Hazara Nation

NATO-led forces alone cannot bring peace and stability to Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Tuesday, a week before Canada votes in a general election.
"I don't believe -- and I've said many times I don't believe -- that we can pacify every corner of Afghanistan as foreign troops," said Harper in an interview with CBC television.
"I don't think it's viable, knowing the history of Afghanistan, what we know about it, to believe that foreigners are going to be able to run Afghanistan or Afghan security on an ongoing basis."
Harper added: "What we can do is establish some basic security and train the Afghan security forces to gradually accept responsibility for the day-to-day security of their country."
To reach this goal, the Conservative leader said, a timeline for a transition of security responsibilities should be set.

Canada maintains 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
But since they first deployed in 2002, 97 Canadian troops have died in roadside blasts and in fighting with Taliban insurgents. Two Canadian aid workers and a senior diplomat have also been killed.
Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Canadian oppose the Afghanistan mission, while Harper has expressed frustration at the failure of NATO allies to commit more troops and resources to ISAF.
In March, the House of Commons approved prolonging Canada's presence in Afghanistan to 2011, and at the start of the election campaign Harper ruled out any extension beyond that date.
The main opposition Liberals, who were in government when Canada agreed to send troops to Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, supports a 2011 withdrawal.
The smaller New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois want an immediate exit.
Harper said Tuesday: "My judgment is if we have an open-ended commitment, we are never going to make the transition to Afghan security. So I think setting the timeline is part and parcel of accomplishing the mission."
"I don't think anybody can accuse Canada of cutting and running for a mission we will, by that point, have been on for nearly a decade." (AFP)
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The Afghan president's brother sat with former Taliban leaders at a religious meal hosted by the Saudi King Abdullah last month, the BBC has learnt.
The meeting is regarded as a possible prelude to talks between the Afghan government and the Islamic movement.
Reports suggest negotiations took place during this meeting, although this has been strongly denied by both sides.
Recently, British and US officials said a resolution to the conflict would require negotiations with the Taliban.
Last month the king of Saudi Arabia played host to an extraordinary cast of political players during a religious meal.
The BBC understands that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's older brother, Qayum Karzai, was in attendance, as well as former Taliban leaders.
Also present was the former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and a delegation of at least 15 Afghans.

In addition, men representing every political movement in Afghanistan "at some point or another" were at the meal, the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was also present, told the BBC.
He said that there was an eagerness in the room to find a solution to end the violence in Afghanistan but denied that any "formal talks" had taken place.
For their part, both the Afghan government and the Taliban have also flatly denied that there were any negotiations.
But while it is not clear what was discussed in Saudi Arabia, the meeting of leaders and politicians appears to be far more than a coincidence.
In the past, Saudi Arabia has acted as a broker between the Taliban and other parties. It was one of only three countries (Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates were the others) to recognize the Taliban government in the mid-1990s.
The presence of the former Mr Sharif could also be significant. Mr Sharif played a significant role in brokering a deal between various warring mujahideen factions in Afghanistan during the early 1990s.
In recent days, in Kabul and in Western capitals, there appears to be an emphasis on pushing for negotiations with the Taliban.
On Sunday, there was a flurry of interest after the UK's most senior military official in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, said that there could be no military solution to the conflict.
Then the UN special envoy, Kai Eide, weighed in on Monday, saying: "If you want to have relevant results, you must speak to those who are relevant."
And finally, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday that the only way to win the war was "through political means".
But any negotiations with the Taliban will be fraught with difficulties - it's not clear whether the movement even wants talks.
The Taliban’s senior leader Mullah Omar, in his traditional end of Ramadan message, made no indication that he was willing to speak to the Afghan government, instead, insisting that foreign troops leave the country.
There's also doubt about what role Saudi Arabia could play.
Some analysts say that the Saudis are still furious after Mullah Omar reversed his decision in 1998 to hand over Osama Bin Laden to Prince Turki al Faisal, the former Saudi head of intelligence. Mullah Omar then also insulted the Saudi kingdom and its rulers.
Whatever is happening there appears to be momentum - but nobody seems to know in what direction that will take Afghanistan. (BBC)
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TN
After September 11, the British-Pakistani author Nadeem Aslam told The Independent that he was plagued by feelings of guilt: “I asked myself whether in my personal life and as a writer I had been rigorous enough to condemn the small scale September 11s that go on every day.” Detaching September 11 from its political context, Aslam subsumed all crimes committed in the name of Islam to one category, and so saw patriarchal bullying within the family or the overbearing social pressure of a conservative neighbourhood as forms almost of Islamist terrorism, mini September 11s.

