[Afghan News] May 24, 2013

[یاسمینه]

Policeman, five gunmen killed in Kabul Taliban attack
KABUL (AFP) - Explosions rocked central Kabul for several hours on Friday after Taliban gunmen launched a major suicide and gun attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

One police officer was killed and five militants were shot dead as security forces hunted down the attackers, with prolonged bursts of gunfire and grenade blasts heard across the Afghan capital.

A United Nations building and several other official premises were caught up in the coordinated assault that started when a suicide car bomb sent a plume of dark smoke into the sky.

Commandos shot dead five gunmen who were firing and throwing grenades from a building, interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told AFP.

One policeman was killed by the suicide car bomb and at least five local civilians and two police officers were injured, he said.

No other fatalities were immediately reported, but an Italian woman working for IOM was seriously wounded by a grenade explosion.

"I strongly condemn today's terrorist attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration," Jan Kubis, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), said in a statement.

"Three IOM staff members were injured, one seriously. A staff member from the International Labour Organization was also injured."

The Geneva-based IOM, which is affiliated with the UN, works across the world to improve management of cross-border migration.

IOM spokesman Chris Lom confirmed to AFP that the badly wounded employee was an Italian woman.

Friday's attack comes a week after another suicide car bomb in Kabul targeted a foreign military convoy, killing 15 people including five Americans.

The Taliban announced their annual "spring offensive" on April 27, opening a crucial period as local security forces take the lead in the fight against the insurgents.

The blasts hit the centre of Kabul at about 4:00 pm (1130 GMT) on Friday -- Afghanistan's weekly day off -- and fighting continued into the night.

Norwegian soldiers were among the security forces involved in the response operation, an AFP photographer witnessed, but the NATO-led military coalition gave no further details.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told AFP that his group was responsible and that the main target was a guesthouse allegedly used by Afghan and US intelligence staff.

"A group of mujahideen armed with heavy and light weapons took position in a building and are firing on several targets," he said.

"The main target was a guesthouse where foreigners, including members of the CIA who train members of the Afghan spy agency stay."

Jawed Kazem, a local shopkeeper, told AFP: "I was sitting in my shop when the explosion happened. It was a big explosion which threw me off my chair. Minutes later another explosion happened."

The suicide bombing on the NATO convoy on May 16 was the first major attack in Kabul since March 9, when a bomber on a bicycle killed nine people outside the defence ministry during a visit by US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

The attacks further underline the capital's vulnerability to militant assaults as 100,000 NATO troops gradually withdraw from Afghanistan ahead of the end of international combat operations next year.

More than 11 years after the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, efforts to seek a political settlement ending the violence have so far made little progress, but pressure is growing ahead of the NATO withdrawal.


Afghanistan capital hit by deadly, huge bombing
CBS/AP/ May 24, 2013, 6:07 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan In the latest militant strike on the Afghan capital, Taliban gunmen backed by a suicide car bomber attacked an international aid group's compound on Friday, killing two guards and setting off an hours-long street battle with police in the heart of Kabul .

The attack, the second in the city in just over a week, also left four International Organization for Migration workers wounded including an Italian woman badly burned by a grenade. Thirteen police were wounded while all six attackers died in the assault, authorities said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, telling CBS News' Mukhtar Ahmad the building targeted was being used by U.S. agents. His claims could not be verified, and the Taliban often exaggerate their successes in similar attacks.

At the chaotic scene of the siege, dozens of Afghan police took cover behind blast walls and rushed around through a thick cloud of smoke made by the bomb. At least one wounded officer was seen being helped away by his comrades.

The insurgents have unleashed a wave of bombings and assassinations around the country, testing Afghan security forces' ability to respond with reduced help from international forces, who have begun a withdrawal that will see most foreign troops gone by the end of 2014.

A Nepalese guard and an Afghan police officer providing security to the compound died in the assault as well as all of the attackers, said Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.

The attackers stormed into the building with grenade launchers after blasting open the compound's gate with the car bomb, Salangi said. He said police were able to evacuate the guest house with none of the residents killed.

From when the initial blast shook much of the city in the late afternoon until well past nightfall, fighting was still going on in the upscale Shahr-i-Now neighborhood, home to several international groups' fortified compounds as well as the headquarters of the Afghan Public Protection Force and a hospital run by the National Directorate for Security.

Security forces were able to enter the building in late evening and by 10:30 p.m. the siege was over, according to Sediq Sediqi , spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Interior.

"Fortunately, it is finished. The last attacker has been killed by the police," Sediqi told The Associated Press. Local television reporters demanded to know how a car bomber and five attackers could enter the capital, but Sediqi portrayed the battle as a victory for security forces.

"We were successful because we prevented civilian casualties," he said. He said adding that 13 police were wounded in the fighting.

"Wild terrorists attacked ... the IOM," police official Zemarai Bashari told The Associated Press at the scene. "Our forces are fighting the enemy with courage and honesty."

IOM spokesman Chris Lom told the AP in Geneva that an Italian woman working for the group was seriously burned by a grenade thrown into the compound by the attackers.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said insurgent fighters killed several people in the compound, which he said was targeted because it is "the place of residence of trainers for the CIA." He said late in the afternoon that he was in contact with the attackers and that their "morale is high" despite the fierce fighting.

Initial reports identified the target as a United Nations compound. However, the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, said in a statement that all U.N. staff in Kabul were accounted for.

The IOM is an inter-governmental organization based in Geneva that helps resettle people worldwide. It operates in Afghanistan in a mission coordinated by the U.N. but is not an agency of the world body.

Last Thursday in Kabul, a suicide car bomber killed six Americans, including two soldiers, and nine Afghan bystanders in an attack on a U.S. convoy. Another insurgent faction, Hizb-i-Islami, claimed that bombing.

Militants have staged dramatic assaults in the past on Afghan security and international targets in the capital, but the two months before that had been relatively calm there.

As the Taliban spring offensive gets underway, however, it will test the Afghan forces' ability to keep security now that international combat forces are pulling back ahead of the 2014 withdrawal.

Most of the U.S.-led military coalition will leave by the end of next year, more than a dozen years after launching the war to topple the Taliban regime over its sheltering of al Qaeda's leadership.

The coalition on Friday condemned the attack and praised the work of the Afghan forces, saying that international personnel provided only medical support.

"Their prompt and effective action saved the lives of other innocent Afghans and members of the international community," said Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, the commander of international forces.

International forces have trained some 350,000 Afghan soldiers, police and other security units under the plan to turn over full responsibility for fighting the Taliban and other militants when most foreign troops leave.

The Associated Press contributed to this report


The sooner the US exits Afghanistan, the better
There is no military solution to Afghan political problems. Staying longer only costs more lives and money
Guardian By Matthew Hoh and Matt Southworth 23 May 2013
As President Barack Obama is set to discuss the future of US counterterrorism policy around the world, he should also provide a framework for a swift end to the US war in Afghanistan. It is our belief US troops should not stay one day longer or shed one more drop of blood, and US taxpayers should not spend one more penny to keep troops in Afghanistan past 2014.

It is time to truly end the US war in Afghanistan. It is pure folly and wholly counterproductive for the US to keep fighting in Afghanistan, paying the highest price in life and treasure, for one more day, let alone until a specific calendar date is reached. The current US strategy, which lacks critical political and economic transition elements, will neither accomplish US political objectives, nor provide security for the people of Afghanistan. As violence is currently on the rise, one can reasonably wonder what has been gained from years of remarkable expense and sacrifice.

