Hazara Nation

latest Syrian jihadist cleric 'Abd Al-Mun'im Mustafa Halima, better known as Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, has published on his website an essay in which he declares Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi to be an apostate.

Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is one of the most prominent clerics in the Muslim world. He heads the International Union for Muslim Scholars , has a weekly show called "Sharia and Life" on Al-Jazeera TV, and is close to a number of Arab regimes, especially those of Qatar and Algeria. He has in the past been criticized by Arab liberals, especially over statements regarding the killing of American civilians in Iraq(1) and his support for Hamas suicide bombings.(2) He has been barred from entering the U.S. since 1999;(3) in early 2008 he was also denied an entry visa to the U.K.(4) More recently, his statements warning against Shi'ite proselytizing in Sunni countries have generated controversy.(5)

In Al-Tartusi's view, though, Al-Qaradhawi is an apostate. This position reflects the gulf that has opened between clerics close to the Muslim Brotherhood, like Al-Qaradhawi, and global jihadists like Al-Tartusi. Al-Tartusi writes that he had previously issued a fatwa declaring Al-Qaradhawi an apostate, but since the fatwa was distributed widely without the accompanying explanation, he had decided to publish an expanded article explaining the reasoning behind his fatwa. He attacks Al-Qaradhawi in particular over the latter's support for multiparty democracy and for promoting close ties between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Following is a summary of Al-Tartusi's essay declaring Al-Qaradhawi an apostate:(6)

Al-Qaradhawi Defended the Buddha Statues in Afghanistan

The first reason Al-Tartusi gives for his fatwa is that Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi tried to save the Buddha statues in the Bamyan Valley in Afghanistan from being destroyed by the Taliban. Al-Qaradhawi led a delegation of Muslim scholars to Afghanistan to try to persuade Mullah Omar that since the statues were not objects of worship, the shari'a did not require their destruction, and that destroying them would reflect badly on Islam. The delegation was sponsored by Qatar, Al-Qaradhawi's country of residence, which at the time also held the rotating presidency of the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the initiative came in response to a request from the Japanese foreign minister. Shortly before the delegation left, Al-Qaradhawi also issued a fatwa against the destruction of the statues.(7)

Al-Tartusi writes: "This man [Yousef Al-Qaradhawi] never travelled to Afghanistan throughout the [various] stages of jihad the country went through, apart from one time, and that was when he wanted to rescue the false god, the greatest of idols that is worshipped instead of Allah, from destruction and obliteration. The blood and body parts of hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims did not move him, but for the sake of the false god and the idol he was moved, and set out [for Afghanistan]…"

Al-Tartusi argues that the attempt to save the Buddha statues is a clear act of apostasy, since it says in Koran 2:256: "One who repudiates false gods (al-taghut) and believes in Allah has clung to the firmest bond of faith that never breaks…" He then argues that this verse lays out two conditions for faith – repudiation of false gods and belief in Allah – and that Al-Qaradhawi, by defending the Buddha statues, failed to uphold the first condition, and thus became an unbeliever.

His Fatwa Allowing Muslims to Fight in the U.S. Army Is an Act of Apostasy

At the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces, Maj. Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, wrote to Yousef Al-Qaradhawi and other Muslim scholars asking their opinion as to whether enlisted American Muslims may fight other Muslims. In response, Al-Qaradhawi and his four cosignatories wrote that there was nothing wrong with Muslims fighting in the U.S. Armed Forces against those thought to be responsible for terrorism. They explained that Islam forbids killing innocent people, and that Muslims have a responsibility to bring such killers to justice, as stated in Koran 5:2: "Help one another in righteousness and piety, and do not help one another in sin and aggression." While this is complicated by the fact that in war it is difficult not to kill innocent people as well, this consideration is outweighed by the fact that if Muslim soldiers did not obey orders, their loyalty to the U.S. would be cast into doubt. A Muslim soldier who so desires may ask to be temporarily transferred to a non-combat role, if such a request carries no negative repercussions for himself or other Muslims; otherwise, he is forbidden to make such a request. The general jurisprudential principle behind the fatwa is that while it is forbidden to kill other Muslims, a pressing necessity makes permissible that which is forbidden.(8)

Abu Basir Al-Tartusi characterizes this ruling as "this man's [Al-Qaradhawi's] infamous fatwa which determines that Muslims in America should enlist to fight in the American Crusader army… against the Muslim mujahideen, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, claiming that this falls under [the verse] 'help one another in righteousness and piety,' and saying that in order for their national allegiance not to be called into question, they need to prefer their national allegiance – to the American nation – over their allegiance to Allah, to the faith, and to the fraternity of faith and religion!"

