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Iran reiterates its opposition to permanent US bases in Afghanistan
By MEENA HASEEB - 23 May 2013, 2:22 pm Khaama Press
Iran once again expressed its opposition towards the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan after NATO-led coalition security forces leave the country in 2014.
The issue was raised by Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi during a visit by UN special envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis on Wednesday.
Mr. Salehi during his meeting with Jan Kubis once again insisted that United States should not establish military bases in Afghanistan and emphasized that Afghan security forces should take full security lead across the country.
In the meantime UN special envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis urged Iran to Afghanistan advance its political transition and hold elections while underlining Iranian’s key role in the region.
As NATO-led international security assistance force (ISAF) is preparing to withdraw all its combat troops from Afghanistan, Kabul and Washington are engaged in discussions to finalize a bilateral security agreement which will allow the presence of US troops in Afghanistan after 2014.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai earlier this month announced that U.S. can keep nine bases in Afghanistan after the scheduled 2014 NATO combat troop pullout, however, he insisted on economic and security guarantees first.
The places in which the US wants to keep troops include the capital, Kabul, the sprawling Bagram airbase, which has been the heart of operations in the east, the restive southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, and Shindand in the west, where Nato is training the Afghan airforce, Karzai said.
The other bases are in the northern hub of Mazar-i-Sharif, the western city of Herat, near the Iranian border, and eastern Gardez and Jalalabad, which is a key gateway to Pakistan and a base for drones.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan cause of insecurity in region: Iranian lawmaker
TEHRAN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- A senior Iranian lawmaker said the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan has led to growing insecurity in the region, Press TV reported Thursday.
"The pretext of the United States and its allies for their presence in Afghanistan was to establish security in the region, but as we are witnessing today, not only security not established, but (the presence of foreign forces) also led to insecurity in the region," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran's Majlis (parliament) said here in a meeting with the top UN envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis.
Boroujerdi said the restoration of peace and stability in Afghanistan is of grave importance to regional countries, adding that "The establishment of stability and tranquillity in Afghanistan will contribute to lasting security in the region, and Iran is ready for cooperation to help restore security, peace and development in this country."
Praising the Islamic republic for delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan as well as hosting Afghan refugees, Kubis, for his part, underlined the need for cooperation among Afghanistan's neighbors to see peace take hold in the country.
Afghan security concerns to ease after 2014, Karzai says
Los Angeles times By Mark Magnier May 22, 2013
New Delhi - Afghan security after the departure of foreign combat troops in 2014 will become easier because of the ill-advised, misdirected and often corrupt ways NATO and its contractors have pursued the "war on terror," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told reporters in India on Wednesday.
U.S.-led foreign troops have targeted Afghan villagers, including the use of special forces on night raids, rather than focusing on the real source of terrorism: foreign insurgents mounting attacks from bases in neighboring Pakistan, he said.
“Withdrawing of their forces from Afghanistan will be good for us,” Karzai, dressed in a long black robe, said at a breakfast meeting in New Delhi with Indian and foreign journalists. “We believe there will be more peace in Afghanistan when they leave. We believe those attacking Afghanistan will find it hard to attack.”
Karzai’s sharp criticism of the United States in recent months -- even as he calls on Washington to supply more aid, training and equipment -- reflects efforts to shore up political support at home, analysts said. By distancing himself from unpopular foreign missteps, including the killing of civilians in NATO airstrikes, he hopes to be seen as an Afghan nationalist and avoid looking like a Western pawn.
“He’s a complicated and complex customer,” said Rana Banerji, a retired Indian official and independent analyst. “This is a line that’s really not getting him anywhere.”
Karzai spoke at the end of a three-day trip during which he received an honorary doctorate from western India’s Lovely Professional University, touched base with Indian leaders, appealed for more aid and presented a request for military equipment and assistance from India. “It’s a wish list,” he said, when asked what it contained.
India has pledged greater support without providing details.
India and Afghanistan enjoy good relations and a shared wariness of Pakistan, which divides them geographically. India has funded $2 billion in Afghan infrastructure projects and trained hundreds of Afghan army officers and police. But its staff hostels, aid projects and embassy in Afghanistan have been bombed repeatedly by militants it believes are linked to Pakistan, reinforcing a reluctance to train or station troops on Afghan soil.
India isn’t likely to supply weapons to Afghanistan until the regional picture is clearer, said Vishal Chandra, a research fellow at New Delhi’s Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. That includes U.S. strategic objectives after 2014, the outcome of Afghanistan’s upcoming election and what policy the new Pakistani government pursues following the electoral victory of Nawaz Sharif's party.
Karzai tiptoed around the tricky shoals of regional diplomacy Wednesday. Afghanistan maintains longstanding relations with Iran and the United States as well as Pakistan and India despite their respective differences, he said, even as he expressed hope that Sharif would step up Pakistan’s battle against extremism.
“Pakistan has influence over the Taliban because they have residence there, to put it mildly,” he said. “It’s going to be a very cumbersome process for peace without Pakistan’s cooperation.”
Karzai’s meetings this week with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pranab Mukherjee are part of a broader dance as regional powers maneuver for position in advance of NATO’s planned withdrawal.
India’s $2 billion in aid was well spent, with every dollar accounted for, Karzai told reporters, in contrast to U.S. assistance. Western media have accused his government of entrenched corruption, but he said that graft is to be expected in a developing country that saw state institutions wiped out by three decades of war.
A distinction must be made between homegrown graft, which is relatively negligible, and deep-seated corruption linked to foreign contracts, he said.
“The problem is very faulty, very superficially awarded contracts by the West, especially the United States, which has brought lots of corruption, massive corruption,” he said. “If it were Denmark criticizing Afghanistan, I would say it was valid, or if it were Norway. But if the United States does it, I would simply laugh at it.”
Karzai did not address the case of Kabul Bank, from which nearly $1 billion was siphoned off for the benefit of a few individuals, including three of Karzai’s relatives, with no apparent Western link.
Karzai said that under no circumstance would he continue as president after 2014, when his second term expires.
“I’m exhausted, totally exhausted,” he said. “Secondly, why would I ruin my legacy by staying on. ... It’s not good for me, nor Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan’s Karzai Says ‘No Circumstances’ Allow Him to Seek Another Term
The New York Times By Gardiner Harris and Matthew Rosenberg May 22, 2013
New Delhi - Seeking to dispel widespread rumors that he will find a way to cling to power beyond the end of his second term next year, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said Wednesday that there was “no circumstance that will allow me to stay as president.”
“And there are two reasons for that,” he said. “One is I’m exhausted. Really, totally exhausted, and I would like to be retired. And second, why would I ruin my legacy by staying on and taking an opportunity away from Afghanistan to become an institutionalized democracy?”
Elections are scheduled for April, and American and European officials say privately that billions of dollars of aid on which Afghanistan depends will be jeopardized if the vote does not go ahead.
That message has been conveyed to Mr. Karzai, the officials have said, and the Afghan leader has repeatedly sought to dispel talk that he will try to find a way to stay on beyond his constitutionally mandated two five-year terms.
But the rumors have persisted, fueled in part by the reticence of possible contenders to declare their interest in running.
To do so, Afghan politicians and analysts say, would be to acknowledge that Mr. Karzai is a lame duck. With government power highly centralized in the presidency — the president appoints everyone from ministers to district governors, for instance — few top officials are willing to risk angering Mr. Karzai by openly campaigning to fill his job.
Mr. Karzai said he had come to New Delhi with a “wish list” that he hoped India would fill. He and others in his party refused to specify what was on the list. India provides training to Afghan forces, although that training is done entirely in India.
India could provide small arms that are made in India, but those weapons are generally not highly regarded. India has to buy from abroad most of the weapons that Afghanistan might want.
Mr. Karzai’s trip to India was overshadowed by that of the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, who left New Delhi on Tuesday just as Mr. Karzai was ushered in to see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The two visits, along with the leadership change this month in Pakistan, made for an unusually active week in top-level South Asian political jockeying.
Afghanistan’s outreach to India has long been a source of intense concern in Pakistan, but Mr. Karzai said Wednesday that he needed permission from no one to conduct diplomacy. “Afghanistan is a sovereign country, and like all sovereigns, it has the right to choose its friends,” he said. “But our relations with India will not be at the cost of Pakistan or a cause for worry for Pakistan.”
Mr. Karzai said he welcomed the election of Nawaz Sharif as president in Pakistan, saying he had dined with Mr. Sharif last year in Islamabad. “I found him very much inclined to better relations with India,” Mr. Karzai said. “I found him aware of the dangers of terrorism.”
Mr. Karzai dismissed widespread concerns that his government was deeply corrupt and that members of his family had been among the worst offenders. Most corruption, he said, results from the contracting practices of foreign countries, “especially on the part of the United States.”
The worst corruption centered for years on private security companies, which he finally banned, he said. Beyond that, those who criticize Afghan corruption mostly do so for political reasons, said Mr. Karzai, who late last month acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency had for more than a decade financed a presidential slush fund used to buy the support of warlords, lawmakers and other powerful Afghans.
“If Denmark criticizes corruption in Afghanistan, I will see it as meant to improve things,” he said. “But if the United States does it, I will simply laugh at it.”
Mr. Karzai dismissed the idea that Afghanistan might turn as violent and chaotic as Iraq after most foreign troops leave in 2014. “Iraq is a very unfortunate situation,” he said. “We are pained to see the way Iraq is suffering. I can tell you with a strong measure of confidence that Afghanistan will not see that.”
The reason, he said, is that Afghanistan has never suffered the sort of sectarian violence that Iraq has experienced.
The peace process is continuing but can be successful only with the participation of Pakistan, he said, adding: “Pakistan has influence over the Taliban because they have residence there, to put it mildly.”
Gardiner Harris reported from New Delhi, and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Turkish hostage released in capital Kabul
By SADAF SHINWARI - 23 May 2013, 1:28 pm Khaama Press
Afghan intelligence department — National Directorate of Security (NDS) on Thursday said a kidnapped Turkish citizen was released in capital Kabul.
National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told reporters that the Turkish citizen was kidnapped round 11 days ago and was freed from the hostage takers.
Mr. Tahiri further added, no suspect has been arrested in connection to kidnapping of the Turkish citizen.
According to reports a Turkish businessman, Sami Yavuz was kidnapped in capital Kabul by unknown gunmen on 12 May. He was head of Afghanistan Turkish Industrialists & Businessmen’s Association and was doing business in Afghanistan for the past ten years.
This comes as Taliban militants kidnapped eight Turkish engineers along with a Russian, a Kyrgyz and an Afghan national on 21 April after their helicopter made an emergency landing in eastern Logar province.
All kidnapped Turkish engineers were later released by Taliban militants.
The Election Law was approved today by the Lower House of the Afghan Parliament
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 22 May 2013
There have been differences among the lawmakers in respect of 11 provisions in this law which have been ongoing for the past one month. Eventually this law, comprising of 16 chapters and 79 articles, was approved by majority of the Lower House.
The final vote in respect to the Election Law was 96 votes in favor and 36 against, as pronounced by Mirwais Yassini First Deputy Speaker of the Lower House.
Meanwhile, a number of political parties welcomed the approval of this law. The law on Functioning and Governing of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) was also discussed in the Lower House but due to differences between parliamentarians this law didn't receive its approval.
Previously, IEC had said that if the Election Law isn't approved on time by the Lower House the IEC has to hold elections based on the legislative decree of the President.
The Functioning and Governing of IEC Law was sent to the President for his signature. However, with differences in eight provisions regarding this law between the Presidential Office and Parliament, it was once again sent to the Lower House.
These eight provisions where there were differences between the President's office and the Parliament were discussed in the Lower House.
After several rounds of discussions, the Lower House decided to approve the Functioning and Governing Law of IEC with two-third votes. If the Lower House can't approve it, the law will be reconsidered by the Joint Commissions of the National Assembly.
For a long time the approval of Election Law had sparked a number of debates in the Lower House.
Apparently, 11 provisions in the law caused a delay in the approval of the Election Law.
Some of them have been summarised below:
1- Paragraph 20 of the fourth article, the authority of announcing the final results of elections has been given to the IEC.
2- In other articles of the law, the authority to consider the electoral complaints has been given to the Electoral Complaints Commission.
3- Paragraph number two of article number seven states that one electoral site must be given to the Kuchis (nomads).
4- In other articles of this law, the establishment of each electoral site needs to be approved for each province.
5- Other articles of the law state that all suspicious ballot boxes must be quarantined at the electoral centers.
6- Other provisions of this law dictate that vote counting must be done in the district centers.
7- Another issue was regarding the candidacy of Mayors. They must have five years of experience in the same city to be eligible.
Despite all these differences, a number of political parties welcomed the approval of this law.