The Obama administration should end this war and double down on efforts to achieve broad and inclusive political solutions. There are several reasons why this track has a better chance for success.

First, there is no military solution to Afghan political problems, many of which don't even originate in Afghanistan. In fact, efforts to pacify the Afghan insurgency by force have only backfired. The security situation in Afghanistan today is worse than it was before the surge in 2009. A failure to achieve a negotiated political settlement with regional stakeholders will almost certainly mean a fourth decade of war in Afghanistan – fomenting the same conditions which led to the rise of al Qaida in that country.

For 12 years, the US has given military solutions every chance to work. It is clear these efforts have failed. For example, the Afghan NGO Safety Office, a highly respected group that tracks insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, recently noted a 47% increase in attacks by armed opposition groups from the first quarter of 2012 to the first quarter of 2013. Inclusive political negotiations are extremely difficult in the best of conditions. As violence grows, any efforts are very unlikely to bear fruit without first securing a ceasefire between international and Afghan forces and the insurgency.

Second, no regional agreement can be reached without Pakistan. It is true that one of the biggest challenges to stability in Afghanistan comes from outside its borders. The Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, target of most of the 368 US drones strikes in Pakistan, has become a heavily militarized insurgent haven. The insurgency causes great instability, but is not the only undercurrent that matters regarding political violence in the FATA, in other areas of Pakistan or in Afghanistan.

Tension between Pakistan and India, two growing and nuclear armed states, has largely driven Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan. A political peace process that seeks to end the India-Pakistan cold war – a decade long endeavor at least – is as important as fully inclusive peace talks in Afghanistan. India and Pakistan are both best served by a stable Afghanistan free of foreign meddling, including their own. Gestures of good faith between India and Pakistan, such as prisoner exchanges or high-level, public diplomatic exchanges could offer a good start. Any agreement will not be achieved through military force. However, there is scarcely a whisper of such a process in Washington.

Lastly, soon there will be no more time or money to fight the war. As the US military attempts to set parameters for long term military engagement, Congress is ever less inclined to support operations. Congressional support has been in decline since 2009, when the House first voted on an Afghanistan exit strategy amendment, offered by Representatives Jim McGovern (Massachusetts) and Walter Jones (North Carolina). In November 2012, the Senate voted 62-33 to endorse the president's plan for withdrawal and express the sense that no US combat troops should remain in Afghanistan after 2014. Declining congressional support for an overwhelmingly unpopular war is likely to continue. That the military focused transition from US to Afghan control, to end next year, is on a razor's edge does not help.

The US will not fight a war in Afghanistan forever, so why not cut to the chase? After over a decade of war in Afghanistan, the United States does owe as smooth as possible a transition to Afghans. The emphasis on the military aspects of the transition has greatly reduced the chances for true political and economic progress to take hold. Both of these are needed if peace and stability, both in Afghanistan and the region, are to become a reality.

The Obama administration must now accept risk of a different kind in order to achieve true success, but by using non-military means.


In Afghanistan, businesswomen must seek a delicate balance
Female entrepreneurs in male-dominated Afghanistan must walk a fine line as they try to raise their profile while staying below the Taliban's radar.
Los Angeles Times By Alex Rodriguez May 23, 2013
KABUL, Afghanistan - Roya Mahboob navigates the potholes of doing business in Afghanistan like any other entrepreneur. Corruption is rife. Kidnappings are common. Bomb blasts remain an overarching reality.

But as the female chief executive of a thriving software firm in Afghanistan's male-dominated society, Mahboob finds that her potholes sometimes feel like sinkholes.

Banks have balked at lending her money simply because she is a woman. Anonymous emails and text messages have warned her to abandon her work. One ominous missive came on crumpled paper wrapped around a rock and thrown into her front yard. It said: "You're a bad girl. When you head outside, you'd better be careful."

"It's been very difficult for us," says Mahboob, a diminutive 25-year-old with a soft voice that nonetheless comes across as firm and unhesitant. "When we first went to talk to businessmen, they treated us very badly. They couldn't believe that women could be technical-minded. They'd make jokes about us. When they smiled, their smile told us that they didn't think we could do the job."

Afghanistan has made meaningful strides in women's rights since the Taliban's rule ended more than a decade ago. Back then, women were barred from going to school and could not leave home without being escorted by a male relative.

Now, nearly 3 million girls go to school. Women are forging careers in medicine, law and business. In the parliament's lower chamber, 69 of 249 members are women.

But mistreatment is still prevalent, particularly in villages and rural areas, where some girls are sold to settle disputes and child marriages remain common.

In Afghanistan's business world, chauvinism takes a different shape. Male colleagues bristle at the thought of a woman competing alongside them or winning a contract they sought.

Afghan businesswomen have to strike a delicate balance: They must be visible enough to nurture new connections and customers but not to the extent that they land on the Taliban's hit list.

"Most successful businesswomen here, they prefer to be in the background," Mahboob says. "We still have Taliban here, and we're afraid of them. If we're too visible and too many people are talking about you, maybe you will be more successful — but maybe you'll have more trouble."

So Mahboob takes measured steps through Afghanistan's male-dominated business world. She rarely grants interviews to Afghan television, radio or newspapers. She maintains three offices: one in her home city of Herat in western Afghanistan, another in New York City and a third in a small, two-story building in Kabul tucked away in a maze of rutted dirt lanes far from the Afghan capital's main thoroughfares.

She used to change her cellphone number each month as a precaution but has abandoned the tactic because she lost customers.

Despite the hurdles, Mahboob has, in less than three years, turned her software start-up — launched with four workers and $10,000 borrowed from relatives — into a multimedia moneymaker with pending projects valued at more than $1 million.

Her company, Afghan Citadel Services, operates information technology centers in schools in western Afghanistan, runs an online documentary channel that attracts as many as 3 million viewers a month, sells casual wear online and even owns 10% of a local professional soccer team.

At the moment, she's seeking investors for her next project: an Afghan television channel devoted to women's issues.

"Media can be a powerful way to tell the government what we want — what Afghan women want," Mahboob says, seated in front of her laptop, a red scarf wrapped over her jet-black hair. "Using $100,000 to teach 20 women is one thing, but by putting $100,000 into a women's channel, you can teach millions of women. Television can go to the villages, where it can teach women and empower them."

Mahboob started her business while working at Herat University as an information technology coordinator. Lacking the money to rent an office, she and her four employees, all university students, worked on their laptops from a cafe. They began winning contracts, but they also ruffled feathers in Herat, a city of 397,000.

Prospective clients liked Afghan Citadel's work, but they wanted steep discounts because the company was run by a woman and had mostly female employees.

"One of our systems, a Web-based accounting system, cost $2,500, but they were only willing to give us $800 to $1,000," Mahboob says. "The same system sold by companies run by men cost $4,000."

Eventually, Afghan Citadel began outpacing the competition and moved into an office building with additional workers. But male competitors seethed with anger.

Three of her female workers quit after receiving a stream of anonymous threats and the company's website was hacked several times. Mahboob had to fire a male worker who had been sabotaging one of Afghan Citadel's projects. "He turned out to be a spy, working for a competitor," she says.

One of Mahboob's workers, the Herat branch manager, fell prey to fake Facebook profiles that portrayed her as having a slew of boys as friends. "In Herat, if a girl adds boys to her Facebook page, people think she's not a good girl," the manager says.

By the summer of 2011, the threats and warnings began to wear on Roya Mahboob. Her parents supported her, but family friends and relatives weren't as open-minded.

