers have protection from high-ranking officials. We strongly urge [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai to take action."
Located near Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, Kalafgan's mountainous terrain makes it uniquely suitable as a drug route, with remote roads making it inaccessible to most. The district's remoteness has meant locals have seen little economic improvement. Unemployment statistics are unavailable, but local officials say it exceeds 50 percent, 10 percentage points more than the estimated national average.
Suriya, another resident, says poverty and lack of jobs in Kalafgan have made many villagers easy targets for Afghan drug cartels seeking to recruit couriers. Among them was her husband, one of the 10 residents recently executed in Iran.
She says the need to provide for two newborn children compelled her husband, despite her protests, to take a job with what she calls the "free-roaming drug mafia" in Kalafgan.
Empty Beds And Threats
With the breadwinner of the family gone, Suriya, who is an Iranian national, says the family is struggling to survive. Like many residents, she blames the provincial government. She says locals know the names and addresses of drug smugglers, yet many officials turn a blind eye.
"The Afghan government is not taking action against the drug dealers," Suriya says. "Why aren't they doing anything? My husband was killed. They've taken everything away from me, including my family. I'm widowed with two children now. What should I do?"
To add to her misery, Suriya says she has been threatened by her husband's former employers. She says the ringleader, whom she names, has told her to pay him compensation for the drugs her husband lost when he got caught. If she does not pay, she says, she will either have to carry drugs for them or risk losing her children.
"A dealer called Khari Mohebullah, who smuggles drugs into Iran, came to see me and told me that my husband had cost him 5 kilograms of drugs," Suriya says. "He told me he wouldn't let me bury my husband until I paid him compensation. He said, 'Even though your husband is dead, I will still collect my money.'"
Mohammad Farid Zaki, the acting governor of Takhar, confirms that at least 43 Kalafgan residents have been hanged in Iran in the past six months. That is the number that Iranian officials have confirmed, he says, adding that he suspects the number is much higher.
Not So Isolated?
Zaki adds that his office has launched an investigation into why high numbers of Kalafgan residents have been imprisoned and executed in Iran. He admits the drug trade in the area is playing its part, and stresses that Takhar is not alone.
"This is not a problem only in Takhar, but all over Afghanistan," Zaki says. "In some places Afghan youths who travel to Pakistan and Iran are used [as drug mules by narcotics gangs]."
The precise number of Afghans executed in Iran over the past several years is unknown. Tehran rarely informs or provides explanations to Kabul about the execution of its citizens.
Afghan media estimate that some 2,000 Afghans have been jailed in Iran on drug-smuggling charges and other criminal acts, while hundreds more face the death penalty.
Afghan lawmakers and human rights groups have raised concerns, saying many Afghans imprisoned in Iran do not receive fair trials because they lack access to defense lawyers and are not given the opportunity to get assistance from Kabul.
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan in Prague, with reporting by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Dayan Ahmadi in Takhar Province
Soviet war veteran found in Afghanistan after 33 years
BBC News 5 March 2013
A Soviet soldier who went missing in Afghanistan nearly 33 years ago has been found living with Afghans in the western province of Herat.
The soldier is semi-nomadic, has the adopted Afghan name Sheikh Abdullah and practises herbal medicine, Russia's RIA news agency reports.
An ethnic Uzbek, he was found by ex-Soviet veterans of the war.
He was wounded in battle in 1980, only months after the Soviet invasion, and was rescued by local Afghans.
The head of the official veterans' committee, Ruslan Aushev, said Sheikh Abdullah - real name Bakhretdin Khakimov - was tracked down in Shindand district after a year-long search. He had served with a motorised rifle unit.
The committee lists 264 Soviet soldiers as still missing in Afghanistan, half of them Russians. In the first decade after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 the committee found 29 missing soldiers - and 22 of them decided to return home, while seven opted to stay in Afghanistan, RIA reports.
The committee says it is determined to track all of the missing men down.
Sheikh Abdullah was married but his wife died and he has no children.
The committee's deputy chairman, Alexander Lavrentyev, said Sheikh Abdullah bore the scars of his war wounds - a shaking hand and shoulder and nervous tic. The ex-soldier, from the city of Samarkand, was able to name his former place of residence in Uzbekistan and the names of his relatives, Mr Lavrentyev said.
He understood Russian but spoke it very poorly.
In 2009 the BBC's Lyse Doucet interviewed two ex-soldiers from Ukraine, now Muslims and living with Afghans in northern Afghanistan.
Some 15,000 Red Army soldiers and more than a million Afghans were killed in a decade of fighting between a Soviet-backed government in Kabul and mujahideen fighters armed by the West and Islamic neighbours.
Anti-Graft Chief Calls for Abolishment of Kankor
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Afghanistan's anti-corruption watchdog Tuesday called for the countrywide university entrance test, or Kankor, to be abolished, saying that half the corruption within the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) was linked to the exam.
"This process should be cancelled and instead of the Kankor exam, those students of classes 9, 10, 11, and 12 that score more than 7 (out of 10) should be introduced to their favourite faculties directly," said Azizullah Lodin, head of High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption.
"This is my suggestion to the president, who should appoint a committee to inspect more on this suggestion, and correct possible defects. But after all, the Kankor exam should be cancelled," he told TOLOnews.
Lodin said that the Kankor's corruption included the selling of exam questions, influential figures putting pressure to change results, and general cheating.
The MOHE has rejected the claims, pointing out that it charged 540 students with cheating on the test – some of whom have been referred to the Attorney General.
"The Kankor exam has been held with no fraud and was completely transparent as many were monitoring the process," said Abdulazim Noorbakhsh, MOHE spokesman.
Japan Delivers Further $117m in Aid to Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Japan has agreed to fund a further $117 million in financial aid for development projects in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Tuesday.
Ministry officials said that four main projects will be funded by the new aid: road maintenance, water supply network of New Kabul Project, the development of Kabul International Airport, and fuel purchases for government organisations.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul welcomed the aid saying that Japan has made a significant contribution to aid Afghanistan in the past decade.
Outlining the breakdown of the $117m, Rassoul said $34.6m will go towards buying oil, $16.8m for the development of parking and power at Kabul International Airport, $33.9m to repair roads and $31.6 million for the water supply of the New Kabul City (Desabz project).
"We promised $3 billion at the Chicago meeting from 2012 up to 2016 for five years. Last week we signed $281m with the United Nations which becomes around $400m with today's aid [pledges]," Japan's Ambassador to Afghanistan Hiroshi Takahashi said at a press conference.
