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Taliban declare 'spring offensive' in Afghanistan
Agence-France Presse – Sat, Apr 27, 2013 6:31 PM NZST
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan announced the start of their annual "spring offensive" against the US-backed government, vowing a nationwide series of attacks as foreign troops withdraw.
The Islamist extremists said that multiple suicide bombings, "insider attacks" by Afghan soldiers and "special military tactics" would target international airbases and diplomatic buildings to inflict maximum casualties.
They warned Afghans working for President Hamid Karzai's "stooge" regime to distance themselves from the government to avoid being caught up in the promised violence, and called for young people not to join the police or army.
This year's "fighting season" is seen as crucial to Afghanistan's future as its much-criticised security forces pit themselves against the insurgents who have fought against the Kabul government since 2001.
NATO combat operations in Afghanistan are due to end next year, and coalition commanders say that the local army and police have made enough progress to provide security and keep the Taliban at bay.
Afghanistan's fighting season traditionally begins in April or May as snow recedes from the mountains, and in recent years the Taliban have marked the occasion with a public declaration of their intent to bring down Karzai.
The insurgents' latest statement celebrated the start of the NATO withdrawal, saying that "the enemy, with all its military might, has been overwhelmed and finally forced to flee from their military bases".
It added that this year's offensive, named after 7th-century general Khalid bin Waleed, would start on Sunday "in unison throughout the country... against the transgressing invaders and their degenerate backers".
Last week a study by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office found attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents rose 47 percent in January-March compared with the same period last year.
The United Nations has separately reported a rise of almost 30 percent in civilian casualties in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, with 475 civilians killed and 872 wounded.
But NATO insists that the war is being won, with US General Joseph Dunford, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), saying on Thursday there was "indisputable" progress towards the goal of a stable nation.
Dawlat Waziri, a defence ministry spokesman, told AFP that Afghan forces were ready to take on the rebels alone.
"The Taliban are not able to fight face-to-face, so they heavily rely on roadside bombs and suicide attacks and their attacks inflict a heavy toll on Afghan civilians," he added.
Afghan security forces during an operation in Laghman Province on April 11, 2013. Taliban insurgents announced the start of their annual "spring offensive" against the US-backed government, vowing a nationwide series of attacks as foreign troops withdraw.
Afghan troops hold their ground at high cost
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE CONNOLLY, Afghanistan (AP) — The Americans could be spotted waiting for the Chinooks in the 2 a.m. darkness only by the shape of their night-vision goggles, as they shared a cigarette with glowing embers in quick drags among the kneeling assaulters in the chilled dark.
They would be on the first two helicopters to drop into the villages of the Khogyani district in the shadows of the Tora Bora mountains, kicking off a four-day operation against the Taliban by roughly 175 Americans and 1,250 Afghan troops, in a teeth-clenching test of U.S. mentoring and training.
The Afghans were lined up behind the Americans, leaning back on their 130-pound backpacks, saving their strength to carry the loads onto the Chinooks for their first air assault, and without the Americans' high-tech goggles, letting their eyes adjust to the dark for the assault to come.
They didn't talk much.
A Predator drone feed showed the groups landing in the darkened district — dark spots trudging slowly up hills and sometimes falling into ditches — U.S. and Afghan alike. They set up a post to oversee the insurgent-ridden villages they would be guarding for the next four days as Afghan police cleared them out house by house.
Intelligence intercepts showed most of the insurgents already had fled to the farthest village just beneath Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden escaped his American pursuers, after watching the Afghan troops and police mass the day before.
The Afghans and their American security advisers from the U.S. Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, were less interested in pursuing them than in making sure they could not return, making way for the Afghan local police who would take their place.
In the daylight, village elders were invited to meet with the Afghan general who led the attack, and they said they welcomed the troops because they were Afghans, not foreigners.
The U.S. brigade's commander, Col. Joseph "J.P." McGee, sat quietly in a corner, making the briefest of comments. This was an Afghan-to-Afghan conversation.
Overall in the operation, there were tactical missteps that Americans pointed out privately to the Afghan commanders, tactfully out of earshot of their subordinates. There were shortfalls in supplies, and requests were sometimes denied for U.S. air support for nighttime bombing runs or medical assistance.
But in The Associated Press' visits to Khogyani district and some of the country's most contested southern and eastern provinces — Helmand, Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar — multiple operations were led or carried out mostly by Afghans. Their officers were doing the bulk of the planning and execution, responding without U.S. aid to large-scale Taliban attacks or choosing targets the Americans sometimes disagreed with, if the U.S. advisers were consulted at all.
The uneven but steady progress is encouraging for the U.S. commanders trying to hand off responsibility ahead of the December 2014 drawdown of most U.S. forces, from roughly 66,000 Americans at the start of this year, to an as-yet-undetermined residual force of NATO troops that have been estimated will be around 8,000 to 10,000.
The Afghans are paying heavily for that lead role, with casualty figures rising steadily, more than doubling from 550 Afghan soldiers and police killed in 2011 to more than 1,200 last year, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
This year is bloodier still, with 300 security personnel, mostly police, killed in March alone, according to a top Afghan security official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to discuss the unpublished figure. That monthly average is roughly equivalent to the total number of U.S. forces lost in 2012, according to AP's own count of 297 U.S. troops killed, out of a total of 394 coalition forces.
About 660 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces so far this year, compared with close to 3,000 militants last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified.
Still, there is little public outcry over the Afghan losses.
While the Afghan army's attrition rate spiked to 4.1 percent in January, it has dropped back closer to the annual average of 2.6 percent. The combined Afghan army and police roster remains in excess of 332,753, according to figures provided by NATO's training mission, and the combined forces are clawing back some new ground from the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan officials say.
Arrayed against the green Afghan forces is a still-formidable force of Taliban and other militants. Their numbers are small, at an estimated 20,000 to 30,000, compared with the Afghan security forces' strength.
But they are knitted into the rural fabric of much of Afghanistan, well-versed in guerrilla tactics and local terrain, well-supplied with explosives and ammunition and plugged into enough local tipsters to ambush Afghan security forces when they are at their most vulnerable.
By summer's end, the U.S., the Afghans and the Taliban should know whether Afghan forces have what it takes to hold their ground, Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the AP.
"If the Afghans perform in a manner that we expect them to, that's going to have a demoralizing effect on the Taliban," he said in his headquarters office in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
"It's going to reduce the capabilities of the Taliban psychologically, and as importantly, it's going to cause the Afghan people to be more confident" in their forces and less likely to support or join the Taliban, he added.
Senior administration and coalition officials said the goal is to reach a sort of bloody equilibrium, where the Afghan security forces hold the populated areas and major trade routes to allow commerce to grow, and thereby slowly diminish the ranks of the Taliban by providing other employment opportunities for would-be fighters.
"What they need to be able to do is to secure key areas ... and eventually wait out and let the insurgency wither away," said McGee, at his headquarters in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar province.
"It would be folly to try to roll up into every valley and fight these guys. It is what we used to do," McGee said. "I think (the Afghans) will pursue a very different approach than we did .... more patient, more focused on endurance as opposed to attrition of the enemy, and I think eventually the Taliban will lose relevance and support over time," he said.
The Taliban know this is a make-or-break season for the Afghan forces and are targeting accordingly.
From November 2012 through the end of January, 75 percent of attacks were against coalition forces and only 25 percent were targeted at Afghans, according to a senior coalition intelligence official, who spoke anonymously as a condition of discussing the confidential statistics.
This past winter, the numbers were reversed, with 75 percent of the attacks now striking Afghans and 25 percent targeting coalition or coalition and Afghan joint patrols.
The police remain the Afghans' most vulnerable target. They're usually in lightly defended posts, in remote areas and still considered far less trained, with incidents of drug use and corruption still common.
But NATO deputy commander Lt. Gen. Nick Carter said five of Afghanistan's 26 army brigades, each with 450 to 600 troops, can operate independently, and an additional 16 are capable of operating with limited advice from the U.S.-led international coalition.
U.S. military officers who monitor performance say they've tracked a marked improvement in Afghan army units during the past 12 months, with 101 units improving and only seven dropping in the ratings.
One of those newly independent Afghan army brigades is in Helmand province, scene of some of the fiercest fighting, and worst losses, for U.S. Marines.
Now the once-bustling Camp Dwyer, a satellite base a 20-minute flight south from the larger Camp Leatherneck, has shrunk from some 5,000 Marines and support staff to roughly 800. About 60 of those Marines are living in a smaller base, next to the Afghan National Army's 1st Brigade, 215th Corps headquarters.
The last time Marines there went on joint patrols with the Afghans was in the fall, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Philip Treglia, who leads the security force adviser team.
"We're shrinking from 60 to 24 advisers," this spring, Treglia said. "This summer I'm recommending we go down to five," he added. "The Afghans just aren't going to need us."
Treglia's Afghan counterpart, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Sujai, bolstered that prediction only weeks earlier by conducting a four-day, 650-man army and police operation to clear insurgents and opium-producing poppy fields out of Trek Nawa, a known Taliban safe haven.
He only told the Americans about the operation when it was done.
"It was a test," Sujai said. "I wanted to prove we could do it alone."
Treglia described another incident, this one watched by the Americans on aerial surveillance.
About 80 Taliban fighters approached the town of Marjah from the north, stopping at a mosque to let the locals know they were coming back to take over.
