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Suicide car bomb strikes NATO convoy in Afghan capital, killing at least 6 and wounding many
Associated Press By Associated Press May 16, 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least six people in the explosion and wounding more than 30, police and hospital officials said.
A Muslim militant group, Hizb-e-Islami, claimed responsibility for the early morning attack. The powerful explosion rattled buildings on the other side of Kabul and sent a pillar of white smoke into the sky in the city’s east.
NATO spokesman Lt. j.g. Quenton Roehricht said the international alliance can “confirm an explosion occurred on a coalition convoy in Kabul this morning,” but provided no further details.
Kabul provincial police spokesman Hashmad Stanakzi said the suicide bomber attacked the convoy with a car packed with explosives. “The explosion was very big. It set the nearby buildings on fire,” Stanakzi said.
He said there were people killed and several were wounded but he could not immediately give exact numbers. “The casualty numbers are high and mostly civilian.”
Kabul Deputy Police Chief Daud Amin said it was difficult to immediately estimate the number of dead because the blast had shredded many of the victims.
“We saw two dead bodies of children on the ground,” Amin said. “But the rest of the bodies were scattered in pieces around.”
Two Kabul hospitals reported that at least six dead and 37 wounded were brought in from the scene, city hospitals chief Kabir Amiri said, adding that the toll could increase as more hospitals report in.
The bodies were too badly charred to immediately identify, he added. A spokesman for Hizb-e-Islami, Haroon Zarghoon, told The Associated Press that one of the movement’s operatives carried out the attack on what he described as two vehicles of American advisers. He claimed that most of the American advisers were killed and their vehicles destroyed, though neither Afghan nor coalition officials have confirmed any foreign casualties. Afghan insurgents often exaggerate the success of their attacks.
Hizb-e-Islami is headed by 65-year-old former warlord Gubuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and one-time U.S. ally who is now listed as a terrorist by Washington. The militia has thousands of fighters and followers across the country’s north and east.
Thursday’s attack was the second in eight months claimed by Hizb-e-Islami. In September, the militant group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed least 12 people. At the time, Hizb-e-Islami said the attack was revenge for the film “Innocence of Muslims,” which was made by an Egyptian-born American citizen and infuriated Muslims abroad for its negative depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
NATO Troops, Civilians Killed in Kabul Attack
VOA News May 16, 2013
NATO say two of its service members and four contracted civilians in Afghanistan have died in a suicide car bombing.
Afghan police say the bomber targeted a convoy of foreign military vehicles in the capital Thursday morning. Officials say 37 people were wounded in the explosion
The Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Kabul. A spokesman for the group said American advisers were the targets.
Hezb-e-Islami is a militant group which shares some of the anti-foreigner, anti-government aims of the Taliban.
Taliban militants have been ramping up attacks on government forces lately, seeking to destabilize Afghanistan as more foreign troops prepare to draw down from the 12-year war.
2 Afghan suicide attacks kill 8, wound 41 in single day
KABUL, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The war-weary Afghans experienced two deadly suicide bombings in one single day across the country on Thursday, leaving eight people, including two attackers, dead and more than three dozen others injured, officials confirmed.
In the first incident which happened during the rush hours in the morning in the fortified capital city Kabul, seven people, including the attacker and six non-combatants, were killed and nearly three dozen others wounded.
"The suicide attack carried out by terrorists this morning in Shah Shahid locality of Kabul city at around 08:00 a.m. local time claimed the lives of six civilians and injured 35 others majority of them children," a statement of Kabul police released here said.
It also added that blast had damaged several houses, shops and cars at nearby.
Although, there is no confirmation on the NATO-led forces possible casualties, according to locals at the site of the blast, some foreign soldiers were either killed or injured in the attack.
The attacker, according to a taxi driver, drove an explosives- packed Toyota Corolla car into a two-vehicle convoy of the foreign forces, tearing a vehicle to shreds and injuring 10 people including seven passersby and three foreigners.
Meantime, a spokesman of NATO-led forces when approached by Xinhua confirmed the attack against coalition forces, but noted details will be released after investigation.
Some 90 minutes later another attack, also in the shape of suicide bombing hit a bazaar in Paktika province 155 km south of Afghan capital Kabul leaving two people including the attacker dead and wounding six others, all civilians. "A terrorist strapped explosive device in his body blew himself up next to a pro-government tribal elder named Shir Zaman in the bazaar of Sarobi district at around 09:30 a.m. local time today killing a shopkeeper and injuring six others including Shir Zaman and two police," provincial police chief Daulat Khan Zadran told Xinhua.
The attacker was also killed in his blast, he added.
Militancy and violent incidents have been on rise since April 28 when the Taliban outfit launched its so-called spring offensive in Afghanistan.
Pakistan says controversy over border post with Afghanistan resolved
ISLAMABAD, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan said on Thursday that the conflict with Afghanistan over construction of a border post has been resolved.
Clashes took place between border forces of the two countries in recent weeks which left an Afghan soldier dead and several Pakistani troops injured.
The Afghan government accused the Pakistan army of constructing a border post on the Afghan side while Pakistan insisted that it has renovated one of its old posts on its own side of the border.
"The issue of border post has been resolved," said Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.
The spokesman told his weekly briefing that Pakistan has been emphasizing the need for effective border management to interdict undesirable cross-border activity.
Pakistan is in regular contact with Afghan authorities, including military to military contact, he said.
Replying to a question about the upcoming visit to Pakistan by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the spokesman said that no details of the visit are available as yet.
Pakistan and the United States enjoy mutually collaborative relationship, he said, adding, "Pakistan would like to have good relations with the United States based on mutual respect and mutual benefits."
Afghanistan mines revenue worth AFN 285 million missing: EITI
By MEENA HASEEB - 16 May 2013, 1:30 pm Khaama Press
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) following an audit report revealed that AFN 285 million worth revenue from Afghanistan’s natural resources have been lost.
EITI officials on Wednesday said that taxation documents of the private companies does not match with the documents available in the ministry of finance of Afghanistan.
Head of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Bashir Khan Salehi told reporters that the audit was conducted for the years 2009 and 2011, with an aim to clarify the transparency in Afghanistan mining sector revenue.
Salehi said, “The main issue is that international accountibility systems are not implemented in afghanistan and this has created a major problem. The first audit report showed a difference of AFN 68 million while in second audit report a difference of AFN 285 million was revealed. We have hired another company to audit the work and its result will be announced soon.”
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) department was formed with the financial support of Afghan government and World Bank in 2009.
According to EITI, several private companies including Aynak Copper, Mesaq-e-Sharq, Khoshang Brothers have issues and difference in their financial accounts.
EITI officials said they found considerable diferences in their documents while comparing with the ones available in the ministry of finance of Afghanistan.
Afghan finance ministry officials have not commented on Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s reports so far.
The Afghan government has awarded several small and medium mining projects to private companies during the recent years, including Aynak Copper mine in Logar province, Haji Gak irone ore in Bamiyan province and fuel extraction projects i northern Afghanistan.
However, there are concerns and reports regarding the lack of transparency in the projects which have been awarded to various companies.
What have we learned about stabilization in Afghanistan? Not much.
Foreign Policy By Ashley Jackson May 15, 2013
As of this year, Afghanistan has experienced ten years of stabilization intervention, but what is there to show for it? Marked by massive expenditure with little to no accountability, and often marred by waste, stabilization in Afghanistan started out with arguably honorable aims. However, as troops prepare to leave in 2014, what legacy will be left behind?
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) began with perhaps the best of intentions: to fill the vacuum of law and order left by the fall of the Taliban and undertake reconstruction, badly needed in a country devastated by three decades of conflict. The security situation was perceived to be relatively benign, with the major threats being criminals and warlords seeking to reassert power.
PRTs did some positive work, often acting as the only authority in a security vacuum, and were appreciated, at least early on, by Afghans. They were no substitute, however, for the effective governance and security required. PRTs' predominantly military staff received little to no training, lacked the technical skills required to carry out development work and focused more on short term quick impact projects instead of the long term state-and-peace-building work that was so badly needed. Rather than seeking to build Afghan capacity - a central component of their mandate - they often worked around the government. The PRTs also created winners and losers, supporting local strongmen or funneling money through often corrupt construction companies.
Despite early U.S. government acknowledgement of these problems, PRTs expanded rapidly, led by a multitude of different nations that were often unable to effectively coordinate amongst each another. In 2008, the US Congress described the situation as one with "no clear definition of the PRT mission, no concept of operations or doctrine, no standard operating procedures."
As insecurity spread, the dual security and reconstruction roles of PRTs became increasingly schizophrenic. One incident in Ghazni province in 2004 saw PRT officials offering to build a well for villagers just weeks after they had fired rockets into the very same village killing nine children. Unsurprisingly, residents were hardly consoled and Afghan goodwill for the PRTs was quickly eroded.
But the amount of money available for military-led development continued to increase. In 2009, the US Army published the Commanders' Guide to Money as a Weapons System, which defined aid as "a nonlethal weapon" to be utilised to "win the hearts and minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the insurgents." Aid devoted to these objectives rapidly increased: annual funding for the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), the primary U.S. PRT funding stream, rose from $200m in 2007 to $1bn in 2010.
No centralised, comprehensive records appear to have been kept on the PRTs, either within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or the Afghan government, and rarely even within PRTs. When auditors found CERP project files incomplete or non-existent in 2009, CERP project managers told US auditors that their focus "was on obligating funds for projects rather than monitoring their implementation." Unsurprisingly there has been no comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of CERP-funded programmes; the most thorough examination is a 2011 SIGAR audit of CERP programming in the insecure eastern province of Laghman. It's a harrowing read. Of the $53m CERP funds allocated to the PRT between 2008 and 2011, 92% (or $49.2m) was dedicated to projects found by SIGAR to be "at risk or have questionable outcomes." Funds were not managed in accordance with standard operating procedures, which were finally established in 2009, and none of the 69 projects had sufficient documentation to track outcomes. Agai
n and again, the audit found the Afghan government unable to take over PRT projects.
PRTs were not the only instrument of stabilization. Between 2003 and 2012, USAID obligated $1.1bn in stabilization funding to for-profit contractors but such projects fared no better. One example is USAID's ‘flagship counterinsurgency program' the Local Government and Community Development Programme (LGCD). The budget and timelines for the $400m, five-year project mushroomed despite questionable early evaluation findings and the fact that over half of LGCD's expenditures were on staff costs and security. USAID officials were unable to visit several sites because it was too dangerous. As for its impact, the USAID Inspector-General reported ‘the project's overall success seemed highly questionable.'
Part of the problem is that the goals of stabilization in Afghanistan were never comprehensively, consistently or clearly articulated. Stabilization works on the assumption that conflicts are fuelled by grievances about poverty or neglect, and that development projects that improve governance, opportunities and services can ‘stabilize' conflict situations. But evidence is lacking or discouraging. A 2011 Tufts university study found while there was some evidence some stabilization interventions can work in the short term, there is little evidence of long term security gains and much more indicating a tendency to create local conflict and ‘perverse incentives' to maintain insecurity.
In an world where aid agencies are required to prove their ‘value for money' and aid-receiving governments are pressured to become fully transparent, the lack of systematic, government-led push for accountability for the multi-billion dollar investments is hypocritical and irresponsible - and speaks to an ideological unwillingness to address the problems and pitfalls of stabilization approaches.
The lack of interest in documenting the impact of the stabilization efforts - both what works and what doesn't - does not bode well for the rest of the world. As global focus turns to other complex emergencies in Mali, Yemen and Somalia, stabilization is increasingly the approach of choice. Without recognizing systematic problems, stabilization interventions are unlikely to improve and begin to fulfill their lofty goals. After the troop drawdown in Afghanistan next year, perhaps we'll have a better idea of the true legacy of stabilization. But for now, the future looks worryingly unstable.
U.S. Hands Over Nation-Building Projects To Afghans
NPR By Sean Carberry May 16, 2013
On a sunny spring day in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province, Afghan officials and U.S. troops and civilians gather inside the ancient mud fort in the center of Forward Operating Base Gardez. They're attending a ceremony marking the formal end of the work of the provincial reconstruction team, or PRT.
As the international military presence in Afghanistan draws down, so too are these small units, which often consist of dozens of military personnel along with a few civilians. The teams have spent billions of dollars building schools and roads, and they've tried to help strengthen the capacity of Afghan local governance.
The U.S. launched its first reconstruction team in Paktia in November 2002, just months after a major military operation aimed at clearing Taliban and al-Qaida militants from the area. It was a new twist on an old concept: nation building.
"This unique organization comprised of active Army, Air Force, Army National Guard, Army Reserve, U.S. government agencies, all work together to provide governance, security, economic assistance and reconstruction for Paktia province," says Capt. Eric Rauglas, who emceed the closing ceremony.