Al-Tartusi takes issue with Al-Qaradhawi's reasoning in the fatwa on a number of grounds. He argues that since military service in the U.S. and Europe is voluntary, one cannot speak about the Muslim soldier as though he is required to fight and could face repercussions for failing to do so. In addition, he accuses Al-Qaradhawi of accepting the U.S.'s claim that the war was directed against terrorists, when in fact the U.S. is fighting Islam and the Muslims.

Al-Tartusi then presents his view regarding the consequences of the fighting that Al-Qaradhawi supported: the U.S. replaced an Islamic government in Afghanistan with a traitorous puppet state and killed tens of thousands of peaceful Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. He says that Al-Qaradhawi is "an accomplice to the Crusader invasions and all the crimes they perpetrated in Muslim lands," and warns him to prepare for the Day of Reckoning. The negative consequences of these wars undermine Al-Qaradhawi's legal reasoning; He had permitted fighting in the U.S. Armed Forces only out of the principle that necessity permits the forbidden, whereas for Al-Tartusi the damage done to the Muslim world far outweighs such considerations as the soldier's professional future or the casting of his allegiance to the U.S. into doubt. In addition, the application of the principle of necessity to this question was erroneous from the outset: Not even true compulsion can justify the killing of a fellow Muslim; one is even required to be killed rather than kill another.

He then goes on to explain why he considers Al-Qaradhawi's fatwa to be not only wrong, but an act of apostasy. First, he writes that permitting a Muslim to be a soldier in an army of "unbelief and idolatry" fighting against Muslims is clear apostasy, as laid out in verses such as Koran 5:51: "Oh believers: do not take the Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends one to another, and those of you who befriend them become of them. Allah does not guide iniquitous people"; and Koran 3:28: "Let not the believers take the infidels as friends instead of the believers; one who does so has no part in Allah." Al-Qaradhawi is not only guilty of doing this himself, but he has permitted it to others, which is a separate sin known as "permitting that which is forbidden," and is in itself cause for apostasy.

In addition, Al-Tartusi writes that Al-Qaradhawi has taken the concept of nation as a false idol, by speaking of allegiance to nation and to national laws, and by preferring this allegiance over allegiance to Allah and to Islam. This is apostasy, since it violates the principle of al-wala' w'al-bara': exclusive allegiance to Allah and Islam, and repudiation of unbelief and unbelievers.

He is Making Light of Allah

Al-Tartusi then accuses Al-Qaradhawi of making light of Allah in a Friday sermon. According to Al-Tartusi, Al-Qaradhawi praised elections in Israel as fair, in contrast with elections in some Arab countries, where the ruler receives "99.99" percent of the vote; Al-Qaradhawi then added "if Allah [Himself] were in the running he wouldn't receive such a share" of the vote. Al-Tartusi further claims that when this quote was presented to the late senior Saudi cleric Muhammad Ibn Salih Ibn 'Uthaymin, he said: "… He [Al-Qaradhawi] must repent, he must repent for this; if he doesn't, he is an apostate, because he has made the created greater than the Creator. He must repent to Allah, and Allah accepts the repentance of his servants. If he doesn't, the authorities need to behead him."(9)

He Supported Multiparty Democracy

Abu Basir Al-Tartusi next attacks Al-Qaradhawi's "support for democracy, in its permissive, infidel meaning," as Al-Tartusi puts it. He writes that Al-Qaradhawi supports freedom of belief and apostasy; freedom to form infidel and apostate political parties, including atheist Communist parties; and sanctification of majority rule, even if this majority were to choose unbelief and atheism.

Al-Tartusi provides a collection of statements from Al-Qaradhawi's writings to illustrate these points. (From here through the end of the essay, Al-Tartusi quotes extensively from Al-Qaradhawi without specifying the precise source.)

According to Al-Tartusi, Al-Qaradhawi wrote: "What matters to me regarding any political party in Islamic society or in the Islamic state is two things: … that it respect all religions, and that it not be an extension of a foreign power, like America or Russia; … To say that… when we [the Islamists] assume power, we won't allow Communists or secularists to form political parties – this is against the same Islamic jurisprudence that we call for and believe in. Some say that the Islamists are the only ones with the right [to rule], and that the others don't exist; but no, we will allow the others [to be politically active]…." The quote continues to say that if Islamists come into power and implement the shari'a, and then do a bad job governing and are voted out of office, they should hand over rule to those who won the elections. Other quotations express opinions that joining political parties in the West is permitted; that the penalty for apostasy is not for all those who leave Islam, but only for those apostates who stir up civil strife; that assuring [civil] liberties is more important than implementing the shari'a; that democracy is not unbelief; and that a secular regime is to be preferred in countries like India where there is no clear religious majority.

