[Afghan News] April 1, 2013

[یاسمینه]

Russia going back to Afghanistan? Kremlin confirms it could happen
Nearly 25 years after Soviet troops left Afghanistan in defeat, Russia may return – in order to service the Russian equipment that makes up the backbone of the Afghan military.
By Fred Weir | Christian Science Monitor
Almost a quarter century after Soviet troops left Afghanistan in defeat, Russia may return to the country by establishing "maintenance bases" for Russian-made military equipment after NATO winds down its operations there next year, defense ministry officials have confirmed.

"It is important to maintain the weapon systems and military equipment of the Afghan armed forces in a serviceable state," Sergei Koshelev, head of the Russian defense ministry's international cooperation department, told journalists late last week.

Moscow is extremely worried "that any escalation of the situation in Afghanistan after NATO troops pull out in 2014 could have a negative impact on the security of both Russia and other European nations," he added.

Russian experts insist that it's not an attempt to overcome Russia's own version of the "Vietnam syndrome" – an agonized folk memory of the decade-long war in Afghanistan that arguably brought down the Soviet Union. Rather, they say the new engagement will be limited to commercial obligations, negotiated with NATO before it pulls most of its forces out, and will absolutely not involve any active military role.

"Someone has to help the Afghan people build a peaceful life. They've known nothing but weapons and war for so long," says Oleg Tikhonov, deputy head of the Injured Afghan War Veterans in Sverdlovsk region, western Siberia.

"But Russia must never repeat its past mistakes. There cannot again be any Russian troops in Afghanistan. After the past, it would be impossible to explain why Russian boys are dying there. You cannot do such things without the people's consent," he adds.

TWOFOLD GOALS

Analysts say that, first, there is an objective need to maintain and repair generations of Soviet and Russian-made military hardware that constitute the main weaponry used by the Afghan security forces. Over the past decade, rather than re-equip Afghan government troops with sophisticated Western-made arms, the US has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Russian weapons, including helicopters, from Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport to fill their needs.

Second, Russia wants to establish forward posts in Afghanistan because it is increasingly alarmed about a possible resurgence of the cross-border militant Islamist incursions that sowed chaos in the post-Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan during the turbulent 1990s. Production of narcotics has exploded under NATO's watch in Afghanistan, and much of it moves via criminal pipelines through former Soviet central Asia and Russia, feeding official corruption and the growth of mafia power throughout the region. Many Russians say they fear that the NATO withdrawal may soon leave them to face these challenges alone.

Over the past couple of years, Russia has become more active assisting the beleaguered NATO mission in Afghanistan, even granting the use of an important airbase in central Russia to help with resupply efforts. Russian leaders have repeatedly urged NATO not to leave in 2014, and to stay in Afghanistan until "the job is done."

But most Russian experts say they are now resigned to the US pulling the plug in 2014 and, in a pattern familiar from previous wars from Vietnam to Iraq, abandoning the region to its own devices.

"Look at Iraq. The US lost interest in it, and nobody cares if it's becoming engulfed in civil war," says Vadim Kozyulin, a researcher with the PIR Center, a leading Moscow security think tank.

"The same process may happen in Afghanistan, and could develop much more quickly. The US effort in Afghanistan is about to end. It's time for Russia to design a new effort, which means we have to take a share of responsibility on ourselves. We're already playing the role of political and military leader in central Asia.... Even though [President Vladimir] Putin previously said we won't send Russian specialists to Afghanistan, the Russian military now says we might create enterprises on Afghan territory to service military equipment. The situation is changing," he adds.

RUSSIA'S MILITARY-EQUIPMENT FOOTHOLD

The US has already purchased about 70 Russian Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan army, at around $17 million apiece, and wants to buy 30 more – an arrangement that's extremely controversial in the US.

"NATO buys Russian arms for the Afghan forces in part because they're very familiar with this equipment, and in part because they probably don't want to supply sophisticated Western arms that might wind up in the hands of the Taliban," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow foreign policy journal.

"As Russia tries to extend its economic presence, this edge in military equipment is about the only thing going for us. And it's guaranteed that Russia's own military-industrial lobbies will push hard for expanding it," he adds.

One of Mr. Putin's key policies is to knit together former Soviet lands in a new Eurasian Union that would be driven by economic synergies rather than political domination. As Russia pivots eastward, the resource-rich but politically unstable former Soviet republics of central Asia – which abut Afghanistan – are taking on a whole new significance.

Some experts say that stability in Afghanistan, with which the USSR maintained good relations for most of its history, will be key to Russia's ability to achieve its other goals in the region.

"Russia is returning to Afghanistan. Indeed, according to some information, Russia is already doing that without waiting for the Americans to leave," says Anatoly Tsyganok, an analyst with the independent Center for Military Forecasting and a member of the Russian Defense Ministry's advisory public council.

"I think we should be investing right now. There are many proposals from the Afghan government on the table, including participation in geological surveys, developing oil production and water resources. There is an offer to build a metro in Kabul, and it is being considered in Moscow.... Consider that the Chinese are already very active. They are building roads in Taliban-held territory, using the Taliban for protection. We need to look ahead, and be practical about it," he says.

Gen. Makhut Garayev, president of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences and a former adviser to the pro-Soviet regime of Mohammad Najibullah in Afghanistan, says Russia needs to step cautiously in any return to Afghanistan.

"There has been a lot of harm done to Afghanistan, and many countries participated in doing it," General Garayev says.

"But Afghanistan needs to be restored. Several generations have known only war, weapons, and death. We have a history with that country, and not only a negative one. The USSR cooperated with Afghanistan since it had a king. There is a chance here to work creatively. Nobody's ever tried that before. We need to step carefully, but we should try," he says.


Afghanistan's Karzai in Qatar, Taliban talks in focus
Reuters – Sun, Mar 31, 2013
DOHA (Reuters) - President Hamid Karzai held talks with Qatari leaders on Sunday, official media reported, on a visit the Kabul government has said would seek to explore the possibility of talks with Taliban insurgents on ending Afghanistan's war.

Karzai's trip to the Gulf Arab state, a U.S. ally which has mediated in conflicts in Arab or Muslim countries, follows years of stalled discussions among the United States, Pakistan and the Taliban about a possible Afghan settlement.

Afghanistan's embassy in Doha confirmed Karzai's arrival on Saturday for a two-day visit to the Qatari capital, but declined to give any details on the purpose of the visit.

Qatar's state news agency QNA said Karzai held talks with the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, attended by the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani.

QNA gave no details of the discussions, and later reported without elaborating that Karzai had left the country.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Janan Mosazai, announcing the visit last week, said Karzai would "discuss the peace process and the opening of a (Taliban) office for the purposes of conducting negotiations with Afghanistan."

The Kabul government has been pushing hard to get the Taliban to the negotiating table before foreign troops withdraw.

Afghan officials have not held direct talks with the militants, who were toppled in 2001 and have proven resilient after more than a decade of war with Western forces.

DIALOGUE

Earlier this month, Karzai said the Taliban and the United States had been holding talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on a "daily basis", but the militant group and Washington denied they had resumed efforts on dialogue that stalled a year ago.

The Taliban suspended those talks, saying Washington was giving mixed signals on the nascent Afghan reconciliation process.

However, the United States has said it would support setting up a Taliban office in Qatar where peace talks between the Taliban and Afghanistan could take place.

On a visit to Kabul last week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry repeated a U.S. call for the Taliban to enter into talks and a wider political process.

