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Civil war is the price Afghans will pay for the criminals the west installed
This week civil war was predicted, a result of giving so much power to warlords after the Taliban's overthrow
The Guardian By Lucy Morgan Edwards 12 April 2013
This week the defence select committee published a report which concluded that civil war in Afghanistan is likely when international forces leave next year. If the predictions of Securing the Future of Afghanistan are correct, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence share much of the blame.
When I returned to Kabul in January and asked an American journalist I'd known in 2001 his view of the situation, he said: "When you look at the facts on the ground, it is hard to believe that civil war is not inevitable."
The facts on the ground include the militias the west has set up in the countryside in a desperate attempt to shore up the barely legitimate Karzai regime. Sadly, these militias, plus the many Afghan private security companies, have contributed to a proliferation of armed groups that will be roaming the country after 2014. Ironically, in the MPs' report, the Foreign Office acknowledges the need to disarm the Taliban, yet omits to mention the problems of re-arming these groups, presumably because they are "the good guys".
What is so tragic is that back in 2001, the west did have the opportunity to assist Afghanistan on its path to peace. But myopia, jealousy and score-settling took precedence over dealing with the political problems that had led to the arrival of the Taliban. Using the maxim "My enemy's enemy is my friend", the US military took sides in a continuing civil war and co-opted the strongmen of the Northern Alliance. In theory, this was to reduce the need for American "boots on the ground".
These regional chiefs, or warlords, were mostly brought back from exile. They were unpopular, having committed war crimes during the civil war. But instead of sidelining them, the US and UK re-empowered them with cash and weapons and made them the allies' sole reference points. They still are, to the bemusement of ordinary Afghans, many of whom, particularly in rural areas, would have preferred a more genuine engagement with the more legitimate local leadership. Unfortunately, the use of strongmen to fight al-Qaida and Taliban has led to chaos in rural areas and a further fragmentation of the tribal system that we should have worked with instead.
As an election monitor in 2002 when a transitional administration was convened to start the state-building process, I witnessed how the warlords were given political legitimacy. The US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, sidelined the popular former king and made a Faustian bargain with the warlords to allow them into the meeting. This paved the way for them to hijack the state-building process.
The democratically elected Afghans were ignored. The press did not report this, perhaps because it did not fit the narrative of democracy and images of Afghan women putting ballots into boxes. But it marked the end of any pretence that the international community had come here to deliver a "liberal peace" (encompassing democracy and human rights). So the strongmen returned to their fiefdoms empowered, while ordinary Afghans were cowed.
The result – extreme corruption, insecurity, inequality, poverty and violence – is what you see today: a crisis of impunity in Afghanistan. Sadly, our complicity in this is all too often ignored and, instead, analysis centres around historical prejudices: "These Afghans have always fought one another."
Increasingly, these criminal elements – often integrated into international organised networks – took ministerial or local government positions. They became the state. Which is why so much money has been poured in but has been lost to corruption. It is why, however many courthouses the British build, or training we give the Afghan judiciary, there cannot be a properly functioning justice system because there is no impartiality. Because the powerbrokers, having evaded the law themselves, have no interest in strong institutions and a decent justice system.
There can never be true reconciliation in Afghan society until the past is dealt with and those who have committed crimes are made accountable.
By the start of 2001, a famous commander of the 1980s anti-Soviet war, the Pashtun Abdul Haq, had spent two years devising a peace plan aimed at toppling the Taliban. The former king was to be the glue to unify different groups, and Haq engaged Ahmed Shah Massoud – the Northern Alliance leader assassinated in 2001 – tribal leaders and Taliban within the regime's military who were willing to defect. They had held meetings in Bonn and Istanbul. People were willing to work with him because of his history as a guerrilla leader and his record of bridging the ethnic divide. However, in Whitehall and Washington DC, his plan was dismissed.
Today the politicians are hoping that the "bad guy" Taliban will somehow reconcile with the western-backed regime of Hamid Karzai. But the reality is that the Taliban hardliners are controlled by Pakistan, while in Afghanistan many people continue supporting the Taliban because they know they will soon be back. They have already filled a vacuum in providing justice and security in rural Afghanistan, where the government has been corrupt, incompetent or hampered by the US military strategy, which has bred insecurity and chaos.
In reality, the west is using the talks to give itself a chance both to get out of Afghanistan and to claim that the state is stable. For both reasons, Pakistan's co-operation is needed, and Islamabad is driving a hard bargain with the US, even suggesting that Afghan military officers must be trained in Islamabad. In Kabul this year, several Afghans asked me: "Why is the UK appeasing Pakistan?"
Unfortunately, it looks like the need for a quick exit will mean the west caves in to Pakistan's demands. At that stage, we will have gone full circle in Afghanistan since 2001, with Pakistan once again back in the driving seat and civil war the only realistic outlook.
Pakistan launches aerial assault to drive Taliban out from Tirah Valley
By Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani security forces are using fighter jets and gunship helicopters to flush out the Taliban fighters and other armed insurgents from a strategically located valley in the Khyber tribal region.
The aerial assault on Tirah Valley was launched last month after the Taliban took control of the area and expelled members of a pro-government armed group.
Fighters of another group, "Lashkar-e-Islam" or the Army of Islam,have been helping the Taliban in fighting the Pakistani forces.
The military said that at least 15 militants were killed in the assault on Tirah Valley Thursday morning. One soldier was killed on the Pakistani side, an Army statement said.
On Tuesday, the military said that several days of intense clashes left 23 Pakistani soldiers and more than 110 militants dead.
Tirah Valley, which is bordering Afghanistan, is very important for the Taliban because of its strategic location, having three entry points,one to the nearby Orakzai tribal region, the second to the northwestern Peshawar city, and third to the famous town Landi Kotal, which lies on the Khyber Pass, the main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Although the Pakistan Army has no ground forces in Tirah Valley, their forces control the hilltops overlooking the rugged mountainous region from where they can monitor any movement of the Taliban militants and fighters of Lashkar-e-Islam.
Both groups routinely fire rockets into Hayat Abad, a posh area in the outskirts of Peshawar, located at the edge of the Khyber Pass.Twelve people were injured when the militants fired rockets into Hayat Abad on Tuesday evening.
Since there are no roads leading to the Tirah Valley, the Pakistani forces are now depending mainly on airpower to bomb the Taliban in efforts to clear the way for ground forces to advance into the region and eliminate the Taliban once and for all.
The military said that it will be using special commando units in driving the Taliban from the valley.
But the Taliban and armed militant groups are showing stiff resistance since they do not want to lose control of such a strategic position, the valley being its major hideout for their fighters who have fled from some areas after they were attacked by the Pakistani military.
Earlier, the Taliban expelled the fighters of the pro- government group "Ansar-ul-Islam," from the valley. The pro- government guerrillas retreated after suffering heavy casualties from the Taliban offensive.
The Pakistani military believes that total control of the Tirah Valley by the Taliban would destabilize the situation in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Taliban presence in Tirah could also make the NATO supply route vulnerable at a time when the foreign forces in Afghanistan are packing up and the United States has already started withdrawing heavy equipment through Khyber's key route.
The Americans wanted Pakistani forces to take full control of the area to ensure the safety of the NATO trucks. The United States has in the past carried out drone strikes in Tirah Valley and killed important Taliban commanders and fighters.
Musharraf admits secret Pak-US deal on drone attacks
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 12 Apr 2013, 10:20 am Khaama Press
The former president of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf admitted his government secretly signed off on U.S. drone strikes.
This is the first time a former senior Pakistani official has publicly acknowledged to such a deal with CIA, amid open challenges by Pakistani leaders for having no part in drone deal with the United States.
Despite Pakistan had no role to oversee the program or approve every attack however Musharraf’s admission suggests that himself and others did play some role in drone strikes.
While speaking during an interview with the CNN, Musharraf insisted Pakistan’s government signed off on strikes “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage.”
According to a nonpartisan public policy group New American Foundation, at least 1,990 people including civilians have been killed during the drone strikes in Pakistan.
Drone strikes for the first time were launched in 2004 during the leadership of Pervez Musharraf while he was serving as Pakistan president for five years term.
He said that Pakistani leaders would OK U.S. drone strikes after discussions involving military and intelligence units and only if “there was no time for our own … military to act.”
Musharraf also confirmed that Nek Mohammad, a tribal leader accused of harboring al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s western border region was killed in US drone attack.
Report: Afghan militants could get contract funds
Associated Press By Stephen Braun April 11, 2013
WASHINGTON - Militant groups in Afghanistan could still obtain U.S. government contracts and siphon off American taxpayer dollars because administrative flaws and misunderstandings are hampering a law aimed at weeding out corruption, a top auditor warned Thursday.
The special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, John F. Sopko, said weaknesses mar procedures that the Defense Department tightened in 2012 to comply with a new federal law aimed at preventing militants from obtaining U.S. contract payments. Sopko said nearly $2 billion in government contracts was awarded in 2012, but he did not identify how much money was in jeopardy.