His highly praised second novel,

Maps for Lost Lovers, released in 2004, deals with precisely such prosaic atrocities. The book is a portrait of a tortured and self-tormenting Pakistani community in the north of England that calls itself Dasht-e-Tanhaii, or Desert of Loneliness; it is working class and inward-looking, bound by secrets and taboos, fearing and hating the white world beyond its walls. The atrocities enacted include an honour killing, a brutal “exorcism”, paedophilia in the mosque and wife beating – each episode based on real events culled from newspapers. But the threat of violence in Aslam’s Lonely Desert is ultimately incapable of holding lovers back from the passion of life. Here is the novel’s great beauty: in the exuberance of individual desire, in the capacity of people to break their cages – also in the poetry of moths and flowers that cloaks Aslam’s postindustrial town with an Urdu-tinted mantle of transcendence.

Though elegant, the novel is unbalanced in its unrelenting focus on crimes of honour. It fails to show how the meanings of Islam are contested within Muslim communities by liberal, fundamentalist and traditionalist Muslims, by feminists and misogynists, leftists and rightists. But it was written with the love and deep knowledge of an insider. Aslam writes about parents and children in the way we all probably think of our own parents and children – with simultaneous compassion, admiration and revulsion. His characters are complex and sympathetic even when their behaviour is cruel. Each is a breathing individual, deeply human, credible on their own terms, whatever their writer’s political message.

In that same Independent interview, Aslam spoke of the visceral sense of responsibility he felt as a Muslim for the murderous excesses of other Muslims: “We moderate Muslims have to stand up,” he said. “I feel that a game of Hangman is being played on an enormous scale in the world, and that sooner or later I’m going to be asked certain questions, and if I don’t give the right answer somebody is going to get hurt.”

This comment prefigured Aslam’s new novel, The Wasted Vigil, which concentrates on the murderous excesses of Afghanistan, a land where Muslim violence reaches out of private homes and into the enormous scale of the skies.

What made this violence erupt? The CIA began funding and arming right-wing Islamists in Afghanistan even before the Soviet invasion in December 1979, in an effort to “increase the probability” that the Russians would intervene. In the resulting war perhaps two million Afghans died and up to five million fled the country. Afghanistan lost its infrastructure and its educated class. The Russians were eventually driven out, only to be replaced by squabbling “mujahideen” warlords who terrorised the population in pursuit of their private vendettas. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, with the approval of the United States, backed the Taliban, who made the roads safer and stopped opium cultivation, but at a huge cost. In a perverse marriage of the worst of the Deobandi and Wahhabi theological traditions, the Taliban’s boy commanders declared an Afghan year zero. Men were imprisoned for having “un-Islamic haircuts”. Women were forbidden to leave the house unaccompanied. All “ungodly innovations”, from kite flying to television, were banned. After September 11, American policy shifted abruptly. A new set of warlords were brought to power, and the Kabul bourgeoisie was partially liberated.

Today Afghanistan remains mired in war, corruption and poverty. The latest foreign occupation wants to educate the Afghans out of their barbarism, but doesn’t recognise that every prior foreign occupation has dramatically increased that barbarism. The Taliban, almost universally hated a few years ago, are resurgent in the guise of a national liberation movement.

Afghanistan is a vast human tragedy representing the moral and practical failure of all concerned, Muslim and Christian, Arab and Pakistani, Russian and American. It’s enough to enrage anyone. A novelist, however, must produce more than rage.

Aslam presents Afghanistan through the eyes of foreigners whose lives are painfully tied to the country. Marcus Caldwell, an Englishman aged and bearded like “a prophet in wreckage”, welcomes a succession of wounded characters to his house near Tora Bora. These visitors are connected and divided by bitter secrets, shared loss and burning questions. What has become of Marcus’s Afghan wife, his daughter and most brutally, his hand? What of the Russian woman Lara’s brother, a missing Soviet soldier? Or of the ex-spy David’s brother, or his lover, Marcus’s daughter, Zameen? And what of David’s son, Marcus’s grandson? The sad answers to these mysteries are revealed gradually through a narrative of flashbacks, on a canvas stretched between Islamabad, New York and Saint Petersburg.