By the time they'd reached a second mosque, residents had called the Afghan security forces — army, police and the militia-like local police, who happened to all be interrelated by marriage. Some of them were even former Taliban, Treglia said. A 400-man force headed north and intercepted the would-be invaders.
The Americans counted at least 30 bodies left on the battlefield, all Taliban, according to Sujai. The rest fled.
Treglia said sometimes the Afghans don't want the Americans there, because they don't want them watching, such as when the police shake down local farmers for bribes, in return for burning only part, instead of all, of their poppy crops.
The police then demand the farmers turn in the Taliban when they visit to collect the drugs, thus both lining their pockets and bumping up their arrest record, Treglia explained.
"We used to try to stop it. Now, we let the Afghan general know — and he knows — and it's up to them to sort it out," the American said.
In some cases, the Americans are forcing the Afghans to take charge before they want to, hoping to wean the Afghans of support that soon won't be available as the U.S. forces shrink in southern Afghanistan in the coming months.
If the Afghans are wounded on an operation, the Marines get them to describe the injuries and only send a U.S. aerial medevac crew if the wounds are life-threatening, explained U.S. Marine Maj. Christopher Bourbeau, deputy commander of the mission.
Bourbeau traded flying combat helicopters over southern Afghanistan to join the adviser team and has watched the Afghans develop over a four-year period of rotations through the area.
Bourbeau has enlisted Marine medics and the doctors and nurses at the U.S. medical facility at neighboring Camp Dwyer to teach the Afghans how to transport their less severely wounded troops by road. The troops got a grim reminder to pay closer attention when they were hit a few months ago, however, and failed to tie tourniquets on the wounded men.
"They lost guys because no one did that simple thing," Bourbeau.
He launched a brigade-wide refresher course after the losses and demonstrated the results by staging an impromptu pop quiz of one of the Afghan bomb technicians as he walked around the Afghan base. He tossed a tourniquet at the man, said, "Go," and the Afghan had tied a tourniquet on the American officer's leg in just over 30 seconds.
There was a similar spirit of just-say-no tough love at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Kunar province. When the U.S. refused to supply a remote Afghan guard post in the hills above their side-by-side bases, the Afghans built a road to it themselves.
"They secure the camp better than we do now," said U.S. Army security adviser Lt. Col Bryan Laske.
By the numbers, they are finding 20 percent more improvised explosive devices, or IEDs on average than the Americans did, Laske added.
When Col. Hayatullah, who uses only one name, agreed to clear the Pech Valley, he addressed the villagers before the operation alone.
"I told them I am a fellow Muslim," said the commander of the Afghan army's 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps, gesturing to the Arabic inscription "God is great" on one shoulder of his uniform. "I told them I come with a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other. Your actions determine which one I use."
The troops took the valley and are holding it, something the Americans never could in a decade of battle, Laske said.
In a planning meeting for another clearing operation to come, the Afghan army commanders and a group of police and intelligence chiefs argued over how the operation would unfold, with the Americans sitting silently at the far end of the crowded conference table.
"We're not going to leave the enemy sitting a kilometer away from us and do nothing," shouted Afghan Maj. Mahboob, who also goes by one name, leaping to his feet and straining across the table for emphasis.
"The coalition is going to leave, and we have to be able to do this!" he said. The officer's words were translated by a U.S. military translator, but he later repeated what was said in English when asked.
In the operation McGee oversaw to the south, the 1,250 Afghans took and held the towns, leaving Afghan local police in their stead, McGee said.
"There were no civilian casualties, and the villagers are supporting it and at least 100 local police have started work," said Khogyani district's administration chief, Abdul Wahab Momand.
But even as that operation was going ahead, up to eight suicide bombers hit a police headquarters in nearby Jalalabad, about 75 miles east of Kabul, killing least five officers. On the same day in Helmand province, a car bomb struck a British base, killing one of the coalition troops. Those are grim reminders that militants intend to keep fighting.
"Do we still have challenges? Sure we do," Dunford said. "Literacy, logistics ... technical capabilities. ... But in terms of their ability to provide security to the Afghan people in 2013 and beyond, I'm confident that they'll be able to do that," he said.
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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier
Public uprising against Pakistani and Afghan Taliban in Kunar
By MEENA HASEEB - 27 Apr 2013, 9:22 am Khaama Press
Heavy clashes have been reported between local residents and Taliban militants in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan on Friday.
According to local authorities in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, the incident took place in Dangam district after local residents started resisting local and foreign Taliban militants in this district.
Provincail goveror Syed Fazlullah Wahidi confirming the report said efforts have been put in place by local tribal elders to reconcile between the local resident and Taliban militants.
He said, “Local residents started public uprising against the Pakistani Taliban militants and currently local tribal elders have organized a Jirga to end the violence.”
Local elders in Dangam are saying that the clashes between the local resident and Taliban militants took place after Taliban fighters were torturing two residents.
They also said that Taliban militants attacked the local residents while they gathered to discuss with the militants.
According to the local tribal elders, at least two Taliban suicide bombers have been killed and another one has been injured during the clashes, while four local residents have also been injured.
Local elders are also saying that clashes have ended however both local resident and Taliban fighters are prepared for another fight, which may take place any time.
NATO Commander: ‘Cautious Optimism’ Ahead of Afghanistan Withdrawal
Al Pessin VOA News April 26, 2013
BRUSSELS — The top NATO military commander says, with all the challenges still facing Afghanistan, he is only “cautiously optimistic” that the Afghan government and security forces will be able to maintain security and prevent the country from again becoming a safe haven for terrorists after most foreign forces withdraw at the end of next year. U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis spoke about the situation in an interview.
It’s been nearly four years since Stavridis took over at U.S. European Command, and a few days later as commander of NATO operations worldwide.
Since then, he has made numerous visits to Afghanistan to provide strategic guidance to troops and commanders from dozens of countries, and to monitor progress.
But four years later - and after more than 11 years of Western military involvement, thousands of casualties and billions of dollars spent - he can muster only ‘cautious’ optimism that in the end the Afghanistan effort will succeed.
“I think we've gone, over the four years that I've been in command, that I can speak to personally, from a period of time in which I had doubts about our ability to succeed to today, [when] I think we will succeed. And I remain cautiously optimistic that we will,” said Stavridis.
That optimism is based in large part on what the admiral sees as significant improvements in the Afghan security forces, which showed him some of what they can do during a visit two years ago.
More broadly, he said Afghanistan’s civilian society also is changing for the better.
Meanwhile, Taliban attacks continue in several parts of the country. But the admiral said that when foreign troops, except for trainers and counter-terrorism experts, leave at the end of next year, the Taliban’s ability to convince Afghans to help them will be severely reduced.
“The Taliban narrative throughout this period, throughout this decade, has been 'we're fighting the foreigners.' And that was their rallying call. Well, guess what. At the end of 2014 they're not fighting the foreigners, they're fighting Afghans - their own brothers, and by the way their sisters, in the Afghan armed forces. So their narrative breaks at the end of 2014,” he said.
It could still all go wrong, but Afghanistan researcher Matthew Willis, at London’s Royal United Services Institute, has a view similar to the admiral’s.
“I think they will hold it together. A lot of people are concerned that, following 2014, Afghanistan will revert to a 1990s sort of situation, which ultimately was civil war. But there is no reason that history should repeat itself,” said Willis.
After years of war and dashed hopes, however, no one is expressing confidence, only hope and caution.
And as he prepares to retire after 37 years in the U.S. Navy, Admiral Stavridis shares one lesson he has learned, partly from the Afghanistan war.
“In the end, in this 21st century, we won't deliver security from the barrel of a gun. We won't deliver security from the barrel of a gun,” he said.
The admiral said security and freedom will be gained through international cooperation and a communications strategy to explain and promote democratic values, with only sparing use of the military to which he devoted his career.
Will fine words fix Afghanistan?
Foreign ministers from Heart of Asia group resolve to cooperate and 'implement' key projects once US and NATO withdraw.
Aljazeera By Robin Forestier-Walker 26 Apr 2013
There is widespread concern that after 2014's US and NATO troop withdrawal, Afghanistan could lapse back into widespread insecurity and decline. However, there is a process which is aimed at not letting that happen.
In the Kazakh commercial city of Almaty, foreign ministers of the Heart of Asia group signed a new declaration underlining their resolve to cooperate on, and now 'implement,' key projects under the Istanbul Process - named after their first meeting which was held in the Turkish city in November, 2011.
A key development to come out of all this was an agreement by China to host the next round of talks - a sign that Beijing is more willing to engage with the Afghan problem.
Just another talking shop? Well, with a bit of a difference. Washington is keen to stress (and so too are the Afghans) that this is not a US-led venture. In fact, the US and Europeans are just observers on the sidelines and in Almaty, did not actively take part.
"We did not shape the communique. In fact we might have written it differently," said one Western official.
Sometimes the interesting stuff is hidden within the print. The communique notes the termination of the end of the NATO/ISAF mission and the transformation of the role into one of assisting the Afghan National Security Forces by the end of 2014.
According to one source, that sort of line (inoffensive at face-value) is why it took 12 hours to thrash out the text among mid-level diplomats.
The Iranians had to wake their minister in the middle of the night for approval, the source said. Until now, the Iranians have generally refused to acknowledge ISAF having any legitimate role in Afghanistan.