Relations with Non-Muslims

Abu Basir Al-Tartusi accuses Al-Qaradhawi of negating the principle of al-wala' w'al-bara' – exclusive allegiance to Allah and Islam, and repudiation of unbelief and unbelievers – by relating too positively to non-Muslims. Here too Al-Tartusi provides a sampling of quotations from Al-Qaradhawi, such as "all of the problems among us [Muslim and Christian Egyptians] are common to us all. We are members of the same homeland and the same nation. I call them 'our Christian brothers'; some people condemn me for this [and say]: how can I say 'my Christian brothers'? Koran 49:10 [says] 'The believers are but a single brotherhood.' Yes, we are believers, and they are believers, in a different way… The Copts are our brothers, and we have the same rights and duties." Regarding Jews, Al-Qaradhawi says: "The war between us and the Jews is not because of belief. Some might think that we are fighting the Jews because of their belief, but this is wrong… We are fighting the Jews because of the land they usurped and its people they made homeless." Al-Qaradhawi also says that there is no reason to use the term 'infidels' (kuffar), and that one should say 'non-Muslims' instead.(10)

Al-Tartusi considers statements of this kind apostasy, because of verses like Koran 5:51 and 3:28 which forbid befriending non-Muslims, and were already cited above in connection with Al-Qaradhawi's fatwa about serving in the U.S. military.

"Heretical" Jurisprudence
Al-Tartusi sees the root of the problem with Al-Qaradhawi as being in the latter's use of a "heretical" jurisprudence which substitutes whim for divine law. "Under the rubric of 'the jurisprudence of balances,' which he subjects to his own whim and nothing else, he permits and forbids of his own accord, without rule from Allah; he ratifies heresy and idolatry, and sacrifices the interest of Allah's unity for the least supposed material interest…" Such a jurisprudence led to rulings like the defense of the Buddha statues, allowing churches to be built in the Arabian Peninsula, and support for apostate rulers. In Al-Tartusi's view, one can weigh benefits versus drawbacks in jurisprudence, but first one must be able to assess them correctly, and the principle of Allah's unity must always be placed first and foremost. He also accuses Al-Qaradhawi of raising leniency to an independent principle, whereby he permits mixing of the sexes, women's singing, the sale of wine and pork in some circumstances, and some interest-bearing transactions, as well as allowing a Muslim wife to remain with her non-Muslim husband.

Al-Tartusi is particularly incensed by an explicit call by Al-Qaradhawi to review older religious texts in light of the modern age, expressed in his essay "Islam Considers Humanity One Single Family": "[We need] to cleanse our public culture, which we instill in students in the schools, and in the masses through the media, of some of the erroneous concepts found in old books, which carry the imprint of their age and the environment [in which they were written]. We cannot generalize these concepts to all generations, as they ended together with the conditions [that produced them]…[We need] to inaugurate a new moderate culture, based on mutual recognition, not mutual refusal of acknowledgement… based on love, not hatred; based on pluralism, not on isolation; and based on peace, and not on war."(11)

Al-Qaradhawi Is an Infidel, an Apostate, and a Heretic

Al-Tartusi concludes his essay: "Because of all of the above, and in order to discharge my duty, and in order to advise the Islamic nation [of this matter], I ruled – and I still hold to this ruling – that Yousef Al-Qaradhawi is an infidel, an apostate, and a heretic. All of the laws applying to infidels, apostates, and heretics apply to him, until he repents of the aforementioned beliefs.

"I did not issue this ruling on a whim or out of a desire for revenge, or in the manner of those who are rash and careless. [I did not issue it] before examining the conditions for takfir and the impediments to it. I went back and reexamined myself time and again before issuing this ruling, and I scrutinized these matters, and reexamined them from every side and angle. For a long time I refrained from broaching [the issue of] this man, until no escape route of [lenient] interpretation or [justified] excuse was left…

"I was worried about incurring the sin of suppressing what I have an obligation to make clear regarding this man… [This was necessary] especially since the corrupt media, for whatever ugly aim is in their souls, have created [an aura of] awe for this man among the people, and among some scholars and their students, and this led many of them to refrain from speaking the truth about him…

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McC Evidence of fraud and poor security conditions are raising concerns that Afghanistan's presidential elections next fall could be compromised.