"My father's friends would say, 'Why is she working? She doesn't need the money.' But I can't live my life based on what other people are saying. I have to live for myself."

That summer, she moved to Kabul while maintaining a branch in Herat.

"There's more freedom here — nobody knows me here," Mahboob says. "No one cares what you wear, what you do.

"There are other businesswomen here, and when I talked to them, they said they encountered the same problems. But they didn't stop, and now they have big businesses. That encouraged me."

She now has 18 employees, almost all of them women. Last fall, Mahboob partnered with an online Italian film distribution platform on a Web channel that broadcasts videos and documentaries about Afghan society. Profits have been used to create information technology training centers at 40 girls' schools in Herat, she says.

There are no statistics on the number of businesswomen in Afghanistan, but Mojgan Mostafavi, the country's deputy women's affairs minister, says the number of female business owners is on the rise.

Mostafavi says the trend should continue after 2014, when most American troops leave the country. But many Afghan women disagree, worrying that the advances made in women's rights over the last decade could be jeopardized by the U.S. withdrawal and the prospect of Islamist fundamentalists taking on a major role in governance.

"It's a concern for all women in Afghanistan," Mahboob says. "If the Taliban comes into government and women's freedoms diminish, what will women be able to do? Even now, we are still treated badly.

"If the Taliban comes after 2014, we'll have even bigger problems."

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com


The Men Who Would Be King
By JOHN DARWIN May 24, 2013 The New York Times
The story of the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839-42 (what was later called the First Afghan War) can be briefly told. A British Army entered the country in April 1839, captured Kabul and ejected the ruler Dost Mohammad Khan. He was replaced by Shah Shuja, who had been living in exile since his overthrow by Dost Mohammad and his brother some 30 years earlier. The British expected Shah Shuja to be a more pliable king, a client of their Indian Raj, and a more reliable ally against the intrigues of the Russians. But they underestimated the resentment that their presence would arouse, and inflamed Afghan hostility by their overbearing behavior. After they failed to quell an uprising in Kabul and their envoy was murdered, they agreed to withdraw. But the retreating army of British officers, Indian soldiers and a multitude of camp followers was slaughtered almost to a man as it struggled back through the Khyber Pass in January 1842. Some months later, the British returned with an “army of retribution.” After a short stay in Kabul, and some indiscriminate killing, they withdrew once more. Dost Mohammad returned (with their blessing) to resume his place on the throne. Ever since this fiasco, an entire phalanx of writers has denounced the arrogance, folly and incompetence of the British aggressors (of which there was plenty) and has drawn a predictable lesson: those who invade Afghanistan pay a high price in treasure and blood — and also inflict one on its unlucky peoples. The latest (and most brilliant) in this long line of critics is William Dalrymple and his “Return of a King.”

Of course this was not simply a tale of hubris and nemesis. Dalrymple says relatively little about the larger geopolitical scene, but it was surely crucial to the decisions made by the British. The late 1830s and early 1840s were a critical period in the consolidation of British influence and rule all across southern Asia from the Near East to China. In the late 1830s, they faced a series of crises that stretched them to the limit. The Ottoman Empire, their principal bulwark against Russia’s southward expansion, seemed on the verge of collapse, with a threat from within by its rebellious Egyptian viceroy, Mehemet Ali. He had conquered Syria, was on the Persian Gulf at Bahrain and was poised to capture what is now Iraq. His great-power sponsor was France.

Meanwhile, Persia had entered into an alliance with Russia with the aim of recovering Herat — and thus much of western Afghanistan — opening Russia’s road to India. The British attempt to deter this by a naval attack in the gulf had not been effective. To add to their worries, far away in East Asia the conflict with China over the selling of opium (the main British export there) was reaching a climax. To the anxious British cabinet in London, it appeared that the one counterpoise with any chance of success was to ensure that the ruler in Kabul should be reliably loyal. “We do not want to make Afghanistan a British province,” Lord Palmerston (the presiding genius of British foreign policy) declared, “but we must have it an ally on whom we can depend.” The viceroy in India, Lord Auckland, had no choice but to comply.

This was the setting in which a furious argument broke out between the viceroy’s advisers. His man in Kabul, the celebrated explorer and traveler Alexander Burnes, urged the case for Dost Mohammad, insisting that his power was effective and that the British should strike an alliance with him. But Burnes was overruled by those closer to Auckland, including Sir William Macnaghten, soon to be Britain’s short-lived envoy. Dalrymple is contemptuous of his judgment, but it is not hard to see why he won the argument. The price that Dost Mohammad had set on a British alliance was their help in reclaiming Peshawar, the fertile vale that the Afghan rulers had lost to the Sikh state of Punjab. But the Sikh ruler, the one-eyed Ranjit Singh, commanded a well-trained army of more than 60,000 men within striking distance of Delhi. To try to dispossess him of this prize would have hurled northern India into turmoil. Dost Mohammad seemed an easier target, and Shah Shuja a better bet.

What does Dalrymple add to this story? Those who have read his “White Mughals” and “The Last Mughal” will know what to expect: a readable style, a deep humanity and, above all, an extraordinary skill in evoking the lost worlds of Mughals and Afghans. In his earlier books, Dalrymple accomplished this feat by tracking down the memoirs and chronicles of writers in Urdu and Persian — the court language of India — retrieved from the cellars and back rooms of secondhand booksellers. Here, during a perilous stay in Kabul, he made use of Afghanistan’s national archives, and then found — among the secondhand booksellers — the remnants of private libraries abandoned by their aristocratic owners, among them epic poems composed soon after the war. From these, he reconstructs the web of factions and friendships among the Afghan leaders that remained a closed book to the British.

Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammad’s ruthless and charismatic son, emerges as the vital figure in the Afghan resistance. From Shah Shuja’s own memoir, unused by any English-language account, he draws a picture of Afghanistan’s tribal and personal rivalries, and of Shah Shuja’s own tortuous relations with the Sikhs and the British, at once more vivid and persuasive than any previous account. Together with the correspondence in the National Archives of India, the Punjab archives and a mass of diaries and letters left by the British participants (some of them only recently found), these documents help to make “Return of a King”much the fullest and most powerful description of the West’s first encounter with Afghan society.

Dalrymple is in no doubt about the moral horror of the British invasion. But he is too good a historian to fall back on polemic. The cruelty and treachery with which Afghans treated one another is crisply portrayed. The strange double vision with which the British regarded the Afghans — admired for their courage, loathed for their cunning — is carefully documented. The abundance of sources for the British side allows him to present them in all their dimensions: the arrogance and blindness but also the bravery and humanity. His pen-portraits are a masterpiece. But the most brilliant stroke of the book is to bring Shah Shuja back to the stage — for he is the book’s ambiguous hero. It was he who welcomed the first British mission to Kabul in 1809. His long exile was punctuated by a series of forlorn attempts to recover his throne. But once reinstalled by the British invasion, he showed a coolness and courage that shamed his supposed protectors. Indeed, Dalrymple suggests that had he escaped assassination in 1842, he might well have won over his divided opponents — and the Afghan fiasco would have looked rather different.

Yet the final impression that is left on the reader is the author’s lament for the lost civilization that Shah Shuja represented. For in a longer perspective, the meaning of the ghastly events of 1839-42 was the final collapse of a courtly culture that looked back to Tamerlane, the end of Kabul’s long history as the entrepôt of Central Asia and Afghanistan’s gradual descent into the war-torn backwater of Asia. This was the first chapter in an unfinished tragedy.