The U.S. military has estimated that up to $360 million ended up in the hands of Taliban and criminal elements in Afghanistan over the past decade, according to a 2012 Associated Press report.
Sopko said his new audit detected flaws in a provision that Congress added last year to a defense authorization bill. The provision gave the Defense Department the authority to "restrict, terminate or void" any contracts with individuals or organizations opposing U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Sopko said his audit found that language in some contracts did not contain the new provision, which is legally necessary to sever any contracts unwittingly given to militants. Sopko said that in some cases, military contracting authorities were not given up-to-date lists of militants and their supporters, preventing them from voiding ineligible contracts.
In testimony Wednesday before a House committee, Sopko also said that in one instance, Army officials ignored classified information that would have enabled them to void contracts obtained by Afghan militants and sympathizers. During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Sopko said Army officials failed to debar contractors "affiliated with the Haqqani network, the Taliban and/or al-Qaida" because they ignored documents that had been made available to them in a room designated for classified material.
"They apparently did not read - did not take the time to walk 150 feet to a classified skiff to read the classified appendices," Sopko said. "I took the time. I went to the skiff. I read them."
Sopko said that when he urged Army officials to void deals with those Afghan contractors, the officials refused. "So it's probably easier to use a drone strike than it is to stop somebody from contracting with the U.S. government," he said. Sopko said he has since provided the committee with the list of the suspect contractors.
In the audit, Sopko urged Congress to tighten the law further. One change he suggested was to eliminate a $100,000 threshold that prevents lesser contracts from being covered by the anti-militant provisions. Sopko also said the provision only affects Defense Department contracts but should be expanded to contracts overseen by the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other government departments working in Afghanistan.
Sopko also warned the Pentagon that it needed to develop a standard process for tracking suspect contractors and notifying contracting officials and contractors about suspect contractors and their obligations under the law.
State Department denies cover-up over diplomat killed in Afghanistan
Anne Smedinghoff was killed walking to a media event, not in an armoured vehicle, but US denies misleading reporters
The Guardian By Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul 11 April 2013
A US diplomat killed by a suicide bomber in southern Afghanistan was walking to a media event at a nearby high school when the attacker struck, and not travelling in a vehicle convoy as the State Department originally said.
Anne Smedinghoff died on Saturday, along with three soldiers and one other US civilian in Qalat, the small capital of Zabul province. It was the first time a State Department diplomat has been killed in Afghanistan since the 1970s.
At the time of the attack, Smedinghoff was returning from an abortive effort to escort Afghan journalists to a high school barely 50 metres from the gate of the US base in town, a survivor said. The provincial governor was attending a book handover at the school, and the group were planning to report on the ceremony.
The governor's convoy of armoured SUVs passed by as the journalists, soldiers and diplomats were nearly back inside the base and it was then that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, Afghan journalist Ahmed Zia Abed told McClatchy newspapers.
The Taliban, who claimed the attack, said the bomber had been waiting for either the governor's vehicles or a US military convoy to pass by.
Abed, who was wounded by the blast, told the paper that the diplomats and journalists had got lost. However, the extremely close proximity of the school to the military base makes that seem unlikely, particularly as the group were escorted by US soldiers stationed in Zabul, who would have known the area and mapped out even the shortest movement in advance.
The US embassy in Kabul referred all questions about the attack to the State Department in Washington DC, which confirmed that the group were travelling on foot.
Statements made immediately after the bombing suggested that a car full of explosives had rammed into some kind of armoured vehicle carrying Smedinghoff, pictured, and others. Secretary of state John Kerry, who paid moving and personal tribute to the young diplomat, described the attacker as someone who "drives into their [the diplomats'] vehicle".
The State Department, still smarting from accusations that it had tried to distort information about an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012, denied that it had intentionally misled reporters about what happened in Qalat.
The US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans died in the Benghazi violence. For months after there was a heavy stream of mostly partisan attacks against the White House and the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who were accused of attempting to cover up al-Qaida involvement in what was described as a terrorist attack.
Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy press spokesman, said that early reports on Afghan TV and websites about the Zabul attack may have misled diplomats in other Afghan cities who were trying to pin down details of what happened form a distance.
"I think part of the initial confusion came about because there were reports in the media about the local governor and his convoy," he said. "Some of our initial reporting also indicated that, and that's why we weren't able to clarify right away. So our initial read on it was different, and we're now able to say that it was a convoy and they were walking."
The group were all "wearing personal protection gear and under escort of US soldiers", he added. Three of those soldiers died in the attack, along with a US Department of Defense civilian employee who has not been named, and an Afghan nurse who was also in the area.
Four other State Department employees were wounded, including another media official Kelly Hunt, who was seriously injured and has been evacuated to Germany where she is in a medically-induced coma, according to a news website from her home state.
The State Department is reviewing security procedures, Ventrell said. Most diplomats and soldiers use armoured SUVs or even more heavily protected military MRAPs – mine resistant ambush protected vehicles – for most journeys around Afghanistan.
But it is not uncommon for groups of Nato soldiers and civilians to walk short distances near bases where security is considered relatively good, particularly when there are checkpoints on access roads and US spy blimps that can survey the area around the clock.
Zabul province neighbours Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace. Sparsely populated, it has seen regular insurgent attacks but is usually considered less dangerous than other southern provinces.
Afghan Guys And Gals Meet Facebook To Facebook
April 11, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Farangis Najibullah
High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he's got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.
With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook's popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.
Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul's Shah Shahid area to chat with his female "friends." To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.
"In Afghanistan, we don't have disco clubs to meet with girls. It's not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face," Akbar says. "Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can't easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many."
Bright Spot
Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country "a lot less frustrating."
While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl's reputation, "with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend's relatives," he reasons.
Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.
According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.
Some 2 million of Afghanistan's 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.
About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.
"I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook," Sipehr says. "Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business."
The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.
Double Standard?
An informal survey of profiles suggests that many Afghan Facebook users are urbanites in their late teens and 20s. Interests include Bollywood movies, Afghan music, and sport -- mostly soccer and cricket -- among other things.
Such browsing also reveals that male Afghan Facebook users appear to have little concern about online security -- their photos, status updates, and posts are often open to the public.
But girls must take certain precautions. In accordance with social norms that discourage the idea of women putting themselves on display, female Facebook users in Afghanistan rarely post their photos online, at least publicly.
They also tend to post photos of celebrities -- Indian actresses are a favorite -- as their profile pictures.
That doesn't prevent them from attracting many suitors, however.
RFE/RL set up an account as a 22-year-old female medical student living in Kabul to get an idea of what kinds of "friends" she would attract, and received more than 900 friend requests within a month.
Most were young men interested in chatting and sharing photos, while others appeared interested in a real-life relationship.
'A Better Life'
Mock female accounts can be the cause of real heartbreaks in Afghanistan, says Rafiullah Baher, a 22-year-old Kabul student.
"A friend of mine believed he was deep in a relationship with a girl on Facebook and that it was getting serious. But the girl turned out to be a bogus profile made by our local butcher's son," says Baher. "It took my friend a while to get over his heartbreak."
“Now I try to add only those who I know," Baher says. "And I hesitate to chat with girls on Facebook because it seems 50 percent of Afghan female Facebook accounts are fake profiles made by boys."
Instead Baher uses Facebook to post his favorite poetry and updates on the Afghan national cricket team's matches abroad.
In Shah Shahid neighborhood, Akbar is still looking for love on Facebook.
"Recently, my best friend met an American woman on Facebook. They got married and now he lives in Chicago," Akbar says. "He was determined to use Facebook to find a wife and he made it. And why not? Everyone has the right to find ways to a better life."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah, with contributions by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai from Kabul
Defence Ministry to Retire Older Officers
TOLOnews By Abdul Wali Arian 11 April 2013
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) plans to retire a number of high-ranking military officers in the next month as a way of improving army morale, it said Thursday.
The plan has been panned by critics who argue that it is unnecessary and likely to be carried out unfairly, keeping those with more political influence in their positions while removing others.
However, the MOD defended the move as a way of giving younger officers an incentive to advance up the ranks.
"Retiring these offices will offer more opportunities for young officers to improve. This act will raise the morale of the army," MOD spokesperson Gen Zahir Azimi said.
The ministry said that the officers it plans to retire – which includes 3-star generals – have already gone beyond their official contract terms of working for the government.
The exact number the MOD is aiming to retire was not clear.
Some fear that now is not the time to remove the experienced personnel from leading positions given the security situation in Afghanistan.
"This is distressing. Retiring experienced and skilled officers – for whatever reason – will only bring unpleasant outcomes," veteran Gen NoorulHaq Oloomi told TOLOnews.
However, the plan also has its supporters.
"It could be very effectual if done based on laws, because it will be the youth leading the wars," said veteran General Atiqullah Amerkhel.
There are concerns that those army staff that have more influence within the government will remain in their posts, others will be retired, that which Afghanistan has experienced in the past.