Sardar Mohammad Rahimi, Spokesman of the National Front said, "We appreciate the approval of the Election Law and hope that the President will sign it and the elections can be held on time."
Abas Nawiyan, a member of the Right and Justice Party said, "With the approval of Election Law more challenges will be experienced and some doubt that in the upcoming elections some fraudulent activities will take place."
Fazul Rahman Orya member of the National Front said, "We don't expect transparent elections from this law and it is most likely that the elections will not be held in a transparent manner."
IEC to Open Registration Centers On Sunday
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat 22 May 2013
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Wednesday said that a number of registration centers will be opened in 34 provinces on Sunday.
The IEC's officials added that all the required materials for the registration process are being transported to the provinces with ISAF's assistance. Some materials were transported to the insecure provinces by air.
IEC's Spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said that although they have not faced any problem while transporting the materials to the provinces but the commission has some concerns over safeguarding the materials from getting tampered or fiddled with.
The registration process is crucial step in conducting the upcoming Presidential elections in 2014.
"A number of registration centers will be opened on Sunday, 26 May, 2013 in 34 provinces of Afghanistan. 3 centers in Kabul, 2 centers in Kandahar, 2 centers in Herat, 2 centers in Nangarhar and 2 centers in Balkh provinces will be opened," Noor Mohammad Noor said.
IEC intends to open some centers in other districts as well but provision of security is the first requirement. The commission asked all the security organizations to submit a report about the security situation in the other districts of the country.
"We are concerned about the insecure parts of the country. The election materials will be transported into these regions but first security should be taken care of," IEC Spokesman said.
Supervision of the election process by national and international organizations is also an option in hand to keep the security situation up to the mark. The Commission will give credentials to 300,000 supervisors who will be supervising the entire election process of Afghanistan.
Local Haqqani leaders killed in E. Afghanistan
KABUL, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Two local leaders of the Haqqani militant group had been killed in eastern Afghan province of Paktiya, 100 km south of capital Kabul, said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Thursday.
"Afghan and coalition security forces confirmed today the death of two senior Haqqani leaders, Qari Azzam and Mukhlis, during an operation in Zurmat district, Paktiya province, Tuesday," the ISAF said in a press release. As a Taliban-linked group of militant, the Haqqani network, mostly operating in eastern provinces and Kabul, has been responsible for many high-profile attacks against security forces.
"Azzam, also known as Maulawi Sahib, served as an intelligence operative responsible for providing information to senior Haqqani leadership about attacks against Afghan and coalition forces .. Mukhlis, also known as Wazir, planned and participated in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces," the release added.
On Wednesday, an Afghan and coalition security force killed three insurgents during an operation in search of a senior Haqqani leader in Paktiya's Sayyid Karam district, the release noted.
Earlier on Thursday, the joint forces arrested six insurgents during an operation in search of a Taliban facilitator in Baghlan- e Jadid district, Baghlan province, 160 km north of Kabul, according to the release.
"The facilitator exercises command and control over a group of fighters responsible for attacks on Afghan and coalition forces. He also uses his residence as a storage facility for military equipment and coordinates the acquisition of weapons for use in insurgent activities,"
Taliban and the Haqqani militant group have yet to make comments.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched an annual rebel offensive late last month against Afghan government forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
On Wednesday, seven people, including four anti-Taliban local militiamen, were killed and 16 others wounded when a Taliban suicide attacker hit a marketplace in Muqur district in eastern Ghanzi province, 125 km south of Kabul.
Hard-line students in Afghanistan protest women’s rights decree as un-Islamic, demand repeal
Associated Press May 23, 5:07 AM
Kabul, Afghanistan - Hard-line Islamist students protested in the Afghan capital demanding the repeal of a presidential decree for women’s rights that they say is un-Islamic. It was the latest sign of a backlash against the legal protections passed in the 12 years since the toppling of the Taliban regime known for its harsh treatment of women.
The protest came days after conservative lawmakers’ vehement opposition blocked an attempt to cement the decree’s provisions in legislation.
Most of international force that ousted the Taliban is now preparing to withdraw by the end of next year, and activists fear an erosion of the women’s rights will follow if hard-liners pressure the elected government.
More than 200 male students protested in front of Kabul University on Wednesday against the decree on Elimination of Violence Against Women, which includes a ban on child marriage and forced marriage, makes domestic violence a crime and says rape victims cannot be prosecuted for adultery. It also outlaws “ba’ad,” a traditional practice of exchanging women or girls to settle disputes or debts.
Protester Fazel Hadi, 25, said the decree was “imposed by foreigners” and violates Islamic Shariah law.
Mawladad Jalali, the mullah of the university mosque and one of the organizers of the protest, led chants decrying democracy in general and the women’s law specifically.
“Our main demand is that this law should be repealed in the parliament,” he said before leading a brief march while police who cordoned off the area looked on.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued the decree on women’s rights three years ago as part of a raft of commitments to international donors, but lawmaker and activist Fawzia Kofi wanted to pass it in parliament to prevent any future president from reversing it. The brief parliamentary debate Saturday was ended by the speaker after fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers who said several provisions — including the ban on child marriage and jail time for domestic abuse — violated Islamic law. The decree remains in force, but the debate appears to have galvanized opposition to it.
The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan this week urged the government to do more to enforce the women’s rights decree, saying it is only sporadically applied when women report abuse.
“It is imperative for the development of Afghanistan that women are able to exercise their rights and be free from violence in their homes and workplaces,” UN Special Representative Jan Kubis said in a Monday statement.
In another worrisome sign for activists, the international group Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the number of women and girls jailed for alleged loose morals is the highest since the ouster of the Taliban, even though most of those detained are victims of abuse and have committed no crime under Afghan civil law.
The Taliban imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law during their five-year reign, ordering beatings for women failing to wear the full-body burqa garment in public, closing girls’ schools and banning women from leaving their homes without a male relative. They were toppled in a U.S.-led invasion for sheltering the al-Qaida’s terrorist leadership and now wage an insurgency.
Human Rights Watch’s Afghanistan researcher Heather Barr said that Afghanistan risks losing international aid if it does not meet commitments to uphold women’s freedoms.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Feature: Not even Taliban could stop the love for books in Afghanistan
by Abdul Haleem, Jawid Omid
KABUL, May 23 (Xinhua) -- "I have been running this book store since the 1960s and kept it open for book lovers even during Taliban's brutal reign," Hajji Shah Mohammad, owner of the bookstore, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Mohammad's tale only shows that the culture of reading and love for books transcend political upheavals and the test of time.
The two-room bookstore, which can be found in a dilapidated building in downtown Kabul, has served Afghan book lovers for more than five decades.
Mohammad said his personal collection has reached 18,000 books on different subjects about Afghanistan. His collection, properly catalogued and displayed on shelves, includes books in Chinese and Japanese.
Since opening his bookstore and modest library in the l960s, Mohammad has experienced ups and downs but because of perseverance and hard work he was able to survive Afghanistan's more than three decades of turmoil and political unrest.
In order to cater to a more sophisticated clientele and in keeping with the times, Mohammad has opened his own website.
"I have a website which is used by both foreigners and locals. Because of security problems, my clients, especially foreigners who cannot go out of their offices, just open our website at their embassies and offices and order online and later ask their employees to collect the books that they ordered," Mohammad added.
Mohammad said that during the Taliban regime, his bookstore was vandalized by hardline militants who do not believe in the importance of books and reading materials.
"The Taliban religious police came to my bookstore here one day in 1999 and burned several of my books because they contain pictures of human beings and animals. Even the picture of a butterfly was forbidden by them," he recalled.
The Taliban's six-year reign, which ended after the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S.-led military coalition in late 2001, had banned photo shops, television channels, cinema, music and all forms of entertainment.
The Taliban believes that taking pictures is a breach of Islamic teaching and anyone caught taking pictures of living creatures was punished. Only photos for passport and travel documents were allowed.
Nowadays, however, aside from Mohammad's bookstore there are about a dozen other bookstores found in Kabul, aside from libraries, newspaper stalls, printing presses and photo shops.
Some 70 television channels, more than 100 radio stations in Kabul and provinces and hundreds of newspapers, weekly and fortnightly and magazines are operating in the post-Taliban period.
Booksellers can now sell even imported books for children and television channels run animated clips portraying animals and other creatures, all banned during the Taliban regime.
But suicide attacks by the remnants of the Taliban still pose a threat to the security of Kabul and the country in general.
In mid-January, a suicide attack against a government agency near Shah Mohammad's bookstore left seven people, including the attackers, dead, and injuring 33 others. The attack also damaged a portion of the bookstore.
Atiq Rahimi: 'In Iran just as well as in Afghanistan, in actual fact, words defy tyranny'
From the Edinburgh world writers' conference in Saint-Malo, a speech on art, writing and reality from the French-Afghan author and film-maker Atiq Rahimi
Guardian By Atiq Rahimi 22 May 2013
Curator Reading Koran on Roof of Library, Mauritania The power of words a library curator reading in Mauritania. Photograph: Remi Benali/ Remi Benali/Corbis
In a major book of Persian literature called Memorial of the Saints, written in the 13th century, the great poet Farid Ud-din Attar explains that, one day, a young disciple asked his master what the power of wise men was. "Speech", the master answered, "speech!" Then the master showed his disciple the mountain at the foot of which he lived as a hermit, and said: "When a wise man orders this mountain to move, it moves." And at that precise moment, the mountain started shaking. The master scolded it: "I've not asked you to move! I just wanted to show him an example!"
On the surface, of course this tale shows what has been mankind's dream since time immemorial: to create, to change, to move, to destroy, to rebuild the world with words. Just with words! Who hasn't dreamed of being able to say: "Let there be light!" and to see light appear?
Yet beyond this fanciful quest, there is something in that tale which makes me wonder about the link between the power and speech of wise men [and women], intellectuals and writers.
First, about asking a mountain to move and getting it to move: I interpret this allegorically (and perhaps naively) as a pragmatic aspect of language, its transitive function. And I don't just mean in our daily conversations, but also in a literary text. Then, about the fact that the wise man just gives an "example", and that the example becomes a commandment: that opens a debate on the notion of exemplarity and metalanguage in literature.
Everyone undoubtedly remembers the following title, which is magical in French: "Quand dire c'est faire." In English it is "How to Do Things with Words", written by John Langshaw Austin. This English philosopher means a series of sentences which aren't simply a string of words that explain a state or a situation They become the very act they describe. Once uttered, they can change a life or a community's life dramatically. For instance "I now pronounce you man and wife" used by a mayor. Or "War is declared" used by a statesman, who, just by uttering these words, throws his people in the great madness and terror it involves A few centuries ago, in Amsterdam's synagogue, a sermon banished Baruch Spinoza from the Jewish community and condemned him to silence. And more recently, a "fatwa" forced Salman Rushdie into concealment
Believers say that the universe is created by the very words of God. And even if we don't believe it, we still witness the way the words attributed to God lead men to action, whether on the path of wisdom or the madness of suicide attacks
But you might ask: is this the doing of the power of words or of the words of power?
Langshaw Austin said it well: for a performative utterance to be "fortunate", in other words feasible, you need the right set of circumstances. You can't just have anyone pronounce any couple man and wife! First and foremost, the person who unites the two must have some legitimacy and some power. Then, the couple must fulfil certain conditions and so on.
And to get a mountain to move, you have to gain some wisdom first.
In order to shout "I accuse", you have to be Zola first. And to be Zola, you have to have written Nana, Germinal, La Bête Humaine
"It is splendid to be a great writer," said Flaubert, "to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. There must be a delirious pride in the feeling that you are bringing the full weight of your ideas to bear on mankind. But for that you must have something to say."
When the writer has something to say, does it follow that he changes anything in the world? Jean-Paul Sartre would reply yes, because for him, saying things means wanting to change them; talking or writing means acting on the world. Karl Marx Marx the novelist would have had far less impact on the world. Nicholson/Corbis
Bright minds will probably ask: if writers wield such power with their speech, why is the world torn in [to] a thousand pieces? Why is there so much tyranny, war and injustice? Where do we find ourselves, after Germinal, after War and Peace, after A Farewell to Arms, after The Plague ? What is literature up to? Alas, another question that sentences literature to uncertainty.
"Clearly, if Marx had followed his dreams of youth and written the most beautiful novel in the world, he would have held the world spellbound, but he wouldn't have moved it. You therefore have to write Capital and not War and Peace. You don't describe Caesar's murder, you have to be Brutus Making such links, such comparisons, might seem absurd to onlookers. But when art is weighed against action, immediate and pressing, action can only consider art as wrong, and art can only concur".
Maurice Blanchot said these words. And he is not wrong.
Even Sartre, a keen supporter of politically engaged literature, said in a fit of despair: "When a child is dying, Nausea seems very lightweight"!