At its best, The Wasted Vigil is a lament for what has been destroyed: the traces of Afghanistan’s Buddhist and Sufi past, its tradition of miniaturist art, its myths and stories, its delicate intermingling of histories like the scents in a blended perfume. And Aslam generates many startling images (most notably a camel carrying a car’s burnt-out shell) and extended metaphors. Perhaps the novel’s key character is Marcus’s house itself, in which the art and architecture of each room is dedicated to one of the five senses. Books fall in a random literary rain from the ceilings, to which they were nailed by Marcus’s tragedy-maddened wife to hide and save them from the Taliban. Similarly, the walls are covered in paintings, which in turn are covered with mud to protect them from fundamentalist vandals. But some are visible:

“Several of the lovers on the wall were on their own because of the obliterating impact of the bullets – nothing but a gash or a terrible ripping away where the corresponding man or woman used to be. A shredded limb, a lost eye.”

This literal blurring of art and reality works well in a context where cultural violence and murder jog hand in hand – the Taliban’s attacks on the Bamyan Buddhas and Sufi shrines, the American tanks crushing the ancient walls of Ur in Iraq. In the lands of America’s wars, history has often been a victim. Marcus’s house hides a secret Buddha underground, just as Afghanistan hides its Buddhist past. Afghanistan itself is figured as a collapsed building in which “everyone’s life now lies broken at different levels within the rubble.”

Aslam excels in the poetic crossing of borders whereby the senses leak into each other and an idea can be conveyed by the beating of a butterfly’s wings. He presents a stare so strong it verges on sound, a character with “skin the colour of violins” and the “weather” of people’s souls. Unfortunately, it may be that this writerly strength contributes to the category errors in Aslam’s political thought, whereby bombs leak into beatings and honour killing spreads into mass terrorism.

The Wasted Vigil is handicapped by characters that are not quite fully imagined, not quite precise enough to convince. Almost interchangeably, the three non-Afghan characters speak and think about gemstones, perfumes and the classics of world literature, sometimes apparently only to give Aslam further opportunities to be poetic. All three often sound suspiciously like Nadeem Aslam with his committed anti-Islamist hat on.

There is one major Afghan character: Casa, a fundamentalist who, with his horrifyingly wrongheaded interpretations of Islam, seldom rises above stereotype. His religion is animated by hatred for non-Muslims of all varieties as well as traditional Muslims, women, blacks and intellectuals. Such bitter, monomaniacal characters doubtless exist in the real world, but Aslam (unlike in Maps for Lost Lovers) shows us not much more of their inner lives than we see on the TV news. Casa is partially offset by Dunia, a walk-on spokeswoman for a more liberal Islam, but the other minor Afghan characters include two warlords, a wife-murdering cleric and a duplicitous suicide bomber. The reader is told that ordinary Afghans despise the fundamentalists, but rarely sees ordinary people up close in their daily struggles.

“There’s no message in my books,” Aslam told the Independent, but here he appears to have broken his rule. His free indirect style – by which the narrator experiences the world through his characters – breaks down, and the author breaks in, sometimes with thoroughly questionable generalisations (“The religion of Islam at its core does not believe in the study of science”) and orientalist falsehoods (Syria and Egypt suffered cultural collapse when the first Muslims arrived). The book’s final act of violence points to how interconnected western and eastern guilt are in Afghanistan, and how mutual the suffering, but the general approach does not allow enough convincing voices to challenge either fundamentalist or western stereotypes.

The novels style can slip to become an overblown parody of itself. Not every image or beautiful phrase fits snugly in place, especially when Aslam chugs them out without reason: why say “work” when you can call it “the labours of the world”? A sentence rhythm is sometimes ruined entirely by repetition, and there is at times floweriness without a restraining economy, so that even explosions and executions lose their impact. The Wasted Vigil should make the reader experience Afghanistan as if it is immediately present; all too often it offers only an unchallenging exoticism.