Afghanistan goes backwards while Taliban chiefs live it up in Qatar
Taliban leaders came to Doha as a neutral base from which to negotiate with America - two years on they're driving fast cars and "making babies" with negotiations no closer
The Independent By Peter Popham 11 April 2013
Afghanistan is not the only place on the planet which makes a speciality of going backwards rather than forwards, but it is the most spectacular example.
As The New York Times reported this week, a group of high-ranking Taliban have been hanging about in Doha, Qatar, for more than two years, waiting for the Obama administration to make good on its offer of negotiations. These are not negligible people: the most senior is Tayeb Agha, chief of staff to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder, the one-eyed “Amir ul-Mu’minim” or “Commander of the Faithful”, the militia’s unchallenged leader. But back home in Afghanistan, the Taliban show little interest in pursuing the path of peace, the most vivid demonstration of that being the attack on a courthouse near the Iranian border the other day in which 46 people were killed, including judges, lawyers and all the assailants, during the course of an eight-hour blitz that left the complex in ruins.
How can anyone dream of negotiating with people whose comrades take such action against the West’s efforts to furnish Afghanistan with the rudimentary infrastructure of a state? Various Taliban have offered themselves as possible interlocutors, but “the Doha track” was said by an American diplomat to be “the most promising” of them. But for now that track’s going nowhere. “[The Taliban] are just living here, enjoying the air conditioning, driving luxury cars, eating and making babies,” according to an Afghan diplomat in the same city.
There is no talking to these people, not only because their brothers are committing mass murder a few hundred miles away, but because there is not, and never has been, anything to talk to them about. We continue to go through the motions of state building, propping up Karzai’s deeply corrupt regime, pouring money and training into the Afghan National Security Forces (whose uniforms the Taliban who destroyed the courthouse were wearing), making good on our promises to the country. But as the endgame draws closer, the fragility of what we have made is painful to behold.
The Taliban gained the respect, however grudging, of millions of Afghans precisely because they had not done dirty deals with the West; they were not venal, they were the devout, pure, simple products of madrassas. Often it was true. They had memorised the Koran, but otherwise their education was often pitiful: I remember waiting for an exit visa in the office of the Taliban minister responsible, the last time they ran the place. It took so long, I was whisperingly informed by an aide, because he was illiterate.
The Taliban years are remembered for the brutality against women, the banning of all forms of entertainment and diversion, the public executions of blasphemers. All true. But equally true was the absence of any urge towards the creation of a modern country. These tribesmen squatted the British and Soviet ruins of Kabul much as our remote ancestors must have camped amid the crumbling villas left behind by the Romans. The key to their failure to evolve lies in the figure of Mullah Omar himself. Ever since, in 1996, when he donned a cloak supposedly once worn by the Prophet, fulfilling the legend that he would become the Leader of the Faithful, the Taliban have been stuck in their fanatical groove.
Wherever Islam rose to great power in the faith’s early days, whether in Arabia or what is now Turkey, it was because the leader succeeded in subsuming both piety and tribalism to the requirements of building a functioning state. The Ottomans did it through the Janissaries: kidnapped Christian children from the Balkans raised to be slave-administrators, free from all tribal ties. Often they rose to high rank, but could be sacked or executed on the whim of the Sultan.
Since 2002, NATO forces and the flood of experts and NGOs working under their protection have played the part of the Janissaries, a modern equivalent of those military and bureaucratic slaves who had no ties of kinship to the countryside, and who could therefore be depended upon to build courthouses, schools, hospitals and all the rest. But soon they will be gone. And the Taliban couldn’t care less.
Tajik president fears instability after NATO Afghan pullout
Reuters By Barbara Lewis and Adrian Croft April 11, 2013
Tajikistan is deeply concerned about instability after foreign troops withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan, Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon said on Thursday.
Afghanistan is to hold presidential elections in April 2014 as most foreign combat troops will be preparing to withdraw from the country by the end of that year, leaving Afghan security forces in charge.
"It is a matter of deepest concern that the coincidence of the two major events ... might make the situation difficult," Rakhmon told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment conference in Brussels, referring to the election and troop pullout.
Rakhmon, who held talks with European Union and NATO officials in Brussels this week, urged Europe and the rest of the world to "take seriously" the situation after 2014 and to help Afghanistan build up its army and police.
The Afghan government and NATO have been at pains to counter fears that Afghanistan could slide into chaos or that there could be a Taliban resurgence once tens of thousands of foreign troops leave.
Tajikistan has a 1,200-km (750-mile) border with Afghanistan and faces a problem with opium-trafficking from its neighbor.
Tajikistan has signed a transit agreement with NATO, allowing the Western alliance to use its airport to transport equipment to and from Afghanistan.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy reassured Rakhmon in talks on Wednesday that the European Union was engaged in central Asia and Afghanistan "for the long haul" and that it would continue to help in the fight against drug-trafficking.
Provided instability is contained, Rakhmon said there was no reason why the Tajik economy should not continue growing at an annual 7 percent pace, even though the International Monetary Fund has said economic slowdown in dominant regional power Russia could have a knock-on effect.
"Absolutely we can. Just for the (first) three months of 2013 the indicator of economic growth is 7.3 percent," he said, speaking through an interpreter.
HUGE POTENTIAL
Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional amendments that allow him to seek a new seven-year term in November 2013.
Land-locked Tajikistan is the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics but is believed to have huge energy potential.
"Prospective resources of oil and gas are estimated to be one billion and 33 million tonnes of oil equivalent," Sherali Gul, Tajikistan's energy minister, told the investors' meeting.
Tethys Petroleum is the only independent oil and gas explorer operating in three central Asian republics and says Tajikistan is "the jewel in Tethys' crown".
In December, it signed a deal with Total and China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation (CNODC), a unit of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's top oil and gas producer, to jointly explore in Tajikistan.
"We expect to close the deal very soon," David Robson, Tethys' executive chairman and president, told the conference.
Tajikistan hopes to achieve energy independence and to become an energy exporter. Despite its huge potential, for now Tajikistan does not produce enough energy to cover its needs. During the long winter, electricity and gas supplies are limited to six-to-seven hours a day, Rakhmon said.
As well as developing its oil and gas reserves, it is investing in hydro power.
Its flagship project is the Rogun dam, but completion has been frozen pending a World Bank assessment of its impact.
Uzbekistan, which depends on rivers that rise in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to irrigate its farmland, has said the dam has the potential to provoke military conflict.
Hezb-e-Islami Meets in Kabul to Discuss Presidential Candidate
TOLOnews By Karim Amini 11/04/2013
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Islamist political party Hezb-e-Islami will nominate a candidate in the upcoming Afghan presidential election, either from its own ranks or it will support an outsider, it told TOLOnews Thursday.
The party's deputy chief Ghairat Bahir said that a delegation of four senior party figures are in Kabul meeting local members to discuss the election and possible presidential candidates.
"We have sent a delegation to Kabul. The delegation is led by Mohammad Rassoul. Its purpose is to visit and discuses with Hezb-e-Islami members in Kabul, not to talk with [Afghan] government officials," he told TOLOnews via telephone from Pakistan.
"The delegation has talked with the party members about the election and the party decided to introduce a candidate or support a competent candidate. We will soon make a final decision on this. I cannot name the candidate but our party's nomination will be a prominent person in the country," Bahir said.
Hezb-e-Islami is calling for the foreign forces to leave Afghanistan, saying that a proper election is not possible with them in the country.
"We hope the foreigners leave Afghanistan. We stress as our first position: it will be impossible to hold a fair, transparent and free election in the presence of the foreign forces," he said.
According to reports, the party has suspended negotiations with the Afghan government in protest over the Karzai regime's plan to sign a long-term security agreement with the US.
The comments signal a shift in Hezb-e-Islami's demands. It had previously said it would not participate in the election if foreign forces did not withdraw from Afghanistan beforehand.
Afghan political analyst Ahmad Saeedi welcomed the news that the group is planning to take an active part in the election, but stressed that Taliban participation is more important.
"The main problem in Afghanistan is Taliban. Hezb-e-Islami's war is not so important in Afghanistan. If they can come together as a party and participate in the election it will be effective to some extent, but it cannot bring Afghanistan peace and stability," Saeedi told TOLOnews.
Afghanistan's presidential and provincial elections will be held on April 5, 2014.
Opening of Taliban Office Still Unclear: Faizi
TOLOnews By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil 11 April 2013
The Afghan government remains unclear on when the Taliban political office in Qatar will open, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman told TOLOnews.
Aimal Faizi said in an interview Wednesday that there is no clarity on the opening date partly because the decision involves multiple players.
"It is hard to specify a date for the inauguration of the office because it depends on the countries involved in Afghanistan's peace process. In this peace process we are not faced with a person and the Taliban. We are faced with countries - countries that misuse the peace process, that misuse the Taliban and their name," Faizi told TOLOnews Wednesday.
He said the Taliban leaders are in Pakistan because that is where they receive funding. Therefore Pakistan's role is important in the peace process.
"The reason we always say that Pakistan's role is significant in the peace process is because Afghanistan's government opposition groups and their leaders are in Pakistan and Pakistan itself knows where the Taliban leaders are.