Nation-Building Teams
The reconstruction teams were designed to build things the Afghans needed, promote security, and to win hearts and minds. And, as military units, the teams were designed to operate in areas too insecure for traditional development agencies to work.
Over the years, the U.S. and its allies created 26 PRTs across Afghanistan. More than half remain in operation, but they will all be gone by the end of 2014, when the current NATO mission ends.
"[They were] always designed to just buy time and space for our Afghan leaders to establish a strong and responsive government," says Air Force Lt. Col. John Chong, the last of 14 commanders to serve as head of the Paktia reconstruction team.
That high staff turnover is one of the major criticisms of the reconstruction efforts.
But at the Gardez base on the day of the ceremony, everyone is singing the praises of the Paktia team.
"The people of Paktia province will not forget the assistance they received," says Juma Khan Hamdard, the provincial governor. "The people will continue to have needs here. Before they asked the PRT for assistance, and now they will ask the provincial government."
Will The Afghan Government Provide?
Hamdard says he hopes the central government in Kabul will provide him with the financial support the reconstruction team once did so he can deliver projects and services now.
Some of the attendees at the ceremony believe it will. But Jamila Yousefzai, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, isn't so sure.
"We don't believe that the government will be able to deliver 100 percent of the services the PRT was doing," she says.
But U.S. diplomat Stephen McFarland believes the Paktia provincial government is ready to stand on its own.
"You stay too long and inadvertently you smother the capacity that you're trying to build up," he says.
McFarland and others acknowledge it's been a struggle to find a balance between providing services the local governments couldn't, while not creating a culture of dependency on the reconstruction teams, who have access to vast amounts of money and the ability to make things happen quickly. The Paktia team has spent more than $280 million in its time on the ground.
"The presence of PRTs and a lot of international advisers, and a high dependence on them, it kind of made the provincial administrations a little bit lazy," says Hamid Afghan, who manages PRT transition issues for the Afghan government. "Even simple works, they were relying on PRTs," he says.
At times through the years, the reconstruction teams have come in for criticism from Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, who decried what he termed a parallel structure that was working on projects without coordinating with his government.
That was a result of an early culture of doing so-called quick-impact projects designed to win hearts and minds, says Afghan, the government official. That approach led to countless poorly planned and constructed projects that have been abandoned.
He cites a project in Badakhshan province, where a new bridge was built — with no road access.
And some of the work by Afghan subcontractors was so shoddy that it had to be knocked down and restarted. Tales of the money wasted in the process of contracting and subcontracting are legendary.
Clare Lockhart, author of Fixing Failed States, says that several years ago there was a sea change in the approach.
"Where they've worked, they really have been geared to supporting and building Afghan governance," she says.
The teams began to tailor projects to Afghan needs. And they began to focus more on strengthening the capacity of provincial governments. But, Lockhart adds, that capacity still varies enormously across the country.
Progress In The Panjshir Valley
As a result, some provinces are more likely than others to be able to complete the many unfinished projects being handed over to them as the reconstruction teams leave. It's too soon to tell if the Paktia government can stand on its own. But other teams have been closed long enough to judge their legacy.
The Panjshir Valley is a few hours' drive north of Kabul. It's one of the most scenic places in Afghanistan. And it's also one of the safest.
Standing in a valley, Mohammed Tahir, head of technical services for Panjshir province, points to all the surrounding projects. There are wind turbines on top of one of the peaks. The road we're standing on, still under construction, was another project. Many of the government buildings were constructed by the U.S.-run Panjshir reconstruction team, which left in the summer of 2011.
Tahir says that the team provided money and technical expertise, but Afghan contractors did the work, and they are still working on projects here. He admits the quality of the work is uneven, but he believes the government will have no problems completing the projects.
However, some Panjshir residents weren't so sure.
"Americans were doing a good job in terms of construction, but the work slowed down when the local authorities took over the projects," says 25-year-old Haji Ahadmir, who works as a driver. "The work on important projects like building schools and roads has stopped now." A number of people said the central government isn't providing the support to Panjshir that the reconstruction team did. That's where Afghan and Western officials say the real problem lies: For the foreseeable future, Kabul won't have the resources to make up for the drop in reconstruction team spending. And that could undermine provincial governments as they try to stand on their own.
Kabul Rejects Report That It Levied $1 Billion In Taxes On Contractors
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15, 2013
KABUL -- The Afghan Finance Minister has rejected a report by a U.S. government watchdog that Kabul has levied nearly $ 1 billion in illegitimate taxes on contractors working on U.S.-funded reconstruction projects,
Omar Zakhilwal told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15 that the audit report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was “absolutely false, totally wrong."
"It could be political or it could be pure ignorance,” he said. “Either way it is irresponsible, either way it's very unfortunate and I certainly would want them to correct this."
Zakhilwal also said that the report would “create confusion” and undermine trust between the Afghan government and Washington.
In a report issued May 14, SIGAR said a recent audit found that the Afghan Ministry of Finance levied $921 million in taxes and penalties since 2008 on just 43 contractors supporting U.S. government efforts in Afghanistan.
According to the SIGAR report, taxes were also levied on contractors that both the U.S. and Afghan government had agreed should be exempted.
Special Inspector General John Sopko said in a statement accompanying the release of the audit results that "it's disturbing that the Afghan government is targeting American contractors with unjust taxes and intimidation."
But Zakhilwal said the taxes are not unjust and called on SIGAR to meet with his ministry to discuss the differences in their positions:
“We believe that the contractors who still owe billions of dollars in taxes are taking shelter behind the (exemption) agreements that we have but we believe their tax exempt status does not cover the activity that they are involved in, and SIGAR's position is that it probably does,” he said. “But they have to sit down with us and convince us of that.”
The SIGAR report said that in the dispute over tax-exempt status, some contract firms have refused to pay taxes. It charged that, in response, the Finance Ministry "has restricted contractors' freedom of movement and refused to renew business licenses, and the Afghan government has even arrested some contractor personnel.”
The report concluded that "the combined effect is the potential interruption of support to U.S. military operations."
The status of contractors is a pivotal issue in negotiations between Kabul and Washington on a possible long-term US military presence in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO combat forces by the end of 2014.
Why insider attacks are down in Afghanistan
No one claims the problem is solved, but officials are cautiously hopeful that the lower number of 'green-on-blue' killings in Afghanistan this year means preventive measures are having an impact.
Christian Science Monitor By Howard LaFranchi May 15, 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan - The gunfire that pierced the night in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province last September was a troubling surprise to the 20 US soldiers manning a fortified checkpoint near the Pakistan border.Before long, the soldiers would know the terrifying truth: that it was Afghan police officers who, after climbing the wall of a hillside observation post assigned to keeping an eye out for Taliban movement, had emptied their weapons on their American comrades inside.
That night, four Americans died at the hands of their Afghan assailants, making it the deadliest of a string of insider attacks that added up to the worst year for what the military calls “green-on-blue” violence of the Afghanistan war. Last year 61 international forces – at least 34 of them Americans – were killed by Afghan security forces, nearly half of the 132 killed by insider attacks since 2008.
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The Zabul incident intensified an already growing sense of crisis in the US and Afghan militaries over the problem of insider attacks. The result has been a series of steps on both the Afghan and international sides that officials say are having an impact in addressing a particularly demoralizing form of violence.
Yet while initial evidence seems encouraging -- so far in 2013, six US and other international soldiers have been killed in insider attacks – there is also reason for caution. For one thing, those six deaths represent 13 percent of total coalition deaths this year, about the same as the 15 percent of total coalition fatalities they represented last year, according to statistics compiled by the Long War Journal. And the summer fighting season is just getting under way.
On the other hand, well over half of 2012’s 34 insider killings occurred in the first five months of the year. By comparison, this year’s six killings through mid-May represent a reduction of about two-thirds.
(NATO Command in Afghanistan reports slightly different inside-attack figures than Long War Journal: 129 coalition forces killed since 2008, 62 in 2012, and four this year.)
No one claims the problem is solved, but officials are cautiously hopeful that the lower number of “green-on-blue” killings so far this year means that steps – ranging from increased vetting of Afghan security forces and reduced occasions where Afghans are armed while in the company of US and other foreign forces, to enhanced cultural awareness training – are having an impact.
“This violence is an embarrassment for both sides, it’s an issue that can create a lot of mistrust between us – and in the last months we have taken a lot of measures against this issue,” says Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, chief of Army staff in the Afghan military.
Among the measures implemented: The Afghan Army has added hundreds of counterintelligence officers to keep an eye on recruits for signs of “anti-foreigner” sentiment, soldiers returning from leave are interviewed and watched for signs of Taliban indoctrination. Like the US and other NATO countries, Afghanistan has put more emphasis on religious and cultural-sensitivity training.
On the coalition side, the US has implemented a “guardian angels” program under which units designate soldiers to provide security to troops who are training, overseeing, and accompanying Afghan security forces.
The US has also reinforced its counterintelligence capabilities, and augmented cultural awareness training among its troops. The cultural sensitivity effort is tacit acknowledgment, some military experts say, that events of 2012 like the unintentional Quran burnings at Bagram Air Base and the video posted on the Internet of US soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters helped incite the rage behind some of the attacks.
The Taliban issued a statement shortly after the Zabul attack, for example, claiming it was carried out by police officers it had recruited to retaliate for a US-made anti-Muslim video that denigrates the prophet Muhammad.
Still, NATO officials say steps taken by the Afghan Army in particular have been critical in reducing the threat.
“We’ve enhanced training in how to guard against it, and there is a decrease,” says Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, commander of the Afghan Training Mission-Afghanistan. “But most important is w hat the government of Afghanistan is doing” with enhanced vetting and intelligence efforts, he says. “That’s a critical part of it.”
NATO’s second in command in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, says that while insider attacks “in the last six months have been ably contained,” they remain “a problem that needs continued focus and attention.”
One challenge both the coalition and the Afghans will be watching out for is Taliban success in encouraging not just “green-on-blue” but also “green-on-green” insider violence.
In an April statement proclaiming the start of the 2013 fighting season, the Taliban encouraged Afghans in the security forces to turn against both the “foreign transgressors” in Afghanistan and their Afghan compatriots cooperating with foreign troops. The Taliban have also been known to threaten violence against the families of Afghan soldiers and police officers who resist pressure to carry out an attack.
“We shouldn’t be surprised to see the enemy encouraging this tactic again, because it saw last year as being successful,” says Fred Kagan, a military expert and Afghan war specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Last year‘s spike in attacks prompted the US to suspend joint patrols for a short time, and to temporarily pull advisers from Afghan ministries. After a deadly insider attack that left five of its troops dead, France announced it would pull its combat forces out of Afghanistan early.
NATO officials acknowledge that the Taliban will try to boost insider attacks again. “They’re trying to drive a wedge between ISAF [international forces in Afghanistan] and the Afghans, and to drive a wedge between members of the coalition,” says Brig. Gen. Adam Findlay, a deputy to NATO Afghanistan Commander Gen. Dennis Dunford.
Perhaps one encouraging note coming out of investigations into last year’s attacks, General Findlay says, is that none of 2012’s 47 attacks appears to have been the result of personal animosity – no attacks “by people who were person-to-person offended,” he says.
“What we heard in questioning the perpetrators was ‘They don’t respect our women’” or references to the Quran burnings, says Findlay. In other words, US troops may want to keep an eye out for Afghans who might return to training radicalized or under pressure from the Taliban after a long leave.
Afghans voice wariness of Pakistan’s Sharif
Washington Post By Pamela Constable May 15, 2013
Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling to congratulate Pakistan’s prime minister-elect this week on his victory in parliamentary elections, said he hoped the new government in Islamabad would create a “brotherly and peaceful atmosphere with Afghanistan” and cooperate in efforts to destroy terrorist hideouts so both “brother nations” can be saved.
But across Afghan society, many people scoffed at the notions that Nawaz Sharif, a former two-time prime minister, might feel any goodwill toward Pakistan’s fellow Muslim neighbor or seek to improve a relationship long dogged by mutual charges of bad faith, political interference and militant skulduggery.
In interviews in the Afghan capital, political figures, experts and residents expressed strong negative opinions about Pakistan’s trustworthiness and Sharif’s political record and religious views, especially his support for the Afghan Taliban while he was prime minister in the late 1990s and his continued tolerance of armed religious groups in Pakistan.
“It is a mistake to test someone who has already been tested and failed you,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a retired Afghan army general. “Nawaz Sharif did his utmost to fan the civil war in Afghanistan. He was the main figure behind the disintegration of our army, and then he helped the Taliban.”
Sharif’s goals, Amarkhel said, will be “the same as previous Pakistani regimes — to keep Afghanistan unstable, weak and dependent.”