With Afghans scheduled to go to the polls in less than a year, the country's Independent Elections Commission (IEC) is in the midst of a massive voter registration drive that will continue until early February. Election officials are watching registration numbers closely because low registration could delay or derail the presidential polls.

The IEC is reporting high turnout across the country since the drive began in October, despite insurgent threats to kill anyone who registers. Many parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan are under insurgent control.

However, evidence is emerging that the registration numbers are inflated by illegal practices, such as registering lists of "phantom" and underage voters. Lawmakers and an elections watchdog allege that such violations are widespread and could undermine the vote's fairness.

The allegations come at a time when the incoming Obama administration has pledged to increase America's focus on Afghanistan. In addition to sending in thousands of additional troops in 2009, officials cite strengthening the fledgling democracy and building strong governance as key policy goals.

A questionable or fraudulent election could weaken the Afghan government and its allies, as well as strengthen the Taliban's hand. "This would undermine the legitimacy of whoever is elected president next year," says Habibullah Rafeh, a policy analyst with the Afghan Academy of Sciences.

Allegations of fraud are backed by evidence of irregularities in various provinces. In northern Baghlan Province, for instance, some students below the legal voting age claim that election officials issued them registration cards.

"A lot of us took cards, even though we were underage," says area resident Habibullah Sherzai. Another resident, Kabiri, who like many Afghans use only one name, says, "I know many youths who got registration cards. Some of my friends even have two cards."

In southeastern Paktia Province, election officials claim that almost twice as many women have registered than men — despite extreme conservativism that largely prevents women from venturing outdoors. Some residents in the provincial capital, Gardez, claim that in certain cases, one person registered on behalf of others, a violation.

"In Naswan High School, some people took bribes from the provincial council to register lists of women voters," says Mahera Ahmadzai, who heads Paktia's Women's Shura, or council.

She alleges that some of the women on these lists do not exist. Other Gardez residents claim that men are registering on behalf of multiple women and that underage girls are registering. Such registrations could be used by one person to cast multiple votes.

IEC Deputy Chief Electoral Officer Zekra Barakzai says that his organization has received similar reports from Paktia and elsewhere. "We are taking these incidents very seriously, and we are sending people to investigate," he says.

According to the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, an Afghan-based non-governmental organization that observed the process, multiple registrations of a single person were seen in at least 40 percent of all centers during the most recently completed phase of the drive. In one case, investigators found that some 500 registration cards were issued to one person in Badghis Province.

Investigators also found men staffing female registration centers and election officials who were members of political parties.

Poor security also obstructs the process. According to interviews with local tribal elders and provincial officials, insurgents effectively control six of Wardak Province's eight districts.

"There are districts that I am 100 percent sure no government worker can go to," says Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament from Wardak. "But you are telling me that still so many people registered? I don't believe it."

The IEC claims that of the province's 90 registration centers, 82 remained open during registration. But residents say that in the Pashtun ethnic group's districts, many centers never opened.

"I went to staff the registration office just once," says one election worker from the Syed Abad district of Wardak, who declined to be named for security reasons. "The rest of the time I stayed in my village, which is controlled by the Taliban."

"The people . . . didn't even come out of their houses, let alone register," says Alam Gul, the chief of the Shura Council. Mr. Gul says the district of 100,000 people is largely under Taliban control.

Provincial officials say that election teams rarely, if ever, ventured outside district capitals. "Nobody came to our village. Almost no one has new registration cards," says a member of the Shura Council of Chakh district.

As a result, the two Hazara-dominated districts of Wardak comprise the bulk of new voters. (The Hazara, the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, are largely Shiite Muslims although the country is predominantly Sunni.)

The IEC does not release registration numbers on a district-by-district or ethnicity basis, but IEC spokesman Mr. Barakzai says, "the registration numbers in Pashtun districts are very low."

Although some people who didn't register this year may still hold valid registration cards from the previous presidential election, the factors that kept Pashtuns from registering could keep those who have cards from voting. If the results in Wardak and elsewhere are reproduced in Pashtun regions, there could be an ethnic imbalance, says Mr. Rafeh, the policy analyst.