There are six key project areas appetisingly described as CBMs (Confidence Building Measures).
1. Counterterrorism - (led by Afghanistan, Turkey and the UAE) sharing ideas and expertise with special emphasis on countering cross-border arms trading.
2. Counternarcotics - all countries resolve to expand cooperation. This one is led by Russia and Azerbaijan.
3. Disaster-management - in a natural and manmade disaster-prone region, more knowledge exchange. Led by Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
4. Trade, Commerce and Investment - led by India. The aim is to help Afghanistan go from an aid-based to a trade-driven economy by holding investment summits and finding other ways to highlight commercial opportunities in Afghanistan.
5. Regional Infrastructure - led by Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. This includes building major infrastructure projects such as road and rail networks - cross-border power grids and gas pipelines like the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India pipeline(TAPI).
6. Education - led by Iran. Cooperation on higher education and providing scholarships and vocational training to Afghans as well as cultural exchange programmes.
All the diplomats I spoke to were naturally enthusiastic about the meeting, and the Afghan delegation said it was looking forward to seeing concrete steps in the coming months - including the possibility of a regional trust fund for cross-border projects - something that hasn't existed before.
When reading the declaration there is a suspicion that it is all fine wording. For it hides the very real differences in opinion over the future of Afghanistan. Its neighbours have competing interests and ideas about how much of a threat or a business opportunity Afghanistan will shape up to be.
The true extent of the usefulness of all this chatter will become clear if it turns into action before, and after, the 2014 troop withdrawal. Then Afghanistan will begin to sink, or swim, on its own.
I could justify fighting in Afghanistan — until the Boston bombing
Washington Post By Thomas Gibbons-Neff April 26, 2013
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a sergeant in the Marines, is president of the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association. He served as a rifleman in the 1st battalion, 6th Marines in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010.
This past week, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told investigators that he and his brother set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in part because of their opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who fought in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, the news made me wonder: Had my war brought the horrors of battle home?
My family’s house is a few blocks from the blast site, where flying shrapnel killed three people and severed many limbs. When a relative told me, his voice brimming with anger, that he wanted to kill those responsible, I couldn’t help feeling that I had somehow failed. My family sounded like any of the Marines I’d met after a comrade stepped on an improvised explosive device: angry, confused, spiteful. War had seeped through my front door, and now my five-foot-tall flower child of a mother wanted revenge served cold.
When the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks happened, I was a 13-year-old boy barely out of my Pokemon phase. I remember that day vividly, as we all do: gigantic pieces of steel dissolving into a sea of ash.
By April 15, 2013, my frame of reference had changed. Now, at 25, I’ve experienced the horror of the Boston finish line many times. In Afghanistan, I shoved my knee into wounded Marines’ pressure points, smelled the cordite of gunfights and explosions, and said goodbye to dear friends. Recently, however, I’ve returned home to complete an English degree at Georgetown University.
The images of the Boston bombing reminded me of things I saw in southern Helmand province, not the streets where I usually do my Christmas shopping. Many witnesses described the marathon carnage as “a war zone,” and indeed it was: mangled flesh, shocked faces, splattered blood.
Except the runners and spectators in Boston weren’t wearing body armor and helmets. No helicopter swooped in through a cloud of purple smoke to rescue them. They weren’t combatants. Rather, they were strangers, family members, co-workers and friends in Nikes and New Balances, turning sweat-drenched T-shirts and belts into tourniquets.
I deployed to Afghanistan believing my presence in that country would help stop attacks such as Boston’s from happening. But instead, my war has spilled over, striking the city where my 22-year-old brother goes to school and where my mom, until recently, felt perfectly safe eating lunch outdoors.
The Tsarnaev brothers aren’t the first alleged terrorists to cite U.S. military intervention in other countries as a reason for targeting civilians, and they won’t be the last. Despite our best efforts and valor, I wonder, have America’s wars made the homeland less safe? Sure, we’ve killed and captured thousands of radicals who wanted to harm Americans. But in doing so, have we created more?
It wasn’t always easy to justify serving in a war that has devolved from its initial aim of ousting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to a nation-building effort that appeared to have come 10 years too late. The conflict has dragged on for more than a decade, becoming increasingly unpopular after years of mixed results and no clear definition of victory. The counterinsurgency mantra of “clear-hold-build” echoed in our ears as we fought an elusive enemy and slowly pushed them out of the city centers. Day by day, we measured victory by the number of wells we helped build and the time that passed without a casualty.
Some of my best friends came home in flag-draped coffins, and no one ever convincingly explained to me why and what for. On a recent winter afternoon, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered an upbeat speech at Georgetown on the future of Afghanistan, I had the chance to ask him what the sacrifice of my brothers-in-arms meant to him and his countrymen.
The answer I received was a diatribe. Karzai cited Sept. 11, 2001, and America’s global war on terror but never directly answered my question. I would have liked a “thank you” or a sentence with “greatly appreciated” in it. But there was not a hint of gratitude in his response.
While I was deployed, I went to bed at night believing that I was protecting the homeland because coming after me and my fellow Marines was a much easier commute for those so hell-bent on killing Americans. But that argument no longer makes sense if my war has inspired enemies at home.
The brother who stands accused of packing pressure cookers with low-grade explosives and ball bearings is an American citizen. My own countryman was apparently responsible for filling my mom with deep hatred, for killing an 8-year-old boy and three others, for attacking my home town.
I’d like to believe that my war prevented an attack such as Boston’s for some years. If the 16 months I spent in Afghanistan delayed the bombing for just a day, then it would have been worth it.
But my war failed to help those people at the finish line. As those bombs exploded, my war came home.
Seeking asylum in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle By Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi 26.04.2013
The plight of Afghan refugees is known, but less familiar are the dissidents and victims of civil war who have sought refuge in Afghanistan although the war-torn country has no asylum law as yet.
Amir Hamza Halimov fled to Kabul in the early 1990s. He was one of tens of thousands of Tajiks who crossed the border to Afghanistan when Emomali Rahmon became president and civil war broke out in Tajikistan.
Most returned after the end of the war but Halimov, a dissident who feared repercussions because of his anti-regime activity if he returned, stayed in Afghanistan. He and his two sons live in a guesthouse provided by the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations.
The ministry has provided accommodation to about 150 asylum seekers from Iran, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iraq. Although there is no asylum law, it acts according to the tradition of nanawatai that allows a beleaguered person, even an enemy, to enter the house of any other person and make a request of him which cannot be refused, even at the cost of the host's own life or fortune.
There are also countless numbers of separatists from Indian-administered Kashmir who have taken refuge in Afghanistan as well as Muslims from China's Xinjiang province.
Confused status
Until now, Halimov's food and living expenses had been covered by the ministry but he says this support stopped three months ago. Now he has to buy food on credit. He cannot work because his status is unclear. He has spent six years going from one authority to the next to clear his case but in vain. He is still not officially recognized as an asylum seeker nor does he have Afghan nationality.
The Afghan president has the right to grant Afghan nationality if he wants to. Earlier this month, four Iranians who fled their country after taking part in post-election protests in 2009 were granted Afghan nationality by President Hamid Karzai. The government is currently drafting asylum and nationality legislation. Finally Afghanistan will be "a country that can provide refuge in the classical sense" says Karl Kopp from German rights organization Pro Asyl. People persecuted for political reasons or fleeing civil war will be able to apply for asylum. The country can be a "corridor of protection" in a region where there is no traditional system of protection. However, Kopp points out that the main problem is still how to create stable, secure conditions in the devastated country.
In Afghanistan, focusing on the details
GlobalPost correspondent Ben Brody describes the ground beneath his feet in Zabul Province.
Global Post By Ben Brody April 26, 2013
Qalat, Afghanistan - EDITOR’S NOTE: Eastern Afghanistan was hit with an earthquake and flash flooding this week, which killed as many as 33 people and demolished thousands of homes. The epicenter of the quake was 17 miles from Jalalabad, according to a report by the BBC.
Before the quake hit, GlobalPost reporter Ben Brody was further south in Qalat, Zabul province, observing the details of the ground beneath his feet.
Tired, squinting and sweating in the arid, violent southeastern Afghan landscape it's easy to miss the little things. Little things like tiny chips of jade and lizards hiding in the tumbleweeds. Like little fern-like plants that smell of sage when crushed under a boot, or caterpillars attacking the plants and ants attacking the caterpillars. Or lizards attacking the ants and the caterpillars.
Afghanistan is famously rich in minerals, and many of them are easily visible. I recently spent three days at a makeshift gunnery range in Zabul Province, and the slow pace of the days' activities gave me plenty of time to stare at the ground. The longer I looked and the stiller I sat, the more I saw.
Letting my eyes unfocus a bit, it became clear that the ground's greenish cast did not come from the sparse vegetation, but rather from the dirt and rock itself. Jade and turquoise chips were everywhere, many embedded within chunks of brittle black rock.
The distant, forbidding mountains showed reddish iron-rich rock. Huge black and white carrion birds wheeled between them. The difficulty with Afghanistan's mineral wealth, I think, is that it's all buried under Afghanistan.
An Afghan interpreter hired by the US Army told me the sage-smelling plant is called Thayjaa and is used locally to treat kidney problems.