He issued a veiled threat if they did not, saying U.S. President Barack Obama had yet to say how many U.S. troops will remain in the country after 2014.

Karzai has stressed the need to bring neighboring Pakistan into such a negotiation. U.S. and Afghan officials have long said the Taliban forces have sanctuary across the border in Pakistan.

Pakistan denies any senior insurgents enjoy sanctuary within its borders.

(Reporting by Regan Doherty; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by William Maclean and Sophie Hares)


Karzai Softens on Taliban Ahead of Doha Office Opening
TOLOnews.com By Mohammad Salman Sunday, 31 March 2013
DOHA - President Hamid Karzai softened his stance on the Taliban in the backdrop of meetings on the Afghan peace process with Qatari leaders before returning to Kabul Sunday evening.

At a gathering with a select group of businessmen at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Qatar's capital city of Doha on Saturday night, Karzai said that the Taliban have never been a "preventative element" in Afghanistan's economic progress, downplaying the bad image of the insurgent group as a media beat-up.

"When I visit Europe and watch CNN, even I also get scared," he told the businessmen.

Karzai met with the Emir HH Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on Sunday where he was expected to discuss the formal opening of the Taliban office in Doha and the peace process in which the US and Qatar are playing a key role.

Karzai sought to assure the Qatari Sheikhs that there was no reason to worry about Afghanistan, insisting that his country offered massive investment opportunities despite the perceived dire security situation.

Without naming any specific country, he said the Taliban were a group that comprised people from all over the world who would soon return to their country of origin.

"You must have heard of the Taliban, I'm sure you have heard of the Taliban. But there's no problem. They are from all countries; sooner or later they will be back in their own country," he said.

"The Taliban ... has not been a preventive element in the investment or the economic activity in Afghanistan," he added, emphasising that in his understanding no investment has suffered because of a lack of security in the last 10 years.

Karzai listed several achievements of Afghanistan during the past decade, including telecommunications which he claimed that "the fastest growing in the world".

On the subject of a Taliban office in Doha, he said: "The Taliban peace process, when it is officially announced, the opportunities will multiply hugely," he said, adding that he was very hopeful of the outcome.

Foreign Forces to Remain After 2014

Karzai also told the businessmen that the western forces will not be leaving the country and the future is guaranteed.

"The West, the Americans and Europe - they're negotiating with us. After 2014, they will stay, they are not leaving. They want at least five bases in Afghanistan, from the north part of the country to the west.

"As we negotiate with them, they [currently] have 150,000 troops. After 2014, there will be nearly 15,000 troops which will include the US, Nato, France, Germany and up to ten countries.

"With the USA, we have our own direct negotiations. With all other countries, Nato is representing them and talking to us. So the future of the country is guaranteed because we have an equivalent good relations with China, India and Russia."

Invitation to Invest

Karzai invited the Qatari businessmen to invest in the massive natural resources of the country, citing a study that is understood to have been conducted 10 years ago.

"Afghanistan's underground resources are estimated by the Americans to be between $3 trillion and $30 trillion. Trillions!" He said.

"In terms of our underground resources, there is a material that is called the rare earth material, which is lithium and other materials. This is what the Western countries want from us, especially the Americans. They have written me a letter officially, requesting me that please give this to us. And we will give it," he added.

The Qatari businessmen at the meeting showed an interest in the gold reserves in the country, and the Afghan president said he would welcome them warmly.

He also invited the businessmen to look at investments in airlines, electricity, housing, hotel industry and banking sectors as some of the other areas where Qatari businessmen can make the investments.

The chairman of the Qatari Business Association Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani led the delegation of the men who attended the gathering, which also included Sheikh Thani Abdulaziz al-Thani, Dr Sheikh Mohammad bin Eid al-Thani, Shiekh Ali Abdulla al-Thani, Dr Sheikh Khalid bin Thani al-Thani and Dr Hussein al Abdullah.

The potential investors said they appreciated Karzai's stance and requested to visit Afghanistan soon.

Karzai replied he would send his mines and trade ministry to Qatar soon in order for the business owners to have discussions with them before coming to Afghanistan.

"My brothers, we will welcome you with open hearts," Karzai said.


Report: 5000 Afghan troops quit their job every month
By MEENA HASEEB - 01 Apr 2013, 8:26 am Khaama Press
According to the latest figures revealed for every 10 new soldiers recruited to the Afghan National Army (ANA), at least three are lost because they have been sacked, captured or killed in action.

The issue has created concerns regarding the ability of Afghan security forces to protect emerging democracy when coalition forces are leaving the country in less than years time.

Around 5,000 Afghan troops are are quitting every month, according to the latest attrition rates confirmed by British officials.

As the Afghan army and police forces are seen as vital to prevent the return of the Taliban however the Afghan National Security Forces’ (ANSF) failure to hit recruitment and retention targets is particularly troubling for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).

The latest British Government assessments of Afghanistan’s progress towards the goals of stability and democracy confirm that the rate of recruits leaving is far worse than targets set by coalition leaders, amounting to 63,000 every year, or more than a third of the current size of the army, The Independent reported.

The Foreign Office (FCO) has also admitted that the number of recruits exiting the ANA, the border police and the national civil order police has caused “a drain on skills”.

In the meantime Afghan defense ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said the statistics of the report is not correct and he also ruled out concerns that that Afghan army is being threatened by attrition rate.


10 bombs defused in Afghan operations: ISAF
KABUL, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Afghan security forces and the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have defused 10 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in eastern Afghanistan, the ISAF said on Monday.

"Afghan National Security Forces and Coalition Forces found and safely cleared 10 improvised explosive devices, detained four suspected insurgents, discovered one weapons cache during operations in eastern Afghanistan throughout the past 24 hours," the ISAF's Regional Command-East said in a press release.

The home-made bombs were neutralized in Khost, Paktika, Kunar, Logar and Laghman provinces, it added.

The suspected insurgents were arrested in Khost and Logar provinces and transferred to coalition bases for questioning.

Taliban militants, who have been waging an insurgency for more than one decade, used IEDs to launch roadside bomb attacks on security forces but the lethal weapons also inflicted casualties on civilians.

Separately, a local Taliban leader named Hodeer Khan and two others were killed and two insurgents were wounded in an airstrike by the coalition forces in Wata Pur district, Kunar province, provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Habib told Xinhua earlier Monday.

The security forces have recently intensified operations across the country as spring and summer known as the fighting season is drawing near.


Departing British find reasons for optimism in Afghanistan
Soldiers and civilians prepare to depart with qualified confidence that progress will continue under full Afghan control
Guardian.co.uk By Nick Hopkins Sunday 31 March 2013
The Royal Marines don't intend to make a fuss when they leave Afghanistan in the next few days; there will be a low-key ceremony at their headquarters in Helmand, and a lowering of the white ensign that has flown at their camp since last September.

But the veterans among them will pause for reflection.

After six tours in 12 years, and the deaths of 62 commandos in some of the fiercest fighting seen out here, the marines will not be coming back. Their time is over.

"We have taken a significant number of casualties over the years, as many as any cap badge," Lieutenant Colonel Matt Jackson, the commander of 40 Commando, reflects. Foremost in his mind now is getting the memorial to those who fell in Sangin in 2009 and 2010 back to the UK.

"The brass plates with the names of everyone who died have been taken off. It's difficult to take the stones with us, but we'd like to make a replica of the memorial back home."