Security concerns also threaten the elections. "If this (security) situation continues, elections will be postponed or canceled," Rafeh says. Insurgents have kidnapped or killed a number of election workers in recent months. In some areas, they have posted threats to anyone who registers to vote.

According to the constitution, elections must take place in the spring of 2009. But IEC officials have tentatively scheduled polls for the fall.

"If ... security . . . doesn't allow elections, a state of emergency can be declared, and the elections can be postponed even further," adds Mr. Barakzai.

"This is not the type of election we want," Roshanak Wardak, a member of parliament, says. "If you can't guarantee our security, don't expect us to come out and vote."

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NP Everyone had told me not to go west by road, not alone, not as a foreigner. Even my travelling through cities alone was regarded, by most of the expats I spoke to, as somewhat insane. To cross the mountains of central Afghanistan by van and truck was a voyage that not even my Afghan friends in Kabul would consider. Yet as scared as I was, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see the remote interior firsthand.

There were two main routes overland from Kabul to Herat, a major city near the Iranian border. The fast way was the long loop south over paved highway through Kandahar and Helmand. It was also extremely dangerous for foreigners, with Taliban checkpoints a regular occurrence. Even ordinary Afghans were at risk: while I was in Kabul, 23 civilians were pulled off a bus outside of Kandahar City and executed by the Taliban, on suspicion of working for the government.

The slow way was a straight shot west through the rugged mountain ranges of central Afghanistan, a four-to-six-day journey over serpentine, broken dirt roads. Gruelling as it was, it passed through what had until recently been safer, if desolate, territory. But with the security situation in the country deteriorating almost across the board, the route was now considered unsafe and exposed to bandits and militants, particularly in the territories between Ghor and Herat provinces where a renegade warlord named Mullah Mustafa was rumoured to be stopping traffic.

On the way was Bamiyan, site of the infamous destruction of the giant Buddha statues by the Taliban. To get there from Kabul I took a crowded public minivan -- one of the indomitable, four-wheel-drive Toyota Town Aces that ply the mountains here -- back north toward Mazar, and then east into the high mountains. I had to detour this way in order to avoid violent Wardak Province -- south and west of Kabul, the Taliban were operating nearly to the capital's doorstep.

The town of Bamiyan, nestled in a fertile valley at 2,800 metres, is the capital both of Bamiyan Province and the Hazarajat, a region in central Afghanistan inhabited by the Hazara people, Shia Muslims who are descendants of Genghis Khan's army ("Hazara" means "one of the thousands"). Long at the bottom of Afghanistan's socioeconomic hierarchy, the Hazara suffered terribly under the Taliban and have little sympathy for the current insurgency, making the area one of the safest in Afghanistan.

Even with the Buddhas gone, the area around Bamiyan contains a wealth of early Buddhist shrines and caves, and with its gorgeous mountain scenery would make, in some alternate universe, for a first-class touristic destination. There is in fact a small four-star hotel there, frequented mainly by NGO staff, that offers wireless Internet and Japanese cuisine, not far from where Bamiyan's poorest citizens were living in caves.
I met up with Yama Ferozi and Yaghya Ghaznawi, two Afghans working for a Japanese-funded literacy program, and drove down the valley with them to the little villages the program served, small clusters of mud and brick houses with piles of dry sheep dung stacked in front of them as fuel for the coming killer winter.

This is one of the poorest and least-developed places in the world. According to UN statistics, Afghanistan ranks at or near the bottom of every social indicator. With a life expectancy of 43 years, less than a third of the population is literate, and less than a quarter has access to safe drinking water --and the figures are lower in the rural areas.

We spent the day working the villages, speaking with teachers and restocking their supplies of books and pencils. We were a spectacle: the men watching us guardedly, the veiled women turning away from us, the children staring in unabashed fascination.

Programs like this provide a key first step in breaking the cycle of poverty, although its questionable what opportunities will exist for their students in the absence of further development. Yama spoke enthusiastically of what it could do for his country; still, the day came with disappointment, as he discovered that several of the teachers and their supervisors had not been showing up to class. "They don't even want to help themselves," he sighed.

From Bamiyan, my trip into the wilderness began in earnest. I was leaving the relative safety of the Hazarajat, and I now had to shed my identity as a Canadian, something associated both with extreme wealth and the troops fighting in Kandahar. Fortunately, my half-Japanese face resembled those of the Hazara, and with my beard, cheap shoulder bag and grubby Afghan outfit -- a knee length gown, turban, baggy trousers and a plaid waistcoat -- I looked like just another poor traveller. Still, my limited Dari meant that anyone who had a proper conversation with me would realize I was a foreigner -- to that end, I pretended to be Abdul Aziz,

The ravages of geopolitics have swept across this land, again and again a migrant labourer from Kazakhstan heading to Iran for work.