A yellow wren-like bird gathered twigs from these pungent plants and the thorny tumbleweeds to construct a nest in a little depression. No one knew what the bird was called. We watched its dutiful flitting for nearly an hour as a camel spider raced back and forth on the hard ground.
One soldier, a reptile enthusiast, scooped up a docile, foot-long lizard from the brush at the Zabul range and identified it as a bearded dragon, a popular (and expensive) creature in the pet trade.
Research indicates that while bearded dragons are native to Australia, the lizard in question was actually a rock agama, a related species. With no surface moisture to speak of, except what the few plants store in their tough stems, it is hard to understand how these animals live.
A football-sized Russian tortoise lay drying on its side, its shell torn in half by one of the myriad predators who stalk these plains. While on guard duty at night, sharp-eyed soldiers see hyenas, foxes and hounds stalking about in the dusty gloom.
In nearby Kandahar two years ago, I investigated (with great skepticism) soldiers' reports of giant cats stalking them on night patrols. After being stalked myself, I found they were in fact caracals, which look like smallish mountain lions with a bobcat's tufted ears. A biologist suggested to me that the soldiers' noisy patrolling may have flushed small rodents into adjacent fields, so the caracals follow the patrol to prey on the rats and mice.
Removing rocks and minerals from Afghanistan is strictly forbidden - departing soldiers have been known to have their dirty boots seized by customs officials - so it's worth slowing down and taking a long look while you're on the ground.
Afghans stranded in Pakistan's no-man's land
Generations of Afghan refugees raised in Pakistan now face the prospect of returning to a home they have never known.
Aljazeera By Asad Hashim 26 April 2013
Quetta, Pakistan - Ali Muhammad, an Afghan resident of Chaghai, in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, was born in 1981, as his family was fleeing the Afghan-Soviet war for the relative safety of Pakistan.
Today, 32 years later, he and 12 of his family members are returning to their homeland. "We know the conditions in Helmand [where I am from]," he says. "We have been in touch with our family members there. They say that it is better now, compared with how it used to be."
Muhammad is one of more than 5.7 million Afghan refugees who have voluntarily repatriated to their home country since 2002, according to figures compiled by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). More than 3.8 million of those have been from Pakistan, a country which still hosts an estimated 2.7 million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees.
Fewer than half of those refugees live in camps (40.6 percent), with the rest residing in rural and urban areas across Pakistan.
Afghan refugees in Pakistan represent one of the largest and most prolonged refugee situations in the world, agencies working in the field say. Their population is assisted by both the UNHCR and the Pakistani government, in the form of the provincial Commissionerates for Afghan Refugees and the Ministry for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON).
International protection
The UNHCR's assistance mainly takes the form of providing support for health, education, infrastructure and community service projects, says Charles Lynch-Staunton, the head of the agency's Quetta office, which oversees services for the approximately 350,000 registered refugees currently residing in Balochistan.
"The UNHCR's main mandate is a protection mandate, and therefore [that is] what we do throughout the refugee population, whether it is in our ten refugee villages, or among the communities, where actually the majority of Afghan refugees are," he explained. "We are able to monitor their protection and situational protection needs, and we are able to assess those needs and find different solutions for them. Those may be medical solutions, legal solutions, in some cases trying to assist with vocational training."
Old Saranan, located in Pishin district, about 40km from Quetta, is a camp that houses more than 9,000 people and which has been open since 1979. While the homes here are made largely of mud and earth, rather than brick and mortar, and Old Saranan remains cut off from the main electricity grid, residents say that conditions are much better today than they used to be.
And, perhaps more importantly, the administration of the camp is now better organised, and self-run, says Bashir Kakar, a project officer with the UNHCR.
Community elders at the camp have formed committees, which deal with internal issues ranging from funding for the camp's self-run school to proposals for new projects to be presented before the government or the UNHCR. There are currently 11 such proposals in process, and work is ongoing on a water project that was recently approved, bringing fresh water to the camp from 11km away through a pipeline network being laid down by camp residents themselves.
Local burdens
There is a focus on schooling, camp elders say, and when the UNHCR provided enough funding for a school (for both boys and girls) with classes up to Grade 8 (age 14), the community quickly chipped in to run Grades 9 to 11 (up to age 17) through their own funds. Today, 820 children study at the school, which is staffed entirely by residents of the camp.
"The community centre works in various areas, such as health, education and others," says 62-year-old Hayat Khan, one of the leaders of the camp's community committee. "When we have something to propose, we take it to the UNHCR or to one of its implementing partners."
Khan, originally from Kandahar province in Afghanistan, was one of the first residents of Old Saranan. "My family was the first to arrive at this camp, in June 1979. Back then, we did not know the people here, we lived in tents. Slowly, we started to build relationships with those around us. Now, we feel like we are from here, like we belong here."
While that sense of belonging may exist among refugees, a distinct difference is also maintained. Their schooling, for example, is done in Farsi, and the curriculum is that of the Afghan Board of Education, as approved by the Pakistani SAFRON.
Abdul Saroor Kakar, the provincial commissioner for Afghan refugees in Balochistan, told Al Jazeera that, while Pakistan was happy to fulfil its obligations under national and international laws governing conduct with refugees, it was finding itself hard-pressed in terms of resources.
"The host community, which has sustained the refugee population for 30 years, has seen its resources used and its facilities damaged by the extra burden," Kakar explained.
The UN's Refugee Affected Host Areas (RAHA) project is meant to assuage those concerns. Started in 2009, the initiative is aimed at providing infrastructure support to those areas where refugees are being hosted, with a particular focus on education, health, water and sanitation projects that will outlast the refugee population's stay in the country.
Last year, more than 2.2 million people - Pakistani citizens and Afghan refugees alike - benefited from RAHA interventions, according to the UNHCR's figures.
Voluntary repatriation
Pakistan's policy for dealing with the Afghan refugee crisis was due to expire on December 31, 2012, and was extended for a further six months. The extension creates a window during which a new policy may be formulated, Kakar explained. But failing that, all 2.7 million refugees in the country - registered or unregistered – will be declared illegal immigrants.
"One message is clear from our own side: that their local integration [in terms of being given Pakistani citizenship] cannot happen in any way. They will remain refugees, and they will have to go, one way or another," said Kakar.
The only "durable solution", Lynch-Staunton agrees, is the voluntary repatriation of the refugees. With that in mind, the UNHCR has been running three Voluntary Repatriation Centres (two in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and one in Balochistan), that have, since 2002, repatriated 3.82 million refugees.
The centre at Baleli, located just a few kilometres outside of Quetta's city centre, repatriated 16,113 people in 2012, out of a total of 83,423 people to be repatriated from Pakistan during the year.
Returnees go through a process of identity verification, where their refugee ID cards (known as PoR, or Proof of Registration, cards) are checked against a national database and finally cancelled (the approximately one million unregistered refugees are not eligible for UNHCR financial assistance). All family members over the age of five also have their eyes scanned and their records checked against the UNHCR's database of returnees, to prevent fraud.
Finally, all family members are given a medical exam by on-site doctors, who identify any issues that may make it difficult for them to travel, and prescribe medicine from a basic on-site store of medications. UNHCR staff also hold an exit interview with the head of the family, to determine if they are well-informed about their decision to move back, and if they will require any follow-up assistance from the agency's staff in Afghanistan.
Once verified, each individual is given a grant of $150 to aid in the expenses associated with repatriation, and a further discretionary grant of up to $30 based on their final destination and the transportation costs associated with getting there. The funds are disbursed on their arrival in Afghanistan at special encashment centres set up for the purpose.
Many returning refugees, however, face a dire situation when they return. According to the UN's figures, returning citizens face 35 percent lower rates of access to land, and male unemployment that is 63 percent higher than that of their counterparts who stayed in the country.
Once cycled through the repatriation process, however, the refugees cannot return to Pakistan easily - they will have to apply for visas if they wish to return to a land that, for many, has now become home.
"My children have lived here their whole lives," says Muhammad, who is bound for Helmand. "So, obviously, they don't want to go home. But the money we get here - hopefully it will help us set up a new life."
With the refugee population's stay as prolonged as it has been, they have laid down roots here, many say.
"Today," says Hayat Khan, "both are my countries. I have received much love here If I am ever given a choice, I would like to live both in my native Kandahar, and here, and come and go between the two houses."
Taliban Release Deminers After A Week Hostage in Kandahar
TOLOnews.com By TOLOnews.com 27 April 2013
Taliban insurgents have released 10 deminers in southern Kandahar province on Saturday, after having held them hostage for a week, local officials said.
The deminers were taken hostage in Maiwand district of the province, while the deminers from Mine Clearance Cultivator (MCC) were busy clearing roadside mines in the district, provincial spokesman Jawid Faisal said.
"The deminiers have been beaten badly by the group [Taliban] and they were released today," Jawid Faisal said.
Last week, the 27 deminers were busy clearing mines in the district when they were surrounded by the Taliban. Seventeen other miners escaped from the area using one of their cars.
But 10 others were taken hostage by the Taliban.
The local officials had said that the deminers didn't inform the security forces while they were busy in the area.
Maiwand district is considered one of the insecure areas in the province where insurgents use improvised explosive devices to target the local security forces.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Agence-France Presse – Sat, Apr 27, 2013 6:31 PM NZST
Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan announced the start of their annual "spring offensive" against the US-backed government, vowing a nationwide series of attacks as foreign troops withdraw.