Japan is the largest foreign aid donor to Afghanistan after the United States, MOFA officials said.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan March 6, 2013
FAIZABAD, Afghanistan -- Afghan officials say Taliban militants have executed 16 Afghan soldiers in the country’s northeast.
Badakhshan Provincial spokesman Abdul Maruf Raskh told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that the Afghan National Army soldiers were abducted by the Taliban on March 4.
He added that the abductors killed the soldiers in the Warduj district of Badakhshan on March 5.
Raskh said village elders and clerics were able to negotiate the release of another seven soldiers from the same district.
The mountainous, remote Badakhshan Province is generally considered immune from Taliban violence, which is concentrated in the eastern and southern regions along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.
U.S. not to leave Afghanistan: Ambassador to Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, March 6 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Richard Olson, on Wednesday said that the United States will not leave Afghanistan and will not repeat the mistake of late 80s, local media reported.
"Let me be clear, the United States is not leaving Afghanistan. The terms of engagement might change, but the commitment will not, "the envoy said in a speech at a conference on the situation in Afghanistan post-2014 at the National University of Modern Languages.
The former Soviet troops had withdrawn from Afghanistan in 1989 after a 10-year invasion of the Muslim nation.
Afghanistan had spilled into a civil war shortly after the United States and its western allies turned back at the region, which led to Taliban rule in 1996. The United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 after the attacks in New York and Washington that were blamed on al-Qaeda.
"I must unequivocally dispel what I fear is a widespread, but wildly incorrect analogy: 2014 is not 1989. We recognize the mistakes of the past. The United States will not disengage from the region," Ambassador Olson said.
He said that as the U.S. mission changes and Afghan forces grow in capability and experience, international troops will continue to train, advise, assist the Afghans, and fight alongside them when needed.
"In that capacity, we will no longer be leading combat operations, but instead shift to a supporting role as Afghans have demonstrated their increasing capability to lead combat operations across the country."
In order to facilitate a negotiated peace, he called for the United States and Pakistan to work together with purpose, noting, "For the sake of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region, Pakistan' s full support to an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process is needed now."
"The U.S. role is to help advance such a process, including by supporting an office in Qatar, where negotiations can take place between the Afghan High Peace Council and authorized representatives of the Taliban."
He referred to recent remarks by President Obama who reiterated this message in the State of the Union address, in which he said, "We will build an enduring partnership with Afghanistan, so that it is never again a source of attacks against America."
Ambassador Olson noted that, "The international community's financial and political commitment, and the nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars in pledges for security and development assistance that have already been made through 2024, stands out as a defining difference between 2014 and 1989. The United States, and nations across the globe, have unambiguously committed to Afghanistan's future."
"As President Obama and President Karzai agreed in Washington, Afghan-led peace and reconciliation is the surest way to end violence and ensure the lasting stability of Afghanistan and the region," Ambassador Olson recalled.
General Says 20,000 Troops Should Stay in Afghanistan
New York Times By THOM SHANKER March 5, 2013
WASHINGTON - The American commander in the Middle East said on Tuesday that he had recommended that 13,600 United States troops remain in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends in 2014, a number slightly higher than the one being considered by NATO and Pentagon officials.
The officer, Gen. James N. Mattis of the Central Command, revealed his recommendation during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he also said that a NATO contribution to an enduring mission in Afghanistan could equal half of the American deployment, for a total alliance troop presence of 20,000 under his proposal.
President Obama has not decided on the size of any troop deployment after 2014, which would also require agreement with the government in Kabul.
During a session of NATO defense ministers last month, alliance officials discussed a proposal for training, support and counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan after 2014 that envisioned a force of up to 9,500 American troops and up to 6,000 more from other coalition nations.
George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, said those talks focused on a smaller range of 8,000 to 12,000 troops over all, including American and allied contributions. There are about 66,000 American troops in Afghanistan today, with that number to drop to 32,000 by early next year.
Discussing Syria, General Mattis told the Senate that providing weapons and other lethal aid to rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad was complicated, and potentially self-defeating, since the situation was so chaotic that the arms could end up in the possession of militants linked to terrorist organizations.
His assessment of Iran’s nuclear program is that Tehran is enriching uranium at a pace far beyond any peaceful purpose, but that he fully supports economic sanctions. General Mattis warned Iran not to view reductions in American deployments in the region as a sign of weakness; they were brought on by budget cuts under the sequester.
In particular, he noted that he had other combat assets to make up for the decision to deploy just one aircraft carrier in the region, rather than two. “I have what it takes to make it the enemy’s longest day and their worst day,” General Mattis said. “And we’ll get the other carrier out there quickly to reinforce.”
General Mattis testified alongside Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the Special Operations Command, who also was questioned on the impact of the sequester on his ability to carry out training and missions.
Admiral McRaven said the sequester cut of $900 million per year for the Special Operations Command would be made even worse by reductions in money to the various armed services that support his organization and its personnel.
“So the service cuts that they take compound the problem of Special Operations support,” he said. “I get a tremendous amount of my support from the various services, and that will absolutely affect the Special Operations capability of this nation.”
Afghanistan to have transparent elections: President Karzai
KABUL, March 6 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday assured his countrymen of having free and fair presidential elections scheduled for April 5, 2014.
Inaugurating the third legislative year of Afghan parliament, the president pointed out, "I am in favor of holding free and fair elections and believe that fair and transparent elections certainly take the country towards durable peace and stability".
He made these remarks in the wake of calling by certain circles at home and abroad to have transparent elections in Afghanistan in 2014 when the NATO-led forces leave the conflict-ridden country.
"Next year elections are your opportunity to chose the future you want that is your sovereign rights, it is your sovereign role and it is your sovereign responsibility whether these elections are inclusive and that its process and outcome are acceptable to Afghan people," NATO's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a joint press conference with Karzai during his visit to Afghanistan two days ago on Monday.
Political oppositions at home have leveled allegations that president Karzai has been attempting to monopolize the election body and ensure his supporters' success in the next presidential polls.
Allaying the concerns of critics, Karzai stated, "I like to be a person with good reputation after quitting the office and I am supporting a free and transparent elections to enable people elect their next president".
Defending his government's achievements over the past decade, the Afghan leader noted that the country's economy has been stabilized and today Afghanistan's foreign exchange reserve reaches 6.5 billion U.S. dollars.
He also said that the security transition process from NATO- led troops to Afghan national forces is on track and presently the security of more than 77 percent of the country's population is covered by national forces. Karzai also called on Taliban militants to give up fighting and play their role in the rebuilding process of Afghanistan.