Or Friedrich Hölderlin: " what are poets good for in times of trouble?"
But before sinking into unfathomable despair, let's reassure poets: You are here precisely to tell us what poets are good for in times of trouble.
Because by telling us that, poets name, define and recall the nature of our lives in these "times of trouble". Just as Shams Tabrizi, master of Rumi, a mystic Persian in the 13th century:
"We are not able to talk, If only we could listen! We must say all! And listen to all! But Our ears are sealed Our lips are sealed Our hearts are sealed."
This cry has echoed for centuries to denounce the permanent and implacable censorship that is breathed into the heart of writers, in Iran just as well as in Afghanistan (my country of origin), where in actual fact words defy tyranny.
In those countries, the existential problem isn't "to be or not to be " but to say or not to say.
Thus, any act becomes political. Even silence. Even lies.
I remember that when soviets were in Afghanistan, a brilliant saying from Poland was used by intellectuals: "If you want to survive, don't think. If you think, don't talk. If you talk, don't write. If you write, don't sign it. If you sign it, don't be surprised!"
Unfortunately, this still goes for my native country, even if the new post-Taliban constitution allows freedom of the press. But the problem lies elsewhere; it lies in each of us, because our hearts are sealed.
In the south of Afghanistan, Pashtun women have a poetic tradition called landay. These are short, anonymous poems, which reveal a lot, like for instance:
"Lay your lips on mine But leave my tongue free, that I may tell you I love you"
Imagine what would happen to that woman if she signed this!
This is how, by describing the conditions of mankind or by revealing humanity's desires and dreams, a literary text can become a cry, an act of proclamation. It "gives a syntax to the cry", as Deleuze would put it. It is a performative utterance. And even if that cry doesn't waken slumbering spirits, at least it might trouble their sleep! Such an act isn't a provocation, but a pro-vocation.
In that sense, politics isn't the will, the fear or the duty of the writer. It is in the ink of its writing. Writers aren't "engaged" in History, they are "embarked" in it, as Camus coins it, using Pascal's wording.
Now, let's talk about the other aspect of the literary experience, its exemplarity.
"Man's world is the planet of inexperience" said Milan Kundera, "Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from a previous one."
It is because this world is a planet of inexperience that literature has a meaning. Given that we don't live a permanent experience, literature helps us conceive the life of others (of those who lived before our time, or those who live at the same time as we do but elsewhere), as a pointer, perhaps even a mimetic desire, as René Girard put it.
We live and so we think with and through other people's experiences, just as others live with and through our writing as an existential, sentimental, political, metaphysical experience. Salman Rushdie said: "It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel." Denis Diderot said: "Reading novels makes us better people, not only because fictions illustrate abstract principles, or because characters show us what behaviors to adopt or avoid, but also because it turns the empathy felt by the reader into an experience of the other, therefore an altruist experience."
In that sense, an experience isn't just "personal experience", it isn't just past; it isn't a "study", a scientific experiment carried out to check or justify knowledge data, which would make it a future-oriented act. It is the proof of our existence here and now. It is the act of meditating on what we live. It is living the world as the world lives us. It is an "inner experience" for George Bataille and an "original experience" for Maurice Blanchot.
Writing is an experience with language, ie with oneself. It is an experience which helps me see the world within myself, so I can deconstruct it in order to understand it, and then rebuild it as I wish. By changing the world bit by bit, one day we will change the world.
So, should we still doubt the political dimension of literature?
First, I'd say YES! We must doubt it because as Paul Valéry says, "politics means wanting to conquer and to retain power; it therefore involves an action of constraint or of illusion over minds which are the essence of all power ()" The political mind always ends up forced into forgery. It introduces a forged intellectual currency onto the market; it introduces forged historical notions; it builds specious reasoning arguments; in a word, it does anything it can to keep its authority, its so-called moral authority.
And then, I'd say NO, because literature is a fight against all political systems. It is the power of words against the words of power.
Thus the definition of politics in writing.
By branding the Taliban ‘terrorists,’ Canada gave up on Afghan peace
The Globe and Mail By Adnan Khan May 22 2013
For anyone who has followed the Afghan war over the past twelve-odd years, the recent addition of the Afghan Taliban to Canada’s list of terrorist entities came as a surprise. More than a surprise, it was disheartening. After more than a decade of engagement in Afghanistan, the Harper government has indicated it is no longer interested in finding a path to peace.This is the problem with “terrorist lists” in general: they evoke a sense of evil and gloss over the details of complex conflicts like the one in Afghanistan. To simply label the Taliban a terrorist group without taking into account the matrix of alliances and interests that govern Afghanistan indicates a juvenile understanding of that war-ravaged nation. It reduces Afghanistan to Bush-era terms of good and evil.
But terrorism, particularly terrorism in Afghanistan, has never been so simple. Why, it must be asked, did it take the Canadian government more than ten years to add the Taliban to the terrorist list?
According to Canada’s criminal code, “terrorist group” means:
(a) an entity that has as one of its purposes or activities facilitating or carrying out any terrorist activity, or
(b) a listed entity
The first definition is governed by the definition of “terrorist activity” as set out in international conventions. The second is the Canadian government’s loophole, so that even an entity or group that doesn’t meet the requirements of definition (a) can still be listed as a terrorist group, unilaterally.
In legal terms, the Taliban occupy a grey zone in the definition of terrorist activity and appear to be increasingly trying to distance themselves from internationally recognized descriptions of what constitutes a terrorist act. On April 3, for example, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, warned his commanders not to engage in kidnapping for ransom, an act the Canadian criminal code lists as a terrorist activity.
In the past, he has also issued decrees limiting the scope of Taliban attacks to prevent civilian deaths, also in an apparent attempt to give his movement some international legitimacy.
The sincerity of those decrees is of course suspect. Taliban attacks have harmed more civilians in recent years than at any time since the start of the war. Their tactics, low-tech and arbitrary, inevitably kill innocents. Mullah Omar’s decrees are either strategic, in light of continuing negotiations, or representative of the Taliban leadership’s disconnect from the on-the-ground reality of the war they are waging.
But the overarching issues trump the specifics. No peace is possible in Afghanistan without negotiations – this is a fact virtually every stakeholder in Afghanistan now concedes. What the Harper government has done is try to gain short-term political points at the expense of a responsible foreign policy.
In diplomatic terms, it is a disastrous choice. Any leverage Canada may have had in negotiations with the Taliban ended on May 9, when the listing occurred. In moral terms, the Harper government has just devalued everything the Canadian military stood for during its engagement in Afghanistan. Canadian generals were one of the most vocal in their support for negotiations with the Taliban, often clashing with their American counterparts over the issue. That the U.S. administration under Barack Obama has accepted the need for a negotiated settlement is vindication for the approach Canada took in Afghanistan.
This is what Canada’s men and women in uniform, from frontline grunts to officers, all told me during the time I spent with them: negotiations are the only way. From very early on, Canadian soldiers caught on to the reality of Afghanistan: the Taliban represent a significant segment of Afghanistan’s population, primarily in the rural south and east. Defeating them military is impossible. Serious efforts need to be made to reach out and find alternate solutions. Canadians were making those efforts.
The Harper government has just sent the message that all of those sacrifices, all of the hard work and risks our soldiers took, all of the lives lost, in part because Canadians refused to lock themselves away behind blast walls, refused to distance themselves from the local people in Kandahar, many of whom supported the Taliban – were Taliban – all of this, according to the Harper government, was a waste.
According to them, the Taliban is now officially persona non grata.
How this helps to bring an end to the Afghan tragedy is puzzling. It goes against the prevailing logic. But perhaps this is not what the Harper government is after. Despite the billions of dollars spent and the millions still flowing into Afghanistan, it’s possible that our government has thrown in the towel. Forget what happens in Afghanistan, they may be thinking, and worry instead about Canada.
With the new designation, Canadian security agencies can now more closely monitor Canadians and their possible affiliations to the Taliban. Supporting a role for the Taliban in a future Afghanistan may now be tantamount to supporting a terrorist organization. Sending aid money to an Afghan village controlled by the Taliban – of which there is an ever-increasing number – to build, say, a canal, could be construed as terrorist financing.
The basic error in thinking is this: unlike terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban is a national movement. They have never expressed a transnational agenda and have begun to indicate they are willing to work with the Afghan administration. As one commander in Kandahar told me in 2011: “We have changed our position. We now accept that the politicians in Kabul are fellow Muslims; we are of the same nation. We can talk to them.” By officially lumping the Taliban in with the likes of al-Qaeda, the Canadian government is basically saying Afghanistan is a lost cause. By being the only NATO country to do so isolates Canada and negates all of the sacrifices, in blood and coin, which Canada has made over the past decade. Fortunately, it’s unlikely any other NATO country will make the same mistake.
Afghanistan’s Rape Crisis: Villagers Fear U.S.-Backed Militias
Afghans fear the very militias America has set up to protect them—and allegations of sexual violence abound. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau report.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau May 22, 2013
Jumadin, a 45-year-old farmer from the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, returned to his modest mud-brick home late one evening last January to find the front door shattered. He rushed inside, calling and searching for his 19-year-old daughter, Monizha, who had been home alone while Jumadin’s wife and three other children visited relatives in Pakistan. He was panic-stricken. The small house had been ransacked, and Monizha was nowhere inside. He finally found her just in time: she was outside in the animal shed, trying to hang herself.
Thin, grey-bearded and missing most of his front teeth, Jumadin says he wrapped his traumatized daughter in a blanket and cuddled her. “She was in shock. Her eyes were closed, and she would not open them to look at me,” he tells Newsweek /The Daily Beast. He finally coaxed from her the sordid details of the ordeal she’d just suffered. She had been raped repeatedly by three local Afghan militiamen wearing the khaki-colored uniforms of the American-trained and -supported Afghan Local Police (ALP). “I hugged her, and we both cried for hours,” he recalls. “I told her it was written in our destiny, so let’s try to cope with this dishonor.”
He continues, “In our cruel society, if a girl is raped by strong forces there is nothing left for the girl and the family We can cope with being poor, with earthquakes and disease—but not with rape that steals a family’s honor. We are ruined.”
The next morning, Jumadin walked to the village mosque to find out if anyone knew what had happened. “People were talking about how yesterday the ALP, who are under the control of American forces, had raided a number of houses in the village looking for Taliban,” he says.
He called his family in Pakistan and told them not to return—and quickly decided to join them. Within a week, he had sold his animals and most of his possessions. “We could not stay any longer in the house and village where my daughter had lost her and the family’s future,” says a tearful Jumadin, who now lives with his family in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.
“My daughter is still in shock,” he adds. “She is only skin and bone. She won’t eat, and every night she cries out in her dreams: ‘baba jan (father), baba jan, protect me.’”
“I couldn’t protect her,” he continues. “But if there was a Taliban regime, not a single woman would be raped I feel like joining the Taliban, getting a suicide vest to attack [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, the Americans and all these American-backed police militias.”
Monizha is far from the only victim: in northern Kunduz and Jowzjan provinces, locals call the ALP and the other arbakai, or militias, “the enemies of young girls’ virginity.”
With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan looming in 2014, a key part of American strategy has been to organize the ALP as a village self-defense force—sort of a neighborhood watch with AK-47s to protect the local population from Taliban intrusions, freeing Afghan security forces to pursue the Taliban.
The ALP initiative began in 2010 and was the third U.S. attempt to form village watches—the other two programs were scrapped after the local police spent more time harassing, abusing, and extorting money from villagers than protecting them. The ALP are supposed to be different: better trained and led, more disciplined, and loyal to the state rather than local warlords and power brokers.
But it may not have worked out that way. The ALP are recruited by local elders, vetted and trained for three weeks by American Special Operations forces, given Kalashnikovs, radios and khaki-colored uniforms, and paid some $190 a month through American funds transferred to the Ministry of Interior. Currently, there are some 20,000 ALP officers operating out of 100 of the country’s 400 districts. This past February, the United States pledged to provide an additional $1.2 billion to grow the force to 45,000 and support it through 2018.
In many areas, the ALP have been a success, driving the Taliban out of villages once occupied by the insurgents, particularly in the north, where the guerrillas are trying to mount a comeback.
But the advent of the ALP has also coincided with the worrying proliferation of private militias, or arbakai, that have been organized by former anti-Soviet mujahedin commanders, warlords and local power brokers to fight off the Taliban in advance of and after the coalition’s withdrawal. These arbakai are only answerable to their rich and powerful bosses, are largely undisciplined, and have been blamed for extortion, robbery, seriously abusing villagers, reprisal killings of suspected Taliban and insurgent sympathizers, and rape. In many villages, peasants have a hard time telling the difference between the ALP and the many arbakai.