The Islamist extremists said that multiple suicide bombings, "insider attacks" by Afghan soldiers and "special military tactics" would target international airbases and diplomatic buildings to inflict maximum casualties.
They warned Afghans working for President Hamid Karzai's "stooge" regime to distance themselves from the government to avoid being caught up in the promised violence, and called for young people not to join the police or army.
This year's "fighting season" is seen as crucial to Afghanistan's future as its much-criticised security forces pit themselves against the insurgents who have fought against the Kabul government since 2001.
NATO combat operations in Afghanistan are due to end next year, and coalition commanders say that the local army and police have made enough progress to provide security and keep the Taliban at bay.
Afghanistan's fighting season traditionally begins in April or May as snow recedes from the mountains, and in recent years the Taliban have marked the occasion with a public declaration of their intent to bring down Karzai.
The insurgents' latest statement celebrated the start of the NATO withdrawal, saying that "the enemy, with all its military might, has been overwhelmed and finally forced to flee from their military bases".
It added that this year's offensive, named after 7th-century general Khalid bin Waleed, would start on Sunday "in unison throughout the country... against the transgressing invaders and their degenerate backers".
Last week a study by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office found attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents rose 47 percent in January-March compared with the same period last year.
The United Nations has separately reported a rise of almost 30 percent in civilian casualties in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, with 475 civilians killed and 872 wounded.
But NATO insists that the war is being won, with US General Joseph Dunford, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), saying on Thursday there was "indisputable" progress towards the goal of a stable nation.
Dawlat Waziri, a defence ministry spokesman, told AFP that Afghan forces were ready to take on the rebels alone.
"The Taliban are not able to fight face-to-face, so they heavily rely on roadside bombs and suicide attacks and their attacks inflict a heavy toll on Afghan civilians," he added.
Afghan security forces during an operation in Laghman Province on April 11, 2013. Taliban insurgents announced the start of their annual "spring offensive" against the US-backed government, vowing a nationwide series of attacks as foreign troops withdraw.
Afghan troops hold their ground at high cost
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE CONNOLLY, Afghanistan (AP) — The Americans could be spotted waiting for the Chinooks in the 2 a.m. darkness only by the shape of their night-vision goggles, as they shared a cigarette with glowing embers in quick drags among the kneeling assaulters in the chilled dark.
They would be on the first two helicopters to drop into the villages of the Khogyani district in the shadows of the Tora Bora mountains, kicking off a four-day operation against the Taliban by roughly 175 Americans and 1,250 Afghan troops, in a teeth-clenching test of U.S. mentoring and training.
The Afghans were lined up behind the Americans, leaning back on their 130-pound backpacks, saving their strength to carry the loads onto the Chinooks for their first air assault, and without the Americans' high-tech goggles, letting their eyes adjust to the dark for the assault to come.
They didn't talk much.
A Predator drone feed showed the groups landing in the darkened district — dark spots trudging slowly up hills and sometimes falling into ditches — U.S. and Afghan alike. They set up a post to oversee the insurgent-ridden villages they would be guarding for the next four days as Afghan police cleared them out house by house.
Intelligence intercepts showed most of the insurgents already had fled to the farthest village just beneath Tora Bora, where Osama bin Laden escaped his American pursuers, after watching the Afghan troops and police mass the day before.
The Afghans and their American security advisers from the U.S. Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, were less interested in pursuing them than in making sure they could not return, making way for the Afghan local police who would take their place.
In the daylight, village elders were invited to meet with the Afghan general who led the attack, and they said they welcomed the troops because they were Afghans, not foreigners.
The U.S. brigade's commander, Col. Joseph "J.P." McGee, sat quietly in a corner, making the briefest of comments. This was an Afghan-to-Afghan conversation.
Overall in the operation, there were tactical missteps that Americans pointed out privately to the Afghan commanders, tactfully out of earshot of their subordinates. There were shortfalls in supplies, and requests were sometimes denied for U.S. air support for nighttime bombing runs or medical assistance.
But in The Associated Press' visits to Khogyani district and some of the country's most contested southern and eastern provinces — Helmand, Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar — multiple operations were led or carried out mostly by Afghans. Their officers were doing the bulk of the planning and execution, responding without U.S. aid to large-scale Taliban attacks or choosing targets the Americans sometimes disagreed with, if the U.S. advisers were consulted at all.
The uneven but steady progress is encouraging for the U.S. commanders trying to hand off responsibility ahead of the December 2014 drawdown of most U.S. forces, from roughly 66,000 Americans at the start of this year, to an as-yet-undetermined residual force of NATO troops that have been estimated will be around 8,000 to 10,000.
The Afghans are paying heavily for that lead role, with casualty figures rising steadily, more than doubling from 550 Afghan soldiers and police killed in 2011 to more than 1,200 last year, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
This year is bloodier still, with 300 security personnel, mostly police, killed in March alone, according to a top Afghan security official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to discuss the unpublished figure. That monthly average is roughly equivalent to the total number of U.S. forces lost in 2012, according to AP's own count of 297 U.S. troops killed, out of a total of 394 coalition forces.
About 660 militants were reported to have been killed by coalition and Afghan forces so far this year, compared with close to 3,000 militants last year. The NATO command does not issue reports on the number of insurgents its troops have killed, and Afghan military figures, from which the AP compiles its data, cannot be independently verified.
Still, there is little public outcry over the Afghan losses.
While the Afghan army's attrition rate spiked to 4.1 percent in January, it has dropped back closer to the annual average of 2.6 percent. The combined Afghan army and police roster remains in excess of 332,753, according to figures provided by NATO's training mission, and the combined forces are clawing back some new ground from the Taliban, U.S. and Afghan officials say.
Arrayed against the green Afghan forces is a still-formidable force of Taliban and other militants. Their numbers are small, at an estimated 20,000 to 30,000, compared with the Afghan security forces' strength.
But they are knitted into the rural fabric of much of Afghanistan, well-versed in guerrilla tactics and local terrain, well-supplied with explosives and ammunition and plugged into enough local tipsters to ambush Afghan security forces when they are at their most vulnerable.
By summer's end, the U.S., the Afghans and the Taliban should know whether Afghan forces have what it takes to hold their ground, Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the AP.
"If the Afghans perform in a manner that we expect them to, that's going to have a demoralizing effect on the Taliban," he said in his headquarters office in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
"It's going to reduce the capabilities of the Taliban psychologically, and as importantly, it's going to cause the Afghan people to be more confident" in their forces and less likely to support or join the Taliban, he added.
Senior administration and coalition officials said the goal is to reach a sort of bloody equilibrium, where the Afghan security forces hold the populated areas and major trade routes to allow commerce to grow, and thereby slowly diminish the ranks of the Taliban by providing other employment opportunities for would-be fighters.
"What they need to be able to do is to secure key areas ... and eventually wait out and let the insurgency wither away," said McGee, at his headquarters in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangahar province.
"It would be folly to try to roll up into every valley and fight these guys. It is what we used to do," McGee said. "I think (the Afghans) will pursue a very different approach than we did .... more patient, more focused on endurance as opposed to attrition of the enemy, and I think eventually the Taliban will lose relevance and support over time," he said.
The Taliban know this is a make-or-break season for the Afghan forces and are targeting accordingly.
From November 2012 through the end of January, 75 percent of attacks were against coalition forces and only 25 percent were targeted at Afghans, according to a senior coalition intelligence official, who spoke anonymously as a condition of discussing the confidential statistics.
This past winter, the numbers were reversed, with 75 percent of the attacks now striking Afghans and 25 percent targeting coalition or coalition and Afghan joint patrols.
The police remain the Afghans' most vulnerable target. They're usually in lightly defended posts, in remote areas and still considered far less trained, with incidents of drug use and corruption still common.
But NATO deputy commander Lt. Gen. Nick Carter said five of Afghanistan's 26 army brigades, each with 450 to 600 troops, can operate independently, and an additional 16 are capable of operating with limited advice from the U.S.-led international coalition.
U.S. military officers who monitor performance say they've tracked a marked improvement in Afghan army units during the past 12 months, with 101 units improving and only seven dropping in the ratings.
One of those newly independent Afghan army brigades is in Helmand province, scene of some of the fiercest fighting, and worst losses, for U.S. Marines.
Now the once-bustling Camp Dwyer, a satellite base a 20-minute flight south from the larger Camp Leatherneck, has shrunk from some 5,000 Marines and support staff to roughly 800. About 60 of those Marines are living in a smaller base, next to the Afghan National Army's 1st Brigade, 215th Corps headquarters.
The last time Marines there went on joint patrols with the Afghans was in the fall, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Philip Treglia, who leads the security force adviser team.
"We're shrinking from 60 to 24 advisers," this spring, Treglia said. "This summer I'm recommending we go down to five," he added. "The Afghans just aren't going to need us."
Treglia's Afghan counterpart, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Sujai, bolstered that prediction only weeks earlier by conducting a four-day, 650-man army and police operation to clear insurgents and opium-producing poppy fields out of Trek Nawa, a known Taliban safe haven.
He only told the Americans about the operation when it was done.
"It was a test," Sujai said. "I wanted to prove we could do it alone."
Treglia described another incident, this one watched by the Americans on aerial surveillance.
About 80 Taliban fighters approached the town of Marjah from the north, stopping at a mosque to let the locals know they were coming back to take over.