John Darwin’s most recent book is “Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain.”


Mosadeq: Afghanistan facing crucial year for human rights
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 24 May 2013, 4:57 pm Khaama Press
The human rights situation in Afghanistan remains deeply worrying as the country faces a crucial year with the security transition well under way, Amnesty International said in its Annual Report released today.

The report looks at the state of human rights around the world over the past year, and highlights the persistent problems in Afghanistan of violence against women and girls, conflict abuses against civilians, and the dire conditions faced by displaced people.

“With the Afghan authorities’ increasing responsibility for security, it is vital that human rights be prioritized by the government and parliament, Afghanistan’s international partners,” Horia Mosadiq, Amnesty International’s Afghanistan Researcher said.

“2012 was in many ways a bleak year for human rights in Afghanistan. But there is also cause for optimism. We have seen for instance more civil society activism, especially from the women’s movement.”

Women defenders of human rights have bravely spoken out against intimidation, beatings and rape attacks against women and girls across Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission documented more than 4,000 cases of violence against women from 21 March to 21 October 2012 – a jump of 28 per cent from the same period last year, possibly due to increased public awareness.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of the Afghan women’s movement, women and girls attacked by the Taleban or security forces, or in their own homes, still have little access to justice. The 2009 Elimination of Violence Against Women law, although a milestone achievement, remains poorly enforced.”

Amnesty International’s Annual Report this year spotlights the plight millions of migrants, refugees and displaced people face around the world.

In Afghanistan, around 500,000 people remained internally displaced by the end of October 2012. Many are forced to live in slum conditions with poor sanitation and inadequate access to education and healthcare, while under threat of being forcibly evicted.

“We’re glad that our campaign last year to ensure better protection for internally displaced persons seems to have had an impact. The Afghan government’s drafting now of a comprehensive national policy on internal displacement could help enormously, if properly resourced and implemented.”

Civilians continue to suffer disproportionately from the ongoing armed conflict.

Despite the 2010 Taliban code of conduct ordering fighters to avoid targeting civilians, the Taleban and other armed groups continue to breach the laws of war in brutal attacks causing untold suffering.

According to the UN, more than 2,700 civilians were killed in 2012 – although the vast majority (81 per cent) were caused by armed groups, there are still concerns about violations by Afghan and international forces who were responsible for eight per cent of civilian casualties.

“Afghan and international security forces must allow for independent oversight of their actions. Any alleged violations must be promptly investigated, the suspects brought to justice, and their victims provided full reparations including compensation,” said Mosadiq.

“There may be a 2014 deadline for withdrawal of international combat troops, but this should not also mean any withdrawal of support to help protect and promote human rights in Afghanistan.”


Neighbours Of Afghanistan Trying To Divide the Country: Karzai
TOLOnews.com By Shakela Abrahimkhil 23 May 2013
President Karzai on Wednesday said that Afghanistan's neighbours are trying to split the country.

President Karzai at a meeting with Interior Ministry officials warned them that the neighbouring countries are putting efforts to destroy the system of Afghanistan.

Karzai stressed that these countries have taken undue advantage of Afghanistan's situation and always did things to meet their own goals.

"Some countries don't want Afghanistan to have a proper system; many don't want Afghanistan to have a government and are trying to divide us into groups. They want that Afghanistan should be available to serve them whenever needed. The outcome of all this is that- we are now in ruins," President Karzai said.

Afghan President adds that the Taliban who consciously targets the Afghan security forces, are serving the neighbouring countries' intelligence agencies.

"The Taliban is serving our enemy country by attacking the army, police, representatives and the government. Consciously and unconsciously they provide services to our enemies," Karzai said.

President Karzai once again said that United States is willing to keep troops at nine bases in Afghanistan but it will not sign the security agreement with US until its demands are accepted.


Afghan Doctor's Invention To Be Produced By An American Medical Instrument Company
TOLOnews.com By Zabiulah Jahanmal 23 May 2013
A medical instrument that will be used in case the knee or elbow bone breaks and wears out has been invented by Dr. Mohammad Ismeal Wardak.

The invention has been registered in the American Inventions Book, which has over one million inventions in its records. But the American enterprise will give only three percent selling privilege for this invention.

The medical instrument is used in case of a breakage or wearing out of the bone in the elbow or knee. Presently, it is being used in most of the countries.

The inventor of the instrument said that Esmith and Refo American Corporation may produce this instrument on a large scale and make it available to the public.

Dr. Mohammad Ismael Wardak inventor of the medical instrument said, "Depeding on the sales of the corporation two to three percent of the sales amount will be given to the inventor."

Meanwhile, a number of Afghani inventors criticised the Government and said that it doesn't support inventors and doesn't run any programme to encourage innovations.

Ghulam Sediq, an inventor said that he has invented more than 300 instruments for improving agriculture and cleaning of the cities but no agency has come forward to manufacture the instruments and make it available to the public.

He said, "I requested several times. The concerned authorities were even assured that this instrument is beneficial for the people but they failed to give any importance to my efforts. I had made an instrument for cleaning and washing flowers but the country's parks and flower growers are deprived of it."

Reza Jahangeer, Head of Intellectual Property in Afghanistan said, "Because of all the problems we have in Afghanistan, I don't think that Afghanistan should be held accountable for the support of the inventors."

However, a department does exist in the Ministry of Trade and Industry for registering intellectual properties. But so far no comprehensive law has been made on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

According to economic analysts if attention is drawn towards inventions and their inventors, Afghanistan become a giant producer industrial products one day.


Civil Society And FEFA Welcome The Election Law Approval
TOLOnews.com By Saleha Soadat 23 May 2013
Civil societies and the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) on Thursday welcomed the approval of Election Law by the Afghan Lawmakers of the Lower House.

The Law was approved in the Lower House on Wednesday.

Even though the organizations called the approval of Electoral Law a positive step but feel that the organisations' and political parties' demands have not been taken into not consideration.

It is said that one of the demands of these organisations was that 100 chairs should be given to the political parties but it was not accepted.

According to the law, seven elections will be held in Afghanistan. Those elections are: the Presidential, Parliamentary, Provincial Council, District Council, Municipality, Municipality's Administrative Member's and Villages Council elections.

The Law specifies the conditions and dates for all elections.

Meanwhile, the suspension and delaying of the elections under certain emergency situations, which were offered by the Government, were not included in the law.

"We suggested that the nominees of Presidential and Parliamentary elections should at least hold a Bachelor's Degree and have some experience. But it was rejected by the Commission," the Chairman of Legislative Committee of Parliament, Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi told TOLOnews.

The Election Law allocated 10 chairs for nomads and non-resident citizens in those provinces where they live.

According to the law, Electoral Complaints Commission is responsible to investigate frauds and deal with complaints.

"The next thing to be removed was the announcement of election results by the court. The Government suggested that the final results of election should be announced by the court, which we rejected," Qazi Nazir Ahmad Hanafi told TOLOnews.

But the Law has no clause mentioning that only literates can file nomination. This means that anybody whether literate or illiterate can contest in the Presidential elections.

"The Parliament received about five or six drafts. Government's draft, FEFA's drafts, the political parties' drafts and so on. The approved Law is an amalgamation of all these drafts," Member of Parliament, Mohammad Abdu said.

Apart from this, the Law states that one can nominate himself/herself provided they are not convicted for betraying the nation.

Moreover, the law says that two women from each province can join the Parliament even if they get fewer votes.