Often villagers see both as potentially oppressive forces. As a result, a Pentagon report last December warned that the “proliferation of independent [non-government] sanctioned militiasthreaten to undermine the legitimacy and progress of the (ALP) program.”
The report continued, “Many reports of abuse attributed to the Afghan Local Police are actually reports of abuse committed by non-ALP local defense forces such as local arbakai, warlord militias that have taken the ALP name.”
ALP officers have also been involved in “insider” killings in which the Taliban have infiltrated agents into the ALP in an effort to create havoc. Last August, an ALP officer killed two U.S. soldiers in western Farah Province. And last September, Taliban infiltrators drugged and then shot 11 officers and six civilians at an ALP post in Ghazni, an act the caused the United States to temporarily suspend the ALP training program while U.S. military men “revalidated” the force’s active officers. The Taliban leadership makes no secret that it has targeted the ALP for attack and for infiltration. Over the past six months at least 180 ALP officers have been killed. ALP casualty rates are said to be double those of the Afghan National Army and National Police.
Jumadin believes that the militiamen who raped his daughter are affiliated with northern strongman Mir Alam Khan, an ethnic Tajik and a former anti-Soviet commander who, like many of today’s influential powerbrokers, fought against the Taliban in late 2001 with American military and financial support and has prospered ever since. A former police chief of Baghlan province, he has built one of the largest militias in the north, including some 3,000 armed men under his command in Kunduz. Some of his men, locals say, also serve in the ALP.
Seventeen-year-old Chaman Gul suffered a similar fate to that of Monizha. Relatives describe her as being a “healthy and attractive” young woman. In a phone interview with Newsweek/The Daily Beast, she described the ordeal she suffered two months ago in Aqsaee village, Darzab district, in the northern province of Jowzjan. As she, her relatives and other villagers tell it, she was brutally raped by seven men, including the local militia’s powerful commander, Murad Bai. “They broke down the door of our home and did to me, a number of times, horrible things that I can’t tell anyone or put into plain words,” she says from an undisclosed hiding place.
Other relatives and villagers confirm her account. One 60-year-old villager, who does not wish to be named for security reasons, says he watched as Bai and his men broke into Gul’s house. He says they were wearing the khaki-colored uniforms of the ALP. “They came just after noon and collectively raped her,” the villager says. “The village was so frightened no one could raise a voice against the ALP.”
Adds a close relative, who also wishes to remain anonymous: “The girl was raped for hours and was in such a terrible condition that we thought she would die.”
Rather than quietly hiding her suffering, as most victims and their families do, Gul took her case to the district and provincial authorities—but to no avail. “I complained to everyone in the concerned departments, but no one heard my voice,” she says.
The Darzab district police chief even threw her father out of his office. “The district police chief never offered any help or sympathy,” she says. “Another senior policeman told us the commander (Murad Bai) is the darling of the Americans and no one can touch him.”
Gul says that she and her father even traveled to the provincial capital of Sheberghan to register a complaint against the local police commander, but again no one agreed to help open a criminal case against Murad Bai and his men. Having lost all hope of any official intervention, she says she is contemplating suicide.
Local officials are striking back against Gul with their own version of events. The provincial police spokesman, Abdul Hai Razami, charges that Gul was not a virgin, that she is engaged to a Taliban—and even more preposterously, that she wanted to marry Bai. When Bai refused her proposal, he contends, the so-called Taliban fiancé concocted the rape story to cast blame on Bai. The district police chief says the police have arrested her fiancé for “making propaganda against the local police.”
One of Gul’s close relatives, whom Newsweek/The Daily Beast interviewed in Kabul, says that she was indeed engaged, but that Bai simply wanted to rape her. “Villagers say the commander boasts that he is allowed to take her virginity because he is boss,” the relative says. “Since she was a virgin, the commander has said, ‘I have to take the virginity of this 17-year-old girl.’”
Gul and her family received repeated death threats after brining her case to light, and she is now missing, a relative says.
With so many militias competing for riches, influence and territory, villagers say they are fearful that when the United States withdraws toward the end of next year, a destructive civil war will break out among the various armed groups, plunging the country back into the chaos it experienced in the early 1990s after the Soviet pullout. “I’m afraid Afghan Local Police and arbakai are the gifts that Karzai and the U.S. are leaving for us after 13 years of occupation,” the relative says.
Maghfirat Samini, the head of the Jowzjan office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, is sympathetic to Gul’s plight. She says that since Gul comes from a poor agricultural family, she has been ignored by the authorities. “The security forces are hiding the case,” she says. “They didn’t even let the poor girl go for a medical checkup.”
A U.N. official in the regional capital of Mazar-i-Sharif describes Bai as a “strongman with no limits.”
“Since they fight against the Taliban, the government and coalition forces give him a freehand to do whatever he wants,” the official says. “He is a terribly sick person who brags about taking the virginity of young girls.”
The official adds that young boys, too, are not immune from sexual assault by the ALP and arbakai. Early this month, the official says, two young boys were sexually assaulted by a militia group while they were tending their flocks. No one has been charged or arrested.
Even if ALP officers and arbakai militiamen are arrested for sexual or other crimes, chances are they will escape punishment as a result of their official connections. A Kunduz provincial military court officer told Newsweek/The Daily Beast that last year two ALP members were arrested for raping an 18-year-old woman. “The case was in court,” the officer says, “but due to pressure on the victim, the case is almost dead.”
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent, and has been covering the region for the magazine for the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
More Nations to Announce Post-2014 Afghanistan Presence
TOLOnews.com By Shakela Abrahimkhil 22 May 2013
After the recent announcements by Germany and Sweden to retain limited military footprint in Afghanistan after 2014, an International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Spokesman on Wednesday said that there are ten other nations to announce their post-2014 presence soon.
The Isaf Spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz said that the Nato member countries and ten of its allies are interested to have military presence in Afghanistan after the ISAF mission comes to an end by the end of next year.
"The 28 nation plus ten partner nations declared that they are willing to contribute. Germany and Sweden gave concrete numbers and we are quite confident that other nations will follow soon," said Gen Katz.
Asked whether more foreign countries would announce their willingness after the Australian defence minister on Tuesday said that his country is willing to keep some troops post-2014, Gen Katz said that "there are ten other nations" to announce their post-2014 presence, but added that the Nato headquarters should be able to elaborate.
He didn't mention the names of those countries.
Gen Gunter Katz added that Nato will keep its military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, and asked the Afghan people not to be worried about the situation after 2014.
Speaking after a meeting with the US Secretary of Defence in Washington, the Australian Defence Minister Stephan Smith said his government will continue its mission in Afghanistan within the frameworks of Nato regulations and will keep a number of its special forces.
He said that his country is awaiting a decision from US on their military presence in Afghanistan post 2014.
Australia has 1550 soldiers in Afghanistan and most of them are stationed in the southern provinces, especially in the Urozgan province.
India To Train and Equip Afghan National Security Forces
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian 22 May 2013
President Karzai on his visit to India was assured by the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee that New Delhi will equip and train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to the greatest possible extent.
President of India emphasized on the fact that New Delhi will help Afghanistan in its reconstruction and development projects.
Meanwhile, Afghan Ministry of Defence said that New Delhi has agreed to support Afghanistan in equipping its security forces. It will also provide training to the Afghan military forces.
Presently, Afghanistan is concentrating more than ever before on equipping and training its military forces in order to fight the increasing attacks on the country by various insurgent groups.
President Karzai said, "Indo-Afghan relation today stands on a solid cemented ground. Our relations have become stronger than before."
The strategic agreement between Afghanistan and India will help Afghanistan to train and equip its military forces.
President of India Pranab Mukherjee said, "India is proud to partner with the Government and people of Afghanistan in their efforts towards reconstruction and development of Afghanistan. And, India is ready to tender as much help possible to train the Afghan military forces."
India in the past as well has provided military assistance to Afghanistan.
General Zaher Azimi Spokesperson of Ministry of Defense said, "India in the past has provided military assistance to Afghan military forces by providing equipments, mining technology and military vehicles."
Post 2014, Nato mission will change from a combat role into consultancy and training roles.
In the meantime, training of the Afghan military forces in India is considered as an important step in making the forces professional. But whether the training provided by India will be in line with the Nato training missions is a big question. The Spokesperson of Defense said, "For many years Afghan military training has been going on and there is a fantastic coordination between Nato, Afghanistan and India."
Kabul is trying to strengthen its relations with New Delhi at a time when Afghanistan and Pakistan relations have taken a downturn and experiencing severe turbulences.
MP, Mohammad Abdu said, "Pakistan should not oppose or get upset while Afghanistan is trying to strengthen its relations with another country and start supporting terrorism."
India and Pakistan have been known as ancient rivals but presently it seems that close Afghanistan-India relations will outrage Pakistan.
Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism has always criticised Pakistan. Previously, Pakistan had expressed concerns over India's role in Afghanistan and this time it becomes furthermore interesting to see how Pakistan reacts.
Whether Afghan-Indo strengthening ties will affect Afghan-Pakistan relations? Time will only tell.
Tackling Heroin Use in Afghan South
New treatment clinic promised for Zabul, but underlying causes run much deeper.
IWPR By Niaz Mohammad Ziarmal, Abdol Qayum Ajez 22 May 13
Afghanistan - Tall and black-bearded, Mohammad Hashem still has a youthful look that belies the trouble he is in.
When IWPR’s correspondent in the southern Afghan province of Zabul found him, he was sprawled in a heap of trash, barely able to open his eyes.
“Give me money or food; I’m hungry,” he said.
Hashem said he first got involved in opium and heroin when he travelled to Iran in search of work some years ago, and found himself sharing a room with drug users.
He ended the interview by saying, “Take me to hospital. I want to get well.”
Doctors in Zabul province report rising addiction rates for opium and its derivative heroin. Local officials say a specialised treatment centre is desperately needed, and there are now firm promises that such a clinic will be built.
Others argue that the underlying problem is poverty, which needs to be addressed before drug consumption will start falling.
"I have no farmland, no skills, no money and no job,” heroin user Ismail told IWPR. “First I smoked hashish, and then someone gave me this powder, so that I would longer aware of the world once I’d smoked it. It looked like a way to rid myself of m sorrows. Now I want to quit, but there’s no one to help me."
"The only thing that bothers me is that everyone hates me," explaining that his family despised him and would not let him come home.
The director of public health in Zabul, Dr Lal Mohammad Tokhi, says the number of drug addicts is increasing on a daily basis.
“Many of the people admitted [to hospital] are on heroin. We help them as much as we can, but we can’t do more, as we don’t have a specialised hospital or clinic for addicts,” Tokhi said.
Tokhi said the central health ministry in Kabul had agreed in principle to build a treatment hospital.
At the provincial counter-narcotics department, the head of public outreach, Zabihullah, said Kabul was promising that the clinic would be built within the current Afghan year, ending in March 2014.
Zabihullah admitted that the counter-narcotics department started operating so recently that it had not gathered statistics on drug use. “All I can say is that the number of addicts is increasing,” he said.
Nationwide, figures from the Afghan counter-narcotics ministry and United Nations agencies suggest that some 960,000 Afghans are dependent on drugs.
Zabihullah described how the major trafficking networks, whose main business is shipping heroin abroad, also sell it within Zabul, which lies close to the border with Pakistan.
“Unless unemployment and poppy cultivation are eliminated, it’s going to be impossible to halt drug addiction. The problem is increasing day by day,” he said.
Provincial police chief Gholam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai said his officers had taken effective action to curb local distribution as well as cross-border trafficking. The small-time dealers were themselves in desperate situations, he added.
Ibrahim Azhar, deputy counter-narcotics minister at national level, believes that providing a treatment centre is not enough.
“It’s true there’s a need to build a clinic, and we have decided to set one up for addicts in Zabul, but we don’t see it as a fundamental solution,” he said. “it’s going to be impossible to curb addiction rates unless poverty and unemployment are reduced, people are given jobs and [have no need] to travel to other countries for work; and unless tensions within families are addressed, and the imams of mosques offer help.
An Islamic scholar in Zabul, Mohammad Ayub, agreed that clerics could do more to encourage users to stop.
"In Islam, any intoxicating item is considered unlawful and offenders should be punished,” he said. “But it the duty of religious scholars to work with people and make them understand how harmful this [drug use] is, in this world and the next.”
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
By MEENA HASEEB - 23 May 2013, 2:22 pm Khaama Press
Iran once again expressed its opposition towards the establishment of permanent US military bases in Afghanistan after NATO-led coalition security forces leave the country in 2014.
The issue was raised by Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi during a visit by UN special envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis on Wednesday.
Mr. Salehi during his meeting with Jan Kubis once again insisted that United States should not establish military bases in Afghanistan and emphasized that Afghan security forces should take full security lead across the country.