It is a significant moment in the journey British forces have taken in Helmand, marking the first of a number of "lasts" in the next 18 months, as the UK's military and civilian involvement in the province winds down, and their teams become ever more diminished.

Evidence of drawdown is everywhere – the British had 80 military bases in Helmand this time last year, now they have 12. The British embassy in Kabul is sending people home, as is Helmand's provincial reconstruction team (PRT), which has been behind multimillion-pound efforts to rebuild schools, hospitals and roads in the past seven years.

The embassy will shrink by almost half over the next 18 months – from 120 staff to 70; it has already stopped hosting some of the UK's training and mentoring initiatives and will return to "more normal embassy duties".

The PRT drawdown is even more marked. Last year, it had 220 people across Helmand, this year it has 140. By Christmas, only 50 will be left. It has one big building project to complete on Route 611, the main road from Sangin to Kajaki.

But in Kabul and Helmand, they are deeply wary of a narrative which suggests the job is done. The phased drawdown is happening on the eve of the most important fighting season of the conflict so far – the first in which the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will be entirely in charge, with Nato providing only a safety net.

It seems an uncomfortable juxtaposition, especially with so much at stake, but commanders knew this moment would come, even if it has done so earlier than the military had hoped.

The UK's acting ambassador in Kabul, Nic Hailey, said the next few months could define whether the country will be able cope with the tumultuous events of next year, when Nato will be a rump force and an election to replace President Hamid Karzai takes place.

Militarily, politically and economically, Afghanistan's future was coming into focus, he said. "We all talk about 2014 as the flagship date but actually by end of 2013 we will know quite a lot about what 2014 will look like. We will know who might be candidates for the elections, we will know what kind of framework the elections will be held in and we will know whether Afghanistan and Pakistan can make progress. We will know how the ANSF has coped through a fighting season in which they are in the lead."

Lieutenant General Nick Carter, the overall commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and the deputy commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), added: "Afghan confidence is our centre of gravity at every level. If the Afghans can look back over the summer and say 'we managed that' with only limited help from Isaf, then I think that will give them a really good platform for managing the political transition that has to follow in 2014."

It is a big if. Of the 26 ANSF brigades, only five have reached a standard where they are deemed fully independent of Isaf help. Another 16 are almost there, and five still need considerable support.

Within weeks, these brigades, and Afghanistan's police forces, will be expected to take charge of security across the country – a significant step up and, in some contested areas, a step into the unknown.

Carter believes the 21,000 ANSF soldiers in Helmand will be able to manage whatever the Taliban throw at them, but he qualifies the endorsement, saying people in the UK should not be surprised if Isaf has to ride to the rescue on occasions.

"We want the Afghans to manage this on their own, but we do still need to be prepared to support them in the event of this fighting season becoming very intensive.

"And that is why it is important that we still have combat power available. We don't want to use it and the Afghans don't want to call on it, but both parties recognise that it is a necessary stabiliser."

To this end, the British will have Quick Reaction Force and Brigade Reconnaissance Force units on standby throughout the summer, while preparing to withdraw up to 3,000 troops from Helmand by the end of the year.

Jackson, 41, is also bullish that the ANSF will be able to handle security in the three districts that remain the British "area of operations", but he said it had taken time, and a few awkward snubs, for the Afghans to realise they could do it on their own.

Over the last three months the Afghans have asked him "lots of times" for help on operations, but he has turned them down.

"We have all suspected they are good enough. But whilst we were prepared to give our help, they were prepared to accept it. So we had to stop being asked. One day we just said, 'right, we aren't going out today, so you need to go and do it'.

"Afghans are very good at fighting. Firefighting with the Taliban, they enjoy that. But they do find the logistics a bit boring."

In this area of Helmand at least, where Isaf and the ANSF have made securing the towns a priority, Jackson believes the Afghans can protect and hold. "The Taliban appear to be in disarray at the moment," he said. "They are finding it difficult to re-infiltrate [the towns]. To say that it will be eventless over the summer is a little naïve, but I just don't see what kind of activity the insurgents are going to be able to undertake."

It may be different elsewhere, particularly in places such as Maidan Wardak province, near Kabul, where the insurgency is still strong, and any governance is resisted.

"There will be parts of Afghanistan that are not within ANSF control in 2014 and I think that is inevitable," said Hailey. "That's also the case in some other countries, but it doesn't mean those countries are fundamentally unable to run themselves. In the most likely scenario there will be some remaining insurgency beyond 2014 and the rural parts of the south is where it will be.

"But you don't need to have a perfect Afghanistan where there is no single insurgent to have a gradual spread of Afghan government control."

If the Taliban formally came into the political process, then the security situation would be very different, but nobody in the diplomatic community expects that to happen this side of next April's presidential election.

The best hope is that the Taliban prefer not to disrupt the process, and then negotiate with the new president once Nato has all but disappeared.

"There are three big transitions in 2014," says Hailey. "The security, the political and the economic. The political one is the key. It's the strength of the political settlement...the transfer from President Karzai to his successor being peaceful, his successor having enough credibility with the Afghan people to hold the country together, and the whole process being seen by enough Afghans as inclusive enough that they broadly accept the view of the majority. If those things happen we are on a pretty good footing."

The Taliban, he says, are mulling over their options, but it is taking time because they are not unified, and any move is likely to split opinion among their senior commanders.

"I think they find it quite hard because they have spent the last ten years fighting and they are not a movement which has a lot of practice thinking about political strategy, and I think they are probably quite divided internally."

On the civilian side, reconstruction chiefs such as Catriona Laing, head of the PRT mission, are similarly eager to see whether the work they have done will take root or wither as the UK leaves. Much will depend on security – and whether money will flow from Kabul to sustain the province. The new governor, Naeem Baloch, has ambitions to make Helmand a democratic testbed for the rest of the country.

Somewhat against expectations, Afghans in central Helmand have developed a taste for local elections, voting for councillors in seven districts as a way of keeping officials in line.

More than 6,000 people registered to vote in a recent election in Narwar district, compared with fewer than 400 who took part three years ago.

Baloch wants to extend the initiative to areas in north Helmand – an idea that would have been unthinkable until recently because of the violence.

Helmand is the only province to hold district community council (DCC) elections, but two others have said they want to start them too along the lines the PRT developed here.

"The councillors have become the voice of the people, part of the checks and balances system," said Laing, "They are the eyes and ears. People do not want the Taliban here. We have seen a huge drop off in support for them. Only 18 months ago there were still about 22% of people here who said they were interested in seeing the Taliban back in government – that is down to 8%."

But with the PRT drawing down, it is up to the Afghans to decide whether to persist with schemes such as these, and it will be up to the Afghans to decide which of the many schools and health clinics provided by the British will remain open.

The UK built far too much in Helmand as it tried to win the trust of the people – 168 miles of new road; 55 health centres; 26 new schools (and another 86 refurbished and reopened). But there isn't enough money for all of them, so difficult decisions will have to be made – but not by the British.

"It has to be an Afghan lead," said Laing, who will step down in September. "It's about what the people want. It's not about us any more. We are leaving a little faster than I anticipated, but I think setting an end date is a positive thing. It does force people to think about what matters more than if you were just drifting along.

"Obviously the money has to flow from Kabul. And there is a risk if it doesn't come. But if the money keeps flowing I don't see any reason why things should slide. I'm not naive about this, but I don't see how the Taliban offer can land in Helmand, and if it can't land in Helmand then it cannot land easily anywhere."