Our times call for fiction which challenges the simplistic assumptions of religious fundamentalists and imperialising secularists alike. Novel writing is always an excruciatingly difficult process, much easier to get wrong than to get right. The difficulty only increases when the novelist seeks to represent Muslims to a non-Muslim audience in an Islamophobic climate. It may be that here Aslam has tripped up, disabled by his strange sense of cultural guilt for September 11 and by the resultant pressure to rail against the easy target of right wing Islamism. He is an immensely gifted writer, capable of great artistry and feeling, who has already won a deservedly large audience. It is a shame, therefore, that this novel remains on the shimmering surface of things. Its reportage feels a bit like CNN with poetry added, or those technically brilliant Iranian films that seem made for Western festival judges rather than for a real public. As such, The Wasted Vigil is a wasted opportunity.
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guardian
Negotiating with the Taliban is an insult to the Afghan people. Has the world forgotten what they are like?

The international community entered Afghanistan with Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 to oust the Taliban. It promised reconstruction and democracy. Seven years on it is negotiating with the Taliban.

Details of the negotiations were revealed by Jason Burke in the Observer last month. The talks are said to have been initiated by the Afghan government and led by the national security adviser, Zalmei Rassul, approved by the French, MI6, the British Foreign Office and the Saudi king before being implemented by a man as yet unnamed.

Later, a French weekly reported comments attributed to the British ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, advocating "an acceptable dictator" to rule Afghanistan. Then reports confirmed that the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide of Norway, is also backing the idea of negotiations with the Taiban and advocating their taking up cabinet posts. The Taliban obviously have the upper hand and have put forward 11 demands, including having their members in cabinet posts.

These steps will have devastating consequences for Afghanistan and will discredit the international community beyond repair. The suggestion being voiced by some of our top international advocates of democracy is disrespectful to the people of Afghanistan. Imagine if you told Americans that the US wants to negotiate with al-Qaida and have a few of them in high-ranking posts in the administration. Would anyone dare to say that in the US? If not, then how is it that the interntional community permits itself to play that scenario for Afghanistan?

Has the world forgotten what the Taliban and their allies did to Afghanistan in the space of six years? They devastated the country, humiliated the nation, punished, tortured and killed Afghan men and women and tormented the young. Are we saying that the most powerful armies of the world were unable to defeat a few thousand tribal fighters? Are the top international men of peace running out of ideas? You cannot advocate "good governance" and then support an Afghan cabinet with Taliban members in key posts.

One of the main mediators in the negotiations with the Taliban is the notorious warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. For more than 10 years he was one of the main culprits in the wars that raged in Afghanistan. He entered into hundreds of loose alliances, inflaming an already desperate situation. He was at the time responsible for the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. And now he is aiding their entry to Kabul for a second time. He has already placed in the Afghan cabinet one of his loyal supporters and the Taliban are asking for several more ministerial posts. There will be no end to these demands and there will be no reciprocal action.

Continuing high levels of unemployment and severe poverty are among the main reasons why young men join the Taliban. A lucrative narcotics business is also continuing to fund the Taliban's terrorist activity. So would it not be more appropriate if the international community focused on creating jobs, eradicating poverty and fighting the production of narcotics?

The International Crisis Group reported in July that the Taliban have created a "sophisticated communications apparatus that projects an increasingly confident movement". It said the Taliban are using a full range of media, "successfully tapping into strains of Afghan nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government and its international backers". Is the international community doing anything to counter that propaganda?

Leaders of the latest brands of Taliban, recently interviewed by international media have openly confessed they work for the Taliban because their "pay and conditions" are far better than any other work they can find in Afghanistan. People are desperate due to unemployment and poverty. Are these the Taliban that the international community is referring to as "moderate" Taliban? If not who are these "moderate" Taliban? Why are their names not announced? Are they the ones who destroyed the statutes of Buddha in Bamyan, or those killing hundreds of international forces in southern Afghanistan, or perhaps the ones taking people hostage and placing roadside bombs in main highways? Or it might be their other new major partner, Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is based in Waziristan in the tribal areas.