The Afghan president also called on security organs of his government to respect human rights and dignity of citizens as envisaged in the constitution.
In part of his address, the president confirmed that talks on security pact between Kabul and Washington are going on.He also said some of the troops countributing nations within ISAF want to remain in Afghanistan after 2014 pullout of NATO-led ISAF from the country.
Afghan dynamics altering U.S. efforts to wind down war
An order barring elite troops from Wardak province over a slaying jeopardizes a model for a reduced U.S. troop presence. Some see political factors at play.
Los Angeles Times By Shashank Bengali, Hashmat Baktash and David S. Cloud March 5, 2013
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan - The story was gruesome: A university student, captured in a U.S. special forces raid, was found decapitated and with his fingers sliced off.
Amid a groundswell of public anger, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office cited that incident, as well as reports that nine villagers had been abducted from their homes, when he decided last week to bar the elite U.S. troops from a volatile province at the doorstep of Kabul, a move that could one day put the capital at risk.
But the account of the young man's death was wrong, U.S. and local Afghan officials say.
He was snared by armed men, not U.S. forces or their Afghan allies, according to Afghan law enforcement officials. In police photos of the body, he has one finger chopped off and a gash on one side of his neck, but he wasn't beheaded.
Crucially, say Afghan officials who investigated the slaying, the bearded veterinary student known as Nasratullah was a Taliban facilitator whose brother is serving time for planting so-called sticky bombs — explosives that attach with magnets. They believe that Nasratullah was killed in a power struggle between the Taliban and another Islamist faction in insurgent-ridden Wardak province, and that tribal elders here, perhaps coerced by militants, blamed Americans to fuel an outcry against U.S. troops.
If that was the case, it worked. On Feb. 24, Karzai ordered U.S. special forces to leave Wardak within two weeks.
The decision has jeopardized a counter-terrorism campaign seen as a model for a much smaller American military force that is expected to remain in Afghanistan after most U.S. troops withdraw by late next year. Commanders say the post-2014 mission is likely to rely heavily on special operations troops mentoring Afghans and carrying out operations against the remnants of Al Qaeda.
American officials are trying to persuade Karzai to reverse the order. "Obviously we would be reluctant to see our forces not able to operate there right now," Marine Gen. James Mattis, who heads U.S. Central Command, told a congressional hearing Tuesday.
The episode also illustrates how U.S. efforts to wind down the 12-year war are being altered by local politics and an increasingly assertive Karzai, who in recent weeks has issued orders to limit coalition airstrikes and bring under Afghan control the various unofficial militias recruited by coalition forces. By pressing the U.S., the Afghan leader may be courting new alliances, including with the Taliban, while attempting to squeeze concessions from the Obama administration.
Provincial leaders in Wardak believe that the latest claims of murder and abuse by Americans and Afghans under U.S. control are being fed by the Taliban and the militant Hezb-i-Islami party, insurgent groups that have been battered by the elite U.S. forces. The Wardak leaders say Karzai acted without consulting police and intelligence officials who were deeply skeptical of the villagers' allegations and were as blindsided by the decision as American officials.
"It made me very upset," Haji Abdulrazaq Quraishi, the deputy police chief in Wardak, said in his office in this small, mountain-ringed provincial capital 20 miles from Kabul.
"This was not a decision based on facts," he said. "It was a decision that will help our enemies. And it was a decision made without asking all the security sources in the province whose job it is to investigate."
Two U.S. officials said a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation had not found evidence supporting the villagers' accusations of mistreatment by American soldiers and allied Afghan militias.
"I am confident in saying that we didn't cut anyone's head off and we didn't kidnap anyone," said an American official briefed on the inquiry, which is expected to be finished within days. He requested anonymity in discussing the investigation, which has not been completed.
Four of the nine men that Kabul said had "disappeared" were taken prisoner in joint raids in November and December by U.S. and Afghan special operations troops, he said. They are suspected of involvement in insurgent attacks and are being held at the Parwan prison north of Kabul, the official said. The U.S. had no contact with the other five men, the official said.
Karzai demanded that the elite U.S. troops, who reportedly operate in at least three districts in Wardak even though their activities are officially classified, leave the province by Sunday. Wardak has been one of Afghanistan's most contested provinces; in 2011, Taliban fighters here shot down a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, killing 38 U.S. and Afghan troops, including 17 Navy SEALs.
U.S. forces in Afghanistan have been accused of abductions and abuses before, particularly the special operations forces, whose nighttime raids on suspected insurgents' homes have long vexed Karzai. With an election for his successor due next year, analysts believe the Afghan president is facing pressure from Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami sympathizers in his government.
Ridding Wardak of special forces, the analysts argue, could represent an effort to appease the insurgents and draw them into peace talks with Kabul. Karzai recently pledged to send delegates to meet Taliban representatives in Qatar to explore talks, and a U.S. official said that Hezb-i-Islami had recently been in quiet negotiations with Kabul.
"To boost the morale of the insurgents, this decision really works," said Abdul Rahim Khurram, deputy director of the Liaison Office, an independent research organization in Kabul. "They will feel very close to victory at least in one important place."
Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, rejected assertions that politics played a role in the decision, saying that the presidential palace had been receiving complaints about U.S. forces in Wardak for months.
"It's not just one or two allegations," Faizi said. But he did not deny the possibility that villagers had been coerced into making accusations. "With the absence of the special forces, if something happens of the same nature, we will know who is responsible," Faizi said.
A coalition official familiar with the Wardak investigation said the complaints primarily came from members of Hezb-i-Islami, a militant group loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister who once aligned with Osama bin Laden. U.S. military officers met last week with villagers who complained about mistreatment and determined that many were Hezb-i-Islami loyalists.
The insurgent group is under pressure not only from U.S. and Afghan special forces but also from the Taliban and fighters loyal to insurgent leader Jalaluddin Haqqani moving into Wardak, the official said.
Villagers and Karzai's office have provided conflicting stories about the alleged abuse, in some cases blaming U.S. commandos while at other times accusing Afghans who work for the Americans. The identities of those Afghans have not been made clear, although U.S. special operations forces and the CIA over the years have secretly recruited a tangle of local militias to fight insurgents and provide security.
Human rights advocates say these groups sometimes operate as vigilantes beyond the control of their American paymasters. But officials say they have never seen them carrying out such abuse.
"Beheadings, cutting off people's hands and legs — this is what we see from the Taliban," said Ramazan Ali Rasouli, a member of the Wardak provincial council, an elected advisory body.