Sharif has said little about his intended approach to Afghanistan, in contrast with his numerous assertions that he wants to mend fences with Pakistan’s other problematic neighbor, India. Some analysts here said he will probably wait to see how events in Afghanistan play out in 2014, when national elections and the final pullout of NATO troops are scheduled to take place. Afghan analysts also noted that other actors in Pakistan may have as much of a say in Afghanistan policy as Sharif, especially the powerful military and intelligence establishment that dominates foreign policy and appears inclined to support Islamist militant groups as long as they focus their crusade across the border.
Asked to comment on Sharif’s election, several Afghan residents and political leaders accused Pakistan’s major spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, of working to interfere in and harm their country, and they suggested that Sharif would be either unwilling or unable to challenge it.
“The ISI is the biggest enemy of Afghanistan, and they have had a key role in our deteriorating situation in recent decades,” said Mozhda Walizad, a journalism student at Kabul University. “Unfortunately, the ISI has influence on people, politicians and even the press. This is why civilian governments, including Nawaz’s Muslim League, cannot do anything against them.”
Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid, however, pointed out that Sharif’s sweeping electoral victory, combined with Pakistan’s need for international economic support, would give him the means and the motive to help Afghanistan by putting pressure on the Taliban to move forward on long-stalled peace talks with the Karzai government.
“With the heavy mandate Sharif has obtained and his own desire to be more involved with foreign policy, there will be more interlocutors to influence policy toward the Taliban,” Rashid said in a panel discussion organized by the Afghanistan Analysts Network. “After many years, there will be civilian input into the military’s policy toward Afghanistan and the Taliban, which is a good thing.”
One complicating factor, several Afghan experts said, is the strong electoral showing of Sharif’s main rival, former cricket star Imran Khan, as well as the poor performance of several secular parties. Khan, a onetime liberal, reached out to Pakistani militant groups in his campaign, fulminated against U.S. drone strikes and defended the fighting in Afghanistan as a jihad. His party garnered enough votes to give it political dominance in the volatile northwest border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “President Karzai has asked Pakistan repeatedly to cooperate in going after militant strongholds, but both Imran and Nawaz say they want to solve the problem through negotiations,” said Waheed Mojdah, an Afghan political analyst. “That means letting Pakistani militants come into Afghanistan to support the Taliban. It means more tensions and problems for us.”
Pakistan has long denied backing anti-Kabul militants and has accused Afghanistan of exporting its problems across the border. In recent weeks, several clashes have erupted between Afghan security forces and Pakistanis manning border outposts, resulting in the death of an Afghan police officer. The violence triggered protests in Afghan cities and reignited a perennial dispute over a British-drawn boundary known as the Durand Line.
Despite its cordial language, Karzai’s message to Sharif this week focused pointedly on the issue of Pakistan sheltering anti-Afghan militants in the tribal border region. He has complained about this covert policy to Sharif’s predecessors for a decade and has met with repeated denials. After the recent violence, he angrily suggested that the Taliban “turn and take aim” at the “real enemy” across the border. Sharif, despite his experience on the world stage, is also widely viewed here as a religious fundamentalist who has coddled Islamic groups. He was repeatedly quoted during his campaign as vowing to withdraw Pakistan from the U.S.-led war on international terrorism.
“Sharif has been extremely ambiguous on the issue of extremism,” said Imtiaz Gul, an author and director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “His people will have to come clean on what they think are the real threats to Pakistan.”
A few Afghans said this week that they wished Sharif well and hoped his election would provide a fresh start for bilateral relations. Pakistani leaders often point out that both countries have suffered from terrorism and that establishing peace and security in Afghanistan would also benefit Pakistan. Perhaps at age 63, one man said hopefully, an older and wiser Sharif will take those slogans seriously.
“If he continues his past policies, not only will we suffer, but they will, too,” said Obaidullah Ramin, a lawmaker and former aide to Karzai. “He needs to learn from his past times in power and chart an honest, sincere strategy with Afghanistan.”
First Female Afghan Air Force pilot graduated in 30 years
By SAYED JAWAD - 16 May 2013, 8:52 am Khaama Press
The first female pilot of Afghanistan to be trained inside the country earned her flying wing on Tuesday after graduating from Undergraduate Pilot Training.
2nd Lieutenant Niloofar Rahmani, is the first female pilot to be trained in Afghan Air Force in more than 30 years.
The 21-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Nilofar Rahmani was graduated during a ceremony at Shindand Air Base in western Herat province of Afghanistan, along with other eight young Afghan pilots.
The young Afghan pilots hae been trained by U.S. Air Force instructors and were graduated after completing 197 sorties consisting of 145.5 flying hours, the graduates trained on the Cessna 182 fixed-wing aircraft or the MD 530 rotary aircraft
Nilofar Rahmani quoted by Washington Times said, “First, it was my ambition, and second, I want to show that Afghanistan can have female pilots. It’s a job females can do also, it’s not a hard job that the men can just do. Both can do it.”
She also added, “I wanted to fly with my brothers, shoulder to shoulder.”
The young graduates will now move on to more advanced training, on Cessna 208s or Mi-17s, however Lt. Rhmani is aspiring to be a fixed-wing pilot.
“It’s my honor to serve my country and be the first female, and being an example for other females behind me,” she told The Times.
Lt. Rahmani loved to become a pilot since she was a child and spent nearly a year with the coalition forces to learn English in order to qualify to take part in pilot training.
She is influenced by her to become a pilot who could not become a pilot due to problems at that time.
Health Services a Challenge in Ghor
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai 15 May 2013
The central Ghor province local officials and the Parliamentarians on Tuesday said that women doctors don't at all exist in any of the areas in the province.
The officials have said that poor health services especially for women is quite alarming.
Ghor lacks proper health care centers. The centers which have been built in late years either don't have medicines or equipment or doctors.
The residents of Ghor province complain that the health care centers are far from residential villages where repeatedly patients have lost their lives while on their way to the centers.
"Our village is so far, we don't have doctors there," a resident said.
The province includes women addicts. "I became an addict four years back. I was using tablets for two years and after that I started using heroin; now I don't have even one Afghani to buy medicine," a woman addict told TOLOnews.
The local officials blame the private health centers which are currently working remote areas of the province.
"Sometimes the families don't allow the female members to go to the health centers because the doctors are all men," Provincial Parliamentarian Sima Joinda told TOLOnews.
The Provincial Council Chief Fazlulhaq Ihsan told TOLOnews, "A province with such a wide geographical area does not have a single woman doctor."
Ghor Governor, Sayed Anwar Rahmati also criticizes the condition of the health services.
"The Department of Public Health does not have a building. There is no standard building for a hospital and we need it for the treatment of addicts in the province," Rahmati told TOLOnews.
Afghan Public Health Minister confirms the current health challenges inside the province but stressed that challenges will be tackled.
"There is a problem with the quality of health services. Lack of health specialists especially women specialists and obstetricians are a major problem in Ghor and other provinces of Afghanistan," Public Health Minister, Soraya Dalil said.
She added that the ministry is working to facilitate health services by providing some professional training to women nurses and obstetrician in the province.
Zahir Qadir Must Provide Capital Legitimizing Documents: Analysts
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi 15 May 2013
Afghan Member of Parliament Zahir Qadir on Monday's Parliament session said that he has about $365 million assets and there is no need for smuggling.
Parliament member Zahir Qadir's recent speeches about his personal assets raised waves of reactions against him.
A number of Afghan analysts said that the possession of so much money with Zahir Qadir is questionable and these analysts asked him to provide capital legitimizing documents.
"These assets belong to Afghan people and that these are snatched by the powerful figures which is questionable," Faizullah Jalal, a university lecturer told TOLOnews.
"When a person has 3 to 4 hundred thousand dollars per month expenditure, where does he get the money from? The money could be earned by smuggling drugs or either through corruption," Mir Abid Joenda, a civil society activist told TOLOnews.
"In the past, the total amount of wealth of a person never reached ten million dollars but today the amount has scaled new heights and people in the past ten years have amassed numerous assets," Azrakhsh Hafizi, Head of Managing Delegation, Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce told TOLOnews.
"With the past background these people have, I don't think the money earned is legal, most of the money is black money," a Kabul resident told TOLOnews.
Parliament member Zahir Qadir recently said that he owns about 300 vehicles and his monthly expenses are about 3 to 4 hundred thousand dollar per month.
"My asset is worth $365 million but at that time I was not a Parliament Member, number of MPs have raised objections seeking an explanation from Qadir regarding the source of the assets," Zahir Qadir Said.
It comes after Afghan Finance Minister revealed the names of lawmakers that he claims are involved in smuggling and other illegal activities on Monday.
The Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal was summoned to the parliament over his comments about the involvement of a number of lawmakers in illegal activities including smuggling of alcohol, fuel and flour.
The Finance Minister accused Mohammad Zahir Qadir, Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamedzai, Mohammad Arif Rahmani, Mahmmod Khan Sulaiman Khil, Azim Mohsini and Samiullah Samim of making illegal demands and being involved in smuggling.
Accused MPs Want a Parliamentary Commission to be Set Up
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 15/05/2013
The six MPs who have been accused by the Finance Minister on Monday for smuggling and putting front illegal demands refused these allegations in the Parliament session held on Wednesday. They said these accusations must be investigated by a special commission set up by the Parliament.
These MPs said if these accusations are not proved, the Minister of Finance should be impeached.
On the other hand, the Finance Minister said that he has revealed these crimes on national interest.
In the meantime these six accused MPs have said that if their crime is proved they will resign from Parliament.
"All the accusations that the Minister of Finance has raised should be proved by him and in case they are proved, I'm ready to go to jail," Zaher Qadeer, Member of Parliament said.
The MPs said that a special court must set up by the Parliament.
"A commission must be established by the Parliament to consider the allegations and if these accusations were proved before the impeachment of the Minister of Finance, it signifies that he is also associated with the criminals and that it should be investigated," said Baktash Siawash a MP.
"The flour was smuggled with the help of Custom's staff, therefore, Nengarhar Customs officials should be interrogated," Sediq Ahmad Usmani a MP said.
Recently Finance Minister was appreciated by the Parliament Complaint Commission and it said that his revelation was for national interest.
"All those things that I have revealed were for the nation's interest and not for personal interest, and that this law breaking attitude will worsen the condition of the country," Hazrat Omar Zakhailwal, Finance Minister said.
All the MPs accused by the Minister of Finance for smuggling and illegal demands said that till the case is not proved, the Minister of Finance should be banned and the case should be investigated at the earliest.
Afghanistan's kochis: Nomads no more
War forced many to abandon their wandering ways, but settled life is precarious with government offering little help.
Al jazeera By Ali M Latifi 15 May 2013
Qarabagh, Afghanistan - As snow falls over the northern Kabul hillsides, a group of nomadic kochis in Afghanistan congregate at their simple, white mosque. The leaders of this 750-household community, known as maleks, enter first, followed by the other men of the group.
Inside the mosque, the elders share the story of a land dispute that has for two years pitted them against the Afghan government and a local tribesman who claims to own the land they have settled on.
For centuries, Afghanistan's kochi population - numbering about three million - was on the move, following the seasons with their livestock in tow. But about two million of these people, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns, have been pressured by three decades of conflict to abandon their nomadic lifestyle to instead search for permanent residence.
Some have been able to use the profits from selling their livestock to buy homes. But, with 54 percent of the nation's kochis living in poverty, many others have chosen to settle in open areas where they have built their own houses, without the required permission from the Ministry of Urban Development Affairs and Housing.
The hillsides have a historic pull for the kochis living in the Qarabagh district north of the capital. For 200 years, their nomadic routes have afforded them a connection to the land here.
"From the time I came to this Earth we have been [coming] here," says Malek Islam, one of the four leaders of the community.
As youngsters pass around loaves of bread and cups of chai, a tale unfolds of an Afghanistan in which tradition and modernity sit uncomfortably side-by-side, where nomadic camps and contemporary high-rise apartment blocks compete for space.
The ageing maleks may recall setting up camp in Qarabagh as young boys on their way to the highlands, but the government in Kabul sees them as squatters on land belonging to somebody else.
According to records in Kabul province's principal book of properties, the land the kochis currently occupy belongs to a man who inherited it from his family, and who has since relocated to France.
But the maleks insist that the man, who could not be reached for comment by Al Jazeera, has never produced a deed to the land they settled on two years ago. "Ever since we asked for documentation, he fled. He has not been heard from since," they insist. Haji Ghondai, one of the leaders of the community, says that was more than a year ago.
Lined with graves
Meanwhile, the community's four maleks insist that as "people of the Afghan nation", their demands for a school, a clinic and a source of water must be addressed by the government.
But, despite having 10 of the 249 seats in the lower house of the Afghan parliament allocated to them and a special independent directorate to deal with their issues, many kochis feel that their voices remain unheard by the government.