Mes Aynak highlights Afghanistan's dilemma over protecting heritage
Quest for copper riches in Mes Aynak develops as battle between culture and commerce
Guardian By Emma Graham-Harrison in Mes Aynak 23 May 2013
The ruins of Mes Aynak straddle a copper deposit so rich that many of the rocks are brilliant green with oxidised ore from a seam of metal first exploited 5,000 years ago.

The remaining copper cannot be extracted without destroying not just the ruins but the entire hill they perch on, and efforts to develop the mine have often been cast as a battle between the heartless miners and valiant archaeologists, racing against time to save their heritage.

The Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage (Arch), a US non-profit organisation, has led a publicity campaign to prevent the mine, as currently envisaged, from going ahead. It has been so successful that the World Bank office in Kabul faces an internal investigation for supporting the dig and the mine development.

But none of Arch's four directors have a background in cultural heritage, and several have connections to US mining companies interested in Afghan contracts. They are Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, his wife, his business associate in the lobbying firm Gryphon Partners, and a well-travelled restaurateur.

Khalilzad has been openlycritical of China's mining companies and a bidding system that he argues favours them in Afghanistan, the country where he was born and later returned as the first US ambassador after the fall of the Taliban. "The performance of Chinese companies is improving but they have a long way to go," he wrote in a 2011 opinion article for Foreign Policy entitled How many ways can we lose in Afghanistan, which criticised Chinese firms on issues including protection of cultural heritage. "It is certainly ironic that Chinese firms are at an advantage over western companies due to defence department procedures," he wrote, before ending on a slightly less gloomy note: "It is not inevitable that Afghanistan's valuable resources fall into the hands of the Chinese."

Afghan archeologists and experts working on mining have a more complex view of the mine's impact than Arch. Abdul Qadir Temori, head of the Afghan Institute of Archeology, who has committed his entire team of more than 30 graduate archaeologists to Mes Aynak, says the site is so complex and fascinating that experts could easily spend two decades picking over it.

In an ideal world that would be the case, he says. But Afghanistan is desperately poor and has suffered 30 years of violence, which means leaving artefacts in the ground offers little guarantee of preservation.Desperation and lawlessness have fuelled a ruthlessly efficient looting industry, and before the mining guards sealed off the site, looters stripped Mes Aynak of treasures that had been buried untouched for centuries, and destroyed beautiful buildings and crucial archeological evidence in the process. Just a few dozen miles away is Kharwar, another ancient site that may be even richer in remains, but has been described by the UN as "in danger of complete destruction". Without security or funds for excavation, only looters are picking through its treasures.

"Kharwar is possibly more beautiful than Mes Aynak, almost the same age," said SM Raheen, the minister of culture and information. "Unfortunately looting is going on there, but no one pays any attention I don't know why everybody cares just about Mes Aynak."

The mine will ultimately destroy Mes Aynak, but it may also save it from leaving no record or legacy. The urgent need to salvage the site has brought an influx of funds for archaeologists, creating probably the biggest excavation project the country has seen and plans for a storage site for the treasures that are dug up, either in Kabul or near the mine.

The expensive, and extensive mine security has allowed work to go ahead in an area that would otherwise be largely controlled by the Taliban, more famous for blowing up the great Buddhas of Bamiyan than supporting cultural projects.

Archaeologists working on the ancient Afghan town, and the spectacular Buddhist temples around the settlements and smelters, are quietly confident they can rescue the majority of its treasures before it vanishes. Experts discuss stabilising foam, steel reinforcements and the merits of plucking stupas out whole or painstakingly dismantling them stone by stone, then rebuilding them in a permanent museum. "When thieves target a site, they destroy 10 pieces to steal two pieces," Raheen added when asked about the mine and its impact. "This project has been helpful, to save the site. Otherwise it would face the same fate as Kharwar."


Afghan mine delays at ancient site delight archaeologists
Renegotiation of contract with Chinese company mean more time for dig at former Buddhist settlement
Guardian By Emma Graham-Harrison 23 May 2013
Mes Aynak - The forts and temples of the ancient Buddhist town at Mes Aynak in Afghanistan throng with the biggest crowds they have seen in more than 14 centuries. Nearby, rows of sheet metal housing built for Chinese miners are almost empty.

Hundreds of archaeologists are working at the site to excavate gilded statues of the Buddha, elaborate stupas that rise from ornately carved floors and delicate frescoes protected by centuries of mud and forgetfulness. The rich vein of copper that once funded Mes Aynak's creation is now likely to bring about its destruction: a Chinese state-owned mining company paid $3bn (£1.9bn) for the extraction rights, and the site will eventually become the world's biggest copper mine.

But while the fevered excavations are a thrilling sight for those racing to save the last traces of Mes Aynak, the lack of activity in the mining camp is alarming financial mandarins in Kabul, who are counting on mining revenue to make up for slowing streams of western aid.

This year was supposed to see production of the first copper from the site since Afghanistan embraced Islam, the first gush of ore eventually forecast to bring $300m to the government each year, and a $1bn annual boost to the still feeble Afghan economy.

Instead, the only excavation on the site is of archaeological treasures and even the most optimistic officials and analysts admit it will be two years before Mes Aynak copper is trucked off to a Pakistani port.

However, others think 2016 or 2017 are more realistic, after a series of setbacks. The Chinese camp was evacuated last summer after a Taliban rocket attack and shows no signs of being restaffed, the ministry of mines wants to renegotiate the multibillion-dollar contract for the site, and the archaeological dig that must be completed before mining starts is still in full swing.

"Don't worry, you will have at least until 2014," one of the few Chinese miners who stayed on told archaeologists earlier this year. Others from China Metallurgical Group (MCC), the company with a majority stake in the mine, had a similar message. "The cultural artefacts are the most important thing," they told surprised workers on an impromptu tour of the dig site.

Nearby, mining equipment sits idle, and many of the watchtowers ringing the core of the mine are empty at midday, although there is an outer circle of guards from a special resources protection unit.

Such concern for another country's cultural heritage, unusual for a hard-nosed Chinese natural resources company, comes as Afghanistan braces itself for huge political and security upheaval in 2014. The last Nato troops will leave by the end of the year, and the country must hold a presidential election to replace Hamid Karzai, who has ruled for more than a decade but is barred by the constitution from standing again.

Any company looking at a decades-long project might prefer to wait for more clarity on who will rule the country, and how secure it will be, before starting work in earnest, although MCC did not respond to requests for comment on its plans for Mes Aynak.

The Afghan government may also be willing to swallow some delays as it looks to renegotiate a contract that has been shadowed by corruption allegations since it was signed off six years ago. The minister who agreed it resigned shortly after reports surfaced that he had pocketed a $30m bribe from MCC, which he strongly denied. .

"We have requested for the renegotiation [of the contract]," said the current minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, who has led a high-profile campaign to modernise the ministry and make its bidding process professional and transparent.

He declined to go into details on what changes he was seeking, saying only that the contract was several years old. "When it comes to these types of big projects, there could be a need for some type of what we call correction measures to be taken. But as of now we have not launched any formal renegotiation with them," he said, in an office lined with samples of the country's many valuable rocks, from lapis lazuli to iron ore.

The Chinese company was due to submit a new work schedule at the end of April, Shahrani said, and if work goes smoothly he believes production could start by 2015.

The cash is certainly needed, with World Bank forecasts for a $7bn hole in Afghanistan's annual budget after 2014, and the wider economy also suffering as US and Nato contracts dry up.