None of the senior British military and civilian officers will be here to see whether their optimism is misplaced. After 12 grinding years in Afghanistan, and seven in Helmand, the UK has begun its long march home.

Carter concedes there are important lessons to be learned from the conflict, paramount among them the need for the military to be "clearer about the risks and the challenges of what is possible".

"I think the generation that has lived through this period has a pretty good understanding now of what needs to be done in the future," he said.

For Royal Marine officers such as Major Karl Gray, 38, who is on his fourth tour, and whose friends are among the 441 British servicemen who have died, leaving for the last time will allow him the chance to reflect properly on what has been achieved, and what has not.

"We all mourn in our own way, and that's what we will do," he said.

"We are never going to see a perfect Afghanistan. But it is working, and that is the best we can hope for. I can say, with hand on heart, having been here several times, and seen the progress from those early days, that those lives have not been lost in vain. It is small consolation to the families but at least it is some consolation."


Pakistan army chief urges ISAF to check attacks from Afghan soil
ISLAMABAD, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, on Monday urged the top commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan to help Pakistan check cross-border attacks launched from inside Afghanistan, the military said.

General Kayani and General Joseph F. Dunford, Commander of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), met in the garrison city of Rawalpindi and discussed a variety of issues related to strengthening cooperation and pressuring militants who threaten security along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

General Kayani reiterated Pakistan's stance and desire for peaceful, stable and united Afghanistan and the need for a successful Afghan-owned-Afghan-led peace process. He emphasized the need to continue supporting all efforts to bring peace in Pak- Afghan border region, an army statement said.

"The Pakistani, the Afghans and the international community all desire peace and security in the region. These meetings are important to achieve that goal as we continue to explore ways to expand our relationship," the military statement quoted General Dunford as saying in the meeting.

The meeting was part of the continuing tripartite commission effort to strengthen military-to-military cooperation and regional stability, the statement from the army's Inter-Services Public Relations said.

The meeting took place at a time when relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan are tense over cross-border attacks.

The military said that Pakistani militants who had fled to Afghanistan after operations in the tribal regions and Swat valley have regrouped their fighters for attacks on Pakistani border posts and villages. Afghan authorities also claimed that Pakistani forces fire rockets into its border regions.


Painful Payment for Afghan Debt: A Daughter, 6
New York Times By ALISSA J. RUBIN March 31, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - As the shadows lengthened around her family’s hut here in one of Kabul’s sprawling refugee camps, a slight 6-year-old girl ran in to where her father huddled with a group of elders near a rusty wood stove. Her father, Taj Mohammad, looked away, his face glum.

“She does not know what is going to happen,” he said softly.

If, as seems likely, Mr. Mohammad cannot repay his debt to a fellow camp resident a year from now, his daughter Naghma, a smiling, slender child with a tiny gold stud in her nose, will be forced to leave her family’s home forever to be married to the lender’s 17-year-old son.

The arrangement effectively values her life at $2,500. That is the amount Mr. Mohammad borrowed over the course of a year to pay for hospital treatment for his wife and medical care for some of his nine children — including Janan, 3, who later froze to death in bitter winter weather because the family could not afford enough firewood to stay warm.

“They said, ‘Pay back our money,’ and I didn’t have any money, so I had to give my girl,” Mr. Mohammad said. “I was thankful to them at the time, so it was my decision, but the elders also demanded that I do this.”

The story of how Mr. Mohammad, a refugee from the fighting in Helmand Province who in better days made a living as a singer and a musician, came to trade his daughter is in part a saga of terrible choices faced by some of the poorest Afghan families. But it is also a story of the way the war has eroded the social bonds and community safety nets that underpinned hundreds of thousands of rural Afghans’ lives.

Women and girls have been among the chief victims — not least because the Afghan government makes little attempt in the camps to enforce laws protecting women and children, said advocates for the camp residents.

Aid groups have been able to provide a few programs for women and children in the ever-growing camps, including schooling that for many girls here is a first. But those programs are being cut as international aid has dwindled here ahead of the Western military withdrawal. And the Afghan government has not offered much support, in part because most officials hope the refugees will leave Kabul and return home.

Most of the refugees in this camp are from rural southern Afghanistan, and they remain bound by the tribal codes and elder councils, known as jirgas, that resolved disputes in their home villages.

Few, however, still have the support of a broader network of kinsmen to fall back on in hard times as they would have at home. Out of context, the already rigid Pashtun codes have become something even harsher.

“This kind of thing never happened at home in Helmand,” said Mr. Mohammad’s mother as she sat in the back of the smoky room. Watching her granddaughter, as she laughed and smiled with her teacher, Najibullah, who also acts as a camp social worker and was visiting the family, she added, “I never remember a girl being given away to pay for a loan.”

From the point of view of those who participated in the jirga, the resolution was a good one, said Tawous Khan, an elder who led it and is one of the two main camp representatives. “You see, Taj Mohammad had to give his daughter. There was no other way,” he said. “And, it solved the problem.”

Some Afghan women’s advocates who heard about the little girl’s plight from news media reports were outraged and said they had asked the Interior Ministry to intervene, since child marriage is a violation of Afghan law and it is also unlawful to sell a woman. But nothing happened, said Wazhma Frogh, the executive director of the Research Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

“There has to be some sort of intervention,” Ms. Frogh said, “otherwise others will think this behavior is all right and it will increase.”

The Camps

The dark, cramped room where Mr. Mohammad lives with his wife and his eight children is typical of the shelters in the Charahi Qambar camp, which houses 900 refugee families from war-torn areas, mostly in southern Afghanistan.

The camp is the largest in the capital area, but just one of 52 such “informal settlements” in the province, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Abjectly poor, the people in the camps came with little more than a handful of household belongings. Seeking safety and aid, they instead found themselves unwelcome in a city already overcrowded with returning refugees from Pakistan and Iran.

For years Charahi Qambar did not even have wells for water because the government was reluctant to let aid groups dig them, said Mohammad Yousef, an engineer and the director of Aschiana, an Afghan aid group that works in nine camps around the country as well as with street children.

The refugees’ skills as farmers and small village workmen were of little use here since they had neither land nor houses. Penniless, they gravitated to others from the same area, and the camps grew up.

Mr. Mohammad, like most men in the camps, looks for work almost every morning as an unskilled laborer, which pays about $6 a day — not even enough to buy the staples that his family subsists on: green tea, bread and, when they can afford them, potatoes. Meat and sugar are the rarest of luxuries.

Many days, no one hires the camp men at all, put off by their tattered clothes, blanketlike wraps and full beards. “People know where we are from and think we are Taliban,” Mr. Mohammad said.

After four years in the camp, he is thinking now of going back to Helmand as a migrant laborer for the opium poppy harvest so that he can earn enough to feed his family and save a little for next winter’s firewood.

“It is too cold, and we wish we had more to eat,” said Rahmatullah, one of 18 deputy camp representatives and one of the few who spoke against the jirga’s decision to have Mr. Mohammad give his daughter to pay off the debt.

Rahmatullah, who uses just one name, did note a positive difference in camp life, however, adding, “We do have one thing here — we have education.”

Education was unheard-of for most camp residents at home in Helmand, and Rahmatullah, like many camp residents, said that at first he was suspicious of it. Shortly after arriving in the camp four years ago, he was shocked to see young girls walking on the street.

He was even more amazed when another camp resident explained that the girls were going to school.