The maleks of Qarabagh say that the kochis are "servants of God and citizens of this president", but that the government was placing financial interests ahead of its people. "We gave martyrs. We fought alongside our brothers for 35 years, but people won't even allow us in the fields," says Malek Islam, noting that the hillsides here were lined with kochi graves.
Kabul judge Jamaluddin Wahedi says that, without documentation, the kochis are unlikely to have even their most basic demands met: "Everything in this country is in the documents. If you have the proper papers, then the law is in your favour."
But Malek Islam says that, when they do try to deal with government officials, they are discriminated against for their traditional ways: "They look at our patos [shawls], our traditional piran tombans [long robes] and say we are bombers. Our men, our women cast ballots for them, but still the government pays us no attention."
Turned away from government buildings and despondent at what they believe is government indifference towards them, the kochis of Qarabagh took matters into their own hands when they erected their mosque in 2011. But officials said this violated a bylaw stating that no structures capable of standing for more than six months could be built on disputed land.
The maleks say that the morning after they built the mosque, the police surrounded them: "They fired 2,000 bullets on our women and children. What did we do? Did we commit a sin by building a house of God in a single night?”
Educating for self-sufficiency
The kochis' commitment to building a self-sufficient existence is, they insist, reflected in their determination to educate the children of the community.
Each day more than 450 boys and girls take turns attending classes in a tent provided by the Aschiana Foundation, a local NGO serving disadvantaged children. With books, pencils, heaters and firewood provided by Aschiana, Maulvi Ahmad Khan, who serves as the community's mullah and schoolteacher, proudly proclaims: "All our children are literate."
But even the school tents are a reminder of the predicament in which the community finds itself, for, in accordance with Afghan law, they must be taken down within the next few months.
"We asked the government to help our children so our country can move forward," says Malek Islam. "For how long can we be dependent? For how long can we be illiterate?"
The women of Qarabagh are essential to the livelihoods of the community. In the hillsides, their primary daily responsibility is water retrieval. But the maleks say the hills that surround them make even that an hours-long task each day. In the winter, the women resort to heating snow for drinking water.
"What kind of life is this for our women?" asks Haji Ghondai.
But nothing has served as a more stinging reminder of the kochis' lack of agency than the winter of 2011-12. With the nearest medical facility 40 minutes and a $10 taxi ride away, 15 of the community's children died as a result of the cold during that particularly harsh winter, further emphasising the need for permanent structures and a health clinic.
Bureaucracy versus tradition
The kochis used to spend early autumn in Laghman province to the east, but they say even their land there has been taken over by developers, both foreign and local. "Who are [they] building these high-rises for, the Westerners?" Malek Islam asks.
"If an Afghan is not part of Afghanistan then give us our passports to go to Pakistan or Iran," says Haji Ghondai.
But after more than 30 years of war, land disputes are not unique to Afghanistan's kochi populations. In fact, they occur in nearly all of the nation's 34 provinces.
Asadullah Hamdam, the former governor of south-central Uruzgan province, says the solutions to these disputes are to be found in tents, not the halls of power. Shortly after assuming his post in 2007, Hamdam was confronted by a land dispute between two local groups over 5,000 acres in Chora district that led to the killing of 65 people.
At a 2008 loya jirga - a meeting of tribal elders, religious leaders and other "knowledgeable people" - 200 representatives were tasked with resolving the dispute. After three days of meetings with villagers, the jirga was able to bring both parties to an agreement.
Pointing to the rampant corruption in the Central Asian nation, Hamdam says: "In bureaucracy, rights are easily lost [but] in the Afghan jirga tradition, rights are never lost."
Gathered in their mosque, the maleks say a prayer and one by one the community steps out into the cold air. "Other than God we have no connections," says Malek Islam, as he watches a group of girls leave the tents that serve as their classroom to make way for the first shift of boys.
With the "illegal" mosque he helped build behind him and a crowd of schoolchildren before him, Malek Islam argues that it is tradition that has kept his people in Qarabagh. "We have no more places to go. This is where we want to stay."
Halfhearted poppy eradication program in Afghanistan yields inadvertent success
As an unexpected result of the government's eradication program, it's a bad year for poppy farmers.
Global Post By Ben Brody May 15, 2013
ZHARI, Afghanistan - Zhari is having a banner year for opium poppy cultivation. Increased security has led to more fields being sown with poppy, and workers harvest opium with less fear of stepping on Taliban mines than in past summers.
But the colorful fields stretching as far as the eye can see don't tell the whole story. In terms of the actual opium harvest, the raw material used in heroin production, it has been a terrible year for farmers here.
"The leaves turn brown and the milk doesn't flow," complained an elderly farmer as he pushed his way through a huge poppy field in Zhari's Siab Jan village, his tunic stained black with opium sap from long days in the fields.
The poppy in Zhari's muddy fields are afflicted with a condition that causes yellow and brown spots on the leaves, which has dramatically affected the amount of opium sap produced, according to local farmers. The plants aren't dying individually — they are uniformly unproductive, which could suggest overwatering as the cause, according to Kandahar Agribusiness Development Team commander Col. Bob Hayter.
And overwatering could be an unintended consequence of the Zhari district government’s poppy eradication effort.
The Zhari district governor, Niaz Sarhadi, runs an eradication program that stretches the meaning of the word “eradication” considerably and doesn’t actually aim to get rid of all poppy plants, according to 2nd Lt. Bryce Hudson, a platoon leader with A Co., 4-17 Infantry at Ahmadkhan.
"To us, eradication means destroying 90 percent of the poppy," said Hudson. "To [the governor], it means about 10 percent."
US troops do not have a mandate to get directly involved in poppy eradication in Zhari — growing poppy is against Afghan law, so Afghans are responsible for enforcing it.
A fleet of well-worn Massey-Ferguson 875 tractors sit outside the governor's compound at Forward Operating Base Pasab in varying states of disassembly, covered in dried mud and poppy stalks.
Some villagers in Zhari complain that their governor decides to destroy poppy fields based on whether or not the farmers have paid their bribes, and he drives his Lexus out to the poppy fields and watches his tractors crush the flowers. Other villagers claim the farmers whose fields are crushed are just unlucky.
The villagers have tried different strategies to protect their poppies from the marauding tractors. Some plant their poppies in the trenches between grape rows, too narrow for the tractors to get in. Some dig canals around their fields like moats.
The most widespread strategy in Zhari has been to heavily irrigate the poppy fields, making them too muddy for tractors to get in. The Zhari mud is unbelievably sticky and it is easy to plunge knee-deep through its thin crust and spend the next 20 minutes digging your shoe out.
Although the flower itself is very delicate, opium poppy is a tough plant. As long as it has plenty of sunlight, it can grow in poor soil or drought conditions and can tolerate large temperature swings. But the plant seems to be sensitive to overwatering.
"Overwatering causes root rot and mold, which would show up as yellowing leaves," Hayter said. "We see the same thing in their wheat fields when they irrigate too much."
Hayter and his team advise Afghan farmers on irrigation and fertilization techniques for every common local crop except poppy, but he said the principles of agriculture are the same.
And even under ideal conditions, harvesting opium by hand is a very labor-intensive task. Once the poppy's delicate pink and white petals have fluttered to the ground, men and boys use curved knives to carefully scratch the swollen seed pod that releases a watery white sap, or "milk." The sap evaporates overnight and leaves behind a tiny bit of sticky black opium paste, which is then scraped off with plastic spoons.
Making an appreciable amount of opium takes a tremendous number of poppies. The raw opium sap can be smoked, but it is more lucrative to chemically refine it into heroin for export to Asia, Europe and the United States. Last year, about 75 percent of the world's heroin supply came from Afghanistan, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
According to Jaan, an interpreter who works with the US military, farmers tell him that they suspect that high-flying NATO planes are secretly spraying Zhari with a chemical that weakens their poppies. Of course, no such program exists. Jaan did not want his family name used for fear of reprisals.
"I tell them that the Army has no time for that kind of thing, the spraying, but they don't want to listen," said Jaan. "It's just a simple thing — too much water."
Governor Sarhadi loudly denied taking bribes at a district shura — a gathering of local and regional government, tribal and military representatives — and also announced that the eradication program would be immediately halted, two weeks before the end of harvest.
"We have to go after the drug dealers, the people motivated to get rich," Sarhadi said to a group of tribal elders during the shura. "They don't listen to the elders, they don't listen to the governor, they don't listen to the Koran — they're all criminals."
Heavy Metal In Kabul? It's The Music, Not The Munitions
NPR By Sean Carberry May 15, 2013
When 23-year-old Solomon "Sully" Omar felt the music scene in his native Denver wasn't giving him what he was looking for, he made a radical move. He headed for Kabul, capital of the war-torn country his parents had fled decades ago.
"I came here to continue my education and at the same see what's in the music scene here and bring some of the skills and abilities that I have to the music scene," says Omar.
Omar is a member of , a whose performance was one of the highlights of the recent of alternative music and arts in Kabul. More than 30 bands performed over four days during the third annual event.
And if you can imagine it, 's sweat-inducing set had the hundreds of Afghan spectators on their feet.
Omar says he was pleasantly surprised to find an actual music scene when he arrived in Kabul.
"I was expecting to find" — he pauses — "nothing."
"I didn't know there was like crazy metal and dub step," Omar says. "I really wasn't expecting music to be alive and breathing and well and healthy here in Afghanistan."
The Family Returns To Afghanistan
Omar's roots are Afghan. He was born and raised in Colorado, where his parents ultimately settled after leaving Afghanistan in the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion.
After the Taliban were driven from power in 2001, Omar's father started traveling back to Afghanistan, where he now works for the University of Massachusetts' Higher Education Project in Kabul. His mother works in Kabul advising female entrepreneurs.
His brother and sister both moved to Afghanistan, and Omar was the last of the family to resettle in Kabul.
He arrived last August and became the keyboard player, second guitarist and backing vocalist in District Unknown after initially helping them produce some songs.
Omar's parents attended the Sound Central Festival, and it was life coming full circle for the family. Omar's father – who he describes as an artist and former hippie – performed on the very same stage of the French Cultural Central back in the '70s.
"My dad is staunch supporter of my music career," says Omar. "He does want me to finish my school as a first priority."
Omar is doing just that. Currently a student at the American University in Kabul, he hopes eventually to study electronic music production at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Omar says it's a different experience performing in front of an Afghan audience.
"It's a mix of people who are both huge fans of alternative music and arts, and people who are completely new to it, and I think it makes for a great mix," he says.
While he has fans across Kabul who appreciate District Unknown and his DJ work, he does get strange looks from people when he tells his story.
"Most people that I tell that I came here, Afghans, they look at me like, 'what, why?'" he says.
But, at least musically speaking, Omar was able to find what he was looking for.
"I'm happy here. There is here what I was longing for in the States as a musician – to find a thriving, kind of virgin music scene. That's the most awesome thing I could have wanted," Omar says. "It's not in the perfect circumstances, but I'll take it."
Information Minister Refuses Smuggling Accusations
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini 15 May 2013
The Information and Culture Minister on Wednesday called the Senate Committee's accusations irresponsible and revengeful.
The Information and Culture Minister, Sayed Makhdom Rahin said that all 59 antiques that the Head of Senate Committee believes were smuggled are in the National Museum. Rahin added that he has asked President Karzai to set up a delegation to investigate the allegations.
The Afghan Senate House Committee recently stated that the Information and Culture Minister has stolen and smuggled 59 Afghani antiques aboard.
"You know why the Senator passed a comment of this kind? The senator insulted the staffs of Afghanistan National Television a few days ago and the TV refused to broadcast Senator's speech while he was speaking at the Senate. The Senator thought that I ordered them to not broadcast the speech; as a result he accused me of smuggling and stealing. I don't have time to watch TV. I don't watch TV even once a week," Sayed Makhdom Rahin said in a press conference.
The minister adds that it was long time ago that the British police found the smuggled antiques. They asked the Information and Culture Ministry whether the antiques belonged to Afghanistan? Then the ministry told them that it belongs to Afghanistan but not registered at the Afghanistan Museum. The British Police sent all the antiques to Afghanistan
Meanwhile Head of Senate Complaints Committee said that the minister should come to the committee to prove.
"Mr. Minister let the President do his other important jobs; this is the duty of the Parliament. As a minister you violated the Afghanistan Constitution by refusing to present yourself in front of our committee," Head of Complaints Committee of Senate, Zalmai Zabuli said.
The Information and Culture Ministry says that Afghanistan's 700,000 antiques were robbed during the domestic war in the country.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Associated Press By Associated Press May 16, 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in the Afghan capital on Thursday, killing at least six people in the explosion and wounding more than 30, police and hospital officials said.