By the time they'd reached a second mosque, residents had called the Afghan security forces — army, police and the militia-like local police, who happened to all be interrelated by marriage. Some of them were even former Taliban, Treglia said. A 400-man force headed north and intercepted the would-be invaders.
The Americans counted at least 30 bodies left on the battlefield, all Taliban, according to Sujai. The rest fled.
Treglia said sometimes the Afghans don't want the Americans there, because they don't want them watching, such as when the police shake down local farmers for bribes, in return for burning only part, instead of all, of their poppy crops.
The police then demand the farmers turn in the Taliban when they visit to collect the drugs, thus both lining their pockets and bumping up their arrest record, Treglia explained.
"We used to try to stop it. Now, we let the Afghan general know — and he knows — and it's up to them to sort it out," the American said.
In some cases, the Americans are forcing the Afghans to take charge before they want to, hoping to wean the Afghans of support that soon won't be available as the U.S. forces shrink in southern Afghanistan in the coming months.
If the Afghans are wounded on an operation, the Marines get them to describe the injuries and only send a U.S. aerial medevac crew if the wounds are life-threatening, explained U.S. Marine Maj. Christopher Bourbeau, deputy commander of the mission.
Bourbeau traded flying combat helicopters over southern Afghanistan to join the adviser team and has watched the Afghans develop over a four-year period of rotations through the area.
Bourbeau has enlisted Marine medics and the doctors and nurses at the U.S. medical facility at neighboring Camp Dwyer to teach the Afghans how to transport their less severely wounded troops by road. The troops got a grim reminder to pay closer attention when they were hit a few months ago, however, and failed to tie tourniquets on the wounded men.
"They lost guys because no one did that simple thing," Bourbeau.
He launched a brigade-wide refresher course after the losses and demonstrated the results by staging an impromptu pop quiz of one of the Afghan bomb technicians as he walked around the Afghan base. He tossed a tourniquet at the man, said, "Go," and the Afghan had tied a tourniquet on the American officer's leg in just over 30 seconds.
There was a similar spirit of just-say-no tough love at Forward Operating Base Joyce in Kunar province. When the U.S. refused to supply a remote Afghan guard post in the hills above their side-by-side bases, the Afghans built a road to it themselves.
"They secure the camp better than we do now," said U.S. Army security adviser Lt. Col Bryan Laske.
By the numbers, they are finding 20 percent more improvised explosive devices, or IEDs on average than the Americans did, Laske added.
When Col. Hayatullah, who uses only one name, agreed to clear the Pech Valley, he addressed the villagers before the operation alone.
"I told them I am a fellow Muslim," said the commander of the Afghan army's 2nd Brigade, 201st Corps, gesturing to the Arabic inscription "God is great" on one shoulder of his uniform. "I told them I come with a Quran in one hand and a sword in the other. Your actions determine which one I use."
The troops took the valley and are holding it, something the Americans never could in a decade of battle, Laske said.
In a planning meeting for another clearing operation to come, the Afghan army commanders and a group of police and intelligence chiefs argued over how the operation would unfold, with the Americans sitting silently at the far end of the crowded conference table.
"We're not going to leave the enemy sitting a kilometer away from us and do nothing," shouted Afghan Maj. Mahboob, who also goes by one name, leaping to his feet and straining across the table for emphasis.
"The coalition is going to leave, and we have to be able to do this!" he said. The officer's words were translated by a U.S. military translator, but he later repeated what was said in English when asked.
In the operation McGee oversaw to the south, the 1,250 Afghans took and held the towns, leaving Afghan local police in their stead, McGee said.
"There were no civilian casualties, and the villagers are supporting it and at least 100 local police have started work," said Khogyani district's administration chief, Abdul Wahab Momand.
But even as that operation was going ahead, up to eight suicide bombers hit a police headquarters in nearby Jalalabad, about 75 miles east of Kabul, killing least five officers. On the same day in Helmand province, a car bomb struck a British base, killing one of the coalition troops. Those are grim reminders that militants intend to keep fighting.
"Do we still have challenges? Sure we do," Dunford said. "Literacy, logistics ... technical capabilities. ... But in terms of their ability to provide security to the Afghan people in 2013 and beyond, I'm confident that they'll be able to do that," he said.
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Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.
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Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier
Public uprising against Pakistani and Afghan Taliban in Kunar
By MEENA HASEEB - 27 Apr 2013, 9:22 am Khaama Press
Heavy clashes have been reported between local residents and Taliban militants in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan on Friday.
According to local authorities in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan, the incident took place in Dangam district after local residents started resisting local and foreign Taliban militants in this district.
Provincail goveror Syed Fazlullah Wahidi confirming the report said efforts have been put in place by local tribal elders to reconcile between the local resident and Taliban militants.
He said, “Local residents started public uprising against the Pakistani Taliban militants and currently local tribal elders have organized a Jirga to end the violence.”
Local elders in Dangam are saying that the clashes between the local resident and Taliban militants took place after Taliban fighters were torturing two residents.
They also said that Taliban militants attacked the local residents while they gathered to discuss with the militants.
According to the local tribal elders, at least two Taliban suicide bombers have been killed and another one has been injured during the clashes, while four local residents have also been injured.
Local elders are also saying that clashes have ended however both local resident and Taliban fighters are prepared for another fight, which may take place any time.
NATO Commander: ‘Cautious Optimism’ Ahead of Afghanistan Withdrawal
Al Pessin VOA News April 26, 2013
BRUSSELS — The top NATO military commander says, with all the challenges still facing Afghanistan, he is only “cautiously optimistic” that the Afghan government and security forces will be able to maintain security and prevent the country from again becoming a safe haven for terrorists after most foreign forces withdraw at the end of next year. U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis spoke about the situation in an interview.
It’s been nearly four years since Stavridis took over at U.S. European Command, and a few days later as commander of NATO operations worldwide.
Since then, he has made numerous visits to Afghanistan to provide strategic guidance to troops and commanders from dozens of countries, and to monitor progress.
But four years later - and after more than 11 years of Western military involvement, thousands of casualties and billions of dollars spent - he can muster only ‘cautious’ optimism that in the end the Afghanistan effort will succeed.
“I think we've gone, over the four years that I've been in command, that I can speak to personally, from a period of time in which I had doubts about our ability to succeed to today, [when] I think we will succeed. And I remain cautiously optimistic that we will,” said Stavridis.
That optimism is based in large part on what the admiral sees as significant improvements in the Afghan security forces, which showed him some of what they can do during a visit two years ago.
More broadly, he said Afghanistan’s civilian society also is changing for the better.
Meanwhile, Taliban attacks continue in several parts of the country. But the admiral said that when foreign troops, except for trainers and counter-terrorism experts, leave at the end of next year, the Taliban’s ability to convince Afghans to help them will be severely reduced.
“The Taliban narrative throughout this period, throughout this decade, has been 'we're fighting the foreigners.' And that was their rallying call. Well, guess what. At the end of 2014 they're not fighting the foreigners, they're fighting Afghans - their own brothers, and by the way their sisters, in the Afghan armed forces. So their narrative breaks at the end of 2014,” he said.
It could still all go wrong, but Afghanistan researcher Matthew Willis, at London’s Royal United Services Institute, has a view similar to the admiral’s.
“I think they will hold it together. A lot of people are concerned that, following 2014, Afghanistan will revert to a 1990s sort of situation, which ultimately was civil war. But there is no reason that history should repeat itself,” said Willis.
After years of war and dashed hopes, however, no one is expressing confidence, only hope and caution.
And as he prepares to retire after 37 years in the U.S. Navy, Admiral Stavridis shares one lesson he has learned, partly from the Afghanistan war.
“In the end, in this 21st century, we won't deliver security from the barrel of a gun. We won't deliver security from the barrel of a gun,” he said.
The admiral said security and freedom will be gained through international cooperation and a communications strategy to explain and promote democratic values, with only sparing use of the military to which he devoted his career.
Will fine words fix Afghanistan?
Foreign ministers from Heart of Asia group resolve to cooperate and 'implement' key projects once US and NATO withdraw.
Aljazeera By Robin Forestier-Walker 26 Apr 2013
There is widespread concern that after 2014's US and NATO troop withdrawal, Afghanistan could lapse back into widespread insecurity and decline. However, there is a process which is aimed at not letting that happen.
In the Kazakh commercial city of Almaty, foreign ministers of the Heart of Asia group signed a new declaration underlining their resolve to cooperate on, and now 'implement,' key projects under the Istanbul Process - named after their first meeting which was held in the Turkish city in November, 2011.
A key development to come out of all this was an agreement by China to host the next round of talks - a sign that Beijing is more willing to engage with the Afghan problem.
Just another talking shop? Well, with a bit of a difference. Washington is keen to stress (and so too are the Afghans) that this is not a US-led venture. In fact, the US and Europeans are just observers on the sidelines and in Almaty, did not actively take part.
"We did not shape the communique. In fact we might have written it differently," said one Western official.
Sometimes the interesting stuff is hidden within the print. The communique notes the termination of the end of the NATO/ISAF mission and the transformation of the role into one of assisting the Afghan National Security Forces by the end of 2014.
According to one source, that sort of line (inoffensive at face-value) is why it took 12 hours to thrash out the text among mid-level diplomats.