“I did not know that girls could go to school, because in my village only a very few girls were taught anything and it was always at home,” he said. “I thought, ‘Maybe these are the daughters of a general,’ because where I come from women do not leave their homes, not even to bring water.”

“I talked to my wife, and we allowed our girls to go to the camp school, and now they are in the regular Kabul school,” he said.

His daughters were lucky. The schools in the camp were run by Aschiana, which gives a healthful lunch to every child enrolled — 800 in the Charahi Qambar camp alone. They try to bring the children up to a level where they can keep up in the regular Kabul schools.

However, that program has just ended because the European Union, amid financial woes, is not renewing its programs for social protection. Instead, it is focusing its aid spending on the Afghan government’s priorities, ratified at last year’s international aid meeting in Tokyo, which do not include child protection, Alfred Grannas, the European Union’s chargé d’affaires in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail.

The World of Women

Like most dwellings in the camp, Mr. Mohammad’s hut has a tarpaulin roof, lightly reinforced with wood, an unheated entry room, and an inner room with a stove. A small, grimy window lets in a faint patch of light, and piled around the room’s edges are the family’s few possessions: blankets, old clothes, a few battered pots and pans, and 10 bird cages for the quails he trains to sing in hopes of selling them for extra money.

For his wife, a beautiful young woman who sat huddled in the shadows, a black veil drawn across her face as her husband discussed their daughter’s fate, there is little to look forward to day to day. Back in their village in Helmand, even poor families have walled compounds and sometimes land where a woman can go outdoors.

In the camps, though, the huts are crammed together, with narrow mud pathways barely more than foot wide between them.

“There’s no privacy in the camps, and for women it is like they are in a prison,” said Mr. Yousef, the Aschiana director. “They are constantly under emotional stress.”

Like many Afghan women, Mr. Mohammad’s wife, Guldasta, let her husband speak for her — at first. He explained that she was too upset about what was happening to her daughter to talk about the situation.

But then in a quiet moment, she turned, lifting her veil to reveal part of her face and said clearly: “I am not happy with this decision; it was not what I wanted for her.”

“I would have been happy to let her grow up with us,” she said.

The family’s case is a kind of dark distortion of the Afghan tradition of the groom’s family paying a “bride price” to the family of the wife-to-be. The practice is common particularly in Pashtun areas, but it exists among other ethnic groups as well and can involve thousands of dollars. In this case, the boy who is receiving Naghma as a wife, instead of paying for her, will get her in exchange for the debt’s forgiveness.

Because Naghma, whose name means melody, was not chosen by the groom, she will most likely be treated more like a family servant than a spouse — and at worst as a captive slave. Her presence may help the groom attract a more desirable second wife because the family, although poor, will have someone working for it, insulating the chosen wife from some of the hardest tasks.

Anthropologists say this kind of use of women as property intensified after the fall of the Taliban, said Deniz Kandiyoti, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

The most recent anthropological studies of the phenomenon were of indebted drug traffickers who sold their daughters or sisters to settle debts, she said. These are essentially distress sales. And unlike the norm for marriage exchanges before the past three decades of war, the women in some cases have become salable property — stripped of the traditional forms of status and respect, she said.

Regrets

Almost from the moment he agreed to the deal, Mr. Mohammad began to regret it and think about all that could go wrong. “If, God forbid, they mistreat my daughter, then I would have to kill someone in their family,” he said as he stood at the edge of the camp in a muddy lot in the cold winter dusk.

“You know she is very little, we call her ‘Peshaka,’ ” he said, using the Pashto word for kitten. “She is a very lovely girl. Everybody in our family loves her, and even if she fights with her older brothers, we don’t say anything, we give her all possible happiness.”

He added: “I believe that when she goes to that house, she will die soon. She will not receive all the love she receives from us, and I am afraid she will lose her life. A 6-year-old girl doesn’t know about having a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, or having a husband or being a wife,” he said.

Adding to their fears, the mother of the boy that Naghma will marry came to Mr. Mohammad’s home to ask his wife to stop sending the girl to school, he said.

“You know, my daughter loves going to school, and she wants to study more and more. But the boy she is marrying, he sent his mother yesterday to tell my wife, ‘Look, this is dishonoring us to have my son’s future wife go to school,’ ” he said.

“I cannot tell them what to do,” he added, looking down at his boots. “This is their wife, their property.”


News Analysis: Tension over cross-border shelling between Islamabad and Kabul could derail peace process
By Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, April 1 (Xinhua) -- The tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan over alleged cross-border shelling could disrupt the Afghan peace process which relies on cooperation between the two neighbors to progress as the 2014 pullout of NATO forces from Afghanistan is drawing near.

Afghan officials claimed that Pakistani forces fired nearly 50 rockets into eastern Afghan province of Kunar on March 25 and 26.

In return, the Afghan Foreign Ministry cancelled a planned trip to Pakistan by Afghan army officers for joint exercises. Pakistan described the decision as 'overreaction' to a local issue.

Aimal Faizi, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, said that Pakistan is "harming efforts to end the Taliban's bloody 11- year insurgency."

Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Javed Ludin claimed that some Afghan Taliban leaders who signified their intention to join in the peace process were either killed or arrested in Pakistan.

Afghan officials, who had always sought Pakistan's role in reconciliation with Taliban, said however that they can now pursue the peace process without Islamabad's help.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry clarified that Pakistani troops merely returned small arms fire at the specific directions from where the militants fired at the Pakistani border posts.

Cross-border shelling and militant attacks have been the major source of tension between the two neighbors over the past few years.

Islamabad has insisted that Pakistani militants, who had fled military offensive in Swat valley in the northwestern tribal belt, have routinely launched attacks on Pakistani posts and villages from Afghan border areas.

The Pakistani military said that about 100 Pakistani security personnel and civilians have been killed in 20 militant attacks from Afghan side of the border in the past year.

Last month, Afghan forces arrested a senior Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Faqir Mohammad in eastern Nangarhar province.

Faqir, the former Taliban chief in Bajaur tribal region, was among the Pakistani Taliban leaders who have regrouped their fighters in Afghanistan's Kunar and Nooristan provinces, Pakistani officials said.

Pakistan's security agencies said in a report to the Supreme Court on March 26 that the Afghan government was colluding with the Pakistani Taliban and that the alleged collusion could lead to a surge in cross-border attacks.

It was the first time that Pakistani security forces openly blamed the Afghan government for colluding with the Pakistani Taliban.

Tensions are rising at a time when Afghanistan needs support in its frustrated efforts to hold peace talks with the Taliban.

Kabul's new approach to pursue the peace process without Pakistan is unlikely to succeed as the Taliban has ruled out any peace talks with Karzai government as long as foreign troops remain in the war-torn country.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid also ruled out any talks with Karzai during his visit to Qatar where the Taliban is in the process of opening a political office.

It was Pakistan which facilitated Taliban leaders in proceeding to Qatar. Islamabad still has dozens of Taliban prisoners including Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the former deputy to supreme Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Afghanistan's verbal attack on Pakistan can complicate the peace process which is urgently needed before NATO troops withdraw from the country in order to avoid another civil war.

Islamabad too will have to show how serious it is about the process as open hostilities will have negative effects on Pakistan. The country has already lost 49,000 people in the U.S.-led war on terror and the public is fed up with the massive bloodshed.


Afghan teenager fatally stabs US soldier
By KIM GAMEL | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan teenager killed an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan by stabbing him in the neck while he played with a group of local children, officials said Monday.