In the meantime UN special envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis urged Iran to Afghanistan advance its political transition and hold elections while underlining Iranian’s key role in the region.
As NATO-led international security assistance force (ISAF) is preparing to withdraw all its combat troops from Afghanistan, Kabul and Washington are engaged in discussions to finalize a bilateral security agreement which will allow the presence of US troops in Afghanistan after 2014.
Afghan president Hamid Karzai earlier this month announced that U.S. can keep nine bases in Afghanistan after the scheduled 2014 NATO combat troop pullout, however, he insisted on economic and security guarantees first.
The places in which the US wants to keep troops include the capital, Kabul, the sprawling Bagram airbase, which has been the heart of operations in the east, the restive southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, and Shindand in the west, where Nato is training the Afghan airforce, Karzai said.
The other bases are in the northern hub of Mazar-i-Sharif, the western city of Herat, near the Iranian border, and eastern Gardez and Jalalabad, which is a key gateway to Pakistan and a base for drones.
Foreign forces in Afghanistan cause of insecurity in region: Iranian lawmaker
TEHRAN, May 23 (Xinhua) -- A senior Iranian lawmaker said the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan has led to growing insecurity in the region, Press TV reported Thursday.
"The pretext of the United States and its allies for their presence in Afghanistan was to establish security in the region, but as we are witnessing today, not only security not established, but (the presence of foreign forces) also led to insecurity in the region," Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran's Majlis (parliament) said here in a meeting with the top UN envoy to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis.
Boroujerdi said the restoration of peace and stability in Afghanistan is of grave importance to regional countries, adding that "The establishment of stability and tranquillity in Afghanistan will contribute to lasting security in the region, and Iran is ready for cooperation to help restore security, peace and development in this country."
Praising the Islamic republic for delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan as well as hosting Afghan refugees, Kubis, for his part, underlined the need for cooperation among Afghanistan's neighbors to see peace take hold in the country.
Afghan security concerns to ease after 2014, Karzai says
Los Angeles times By Mark Magnier May 22, 2013
New Delhi - Afghan security after the departure of foreign combat troops in 2014 will become easier because of the ill-advised, misdirected and often corrupt ways NATO and its contractors have pursued the "war on terror," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told reporters in India on Wednesday.
U.S.-led foreign troops have targeted Afghan villagers, including the use of special forces on night raids, rather than focusing on the real source of terrorism: foreign insurgents mounting attacks from bases in neighboring Pakistan, he said.
“Withdrawing of their forces from Afghanistan will be good for us,” Karzai, dressed in a long black robe, said at a breakfast meeting in New Delhi with Indian and foreign journalists. “We believe there will be more peace in Afghanistan when they leave. We believe those attacking Afghanistan will find it hard to attack.”
Karzai’s sharp criticism of the United States in recent months -- even as he calls on Washington to supply more aid, training and equipment -- reflects efforts to shore up political support at home, analysts said. By distancing himself from unpopular foreign missteps, including the killing of civilians in NATO airstrikes, he hopes to be seen as an Afghan nationalist and avoid looking like a Western pawn.
“He’s a complicated and complex customer,” said Rana Banerji, a retired Indian official and independent analyst. “This is a line that’s really not getting him anywhere.”
Karzai spoke at the end of a three-day trip during which he received an honorary doctorate from western India’s Lovely Professional University, touched base with Indian leaders, appealed for more aid and presented a request for military equipment and assistance from India. “It’s a wish list,” he said, when asked what it contained.
India has pledged greater support without providing details.
India and Afghanistan enjoy good relations and a shared wariness of Pakistan, which divides them geographically. India has funded $2 billion in Afghan infrastructure projects and trained hundreds of Afghan army officers and police. But its staff hostels, aid projects and embassy in Afghanistan have been bombed repeatedly by militants it believes are linked to Pakistan, reinforcing a reluctance to train or station troops on Afghan soil.
India isn’t likely to supply weapons to Afghanistan until the regional picture is clearer, said Vishal Chandra, a research fellow at New Delhi’s Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses. That includes U.S. strategic objectives after 2014, the outcome of Afghanistan’s upcoming election and what policy the new Pakistani government pursues following the electoral victory of Nawaz Sharif's party.
Karzai tiptoed around the tricky shoals of regional diplomacy Wednesday. Afghanistan maintains longstanding relations with Iran and the United States as well as Pakistan and India despite their respective differences, he said, even as he expressed hope that Sharif would step up Pakistan’s battle against extremism.
“Pakistan has influence over the Taliban because they have residence there, to put it mildly,” he said. “It’s going to be a very cumbersome process for peace without Pakistan’s cooperation.”
Karzai’s meetings this week with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pranab Mukherjee are part of a broader dance as regional powers maneuver for position in advance of NATO’s planned withdrawal.
India’s $2 billion in aid was well spent, with every dollar accounted for, Karzai told reporters, in contrast to U.S. assistance. Western media have accused his government of entrenched corruption, but he said that graft is to be expected in a developing country that saw state institutions wiped out by three decades of war.
A distinction must be made between homegrown graft, which is relatively negligible, and deep-seated corruption linked to foreign contracts, he said.
“The problem is very faulty, very superficially awarded contracts by the West, especially the United States, which has brought lots of corruption, massive corruption,” he said. “If it were Denmark criticizing Afghanistan, I would say it was valid, or if it were Norway. But if the United States does it, I would simply laugh at it.”
Karzai did not address the case of Kabul Bank, from which nearly $1 billion was siphoned off for the benefit of a few individuals, including three of Karzai’s relatives, with no apparent Western link.
Karzai said that under no circumstance would he continue as president after 2014, when his second term expires.
“I’m exhausted, totally exhausted,” he said. “Secondly, why would I ruin my legacy by staying on. ... It’s not good for me, nor Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan’s Karzai Says ‘No Circumstances’ Allow Him to Seek Another Term
The New York Times By Gardiner Harris and Matthew Rosenberg May 22, 2013
New Delhi - Seeking to dispel widespread rumors that he will find a way to cling to power beyond the end of his second term next year, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan said Wednesday that there was “no circumstance that will allow me to stay as president.”
“And there are two reasons for that,” he said. “One is I’m exhausted. Really, totally exhausted, and I would like to be retired. And second, why would I ruin my legacy by staying on and taking an opportunity away from Afghanistan to become an institutionalized democracy?”
Elections are scheduled for April, and American and European officials say privately that billions of dollars of aid on which Afghanistan depends will be jeopardized if the vote does not go ahead.
That message has been conveyed to Mr. Karzai, the officials have said, and the Afghan leader has repeatedly sought to dispel talk that he will try to find a way to stay on beyond his constitutionally mandated two five-year terms.
But the rumors have persisted, fueled in part by the reticence of possible contenders to declare their interest in running.
To do so, Afghan politicians and analysts say, would be to acknowledge that Mr. Karzai is a lame duck. With government power highly centralized in the presidency — the president appoints everyone from ministers to district governors, for instance — few top officials are willing to risk angering Mr. Karzai by openly campaigning to fill his job.
Mr. Karzai said he had come to New Delhi with a “wish list” that he hoped India would fill. He and others in his party refused to specify what was on the list. India provides training to Afghan forces, although that training is done entirely in India.
India could provide small arms that are made in India, but those weapons are generally not highly regarded. India has to buy from abroad most of the weapons that Afghanistan might want.
Mr. Karzai’s trip to India was overshadowed by that of the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, who left New Delhi on Tuesday just as Mr. Karzai was ushered in to see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The two visits, along with the leadership change this month in Pakistan, made for an unusually active week in top-level South Asian political jockeying.
Afghanistan’s outreach to India has long been a source of intense concern in Pakistan, but Mr. Karzai said Wednesday that he needed permission from no one to conduct diplomacy. “Afghanistan is a sovereign country, and like all sovereigns, it has the right to choose its friends,” he said. “But our relations with India will not be at the cost of Pakistan or a cause for worry for Pakistan.”
Mr. Karzai said he welcomed the election of Nawaz Sharif as president in Pakistan, saying he had dined with Mr. Sharif last year in Islamabad. “I found him very much inclined to better relations with India,” Mr. Karzai said. “I found him aware of the dangers of terrorism.”
Mr. Karzai dismissed widespread concerns that his government was deeply corrupt and that members of his family had been among the worst offenders. Most corruption, he said, results from the contracting practices of foreign countries, “especially on the part of the United States.”
The worst corruption centered for years on private security companies, which he finally banned, he said. Beyond that, those who criticize Afghan corruption mostly do so for political reasons, said Mr. Karzai, who late last month acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency had for more than a decade financed a presidential slush fund used to buy the support of warlords, lawmakers and other powerful Afghans.
“If Denmark criticizes corruption in Afghanistan, I will see it as meant to improve things,” he said. “But if the United States does it, I will simply laugh at it.”
Mr. Karzai dismissed the idea that Afghanistan might turn as violent and chaotic as Iraq after most foreign troops leave in 2014. “Iraq is a very unfortunate situation,” he said. “We are pained to see the way Iraq is suffering. I can tell you with a strong measure of confidence that Afghanistan will not see that.”
The reason, he said, is that Afghanistan has never suffered the sort of sectarian violence that Iraq has experienced.
The peace process is continuing but can be successful only with the participation of Pakistan, he said, adding: “Pakistan has influence over the Taliban because they have residence there, to put it mildly.”
Gardiner Harris reported from New Delhi, and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan.
Turkish hostage released in capital Kabul
By SADAF SHINWARI - 23 May 2013, 1:28 pm Khaama Press
Afghan intelligence department — National Directorate of Security (NDS) on Thursday said a kidnapped Turkish citizen was released in capital Kabul.
National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri told reporters that the Turkish citizen was kidnapped round 11 days ago and was freed from the hostage takers.
Mr. Tahiri further added, no suspect has been arrested in connection to kidnapping of the Turkish citizen.
According to reports a Turkish businessman, Sami Yavuz was kidnapped in capital Kabul by unknown gunmen on 12 May. He was head of Afghanistan Turkish Industrialists & Businessmen’s Association and was doing business in Afghanistan for the past ten years.
This comes as Taliban militants kidnapped eight Turkish engineers along with a Russian, a Kyrgyz and an Afghan national on 21 April after their helicopter made an emergency landing in eastern Logar province.
All kidnapped Turkish engineers were later released by Taliban militants.
The Election Law was approved today by the Lower House of the Afghan Parliament
TOLOnews.com By Rafi Sediqi 22 May 2013
There have been differences among the lawmakers in respect of 11 provisions in this law which have been ongoing for the past one month. Eventually this law, comprising of 16 chapters and 79 articles, was approved by majority of the Lower House.
The final vote in respect to the Election Law was 96 votes in favor and 36 against, as pronounced by Mirwais Yassini First Deputy Speaker of the Lower House.
Meanwhile, a number of political parties welcomed the approval of this law. The law on Functioning and Governing of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) was also discussed in the Lower House but due to differences between parliamentarians this law didn't receive its approval.
Previously, IEC had said that if the Election Law isn't approved on time by the Lower House the IEC has to hold elections based on the legislative decree of the President.
The Functioning and Governing of IEC Law was sent to the President for his signature. However, with differences in eight provisions regarding this law between the Presidential Office and Parliament, it was once again sent to the Lower House.
These eight provisions where there were differences between the President's office and the Parliament were discussed in the Lower House.
After several rounds of discussions, the Lower House decided to approve the Functioning and Governing Law of IEC with two-third votes. If the Lower House can't approve it, the law will be reconsidered by the Joint Commissions of the National Assembly.
For a long time the approval of Election Law had sparked a number of debates in the Lower House.
Apparently, 11 provisions in the law caused a delay in the approval of the Election Law.
Some of them have been summarised below:
1- Paragraph 20 of the fourth article, the authority of announcing the final results of elections has been given to the IEC.
2- In other articles of the law, the authority to consider the electoral complaints has been given to the Electoral Complaints Commission.
3- Paragraph number two of article number seven states that one electoral site must be given to the Kuchis (nomads).
4- In other articles of this law, the establishment of each electoral site needs to be approved for each province.
5- Other articles of the law state that all suspicious ballot boxes must be quarantined at the electoral centers.
6- Other provisions of this law dictate that vote counting must be done in the district centers.
7- Another issue was regarding the candidacy of Mayors. They must have five years of experience in the same city to be eligible.
Despite all these differences, a number of political parties welcomed the approval of this law.
Sardar Mohammad Rahimi, Spokesman of the National Front said, "We appreciate the approval of the Election Law and hope that the President will sign it and the elections can be held on time."
Abas Nawiyan, a member of the Right and Justice Party said, "With the approval of Election Law more challenges will be experienced and some doubt that in the upcoming elections some fraudulent activities will take place."