"The country could take the necessary measures the in Afghan peace process until were achieved something in the process, but Pakistan never honestly cooperates with the peace process," Faizi said.
Karzai has visited Pakistan 19 times in the past decade, usually with an aim of strengthening cooperation on the peace process, but the president's doubts over Pakistan's intentions remain.
Dempsey Backs Keeping 8,000-12,000 NATO Troops in Afghanistan
Bloomberg By David Lerman April 11, 2013
The top U.S. military officer said he supports keeping 8,000 to 12,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan after most allied forces leave the country at the end of 2014.
“I find that to be a reasonable target,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. The Obama administration hasn’t yet specified how many U.S. troops it wants to keep in Afghanistan after most of them depart.
In February, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discussed with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Brussels the possibility of maintaining a combined allied presence of 8,000 to 12,000 troops.
Today, Dempsey called that “a reasonable target” when asked whether it’s important for the administration to announce planned U.S. troop levels as it seeks to negotiate an agreement with the Afghan government for a continuing American presence to provide training and conduct counterterror operations.
Some U.S. military officials and members of Congress have publicly said that 13,600 American troops and 7,000 from other countries will be necessary.
Among those who have been pressing for that big a force are Marine General James Mattis, who retired last month as head of the U.S. Central Command, and Marine General Joseph Dunford, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Lerman in Washington atdlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
Afghan Guys And Gals Meet Facebook To Facebook
RFE/RL By Farangis Najibullah April 11, 2013
High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he's got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.
With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook's popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.
Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul's Shah Shahid area to chat with his female "friends." To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.
"In Afghanistan, we don't have disco clubs to meet with girls. It's not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face," Akbar says. "Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can't easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many."
Bright Spot
Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country "a lot less frustrating."
While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl's reputation, "with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend's relatives," he reasons.
Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.
According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.
Some 2 million of Afghanistan's 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.
About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.
"I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook," Sipehr says. "Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business."
The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.
Double Standard?
An informal survey of profiles suggests that many Afghan Facebook users are urbanites in their late teens and 20s. Interests include Bollywood movies, Afghan music, and sport -- mostly soccer and cricket -- among other things.
Such browsing also reveals that male Afghan Facebook users appear to have little concern about online security -- their photos, status updates, and posts are often open to the public.
But girls must take certain precautions. In accordance with social norms that discourage the idea of women putting themselves on display, female Facebook users in Afghanistan rarely post their photos online, at least publicly.
They also tend to post photos of celebrities -- Indian actresses are a favorite -- as their profile pictures.
That doesn't prevent them from attracting many suitors, however.
RFE/RL set up an account as a 22-year-old female medical student living in Kabul to get an idea of what kinds of "friends" she would attract, and received more than 900 friend requests within a month.
Most were young men interested in chatting and sharing photos, while others appeared interested in a real-life relationship.
'A Better Life'
Mock female accounts can be the cause of real heartbreaks in Afghanistan, says Rafiullah Baher, a 22-year-old Kabul student.
"A friend of mine believed he was deep in a relationship with a girl on Facebook and that it was getting serious. But the girl turned out to be a bogus profile made by our local butcher's son," says Baher. "It took my friend a while to get over his heartbreak."
“Now I try to add only those who I know," Baher says. "And I hesitate to chat with girls on Facebook because it seems 50 percent of Afghan female Facebook accounts are fake profiles made by boys."
Instead Baher uses Facebook to post his favorite poetry and updates on the Afghan national cricket team's matches abroad.
In Shah Shahid neighborhood, Akbar is still looking for love on Facebook.
"Recently, my best friend met an American woman on Facebook. They got married and now he lives in Chicago," Akbar says. "He was determined to use Facebook to find a wife and he made it. And why not? Everyone has the right to find ways to a better life."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah, with contributions by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai from Kabul
Medieval Afghan Fort Under Threat
Locals say important cultural site neglected after years of battle damage, and endangered by continuing army presence.
IWPR By Sahil Mangal 11 Apr 13
Hundreds of Afghans gathered at the Bala Hissar fortress near the southern town of Gardez last month to mark Nowruz, the start of the traditional new year.
Families celebrated as young men performed the traditional “attan” dance to the sound of drums. But as in previous years, they were annoyed to find that they were prevented from entering the castle.
Nine hundred years after it was built, the ancient fort, whose name means “high castle”, is still used as a military vantage-point, which makes it an off-limits facility controlled by Afghanistan’s defence ministry.
Local residents and officials in Paktia province agree that the fortress should be in the hands of civilian authorities who could preserve it from further disintegration, with a view to turning it into a tourist attraction in more stable times.
Gardez resident Hejratullah said military use of Bala Hissar was a continuing threat to the fort, which ought to be handed over to Paktia’s cultural affairs department.
“Historical sites like this should be restored and preserved as a reflection of our history,“ he said. “But unfortunately, they are being lost instead.”
Although the high walls appear sound from the outside, about a third of the structures inside the castle have been damaged both by earthquakes and by three decades of war in Afghanistan.
“Most of the damage has been caused by the presence of army forces in Bala Hissar, such as during the [1980s] Russian occupation, when the mujahedin fired rockets at the fort,” local resident Usman said. “Then, when the mujahedin took over [in 1992], they used the site to blow up tanks so as to sell off the scrap in Pakistan. The explosions caused a lot of cracks in Bala Hissar.”
About a year after the United States-led invasion in 2001, the fort was the scene of a major battle between the forces of Paktia governor Pacha Khan Zadran and a rival commander.
Historical strongpoints across Afghanistan have suffered serious damage from modern weaponry in recent conflict. The Qala-ye Jangi fort in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif was badly blasted when troops put down a 2001 uprising by Taleban prisoners held there. That site, too, is still used by the Afghan army.
Noting the destruction done to Qala-ye Jangi and other sites like Kabul’s wrecked Darulaman Palace, writer and journalist Arefullah Haq-Parast said a change of policy was essential if they were to be saved.
“It makes no sense to station forces in historical sites, as many such places across the country have been destroyed because of the presence of the military,” he said. “After it is restored, Bala Hissar should be used as Paktia’s museum for historical artefacts, so that it is not only preserved but serves as an attraction for tourists.”
The director of Paktia province’s culture and information department, Mohammad Shefa Moshfeq, agreed that conservation was impossible at the moment.
“We are concerned about the current state of this historic site,” he said, adding that his department had formally asked its parent ministry in Kabul as well as the local army corps to facilitate a handover.
A spokesman for the 203rd Corps which garrisons the fortress, Colonel Ahmad Jan Mokhles, said the request had been forwarded to the defence ministry.
“We’ll follow whatever instructions the ministry of defence issues,” “Property ownership is not clearly delineate among Afghan government ministries, so we’ll make a decision once we get this clearance.”
Khaista Jan Ahadi, a member of Paktia’s provincial council, said she had been involved in a number of attempts to get Bala Hissar taken out of military hands.
“Several members of our council went to see the minister of information and culture [Sayed Makhdoom Raheen] last year, and he promised to get control shifted to his department, but that yet to materialise,” she said.
Abdul Ahad Abbasi, director of the ministry’s department for protecting monuments, said negotiations on a possible handover were taking place with the defence ministry.
“There is a presidential decree on transferring the Bala Hissar forts in Gardez and Kabul to the information and culture ministry, but the defence ministry is not yet ready to do so,” he said. “Donors won’t fund any restoration project if army troops are housed in a historic monument. This is a problem when it comes to efforts to restore such sites.”
Gardez residents say the fortress is also threatened by new houses being built illegally on the slopes of the hill it sits on.
“I went to the police station to complain about it, but they said it wasn’t their responsibility,” local man Ramatullah Rahimzai said. “When I complained to the Afghan army, they too said it wasn’t within their mandate, so in the end I gave up.”
For its part, Paktia’s provincial government says there is little it can do to protect Bala Hissar, although deputy governor Abdul Wali Sahi promised action to stop further erosion around the site.
“Before embarking on any other plans, we are going to plant trees on the hillside of Bala Hissar to protect it from further destruction and make it green,” he said.
Sahil Mangal is an IWPR-trained reporter in southern Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
This week civil war was predicted, a result of giving so much power to warlords after the Taliban's overthrow
The Guardian By Lucy Morgan Edwards 12 April 2013
This week the defence select committee published a report which concluded that civil war in Afghanistan is likely when international forces leave next year. If the predictions of Securing the Future of Afghanistan are correct, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence share much of the blame.
When I returned to Kabul in January and asked an American journalist I'd known in 2001 his view of the situation, he said: "When you look at the facts on the ground, it is hard to believe that civil war is not inevitable."
The facts on the ground include the militias the west has set up in the countryside in a desperate attempt to shore up the barely legitimate Karzai regime. Sadly, these militias, plus the many Afghan private security companies, have contributed to a proliferation of armed groups that will be roaming the country after 2014. Ironically, in the MPs' report, the Foreign Office acknowledges the need to disarm the Taliban, yet omits to mention the problems of re-arming these groups, presumably because they are "the good guys".