It was a three-day trip westward to Chagcharan, the capital of Ghor Province, the last two days in the cab of an ancient Sovietera cargo truck -- the south of the country had gotten so dangerous that even the truckers were taking the same route as me. During that time, I lived, ate and slept with Afghans, stopping by the rivers to wash before prayer, and bunking down at night in the one-room chaikhanas, where 30 rough-edged men laid out on the floor together.

The rutted, dirt road we travelled took us up over snowbound mountain ranges and down into narrow, jagged river gorges. Once we had to clear a small avalanche from the road by hand. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road, just laden donkeys and flocks of fat-tailed sheep and their shepherds. It seemed like a land lost to time -- until you remembered how the ravages of geopolitics had swept across it, again and again, and how some of those illiterate village elders had satellite phones.

My arrival in the little alpine town of Chagcharan brought new problems. As a young Kazakhstani travelling alone with a big blue shoulder bag, I fit the profile of a foreign jihadist, and I was arrested and questioned twice there, once by the local police anti-terrorism office, and once by the Directorate of National Security -- an "A" for vigilance, I suppose, but an "F" for inter-agency co-ordination.

A greater worry was the final two-day stretch from Chagcharan to Herat. The chaikhanas on the way over had been full of stories about how Mullah Mustafa, a former mujahadeen commander-cum-warlord ostensibly disarmed under a 2004 UN program, had recently turned against the central government and set his men loose -- an example of how complex the situation is, with far more actors than simply the government and the Taliban. Travellers from the west had seen gunmen on the roads, and two men from Kabul had been killed there a week before. With ransoms for foreigners reportedly in the millions, an Afghan could feed his family for a lifetime with a phone call tipping off militants or bandits to a kidnapping opportunity.

As I was pondering my next step in Chagcharan, I sneaked out to the base of the local Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), making my way through the maze of concrete walls and machine gun nests to the inner gate of the compound, where I was met by Lieutenant Ruta Gaizutyte, a young press officer from Vilnius.

The 200-strong, mainly Lithuanian PRT is responsible for assisting security and development in Ghor Province, and to that end they participate in medical programs and distribute aid through the local Afghan institutions.

"People back home ask what are we doing, why are we here, but when you go out to the villages and you are able to do something for these people who have nothing, well," Ruta gushed to me, her blue eyes shining with enthusiasm.

Ghor has traditionally been a safe province, but lately things have worsened. With bad neighbours -- there are full-scale insurgencies in nearby Helmand, Farah and Badghis Provinces -- attacks in the province have increased, including several rocket strikes on the base itself.

"This has been the most difficult rotation in the history of this PRT," Ruta said. They had their first fatality that summer: when reports that a U. S. sniper in Iraq had used a Koran for target practice surfaced, there was an angry demonstration here in front of the base. A hidden gunman opened fire during the riot, and two civilians and a Lithuanian soldier were killed. "Someone used the Koran incident for their own purpose here," she said.

The incident led to a change in rules as security around the base was tightened up. Indeed, as the situation in the province worsens, some of the PRT's aid work has been scaled back. "The NGOs are already leaving," she said. "If the situation gets worse we won't be able to do a lot of the work we are doing now."

The next morning, I left Chagcharan in a crowded Town Ace with 20 of us packed shoulder to shoulder. We followed the River Sargangal through its narrow gorges back down into the plains and stopped for the night in the village of Obe, near the border of Herat and Ghor provinces. I kept my mouth shut pretty much the whole way.

We didn't see any gunmen, though I hid in the van during two police checkpoints, in order to avoid comprising my identity. Two days later, we arrived in Herat, kilometres from the Iranian border. It was still Afghanistan, but after two weeks in the mountains, it felt like civilization again.

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BT By Army 1st Lt. Lory Stevens, Task Force Warrior public affairs office

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - A unit of the 10th Mountain Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team had a new mission in Afghanistan recently when it teamed up with Afghan and New Zealand forces to combat crimes in the eastern part of the country.

After an increase in robberies and other insurgent activities in parts of Bamyan province, a team from Task Force Warrior security force joined forces with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team and Afghan National Police to conduct combat patrols and searches in several areas of the province.