Fazul Rahman Orya member of the National Front said, "We don't expect transparent elections from this law and it is most likely that the elections will not be held in a transparent manner."
IEC to Open Registration Centers On Sunday
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat 22 May 2013
The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Wednesday said that a number of registration centers will be opened in 34 provinces on Sunday.
The IEC's officials added that all the required materials for the registration process are being transported to the provinces with ISAF's assistance. Some materials were transported to the insecure provinces by air.
IEC's Spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said that although they have not faced any problem while transporting the materials to the provinces but the commission has some concerns over safeguarding the materials from getting tampered or fiddled with.
The registration process is crucial step in conducting the upcoming Presidential elections in 2014.
"A number of registration centers will be opened on Sunday, 26 May, 2013 in 34 provinces of Afghanistan. 3 centers in Kabul, 2 centers in Kandahar, 2 centers in Herat, 2 centers in Nangarhar and 2 centers in Balkh provinces will be opened," Noor Mohammad Noor said.
IEC intends to open some centers in other districts as well but provision of security is the first requirement. The commission asked all the security organizations to submit a report about the security situation in the other districts of the country.
"We are concerned about the insecure parts of the country. The election materials will be transported into these regions but first security should be taken care of," IEC Spokesman said.
Supervision of the election process by national and international organizations is also an option in hand to keep the security situation up to the mark. The Commission will give credentials to 300,000 supervisors who will be supervising the entire election process of Afghanistan.
Local Haqqani leaders killed in E. Afghanistan
KABUL, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Two local leaders of the Haqqani militant group had been killed in eastern Afghan province of Paktiya, 100 km south of capital Kabul, said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Thursday.
"Afghan and coalition security forces confirmed today the death of two senior Haqqani leaders, Qari Azzam and Mukhlis, during an operation in Zurmat district, Paktiya province, Tuesday," the ISAF said in a press release. As a Taliban-linked group of militant, the Haqqani network, mostly operating in eastern provinces and Kabul, has been responsible for many high-profile attacks against security forces.
"Azzam, also known as Maulawi Sahib, served as an intelligence operative responsible for providing information to senior Haqqani leadership about attacks against Afghan and coalition forces .. Mukhlis, also known as Wazir, planned and participated in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces," the release added.
On Wednesday, an Afghan and coalition security force killed three insurgents during an operation in search of a senior Haqqani leader in Paktiya's Sayyid Karam district, the release noted.
Earlier on Thursday, the joint forces arrested six insurgents during an operation in search of a Taliban facilitator in Baghlan- e Jadid district, Baghlan province, 160 km north of Kabul, according to the release.
"The facilitator exercises command and control over a group of fighters responsible for attacks on Afghan and coalition forces. He also uses his residence as a storage facility for military equipment and coordinates the acquisition of weapons for use in insurgent activities,"
Taliban and the Haqqani militant group have yet to make comments.
The Taliban-led insurgency has been rampant since the militant group launched an annual rebel offensive late last month against Afghan government forces and about 100,000 NATO-led troops stationed in the country.
On Wednesday, seven people, including four anti-Taliban local militiamen, were killed and 16 others wounded when a Taliban suicide attacker hit a marketplace in Muqur district in eastern Ghanzi province, 125 km south of Kabul.
Hard-line students in Afghanistan protest women’s rights decree as un-Islamic, demand repeal
Associated Press May 23, 5:07 AM
Kabul, Afghanistan - Hard-line Islamist students protested in the Afghan capital demanding the repeal of a presidential decree for women’s rights that they say is un-Islamic. It was the latest sign of a backlash against the legal protections passed in the 12 years since the toppling of the Taliban regime known for its harsh treatment of women.
The protest came days after conservative lawmakers’ vehement opposition blocked an attempt to cement the decree’s provisions in legislation.
Most of international force that ousted the Taliban is now preparing to withdraw by the end of next year, and activists fear an erosion of the women’s rights will follow if hard-liners pressure the elected government.
More than 200 male students protested in front of Kabul University on Wednesday against the decree on Elimination of Violence Against Women, which includes a ban on child marriage and forced marriage, makes domestic violence a crime and says rape victims cannot be prosecuted for adultery. It also outlaws “ba’ad,” a traditional practice of exchanging women or girls to settle disputes or debts.
Protester Fazel Hadi, 25, said the decree was “imposed by foreigners” and violates Islamic Shariah law.
Mawladad Jalali, the mullah of the university mosque and one of the organizers of the protest, led chants decrying democracy in general and the women’s law specifically.
“Our main demand is that this law should be repealed in the parliament,” he said before leading a brief march while police who cordoned off the area looked on.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued the decree on women’s rights three years ago as part of a raft of commitments to international donors, but lawmaker and activist Fawzia Kofi wanted to pass it in parliament to prevent any future president from reversing it. The brief parliamentary debate Saturday was ended by the speaker after fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers who said several provisions — including the ban on child marriage and jail time for domestic abuse — violated Islamic law. The decree remains in force, but the debate appears to have galvanized opposition to it.
The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan this week urged the government to do more to enforce the women’s rights decree, saying it is only sporadically applied when women report abuse.
“It is imperative for the development of Afghanistan that women are able to exercise their rights and be free from violence in their homes and workplaces,” UN Special Representative Jan Kubis said in a Monday statement.
In another worrisome sign for activists, the international group Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that the number of women and girls jailed for alleged loose morals is the highest since the ouster of the Taliban, even though most of those detained are victims of abuse and have committed no crime under Afghan civil law.
The Taliban imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law during their five-year reign, ordering beatings for women failing to wear the full-body burqa garment in public, closing girls’ schools and banning women from leaving their homes without a male relative. They were toppled in a U.S.-led invasion for sheltering the al-Qaida’s terrorist leadership and now wage an insurgency.
Human Rights Watch’s Afghanistan researcher Heather Barr said that Afghanistan risks losing international aid if it does not meet commitments to uphold women’s freedoms.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Feature: Not even Taliban could stop the love for books in Afghanistan
by Abdul Haleem, Jawid Omid
KABUL, May 23 (Xinhua) -- "I have been running this book store since the 1960s and kept it open for book lovers even during Taliban's brutal reign," Hajji Shah Mohammad, owner of the bookstore, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Mohammad's tale only shows that the culture of reading and love for books transcend political upheavals and the test of time.
The two-room bookstore, which can be found in a dilapidated building in downtown Kabul, has served Afghan book lovers for more than five decades.
Mohammad said his personal collection has reached 18,000 books on different subjects about Afghanistan. His collection, properly catalogued and displayed on shelves, includes books in Chinese and Japanese.
Since opening his bookstore and modest library in the l960s, Mohammad has experienced ups and downs but because of perseverance and hard work he was able to survive Afghanistan's more than three decades of turmoil and political unrest.
In order to cater to a more sophisticated clientele and in keeping with the times, Mohammad has opened his own website.
"I have a website which is used by both foreigners and locals. Because of security problems, my clients, especially foreigners who cannot go out of their offices, just open our website at their embassies and offices and order online and later ask their employees to collect the books that they ordered," Mohammad added.
Mohammad said that during the Taliban regime, his bookstore was vandalized by hardline militants who do not believe in the importance of books and reading materials.
"The Taliban religious police came to my bookstore here one day in 1999 and burned several of my books because they contain pictures of human beings and animals. Even the picture of a butterfly was forbidden by them," he recalled.
The Taliban's six-year reign, which ended after the invasion of Afghanistan by U.S.-led military coalition in late 2001, had banned photo shops, television channels, cinema, music and all forms of entertainment.
The Taliban believes that taking pictures is a breach of Islamic teaching and anyone caught taking pictures of living creatures was punished. Only photos for passport and travel documents were allowed.
Nowadays, however, aside from Mohammad's bookstore there are about a dozen other bookstores found in Kabul, aside from libraries, newspaper stalls, printing presses and photo shops.
Some 70 television channels, more than 100 radio stations in Kabul and provinces and hundreds of newspapers, weekly and fortnightly and magazines are operating in the post-Taliban period.
Booksellers can now sell even imported books for children and television channels run animated clips portraying animals and other creatures, all banned during the Taliban regime.
But suicide attacks by the remnants of the Taliban still pose a threat to the security of Kabul and the country in general.
In mid-January, a suicide attack against a government agency near Shah Mohammad's bookstore left seven people, including the attackers, dead, and injuring 33 others. The attack also damaged a portion of the bookstore.
Atiq Rahimi: 'In Iran just as well as in Afghanistan, in actual fact, words defy tyranny'
From the Edinburgh world writers' conference in Saint-Malo, a speech on art, writing and reality from the French-Afghan author and film-maker Atiq Rahimi
Guardian By Atiq Rahimi 22 May 2013
Curator Reading Koran on Roof of Library, Mauritania The power of words a library curator reading in Mauritania. Photograph: Remi Benali/ Remi Benali/Corbis
In a major book of Persian literature called Memorial of the Saints, written in the 13th century, the great poet Farid Ud-din Attar explains that, one day, a young disciple asked his master what the power of wise men was. "Speech", the master answered, "speech!" Then the master showed his disciple the mountain at the foot of which he lived as a hermit, and said: "When a wise man orders this mountain to move, it moves." And at that precise moment, the mountain started shaking. The master scolded it: "I've not asked you to move! I just wanted to show him an example!"
On the surface, of course this tale shows what has been mankind's dream since time immemorial: to create, to change, to move, to destroy, to rebuild the world with words. Just with words! Who hasn't dreamed of being able to say: "Let there be light!" and to see light appear?
Yet beyond this fanciful quest, there is something in that tale which makes me wonder about the link between the power and speech of wise men [and women], intellectuals and writers.
First, about asking a mountain to move and getting it to move: I interpret this allegorically (and perhaps naively) as a pragmatic aspect of language, its transitive function. And I don't just mean in our daily conversations, but also in a literary text. Then, about the fact that the wise man just gives an "example", and that the example becomes a commandment: that opens a debate on the notion of exemplarity and metalanguage in literature.
Everyone undoubtedly remembers the following title, which is magical in French: "Quand dire c'est faire." In English it is "How to Do Things with Words", written by John Langshaw Austin. This English philosopher means a series of sentences which aren't simply a string of words that explain a state or a situation They become the very act they describe. Once uttered, they can change a life or a community's life dramatically. For instance "I now pronounce you man and wife" used by a mayor. Or "War is declared" used by a statesman, who, just by uttering these words, throws his people in the great madness and terror it involves A few centuries ago, in Amsterdam's synagogue, a sermon banished Baruch Spinoza from the Jewish community and condemned him to silence. And more recently, a "fatwa" forced Salman Rushdie into concealment
Believers say that the universe is created by the very words of God. And even if we don't believe it, we still witness the way the words attributed to God lead men to action, whether on the path of wisdom or the madness of suicide attacks
But you might ask: is this the doing of the power of words or of the words of power?
Langshaw Austin said it well: for a performative utterance to be "fortunate", in other words feasible, you need the right set of circumstances. You can't just have anyone pronounce any couple man and wife! First and foremost, the person who unites the two must have some legitimacy and some power. Then, the couple must fulfil certain conditions and so on.
And to get a mountain to move, you have to gain some wisdom first.
In order to shout "I accuse", you have to be Zola first. And to be Zola, you have to have written Nana, Germinal, La Bête Humaine
"It is splendid to be a great writer," said Flaubert, "to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. There must be a delirious pride in the feeling that you are bringing the full weight of your ideas to bear on mankind. But for that you must have something to say."
When the writer has something to say, does it follow that he changes anything in the world? Jean-Paul Sartre would reply yes, because for him, saying things means wanting to change them; talking or writing means acting on the world. Karl Marx Marx the novelist would have had far less impact on the world. Nicholson/Corbis
Bright minds will probably ask: if writers wield such power with their speech, why is the world torn in [to] a thousand pieces? Why is there so much tyranny, war and injustice? Where do we find ourselves, after Germinal, after War and Peace, after A Farewell to Arms, after The Plague ? What is literature up to? Alas, another question that sentences literature to uncertainty.
"Clearly, if Marx had followed his dreams of youth and written the most beautiful novel in the world, he would have held the world spellbound, but he wouldn't have moved it. You therefore have to write Capital and not War and Peace. You don't describe Caesar's murder, you have to be Brutus Making such links, such comparisons, might seem absurd to onlookers. But when art is weighed against action, immediate and pressing, action can only consider art as wrong, and art can only concur".
Maurice Blanchot said these words. And he is not wrong.
Even Sartre, a keen supporter of politically engaged literature, said in a fit of despair: "When a child is dying, Nausea seems very lightweight"!
Or Friedrich Hölderlin: " what are poets good for in times of trouble?"
But before sinking into unfathomable despair, let's reassure poets: You are here precisely to tell us what poets are good for in times of trouble.