The killing comes as the monthly U.S. death toll rose sharply in March to 14 with the start of the spring fighting season when the Taliban and other insurgents take advantage of improved weather to step up attacks.

Sgt. Michael Cable, 26, was guarding Afghan and U.S. officials meeting in a province near the border with Pakistan when the stabbing occurred last Wednesday, two senior U.S. officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

The attack occurred after the soldiers had secured the area for the meeting, but one of the U.S. officials said the youth was not believed to have been a member of the Afghan security forces or in uniform so it was not being classified as an insider attack.

The official said the attacker was thought to be about 16 years old, but the age couldn't be verified.

The Afghan and American dignitaries were attending the swearing-in ceremony of Afghan Local Police in Shinwar district in Nangarhar province, senior district official Zalmai Khan said. Afghan Local Police, or ALP, recruits are drawn from villages and backed by the U.S. military.

The soldier was playing with a group of children outside when the attacker came from behind and stabbed him in the neck with a large knife, Khan said, adding the young man had escaped to nearby Pakistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the young man was acting independently when he killed the soldier but had joined the Islamic militant movement since fleeing the scene.

The Pentagon said in a statement last week that Cable, of Philpot, Ky., died from injuries sustained when his unit was attacked by enemy forces.

At least 14 U.S. soldiers died in March, compared with four in the previous two months, according to an Associated Press tally.

The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan has dropped sharply as international forces increasingly take a back seat while preparing to end their combat mission by the end of 2014. But they continue to face dangers ranging from roadside bombs to attacks by their Afghan counterparts or insurgents disguised as government forces.

___

Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Amir Shah contributed to this report.


Afghanistan joins the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU)
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 01 Apr 2013, 4:05 pm Khaama Press
Afghanistan obtained membership of the Third Standing Committee (Democracy and Human Rights) of the Inter –Parliamentary Union (IPU) on the Union’s 128th Assembly held in Ecuador.

The candidates for the membership to the Committee were Farkhunda Zahra Naderi from Afghanistan, a female Parliamentarian from Australia and a male Parliamentarian from Iran.

Receiving 28 votes from the 52 members of the Committee, Farkhunda Zahra Naderi won the seat on behalf of Afghanistan.

The Australian Parliamentarian and the Iranian Parliamentarian received 20 and 3 votes respectively.

“After this Afghanistan must be given a chance to take part in the international affairs and have a role in the global decision making process and providing solutions to international crisis,” said Ms. Naderi.

In an exclusive interview with Khaama Press, Ms. Naderi said regarded the membership a valuable achievement for Afghanistan.

“It was not easy for Afghanistan to succeed in winning the membership status of the Third Standing Committee (Democracy and Human Rights), as Australia and Iran had worked hard and had advance preparations to obtain membership in this committee. Afghanistan won the seat in a serious election, although the chances of winning for the Australian lady was very high, as she was a popular face and was one of the ex-members of the IPU. This is a great achievement for Afghanistan,” said Miss Naderi.

Afghanistan previously participated in the annual assemblies of the IPU and was not a member of any of the committees. This is the first time that Afghanistan has reserved a seat in one of the important committees of IPU.

Established in 1889, the IPU is the international organization of Parliaments.

The Union is the focal point for world-wide parliamentary dialogue and works for peace and co-operation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy.

IPU assembly is held each year in one of the member countries. The 2014 assembly will be in Azerbaijan.

On its 128th Assembly, the IPU focused on intensifying efforts to protect civilians in conflict.

Adopting resolutions on the Syrian refugee crisis and on the role of parliaments in safeguarding civilian lives, the IPU Assembly urged parliaments to ensure governments protected their people from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity through legislation, the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and by overseeing government action to combat terrorism.

The 128th IPU Assembly also adopted resolutions on the promotion of fair trade and innovative mechanisms for sustainable development and on the use of social media to enhance citizen engagement and democracy.


Make or break time for Afghan forces as Nato prepares to take step back
'We will not let them fail,' says British commander, before local troops take lead role in fighting Taliban insurgency
The Guardian By Nick Hopkins Sunday 31 March 2013
Lashkar Gah - British commanders have warned that the war against the Taliban is entering its most critical phase as Afghanistan's security forces prepare to fight the insurgency on their own for the first time without Nato troops alongside them on the frontline.

President Hamid Karzai is expected to announce that the Afghan army and police will shortly take the lead in combat operations across the whole of Afghanistan, and senior officers interviewed by the Guardian said the next six months – known as the "fighting season" – would show if the bold strategy had paid off.

In Helmand, where British forces have been based since 2006, commanders believe the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will be able to cope.

But they also insisted that UK combat troops would remain on standby until the end of 2014 to help "in extremis" – and that the ANSF had to try to reduce the number of casualties it has sustained.

Brigadier Bob Bruce, the commander of Task Force Helmand, denied the approach was a gamble, and said it was the right time for UK forces to step back to allow the Afghans to gain confidence before Nato combat troops withdraw next year.

"This is their problem. This is their insurgency. We know for a fact there is no military solution to the insurgency; there is no way the military is going to win a counter-insurgency [war] because it is essentially a political issue. It is a battle of offers: the offer the government makes to the people and the offer the insurgents make to the people."

Bruce admitted the campaign was "at a very challenging stage".

"It is a period of some uncertainties but we reduce the risk by retaining combat capability right to the end, to the end of 2014. We will have the capability to do so, at a reducing scale. We are here to support them if they really struggle."

"I am not interested in gambles. People's lives are at stake. This is a plan at the end of a long campaign. It is a plan that has some risk, but that has been carefully mitigated. I know they are good enough. They are genuinely very capable now."

Bruce said the ANSF was a new and developing force and it needed to be weaned off the support of Nato's International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf). In recent weeks, the Afghans had asked for help on low-level operations but the UK had refused.

"They are finding their feet and they are doing this in contact with a pretty ruthless and determined enemy. They have had a pretty hard fight, as have we. Confidence comes when you have overcome a challenge and this summer will be their biggest challenge yet."

He added: "We will not let them fail. When they really need us, we will intervene."

Lieutenant General Nick Carter, the most senior British officer in Afghanistan, and deputy commander of all Nato forces, said people should not be surprised if UK troops were called into action between now and the end of next year, when Nato formally ends 13 years of operations.

"We want the Afghans to manage this on their own but we do still need to be prepared to support them in the event of this fighting season becoming very intensive.

And that is why it is important that we still have combat power available.

"People should not be surprised if there is a setback that needs to be dealt with, because Afghanistan is still a very difficult place and there is a good deal more work to be done."

Carter admitted the ANSF were taking too many casualties – 1,100 deaths in six months last year, a rate he described as "unsustainable".

He said the high numbers were "indicative of the challenges" still facing the Afghans, and warned it would damage confidence unless it could be brought down.

"Most of their casualties are caused by IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. Their counter-IED capability is developing and they find more IEDs than we do, but they need greater capacity.

"The top of the Afghan army and Afghan MoD [defence ministry] need to recognise they have to drive a culture down through the army, to get leaders to acknowledge that the casualty rates are unsustainable And they have to do something about it," he said.

Carter also took issue with those who used a phrase coined by the Americans, "Afghan good enough", as the benchmark for success. It was first coined by the Americans and has been adopted by politicians and thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic.

"I have never liked that phrase because it is patronising," he said.