The Iranians had to wake their minister in the middle of the night for approval, the source said. Until now, the Iranians have generally refused to acknowledge ISAF having any legitimate role in Afghanistan.
There are six key project areas appetisingly described as CBMs (Confidence Building Measures).
1. Counterterrorism - (led by Afghanistan, Turkey and the UAE) sharing ideas and expertise with special emphasis on countering cross-border arms trading.
2. Counternarcotics - all countries resolve to expand cooperation. This one is led by Russia and Azerbaijan.
3. Disaster-management - in a natural and manmade disaster-prone region, more knowledge exchange. Led by Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
4. Trade, Commerce and Investment - led by India. The aim is to help Afghanistan go from an aid-based to a trade-driven economy by holding investment summits and finding other ways to highlight commercial opportunities in Afghanistan.
5. Regional Infrastructure - led by Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. This includes building major infrastructure projects such as road and rail networks - cross-border power grids and gas pipelines like the Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India pipeline(TAPI).
6. Education - led by Iran. Cooperation on higher education and providing scholarships and vocational training to Afghans as well as cultural exchange programmes.
All the diplomats I spoke to were naturally enthusiastic about the meeting, and the Afghan delegation said it was looking forward to seeing concrete steps in the coming months - including the possibility of a regional trust fund for cross-border projects - something that hasn't existed before.
When reading the declaration there is a suspicion that it is all fine wording. For it hides the very real differences in opinion over the future of Afghanistan. Its neighbours have competing interests and ideas about how much of a threat or a business opportunity Afghanistan will shape up to be.
The true extent of the usefulness of all this chatter will become clear if it turns into action before, and after, the 2014 troop withdrawal. Then Afghanistan will begin to sink, or swim, on its own.
I could justify fighting in Afghanistan — until the Boston bombing
Washington Post By Thomas Gibbons-Neff April 26, 2013
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a sergeant in the Marines, is president of the Georgetown University Student Veterans Association. He served as a rifleman in the 1st battalion, 6th Marines in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010.
This past week, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly told investigators that he and his brother set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in part because of their opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a Marine who fought in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2010, the news made me wonder: Had my war brought the horrors of battle home?
My family’s house is a few blocks from the blast site, where flying shrapnel killed three people and severed many limbs. When a relative told me, his voice brimming with anger, that he wanted to kill those responsible, I couldn’t help feeling that I had somehow failed. My family sounded like any of the Marines I’d met after a comrade stepped on an improvised explosive device: angry, confused, spiteful. War had seeped through my front door, and now my five-foot-tall flower child of a mother wanted revenge served cold.
When the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks happened, I was a 13-year-old boy barely out of my Pokemon phase. I remember that day vividly, as we all do: gigantic pieces of steel dissolving into a sea of ash.
By April 15, 2013, my frame of reference had changed. Now, at 25, I’ve experienced the horror of the Boston finish line many times. In Afghanistan, I shoved my knee into wounded Marines’ pressure points, smelled the cordite of gunfights and explosions, and said goodbye to dear friends. Recently, however, I’ve returned home to complete an English degree at Georgetown University.
The images of the Boston bombing reminded me of things I saw in southern Helmand province, not the streets where I usually do my Christmas shopping. Many witnesses described the marathon carnage as “a war zone,” and indeed it was: mangled flesh, shocked faces, splattered blood.
Except the runners and spectators in Boston weren’t wearing body armor and helmets. No helicopter swooped in through a cloud of purple smoke to rescue them. They weren’t combatants. Rather, they were strangers, family members, co-workers and friends in Nikes and New Balances, turning sweat-drenched T-shirts and belts into tourniquets.
I deployed to Afghanistan believing my presence in that country would help stop attacks such as Boston’s from happening. But instead, my war has spilled over, striking the city where my 22-year-old brother goes to school and where my mom, until recently, felt perfectly safe eating lunch outdoors.
The Tsarnaev brothers aren’t the first alleged terrorists to cite U.S. military intervention in other countries as a reason for targeting civilians, and they won’t be the last. Despite our best efforts and valor, I wonder, have America’s wars made the homeland less safe? Sure, we’ve killed and captured thousands of radicals who wanted to harm Americans. But in doing so, have we created more?
It wasn’t always easy to justify serving in a war that has devolved from its initial aim of ousting the Taliban and al-Qaeda to a nation-building effort that appeared to have come 10 years too late. The conflict has dragged on for more than a decade, becoming increasingly unpopular after years of mixed results and no clear definition of victory. The counterinsurgency mantra of “clear-hold-build” echoed in our ears as we fought an elusive enemy and slowly pushed them out of the city centers. Day by day, we measured victory by the number of wells we helped build and the time that passed without a casualty.
Some of my best friends came home in flag-draped coffins, and no one ever convincingly explained to me why and what for. On a recent winter afternoon, after Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered an upbeat speech at Georgetown on the future of Afghanistan, I had the chance to ask him what the sacrifice of my brothers-in-arms meant to him and his countrymen.
The answer I received was a diatribe. Karzai cited Sept. 11, 2001, and America’s global war on terror but never directly answered my question. I would have liked a “thank you” or a sentence with “greatly appreciated” in it. But there was not a hint of gratitude in his response.
While I was deployed, I went to bed at night believing that I was protecting the homeland because coming after me and my fellow Marines was a much easier commute for those so hell-bent on killing Americans. But that argument no longer makes sense if my war has inspired enemies at home.
The brother who stands accused of packing pressure cookers with low-grade explosives and ball bearings is an American citizen. My own countryman was apparently responsible for filling my mom with deep hatred, for killing an 8-year-old boy and three others, for attacking my home town.
I’d like to believe that my war prevented an attack such as Boston’s for some years. If the 16 months I spent in Afghanistan delayed the bombing for just a day, then it would have been worth it.
But my war failed to help those people at the finish line. As those bombs exploded, my war came home.
Seeking asylum in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle By Waslat Hasrat-Nazimi 26.04.2013
The plight of Afghan refugees is known, but less familiar are the dissidents and victims of civil war who have sought refuge in Afghanistan although the war-torn country has no asylum law as yet.
Amir Hamza Halimov fled to Kabul in the early 1990s. He was one of tens of thousands of Tajiks who crossed the border to Afghanistan when Emomali Rahmon became president and civil war broke out in Tajikistan.
Most returned after the end of the war but Halimov, a dissident who feared repercussions because of his anti-regime activity if he returned, stayed in Afghanistan. He and his two sons live in a guesthouse provided by the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations.
The ministry has provided accommodation to about 150 asylum seekers from Iran, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iraq. Although there is no asylum law, it acts according to the tradition of nanawatai that allows a beleaguered person, even an enemy, to enter the house of any other person and make a request of him which cannot be refused, even at the cost of the host's own life or fortune.
There are also countless numbers of separatists from Indian-administered Kashmir who have taken refuge in Afghanistan as well as Muslims from China's Xinjiang province.
Confused status
Until now, Halimov's food and living expenses had been covered by the ministry but he says this support stopped three months ago. Now he has to buy food on credit. He cannot work because his status is unclear. He has spent six years going from one authority to the next to clear his case but in vain. He is still not officially recognized as an asylum seeker nor does he have Afghan nationality.
The Afghan president has the right to grant Afghan nationality if he wants to. Earlier this month, four Iranians who fled their country after taking part in post-election protests in 2009 were granted Afghan nationality by President Hamid Karzai. The government is currently drafting asylum and nationality legislation. Finally Afghanistan will be "a country that can provide refuge in the classical sense" says Karl Kopp from German rights organization Pro Asyl. People persecuted for political reasons or fleeing civil war will be able to apply for asylum. The country can be a "corridor of protection" in a region where there is no traditional system of protection. However, Kopp points out that the main problem is still how to create stable, secure conditions in the devastated country.
In Afghanistan, focusing on the details
GlobalPost correspondent Ben Brody describes the ground beneath his feet in Zabul Province.
Global Post By Ben Brody April 26, 2013
Qalat, Afghanistan - EDITOR’S NOTE: Eastern Afghanistan was hit with an earthquake and flash flooding this week, which killed as many as 33 people and demolished thousands of homes. The epicenter of the quake was 17 miles from Jalalabad, according to a report by the BBC.
Before the quake hit, GlobalPost reporter Ben Brody was further south in Qalat, Zabul province, observing the details of the ground beneath his feet.
Tired, squinting and sweating in the arid, violent southeastern Afghan landscape it's easy to miss the little things. Little things like tiny chips of jade and lizards hiding in the tumbleweeds. Like little fern-like plants that smell of sage when crushed under a boot, or caterpillars attacking the plants and ants attacking the caterpillars. Or lizards attacking the ants and the caterpillars.
Afghanistan is famously rich in minerals, and many of them are easily visible. I recently spent three days at a makeshift gunnery range in Zabul Province, and the slow pace of the days' activities gave me plenty of time to stare at the ground. The longer I looked and the stiller I sat, the more I saw.
Letting my eyes unfocus a bit, it became clear that the ground's greenish cast did not come from the sparse vegetation, but rather from the dirt and rock itself. Jade and turquoise chips were everywhere, many embedded within chunks of brittle black rock.
The distant, forbidding mountains showed reddish iron-rich rock. Huge black and white carrion birds wheeled between them. The difficulty with Afghanistan's mineral wealth, I think, is that it's all buried under Afghanistan.