The people of Afghanistan have been watching with horror the return of the Taliban since 2003, not only to the southern and eastern provinces but also to new areas to the north and, worst of all, to Kabul. They will be even more shocked when they find out the Taliban are in the so-called democratically elected government of Afghanistan.
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by Patrick Barry DA
As long as we're focused on useful historical analogies, I though I'd bring up something that's been on my mind since the debate. For someone who pretty frequently uses history as a truncheon to bludgeon his opponents, you sometime have to wonder whether John McCain understands his own lessons. A perfect example is what he did last night - pointing to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan at the end of the Cold War in an attempt to make himself look like the seasoned professional and Obama, like the inexperienced green horn:

"We drove the Russians out with -- the Afghan freedom fighters drove the Russians out of Afghanistan, and then we made a most serious mistake. We washed our hands of Afghanistan. The Taliban came back in, Al Qaeda, we then had the situation that required us to conduct the Afghan war."

Now for me, the central lesson of American involvement in Afghanistan during the 1980s is pretty clear - don't turn away from a country with poor governance, a non-existent infrastructure, and thousands of well-armed, well-trained militants. But that is precisely what John McCain and George W. Bush did after the U.S. invaded the country in 2001. They turned away. So for McCain to cite this case-study to show how knowledgeable he is on national security is pretty ironic, since it actually has the opposite affect.

It's easy to view McCain's choice - made way back in 2001 - in the abstract, especially in the context of the current crisis. But if you look at the different dynamics that were in play in Afghanistan immediately following the 9-11 attacks, you can't help but get the sense that the decision to abandon that mission to invade Iraq cost us an incredible opportunity. Almost everything was set up in our favor.

First, there was broad international support for the U.S. mission to stabilize the country. Not only had NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history, but in a remarkable step, it authorized military action outside of Europe. International backing for the U.S. didn't end with NATO though. The agreement signed at Bonn in December, which outlined the framework for the new Afghan state, contained a stipulation that the U.N. Security Council would issue a mandate to deploy an international assistance force - the NATO-ISAF - to stablize Afghanistan. This force was envisaged as playing a role similar to that played by U.S. peacekeepers deployed to Bosnia following the Dayton agreement - to help advance prospects for peace after years of turmoil.

Additionally, countries like Pakistan and Iran, which had once been a thorn in the side of the U.S., both in the surrounding region, and around the world, had been so cowled by decisive U.S. action to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda, that they were poised to act cooperatively. According to Jim Dobbins, who was special envoy to Afghanistan at the time, no country contributed more to the negotiations that brought the Bonn process to a successful conclusion than Iran. This behavior was historically unprecedented, and has not been seen since.

Countless tribes, and multiple ethnic groups populate Afghanistan, but they too shared the U.S. vision for a stable Afghan state. Jim Dobbins labored for months to craft an agreement that was amenable to Pashtuns and Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. For the document to contain the signatures of "representatives of Afghanistan's different ethnic groups, expatriate Afghans, and representatives of the exiled monarch,' was remarkable.

And finally - and this is probably the most important point - U.S. military action had left the Taliban and al-Qaeda in disarray. With their camps destroyed, their numbers depleted, their capabilities dramatically curtailed, all that was left was to work cooperatively, but firmly, with the surrounding countries to ensure that extremists could not return to Afghanistan, or set up operations elsewhere. A crippling blow could have been struck.

What all these points demonstrate, and what Max just pointed out by discussing the lessons from peacekeeping and stability operations in the 1990s, is that even when the stars align, even when you get every actor on the same page, and even when you have reduced the destructive influece of spoilers to virtually nil, no comprehensive agreement can sustain itself without a complimentary infusion of resources and attenion. It's incredibly fortunate that you get to 'yes' in instances like these, and when you do, that's just the beginning. Taking advantage of such an opportunity requires a forceful committment from all the actors involved, something which did not occur when the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of the Cold War, but which could have happened had John McCain and George W. Bush not turned so suddenly to Iraq ten years later. Unfortunately, John McCain didn't heed his own advice, and the "most serious mistake" of the 1990s replayed itself in 2001.

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The Age
A second group of suspected Middle Eastern refugees has arrived in Australian waters and is being transported to Christmas Island for processing.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Chris Evans tonight said 17 people, including three crew, had arrived at an offshore storage facility in the Timor Sea off the north-west coast of Western Australia.

"The reasons for their voyage are unknown at this time," the spokesman said.

"They've been moved on to a Royal Australian Navy vessel for transfer to Christmas Island where they'll be placed in immigration detention," the spokesman said.

The spokesman said the group would undergo health, security and identity checks upon their arrival at Christmas Island.
He was unable to confirm the nationalities of any of the group.