Because by telling us that, poets name, define and recall the nature of our lives in these "times of trouble". Just as Shams Tabrizi, master of Rumi, a mystic Persian in the 13th century:
"We are not able to talk, If only we could listen! We must say all! And listen to all! But Our ears are sealed Our lips are sealed Our hearts are sealed."
This cry has echoed for centuries to denounce the permanent and implacable censorship that is breathed into the heart of writers, in Iran just as well as in Afghanistan (my country of origin), where in actual fact words defy tyranny.
In those countries, the existential problem isn't "to be or not to be " but to say or not to say.
Thus, any act becomes political. Even silence. Even lies.
I remember that when soviets were in Afghanistan, a brilliant saying from Poland was used by intellectuals: "If you want to survive, don't think. If you think, don't talk. If you talk, don't write. If you write, don't sign it. If you sign it, don't be surprised!"
Unfortunately, this still goes for my native country, even if the new post-Taliban constitution allows freedom of the press. But the problem lies elsewhere; it lies in each of us, because our hearts are sealed.
In the south of Afghanistan, Pashtun women have a poetic tradition called landay. These are short, anonymous poems, which reveal a lot, like for instance:
"Lay your lips on mine But leave my tongue free, that I may tell you I love you"
Imagine what would happen to that woman if she signed this!
This is how, by describing the conditions of mankind or by revealing humanity's desires and dreams, a literary text can become a cry, an act of proclamation. It "gives a syntax to the cry", as Deleuze would put it. It is a performative utterance. And even if that cry doesn't waken slumbering spirits, at least it might trouble their sleep! Such an act isn't a provocation, but a pro-vocation.
In that sense, politics isn't the will, the fear or the duty of the writer. It is in the ink of its writing. Writers aren't "engaged" in History, they are "embarked" in it, as Camus coins it, using Pascal's wording.
Now, let's talk about the other aspect of the literary experience, its exemplarity.
"Man's world is the planet of inexperience" said Milan Kundera, "Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from a previous one."
It is because this world is a planet of inexperience that literature has a meaning. Given that we don't live a permanent experience, literature helps us conceive the life of others (of those who lived before our time, or those who live at the same time as we do but elsewhere), as a pointer, perhaps even a mimetic desire, as René Girard put it.
We live and so we think with and through other people's experiences, just as others live with and through our writing as an existential, sentimental, political, metaphysical experience. Salman Rushdie said: "It is literature which for me opened the mysterious and decisive doors of imagination and understanding. To see the way others see. To think the way others think. And above all, to feel." Denis Diderot said: "Reading novels makes us better people, not only because fictions illustrate abstract principles, or because characters show us what behaviors to adopt or avoid, but also because it turns the empathy felt by the reader into an experience of the other, therefore an altruist experience."
In that sense, an experience isn't just "personal experience", it isn't just past; it isn't a "study", a scientific experiment carried out to check or justify knowledge data, which would make it a future-oriented act. It is the proof of our existence here and now. It is the act of meditating on what we live. It is living the world as the world lives us. It is an "inner experience" for George Bataille and an "original experience" for Maurice Blanchot.
Writing is an experience with language, ie with oneself. It is an experience which helps me see the world within myself, so I can deconstruct it in order to understand it, and then rebuild it as I wish. By changing the world bit by bit, one day we will change the world.
So, should we still doubt the political dimension of literature?
First, I'd say YES! We must doubt it because as Paul Valéry says, "politics means wanting to conquer and to retain power; it therefore involves an action of constraint or of illusion over minds which are the essence of all power ()" The political mind always ends up forced into forgery. It introduces a forged intellectual currency onto the market; it introduces forged historical notions; it builds specious reasoning arguments; in a word, it does anything it can to keep its authority, its so-called moral authority.
And then, I'd say NO, because literature is a fight against all political systems. It is the power of words against the words of power.
Thus the definition of politics in writing.
By branding the Taliban ‘terrorists,’ Canada gave up on Afghan peace
The Globe and Mail By Adnan Khan May 22 2013
For anyone who has followed the Afghan war over the past twelve-odd years, the recent addition of the Afghan Taliban to Canada’s list of terrorist entities came as a surprise. More than a surprise, it was disheartening. After more than a decade of engagement in Afghanistan, the Harper government has indicated it is no longer interested in finding a path to peace.This is the problem with “terrorist lists” in general: they evoke a sense of evil and gloss over the details of complex conflicts like the one in Afghanistan. To simply label the Taliban a terrorist group without taking into account the matrix of alliances and interests that govern Afghanistan indicates a juvenile understanding of that war-ravaged nation. It reduces Afghanistan to Bush-era terms of good and evil.
But terrorism, particularly terrorism in Afghanistan, has never been so simple. Why, it must be asked, did it take the Canadian government more than ten years to add the Taliban to the terrorist list?
According to Canada’s criminal code, “terrorist group” means:
(a) an entity that has as one of its purposes or activities facilitating or carrying out any terrorist activity, or
(b) a listed entity
The first definition is governed by the definition of “terrorist activity” as set out in international conventions. The second is the Canadian government’s loophole, so that even an entity or group that doesn’t meet the requirements of definition (a) can still be listed as a terrorist group, unilaterally.
In legal terms, the Taliban occupy a grey zone in the definition of terrorist activity and appear to be increasingly trying to distance themselves from internationally recognized descriptions of what constitutes a terrorist act. On April 3, for example, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, warned his commanders not to engage in kidnapping for ransom, an act the Canadian criminal code lists as a terrorist activity.
In the past, he has also issued decrees limiting the scope of Taliban attacks to prevent civilian deaths, also in an apparent attempt to give his movement some international legitimacy.
The sincerity of those decrees is of course suspect. Taliban attacks have harmed more civilians in recent years than at any time since the start of the war. Their tactics, low-tech and arbitrary, inevitably kill innocents. Mullah Omar’s decrees are either strategic, in light of continuing negotiations, or representative of the Taliban leadership’s disconnect from the on-the-ground reality of the war they are waging.
But the overarching issues trump the specifics. No peace is possible in Afghanistan without negotiations – this is a fact virtually every stakeholder in Afghanistan now concedes. What the Harper government has done is try to gain short-term political points at the expense of a responsible foreign policy.
In diplomatic terms, it is a disastrous choice. Any leverage Canada may have had in negotiations with the Taliban ended on May 9, when the listing occurred. In moral terms, the Harper government has just devalued everything the Canadian military stood for during its engagement in Afghanistan. Canadian generals were one of the most vocal in their support for negotiations with the Taliban, often clashing with their American counterparts over the issue. That the U.S. administration under Barack Obama has accepted the need for a negotiated settlement is vindication for the approach Canada took in Afghanistan.
This is what Canada’s men and women in uniform, from frontline grunts to officers, all told me during the time I spent with them: negotiations are the only way. From very early on, Canadian soldiers caught on to the reality of Afghanistan: the Taliban represent a significant segment of Afghanistan’s population, primarily in the rural south and east. Defeating them military is impossible. Serious efforts need to be made to reach out and find alternate solutions. Canadians were making those efforts.
The Harper government has just sent the message that all of those sacrifices, all of the hard work and risks our soldiers took, all of the lives lost, in part because Canadians refused to lock themselves away behind blast walls, refused to distance themselves from the local people in Kandahar, many of whom supported the Taliban – were Taliban – all of this, according to the Harper government, was a waste.
According to them, the Taliban is now officially persona non grata.
How this helps to bring an end to the Afghan tragedy is puzzling. It goes against the prevailing logic. But perhaps this is not what the Harper government is after. Despite the billions of dollars spent and the millions still flowing into Afghanistan, it’s possible that our government has thrown in the towel. Forget what happens in Afghanistan, they may be thinking, and worry instead about Canada.
With the new designation, Canadian security agencies can now more closely monitor Canadians and their possible affiliations to the Taliban. Supporting a role for the Taliban in a future Afghanistan may now be tantamount to supporting a terrorist organization. Sending aid money to an Afghan village controlled by the Taliban – of which there is an ever-increasing number – to build, say, a canal, could be construed as terrorist financing.
The basic error in thinking is this: unlike terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban is a national movement. They have never expressed a transnational agenda and have begun to indicate they are willing to work with the Afghan administration. As one commander in Kandahar told me in 2011: “We have changed our position. We now accept that the politicians in Kabul are fellow Muslims; we are of the same nation. We can talk to them.” By officially lumping the Taliban in with the likes of al-Qaeda, the Canadian government is basically saying Afghanistan is a lost cause. By being the only NATO country to do so isolates Canada and negates all of the sacrifices, in blood and coin, which Canada has made over the past decade. Fortunately, it’s unlikely any other NATO country will make the same mistake.
Afghanistan’s Rape Crisis: Villagers Fear U.S.-Backed Militias
Afghans fear the very militias America has set up to protect them—and allegations of sexual violence abound. Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau report.
The Daily Beast By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau May 22, 2013
Jumadin, a 45-year-old farmer from the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, returned to his modest mud-brick home late one evening last January to find the front door shattered. He rushed inside, calling and searching for his 19-year-old daughter, Monizha, who had been home alone while Jumadin’s wife and three other children visited relatives in Pakistan. He was panic-stricken. The small house had been ransacked, and Monizha was nowhere inside. He finally found her just in time: she was outside in the animal shed, trying to hang herself.
Thin, grey-bearded and missing most of his front teeth, Jumadin says he wrapped his traumatized daughter in a blanket and cuddled her. “She was in shock. Her eyes were closed, and she would not open them to look at me,” he tells Newsweek /The Daily Beast. He finally coaxed from her the sordid details of the ordeal she’d just suffered. She had been raped repeatedly by three local Afghan militiamen wearing the khaki-colored uniforms of the American-trained and -supported Afghan Local Police (ALP). “I hugged her, and we both cried for hours,” he recalls. “I told her it was written in our destiny, so let’s try to cope with this dishonor.”
He continues, “In our cruel society, if a girl is raped by strong forces there is nothing left for the girl and the family We can cope with being poor, with earthquakes and disease—but not with rape that steals a family’s honor. We are ruined.”
The next morning, Jumadin walked to the village mosque to find out if anyone knew what had happened. “People were talking about how yesterday the ALP, who are under the control of American forces, had raided a number of houses in the village looking for Taliban,” he says.
He called his family in Pakistan and told them not to return—and quickly decided to join them. Within a week, he had sold his animals and most of his possessions. “We could not stay any longer in the house and village where my daughter had lost her and the family’s future,” says a tearful Jumadin, who now lives with his family in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.
“My daughter is still in shock,” he adds. “She is only skin and bone. She won’t eat, and every night she cries out in her dreams: ‘baba jan (father), baba jan, protect me.’”
“I couldn’t protect her,” he continues. “But if there was a Taliban regime, not a single woman would be raped I feel like joining the Taliban, getting a suicide vest to attack [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, the Americans and all these American-backed police militias.”
Monizha is far from the only victim: in northern Kunduz and Jowzjan provinces, locals call the ALP and the other arbakai, or militias, “the enemies of young girls’ virginity.”
With the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan looming in 2014, a key part of American strategy has been to organize the ALP as a village self-defense force—sort of a neighborhood watch with AK-47s to protect the local population from Taliban intrusions, freeing Afghan security forces to pursue the Taliban.
The ALP initiative began in 2010 and was the third U.S. attempt to form village watches—the other two programs were scrapped after the local police spent more time harassing, abusing, and extorting money from villagers than protecting them. The ALP are supposed to be different: better trained and led, more disciplined, and loyal to the state rather than local warlords and power brokers.
But it may not have worked out that way. The ALP are recruited by local elders, vetted and trained for three weeks by American Special Operations forces, given Kalashnikovs, radios and khaki-colored uniforms, and paid some $190 a month through American funds transferred to the Ministry of Interior. Currently, there are some 20,000 ALP officers operating out of 100 of the country’s 400 districts. This past February, the United States pledged to provide an additional $1.2 billion to grow the force to 45,000 and support it through 2018.
In many areas, the ALP have been a success, driving the Taliban out of villages once occupied by the insurgents, particularly in the north, where the guerrillas are trying to mount a comeback.
But the advent of the ALP has also coincided with the worrying proliferation of private militias, or arbakai, that have been organized by former anti-Soviet mujahedin commanders, warlords and local power brokers to fight off the Taliban in advance of and after the coalition’s withdrawal. These arbakai are only answerable to their rich and powerful bosses, are largely undisciplined, and have been blamed for extortion, robbery, seriously abusing villagers, reprisal killings of suspected Taliban and insurgent sympathizers, and rape. In many villages, peasants have a hard time telling the difference between the ALP and the many arbakai.