The security force normally provides transportation for key personnel throughout the area of operations. But for the last couple of weeks, they conducted offensive operations in conjunction with other elements of the brigade as well as the PRT and ANP, Army Lt. Col. Stephen Jeselink, the task force's deputy commander, said.

"There had been a couple recent robberies along the Shibar Pass, which runs along the boundary of Bamyan and Parwan provinces," said Army 1st Lt. Brian Capra, officer in charge of the force, who implemented vehicle checkpoints and static observation posts throughout Shibar Valley.

The force also conducted patrols along the Gandak Highway, which runs along the territory where Hungarians conduct operations in Baghlan province.

"The operation targeted insurgents known to traffic weapons and explosives used to conduct attacks," said Jeselink, who reported the operation as successful and without incident.

Coalition forces established more of a presence to dissuade criminal activity and deny the enemy freedom of movement, officials said. In addition, they established relationships with local villagers.

"Afghan people were very generous," Capra said, noting that village elders allowed troops to stay overnight in village schoolhouses as they traveled throughout the territory.

The force also distributed radios and handed out other humanitarian aid as they conducted patrols. Read the full story

ToL A new wave of boat people to Australia has forced the government to open a controversial detention centre on a tiny Indian Ocean island nearly 1000 miles off the coast.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government had been resisting pressure to open the detention centre on Christmas Island, criticised by its own MPs and refugee workers as harsh and 'prison like.'

Mr Rudd had inherited the Christmas Island facility from the previous government of John Howard, but had consistently argued that the $A400 million (£180m) centre, which was completed only a few months ago, would not be used as it was not family friendly.

Michael Danby MP, the head of a parliamentary delegation that visited the centre earlier this year described it as a "stalag" and a "grandiose waste of money".

Refugee advocates who toured the facilities in August criticised the high security facility as "prison like".

In a letter to Chris Evans, the Immigration minister, Amnesty International reminded him of "the damage done to people's mental and physical health by detaining them in remote, high security detention centres such as this."

But a spate of refugees arriving by boat has forced the government into an about turn. Australian authorities have intercepted seven boats trying to make it to Australia, with 164 suspected asylum seekers on board, in the past three months.

The most recent arrivals were intercepted on Tuesday, 100 miles north east of Darwin. The boatload of 37 suspected refugees will be the first asylum seekers to be housed at the detention centre.

The Rudd government has recently come under fire for relaxing its policies on asylum seekers which some have blamed for the recent spate of boat people.

Since coming to power a year ago, the government has instituted a number of changes to migration policy, which under John Howard had been notoriously hard-line.

One of its first acts was to end the so-called Pacific Solution - a policy of compulsory detention for asylum seekers, who were sent to offshore institutions on Papua New Guinea and Nauru to make it impossible for them to apply for refugee status in Australia.

It has also ended the system of temporary-protection visas for refugees, a move that has led to accusations from the Liberal opposition that it is turning Australia into a 'soft touch' for people smugglers.

Last month, Indonesian officials arrested an Iranian they described as the head of a people smuggling racket responsible for an influx of mainly Iraqi and Afghan refugees to the shores of Asutralia.

The Immigration Department said in a statement today: "The government's policy is to open the new facility when numbers and separation arrangements required it."

It said women,children and family groups would not be detained at the facility but would be housed in other accomodation on the island.

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AFP The crowd surges forward as two huge mastiffs launch themselves at each other in the ring, before one ends the bout by grabbing the other's throat, and is then paraded in triumph.

Every Friday morning between November and March, thousands of Afghans flock to a makeshift arena on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul to witness such scenes, with thousands of dollars riding on the outcome.

"That was a great fight," says Said Rahim, a 75-year-old dog fighting aficionado and one of 5,000 men and children who watched mastiff Falang win his bout.

"The dogs were very good and it was very special because there was a big bet -- 150,000 afghanis (3,000 dollars)."

The sport brings together Afghanistan's diverse tribes, from southern Pashtuns in turbans to oriental-looking Hazaras from the country's centre and Panjshir people in their traditional pakol wool hats.

But a fierce ethnic rivalry is in evidence.

"People standing on this side are from the north of Afghanistan. On the other side, they are from the south. It's a competition between them and their dogs," says Massud, a translator for the US special forces in Afghanistan.

At the centre of the ring stands the master of ceremonies who announces the upcoming bouts in a voice hoarse with shouting, and wields a large stick to keep the eager spectators from getting too close.

The Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan until it was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 banned dog fighting because gambling is forbidden under Islam.