"It will probably take at least three or four days before they arrive at Christmas Island and that's where they'll determine all of that," he said.
It is believed the group arrived about 10.30am yesterday.

It is the second boat of unauthorised arrivals to be intercepted off the coast of Australia this year.

An Australian naval patrol boat last week intercepted another vessel carrying 14 people near the Ashmore Islands, 320km off Australia's north-west coast.

The group, including one woman, was also transferred to Christmas Island for processing.
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NYT
Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.
Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.

In many ways this province, Bamian, is unique. A half-dozen years of relative peace in this part of the country since the fall of the Taliban and a lessening of lawlessness and disorder have allowed women to push the boundaries here.

Most of the people in Bamian are ethnic Hazaras, Shiite Muslims who are in any case more open than most Afghans to the idea of women working outside the home.

But the changes in women’s lives here are also an enormous step for Afghanistan as a whole. And they may point the way to broader possibilities for women, eventually, if peace can be secured in this very conservative Muslim society, which has been dominated by militia commanders and warlords during the last 30 years of war.

In a country with low rankings on many indicators of social progress, women and girls are the most disadvantaged.

More than 80 percent of Afghan women are illiterate. Women’s life expectancy is only 45 years, lower than that of men, mostly because of the very high rates of death during pregnancy. Forced marriage and under-age marriage are common for girls, and only 13 percent of girls complete primary school, compared with 32 percent of boys.

The cult of war left women particularly vulnerable. For years now they have been the victims of abduction and rape. Hundreds of thousands were left war widows, mired in desperate poverty. Particularly in the last years of Taliban rule, even widows, who had no one to provide for them, were not allowed to work or leave the home unaccompanied by a male relative.

Fear of armed militiamen left women afraid even to walk in front of the police station in the town of Bamian, recalled Nahida Rezai, 25, the first woman to join the police force here. “And I came right into the police station,” she said, admitting to some fears.

At the beginning, she had some problems. “I received some threats by telephone,” she said. “But now I am working as a police officer, I think nothing can deter me.”

Nekbakht, 20, joined the police force, too, and now helps her father, a casual laborer, support the family. They live in a single room tucked into the cliff face of Bamian valley, where homeless refugees have found shelter in caves inhabited centuries ago by Buddhist pilgrims.

“It was very difficult to find a job,” she said. “We had economic problems, and with the high prices life was difficult. Finally, I decided if I could not find another job, I should go into the police.” After joining nine months ago, she likes the job so much she says she is encouraging other women to join, too.

Indeed, growing economic hardship has helped drive some women to join the work force or to take other bold steps as they try to help their families cope with a severe drought, rising food prices and unemployment.

That was the case for Zeinab Husseini, 19. Her father, with seven daughters and no sons, says he had little choice when he needed a second driver to help at home.

“I like driving,” she said, seated at the wheel of her family’s minibus. “I was interested from childhood to learn to drive and to buy a car. I was the first woman in Bamian to drive.”

But over all, it is the return to relative peace here that has allowed for women’s progress, said the governor, Habiba Sarabi, a doctor and educator who ran underground literacy classes during the Taliban regime.

“If the general situation improves, it can improve the situation for women,” she said. She pushed to have policewomen so they could handle women’s cases, and there are now 14 women on the force, she said.

Some of the changes in Bamian have been echoed in more conservative parts of Afghanistan. But even the success stories sometimes end up showing the continuing dangers for women who take jobs to improve their lot. In Kandahar Province, one of the most noted female police officials in the country, Capt. Malalai Kakar, was gunned down on her way to work on Sept. 28.

In Bamian Province, Mrs. Sarabi, 52, has been the driving force behind women’s progress in public life. Her appointment by President Hamid Karzai three years ago as governor of Bamian was a bold move when jihadi leaders were still so powerful in the towns and countryside.

Some opponents are still agitating for her removal, Mrs. Sarabi said. “It is not only because they are against women,” she said, “but they do not want to lose power, so they make trouble for the governor.”
The people of Bamian say they accepted a woman as governor in the hope that an English-speaking, development-oriented technocrat like Mrs. Sarabi would deliver jobs and prosperity.

In fact, the success of women’s Community Development Councils here has caught the attention of the World Bank, which has been a major donor to the programs and is looking to develop them further. Around the country there are 17,000 such councils, which choose local development projects and could be expanded to work on district and regional levels, said the bank’s president, Robert B. Zoellick, who visited Bamian this year.