Often villagers see both as potentially oppressive forces. As a result, a Pentagon report last December warned that the “proliferation of independent [non-government] sanctioned militiasthreaten to undermine the legitimacy and progress of the (ALP) program.”
The report continued, “Many reports of abuse attributed to the Afghan Local Police are actually reports of abuse committed by non-ALP local defense forces such as local arbakai, warlord militias that have taken the ALP name.”
ALP officers have also been involved in “insider” killings in which the Taliban have infiltrated agents into the ALP in an effort to create havoc. Last August, an ALP officer killed two U.S. soldiers in western Farah Province. And last September, Taliban infiltrators drugged and then shot 11 officers and six civilians at an ALP post in Ghazni, an act the caused the United States to temporarily suspend the ALP training program while U.S. military men “revalidated” the force’s active officers. The Taliban leadership makes no secret that it has targeted the ALP for attack and for infiltration. Over the past six months at least 180 ALP officers have been killed. ALP casualty rates are said to be double those of the Afghan National Army and National Police.
Jumadin believes that the militiamen who raped his daughter are affiliated with northern strongman Mir Alam Khan, an ethnic Tajik and a former anti-Soviet commander who, like many of today’s influential powerbrokers, fought against the Taliban in late 2001 with American military and financial support and has prospered ever since. A former police chief of Baghlan province, he has built one of the largest militias in the north, including some 3,000 armed men under his command in Kunduz. Some of his men, locals say, also serve in the ALP.
Seventeen-year-old Chaman Gul suffered a similar fate to that of Monizha. Relatives describe her as being a “healthy and attractive” young woman. In a phone interview with Newsweek/The Daily Beast, she described the ordeal she suffered two months ago in Aqsaee village, Darzab district, in the northern province of Jowzjan. As she, her relatives and other villagers tell it, she was brutally raped by seven men, including the local militia’s powerful commander, Murad Bai. “They broke down the door of our home and did to me, a number of times, horrible things that I can’t tell anyone or put into plain words,” she says from an undisclosed hiding place.
Other relatives and villagers confirm her account. One 60-year-old villager, who does not wish to be named for security reasons, says he watched as Bai and his men broke into Gul’s house. He says they were wearing the khaki-colored uniforms of the ALP. “They came just after noon and collectively raped her,” the villager says. “The village was so frightened no one could raise a voice against the ALP.”
Adds a close relative, who also wishes to remain anonymous: “The girl was raped for hours and was in such a terrible condition that we thought she would die.”
Rather than quietly hiding her suffering, as most victims and their families do, Gul took her case to the district and provincial authorities—but to no avail. “I complained to everyone in the concerned departments, but no one heard my voice,” she says.
The Darzab district police chief even threw her father out of his office. “The district police chief never offered any help or sympathy,” she says. “Another senior policeman told us the commander (Murad Bai) is the darling of the Americans and no one can touch him.”
Gul says that she and her father even traveled to the provincial capital of Sheberghan to register a complaint against the local police commander, but again no one agreed to help open a criminal case against Murad Bai and his men. Having lost all hope of any official intervention, she says she is contemplating suicide.
Local officials are striking back against Gul with their own version of events. The provincial police spokesman, Abdul Hai Razami, charges that Gul was not a virgin, that she is engaged to a Taliban—and even more preposterously, that she wanted to marry Bai. When Bai refused her proposal, he contends, the so-called Taliban fiancé concocted the rape story to cast blame on Bai. The district police chief says the police have arrested her fiancé for “making propaganda against the local police.”
One of Gul’s close relatives, whom Newsweek/The Daily Beast interviewed in Kabul, says that she was indeed engaged, but that Bai simply wanted to rape her. “Villagers say the commander boasts that he is allowed to take her virginity because he is boss,” the relative says. “Since she was a virgin, the commander has said, ‘I have to take the virginity of this 17-year-old girl.’”
Gul and her family received repeated death threats after brining her case to light, and she is now missing, a relative says.
With so many militias competing for riches, influence and territory, villagers say they are fearful that when the United States withdraws toward the end of next year, a destructive civil war will break out among the various armed groups, plunging the country back into the chaos it experienced in the early 1990s after the Soviet pullout. “I’m afraid Afghan Local Police and arbakai are the gifts that Karzai and the U.S. are leaving for us after 13 years of occupation,” the relative says.
Maghfirat Samini, the head of the Jowzjan office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, is sympathetic to Gul’s plight. She says that since Gul comes from a poor agricultural family, she has been ignored by the authorities. “The security forces are hiding the case,” she says. “They didn’t even let the poor girl go for a medical checkup.”
A U.N. official in the regional capital of Mazar-i-Sharif describes Bai as a “strongman with no limits.”
“Since they fight against the Taliban, the government and coalition forces give him a freehand to do whatever he wants,” the official says. “He is a terribly sick person who brags about taking the virginity of young girls.”
The official adds that young boys, too, are not immune from sexual assault by the ALP and arbakai. Early this month, the official says, two young boys were sexually assaulted by a militia group while they were tending their flocks. No one has been charged or arrested.
Even if ALP officers and arbakai militiamen are arrested for sexual or other crimes, chances are they will escape punishment as a result of their official connections. A Kunduz provincial military court officer told Newsweek/The Daily Beast that last year two ALP members were arrested for raping an 18-year-old woman. “The case was in court,” the officer says, “but due to pressure on the victim, the case is almost dead.”
Sami Yousafzai is Newsweek's correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he has covered militancy, al Qaeda, and the Taliban for the magazine since 9/11. He was born in Afghanistan but moved to Pakistan with his family after the Russian invasion in 1979. He began his career as a sports journalist but switched to war reporting in 1997.
Ron Moreau is Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent, and has been covering the region for the magazine for the past 10 years. Since he first joined Newsweek during the Vietnam War, he has reported extensively from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
More Nations to Announce Post-2014 Afghanistan Presence
TOLOnews.com By Shakela Abrahimkhil 22 May 2013
After the recent announcements by Germany and Sweden to retain limited military footprint in Afghanistan after 2014, an International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) Spokesman on Wednesday said that there are ten other nations to announce their post-2014 presence soon.
The Isaf Spokesman Brigadier General Gunter Katz said that the Nato member countries and ten of its allies are interested to have military presence in Afghanistan after the ISAF mission comes to an end by the end of next year.
"The 28 nation plus ten partner nations declared that they are willing to contribute. Germany and Sweden gave concrete numbers and we are quite confident that other nations will follow soon," said Gen Katz.
Asked whether more foreign countries would announce their willingness after the Australian defence minister on Tuesday said that his country is willing to keep some troops post-2014, Gen Katz said that "there are ten other nations" to announce their post-2014 presence, but added that the Nato headquarters should be able to elaborate.
He didn't mention the names of those countries.
Gen Gunter Katz added that Nato will keep its military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, and asked the Afghan people not to be worried about the situation after 2014.
Speaking after a meeting with the US Secretary of Defence in Washington, the Australian Defence Minister Stephan Smith said his government will continue its mission in Afghanistan within the frameworks of Nato regulations and will keep a number of its special forces.
He said that his country is awaiting a decision from US on their military presence in Afghanistan post 2014.
Australia has 1550 soldiers in Afghanistan and most of them are stationed in the southern provinces, especially in the Urozgan province.
India To Train and Equip Afghan National Security Forces
TOLOnews.com By Abdul Wali Arian 22 May 2013
President Karzai on his visit to India was assured by the Indian President Pranab Mukherjee that New Delhi will equip and train the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to the greatest possible extent.
President of India emphasized on the fact that New Delhi will help Afghanistan in its reconstruction and development projects.
Meanwhile, Afghan Ministry of Defence said that New Delhi has agreed to support Afghanistan in equipping its security forces. It will also provide training to the Afghan military forces.
Presently, Afghanistan is concentrating more than ever before on equipping and training its military forces in order to fight the increasing attacks on the country by various insurgent groups.
President Karzai said, "Indo-Afghan relation today stands on a solid cemented ground. Our relations have become stronger than before."
The strategic agreement between Afghanistan and India will help Afghanistan to train and equip its military forces.
President of India Pranab Mukherjee said, "India is proud to partner with the Government and people of Afghanistan in their efforts towards reconstruction and development of Afghanistan. And, India is ready to tender as much help possible to train the Afghan military forces."
India in the past as well has provided military assistance to Afghanistan.
General Zaher Azimi Spokesperson of Ministry of Defense said, "India in the past has provided military assistance to Afghan military forces by providing equipments, mining technology and military vehicles."
Post 2014, Nato mission will change from a combat role into consultancy and training roles.
In the meantime, training of the Afghan military forces in India is considered as an important step in making the forces professional. But whether the training provided by India will be in line with the Nato training missions is a big question. The Spokesperson of Defense said, "For many years Afghan military training has been going on and there is a fantastic coordination between Nato, Afghanistan and India."
Kabul is trying to strengthen its relations with New Delhi at a time when Afghanistan and Pakistan relations have taken a downturn and experiencing severe turbulences.
MP, Mohammad Abdu said, "Pakistan should not oppose or get upset while Afghanistan is trying to strengthen its relations with another country and start supporting terrorism."
India and Pakistan have been known as ancient rivals but presently it seems that close Afghanistan-India relations will outrage Pakistan.
Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism has always criticised Pakistan. Previously, Pakistan had expressed concerns over India's role in Afghanistan and this time it becomes furthermore interesting to see how Pakistan reacts.
Whether Afghan-Indo strengthening ties will affect Afghan-Pakistan relations? Time will only tell.
Tackling Heroin Use in Afghan South
New treatment clinic promised for Zabul, but underlying causes run much deeper.
IWPR By Niaz Mohammad Ziarmal, Abdol Qayum Ajez 22 May 13
Afghanistan - Tall and black-bearded, Mohammad Hashem still has a youthful look that belies the trouble he is in.
When IWPR’s correspondent in the southern Afghan province of Zabul found him, he was sprawled in a heap of trash, barely able to open his eyes.
“Give me money or food; I’m hungry,” he said.
Hashem said he first got involved in opium and heroin when he travelled to Iran in search of work some years ago, and found himself sharing a room with drug users.
He ended the interview by saying, “Take me to hospital. I want to get well.”
Doctors in Zabul province report rising addiction rates for opium and its derivative heroin. Local officials say a specialised treatment centre is desperately needed, and there are now firm promises that such a clinic will be built.
Others argue that the underlying problem is poverty, which needs to be addressed before drug consumption will start falling.
"I have no farmland, no skills, no money and no job,” heroin user Ismail told IWPR. “First I smoked hashish, and then someone gave me this powder, so that I would longer aware of the world once I’d smoked it. It looked like a way to rid myself of m sorrows. Now I want to quit, but there’s no one to help me."
"The only thing that bothers me is that everyone hates me," explaining that his family despised him and would not let him come home.
The director of public health in Zabul, Dr Lal Mohammad Tokhi, says the number of drug addicts is increasing on a daily basis.
“Many of the people admitted [to hospital] are on heroin. We help them as much as we can, but we can’t do more, as we don’t have a specialised hospital or clinic for addicts,” Tokhi said.
Tokhi said the central health ministry in Kabul had agreed in principle to build a treatment hospital.
At the provincial counter-narcotics department, the head of public outreach, Zabihullah, said Kabul was promising that the clinic would be built within the current Afghan year, ending in March 2014.
Zabihullah admitted that the counter-narcotics department started operating so recently that it had not gathered statistics on drug use. “All I can say is that the number of addicts is increasing,” he said.
Nationwide, figures from the Afghan counter-narcotics ministry and United Nations agencies suggest that some 960,000 Afghans are dependent on drugs.
Zabihullah described how the major trafficking networks, whose main business is shipping heroin abroad, also sell it within Zabul, which lies close to the border with Pakistan.
“Unless unemployment and poppy cultivation are eliminated, it’s going to be impossible to halt drug addiction. The problem is increasing day by day,” he said.
Provincial police chief Gholam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai said his officers had taken effective action to curb local distribution as well as cross-border trafficking. The small-time dealers were themselves in desperate situations, he added.
Ibrahim Azhar, deputy counter-narcotics minister at national level, believes that providing a treatment centre is not enough.
“It’s true there’s a need to build a clinic, and we have decided to set one up for addicts in Zabul, but we don’t see it as a fundamental solution,” he said. “it’s going to be impossible to curb addiction rates unless poverty and unemployment are reduced, people are given jobs and [have no need] to travel to other countries for work; and unless tensions within families are addressed, and the imams of mosques offer help.
An Islamic scholar in Zabul, Mohammad Ayub, agreed that clerics could do more to encourage users to stop.
"In Islam, any intoxicating item is considered unlawful and offenders should be punished,” he said. “But it the duty of religious scholars to work with people and make them understand how harmful this [drug use] is, in this world and the next.”
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