"My sense is that Afghanistan has reached a point of progression. Progress now needs to be maintained over the next 10–20 years and we need to help stimulate this mood and this momentum.

"As you travel in that direction you will obviously have speed bumps, and we are not going to solve many of the problems overnight but provided you get some development in civil society terms that becomes irreversible, and I think we are not far away from that point. You can park thoughts like being 'good enough', and you can see Afghanistan being pointed in a direction that is progressive and meets people's expectations."

Nic Hailey, acting UK ambassador in Kabul, said it was "inevitable" that parts of Afghanistan would not be under ANSF control by the end of 2014. He warned that the Taliban were divided internally about whether to enter the political process before next year's presidential elections.


Afghanistan to destroy 15,000 hectares of poppy
AFP 31 March 2013
Afghanistan plans to destroy 15,000 hectares (37,050 acres) of poppy fields this year in its latest efforts to control the heroin trade that fuels endemic violence and corruption, officials said Sunday.

Poppy crops will be ploughed up by tractor or flattened by teams of men wielding sticks as part of the programme starting in the southern and western provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Farah and Nimroz.

The target is 50 percent higher than 2012 but already 24 police officers and seven soldiers have died in this year’s eradication campaign, the ministry of counter-narcotics said in a press conference.

Many of those killed have been blown up by mines planted in fields or shot by insurgents keen to protect the lucrative crop, which is grown in some of Afghanistan’s most violent regions.

“Our goal is to destroy 15,000 hectares of poppy fields this year,” ministry spokesman Abdul Qayum Saamer told reporters as the annual poppy harvest begins. “Last year 10,000 hectares were destroyed successfully.”

Saamer said the overall area of poppy cultivation was up slightly on last year and only 10 percent of the total crop would be destroyed by the programme.

Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world’s opium and in 2012 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) warned that opium cultivation in the country had increased by 18 percent.

“Since the campaign started a month ago, around 3,400 hectares of poppy lands have been already destroyed,” said Hamayun Faizad, a provincial counter-narcotics official.

“So far this year 24 police, 7 army soldiers and 73 insurgents have been killed during the eradication. The enemy are using land mines and even snipers to target our personnel.”

Poppy farmers are taxed by Taliban militants who use the cash to help fund their insurgency against the government and NATO forces, according to the UNODC.

The poppies, which provide huge profits in one of the world’s poorest countries, also play a large part in the corruption that plagues Afghan life at every level from district to national government.


Afghan Officials Say Opium Cultivation Rising
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan April 01, 2013
KABUL -- Afghan officials say illegal opium cultivation in the country has increased this year despite efforts to target traffickers, and provide farmers with alternative livelihoods.

Qayum Samir, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counternarcotics told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan on April 1 that an estimated 157,000 hectares of land are being illegally used for opium cultivation this spring.

The ministry believes that is about 3,000 hectares more than at the same time last year.

Samir blamed a lack of security and widespread poverty for the rise in opium production.

The spokesman said the ministry has set up special taskforces to eradicate opium farms in four southern and southeastern provinces, including Kandahar, Helmand, Nimruz, and Farah, which are the highest-volume regions for opium production.

The ministry intends to expand the opium eradication to other areas.


Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) Officially Opens Doors Of Cutting-Edge Library And Research Center In Kabul
Singular Collection of Documents on Afghanistan's History and Culture Preserved by Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree
Books and Information-Sharing to Help Support Foundation for Development in Afghanistan
PR NewswirePress Release: Dupree Foundation
NEW YORK, April 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University (ACKU) officially opened the doors on the most advanced library and research center in Afghanistan, now at its permanent home on the campus of Kabul University.

ACKU is an active, working archive containing extensive material on Afghan history and society. Used by students, journalists and policy makers, ACKU facilitates research on institution building, program design and project implementation. ACKU has an important role in rebuilding the social, economic, political and cultural fabric of Afghanistan.

ACKU was established in 1989 by Nancy Hatch Dupree and her late husband Louis Dupree and has collected approximately 80,000 documents, 40 percent of which are in the local Afghan languages, Dari and Pashto. ACKU's comprehensive and singular collection encompasses documents from the time of the Soviet invasion, the rule of the mujahedeen, the Taliban era and the present day. The collection includes non-traditional monographs, serials, newspaper titles, and a large number of reference resources as well as historical books, magazines, and newspapers about the socio-political history of Central Asia and international relations between Afghanistan and its neighboring countries.

The new Centre was designed and overseen by an international team of architects including German-Canadian Sebastian May, Afghan Ajmal Maiwandi, Afghan-American Rafi Samizay, South African Jolyon Leslie, and Afghan Salim Rafik. The nearly 8,000 square foot facility is configured around a central courtyard, reflecting historic sensibilities of Afghan architecture. As much as possible, indigenous materials of Afghanistan were used in its construction, from its use of cedar wood from Kunar Province to its Maidan Shar stone strips on its interior walls and stone cladding on the exterior. All of the furniture pieces were designed and manufactured in Kabul, Afghanistan.

In addition to the central courtyard, the new ACKU library houses a reading room, lecture hall, gallery space, underground stacks, and a section to house ACKU's mobile outreach program, ABLE, which brings easy-to-read books in local languages to new readers throughout Afghanistan.

"By opening the doors of the Afghan Centre at Kabul University today, we are also helping to open new opportunities for the leaders of an Afghan society capable of contributing to the growth of their nation," said Mrs. Dupree. "ACKU is helping ensure that the people of Afghanistan once again have important resources about their history, culture, and development. We are proud of what we have accomplished to date, and look forward to accomplishing much more in the years and decades to come."

Mrs. Dupree is an internationally recognized expert on the history, art, and archaeology of Afghanistan. She has dedicated her life to documenting and preserving Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Mrs. Dupree arrived in Kabul in 1962 and, for the next 15 years, she and her late husband, Louis Dupree – a renowned archaeologist and scholar of Afghanistan's culture and history – traveled throughout Afghanistan conducting archaeological excavations. Mrs. Dupree is the author of five books, which are considered to be the foremost, authoritative guides to Afghanistan's major archaeological and historic sites (one of her books became the inspiration for Tony Kushner's play, Homebody/Kabul). Mrs. Dupree has been honored with an Award of Great Officer of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity by the Italian government in Kabul for her work over the years.

Mrs. Dupree and the late Professor Louis Dupree began collecting these documents in Pakistan for safekeeping in 1979 and, along with the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, continued amassing documents. In July 2006, Mrs. Dupree brought the collection to Afghanistan so that Afghan students, citizens and the expatriate community working to rebuild the country would have access to its holdings.

Mrs. Dupree is assisted in her work by Abdul Waheed Wafa, the Executive Director of ACKU. Mr. Wafa, a native of Afghanistan, has been the Executive Director of ACKU since 2011. From 2010-11, he was a Neiman Foundation Fellow at Harvard University where he studied leadership, democracy and communications. Prior to that, he was a Kabul-based reporter for The New York Times and helped run its bureau there. Mr. Wafa earned his LLB at Kabul University.

Mr. Wafa said, "There are tremendous gaps in knowledge and understanding in Afghanistan today. ACKU exists to fill this gap and to build and strengthen the capacity and culture of research. ACKU collects, stores, preserves, and shares information with a wide body of readers in both urban and rural settings so as to encourage the development of a qualitatively literate society capable of contributing to the growth of our nation."