What is so tragic is that back in 2001, the west did have the opportunity to assist Afghanistan on its path to peace. But myopia, jealousy and score-settling took precedence over dealing with the political problems that had led to the arrival of the Taliban. Using the maxim "My enemy's enemy is my friend", the US military took sides in a continuing civil war and co-opted the strongmen of the Northern Alliance. In theory, this was to reduce the need for American "boots on the ground".
These regional chiefs, or warlords, were mostly brought back from exile. They were unpopular, having committed war crimes during the civil war. But instead of sidelining them, the US and UK re-empowered them with cash and weapons and made them the allies' sole reference points. They still are, to the bemusement of ordinary Afghans, many of whom, particularly in rural areas, would have preferred a more genuine engagement with the more legitimate local leadership. Unfortunately, the use of strongmen to fight al-Qaida and Taliban has led to chaos in rural areas and a further fragmentation of the tribal system that we should have worked with instead.
As an election monitor in 2002 when a transitional administration was convened to start the state-building process, I witnessed how the warlords were given political legitimacy. The US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, sidelined the popular former king and made a Faustian bargain with the warlords to allow them into the meeting. This paved the way for them to hijack the state-building process.
The democratically elected Afghans were ignored. The press did not report this, perhaps because it did not fit the narrative of democracy and images of Afghan women putting ballots into boxes. But it marked the end of any pretence that the international community had come here to deliver a "liberal peace" (encompassing democracy and human rights). So the strongmen returned to their fiefdoms empowered, while ordinary Afghans were cowed.
The result – extreme corruption, insecurity, inequality, poverty and violence – is what you see today: a crisis of impunity in Afghanistan. Sadly, our complicity in this is all too often ignored and, instead, analysis centres around historical prejudices: "These Afghans have always fought one another."
Increasingly, these criminal elements – often integrated into international organised networks – took ministerial or local government positions. They became the state. Which is why so much money has been poured in but has been lost to corruption. It is why, however many courthouses the British build, or training we give the Afghan judiciary, there cannot be a properly functioning justice system because there is no impartiality. Because the powerbrokers, having evaded the law themselves, have no interest in strong institutions and a decent justice system.
There can never be true reconciliation in Afghan society until the past is dealt with and those who have committed crimes are made accountable.
By the start of 2001, a famous commander of the 1980s anti-Soviet war, the Pashtun Abdul Haq, had spent two years devising a peace plan aimed at toppling the Taliban. The former king was to be the glue to unify different groups, and Haq engaged Ahmed Shah Massoud – the Northern Alliance leader assassinated in 2001 – tribal leaders and Taliban within the regime's military who were willing to defect. They had held meetings in Bonn and Istanbul. People were willing to work with him because of his history as a guerrilla leader and his record of bridging the ethnic divide. However, in Whitehall and Washington DC, his plan was dismissed.
Today the politicians are hoping that the "bad guy" Taliban will somehow reconcile with the western-backed regime of Hamid Karzai. But the reality is that the Taliban hardliners are controlled by Pakistan, while in Afghanistan many people continue supporting the Taliban because they know they will soon be back. They have already filled a vacuum in providing justice and security in rural Afghanistan, where the government has been corrupt, incompetent or hampered by the US military strategy, which has bred insecurity and chaos.
In reality, the west is using the talks to give itself a chance both to get out of Afghanistan and to claim that the state is stable. For both reasons, Pakistan's co-operation is needed, and Islamabad is driving a hard bargain with the US, even suggesting that Afghan military officers must be trained in Islamabad. In Kabul this year, several Afghans asked me: "Why is the UK appeasing Pakistan?"
Unfortunately, it looks like the need for a quick exit will mean the west caves in to Pakistan's demands. At that stage, we will have gone full circle in Afghanistan since 2001, with Pakistan once again back in the driving seat and civil war the only realistic outlook.
Pakistan launches aerial assault to drive Taliban out from Tirah Valley
By Muhammad Tahir
ISLAMABAD, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani security forces are using fighter jets and gunship helicopters to flush out the Taliban fighters and other armed insurgents from a strategically located valley in the Khyber tribal region.
The aerial assault on Tirah Valley was launched last month after the Taliban took control of the area and expelled members of a pro-government armed group.
Fighters of another group, "Lashkar-e-Islam" or the Army of Islam,have been helping the Taliban in fighting the Pakistani forces.
The military said that at least 15 militants were killed in the assault on Tirah Valley Thursday morning. One soldier was killed on the Pakistani side, an Army statement said.
On Tuesday, the military said that several days of intense clashes left 23 Pakistani soldiers and more than 110 militants dead.
Tirah Valley, which is bordering Afghanistan, is very important for the Taliban because of its strategic location, having three entry points,one to the nearby Orakzai tribal region, the second to the northwestern Peshawar city, and third to the famous town Landi Kotal, which lies on the Khyber Pass, the main supply route for NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Although the Pakistan Army has no ground forces in Tirah Valley, their forces control the hilltops overlooking the rugged mountainous region from where they can monitor any movement of the Taliban militants and fighters of Lashkar-e-Islam.
Both groups routinely fire rockets into Hayat Abad, a posh area in the outskirts of Peshawar, located at the edge of the Khyber Pass.Twelve people were injured when the militants fired rockets into Hayat Abad on Tuesday evening.
Since there are no roads leading to the Tirah Valley, the Pakistani forces are now depending mainly on airpower to bomb the Taliban in efforts to clear the way for ground forces to advance into the region and eliminate the Taliban once and for all.
The military said that it will be using special commando units in driving the Taliban from the valley.
But the Taliban and armed militant groups are showing stiff resistance since they do not want to lose control of such a strategic position, the valley being its major hideout for their fighters who have fled from some areas after they were attacked by the Pakistani military.
Earlier, the Taliban expelled the fighters of the pro- government group "Ansar-ul-Islam," from the valley. The pro- government guerrillas retreated after suffering heavy casualties from the Taliban offensive.
The Pakistani military believes that total control of the Tirah Valley by the Taliban would destabilize the situation in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Taliban presence in Tirah could also make the NATO supply route vulnerable at a time when the foreign forces in Afghanistan are packing up and the United States has already started withdrawing heavy equipment through Khyber's key route.
The Americans wanted Pakistani forces to take full control of the area to ensure the safety of the NATO trucks. The United States has in the past carried out drone strikes in Tirah Valley and killed important Taliban commanders and fighters.
Musharraf admits secret Pak-US deal on drone attacks
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 12 Apr 2013, 10:20 am Khaama Press
The former president of Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf admitted his government secretly signed off on U.S. drone strikes.
This is the first time a former senior Pakistani official has publicly acknowledged to such a deal with CIA, amid open challenges by Pakistani leaders for having no part in drone deal with the United States.
Despite Pakistan had no role to oversee the program or approve every attack however Musharraf’s admission suggests that himself and others did play some role in drone strikes.
While speaking during an interview with the CNN, Musharraf insisted Pakistan’s government signed off on strikes “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage.”
According to a nonpartisan public policy group New American Foundation, at least 1,990 people including civilians have been killed during the drone strikes in Pakistan.
Drone strikes for the first time were launched in 2004 during the leadership of Pervez Musharraf while he was serving as Pakistan president for five years term.
He said that Pakistani leaders would OK U.S. drone strikes after discussions involving military and intelligence units and only if “there was no time for our own … military to act.”
Musharraf also confirmed that Nek Mohammad, a tribal leader accused of harboring al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s western border region was killed in US drone attack.
Report: Afghan militants could get contract funds
Associated Press By Stephen Braun April 11, 2013
WASHINGTON - Militant groups in Afghanistan could still obtain U.S. government contracts and siphon off American taxpayer dollars because administrative flaws and misunderstandings are hampering a law aimed at weeding out corruption, a top auditor warned Thursday.
The special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction, John F. Sopko, said weaknesses mar procedures that the Defense Department tightened in 2012 to comply with a new federal law aimed at preventing militants from obtaining U.S. contract payments. Sopko said nearly $2 billion in government contracts was awarded in 2012, but he did not identify how much money was in jeopardy.
The U.S. military has estimated that up to $360 million ended up in the hands of Taliban and criminal elements in Afghanistan over the past decade, according to a 2012 Associated Press report.
Sopko said his new audit detected flaws in a provision that Congress added last year to a defense authorization bill. The provision gave the Defense Department the authority to "restrict, terminate or void" any contracts with individuals or organizations opposing U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Sopko said his audit found that language in some contracts did not contain the new provision, which is legally necessary to sever any contracts unwittingly given to militants. Sopko said that in some cases, military contracting authorities were not given up-to-date lists of militants and their supporters, preventing them from voiding ineligible contracts.
In testimony Wednesday before a House committee, Sopko also said that in one instance, Army officials ignored classified information that would have enabled them to void contracts obtained by Afghan militants and sympathizers. During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Sopko said Army officials failed to debar contractors "affiliated with the Haqqani network, the Taliban and/or al-Qaida" because they ignored documents that had been made available to them in a room designated for classified material.