A Muslim militant group, Hizb-e-Islami, claimed responsibility for the early morning attack. The powerful explosion rattled buildings on the other side of Kabul and sent a pillar of white smoke into the sky in the city’s east.
NATO spokesman Lt. j.g. Quenton Roehricht said the international alliance can “confirm an explosion occurred on a coalition convoy in Kabul this morning,” but provided no further details.
Kabul provincial police spokesman Hashmad Stanakzi said the suicide bomber attacked the convoy with a car packed with explosives. “The explosion was very big. It set the nearby buildings on fire,” Stanakzi said.
He said there were people killed and several were wounded but he could not immediately give exact numbers. “The casualty numbers are high and mostly civilian.”
Kabul Deputy Police Chief Daud Amin said it was difficult to immediately estimate the number of dead because the blast had shredded many of the victims.
“We saw two dead bodies of children on the ground,” Amin said. “But the rest of the bodies were scattered in pieces around.”
Two Kabul hospitals reported that at least six dead and 37 wounded were brought in from the scene, city hospitals chief Kabir Amiri said, adding that the toll could increase as more hospitals report in.
The bodies were too badly charred to immediately identify, he added. A spokesman for Hizb-e-Islami, Haroon Zarghoon, told The Associated Press that one of the movement’s operatives carried out the attack on what he described as two vehicles of American advisers. He claimed that most of the American advisers were killed and their vehicles destroyed, though neither Afghan nor coalition officials have confirmed any foreign casualties. Afghan insurgents often exaggerate the success of their attacks.
Hizb-e-Islami is headed by 65-year-old former warlord Gubuddin Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and one-time U.S. ally who is now listed as a terrorist by Washington. The militia has thousands of fighters and followers across the country’s north and east.
Thursday’s attack was the second in eight months claimed by Hizb-e-Islami. In September, the militant group claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed least 12 people. At the time, Hizb-e-Islami said the attack was revenge for the film “Innocence of Muslims,” which was made by an Egyptian-born American citizen and infuriated Muslims abroad for its negative depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.
NATO Troops, Civilians Killed in Kabul Attack
VOA News May 16, 2013
NATO say two of its service members and four contracted civilians in Afghanistan have died in a suicide car bombing.
Afghan police say the bomber targeted a convoy of foreign military vehicles in the capital Thursday morning. Officials say 37 people were wounded in the explosion
The Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Kabul. A spokesman for the group said American advisers were the targets.
Hezb-e-Islami is a militant group which shares some of the anti-foreigner, anti-government aims of the Taliban.
Taliban militants have been ramping up attacks on government forces lately, seeking to destabilize Afghanistan as more foreign troops prepare to draw down from the 12-year war.
2 Afghan suicide attacks kill 8, wound 41 in single day
KABUL, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The war-weary Afghans experienced two deadly suicide bombings in one single day across the country on Thursday, leaving eight people, including two attackers, dead and more than three dozen others injured, officials confirmed.
In the first incident which happened during the rush hours in the morning in the fortified capital city Kabul, seven people, including the attacker and six non-combatants, were killed and nearly three dozen others wounded.
"The suicide attack carried out by terrorists this morning in Shah Shahid locality of Kabul city at around 08:00 a.m. local time claimed the lives of six civilians and injured 35 others majority of them children," a statement of Kabul police released here said.
It also added that blast had damaged several houses, shops and cars at nearby.
Although, there is no confirmation on the NATO-led forces possible casualties, according to locals at the site of the blast, some foreign soldiers were either killed or injured in the attack.
The attacker, according to a taxi driver, drove an explosives- packed Toyota Corolla car into a two-vehicle convoy of the foreign forces, tearing a vehicle to shreds and injuring 10 people including seven passersby and three foreigners.
Meantime, a spokesman of NATO-led forces when approached by Xinhua confirmed the attack against coalition forces, but noted details will be released after investigation.
Some 90 minutes later another attack, also in the shape of suicide bombing hit a bazaar in Paktika province 155 km south of Afghan capital Kabul leaving two people including the attacker dead and wounding six others, all civilians. "A terrorist strapped explosive device in his body blew himself up next to a pro-government tribal elder named Shir Zaman in the bazaar of Sarobi district at around 09:30 a.m. local time today killing a shopkeeper and injuring six others including Shir Zaman and two police," provincial police chief Daulat Khan Zadran told Xinhua.
The attacker was also killed in his blast, he added.
Militancy and violent incidents have been on rise since April 28 when the Taliban outfit launched its so-called spring offensive in Afghanistan.
Pakistan says controversy over border post with Afghanistan resolved
ISLAMABAD, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan said on Thursday that the conflict with Afghanistan over construction of a border post has been resolved.
Clashes took place between border forces of the two countries in recent weeks which left an Afghan soldier dead and several Pakistani troops injured.
The Afghan government accused the Pakistan army of constructing a border post on the Afghan side while Pakistan insisted that it has renovated one of its old posts on its own side of the border.
"The issue of border post has been resolved," said Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.
The spokesman told his weekly briefing that Pakistan has been emphasizing the need for effective border management to interdict undesirable cross-border activity.
Pakistan is in regular contact with Afghan authorities, including military to military contact, he said.
Replying to a question about the upcoming visit to Pakistan by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the spokesman said that no details of the visit are available as yet.
Pakistan and the United States enjoy mutually collaborative relationship, he said, adding, "Pakistan would like to have good relations with the United States based on mutual respect and mutual benefits."
Afghanistan mines revenue worth AFN 285 million missing: EITI
By MEENA HASEEB - 16 May 2013, 1:30 pm Khaama Press
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) following an audit report revealed that AFN 285 million worth revenue from Afghanistan’s natural resources have been lost.
EITI officials on Wednesday said that taxation documents of the private companies does not match with the documents available in the ministry of finance of Afghanistan.
Head of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Bashir Khan Salehi told reporters that the audit was conducted for the years 2009 and 2011, with an aim to clarify the transparency in Afghanistan mining sector revenue.
Salehi said, “The main issue is that international accountibility systems are not implemented in afghanistan and this has created a major problem. The first audit report showed a difference of AFN 68 million while in second audit report a difference of AFN 285 million was revealed. We have hired another company to audit the work and its result will be announced soon.”
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) department was formed with the financial support of Afghan government and World Bank in 2009.
According to EITI, several private companies including Aynak Copper, Mesaq-e-Sharq, Khoshang Brothers have issues and difference in their financial accounts.
EITI officials said they found considerable diferences in their documents while comparing with the ones available in the ministry of finance of Afghanistan.
Afghan finance ministry officials have not commented on Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative’s reports so far.
The Afghan government has awarded several small and medium mining projects to private companies during the recent years, including Aynak Copper mine in Logar province, Haji Gak irone ore in Bamiyan province and fuel extraction projects i northern Afghanistan.
However, there are concerns and reports regarding the lack of transparency in the projects which have been awarded to various companies.
What have we learned about stabilization in Afghanistan? Not much.
Foreign Policy By Ashley Jackson May 15, 2013
As of this year, Afghanistan has experienced ten years of stabilization intervention, but what is there to show for it? Marked by massive expenditure with little to no accountability, and often marred by waste, stabilization in Afghanistan started out with arguably honorable aims. However, as troops prepare to leave in 2014, what legacy will be left behind?
Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) began with perhaps the best of intentions: to fill the vacuum of law and order left by the fall of the Taliban and undertake reconstruction, badly needed in a country devastated by three decades of conflict. The security situation was perceived to be relatively benign, with the major threats being criminals and warlords seeking to reassert power.
PRTs did some positive work, often acting as the only authority in a security vacuum, and were appreciated, at least early on, by Afghans. They were no substitute, however, for the effective governance and security required. PRTs' predominantly military staff received little to no training, lacked the technical skills required to carry out development work and focused more on short term quick impact projects instead of the long term state-and-peace-building work that was so badly needed. Rather than seeking to build Afghan capacity - a central component of their mandate - they often worked around the government. The PRTs also created winners and losers, supporting local strongmen or funneling money through often corrupt construction companies.
Despite early U.S. government acknowledgement of these problems, PRTs expanded rapidly, led by a multitude of different nations that were often unable to effectively coordinate amongst each another. In 2008, the US Congress described the situation as one with "no clear definition of the PRT mission, no concept of operations or doctrine, no standard operating procedures."
As insecurity spread, the dual security and reconstruction roles of PRTs became increasingly schizophrenic. One incident in Ghazni province in 2004 saw PRT officials offering to build a well for villagers just weeks after they had fired rockets into the very same village killing nine children. Unsurprisingly, residents were hardly consoled and Afghan goodwill for the PRTs was quickly eroded.
But the amount of money available for military-led development continued to increase. In 2009, the US Army published the Commanders' Guide to Money as a Weapons System, which defined aid as "a nonlethal weapon" to be utilised to "win the hearts and minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the insurgents." Aid devoted to these objectives rapidly increased: annual funding for the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP), the primary U.S. PRT funding stream, rose from $200m in 2007 to $1bn in 2010.
No centralised, comprehensive records appear to have been kept on the PRTs, either within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) or the Afghan government, and rarely even within PRTs. When auditors found CERP project files incomplete or non-existent in 2009, CERP project managers told US auditors that their focus "was on obligating funds for projects rather than monitoring their implementation." Unsurprisingly there has been no comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of CERP-funded programmes; the most thorough examination is a 2011 SIGAR audit of CERP programming in the insecure eastern province of Laghman. It's a harrowing read. Of the $53m CERP funds allocated to the PRT between 2008 and 2011, 92% (or $49.2m) was dedicated to projects found by SIGAR to be "at risk or have questionable outcomes." Funds were not managed in accordance with standard operating procedures, which were finally established in 2009, and none of the 69 projects had sufficient documentation to track outcomes. Agai
n and again, the audit found the Afghan government unable to take over PRT projects.
PRTs were not the only instrument of stabilization. Between 2003 and 2012, USAID obligated $1.1bn in stabilization funding to for-profit contractors but such projects fared no better. One example is USAID's ‘flagship counterinsurgency program' the Local Government and Community Development Programme (LGCD). The budget and timelines for the $400m, five-year project mushroomed despite questionable early evaluation findings and the fact that over half of LGCD's expenditures were on staff costs and security. USAID officials were unable to visit several sites because it was too dangerous. As for its impact, the USAID Inspector-General reported ‘the project's overall success seemed highly questionable.'
Part of the problem is that the goals of stabilization in Afghanistan were never comprehensively, consistently or clearly articulated. Stabilization works on the assumption that conflicts are fuelled by grievances about poverty or neglect, and that development projects that improve governance, opportunities and services can ‘stabilize' conflict situations. But evidence is lacking or discouraging. A 2011 Tufts university study found while there was some evidence some stabilization interventions can work in the short term, there is little evidence of long term security gains and much more indicating a tendency to create local conflict and ‘perverse incentives' to maintain insecurity.
In an world where aid agencies are required to prove their ‘value for money' and aid-receiving governments are pressured to become fully transparent, the lack of systematic, government-led push for accountability for the multi-billion dollar investments is hypocritical and irresponsible - and speaks to an ideological unwillingness to address the problems and pitfalls of stabilization approaches.
The lack of interest in documenting the impact of the stabilization efforts - both what works and what doesn't - does not bode well for the rest of the world. As global focus turns to other complex emergencies in Mali, Yemen and Somalia, stabilization is increasingly the approach of choice. Without recognizing systematic problems, stabilization interventions are unlikely to improve and begin to fulfill their lofty goals. After the troop drawdown in Afghanistan next year, perhaps we'll have a better idea of the true legacy of stabilization. But for now, the future looks worryingly unstable.
U.S. Hands Over Nation-Building Projects To Afghans
NPR By Sean Carberry May 16, 2013
On a sunny spring day in eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province, Afghan officials and U.S. troops and civilians gather inside the ancient mud fort in the center of Forward Operating Base Gardez. They're attending a ceremony marking the formal end of the work of the provincial reconstruction team, or PRT.
As the international military presence in Afghanistan draws down, so too are these small units, which often consist of dozens of military personnel along with a few civilians. The teams have spent billions of dollars building schools and roads, and they've tried to help strengthen the capacity of Afghan local governance.
The U.S. launched its first reconstruction team in Paktia in November 2002, just months after a major military operation aimed at clearing Taliban and al-Qaida militants from the area. It was a new twist on an old concept: nation building.
"This unique organization comprised of active Army, Air Force, Army National Guard, Army Reserve, U.S. government agencies, all work together to provide governance, security, economic assistance and reconstruction for Paktia province," says Capt. Eric Rauglas, who emceed the closing ceremony.
Nation-Building Teams
The reconstruction teams were designed to build things the Afghans needed, promote security, and to win hearts and minds. And, as military units, the teams were designed to operate in areas too insecure for traditional development agencies to work.