Mrs. Dupree is also the Founder and Ex-Officio of the New York-based Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation. The Foundation supports ACKU and its activities by raising funds and broadening knowledge about the history and culture of the people of Afghanistan throughout the United States.

ACKU's new building was granted generous financial support by the Afghan Government, the United States Agency for International Development, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, The Asia Foundation, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, and the many individuals who provided gifts to ACKU through the Dupree Foundation. A significant portion of ACKU's collection has been digitized by ACKU and preserved by the University of Arizona through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Currently, there are about 400,000 pages available online through the University of Arizona libraries via ACKU's website.

About the Dupree Foundation: The Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation for the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University is a nonprofit organization that raises awareness and broadens knowledge throughout the United States about the history and culture of the people of Afghanistan. The Dupree Foundation supports the history and cultural heritage preservation, information-sharing objectives and research efforts of the Afghanistan Centre at Kabul University.


British troop cut in Afghanistan may be 'dangerous'
By Indo Asian News Service | IANS
London, April 1 (IANS) Cutting British forces in Afghanistan too quickly could "endanger" the progress in the war-torn country at a critical time, Britain's top commander there has said.

Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, deputy chief of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told The Independent daily that passing control of security to Afghan forces was going well.

But he warned any move to thin out British forces too soon would be unforgivable.

NATO combat operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan are scheduled to finish by the end of 2014.

And as part of a gradual withdrawal, the number of British troops in Afghanistan will be almost halved from 9,000 to 5,200 by the end of 2013.

Carter's warning came as forces for Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for support from ISAF during a battle against drug smugglers.

A major operation to airlift tonnes of British military equipment from Afghanistan, including helicopters and armoured vehicles, is already under way, BBC reported.

"It would be unforgivable if we allowed the gains of the last three years to be lost because we were not able to provide the Afghans with the support to take this through into 2014," Carter told the daily.

"Our judgement is we have to manage this in a way that retains confidence. Precipitating withdrawal that is not in line with the current plan will damage Afghan confidence."

He said the coming summer would be "a genuine test of the capability and confidence of the Afghan forces, a test of determination of the Afghan people to be with their government and a test of how much will remain in the insurgency".

At least 441 British personnel have died since operations began in Afghanistan in 2001.


Afghan MPs Seek to Abolish US-Backed Reform Commission
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Sadat Sunday, 31 March 2013
Some Afghan lawmakers have called for the US-funded Independent Administrative Reform and Civil Service Commission (IRACSC) to be abolished, claiming that it abets corruption and nepotism.

Established almost 10 years ago in partnership with US AID, the commission was intended to be as its name suggests: a reformer.

"The philosophy of the creation and existence of the IARCSC is to introduce changes in various dimensions including legal, cultural, management, structural, human, technical and capacity of Afghan civil service institutions towards standardization of these institutions and delivery of standard services," the US AID website says.

However, some parliamentarians on Saturday said that widespread corruption exists throughout the commission and that staff are regularly hired based on family connections.

"The commission should be abolished and its employees should be appointed to other government administrations," said MP Hafiz Masoor, who is part of the parliamentary commission on central investigation and law implementation.

"The Constitution gives this right to Parliament to cancel a commission which has been created by the president. The cancelation of this commission is our legal right," Wardak MP Ghulam Hussain Nasiri said in the parliamentary session.

Some lawmakers claimed that the commission was ineffective.

"The commissions' work is not giving results, so why do we need to continue this commission," MP Sayed Hussain Alimi Balkhi said.

MP Ramazan Bashardost said he opposed the commission from the start.

"From its beginning, I have said that this commission does not have any benefit," he said.

But a number of lawmakers opposed the move to abolish it saying it is not a suitable time to do so.

"The president created the commission and he will not accept your decision – it would be a hasty decision. This decision will make new problems between the parliament and government," Parwan MP Sediq Ahmad Osmani said.

An IARCSC representative did not deny the claims laid against the commission, saying there should an investigation into the matter.

Head of the IARCSC appeals board director Mohammad Nader Hotak noted that some lawmakers have tried to influence the independence of the commission.

"Every day a member of parliament comes here and demands we appoint some person but we excuse them because our work has special policies and systems," he told TOLOnews Saturday.


4 Ministers Face Parliament Confidence Vote Tomorrow
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi Sunday, 31 March 2013
Afghanistan's parliament on Monday will vote on whether four government ministers will keep their positions over their ministries failure to spend more than 50 percent of their designated "development" budgets in 2011.

The four ministers of economy, commerce and industry, information and culture, and mines have been summoned to appear before the lawmakers tomorrow to defend their ministries' budget spending from March 2011-March 2012 (Persian year 1390), parliamentary secretary Sayed Ikram told TOLOnews.

"Tomorrow the lawmakers will decide which of them will receive a vote of confidence," Ikram said.

"The summoning process will be carried out in accordance with the rules of the procedures of the house," he added.

Four more ministers will be summoned Wednesday and three more on Saturday, Ikram said, meaning the total 11 ministers whose ministries under-spent their development budgets in 1390 will be questioned, despite four of the 11 ministers only being appointed after 1390.

The debate among MPs over whether to dismiss all 11 ministers began in December but was never resolved.

The 11 ministers of interior, defence, economy, commerce, water and energy, education, urban development, mining, higher education, counter-narcotics, and information and culture were first summoned late last year to answer for their ministries budget management.


Economic Analysts, Govt Divided on Afghan Future
TOLOnews.com By Zabihullah Jhanmal Sunday, 31 March 2013
The government has no specific plan to tackle the challenges ahead of Afghanistan when international donor funding drops, putting the country at risk, an Afghan economic analyst said Sunday.

But the charge was dismissed by the Ministry of Economics which has argued that Afghanistan is more likely to witness economic progress than a slowdown.

Economic analyst Azarakhsh Hafezi told TOLOnews that the government is not paying sufficient attention to the improvement of the country's economy, and he fears that the private sector will particularly struggle.

"The manifestation of every country's economic growth are the gross domestic product, development of productions and exports, and sufficient amount of assistance to the private sector. None of these are provided in Afghanistan," he said.

A 96 percent deficit in the country's trade balance, rising unemployment, stagnation of industries, lack of economic infrastructure, trade and transit issues with neighbouring countries, corruption and bureaucracy, as well as being dependent on foreign aid are all concerns that analysts have said will impede sustainable economic after 2014.

However, the Minister of Economics Abdulhadi Arghandiwal argued that Afghanistan's economic growth may face only a very small slowdown after 2014 when the international forces withdraw and donor funding ceases.

Considering the long-term funding commitments of the international community and the potential of the country's mine resources, Afghanistan will witness economic progress, he told TOLOnews Sunday.

"We have worked towards a national economic strategy and, God-willing, it will soon be approved and implemented. Furthermore, the private sector also has had impressive progress which reassures us that we may have sustainable economic growth in the future," he said.

The Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) is also optimistic that there will be more progress in the future.

"We are hopeful that there will be more interest in investments in the future, especially in the sectors of agriculture and processing of domestic products," said Wafiullah Safi, head of AISA.

Yet despite the signs of economic growth, some analysts argue that this is an illusion buoyed by foreign aid, indirect incomes from the opium trade, and income from projects funded by the international community. Any decrease or discontinuation of these factors will affect growth.

"The government needs to address the current issues of the economic situation and make opportunities for employment and production. If these are not carried out, it is clear that there will be more problems ahead," said Mohammad Qurban Haqjoo, head of the Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Industries (ACCI).

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