It isn't the first time that Afghan officials in Wardak say they have faced a misinformation campaign from militants.
About three months ago, for example, the Afghan army set up seven checkpoints along a roughly 13-mile stretch of highway that was notorious for roadside bombs. Soldiers seized more than 400 bombs in the first several weeks, said Quraishi, the deputy police chief, before tribal leaders in nearby districts began accusing Afghan soldiers of shooting civilians.
Families contended that 51 people were killed, but police found no evidence of the deaths. Still, officials in Kabul ordered the checkpoints removed. The road remains dangerous.
In January, after 17 people were killed and 21 wounded in heavy fighting between coalition forces and Taliban fighters holed up in a mosque, some tribal elders reported that North Atlantic Treaty Organization airstrikes had killed civilians. Villagers later told police that there were no airstrikes and that all the dead were members of the Taliban or relatives fighting alongside them, but that insurgents had forced them to claim otherwise, Quraishi said.
"Most of these stories come from very poor people who can't stand up to the Taliban," said Mohammed Hussain Fahimi, secretary of the provincial council. "The special forces are putting pressure on the Taliban, so they are putting pressure on the villagers."
Officials worried that security would deteriorate once insurgents no longer faced the threat of special forces operations. Sitting inside the shrapnel-pocked police headquarters, Quraishi motioned through his window toward the capital barely half an hour's drive away.
"If the special forces leave here," Quraishi said, "the Taliban will reach the gates of Kabul."
shashank.bengali@latimes.com
david.cloud@latimes.com
Times staff writer Bengali and special correspondent Baktash reported from Maidan Shahr and staff writer Cloud from Washington.
Coalition will no longer publish Taliban attack figures in Afghanistan
Associated Press Tuesday, March 5, 2013
WASHINGTON - The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan said Tuesday it will no longer publish figures on Taliban attacks, a week after acknowledging that its report of a 7 percent decline in attacks last year was actually no decline at all.
A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, Jamie Graybeal, said Tuesday that its reporting on the number of attacks will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan forces move further into the battlefield lead.
“Because (Afghan forces) are now conducting an increasing number of successful unilateral operations, often beyond the view of ISAF, we have determined that our databases will become increasingly inaccurate in reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated attacks,” Graybeal said in a written statement.
“Additionally, we have come to realize that a simple tally of (attacks) is not the most complete measure of the campaign’s progress,” Graybeal said. “At a time when more than 80 percent of the (attacks) are happening in areas where less than 20 percent of Afghans live, this single facet of the campaign is not particularly accurate in describing the complete effect of the insurgency’s violence on the people of Afghanistan.”
The Taliban have been pushed out of many population centers and have failed to regain territory they held before the surge of U.S. troops in 2010. But they are expected to test Afghan forces as U.S. and allied troops withdraw over the coming two years. All foreign combat forces are to be gone by Dec. 31, 2014.
Coalition officials, including Obama administration officials, had previously cited the reported 2012 drop in Taliban attacks as among a number of signs that the insurgency was in decline and that the Afghans could take on more of the fighting burden.
Last Tuesday, on his final day as defense secretary, Leon Panetta indicated, after The Associated Press revealed that ISAF had incorrectly reported Taliban attack figures for 2012, that he was disappointed about the error.
The error came to light after ISAF removed from its website a set of statistics that included its tally of “enemy initiated attacks,” which it had said declined by 7 percent over 2011 levels. When the AP inquired about the missing figures, ISAF said they had been removed because they contained errors. It blamed the mistake on a failure to include Afghan-provided attack figures.
Graybeal said Tuesdsay that the corrected 2012 figures will not be published.
Karzai Announces Key Afghan Prisoner Transfer
March 6, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has announced the final handover of a U.S.-run prison to his administration's control within days.
The development signals a breakthrough in a long-running dispute with Washington over the control of Bagram prison near Kabul.
Addressing parliament on March 6, Karzai said that his administration's long efforts for the transfer of the U.S.-run prison have eventually paid off and next week the transfer will take place.
"We know that many innocents are languishing in this prison. Despite all the expected criticism, I will order the release of innocents so they can go to their homes," Karzai said. "But people who are involved in killing Afghans by shooting them or bombing them will meet their punishment."
Last year, Karzai accused the U.S. of violating an agreement to transfer more than 3,000 detainees from Bagram prison to Afghan custody.
Afghans consider the issue sensitive for their sovereignty.
Karzai on March 6 also called on his security forces to end incidents of torture and abuse of their countrymen.
"Today, I want to promise the people of Afghanistan that they are safe inside their houses," Karzai said. "The law should take its course only in relations to the criminals. I call on their parliament to raise their voice and react strongly to cases of abuse, if they hear about it. As long as we do not end abuse and torture in our own institutions, we cannot stop others."
An investigation by the government last month unveiled widespread abuse in prisons run by Afghan forces. The findings backed a recent United Nations investigation that Kabul initially rejected.
Western diplomats have urged Kabul to look into allegations of abuse by Afghan troops.
Based on reporting by AP, AFP, and RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan
Afghan Ambassador Renews Push for Clerics Conference
TOLOnews.com By Shakila Abrahimkhil Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Afghanistan's Ambassador to Pakistan Tuesday will renew attempts for a conference between religious leaders of the two countries, saying he will ask Pakistan to replace its previously designated leader Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi who recently suggested suicide attacks were permissible under Islam.
"I will have a meeting with the Pakistani foreign ministry today or tomorrow and I will ask them to have the clerics council start everything again because of the importance of this conference," said Omar Dawoodzai told TOLOnews in a telephone interview.
"My suggestion is to remake the team which was headed by Mr. Ashrafi and to introduce new members to us," he said.
Pakistan has distanced itself from Ashrafi's comments in a letter from its embassy in Afghanistan stating that the cleric's viewpoint was nothing but personal opinion and not one supported by the government.
Ashrafi was appointed by Pakistan's foreign ministry to head the country's delegation for the planned regional conference of Islamic clerics. Last week, he stated that Pakistani clerics will not attend the conference in Kabul, saying that Taliban clerics should have been invited.
One of the conference's aims was to have a joint decision made by both countries' religious leaders declaring suicide attacks as Haram – prohibited under Islam.
On Friday, Ashrafi stoked the fire when he answered TOLOnews' questions on whether suicide attacks were legitimate saying that sacrificing one's life for Allah was permissible because Muslims did not have the atomic bomb and Afghanistan was occupied by the US.
Afghanistan's National Security Council deputy Rahmatullah Nabil said Sunday that just as the US and international community blacklist terrorists, so to it should blacklist people who support terrorists or provide the means for them to act.