Over the years, the U.S. and its allies created 26 PRTs across Afghanistan. More than half remain in operation, but they will all be gone by the end of 2014, when the current NATO mission ends.
"[They were] always designed to just buy time and space for our Afghan leaders to establish a strong and responsive government," says Air Force Lt. Col. John Chong, the last of 14 commanders to serve as head of the Paktia reconstruction team.
That high staff turnover is one of the major criticisms of the reconstruction efforts.
But at the Gardez base on the day of the ceremony, everyone is singing the praises of the Paktia team.
"The people of Paktia province will not forget the assistance they received," says Juma Khan Hamdard, the provincial governor. "The people will continue to have needs here. Before they asked the PRT for assistance, and now they will ask the provincial government."
Will The Afghan Government Provide?
Hamdard says he hopes the central government in Kabul will provide him with the financial support the reconstruction team once did so he can deliver projects and services now.
Some of the attendees at the ceremony believe it will. But Jamila Yousefzai, with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, isn't so sure.
"We don't believe that the government will be able to deliver 100 percent of the services the PRT was doing," she says.
But U.S. diplomat Stephen McFarland believes the Paktia provincial government is ready to stand on its own.
"You stay too long and inadvertently you smother the capacity that you're trying to build up," he says.
McFarland and others acknowledge it's been a struggle to find a balance between providing services the local governments couldn't, while not creating a culture of dependency on the reconstruction teams, who have access to vast amounts of money and the ability to make things happen quickly. The Paktia team has spent more than $280 million in its time on the ground.
"The presence of PRTs and a lot of international advisers, and a high dependence on them, it kind of made the provincial administrations a little bit lazy," says Hamid Afghan, who manages PRT transition issues for the Afghan government. "Even simple works, they were relying on PRTs," he says.
At times through the years, the reconstruction teams have come in for criticism from Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, who decried what he termed a parallel structure that was working on projects without coordinating with his government.
That was a result of an early culture of doing so-called quick-impact projects designed to win hearts and minds, says Afghan, the government official. That approach led to countless poorly planned and constructed projects that have been abandoned.
He cites a project in Badakhshan province, where a new bridge was built — with no road access.
And some of the work by Afghan subcontractors was so shoddy that it had to be knocked down and restarted. Tales of the money wasted in the process of contracting and subcontracting are legendary.
Clare Lockhart, author of Fixing Failed States, says that several years ago there was a sea change in the approach.
"Where they've worked, they really have been geared to supporting and building Afghan governance," she says.
The teams began to tailor projects to Afghan needs. And they began to focus more on strengthening the capacity of provincial governments. But, Lockhart adds, that capacity still varies enormously across the country.
Progress In The Panjshir Valley
As a result, some provinces are more likely than others to be able to complete the many unfinished projects being handed over to them as the reconstruction teams leave. It's too soon to tell if the Paktia government can stand on its own. But other teams have been closed long enough to judge their legacy.
The Panjshir Valley is a few hours' drive north of Kabul. It's one of the most scenic places in Afghanistan. And it's also one of the safest.
Standing in a valley, Mohammed Tahir, head of technical services for Panjshir province, points to all the surrounding projects. There are wind turbines on top of one of the peaks. The road we're standing on, still under construction, was another project. Many of the government buildings were constructed by the U.S.-run Panjshir reconstruction team, which left in the summer of 2011.
Tahir says that the team provided money and technical expertise, but Afghan contractors did the work, and they are still working on projects here. He admits the quality of the work is uneven, but he believes the government will have no problems completing the projects.
However, some Panjshir residents weren't so sure.
"Americans were doing a good job in terms of construction, but the work slowed down when the local authorities took over the projects," says 25-year-old Haji Ahadmir, who works as a driver. "The work on important projects like building schools and roads has stopped now." A number of people said the central government isn't providing the support to Panjshir that the reconstruction team did. That's where Afghan and Western officials say the real problem lies: For the foreseeable future, Kabul won't have the resources to make up for the drop in reconstruction team spending. And that could undermine provincial governments as they try to stand on their own.
Kabul Rejects Report That It Levied $1 Billion In Taxes On Contractors
By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15, 2013
KABUL -- The Afghan Finance Minister has rejected a report by a U.S. government watchdog that Kabul has levied nearly $ 1 billion in illegitimate taxes on contractors working on U.S.-funded reconstruction projects,
Omar Zakhilwal told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 15 that the audit report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was “absolutely false, totally wrong."
"It could be political or it could be pure ignorance,” he said. “Either way it is irresponsible, either way it's very unfortunate and I certainly would want them to correct this."
Zakhilwal also said that the report would “create confusion” and undermine trust between the Afghan government and Washington.
In a report issued May 14, SIGAR said a recent audit found that the Afghan Ministry of Finance levied $921 million in taxes and penalties since 2008 on just 43 contractors supporting U.S. government efforts in Afghanistan.
According to the SIGAR report, taxes were also levied on contractors that both the U.S. and Afghan government had agreed should be exempted.
Special Inspector General John Sopko said in a statement accompanying the release of the audit results that "it's disturbing that the Afghan government is targeting American contractors with unjust taxes and intimidation."
But Zakhilwal said the taxes are not unjust and called on SIGAR to meet with his ministry to discuss the differences in their positions:
“We believe that the contractors who still owe billions of dollars in taxes are taking shelter behind the (exemption) agreements that we have but we believe their tax exempt status does not cover the activity that they are involved in, and SIGAR's position is that it probably does,” he said. “But they have to sit down with us and convince us of that.”
The SIGAR report said that in the dispute over tax-exempt status, some contract firms have refused to pay taxes. It charged that, in response, the Finance Ministry "has restricted contractors' freedom of movement and refused to renew business licenses, and the Afghan government has even arrested some contractor personnel.”
The report concluded that "the combined effect is the potential interruption of support to U.S. military operations."
The status of contractors is a pivotal issue in negotiations between Kabul and Washington on a possible long-term US military presence in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO combat forces by the end of 2014.
Why insider attacks are down in Afghanistan
No one claims the problem is solved, but officials are cautiously hopeful that the lower number of 'green-on-blue' killings in Afghanistan this year means preventive measures are having an impact.
Christian Science Monitor By Howard LaFranchi May 15, 2013
Kabul, Afghanistan - The gunfire that pierced the night in Afghanistan’s Zabul Province last September was a troubling surprise to the 20 US soldiers manning a fortified checkpoint near the Pakistan border.Before long, the soldiers would know the terrifying truth: that it was Afghan police officers who, after climbing the wall of a hillside observation post assigned to keeping an eye out for Taliban movement, had emptied their weapons on their American comrades inside.
That night, four Americans died at the hands of their Afghan assailants, making it the deadliest of a string of insider attacks that added up to the worst year for what the military calls “green-on-blue” violence of the Afghanistan war. Last year 61 international forces – at least 34 of them Americans – were killed by Afghan security forces, nearly half of the 132 killed by insider attacks since 2008.
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The Zabul incident intensified an already growing sense of crisis in the US and Afghan militaries over the problem of insider attacks. The result has been a series of steps on both the Afghan and international sides that officials say are having an impact in addressing a particularly demoralizing form of violence.
Yet while initial evidence seems encouraging -- so far in 2013, six US and other international soldiers have been killed in insider attacks – there is also reason for caution. For one thing, those six deaths represent 13 percent of total coalition deaths this year, about the same as the 15 percent of total coalition fatalities they represented last year, according to statistics compiled by the Long War Journal. And the summer fighting season is just getting under way.
On the other hand, well over half of 2012’s 34 insider killings occurred in the first five months of the year. By comparison, this year’s six killings through mid-May represent a reduction of about two-thirds.
(NATO Command in Afghanistan reports slightly different inside-attack figures than Long War Journal: 129 coalition forces killed since 2008, 62 in 2012, and four this year.)
No one claims the problem is solved, but officials are cautiously hopeful that the lower number of “green-on-blue” killings so far this year means that steps – ranging from increased vetting of Afghan security forces and reduced occasions where Afghans are armed while in the company of US and other foreign forces, to enhanced cultural awareness training – are having an impact.
“This violence is an embarrassment for both sides, it’s an issue that can create a lot of mistrust between us – and in the last months we have taken a lot of measures against this issue,” says Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, chief of Army staff in the Afghan military.
Among the measures implemented: The Afghan Army has added hundreds of counterintelligence officers to keep an eye on recruits for signs of “anti-foreigner” sentiment, soldiers returning from leave are interviewed and watched for signs of Taliban indoctrination. Like the US and other NATO countries, Afghanistan has put more emphasis on religious and cultural-sensitivity training.
On the coalition side, the US has implemented a “guardian angels” program under which units designate soldiers to provide security to troops who are training, overseeing, and accompanying Afghan security forces.
The US has also reinforced its counterintelligence capabilities, and augmented cultural awareness training among its troops. The cultural sensitivity effort is tacit acknowledgment, some military experts say, that events of 2012 like the unintentional Quran burnings at Bagram Air Base and the video posted on the Internet of US soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters helped incite the rage behind some of the attacks.
The Taliban issued a statement shortly after the Zabul attack, for example, claiming it was carried out by police officers it had recruited to retaliate for a US-made anti-Muslim video that denigrates the prophet Muhammad.
Still, NATO officials say steps taken by the Afghan Army in particular have been critical in reducing the threat.
“We’ve enhanced training in how to guard against it, and there is a decrease,” says Lt. Gen. Kenneth Tovo, commander of the Afghan Training Mission-Afghanistan. “But most important is w hat the government of Afghanistan is doing” with enhanced vetting and intelligence efforts, he says. “That’s a critical part of it.”
NATO’s second in command in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Nick Carter, says that while insider attacks “in the last six months have been ably contained,” they remain “a problem that needs continued focus and attention.”
One challenge both the coalition and the Afghans will be watching out for is Taliban success in encouraging not just “green-on-blue” but also “green-on-green” insider violence.
In an April statement proclaiming the start of the 2013 fighting season, the Taliban encouraged Afghans in the security forces to turn against both the “foreign transgressors” in Afghanistan and their Afghan compatriots cooperating with foreign troops. The Taliban have also been known to threaten violence against the families of Afghan soldiers and police officers who resist pressure to carry out an attack.
“We shouldn’t be surprised to see the enemy encouraging this tactic again, because it saw last year as being successful,” says Fred Kagan, a military expert and Afghan war specialist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Last year‘s spike in attacks prompted the US to suspend joint patrols for a short time, and to temporarily pull advisers from Afghan ministries. After a deadly insider attack that left five of its troops dead, France announced it would pull its combat forces out of Afghanistan early.
NATO officials acknowledge that the Taliban will try to boost insider attacks again. “They’re trying to drive a wedge between ISAF [international forces in Afghanistan] and the Afghans, and to drive a wedge between members of the coalition,” says Brig. Gen. Adam Findlay, a deputy to NATO Afghanistan Commander Gen. Dennis Dunford.
Perhaps one encouraging note coming out of investigations into last year’s attacks, General Findlay says, is that none of 2012’s 47 attacks appears to have been the result of personal animosity – no attacks “by people who were person-to-person offended,” he says.
“What we heard in questioning the perpetrators was ‘They don’t respect our women’” or references to the Quran burnings, says Findlay. In other words, US troops may want to keep an eye out for Afghans who might return to training radicalized or under pressure from the Taliban after a long leave.
Afghans voice wariness of Pakistan’s Sharif
Washington Post By Pamela Constable May 15, 2013
Kabul - Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling to congratulate Pakistan’s prime minister-elect this week on his victory in parliamentary elections, said he hoped the new government in Islamabad would create a “brotherly and peaceful atmosphere with Afghanistan” and cooperate in efforts to destroy terrorist hideouts so both “brother nations” can be saved.
But across Afghan society, many people scoffed at the notions that Nawaz Sharif, a former two-time prime minister, might feel any goodwill toward Pakistan’s fellow Muslim neighbor or seek to improve a relationship long dogged by mutual charges of bad faith, political interference and militant skulduggery.
In interviews in the Afghan capital, political figures, experts and residents expressed strong negative opinions about Pakistan’s trustworthiness and Sharif’s political record and religious views, especially his support for the Afghan Taliban while he was prime minister in the late 1990s and his continued tolerance of armed religious groups in Pakistan.
“It is a mistake to test someone who has already been tested and failed you,” said Atiqullah Amarkhel, a retired Afghan army general. “Nawaz Sharif did his utmost to fan the civil war in Afghanistan. He was the main figure behind the disintegration of our army, and then he helped the Taliban.”
Sharif’s goals, Amarkhel said, will be “the same as previous Pakistani regimes — to keep Afghanistan unstable, weak and dependent.”