"When Aynak reaches full production the revenues to the government would be at least $300m although it depends on fluctuations in the international copper market," Shahrani said. "In terms of its contribution to the national economy, the indirect contribution, it would be around $1bn."

But mining experts say that even if preparation work were to start in earnest this June, when the archaeologists' permission to dig ends, production is unlikely before 2016, given the preparation work usually needed for big mining projects.

"Big mines take on average between three to five years to build and construct," said a World Bank mining specialist, Michael Stanley, who declined to comment directly on Mes Aynak.

However, as long as the project is not called off, the wider Afghan economy will benefit from trucking, construction and any other work MCC contracts out, long before copper sales bring the government cash to balance its books.

"What everyone tends to forget is that the construction period for a mine, in terms of economic stimulus, is as important or more for the local economy than the production period," Stanley said.


I Traveled Through Afghanistan And Didn't See Another Tourist
Business Insider By Gunnar Garfors May 23, 2013
Afghanistan is the 10th least visited country in the world.

Go figure. Then again, I always thought it would be even less visited. Not because of its beauty, cold mountains and fantastic scenery, but because of regular bombings, terrorist attacks and being the home turf of Taliban. War zone tourism never really did catch on.

I traveled there in 2009 with two friends. Eventually. Getting visas wasn't the easiest of tasks. The friendly people in the Afghan embassy in Oslo made it very clear that tourists were not welcome. Full stop.

We could in other words only get in as journalists or military personnel. The most dangerous weapons I've had my lethal hands on were a 5 millimeter home-made slingshot, a Zulu bow and arrow and my dad's sledge hammer. The army option to get in was in other words quickly ruled out.

Luckily I am originally a journalist. And an owner of a legitimate press card. So is Marius Arnesen, one of the two fearless friends that tagged along. Asbjørn Havnen, the third traveler in war, is not. He is a big guy, is the occasional sparring partner of the Hulk and drinks any man, woman or beast under the table. The latter has given him a nickname. Dr. Vodka. His physical strength and drinking abilities still don't make him a soldier, so he ended up posing as our fixer to be able to get in with a press visa. He should have known better. Signing up as the fixer of two spoiled journalists would give him more of an headache than a couple of bottles of Ukrainian vodka. He sure had to work for his fixer title.

- Asbjørn, can you fix me a beer?

Marius soon picked up on the art of frequent nagging our newly appointed fixer.

- Yes, and don't forget to fix-shine my shoes, fix-iron my war shirt and fix-taste that my food hasn't been poisoned.

Admittedly, I was probably far worse than Marius.

Entering Afghanistan

The three of us flew in to Mashad in Iran. Entering via an airport enabled us to get a visa on arrival. A single entry one. Take note, traveling overland into Iran does not give you the same privilege. No visas are issued at land based border posts.

On the plane to Iran, we met a friendly Afghan guy. He was heading our way, to Herat in northern Afghanistan. We shared a car there. Our visas to Afghanistan were safely stamped inside our passports, but we didn't have visas to get back to Iran where we would meet my brother five days later before continuing to Turkmenistan.

The fact that we might end up being stuck in Afghanistan without a visa out of there freaked Marius out. Sort of. Sort of, as in totally, utterly, completely. And then some. I have never seen a man closer to a fit.

Surprisingly enough. Marius is among the most adventurous of guys. He eats extreme sports equipment for breakfast. He kites on snow, ice and water. He downs a cocktail a minute, still managing to down a shot of whatever is on hand in between every one of them. He will contagiously laugh you under the table. If his laughter doesn't make you smile or crack up, please cut down on the Botox. But he is not too keen on being stuck in a war-ridden country without the possibility of getting out of there. He first refused to join us across the border but soon realized he'd possibly miss out on the holiday of a lifetime. After some convincing about how easy it would be to get another visa at the Iranian consulate in Herat, he reluctantly joined us into unknown territory. Would he ever forgive us for inhuman amounts of peer pressure from Asbjørn and myself?

I think he did. Afghanistan is a photographer's paradise. Marius is a photographer. He shot hundreds.

We met Maroof and his brother outside Herat, after having crossed the border. The two locals asked if we needed a ride. They even agreed to drive us around for our entire stay, and we soon realized that they took personal pride in our safety. Much appreciated, although that task must have taken its toll with us exploring various neighborhoods as if there would be no tomorrow.

They showed us various hotels, but we ended up in the only semi-civilized hotel in town. They even had decent Wi-Fi. And good security. Of course, if you are a terrorist, that would be the hotel to blow up. The best and "safest" hotel in town usually is the main target, as we have seen too many times. We still felt safe despite the odd gunshot at night. After all, most of the other guests were hired guns. Or looked like ones. Because in Afghanistan you don't ask other foreigners what they are doing there. It's a rule, we found out. Most of them are there on shade business, or so it seems. Their heavy armored cars in the hotel parking lot didn't do anything to disguise that impression.

What to do in Herat

The third biggest city of Afghanistan has tales to tell. It dates back to ancient times, and feels in part like an old museum. The Herat Citadel is well worth a visit, so is the Friday Mosque of Herat, one of the oldest in the country. We were even given old tiles from the mosque as souvenirs from one of the guys restoring the mosque. He showed us around and told us about their massive work load. They have to make sure that all the millions of tiles look as they did originally. A never ending task, I imagine. Herat also used to have many minarets, but most of them have fallen thanks to the unstable foundations of the ancient city. A lot of heavy traffic on the circle road around it certainly hasn't helped either, but at least the Fifth Minaret is still standing. It gives you a chance to see such a historic structure in relatively good shape.

There are also mountains outside town, but we were given polite suggestions of not going there. Kidnappings had recently occurred. We listened. Especially Marius. We didn't go.

And of course, the market. Amazing fruit, traditional carpets, cooking utensils, leather shoes, ornaments and burqas. One particular burqa shop, exhibiting nothing but blue burqas, somehow caught our attention. Both Marius and Asbjørn are bigger than me. They both had girlfriends at the time. Both girlfriends were allegedly my size. For some kinky reason or another they wanted to buy burqas as presents to their girlfriends. Do not ask why. Needless to say, I had to try them on. I have ever since struggled with mental images of what the burqas I wore have since been used for. And as a bonus, a photograph Marius took of me with the burqa on has since appeared on the front page of a French newspaper with the photo caption "Close up of Afghan woman. Photo: Marius Arnesen." Thanks, mate!

At least I am honest about my whereabouts. After having travelled a lot, my family has more or less given up on me. They can't any longer be bothered if I am visiting some place of war, terror or crime. "He will be fine," they think. Or hope. And this is an arrangement to mutual benefit. If they were to worry every time I travelled to such places they'd have monthly heart attacks. Asbjørn and Marius have both travelled a lot too. They still didn't feel comfortable telling their families that they were actually in Afghanistan. Which meant that we were "officially" still in Iran, the country we were hoping we would be able to get back into. They even spoke to their loved ones at home, carefully mumbling the answer of where they were, so that it sounded like "Iran...ish." Hypocrites!

Getting back out

To enter Afghanistan from Iran was not a problem. Getting a visa to reenter Iran turned out to be a major obstacle. Maroof drove us to the consulate the first morning in town. There was a queue of 36 men with beards. Standing next to the wall of the consulate. At the end of the queue, towards the corner of the wall, there was a small window. The first guy in line had bent down and was negotiating with the consulate staff inside. We were in a hurry to get back out to Iran, where we were to meet my brother four days later. I first entered the queue in a very British manner. At the far back, nodding and smiling politely to everyone. Many of them smiled back. After 15 minutes without moving an inch, I realised the British way wasn't working for us. I decided to queue, Norwegian style. Rude, ignorant and with active elbows. It worked. I was bending down to the little window in a matter of minutes. The smiles of my local queue colleagues had disappeared.