Meanwhile, at a convention in Kabul Tuesday of Afghanistan's social organisations, the convention's spokesman and head of the Heirs of Martyrs Social Foundation called the Afghan government to take clear action on the Pakistan Ulema Council chief's comments.
"The convention of the national coalition of Afghanistan's social organisations asks the clerics of country and especially the new clerics to religiously react against the political fatwa of the Pakistani Ulema Council behind which that country's intelligence hands are working," said Murteza Nikzad.
Nikzad backed Nabil's statement and called on Pakistan to send Ashrafi to court for his inflammatory statements.
Head of the Afghanistan Council of Victims Ayamuddin Watandoost also called for him to be charged: "We want the government of Pakistan to take these people to court."
Taliban prisoners seize control of British-funded prison in Helmand
Taliban prisoners have seized control of parts of a £4.3 million British-funded prison in Helmand and taken hostages, triggering an armed siege at the flagship aid project.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 05 Mar 2013
Lashkar Gah - Afghan police and soldiers have been surrounding Helmand central prison for more than two days, after a weekend protest in a wing housing insurgent prisoners spread and erupted in violence.
Inmates seized two prison guards and their assault rifles during the unrest. Other prison guards opened fire, wounding six inmates, but were unable to recover their colleagues.
Naeem Baloch, Helmand's governor, was on Tuesday leading negotiations to end the stand-off and it remained unclear how much of the prison was under government control.
Prison sources told The Daily Telegraph inmates had broken down doors and walls and roamed free in much of the prison, smashing security cameras and furniture and holding security forces at bay with their captured weapons.
British officials described the situation as confused and "ongoing" though stressed Afghan forces had contained the violence and no international staff were injured or caught up in the unrest.
The prison in Lashkar Gah was built with British aid and is a centrepiece of Britain's development effort in the province.
The prison is considered well-run and progressive compared to most of Afghanistan's squalid, overcrowded jails. Inmates are offered training courses ranging from motorbike maintenance to computing.
The violence began on Sunday morning when prisoners held in a wing reserved for captured insurgents began protesting at their lack of exercise. Local media reported inmates were also angry many prisoners had been able to gain their freedom through bribery or family connections. Other inmates soon joined the disturbances and at one point around 1,200 prisoners were involved, sources said.
The governor declined to comment on the unrest, though officials claimed by Tuesday evening it had been confined to a small section of the prison.
ISAF: No More Data On Taliban Attacks
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan March 5, 2013
The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan says it will no longer publish figures on Taliban attacks.
The announcement about the decision comes a week after the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan admitted that its report of a 7 percent decline in Taliban attacks during 2012 was wrong and that there actually had not been any decline in Taliban attacks.
General Gunter Katz, a spokesman for the NATO-led ISAF, told RFE/RL that the mistake was made because ISAF is now in the transition process of handing over the leadership of all security responsibilities and combat operations to Afghan government forces.
"Many of those operations that the Afghans are conducting are actually unilateral operations," Katz said. "Therefore, it is more and more difficult for ISAF to get the right database and our current database becomes more and more inaccurate."
Coalition officials -- including members of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration -- had previously cited the reported drop in Taliban attacks during 2012 as a sign that Afghanistan’s insurgency was in decline and that the Afghans could take on more of the fighting burden.
Last week, on his final day as U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta indicated that he was disappointed about the error.
ISAF spokesman Jamie Graybeal said ISAF expects that its reports on the number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan forces continue to expand their leadership role in the battlefield.
He said that is because Afghan forces are carrying out “an increasing number of successful unilateral operations” that often are beyond the view of ISAF.
Graybeal also said that the corrected 2012 figures on Taliban attacks will not be published.
He said ISAF has come to realize that a simply tally of the number of attacks is “not the most complete measure of the campaign’s progress.”
He said about 80 percent of the Taliban’s attacks are now happening in areas where less than 20 percent of the Afghan population lives.
Taliban militants have been pushed out of many of Afghanistan’s population centers and have failed to regain territory they held before the surge of U.S. troops in 2010.
But the Taliban is expected to test the abilities of Afghan government forces as U.S. and allied combat troops are withdrawn during the next two years.
All foreign combat forces in the U.S.-led military coalition are scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
With reporting by AP and AFP
Female Afghan boxers could miss UK bout
The three women were due in London on International Women's Day but have been stuck in Delhi waiting for paperwork
The Guardian By Amelia Hill Tuesday 5 March 2013
Three young Afghan women boxers risk missing an official invitation to train and fight in the UK because of "excessive" red tape.
Sadaf Rahimi, Fahima Mohammad and Shabnam Rahman have overcome a host of cultural and financial barriers to pursue their sport in Kabul.
They were due to visit London for their first bout with UK rivals as part of International Women's Day on Friday. Instead, they have been forced to wait for days in Delhi for paperwork that has already been approved to be "officially processed".
The team from Kabul has "invited status" and support for sports visas, but visitors from Afghanistan must get paperwork in India before they can travel to the UK.
Margaret Pope, founder of the Women in Sport Foundation which had worked to bring the Afghan boxers to the UK, said of the delay: "It is a frustrating, 11th-hour development to a groundbreaking initiative to bring the women to the UK and equip them with skills and experience to take back to Afghanistan.
"One of the justifications for the UK military involvement in Afghanistan was to help improve the terrible situation for the country's women," she added. "It is therefore a bitter irony that when there is a clear opportunity to assist some of the bravest, talented and most inspiring young Afghan women, bureaucratic delays are quashing their dreams."
Former aid worker Melanie Brown said: "Making Afghans who request visas travel to a third country in order to receive them and then wait weeks to hear if they have been successful could cynically be seen as a way of discouraging all those but the very wealthy from visiting the UK.
"This is extremely frustrating, there is the considerable cost and the impracticality of staying in Delhi for weeks at a time while waiting for paperwork to be rubberstamped."
Rahimi, Mohammad and Rahman are due to train and attend a charity auction in London to raise money for their gym in Kabul, then travel to Bristol to be coached by Britain's first officially licensed female boxer, Jane Couch MBE.
Couch is no stranger to struggles with authorities – in 1998 she persuaded an industrial tribunal to overturn a British Boxing Board of Control ruling that had denied her a licence. The BBBC had argued that premenstrual syndrome made women too unstable to box.
After years of lobbying from British women fighters, women's boxing was officially recognised as an Olympic sport on 14 August 2009. At London 2012 there were women boxers from Kazakhstan, North Korea and Turkey, while British boxer Nicola Adams became the first woman to win an Olympic boxing gold.