An Afghan interpreter hired by the US Army told me the sage-smelling plant is called Thayjaa and is used locally to treat kidney problems.
A yellow wren-like bird gathered twigs from these pungent plants and the thorny tumbleweeds to construct a nest in a little depression. No one knew what the bird was called. We watched its dutiful flitting for nearly an hour as a camel spider raced back and forth on the hard ground.
One soldier, a reptile enthusiast, scooped up a docile, foot-long lizard from the brush at the Zabul range and identified it as a bearded dragon, a popular (and expensive) creature in the pet trade.
Research indicates that while bearded dragons are native to Australia, the lizard in question was actually a rock agama, a related species. With no surface moisture to speak of, except what the few plants store in their tough stems, it is hard to understand how these animals live.
A football-sized Russian tortoise lay drying on its side, its shell torn in half by one of the myriad predators who stalk these plains. While on guard duty at night, sharp-eyed soldiers see hyenas, foxes and hounds stalking about in the dusty gloom.
In nearby Kandahar two years ago, I investigated (with great skepticism) soldiers' reports of giant cats stalking them on night patrols. After being stalked myself, I found they were in fact caracals, which look like smallish mountain lions with a bobcat's tufted ears. A biologist suggested to me that the soldiers' noisy patrolling may have flushed small rodents into adjacent fields, so the caracals follow the patrol to prey on the rats and mice.
Removing rocks and minerals from Afghanistan is strictly forbidden - departing soldiers have been known to have their dirty boots seized by customs officials - so it's worth slowing down and taking a long look while you're on the ground.
Afghans stranded in Pakistan's no-man's land
Generations of Afghan refugees raised in Pakistan now face the prospect of returning to a home they have never known.
Aljazeera By Asad Hashim 26 April 2013
Quetta, Pakistan - Ali Muhammad, an Afghan resident of Chaghai, in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, was born in 1981, as his family was fleeing the Afghan-Soviet war for the relative safety of Pakistan.
Today, 32 years later, he and 12 of his family members are returning to their homeland. "We know the conditions in Helmand [where I am from]," he says. "We have been in touch with our family members there. They say that it is better now, compared with how it used to be."
Muhammad is one of more than 5.7 million Afghan refugees who have voluntarily repatriated to their home country since 2002, according to figures compiled by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). More than 3.8 million of those have been from Pakistan, a country which still hosts an estimated 2.7 million registered and unregistered Afghan refugees.
Fewer than half of those refugees live in camps (40.6 percent), with the rest residing in rural and urban areas across Pakistan.
Afghan refugees in Pakistan represent one of the largest and most prolonged refugee situations in the world, agencies working in the field say. Their population is assisted by both the UNHCR and the Pakistani government, in the form of the provincial Commissionerates for Afghan Refugees and the Ministry for States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON).
International protection
The UNHCR's assistance mainly takes the form of providing support for health, education, infrastructure and community service projects, says Charles Lynch-Staunton, the head of the agency's Quetta office, which oversees services for the approximately 350,000 registered refugees currently residing in Balochistan.
"The UNHCR's main mandate is a protection mandate, and therefore [that is] what we do throughout the refugee population, whether it is in our ten refugee villages, or among the communities, where actually the majority of Afghan refugees are," he explained. "We are able to monitor their protection and situational protection needs, and we are able to assess those needs and find different solutions for them. Those may be medical solutions, legal solutions, in some cases trying to assist with vocational training."
Old Saranan, located in Pishin district, about 40km from Quetta, is a camp that houses more than 9,000 people and which has been open since 1979. While the homes here are made largely of mud and earth, rather than brick and mortar, and Old Saranan remains cut off from the main electricity grid, residents say that conditions are much better today than they used to be.
And, perhaps more importantly, the administration of the camp is now better organised, and self-run, says Bashir Kakar, a project officer with the UNHCR.
Community elders at the camp have formed committees, which deal with internal issues ranging from funding for the camp's self-run school to proposals for new projects to be presented before the government or the UNHCR. There are currently 11 such proposals in process, and work is ongoing on a water project that was recently approved, bringing fresh water to the camp from 11km away through a pipeline network being laid down by camp residents themselves.
Local burdens
There is a focus on schooling, camp elders say, and when the UNHCR provided enough funding for a school (for both boys and girls) with classes up to Grade 8 (age 14), the community quickly chipped in to run Grades 9 to 11 (up to age 17) through their own funds. Today, 820 children study at the school, which is staffed entirely by residents of the camp.
"The community centre works in various areas, such as health, education and others," says 62-year-old Hayat Khan, one of the leaders of the camp's community committee. "When we have something to propose, we take it to the UNHCR or to one of its implementing partners."
Khan, originally from Kandahar province in Afghanistan, was one of the first residents of Old Saranan. "My family was the first to arrive at this camp, in June 1979. Back then, we did not know the people here, we lived in tents. Slowly, we started to build relationships with those around us. Now, we feel like we are from here, like we belong here."
While that sense of belonging may exist among refugees, a distinct difference is also maintained. Their schooling, for example, is done in Farsi, and the curriculum is that of the Afghan Board of Education, as approved by the Pakistani SAFRON.
Abdul Saroor Kakar, the provincial commissioner for Afghan refugees in Balochistan, told Al Jazeera that, while Pakistan was happy to fulfil its obligations under national and international laws governing conduct with refugees, it was finding itself hard-pressed in terms of resources.
"The host community, which has sustained the refugee population for 30 years, has seen its resources used and its facilities damaged by the extra burden," Kakar explained.
The UN's Refugee Affected Host Areas (RAHA) project is meant to assuage those concerns. Started in 2009, the initiative is aimed at providing infrastructure support to those areas where refugees are being hosted, with a particular focus on education, health, water and sanitation projects that will outlast the refugee population's stay in the country.
Last year, more than 2.2 million people - Pakistani citizens and Afghan refugees alike - benefited from RAHA interventions, according to the UNHCR's figures.
Voluntary repatriation
Pakistan's policy for dealing with the Afghan refugee crisis was due to expire on December 31, 2012, and was extended for a further six months. The extension creates a window during which a new policy may be formulated, Kakar explained. But failing that, all 2.7 million refugees in the country - registered or unregistered – will be declared illegal immigrants.
"One message is clear from our own side: that their local integration [in terms of being given Pakistani citizenship] cannot happen in any way. They will remain refugees, and they will have to go, one way or another," said Kakar.
The only "durable solution", Lynch-Staunton agrees, is the voluntary repatriation of the refugees. With that in mind, the UNHCR has been running three Voluntary Repatriation Centres (two in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and one in Balochistan), that have, since 2002, repatriated 3.82 million refugees.
The centre at Baleli, located just a few kilometres outside of Quetta's city centre, repatriated 16,113 people in 2012, out of a total of 83,423 people to be repatriated from Pakistan during the year.
Returnees go through a process of identity verification, where their refugee ID cards (known as PoR, or Proof of Registration, cards) are checked against a national database and finally cancelled (the approximately one million unregistered refugees are not eligible for UNHCR financial assistance). All family members over the age of five also have their eyes scanned and their records checked against the UNHCR's database of returnees, to prevent fraud.
Finally, all family members are given a medical exam by on-site doctors, who identify any issues that may make it difficult for them to travel, and prescribe medicine from a basic on-site store of medications. UNHCR staff also hold an exit interview with the head of the family, to determine if they are well-informed about their decision to move back, and if they will require any follow-up assistance from the agency's staff in Afghanistan.
Once verified, each individual is given a grant of $150 to aid in the expenses associated with repatriation, and a further discretionary grant of up to $30 based on their final destination and the transportation costs associated with getting there. The funds are disbursed on their arrival in Afghanistan at special encashment centres set up for the purpose.
Many returning refugees, however, face a dire situation when they return. According to the UN's figures, returning citizens face 35 percent lower rates of access to land, and male unemployment that is 63 percent higher than that of their counterparts who stayed in the country.
Once cycled through the repatriation process, however, the refugees cannot return to Pakistan easily - they will have to apply for visas if they wish to return to a land that, for many, has now become home.
"My children have lived here their whole lives," says Muhammad, who is bound for Helmand. "So, obviously, they don't want to go home. But the money we get here - hopefully it will help us set up a new life."
With the refugee population's stay as prolonged as it has been, they have laid down roots here, many say.
"Today," says Hayat Khan, "both are my countries. I have received much love here If I am ever given a choice, I would like to live both in my native Kandahar, and here, and come and go between the two houses."
Taliban Release Deminers After A Week Hostage in Kandahar
TOLOnews.com By TOLOnews.com 27 April 2013
Taliban insurgents have released 10 deminers in southern Kandahar province on Saturday, after having held them hostage for a week, local officials said.
The deminers were taken hostage in Maiwand district of the province, while the deminers from Mine Clearance Cultivator (MCC) were busy clearing roadside mines in the district, provincial spokesman Jawid Faisal said.
"The deminiers have been beaten badly by the group [Taliban] and they were released today," Jawid Faisal said.
Last week, the 27 deminers were busy clearing mines in the district when they were surrounded by the Taliban. Seventeen other miners escaped from the area using one of their cars.
But 10 others were taken hostage by the Taliban.
The local officials had said that the deminers didn't inform the security forces while they were busy in the area.
Maiwand district is considered one of the insecure areas in the province where insurgents use improvised explosive devices to target the local security forces.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com