“They are very effective,” he said of the councils in a recent interview. “People feel they have an influence in the future.”

The quiet work being done by women on the councils and in other jobs has helped turn things around for many in Bamian.

Najiba, 48, is a woman in Yakowlang District who lost her husband in the notorious massacre by Taliban forces there in the winter of 2000-1.

The Taliban fighters came on horseback, forcing the villagers and townspeople to flee in the night, leaving everything behind. Their shops and homes were set on fire while they sought refuge in the mountains.

After the American intervention in Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, they returned home to nothing, not even a roof over their heads.

“I just had one skirt, and I was always patching it,” Najiba said.

As the government began development programs in the provinces, Najiba was elected head of a newly formed women’s development council, representing her village and the neighboring village. Its job was to plan how to spend a government development grant.

The men’s council decided the area needed a road, and flood barriers to save the farming land near the river. The women’s council wanted instead to buy livestock for each family, traditionally the women’s domain in Afghan households, to improve the food supply for families.

The men won that debate. “We did not get the farming project,” Najiba said. “We are still suggesting it was valuable; we are trying to work on our projects so we don’t have to depend on the men.”

The women got their way with the next project: solar panels to provide light to groups of four houses. That project has opened up all sorts of ideas, for computers, televisions and educational and election programs, she said.

Women have participated in literacy and tailoring training programs, too. Najiba laughed as she explained: “We have changed our way of life. Now I have lots of skirts.”

She added, “It all comes down to the council.”

Now, women are taking courses run by nongovernmental organizations, getting educated and learning ways to improve their family incomes. Most important, the women have won over the men, she said.

“Their minds have changed,” Najiba said. “They want to share decisions, not too far, but they want to give us some share.”
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Online Athens

Doris Aldrich knows the women and children of war-torn Afghanistan need medical care, even if they aren't yet using the clinic the Athens-based Women to the World organization helped set up there.

Afghanistan has one of the highest women's suicide and infant mortality rates in the world, and for years, few Afghan women have been able to find medical treatment.

As president of Women to the World, Aldrich has been working for more than seven years to give Afghan women access to doctors and nurses.

Three years ago, Aldrich caught a break and used donations and grants from the Afghan Embassy to build a clinic in a 7,000 square-foot building in northern Kabul.

The clinic opened in June in a section of the city where more than 200,000 people lack reliable access to medical services.

"Many are handicapped widows, and the children are dying in large numbers still," Aldrich said.

People near the clinic live in extreme poverty and many young children are missing limbs from stepping on land mines.

Kabul's two main hospitals and several other clinics don't always allow women access to health care because of firmly established gender rules and racial tension among ethnic groups.

"Some (doctors) are still unwilling to serve Hazara women," Aldrich said, referring to one of Afghanistan's ethnic groups. "They'll let them lie there and basically bleed to death because of their ethnic prejudices."

And while women in Afghanistan are not allowed to drive cars - or even ride bicycles - Aldrich says she's witnessed several changes to what many view as oppression.

Six years ago, about 80 percent of Afghan women wore burqas, face-covering masks that also obstruct the wearer's view of the outside world. Today, about 40 percent of women in Afghanistan wear them.

Women also have been allowed back in schools, but most don't have classes for women beyond the teachings of the Quran.

Some 450 women come every week to a Women to the World training center in Kabul to learn English and how to use the Internet.

Some graduates have found office work with the government or military, while others dream of attending a university. Recently, Women to the World's focus has shifted to helping more women start their own small businesses.

"Our only teachers are females, and they interact with female students. The culture demands that, but we've gained the trust and it's taken that many years to do it," Aldrich said. "We're winning the gender war in Afghanistan, thank God."

On a return trip to Kabul last month, Aldrich visited the recently established women's clinic.

Three full-time male physicians and one-full time female gynecologist were working in the building, but not one woman has dared to seek their services.

That could change as Aldrich and others work to advertise the clinic and build on a network of trust.

"There's some basic marketing that if people are confused, or don't feel safe, they're not going to come to the right place," Aldrich said.

Aldrich talks about continuing her mission with the clinic by acquiring more polio vaccine to combat the disease which afflicts more children in Afghanistan than in any other developing nation in the world. She also plans to provide mental health and other forms of support for abused women.