"They apparently did not read - did not take the time to walk 150 feet to a classified skiff to read the classified appendices," Sopko said. "I took the time. I went to the skiff. I read them."
Sopko said that when he urged Army officials to void deals with those Afghan contractors, the officials refused. "So it's probably easier to use a drone strike than it is to stop somebody from contracting with the U.S. government," he said. Sopko said he has since provided the committee with the list of the suspect contractors.
In the audit, Sopko urged Congress to tighten the law further. One change he suggested was to eliminate a $100,000 threshold that prevents lesser contracts from being covered by the anti-militant provisions. Sopko also said the provision only affects Defense Department contracts but should be expanded to contracts overseen by the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other government departments working in Afghanistan.
Sopko also warned the Pentagon that it needed to develop a standard process for tracking suspect contractors and notifying contracting officials and contractors about suspect contractors and their obligations under the law.
State Department denies cover-up over diplomat killed in Afghanistan
Anne Smedinghoff was killed walking to a media event, not in an armoured vehicle, but US denies misleading reporters
The Guardian By Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul 11 April 2013
A US diplomat killed by a suicide bomber in southern Afghanistan was walking to a media event at a nearby high school when the attacker struck, and not travelling in a vehicle convoy as the State Department originally said.
Anne Smedinghoff died on Saturday, along with three soldiers and one other US civilian in Qalat, the small capital of Zabul province. It was the first time a State Department diplomat has been killed in Afghanistan since the 1970s.
At the time of the attack, Smedinghoff was returning from an abortive effort to escort Afghan journalists to a high school barely 50 metres from the gate of the US base in town, a survivor said. The provincial governor was attending a book handover at the school, and the group were planning to report on the ceremony.
The governor's convoy of armoured SUVs passed by as the journalists, soldiers and diplomats were nearly back inside the base and it was then that the suicide bomber detonated his explosives, Afghan journalist Ahmed Zia Abed told McClatchy newspapers.
The Taliban, who claimed the attack, said the bomber had been waiting for either the governor's vehicles or a US military convoy to pass by.
Abed, who was wounded by the blast, told the paper that the diplomats and journalists had got lost. However, the extremely close proximity of the school to the military base makes that seem unlikely, particularly as the group were escorted by US soldiers stationed in Zabul, who would have known the area and mapped out even the shortest movement in advance.
The US embassy in Kabul referred all questions about the attack to the State Department in Washington DC, which confirmed that the group were travelling on foot.
Statements made immediately after the bombing suggested that a car full of explosives had rammed into some kind of armoured vehicle carrying Smedinghoff, pictured, and others. Secretary of state John Kerry, who paid moving and personal tribute to the young diplomat, described the attacker as someone who "drives into their [the diplomats'] vehicle".
The State Department, still smarting from accusations that it had tried to distort information about an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012, denied that it had intentionally misled reporters about what happened in Qalat.
The US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans died in the Benghazi violence. For months after there was a heavy stream of mostly partisan attacks against the White House and the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who were accused of attempting to cover up al-Qaida involvement in what was described as a terrorist attack.
Patrick Ventrell, the acting deputy press spokesman, said that early reports on Afghan TV and websites about the Zabul attack may have misled diplomats in other Afghan cities who were trying to pin down details of what happened form a distance.
"I think part of the initial confusion came about because there were reports in the media about the local governor and his convoy," he said. "Some of our initial reporting also indicated that, and that's why we weren't able to clarify right away. So our initial read on it was different, and we're now able to say that it was a convoy and they were walking."
The group were all "wearing personal protection gear and under escort of US soldiers", he added. Three of those soldiers died in the attack, along with a US Department of Defense civilian employee who has not been named, and an Afghan nurse who was also in the area.
Four other State Department employees were wounded, including another media official Kelly Hunt, who was seriously injured and has been evacuated to Germany where she is in a medically-induced coma, according to a news website from her home state.
The State Department is reviewing security procedures, Ventrell said. Most diplomats and soldiers use armoured SUVs or even more heavily protected military MRAPs – mine resistant ambush protected vehicles – for most journeys around Afghanistan.
But it is not uncommon for groups of Nato soldiers and civilians to walk short distances near bases where security is considered relatively good, particularly when there are checkpoints on access roads and US spy blimps that can survey the area around the clock.
Zabul province neighbours Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace. Sparsely populated, it has seen regular insurgent attacks but is usually considered less dangerous than other southern provinces.
Afghan Guys And Gals Meet Facebook To Facebook
April 11, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty By Farangis Najibullah
High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he's got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.
With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook's popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.
Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul's Shah Shahid area to chat with his female "friends." To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.
"In Afghanistan, we don't have disco clubs to meet with girls. It's not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face," Akbar says. "Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can't easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many."
Bright Spot
Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country "a lot less frustrating."
While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl's reputation, "with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend's relatives," he reasons.
Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.
According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.
Some 2 million of Afghanistan's 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.
About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.
"I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook," Sipehr says. "Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business."
The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.
Double Standard?
An informal survey of profiles suggests that many Afghan Facebook users are urbanites in their late teens and 20s. Interests include Bollywood movies, Afghan music, and sport -- mostly soccer and cricket -- among other things.
Such browsing also reveals that male Afghan Facebook users appear to have little concern about online security -- their photos, status updates, and posts are often open to the public.
But girls must take certain precautions. In accordance with social norms that discourage the idea of women putting themselves on display, female Facebook users in Afghanistan rarely post their photos online, at least publicly.
They also tend to post photos of celebrities -- Indian actresses are a favorite -- as their profile pictures.
That doesn't prevent them from attracting many suitors, however.
RFE/RL set up an account as a 22-year-old female medical student living in Kabul to get an idea of what kinds of "friends" she would attract, and received more than 900 friend requests within a month.
Most were young men interested in chatting and sharing photos, while others appeared interested in a real-life relationship.
'A Better Life'
Mock female accounts can be the cause of real heartbreaks in Afghanistan, says Rafiullah Baher, a 22-year-old Kabul student.
"A friend of mine believed he was deep in a relationship with a girl on Facebook and that it was getting serious. But the girl turned out to be a bogus profile made by our local butcher's son," says Baher. "It took my friend a while to get over his heartbreak."
“Now I try to add only those who I know," Baher says. "And I hesitate to chat with girls on Facebook because it seems 50 percent of Afghan female Facebook accounts are fake profiles made by boys."
Instead Baher uses Facebook to post his favorite poetry and updates on the Afghan national cricket team's matches abroad.
In Shah Shahid neighborhood, Akbar is still looking for love on Facebook.
"Recently, my best friend met an American woman on Facebook. They got married and now he lives in Chicago," Akbar says. "He was determined to use Facebook to find a wife and he made it. And why not? Everyone has the right to find ways to a better life."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah, with contributions by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai from Kabul
Defence Ministry to Retire Older Officers
TOLOnews By Abdul Wali Arian 11 April 2013
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) plans to retire a number of high-ranking military officers in the next month as a way of improving army morale, it said Thursday.
The plan has been panned by critics who argue that it is unnecessary and likely to be carried out unfairly, keeping those with more political influence in their positions while removing others.
However, the MOD defended the move as a way of giving younger officers an incentive to advance up the ranks.
"Retiring these offices will offer more opportunities for young officers to improve. This act will raise the morale of the army," MOD spokesperson Gen Zahir Azimi said.
The ministry said that the officers it plans to retire – which includes 3-star generals – have already gone beyond their official contract terms of working for the government.
The exact number the MOD is aiming to retire was not clear.
Some fear that now is not the time to remove the experienced personnel from leading positions given the security situation in Afghanistan.
"This is distressing. Retiring experienced and skilled officers – for whatever reason – will only bring unpleasant outcomes," veteran Gen NoorulHaq Oloomi told TOLOnews.
However, the plan also has its supporters.
"It could be very effectual if done based on laws, because it will be the youth leading the wars," said veteran General Atiqullah Amerkhel.
There are concerns that those army staff that have more influence within the government will remain in their posts, others will be retired, that which Afghanistan has experienced in the past.
Afghanistan goes backwards while Taliban chiefs live it up in Qatar
Taliban leaders came to Doha as a neutral base from which to negotiate with America - two years on they're driving fast cars and "making babies" with negotiations no closer
The Independent By Peter Popham 11 April 2013
Afghanistan is not the only place on the planet which makes a speciality of going backwards rather than forwards, but it is the most spectacular example.
As The New York Times reported this week, a group of high-ranking Taliban have been hanging about in Doha, Qatar, for more than two years, waiting for the Obama administration to make good on its offer of negotiations. These are not negligible people: the most senior is Tayeb Agha, chief of staff to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder, the one-eyed “Amir ul-Mu’minim” or “Commander of the Faithful”, the militia’s unchallenged leader. But back home in Afghanistan, the Taliban show little interest in pursuing the path of peace, the most vivid demonstration of that being the attack on a courthouse near the Iranian border the other day in which 46 people were killed, including judges, lawyers and all the assailants, during the course of an eight-hour blitz that left the complex in ruins.