- I'm sorry, but this is an emergency. We really need a visa to get back into Iran. My brother is there. It is urgent.

- How soon do you need the visa, sir.

- Tomorrow. Or in maximum two days.

- I am sorry, sir. That is impossible. It will take at least a week.

- A week?

I shouted. I could literally feel Marius panicking a few meters from me. The dialogue continued, and I used the words emergency, disaster and urgent a lot. In the end I got three forms to fill out.

- I really want to help you, sir. Come back when you have completed them, please. I will see what I can do.

We quickly filled out the forms, and I jumped the queue again. Even fewer smiles this time around. A fair amount of the next three days was spent nearby Herat's Iranian consulate. They needed two photographs and a copy of the application form (photographers and copy shops were conveniently located across the street - no discounts were offered). The consulate staff wanted to know about our parents' religious backgrounds. I then had money in cash, but the consulate demanded that it was deposited into its bank account. Which could only be done through a specific bank in town. They later demanded proof of payment. And a negative HIV test. We had to find a clinic to have our HIV tests taken. I will from now on carry a negative HIV test in my pocket for such future instances. The hygiene level of the clinic seemed to be good, and the needles used for the blood tests look reasonably clean.

- If we don't currently have HIV, I am sure that we'll get it here, Asbjørn joked.

Neither Marius nor I laughed.

Interrogation time

I was soon a hated man in the Iranian visa seeking community of Herat. Rarely have one queue member pissed off so many others. Finally, I still received some good news.

- We have what we need. Please come to the entrance door.

Wow, a breakthrough! No more back-busting-tiny-window-in-a-wall correspondence. Marius looked particularly happy. I knocked and stated our names and nationality when asked to do so. A porter let us in to a waiting room. There were 9 people already there. It turned out to be interrogation time. On an individual basis. No chance to make sure our stories matched.

I was first up. I was taken into a big room. There was a desk. Some big man was seated behind it. I tried to shake his hand, but he wasn't having it. He even knew what he was doing or had seen too many shady Russian cop shows. He pointed at a little chair by the opposite wall and touched his well-trimmed moustache.

- What are you doing in Afghanistan?

He asked calmly. We had entered on a journalist visa, but I somehow didn't think that was the right time to reveal that particular technicality.

- We are here as tourists to see the beautiful city of Herat and the scenic surrounding areas. We have heard so much about it. Great place!

He hit his fist on the desk.

- What ARE you doing in Afghanistan?? There are no tourists in Afghanistan!

He clearly wasn't finished despite his two long seconds of silence.

- Are you a spy?

I decided this was not the time for bad jokes, but I stuck to my story and explained that we wanted to explore for ourselves this country we only heard awful things about in western media. As tourists. He probably didn't believe a second of it. Then again, he had two others to interrogate. I still stayed there for another 20 minutes, telling about other trips, and that we had already travelled a lot to a number of unusual destinations.

Marius was next up. He was there for a little shorter. I used the time to coordinate with Asbjørn. I said that it might be a good idea to tell the guy that we were really tourists and that we had already travelled together to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and other famous tourist destinations. As proof of our genuine interest in the road less travelled.

- And you think that will make us look like anything but spies?

Asbjørn questioned my cunning plan of synchronized stories before he was called in. Having returned from his 15 minutes of Iranian consulate fame, Marius told me that he had received some of the same questions as me and that he too had reassured the Iranian that we were only tourists.

Asbjørn was back five minutes later. With a big smile.

- He shook my hand and just laughed. Are you really here as tourists, he asked me? Before shaking his hand and calling us you crazy, crazy guys!

Just one more wait later, and we had our passports in hand. With the precious Iranian visa in it. Marius looked 10 years younger.

Time to relax

With our return sorted, we had time to properly act as tourists in Herat. We had seen the citadel and the mosque between consulate action earlier, and we decided it was finally time to get postcards. But where do you get postcards in a country without tourists?

We found gold in the fourth shop, a book shop. The three first shop owners didn't even know what postcards were. But here, a few cards were hidden under layers of dust and some ancient looking books. Clearly not their main means of income, even for the sole postcard supplier in town.

Good stuff, but of course the friendly shop owner didn't have stamps.

- Try the post office, he suggested.

A groundbreaking idea. Maroof drove us there. We walked across the big courtyard and into a building. We found a counter in a dark room in the back. No one there spoke English. We showed the postcards, and asked for stamps. Our requests were returned by head shaking. Maroof started translating. He told us that we couldn't send anything without an envelope.

- But they are postcards. They don't need envelopes. They are designed to be envelope independent, I tried to explain.

Maroof did the same to the postal workers. Ten minutes later they had reluctantly agreed to sell us stamps. The postcards arrived safe and unharmed in Europe six weeks later. You know you are in a tourism deprived country when even the concept of postcards is unfamiliar. And that is in Afghanistan. It was one of the most modern countries in the world in the 1970s. Thanks, Taliban! Good job.

May the war end soon and democracy return. A realistic possibility? Probably not, but the people there deserves it. Future travelers also deserve it, in my opinion. Afghanistan is a truly fantastic country. I will be back. Soon, I hope.

And Marius? He has been back to Afghanistan half a dozen times. Well protected by the Norwegian army while filming news reporters and making award winning television documentaries about the Norwegian operations there. On his next visits he had his return visas sorted out in advance.

I don't blame him.


Father of Afghanistan cricket captain abducted
Associated Press – Thu, May 23, 2013.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Gunmen kidnapped the father of Afghanistan's national cricket team captain near his home in an eastern city, officials said Thursday.

There has been no ransom demand since Mohammad Nabi's 60-year-old father Khobi Khan was abducted from his car in the city of Jalalabad, cricket board president Shazada Masoud said.

Police are searching for Khan, but there have been no leads or any contact since he was taken Tuesday morning, said Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, spokesman for the province of Nangarhar, where Jalalabad is the capital.

Masoud said he's spoken to Nabi, who says his family has no personal disputes and he is shocked at the abduction. Kidnapping is fairly common in Afghanistan amid the violence of the Taliban insurgency.

Nabi has been influential in promoting Afghan cricket. He learned to play while at age 10 while living in a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The 28-year-old Nabi was the architect of Afghanistan's progress to cricket World Cup qualifiers in South Africa in 2009 and was named national team captain in March.


80% of Afghan Women Have Access To Telecommunication Services: USAID Survey
TOLOnews.com By Zabiulah Jahanmal 23 May 2013
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in a recently conducted survey found that over 80% of Afghan women have access to telecommunication services.

USAID stated that a number of women are using telecommunication services in Afghanistan.

USAID's survey on the use of information technology and telecommunication services in Afghanistan, especially cell phones showed that only 20% of Afghan women didn't have access to the services due to poverty and family restrictions.

"The challenge that we have set, still remains. But I am convinced that we all have worked together; and if everybody- the private sector, the Government and the international community work towards a common goal, we will be successful. Most importantly, the Afghan people will benefit from our efforts. I would like to thank the World Bank for everything it has done in this area," Hilda M. Arellano, Coordinating Director for Development and Economic Affairs (CDDEA) said.

Meanwhile, high price of telecommunication services, low quality of services and pesky phone calls are some of the problems that have been mentioned in the survey.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has warned those who make pesky phone calls and disturb women. The Ministry added that it will soon come out with a policy to overcome the problem.