"That's our big dream next, once the hospital is stabilized," Aldrich said.
Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, October 04, 2008
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The Australian.News

BOATPEOPLE intercepted in the Ashmore Islands this week have arrived on Christmas Island and are being held in detention

The 12 suspected asylum-seekers and two Indonesian crew were brought ashore by barge at Flying Fish Cove shortly before 11am local time.

They were met by immigration officials who flew in from mainland Australia last night, Customs officials and guards from detention centre contractor GSL to carry out health, security and identity checks on them.
The group, who are thought to have reached Indonesia from the Middle East, have been travelling towards the Australian territory of Christmas Island aboard a naval vessel since being picked up at the Ashmore Islands on Monday.

“The group seemed mostly like young men, they looked quite healthy and happy, they were smiling and waving to us,” said observer Michelle Dimasi from the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University in Melbourne.

Ms Dimasi, who is writing a PhD on Australia's asylum-seeker policy on Christmas Island, said: “To me, they appeared to be Afghanis, of Hazara ethnicity.”

Ms Dimasi said the group was then taken by bus to the island's six-year-old detention centre near the community's swimming pool, often referred to as the temporary detention centre.

Federal Immigration and Citizenship Minister Chris Evans said the group's interception demonstrated the Rudd Government's border security arrangements were working.

He rejected opposition claims this week that border security had weakened under Labor, saying the Rudd Government “maintained extensive patrolling of our borders by Defence and Customs which is why this vessel was intercepted”.

Christmas Island, which will this weekend celebrate 50 years as an Australian territory, is excised from Australian waters for migration purposes.

“The Rudd Government has also consistently made clear its commitment to maintain a system of mandatory detention and excision,” Senator Evans said.

“As part of this system of mandatory detention, all unauthorised boat arrivals will be detained and processed on Christmas Island and those found not to be owed protection will be removed.

“They will be held in detention at Christmas Island while they undergo health, security, identity and other checks to establish their identity and reasons for travelling to Australia.

Senator Evans said processing suspected asylum-seekers at Christmas Island signalled that the Australian Government maintained a very strong anti-people smuggling stance.

“The continuing threat of people smuggling is a direct result of significant long-term pressures driving the international movement of displaced persons through our immediate region,” he said.

“Despite this latest arrival, 2008 has seen the smallest number of arrivals in three years.

“This is testament to the increased level of engagement undertaken by Australian agencies in the region and the close relationships formed with key partners such as Indonesia.”

Senator Evans said the Rudd Government was determined to deal “effectively and appropriately with the perpetrators of the heinous crime of people smuggling that puts vulnerable lives at risk”.
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Fourteen boatpeople picked up off Australia's northwest coast will be taken to an off-shore immigration centre, the government said yesterday, sparking concern among human rights advocates.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the navy had intercepted the group of 13 men and one woman near the Ashmore Islands, some 320 kilometres off Western Australia on Monday.
The minister said the boat appeared to have come from Indonesia, but he did not know their nationalities or whether they were asylum-seekers. He said they would be transferred to Christmas Island for processing.
"There's no suggestion at the moment that they were illegal fishers, but we don't know much more about them at this stage," Senator Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"Until they're properly interviewed on Christmas Island, we won't know and I won't be able to make public comment about that.
"If they are seeking asylum, then they will be assessed and have their claims tested before proceeding any further."
Rights group Amnesty International Australia said it was concerned about the government's policy of taking boatpeople to remote off-shore stations rather than processing their claims on the mainland.
"It is completely inappropriate to treat this group differently from other asylum seekers," spokesman Graham Thom said. "Individuals should not be punished simply based on their mode of arrival."
"A small boat with 14 people on board is not a border security issue, it is a humanitarian issue and should be treated as such."
In July, Australia announced a "more humane" policy towards refugees, scrapping a widely-criticised system of automatically locking up asylum seekers on arrival, which was introduced by the previous conservative government.
Asylum seekers arriving by boat would still be held at Australia's Christmas Island detention centre, but with the aim of resolving their cases as quickly as possible, Evans said at the time.
The new government has already scrapped the "Pacific Solution" under which boatpeople were sent to special detention centres in the tiny island nation of Nauru or the Papua New Guinea island of Manus.
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