Kabul's Frustrations With Pakistan Boil Over
By Frud Bezhan March 5, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Pakistan's checkered role in Afghanistan has long attracted the anger and mistrust of Afghan officials. But while some might go so far as to privately accuse Islamabad of orchestrating violence in their country, such sentiments were routinely suppressed.
That all changed this week, when high-level Afghan officials publicly accused Islamabad and its notorious intelligence service, the Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), of covertly supporting the Taliban and other extremist groups working against the government in Afghanistan.
First came Afghanistan's ex-spy chief, Rahmatullah Nabil, who on March 3 took the unprecedented step of calling for the United Nations to place the ISI on its global list of terrorist groups.
"A terrorist is blacklisted, but the person who issues the fatwa for them to act or who provides them with safe havens is not blacklisted. Any entity that gives support and shelter to terrorists must be blacklisted," Nabil said.
Nabil, who is deputy chairman of Afghanistan's National Security Council, also said Pakistan should not be allowed to participate in negotiations to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban.
"The Afghan government and people have done their outmost to forge a good relationship with Pakistan so we could, as Muslim neighbors, live together and create peace in Afghanistan and in the region," Nabil said. "But, unfortunately, we have never seen any positive steps from Pakistan. Instead, they fire rockets that shell our people and land while our clerics, tribes, and children are martyred by their terrorists."
Then came President Hamid Karzai, who issued similarly robust remarks on March 4.
Speaking to reporters alongside NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Kabul, Karzai said Pakistan has taken "no practical steps" to help Afghanistan fight terrorism. The Afghan president also criticized recent statements by influential Pakistani cleric Tahir Ashrafi, who reportedly said suicide attacks in Afghanistan were justifiable because they target foreign occupiers.
Raised Political Stakes
For Kabul to formalize Nabil's calls for the ISI to be blacklisted by the UN, Afghanistan would have to make a request to the Al-Qaeda and Associated Individuals and Entities Committee, also known as the "Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee."
The committee, which is chaired by Australia's ambassador to the UN and includes representatives from all 15 members of the Security Council, would then have to decide by consensus to add the ISI to its blacklist.
Much of the anger in Afghanistan appears to be directly related to Ashrafi's legitimization of terrorist acts in Afghanistan.
Former Afghan spy chief Nabil initially charged that Ashrafi's statement represented the views of the Pakistan government and intelligence services. Ashrafi has since backtracked and said his comments were taken out of context by the Afghan media.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, suggests that the recent criticism could be a sign of Kabul's frustrations with its efforts to reach a peace settlement with the Taliban.
Kabul has secured the releases of dozens of Taliban officials held in Pakistani prisons over the past few months, but the move has not led to any breakthroughs. Instead, there have been media reports that many of those released are now back on the battlefield.
Kugelman also leaves open the possibility that the strong reaction by Nabil could be driven by political considerations, with presidential elections scheduled to take place in Afghanistan in 2014.
"This strong comment from Kabul could betray this sense of anger about how things aren't really progressing very well. Given the elections aren't too far off, someone like [Nabil], a possible candidate, could be trying to make a political statement that would appeal to public opinion. Particularly given how hostile many Afghans are toward Pakistan, but in particular the ISI," Kugelman said.
Whatever the case, Kugelman said, the strong reaction from Kabul does not bode well for Afghan-Pakistani relations. And this comes at a particularly critical time, he says, with Kabul in need of Islamabad's support as it prepares to take over security responsibilities as international forces prepare to withdraw.
"Afghanistan-Pakistan relations are volatile and not good. They seem to have improved over the last few months. But anytime you have a high-level official make a comment as strong as Nabil did about the ISI, that risks not endangering but definitely harming the relationship -- in the sense that to have such a strong statement come from so high up in the government against such a significant and powerful organization such as the ISI," Kugelman said.
Kabul Bank: A bank that defaulted on trust
Sentencing of two ex-top executives brings spotlight back on nation's first private bank that was felled by greed.
Aljazeera By Ali M Latifi 05 Mar 2013
Afghanistan's Kabul Bank is back in news, with the sentencing of two of its top executives to five years in prison for fraud. But being in the limelight - for good or bad - has been part of the bank's saga since its inception in 2004.
Billed as "the bank for everyone", the bank's advertisements featured on international television channels showcased a lifestyle that few Afghans could resist. It evoked both trust and awe as its ads constantly showed images of houses, cars and even gold bars it purported to give away.
Suddenly, Afghans who had been distrustful of banks took money they had stored in their homes for decades and opened accounts at the financial institution. The aspirational promises quickly drew in more than one million depositors.
But by summer 2010, the rumblings of something amiss at the nation's first private bank became too loud to ignore.
Indebted and embarrassed
On August 29, 2010, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, then head of Afghanistan's Central Bank, convened a meeting of Kabul Bank's shareholders to discuss what had brought an institution seen as an overwhelming success by Afghans and foreigners alike to the verge of collapse.
The bank has since been replaced by the New Kabul Bank, with the government investing more than $800m. But the fallout of the collapse of the first bank is still being felt.
Nearly three years later, a series of investigations detailed how massive off-book loans, lavish purchases and 114 rubber stamps used for fake companies helped contribute to the embezzlement of more than $900m from Kabul Bank.
The image of the "bank for everyone" was quickly replaced with one of "crony capitalism" forming a "Ponzi scheme" that affected nearly everyone in the Central Asian nation.
The scandal left Jawed Rassool, an operations manager at a construction company, broke and indebted. The 27-year-old said the media coverage of the corruption soon locked his employer out of access from its accounts. As a result, "I wasn't paid for four months", he told Al Jazeera.
"I am not a very wealthy man. I cannot afford not to have money to feed my family for one month, and never four months I borrowed 7,000 afghanis [$136] to pay for electricity, firewood and other expenses."
While the bank's CEO was reported to have gone on shopping sprees at Louis Vuitton and Versace with money from the bank, Rassool languished.
A November 2012 report, published by the Independent Joint Anti-corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), found that 92 percent of the bank's loans, or $861m, was extended to just 19 individuals and businesses.
The bank collapsed
Seema Ghani, executive director of the MEC, said that along with a loss of faith in the banking industry, the Kabul Bank scandal left many people without essential services.
"Kabul Bank was a trusted institution that millions of Afghans relied on to receive their salaries and secure their savings The fact that the government stepped in with an $825m infusion of funds has simply meant the cost of the fraud has been dispersed to all Afghans," Ghani told Al Jazeera.