How can anyone dream of negotiating with people whose comrades take such action against the West’s efforts to furnish Afghanistan with the rudimentary infrastructure of a state? Various Taliban have offered themselves as possible interlocutors, but “the Doha track” was said by an American diplomat to be “the most promising” of them. But for now that track’s going nowhere. “[The Taliban] are just living here, enjoying the air conditioning, driving luxury cars, eating and making babies,” according to an Afghan diplomat in the same city.
There is no talking to these people, not only because their brothers are committing mass murder a few hundred miles away, but because there is not, and never has been, anything to talk to them about. We continue to go through the motions of state building, propping up Karzai’s deeply corrupt regime, pouring money and training into the Afghan National Security Forces (whose uniforms the Taliban who destroyed the courthouse were wearing), making good on our promises to the country. But as the endgame draws closer, the fragility of what we have made is painful to behold.
The Taliban gained the respect, however grudging, of millions of Afghans precisely because they had not done dirty deals with the West; they were not venal, they were the devout, pure, simple products of madrassas. Often it was true. They had memorised the Koran, but otherwise their education was often pitiful: I remember waiting for an exit visa in the office of the Taliban minister responsible, the last time they ran the place. It took so long, I was whisperingly informed by an aide, because he was illiterate.
The Taliban years are remembered for the brutality against women, the banning of all forms of entertainment and diversion, the public executions of blasphemers. All true. But equally true was the absence of any urge towards the creation of a modern country. These tribesmen squatted the British and Soviet ruins of Kabul much as our remote ancestors must have camped amid the crumbling villas left behind by the Romans. The key to their failure to evolve lies in the figure of Mullah Omar himself. Ever since, in 1996, when he donned a cloak supposedly once worn by the Prophet, fulfilling the legend that he would become the Leader of the Faithful, the Taliban have been stuck in their fanatical groove.
Wherever Islam rose to great power in the faith’s early days, whether in Arabia or what is now Turkey, it was because the leader succeeded in subsuming both piety and tribalism to the requirements of building a functioning state. The Ottomans did it through the Janissaries: kidnapped Christian children from the Balkans raised to be slave-administrators, free from all tribal ties. Often they rose to high rank, but could be sacked or executed on the whim of the Sultan.
Since 2002, NATO forces and the flood of experts and NGOs working under their protection have played the part of the Janissaries, a modern equivalent of those military and bureaucratic slaves who had no ties of kinship to the countryside, and who could therefore be depended upon to build courthouses, schools, hospitals and all the rest. But soon they will be gone. And the Taliban couldn’t care less.
Tajik president fears instability after NATO Afghan pullout
Reuters By Barbara Lewis and Adrian Croft April 11, 2013
Tajikistan is deeply concerned about instability after foreign troops withdraw from neighboring Afghanistan, Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon said on Thursday.
Afghanistan is to hold presidential elections in April 2014 as most foreign combat troops will be preparing to withdraw from the country by the end of that year, leaving Afghan security forces in charge.
"It is a matter of deepest concern that the coincidence of the two major events ... might make the situation difficult," Rakhmon told Reuters on the sidelines of an investment conference in Brussels, referring to the election and troop pullout.
Rakhmon, who held talks with European Union and NATO officials in Brussels this week, urged Europe and the rest of the world to "take seriously" the situation after 2014 and to help Afghanistan build up its army and police.
The Afghan government and NATO have been at pains to counter fears that Afghanistan could slide into chaos or that there could be a Taliban resurgence once tens of thousands of foreign troops leave.
Tajikistan has a 1,200-km (750-mile) border with Afghanistan and faces a problem with opium-trafficking from its neighbor.
Tajikistan has signed a transit agreement with NATO, allowing the Western alliance to use its airport to transport equipment to and from Afghanistan.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy reassured Rakhmon in talks on Wednesday that the European Union was engaged in central Asia and Afghanistan "for the long haul" and that it would continue to help in the fight against drug-trafficking.
Provided instability is contained, Rakhmon said there was no reason why the Tajik economy should not continue growing at an annual 7 percent pace, even though the International Monetary Fund has said economic slowdown in dominant regional power Russia could have a knock-on effect.
"Absolutely we can. Just for the (first) three months of 2013 the indicator of economic growth is 7.3 percent," he said, speaking through an interpreter.
HUGE POTENTIAL
Rakhmon, a 60-year-old former head of a Soviet cotton farm, has ruled the impoverished Central Asian nation of 7.5 million for 20 years. He has overseen constitutional amendments that allow him to seek a new seven-year term in November 2013.
Land-locked Tajikistan is the poorest of the 15 former Soviet republics but is believed to have huge energy potential.
"Prospective resources of oil and gas are estimated to be one billion and 33 million tonnes of oil equivalent," Sherali Gul, Tajikistan's energy minister, told the investors' meeting.
Tethys Petroleum is the only independent oil and gas explorer operating in three central Asian republics and says Tajikistan is "the jewel in Tethys' crown".
In December, it signed a deal with Total and China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Corporation (CNODC), a unit of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the country's top oil and gas producer, to jointly explore in Tajikistan.
"We expect to close the deal very soon," David Robson, Tethys' executive chairman and president, told the conference.
Tajikistan hopes to achieve energy independence and to become an energy exporter. Despite its huge potential, for now Tajikistan does not produce enough energy to cover its needs. During the long winter, electricity and gas supplies are limited to six-to-seven hours a day, Rakhmon said.
As well as developing its oil and gas reserves, it is investing in hydro power.
Its flagship project is the Rogun dam, but completion has been frozen pending a World Bank assessment of its impact.
Uzbekistan, which depends on rivers that rise in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to irrigate its farmland, has said the dam has the potential to provoke military conflict.
Hezb-e-Islami Meets in Kabul to Discuss Presidential Candidate
TOLOnews By Karim Amini 11/04/2013
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Islamist political party Hezb-e-Islami will nominate a candidate in the upcoming Afghan presidential election, either from its own ranks or it will support an outsider, it told TOLOnews Thursday.
The party's deputy chief Ghairat Bahir said that a delegation of four senior party figures are in Kabul meeting local members to discuss the election and possible presidential candidates.
"We have sent a delegation to Kabul. The delegation is led by Mohammad Rassoul. Its purpose is to visit and discuses with Hezb-e-Islami members in Kabul, not to talk with [Afghan] government officials," he told TOLOnews via telephone from Pakistan.
"The delegation has talked with the party members about the election and the party decided to introduce a candidate or support a competent candidate. We will soon make a final decision on this. I cannot name the candidate but our party's nomination will be a prominent person in the country," Bahir said.
Hezb-e-Islami is calling for the foreign forces to leave Afghanistan, saying that a proper election is not possible with them in the country.
"We hope the foreigners leave Afghanistan. We stress as our first position: it will be impossible to hold a fair, transparent and free election in the presence of the foreign forces," he said.
According to reports, the party has suspended negotiations with the Afghan government in protest over the Karzai regime's plan to sign a long-term security agreement with the US.
The comments signal a shift in Hezb-e-Islami's demands. It had previously said it would not participate in the election if foreign forces did not withdraw from Afghanistan beforehand.
Afghan political analyst Ahmad Saeedi welcomed the news that the group is planning to take an active part in the election, but stressed that Taliban participation is more important.
"The main problem in Afghanistan is Taliban. Hezb-e-Islami's war is not so important in Afghanistan. If they can come together as a party and participate in the election it will be effective to some extent, but it cannot bring Afghanistan peace and stability," Saeedi told TOLOnews.
Afghanistan's presidential and provincial elections will be held on April 5, 2014.
Opening of Taliban Office Still Unclear: Faizi
TOLOnews By Shakeela Ahbrimkhil 11 April 2013
The Afghan government remains unclear on when the Taliban political office in Qatar will open, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman told TOLOnews.
Aimal Faizi said in an interview Wednesday that there is no clarity on the opening date partly because the decision involves multiple players.
"It is hard to specify a date for the inauguration of the office because it depends on the countries involved in Afghanistan's peace process. In this peace process we are not faced with a person and the Taliban. We are faced with countries - countries that misuse the peace process, that misuse the Taliban and their name," Faizi told TOLOnews Wednesday.
He said the Taliban leaders are in Pakistan because that is where they receive funding. Therefore Pakistan's role is important in the peace process.
"The reason we always say that Pakistan's role is significant in the peace process is because Afghanistan's government opposition groups and their leaders are in Pakistan and Pakistan itself knows where the Taliban leaders are.
"The country could take the necessary measures the in Afghan peace process until were achieved something in the process, but Pakistan never honestly cooperates with the peace process," Faizi said.
Karzai has visited Pakistan 19 times in the past decade, usually with an aim of strengthening cooperation on the peace process, but the president's doubts over Pakistan's intentions remain.
Dempsey Backs Keeping 8,000-12,000 NATO Troops in Afghanistan
Bloomberg By David Lerman April 11, 2013
The top U.S. military officer said he supports keeping 8,000 to 12,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan after most allied forces leave the country at the end of 2014.