"Any woman facing the issue of pesky calls can file a complaint with the Afghanistan Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (ATRA). ATRA informs the Ministry and we block the SIM card of the pesky caller," Amirzai Sangin, Minister of Communications and Information Technology said.

Even though, lot of investments have been made over the past 11 years in developing the telecommunication services, majority of the Afghans are unhappy with the internet services in the country.


U.S. Sergeant Raped in Afghanistan Found Nowhere to Go
Bloomberg By David Lerman May 23, 2013
As the only woman in her bomb-disposal unit in Afghanistan, Army Sergeant Rebekah Havrilla said she had learned to endure sexual harassment from her team leader and contempt from the captain who commanded the unit.

So when another service member raped her, she said, reporting the crime to her commanding officer was unthinkable.

“There was no way I was going to go to my commander,” Havrilla, who served in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007, said in an interview. “He made it clear he didn’t like women.”

The reluctance of most victims to report crimes of sexual assault in the U.S. military goes to the heart of the uproar over such attacks, which President Barack Obama denounced last week as “shameful and disgraceful.”

Now a growing number of lawmakers, led by women in the House of Representatives and Senate, are demanding a change that military leaders have long considered anathema: letting independent military prosecutors, instead of commanding officers, pursue sexual assaults and other major crimes.

“Our system is broken,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat and chief sponsor of a measure to wrest such cases away from military supervisors. “This is the only way we can provide the unbiased justice that our victims need.”

The issue reached a boiling point this month after three officers assigned to programs to prevent sexual abuse were removed from their posts after allegations of wrongdoing.

Shower Videotapes

Yesterday, the Army said a sergeant at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who supervised 121 cadets was charged with violations including committing indecent acts. The allegations concern secret videotaping of female cadets without their consent while they showered, according to a U.S. official who commented on condition of not being identified discussing details not announced by the Army.

The U.S. military system for handling assault allegations is based on a principle older than the republic: Commanders must be in charge of disciplining their troops. That means a service member’s sexual-assault complaint goes to his or her commanding officer, who decides whether to initiate prosecution in a military court, picks the jury and has the power to reduce or overturn the verdict.

‘Huge Problem’

While Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last week that all options are now on the table on measures to reduce the “huge problem” of sexual assaults in the military, he had resisted the idea behind Gillibrand’s legislation a week earlier. “The ultimate authority has to remain within the command structure,” Hagel, who served in Vietnam as an Army sergeant, told reporters on May 7.

The military’s top officer continues to express concern.

“I can’t imagine going forward to solve this problem without commanders involved,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on May 14.

Still, even the Pentagon has said the current system is broken, as the vast majority of sexual assaults go unreported. Based on a confidential survey of service members, the Defense Department projected this month that 26,000 military personnel may have experienced unwanted sexual contact last year, compared with 2,949 victims identified in criminal reports.

Advocates for Gillibrand’s bill say commanders have failed for decades in their responsibility to prosecute crimes and ensure justice for their troops when it comes to sexual assaults.

‘Not Professional’

“Today’s military justice system is not professional,” said Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine captain and company commander who is executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network, a New York-based advocacy group. “It’s controlled by commanders who aren’t fully qualified to make legal decisions.”

Military law scholars such as Victor Hansen say Gillibrand’s legislation would set a troubling precedent that could do more harm than good to military culture.

“The consequences could be really bad if we’re talking about undermining a commander’s ability to ensure good order and discipline,” said Hansen, a retired Army JAG Corps officer who now teaches criminal law at New England Law Boston.

Havrilla, who has testified to Congress about her ordeal, said there was little order or discipline in her unit as she endured months of harassment that culminated in rape.

Kissing, Biting

“I dealt with an abusive team leader for six months in Afghanistan,” she said in an interview. The sergeant first class “tried to pull me into his bed a couple of times, would slap my butt when I walked by if no one was around and one time tried to kiss and bite the back of my neck and put his hand in my shirt.”

The captain in command of the unit told other soldiers that he didn’t think women belonged there and seldom talked to her, Havrilla said.

About a week before she was due to return home, Havrilla said, she stopped by the room of an enlisted man who worked with a bomb dog to drop off some equipment she had borrowed.

“He grabbed me and threw me back on the bed,” she said. “I physically tried to leave and he physically restrained me. I told him ‘no’ repeatedly.”

She eventually relented, she said, to avoid what she feared would be a beating.

“It’s hard to explain what goes through your head, but you do a risk assessment,” Havrilla said. “I didn’t want to get hurt. I wanted to get out of Afghanistan as much in one piece as I could.”

‘Restricted’ Report

With no faith in the chain of command, Havrilla said, she filed only a “restricted” report, a move that entitled her to counseling without triggering an investigation or charges. After leaving active duty, she filed a second restricted report in February 2009, after running into her rapist at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where she was doing training for the Army Reserves.

Later that year, after a friend notified her that graphic pictures of her rape were posted online, Havrilla said she filed an unrestricted report. An investigation was conducted, though no charges resulted.

“It was a two-year-old case and a ‘he-said-she-said’ situation,” said Havrilla, who left the military in 2010. “I knew the chances of anything happening were pretty much slim to none.”

Data Lacking

The record of commanding officers administering justice in sexual-assault cases is difficult to measure, partly because the military hasn’t compiled the data in a centralized manner.

The overturning of convictions is relatively rare, according to congressional testimony. The Air Force reported five such cases involving sexual assault in the last five years. The Navy reported one. The Army reported none since 2008, and the Marine Corps reported none since 2010.

How often commanding officers reduce sentences isn’t clear. The Air Force and Navy said they don’t track that data. The Army and Marines didn’t respond to e-mailed questions on the topic.

Hagel has agreed to legislation pending in Congress that would prohibit commanding officers from overturning verdicts. He has said they should retain the power to reduce sentences, although they should have to explain the reason in writing.

A draft of the annual defense authorization bill emerging from the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee stops short of removing sexual assaults from the chain of command, calling instead for a study.

Study Sought

Similar measures were introduced today in the House and Senate by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. The bills would require those found guilty of sexual assault to be dishonorably discharged from the military as a minimum punishment. They also would remove the ability of commanding officers to overturn court-martial verdicts, while calling for a study of their other powers military judicial proceedings.

“The important thing is to try to get as many of us to agree on legislation so we don’t end up with a party-line vote,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and chief sponsor of the latest proposal. “This is an opportunity where we can bust that gridlock.”

The same may not be true when it comes to prosecuting sexual assault and other crimes outside the chain of command.

‘One Person’

“We have generally held the view that the one person that has the power to determine good order and discipline and to make sure it’s present is the military commander,” Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former Air Force staff judge advocate and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a March 13 hearing.

Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is a cosponsor of Gillibrand’s bill, said that philosophy is no longer credible.

“It’s in the chain of command and it’s an utter failure,” Boxer said at a press briefing about the bill. “People are not reporting. We are not going to stop until we fix this.”

Even with an independent prosecutor, Havrilla said she isn’t sure she would have reported her rape immediately because “life would have been difficult” in a close-knit unit deployed in a war zone.

Brian Lewis, a former Navy petty officer third class who said he was raped by a superior noncommissioned officer, told Congress the proposal would have helped him.

“An independent prosecutor would have made a world of difference,” Lewis said at the hearing in March. “It would have gotten the reporting outside of the chain of command and not enabled my commanding officer to sweep this under the rug.”


www.afghanistannewscenter.com