Sharif has said little about his intended approach to Afghanistan, in contrast with his numerous assertions that he wants to mend fences with Pakistan’s other problematic neighbor, India. Some analysts here said he will probably wait to see how events in Afghanistan play out in 2014, when national elections and the final pullout of NATO troops are scheduled to take place. Afghan analysts also noted that other actors in Pakistan may have as much of a say in Afghanistan policy as Sharif, especially the powerful military and intelligence establishment that dominates foreign policy and appears inclined to support Islamist militant groups as long as they focus their crusade across the border.
Asked to comment on Sharif’s election, several Afghan residents and political leaders accused Pakistan’s major spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, of working to interfere in and harm their country, and they suggested that Sharif would be either unwilling or unable to challenge it.
“The ISI is the biggest enemy of Afghanistan, and they have had a key role in our deteriorating situation in recent decades,” said Mozhda Walizad, a journalism student at Kabul University. “Unfortunately, the ISI has influence on people, politicians and even the press. This is why civilian governments, including Nawaz’s Muslim League, cannot do anything against them.”
Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid, however, pointed out that Sharif’s sweeping electoral victory, combined with Pakistan’s need for international economic support, would give him the means and the motive to help Afghanistan by putting pressure on the Taliban to move forward on long-stalled peace talks with the Karzai government.
“With the heavy mandate Sharif has obtained and his own desire to be more involved with foreign policy, there will be more interlocutors to influence policy toward the Taliban,” Rashid said in a panel discussion organized by the Afghanistan Analysts Network. “After many years, there will be civilian input into the military’s policy toward Afghanistan and the Taliban, which is a good thing.”
One complicating factor, several Afghan experts said, is the strong electoral showing of Sharif’s main rival, former cricket star Imran Khan, as well as the poor performance of several secular parties. Khan, a onetime liberal, reached out to Pakistani militant groups in his campaign, fulminated against U.S. drone strikes and defended the fighting in Afghanistan as a jihad. His party garnered enough votes to give it political dominance in the volatile northwest border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “President Karzai has asked Pakistan repeatedly to cooperate in going after militant strongholds, but both Imran and Nawaz say they want to solve the problem through negotiations,” said Waheed Mojdah, an Afghan political analyst. “That means letting Pakistani militants come into Afghanistan to support the Taliban. It means more tensions and problems for us.”
Pakistan has long denied backing anti-Kabul militants and has accused Afghanistan of exporting its problems across the border. In recent weeks, several clashes have erupted between Afghan security forces and Pakistanis manning border outposts, resulting in the death of an Afghan police officer. The violence triggered protests in Afghan cities and reignited a perennial dispute over a British-drawn boundary known as the Durand Line.
Despite its cordial language, Karzai’s message to Sharif this week focused pointedly on the issue of Pakistan sheltering anti-Afghan militants in the tribal border region. He has complained about this covert policy to Sharif’s predecessors for a decade and has met with repeated denials. After the recent violence, he angrily suggested that the Taliban “turn and take aim” at the “real enemy” across the border. Sharif, despite his experience on the world stage, is also widely viewed here as a religious fundamentalist who has coddled Islamic groups. He was repeatedly quoted during his campaign as vowing to withdraw Pakistan from the U.S.-led war on international terrorism.
“Sharif has been extremely ambiguous on the issue of extremism,” said Imtiaz Gul, an author and director of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. “His people will have to come clean on what they think are the real threats to Pakistan.”
A few Afghans said this week that they wished Sharif well and hoped his election would provide a fresh start for bilateral relations. Pakistani leaders often point out that both countries have suffered from terrorism and that establishing peace and security in Afghanistan would also benefit Pakistan. Perhaps at age 63, one man said hopefully, an older and wiser Sharif will take those slogans seriously.
“If he continues his past policies, not only will we suffer, but they will, too,” said Obaidullah Ramin, a lawmaker and former aide to Karzai. “He needs to learn from his past times in power and chart an honest, sincere strategy with Afghanistan.”
First Female Afghan Air Force pilot graduated in 30 years
By SAYED JAWAD - 16 May 2013, 8:52 am Khaama Press
The first female pilot of Afghanistan to be trained inside the country earned her flying wing on Tuesday after graduating from Undergraduate Pilot Training.
2nd Lieutenant Niloofar Rahmani, is the first female pilot to be trained in Afghan Air Force in more than 30 years.
The 21-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Nilofar Rahmani was graduated during a ceremony at Shindand Air Base in western Herat province of Afghanistan, along with other eight young Afghan pilots.
The young Afghan pilots hae been trained by U.S. Air Force instructors and were graduated after completing 197 sorties consisting of 145.5 flying hours, the graduates trained on the Cessna 182 fixed-wing aircraft or the MD 530 rotary aircraft
Nilofar Rahmani quoted by Washington Times said, “First, it was my ambition, and second, I want to show that Afghanistan can have female pilots. It’s a job females can do also, it’s not a hard job that the men can just do. Both can do it.”
She also added, “I wanted to fly with my brothers, shoulder to shoulder.”
The young graduates will now move on to more advanced training, on Cessna 208s or Mi-17s, however Lt. Rhmani is aspiring to be a fixed-wing pilot.
“It’s my honor to serve my country and be the first female, and being an example for other females behind me,” she told The Times.
Lt. Rahmani loved to become a pilot since she was a child and spent nearly a year with the coalition forces to learn English in order to qualify to take part in pilot training.
She is influenced by her to become a pilot who could not become a pilot due to problems at that time.
Health Services a Challenge in Ghor
TOLOnews.com By Jawed Stanikzai 15 May 2013
The central Ghor province local officials and the Parliamentarians on Tuesday said that women doctors don't at all exist in any of the areas in the province.
The officials have said that poor health services especially for women is quite alarming.
Ghor lacks proper health care centers. The centers which have been built in late years either don't have medicines or equipment or doctors.
The residents of Ghor province complain that the health care centers are far from residential villages where repeatedly patients have lost their lives while on their way to the centers.
"Our village is so far, we don't have doctors there," a resident said.
The province includes women addicts. "I became an addict four years back. I was using tablets for two years and after that I started using heroin; now I don't have even one Afghani to buy medicine," a woman addict told TOLOnews.
The local officials blame the private health centers which are currently working remote areas of the province.
"Sometimes the families don't allow the female members to go to the health centers because the doctors are all men," Provincial Parliamentarian Sima Joinda told TOLOnews.
The Provincial Council Chief Fazlulhaq Ihsan told TOLOnews, "A province with such a wide geographical area does not have a single woman doctor."
Ghor Governor, Sayed Anwar Rahmati also criticizes the condition of the health services.
"The Department of Public Health does not have a building. There is no standard building for a hospital and we need it for the treatment of addicts in the province," Rahmati told TOLOnews.
Afghan Public Health Minister confirms the current health challenges inside the province but stressed that challenges will be tackled.
"There is a problem with the quality of health services. Lack of health specialists especially women specialists and obstetricians are a major problem in Ghor and other provinces of Afghanistan," Public Health Minister, Soraya Dalil said.
She added that the ministry is working to facilitate health services by providing some professional training to women nurses and obstetrician in the province.
Zahir Qadir Must Provide Capital Legitimizing Documents: Analysts
TOLOnews.com By Haseeb Maudoodi 15 May 2013
Afghan Member of Parliament Zahir Qadir on Monday's Parliament session said that he has about $365 million assets and there is no need for smuggling.
Parliament member Zahir Qadir's recent speeches about his personal assets raised waves of reactions against him.
A number of Afghan analysts said that the possession of so much money with Zahir Qadir is questionable and these analysts asked him to provide capital legitimizing documents.
"These assets belong to Afghan people and that these are snatched by the powerful figures which is questionable," Faizullah Jalal, a university lecturer told TOLOnews.
"When a person has 3 to 4 hundred thousand dollars per month expenditure, where does he get the money from? The money could be earned by smuggling drugs or either through corruption," Mir Abid Joenda, a civil society activist told TOLOnews.
"In the past, the total amount of wealth of a person never reached ten million dollars but today the amount has scaled new heights and people in the past ten years have amassed numerous assets," Azrakhsh Hafizi, Head of Managing Delegation, Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce told TOLOnews.
"With the past background these people have, I don't think the money earned is legal, most of the money is black money," a Kabul resident told TOLOnews.
Parliament member Zahir Qadir recently said that he owns about 300 vehicles and his monthly expenses are about 3 to 4 hundred thousand dollar per month.
"My asset is worth $365 million but at that time I was not a Parliament Member, number of MPs have raised objections seeking an explanation from Qadir regarding the source of the assets," Zahir Qadir Said.
It comes after Afghan Finance Minister revealed the names of lawmakers that he claims are involved in smuggling and other illegal activities on Monday.
The Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal was summoned to the parliament over his comments about the involvement of a number of lawmakers in illegal activities including smuggling of alcohol, fuel and flour.
The Finance Minister accused Mohammad Zahir Qadir, Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamedzai, Mohammad Arif Rahmani, Mahmmod Khan Sulaiman Khil, Azim Mohsini and Samiullah Samim of making illegal demands and being involved in smuggling.
Accused MPs Want a Parliamentary Commission to be Set Up
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 15/05/2013
The six MPs who have been accused by the Finance Minister on Monday for smuggling and putting front illegal demands refused these allegations in the Parliament session held on Wednesday. They said these accusations must be investigated by a special commission set up by the Parliament.
These MPs said if these accusations are not proved, the Minister of Finance should be impeached.
On the other hand, the Finance Minister said that he has revealed these crimes on national interest.
In the meantime these six accused MPs have said that if their crime is proved they will resign from Parliament.
"All the accusations that the Minister of Finance has raised should be proved by him and in case they are proved, I'm ready to go to jail," Zaher Qadeer, Member of Parliament said.
The MPs said that a special court must set up by the Parliament.
"A commission must be established by the Parliament to consider the allegations and if these accusations were proved before the impeachment of the Minister of Finance, it signifies that he is also associated with the criminals and that it should be investigated," said Baktash Siawash a MP.
"The flour was smuggled with the help of Custom's staff, therefore, Nengarhar Customs officials should be interrogated," Sediq Ahmad Usmani a MP said.
Recently Finance Minister was appreciated by the Parliament Complaint Commission and it said that his revelation was for national interest.
"All those things that I have revealed were for the nation's interest and not for personal interest, and that this law breaking attitude will worsen the condition of the country," Hazrat Omar Zakhailwal, Finance Minister said.
All the MPs accused by the Minister of Finance for smuggling and illegal demands said that till the case is not proved, the Minister of Finance should be banned and the case should be investigated at the earliest.
Afghanistan's kochis: Nomads no more
War forced many to abandon their wandering ways, but settled life is precarious with government offering little help.
Al jazeera By Ali M Latifi 15 May 2013
Qarabagh, Afghanistan - As snow falls over the northern Kabul hillsides, a group of nomadic kochis in Afghanistan congregate at their simple, white mosque. The leaders of this 750-household community, known as maleks, enter first, followed by the other men of the group.
Inside the mosque, the elders share the story of a land dispute that has for two years pitted them against the Afghan government and a local tribesman who claims to own the land they have settled on.
For centuries, Afghanistan's kochi population - numbering about three million - was on the move, following the seasons with their livestock in tow. But about two million of these people, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns, have been pressured by three decades of conflict to abandon their nomadic lifestyle to instead search for permanent residence.
Some have been able to use the profits from selling their livestock to buy homes. But, with 54 percent of the nation's kochis living in poverty, many others have chosen to settle in open areas where they have built their own houses, without the required permission from the Ministry of Urban Development Affairs and Housing.
The hillsides have a historic pull for the kochis living in the Qarabagh district north of the capital. For 200 years, their nomadic routes have afforded them a connection to the land here.
"From the time I came to this Earth we have been [coming] here," says Malek Islam, one of the four leaders of the community.
As youngsters pass around loaves of bread and cups of chai, a tale unfolds of an Afghanistan in which tradition and modernity sit uncomfortably side-by-side, where nomadic camps and contemporary high-rise apartment blocks compete for space.
The ageing maleks may recall setting up camp in Qarabagh as young boys on their way to the highlands, but the government in Kabul sees them as squatters on land belonging to somebody else.
According to records in Kabul province's principal book of properties, the land the kochis currently occupy belongs to a man who inherited it from his family, and who has since relocated to France.
But the maleks insist that the man, who could not be reached for comment by Al Jazeera, has never produced a deed to the land they settled on two years ago. "Ever since we asked for documentation, he fled. He has not been heard from since," they insist. Haji Ghondai, one of the leaders of the community, says that was more than a year ago.
Lined with graves
Meanwhile, the community's four maleks insist that as "people of the Afghan nation", their demands for a school, a clinic and a source of water must be addressed by the government.