Sophisticated smuggling
In interviews with Al Jazeera, researchers, bank officials and journalists said a combination of low capacity, lack of due diligence and political influence allowed the Kabul Bank to perpetrate its fraudulent activities for more than five years.
Kabul Bank also had timing on its side: an influx of international aid, expanded public services and new entrepreneurial businesses after the fall of the Taliban all increased the need for banking services.
This growth in demand for financial services "drastically outstripped the capacity to effectively regulate and supervise the industry, resulting in vulnerabilities that were [further] exploited by participants in the Kabul Bank fraud", said Ghani.
"The scale and level of sophistication of the scheme in Kabul Bank was quite astonishing," Martine van Bijlert, co-director of the Afghanistan Analyst Network, told Al Jazeera.
This sophistication included innovative plots to smuggle $861m into banks in 28 countries. The 2012 report by the MEC cited the use of 10 pilots at Pamir Airways, which the bank had a stake in, who were paid annual salaries of over $300,000 to transport money through the airline's food trays. These costs, dated from March 2008 to November 2010, were categorised as "pilots of cash delivery".
A further $66.2m was used for the purchase of 250 cars and motorcycles, false deposits, and payments to employees either unqualified for their positions or who simply did not work for the bank.
And a 2009 report by the Afghan spy agency found that Kabul Bank funds were being used to build a property portfolio in Dubai whose value was estimated at $151m.
These details depicted what van Biljert called "a group of people who found it completely normal that their connections and wealth would earn them [no interest] loans or gifts". Among those accused of receiving loans are the brothers of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, and First Vice President Marshal Fahim.
Protecting itself
Tuesday's sentencing of Sher Khan Farnoud, the bank's founder and chairman, and Khalilullah Ferozi, chief executive of the bank, has done little to restore faith in what they see as a corrupt system.
Shamsul Rahman Shams, head of the special tribunal investigating the bank, said Karzai's and Fahim's brothers still owe $9m and $3m, respectively.
Neither Mahmoud Karzai - the bank's third-largest shareholder - nor Hassin Fahim has been formally charged with wrongdoing.
"It's not as simple as the president and vice president protecting their brothers. It's the system protecting itself," said van Bijlert.
Nor are they the only ones allegedly involved. Kabul Bank reportedly made contributions to between 30 and 40 members of parliament. "Many people are somehow implicated," said van Bijlert.
The response to the scandal has been plagued by delayed or inadequate investigations, and reluctance to pursue the routes that money took out of the country and prosecute those responsible.
This, says van Bijlert, illustrates how the entire process has become "an exercise in containment", to limit the blame to a carefully chosen group.
This highlights a perception among the general population that the perpetrators and beneficiaries of the Kabul Bank fraud have not been properly investigated and that decisions to indict were not made transparently - a view the MEC shares.
With the bank's bailout, funded by international donors, amounting to nearly six percent of the nation's GDP, Dawood Azami, an Afghan Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, said "the Kabul Bank crisis should be a big enough shock for the whole governance structure in Afghanistan to wake up and respond to challenges on time".
But Noorullah Delawari, governor of the Afghan Central Bank, said Kabul Bank is not an entirely unique situation. "The whole world is facing massive banking issues and each country has had difficulty dealing with it." Though he agrees with the findings of an audit prepared by the Kroll investigative firm that the bank was "a well-concealed Ponzi scheme", Delawari says Da Afghan Bank is working with a receivership to recover as much of the lost funds as possible.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Delawari said that within the "next few weeks" the total amount recovered by the receivership will total $225m, which he cites as a major improvement over his predecessor, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, who fled to the United States in June 2010, saying the investigation was putting his life in danger.
"Only $20m had been recovered when I came on board" in November 2011, Delawari said.
Still, the sting of the scandal continues to reverberate in Afghanistan and abroad. "Although the public and investors got their money back after it was seized by the authorities, many people think twice before depositing their money in the banks," said Azami.
For Ahmad Barak, the initial corruption and the mishandling of the subsequent investigation into Kabul Bank are indicative of an unchanging fact of life in modern Afghanistan.
"This is Afghanistan. You are an idiot if you do not steal money."
Afghan Region Makes Name For Drug Mules, Tragedy
By Frud Bezhan and Dayan Ahmadi March 5, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
TAKHAR -- Residents of this remote district of northeast Afghanistan are finding that desperate times call for desperate measures.
With few options to make an honest living, many locals in the Kalafgan district of Takhar Province are taking jobs as drug mules for local drug cartels. As couriers, locals smuggle packages of illicit narcotics to neighboring Tajikistan and Iran.
The work is high-risk and often rewarded with prison or even death.
Those dangers hit home recently as locals buried the bodies of 10 men from Kalafgan who were hanged in Iran, reportedly for drug smuggling. Residents say that in the past six months they have buried 80 villagers who were executed in Iran. As many as 400 other residents, locals say, are serving lengthy jail sentences in the Islamic republic.
Work, Passports 'In A Week'
The high concentration of drug couriers in Kalafgan has forced a light on the booming illicit drug trade in the area. When funerals for the 10 men were held on February 23, hundreds of mourners marched through the streets calling on the provincial government to improve economic conditions and to apprehend smugglers in the area.
Hamidullah's brother was among the Kalafgan residents recently hanged in Iran. He says his brother, whom he does not name, spent years taking menial jobs on either side of the Afghan-Tajik border, the crossing point for one-fifth of Afghanistan's illegal narcotics exports.
One day, Hamidullah says, his brother told him he had had enough. His brother approached a drug dealer in the district for work and within two weeks had been sent to Iran, where Hamidullah says he was apprehended by border police.
Hamidullah says that, like other locals, his brother was wooed with promises of money and the prospect of a job upon his arrival in Iran.
"Drug smugglers pay local passport officials in Takhar 20,000 afghanis (around $400) to get couriers passports," he says. "In just a week, they secure visas for their mules to go to Iran. After they get their papers they hide drugs inside their bodies and go to Iran."
Easy Pickings
Hamidullah blames his brother's death on local officials in Takhar, who he says provide protection to the smugglers for a share of the drug profits.
"The officials and police are offering [drug smugglers] protection. Everybody knows about their presence but they don't do anything about it," Hamidullah says. "The smugglers have protection from high-ranking officials. We strongly urge [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai to take action."