“I find that to be a reasonable target,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. The Obama administration hasn’t yet specified how many U.S. troops it wants to keep in Afghanistan after most of them depart.
In February, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discussed with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Brussels the possibility of maintaining a combined allied presence of 8,000 to 12,000 troops.
Today, Dempsey called that “a reasonable target” when asked whether it’s important for the administration to announce planned U.S. troop levels as it seeks to negotiate an agreement with the Afghan government for a continuing American presence to provide training and conduct counterterror operations.
Some U.S. military officials and members of Congress have publicly said that 13,600 American troops and 7,000 from other countries will be necessary.
Among those who have been pressing for that big a force are Marine General James Mattis, who retired last month as head of the U.S. Central Command, and Marine General Joseph Dunford, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Lerman in Washington atdlerman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net
Afghan Guys And Gals Meet Facebook To Facebook
RFE/RL By Farangis Najibullah April 11, 2013
High-school student Muhammad Akbar has never dated a girl in real life, but he's got plenty of girlfriends on Facebook.
With social and religious taboos restricting face-to-face contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, Facebook's popularity has skyrocketed as a virtual meeting place in Afghanistan.
Akbar spends nearly an hour every evening in a packed Internet cafe near his home in Kabul's Shah Shahid area to chat with his female "friends." To pay for his online habit, which costs about 100 afghanis ($2) an hour, he has taken a part-time job as a garage assistant.
"In Afghanistan, we don't have disco clubs to meet with girls. It's not allowed here to go on a date with girls, to meet and talk with them face to face," Akbar says. "Marriage is the only way to have a relationship with a woman, but many people can't easily afford to get married. Facebook has solved that problem for many."
Bright Spot
Akbar says chatting with girls online has made life in the war-torn, poverty stricken country "a lot less frustrating."
While being seen chatting to an unrelated boy in public can tarnish a girl's reputation, "with Facebook, there is no risk of being beaten up by your female friend's relatives," he reasons.
Such advantages have fueled a sharp rise in new Facebook accounts.
According to the Communication and Information Ministry, there are now more than 470,000 registered Facebook accounts in Afghanistan, compared to 6,000 in 2008.
Some 2 million of Afghanistan's 30 million people have access to the Internet, according to the ministry, mostly through Internet cafes and mobile phones.
About two years ago, Ahmad Sipehr learned about Facebook when a classmate at a Kabul university helped him join the social network. The revelation prompted him to open up his own Internet cafe.
"I would travel several kilometers to the nearest Internet cafe just to use Facebook," Sipehr says. "Then I decided to open an Internet cafe myself. It was Facebook that prompted me to open this business."
The 21-year-old journalism student now runs one of the busiest Internet cafes in downtown Kabul. Sipehr frequently helps visitors open Facebook accounts for the first time, and before long they are regular customers.
Double Standard?
An informal survey of profiles suggests that many Afghan Facebook users are urbanites in their late teens and 20s. Interests include Bollywood movies, Afghan music, and sport -- mostly soccer and cricket -- among other things.
Such browsing also reveals that male Afghan Facebook users appear to have little concern about online security -- their photos, status updates, and posts are often open to the public.
But girls must take certain precautions. In accordance with social norms that discourage the idea of women putting themselves on display, female Facebook users in Afghanistan rarely post their photos online, at least publicly.
They also tend to post photos of celebrities -- Indian actresses are a favorite -- as their profile pictures.
That doesn't prevent them from attracting many suitors, however.
RFE/RL set up an account as a 22-year-old female medical student living in Kabul to get an idea of what kinds of "friends" she would attract, and received more than 900 friend requests within a month.
Most were young men interested in chatting and sharing photos, while others appeared interested in a real-life relationship.
'A Better Life'
Mock female accounts can be the cause of real heartbreaks in Afghanistan, says Rafiullah Baher, a 22-year-old Kabul student.
"A friend of mine believed he was deep in a relationship with a girl on Facebook and that it was getting serious. But the girl turned out to be a bogus profile made by our local butcher's son," says Baher. "It took my friend a while to get over his heartbreak."
“Now I try to add only those who I know," Baher says. "And I hesitate to chat with girls on Facebook because it seems 50 percent of Afghan female Facebook accounts are fake profiles made by boys."
Instead Baher uses Facebook to post his favorite poetry and updates on the Afghan national cricket team's matches abroad.
In Shah Shahid neighborhood, Akbar is still looking for love on Facebook.
"Recently, my best friend met an American woman on Facebook. They got married and now he lives in Chicago," Akbar says. "He was determined to use Facebook to find a wife and he made it. And why not? Everyone has the right to find ways to a better life."
Written and reported by Farangis Najibullah, with contributions by RFE/RL Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Safiullah Stanikzai from Kabul
Medieval Afghan Fort Under Threat
Locals say important cultural site neglected after years of battle damage, and endangered by continuing army presence.
IWPR By Sahil Mangal 11 Apr 13
Hundreds of Afghans gathered at the Bala Hissar fortress near the southern town of Gardez last month to mark Nowruz, the start of the traditional new year.
Families celebrated as young men performed the traditional “attan” dance to the sound of drums. But as in previous years, they were annoyed to find that they were prevented from entering the castle.
Nine hundred years after it was built, the ancient fort, whose name means “high castle”, is still used as a military vantage-point, which makes it an off-limits facility controlled by Afghanistan’s defence ministry.
Local residents and officials in Paktia province agree that the fortress should be in the hands of civilian authorities who could preserve it from further disintegration, with a view to turning it into a tourist attraction in more stable times.
Gardez resident Hejratullah said military use of Bala Hissar was a continuing threat to the fort, which ought to be handed over to Paktia’s cultural affairs department.
“Historical sites like this should be restored and preserved as a reflection of our history,“ he said. “But unfortunately, they are being lost instead.”
Although the high walls appear sound from the outside, about a third of the structures inside the castle have been damaged both by earthquakes and by three decades of war in Afghanistan.
“Most of the damage has been caused by the presence of army forces in Bala Hissar, such as during the [1980s] Russian occupation, when the mujahedin fired rockets at the fort,” local resident Usman said. “Then, when the mujahedin took over [in 1992], they used the site to blow up tanks so as to sell off the scrap in Pakistan. The explosions caused a lot of cracks in Bala Hissar.”
About a year after the United States-led invasion in 2001, the fort was the scene of a major battle between the forces of Paktia governor Pacha Khan Zadran and a rival commander.
Historical strongpoints across Afghanistan have suffered serious damage from modern weaponry in recent conflict. The Qala-ye Jangi fort in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif was badly blasted when troops put down a 2001 uprising by Taleban prisoners held there. That site, too, is still used by the Afghan army.
Noting the destruction done to Qala-ye Jangi and other sites like Kabul’s wrecked Darulaman Palace, writer and journalist Arefullah Haq-Parast said a change of policy was essential if they were to be saved.
“It makes no sense to station forces in historical sites, as many such places across the country have been destroyed because of the presence of the military,” he said. “After it is restored, Bala Hissar should be used as Paktia’s museum for historical artefacts, so that it is not only preserved but serves as an attraction for tourists.”
The director of Paktia province’s culture and information department, Mohammad Shefa Moshfeq, agreed that conservation was impossible at the moment.
“We are concerned about the current state of this historic site,” he said, adding that his department had formally asked its parent ministry in Kabul as well as the local army corps to facilitate a handover.
A spokesman for the 203rd Corps which garrisons the fortress, Colonel Ahmad Jan Mokhles, said the request had been forwarded to the defence ministry.
“We’ll follow whatever instructions the ministry of defence issues,” “Property ownership is not clearly delineate among Afghan government ministries, so we’ll make a decision once we get this clearance.”
Khaista Jan Ahadi, a member of Paktia’s provincial council, said she had been involved in a number of attempts to get Bala Hissar taken out of military hands.
“Several members of our council went to see the minister of information and culture [Sayed Makhdoom Raheen] last year, and he promised to get control shifted to his department, but that yet to materialise,” she said.
Abdul Ahad Abbasi, director of the ministry’s department for protecting monuments, said negotiations on a possible handover were taking place with the defence ministry.
“There is a presidential decree on transferring the Bala Hissar forts in Gardez and Kabul to the information and culture ministry, but the defence ministry is not yet ready to do so,” he said. “Donors won’t fund any restoration project if army troops are housed in a historic monument. This is a problem when it comes to efforts to restore such sites.”
Gardez residents say the fortress is also threatened by new houses being built illegally on the slopes of the hill it sits on.
“I went to the police station to complain about it, but they said it wasn’t their responsibility,” local man Ramatullah Rahimzai said. “When I complained to the Afghan army, they too said it wasn’t within their mandate, so in the end I gave up.”
For its part, Paktia’s provincial government says there is little it can do to protect Bala Hissar, although deputy governor Abdul Wali Sahi promised action to stop further erosion around the site.
“Before embarking on any other plans, we are going to plant trees on the hillside of Bala Hissar to protect it from further destruction and make it green,” he said.
Sahil Mangal is an IWPR-trained reporter in southern Afghanistan.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com