But, despite having 10 of the 249 seats in the lower house of the Afghan parliament allocated to them and a special independent directorate to deal with their issues, many kochis feel that their voices remain unheard by the government.
The maleks of Qarabagh say that the kochis are "servants of God and citizens of this president", but that the government was placing financial interests ahead of its people. "We gave martyrs. We fought alongside our brothers for 35 years, but people won't even allow us in the fields," says Malek Islam, noting that the hillsides here were lined with kochi graves.
Kabul judge Jamaluddin Wahedi says that, without documentation, the kochis are unlikely to have even their most basic demands met: "Everything in this country is in the documents. If you have the proper papers, then the law is in your favour."
But Malek Islam says that, when they do try to deal with government officials, they are discriminated against for their traditional ways: "They look at our patos [shawls], our traditional piran tombans [long robes] and say we are bombers. Our men, our women cast ballots for them, but still the government pays us no attention."
Turned away from government buildings and despondent at what they believe is government indifference towards them, the kochis of Qarabagh took matters into their own hands when they erected their mosque in 2011. But officials said this violated a bylaw stating that no structures capable of standing for more than six months could be built on disputed land.
The maleks say that the morning after they built the mosque, the police surrounded them: "They fired 2,000 bullets on our women and children. What did we do? Did we commit a sin by building a house of God in a single night?”
Educating for self-sufficiency
The kochis' commitment to building a self-sufficient existence is, they insist, reflected in their determination to educate the children of the community.
Each day more than 450 boys and girls take turns attending classes in a tent provided by the Aschiana Foundation, a local NGO serving disadvantaged children. With books, pencils, heaters and firewood provided by Aschiana, Maulvi Ahmad Khan, who serves as the community's mullah and schoolteacher, proudly proclaims: "All our children are literate."
But even the school tents are a reminder of the predicament in which the community finds itself, for, in accordance with Afghan law, they must be taken down within the next few months.
"We asked the government to help our children so our country can move forward," says Malek Islam. "For how long can we be dependent? For how long can we be illiterate?"
The women of Qarabagh are essential to the livelihoods of the community. In the hillsides, their primary daily responsibility is water retrieval. But the maleks say the hills that surround them make even that an hours-long task each day. In the winter, the women resort to heating snow for drinking water.
"What kind of life is this for our women?" asks Haji Ghondai.
But nothing has served as a more stinging reminder of the kochis' lack of agency than the winter of 2011-12. With the nearest medical facility 40 minutes and a $10 taxi ride away, 15 of the community's children died as a result of the cold during that particularly harsh winter, further emphasising the need for permanent structures and a health clinic.
Bureaucracy versus tradition
The kochis used to spend early autumn in Laghman province to the east, but they say even their land there has been taken over by developers, both foreign and local. "Who are [they] building these high-rises for, the Westerners?" Malek Islam asks.
"If an Afghan is not part of Afghanistan then give us our passports to go to Pakistan or Iran," says Haji Ghondai.
But after more than 30 years of war, land disputes are not unique to Afghanistan's kochi populations. In fact, they occur in nearly all of the nation's 34 provinces.
Asadullah Hamdam, the former governor of south-central Uruzgan province, says the solutions to these disputes are to be found in tents, not the halls of power. Shortly after assuming his post in 2007, Hamdam was confronted by a land dispute between two local groups over 5,000 acres in Chora district that led to the killing of 65 people.
At a 2008 loya jirga - a meeting of tribal elders, religious leaders and other "knowledgeable people" - 200 representatives were tasked with resolving the dispute. After three days of meetings with villagers, the jirga was able to bring both parties to an agreement.
Pointing to the rampant corruption in the Central Asian nation, Hamdam says: "In bureaucracy, rights are easily lost [but] in the Afghan jirga tradition, rights are never lost."
Gathered in their mosque, the maleks say a prayer and one by one the community steps out into the cold air. "Other than God we have no connections," says Malek Islam, as he watches a group of girls leave the tents that serve as their classroom to make way for the first shift of boys.
With the "illegal" mosque he helped build behind him and a crowd of schoolchildren before him, Malek Islam argues that it is tradition that has kept his people in Qarabagh. "We have no more places to go. This is where we want to stay."
Halfhearted poppy eradication program in Afghanistan yields inadvertent success
As an unexpected result of the government's eradication program, it's a bad year for poppy farmers.
Global Post By Ben Brody May 15, 2013
ZHARI, Afghanistan - Zhari is having a banner year for opium poppy cultivation. Increased security has led to more fields being sown with poppy, and workers harvest opium with less fear of stepping on Taliban mines than in past summers.
But the colorful fields stretching as far as the eye can see don't tell the whole story. In terms of the actual opium harvest, the raw material used in heroin production, it has been a terrible year for farmers here.
"The leaves turn brown and the milk doesn't flow," complained an elderly farmer as he pushed his way through a huge poppy field in Zhari's Siab Jan village, his tunic stained black with opium sap from long days in the fields.
The poppy in Zhari's muddy fields are afflicted with a condition that causes yellow and brown spots on the leaves, which has dramatically affected the amount of opium sap produced, according to local farmers. The plants aren't dying individually — they are uniformly unproductive, which could suggest overwatering as the cause, according to Kandahar Agribusiness Development Team commander Col. Bob Hayter.
And overwatering could be an unintended consequence of the Zhari district government’s poppy eradication effort.
The Zhari district governor, Niaz Sarhadi, runs an eradication program that stretches the meaning of the word “eradication” considerably and doesn’t actually aim to get rid of all poppy plants, according to 2nd Lt. Bryce Hudson, a platoon leader with A Co., 4-17 Infantry at Ahmadkhan.
"To us, eradication means destroying 90 percent of the poppy," said Hudson. "To [the governor], it means about 10 percent."
US troops do not have a mandate to get directly involved in poppy eradication in Zhari — growing poppy is against Afghan law, so Afghans are responsible for enforcing it.
A fleet of well-worn Massey-Ferguson 875 tractors sit outside the governor's compound at Forward Operating Base Pasab in varying states of disassembly, covered in dried mud and poppy stalks.
Some villagers in Zhari complain that their governor decides to destroy poppy fields based on whether or not the farmers have paid their bribes, and he drives his Lexus out to the poppy fields and watches his tractors crush the flowers. Other villagers claim the farmers whose fields are crushed are just unlucky.
The villagers have tried different strategies to protect their poppies from the marauding tractors. Some plant their poppies in the trenches between grape rows, too narrow for the tractors to get in. Some dig canals around their fields like moats.
The most widespread strategy in Zhari has been to heavily irrigate the poppy fields, making them too muddy for tractors to get in. The Zhari mud is unbelievably sticky and it is easy to plunge knee-deep through its thin crust and spend the next 20 minutes digging your shoe out.
Although the flower itself is very delicate, opium poppy is a tough plant. As long as it has plenty of sunlight, it can grow in poor soil or drought conditions and can tolerate large temperature swings. But the plant seems to be sensitive to overwatering.
"Overwatering causes root rot and mold, which would show up as yellowing leaves," Hayter said. "We see the same thing in their wheat fields when they irrigate too much."
Hayter and his team advise Afghan farmers on irrigation and fertilization techniques for every common local crop except poppy, but he said the principles of agriculture are the same.
And even under ideal conditions, harvesting opium by hand is a very labor-intensive task. Once the poppy's delicate pink and white petals have fluttered to the ground, men and boys use curved knives to carefully scratch the swollen seed pod that releases a watery white sap, or "milk." The sap evaporates overnight and leaves behind a tiny bit of sticky black opium paste, which is then scraped off with plastic spoons.
Making an appreciable amount of opium takes a tremendous number of poppies. The raw opium sap can be smoked, but it is more lucrative to chemically refine it into heroin for export to Asia, Europe and the United States. Last year, about 75 percent of the world's heroin supply came from Afghanistan, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
According to Jaan, an interpreter who works with the US military, farmers tell him that they suspect that high-flying NATO planes are secretly spraying Zhari with a chemical that weakens their poppies. Of course, no such program exists. Jaan did not want his family name used for fear of reprisals.
"I tell them that the Army has no time for that kind of thing, the spraying, but they don't want to listen," said Jaan. "It's just a simple thing — too much water."
Governor Sarhadi loudly denied taking bribes at a district shura — a gathering of local and regional government, tribal and military representatives — and also announced that the eradication program would be immediately halted, two weeks before the end of harvest.
"We have to go after the drug dealers, the people motivated to get rich," Sarhadi said to a group of tribal elders during the shura. "They don't listen to the elders, they don't listen to the governor, they don't listen to the Koran — they're all criminals."
Heavy Metal In Kabul? It's The Music, Not The Munitions
NPR By Sean Carberry May 15, 2013
When 23-year-old Solomon "Sully" Omar felt the music scene in his native Denver wasn't giving him what he was looking for, he made a radical move. He headed for Kabul, capital of the war-torn country his parents had fled decades ago.
"I came here to continue my education and at the same see what's in the music scene here and bring some of the skills and abilities that I have to the music scene," says Omar.
Omar is a member of , a whose performance was one of the highlights of the recent of alternative music and arts in Kabul. More than 30 bands performed over four days during the third annual event.
And if you can imagine it, 's sweat-inducing set had the hundreds of Afghan spectators on their feet.
Omar says he was pleasantly surprised to find an actual music scene when he arrived in Kabul.
"I was expecting to find" — he pauses — "nothing."
"I didn't know there was like crazy metal and dub step," Omar says. "I really wasn't expecting music to be alive and breathing and well and healthy here in Afghanistan."
The Family Returns To Afghanistan
Omar's roots are Afghan. He was born and raised in Colorado, where his parents ultimately settled after leaving Afghanistan in the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion.
After the Taliban were driven from power in 2001, Omar's father started traveling back to Afghanistan, where he now works for the University of Massachusetts' Higher Education Project in Kabul. His mother works in Kabul advising female entrepreneurs.
His brother and sister both moved to Afghanistan, and Omar was the last of the family to resettle in Kabul.
He arrived last August and became the keyboard player, second guitarist and backing vocalist in District Unknown after initially helping them produce some songs.
Omar's parents attended the Sound Central Festival, and it was life coming full circle for the family. Omar's father – who he describes as an artist and former hippie – performed on the very same stage of the French Cultural Central back in the '70s.
"My dad is staunch supporter of my music career," says Omar. "He does want me to finish my school as a first priority."
Omar is doing just that. Currently a student at the American University in Kabul, he hopes eventually to study electronic music production at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Omar says it's a different experience performing in front of an Afghan audience.
"It's a mix of people who are both huge fans of alternative music and arts, and people who are completely new to it, and I think it makes for a great mix," he says.
While he has fans across Kabul who appreciate District Unknown and his DJ work, he does get strange looks from people when he tells his story.
"Most people that I tell that I came here, Afghans, they look at me like, 'what, why?'" he says.
But, at least musically speaking, Omar was able to find what he was looking for.
"I'm happy here. There is here what I was longing for in the States as a musician – to find a thriving, kind of virgin music scene. That's the most awesome thing I could have wanted," Omar says. "It's not in the perfect circumstances, but I'll take it."
Information Minister Refuses Smuggling Accusations
TOLOnews.com By Karim Amini 15 May 2013
The Information and Culture Minister on Wednesday called the Senate Committee's accusations irresponsible and revengeful.
The Information and Culture Minister, Sayed Makhdom Rahin said that all 59 antiques that the Head of Senate Committee believes were smuggled are in the National Museum. Rahin added that he has asked President Karzai to set up a delegation to investigate the allegations.
The Afghan Senate House Committee recently stated that the Information and Culture Minister has stolen and smuggled 59 Afghani antiques aboard.
"You know why the Senator passed a comment of this kind? The senator insulted the staffs of Afghanistan National Television a few days ago and the TV refused to broadcast Senator's speech while he was speaking at the Senate. The Senator thought that I ordered them to not broadcast the speech; as a result he accused me of smuggling and stealing. I don't have time to watch TV. I don't watch TV even once a week," Sayed Makhdom Rahin said in a press conference.
The minister adds that it was long time ago that the British police found the smuggled antiques. They asked the Information and Culture Ministry whether the antiques belonged to Afghanistan? Then the ministry told them that it belongs to Afghanistan but not registered at the Afghanistan Museum. The British Police sent all the antiques to Afghanistan
Meanwhile Head of Senate Complaints Committee said that the minister should come to the committee to prove.
"Mr. Minister let the President do his other important jobs; this is the duty of the Parliament. As a minister you violated the Afghanistan Constitution by refusing to present yourself in front of our committee," Head of Complaints Committee of Senate, Zalmai Zabuli said.
The Information and Culture Ministry says that Afghanistan's 700,000 antiques were robbed during the domestic war in the country.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com