Located near Afghanistan's northern border with Tajikistan, Kalafgan's mountainous terrain makes it uniquely suitable as a drug route, with remote roads making it inaccessible to most. The district's remoteness has meant locals have seen little economic improvement. Unemployment statistics are unavailable, but local officials say it exceeds 50 percent, 10 percentage points more than the estimated national average.
Suriya, another resident, says poverty and lack of jobs in Kalafgan have made many villagers easy targets for Afghan drug cartels seeking to recruit couriers. Among them was her husband, one of the 10 residents recently executed in Iran.
She says the need to provide for two newborn children compelled her husband, despite her protests, to take a job with what she calls the "free-roaming drug mafia" in Kalafgan.
Empty Beds And Threats
With the breadwinner of the family gone, Suriya, who is an Iranian national, says the family is struggling to survive. Like many residents, she blames the provincial government. She says locals know the names and addresses of drug smugglers, yet many officials turn a blind eye.
"The Afghan government is not taking action against the drug dealers," Suriya says. "Why aren't they doing anything? My husband was killed. They've taken everything away from me, including my family. I'm widowed with two children now. What should I do?"
To add to her misery, Suriya says she has been threatened by her husband's former employers. She says the ringleader, whom she names, has told her to pay him compensation for the drugs her husband lost when he got caught. If she does not pay, she says, she will either have to carry drugs for them or risk losing her children.
"A dealer called Khari Mohebullah, who smuggles drugs into Iran, came to see me and told me that my husband had cost him 5 kilograms of drugs," Suriya says. "He told me he wouldn't let me bury my husband until I paid him compensation. He said, 'Even though your husband is dead, I will still collect my money.'"
Mohammad Farid Zaki, the acting governor of Takhar, confirms that at least 43 Kalafgan residents have been hanged in Iran in the past six months. That is the number that Iranian officials have confirmed, he says, adding that he suspects the number is much higher.
Not So Isolated?
Zaki adds that his office has launched an investigation into why high numbers of Kalafgan residents have been imprisoned and executed in Iran. He admits the drug trade in the area is playing its part, and stresses that Takhar is not alone.
"This is not a problem only in Takhar, but all over Afghanistan," Zaki says. "In some places Afghan youths who travel to Pakistan and Iran are used [as drug mules by narcotics gangs]."
The precise number of Afghans executed in Iran over the past several years is unknown. Tehran rarely informs or provides explanations to Kabul about the execution of its citizens.
Afghan media estimate that some 2,000 Afghans have been jailed in Iran on drug-smuggling charges and other criminal acts, while hundreds more face the death penalty.
Afghan lawmakers and human rights groups have raised concerns, saying many Afghans imprisoned in Iran do not receive fair trials because they lack access to defense lawyers and are not given the opportunity to get assistance from Kabul.
Written and reported by Frud Bezhan in Prague, with reporting by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Dayan Ahmadi in Takhar Province
Soviet war veteran found in Afghanistan after 33 years
BBC News 5 March 2013
A Soviet soldier who went missing in Afghanistan nearly 33 years ago has been found living with Afghans in the western province of Herat.
The soldier is semi-nomadic, has the adopted Afghan name Sheikh Abdullah and practises herbal medicine, Russia's RIA news agency reports.
An ethnic Uzbek, he was found by ex-Soviet veterans of the war.
He was wounded in battle in 1980, only months after the Soviet invasion, and was rescued by local Afghans.
The head of the official veterans' committee, Ruslan Aushev, said Sheikh Abdullah - real name Bakhretdin Khakimov - was tracked down in Shindand district after a year-long search. He had served with a motorised rifle unit.
The committee lists 264 Soviet soldiers as still missing in Afghanistan, half of them Russians. In the first decade after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 the committee found 29 missing soldiers - and 22 of them decided to return home, while seven opted to stay in Afghanistan, RIA reports.
The committee says it is determined to track all of the missing men down.
Sheikh Abdullah was married but his wife died and he has no children.
The committee's deputy chairman, Alexander Lavrentyev, said Sheikh Abdullah bore the scars of his war wounds - a shaking hand and shoulder and nervous tic. The ex-soldier, from the city of Samarkand, was able to name his former place of residence in Uzbekistan and the names of his relatives, Mr Lavrentyev said.
He understood Russian but spoke it very poorly.
In 2009 the BBC's Lyse Doucet interviewed two ex-soldiers from Ukraine, now Muslims and living with Afghans in northern Afghanistan.
Some 15,000 Red Army soldiers and more than a million Afghans were killed in a decade of fighting between a Soviet-backed government in Kabul and mujahideen fighters armed by the West and Islamic neighbours.
Anti-Graft Chief Calls for Abolishment of Kankor
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Afghanistan's anti-corruption watchdog Tuesday called for the countrywide university entrance test, or Kankor, to be abolished, saying that half the corruption within the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) was linked to the exam.
"This process should be cancelled and instead of the Kankor exam, those students of classes 9, 10, 11, and 12 that score more than 7 (out of 10) should be introduced to their favourite faculties directly," said Azizullah Lodin, head of High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption.
"This is my suggestion to the president, who should appoint a committee to inspect more on this suggestion, and correct possible defects. But after all, the Kankor exam should be cancelled," he told TOLOnews.
Lodin said that the Kankor's corruption included the selling of exam questions, influential figures putting pressure to change results, and general cheating.
The MOHE has rejected the claims, pointing out that it charged 540 students with cheating on the test – some of whom have been referred to the Attorney General.
"The Kankor exam has been held with no fraud and was completely transparent as many were monitoring the process," said Abdulazim Noorbakhsh, MOHE spokesman.
Japan Delivers Further $117m in Aid to Afghanistan
TOLOnews.com By Shahla Murtazaie Tuesday, 05 March 2013
Japan has agreed to fund a further $117 million in financial aid for development projects in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Tuesday.
Ministry officials said that four main projects will be funded by the new aid: road maintenance, water supply network of New Kabul Project, the development of Kabul International Airport, and fuel purchases for government organisations.
Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul welcomed the aid saying that Japan has made a significant contribution to aid Afghanistan in the past decade.
Outlining the breakdown of the $117m, Rassoul said $34.6m will go towards buying oil, $16.8m for the development of parking and power at Kabul International Airport, $33.9m to repair roads and $31.6 million for the water supply of the New Kabul City (Desabz project).
"We promised $3 billion at the Chicago meeting from 2012 up to 2016 for five years. Last week we signed $281m with the United Nations which becomes around $400m with today's aid [pledges]," Japan's Ambassador to Afghanistan Hiroshi Takahashi said at a press conference.
Japan is the largest foreign aid donor to Afghanistan after the United States, MOFA officials said.
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