The sport attracts large bets in one of the world's poorest countries.

The dogs' owners win between 1,000 and 3,000 dollars for each victory, and the large sums involved lead to some underhand tactics.

"Some people give opium to the dogs to numb the pain. In the south they sometimes give them whisky to make them more aggressive," says spectator Fatih Mohammad, 47.

Dog owner Barat describes the intensive -- and expensive -- preparation the animals undergo before a fight.

"We feed them with eggs, meat milk. It cost 400 afghanis a day. We walk them for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, sometimes in the hills, so that they get more powerful," he says.

In the ring, the dogs are unleashed by the owners and rise onto their hind legs, each trying to grab the other by the throat.

The owners stand over their animals, shouting encouragement, under the watchful eye of the master of ceremonies.

The most difficult part can be separating the dogs once defeat has been conceded, and the owners sometimes have to throw a bucket of cold water over the animals to get them to loosen their grip.

The battles are fierce, but the spectacle is more a ritual struggle for domination than a fight to the death.

"I have seen hundreds of fights and I have only seen one dog die," says owner Mohebullah.

"The fight stops before that -- usually when one dog tries to get away when he sees he's losing, and then the owners separate them."

A handful of police officers provide the only security at the arena, despite a suicide attack in February that killed 100 spectators at a dog fight in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

But terrorist attacks are not the only danger. Falang's owner Kefaiat suffered a heart attack after his dog's win and had to be taken to hospital -- though that did not dim his brother Khalil's enthusiasm.

"I received more than 500 phone calls from people congratulating me on the victory and asking about my brother's health," he said.

"This dog is the best ever, clever as well as strong. Many people have asked to buy him, but my brother would not so much as part with his leash, even if he was offered the whole of Kabul for it."

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By Patrick Cockburn (independent) Why are we asking this now?

There is no sign of the war ending. The Taliban is growing stronger and has a presence in more parts of the country, despite the presence of 70,000 non-Afghan troops. The government of Hamid Karzai is losing authority and credibility at home and abroad. There have been spectacular attacks on the capital, Kabul, this year – such as a devastating bomb at the Indian embassy and another at the luxury Serena Hotel. What happens in Afghanistan is also more relevant now because the US President-elect, Barack Obama, has said America will fight on, unlike in Iraq, where he is committed to withdrawing 150,000 US troops. Gordon Brown has promised to reinforce the 8,000-strong British contingent in Afghanistan. There are also menacing signs of the war spreading into Pakistan, because the US has begun to use unmanned drone aircraft to attack targets there.

How did the Taliban come back when it seemed completely defeated in 2001?

The White House believed the war to overthrow the Taliban after the 11 September attacks in 2001 had succeeded more swiftly and at less cost than anybody could have imagined. In the face of a US air campaign in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Kabul and other cities fell without a fight. This was all a little deceptive. The Taliban did not fight to a finish – its fighters went back to their villages or its leadership fled across the border into Pakistan. The fact that the Taliban had a safe refuge there after 2001 was key to its survival. It had, after all, always relied on Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for military support and operational guidance. The Pakistani military, fearing encirclement by hostile powers, still sees the Afghan Taliban as one of its few allies. At first, the Pakistani military was cowed by the US after 2001, but when President George Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, its leaders began to perceive that his "war on terror" was not entirely serious. They began to revive the Taliban as a serious force.

Why was the Afghan government unable to stabilise after the fall of the Taliban?

The central government of Hamid Karzai had little to build on in terms of trained, capable and honest personnel. The economic infrastructure was wrecked. Afghans saw little improvements in their lives. The US often looked to the warlords as local allies, though they were widely detested by ordinary Afghans. The Taliban's political appeal, aside from its religious bigotry and obscurantism, had always stemmed from its supposed opposition to warlordism. The insurgency could also be funded through the opium business. The UN now estimates that Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the opium which is converted into heroin. The product is sold for some $4bn a year. There is also some concern that although extra foreign troops may strengthen the government in some respects, they will also reinforce the belief among Afghans that their government is a foreign puppet.

Will foreign troop reinforcements ensure military victory overthe Taliban?

This is unlikely because the war is spreading into Pakistan. This is where the Taliban is able to train, recruit and re-supply its forces. So long as the insurgents have these redoubts, they will always recuperate from any military defeat. The US has long been trying to get the Pakistani army to close the border, but this is not politically or military possible. The Afghan government itself does not recognise the present frontier arbitrarily imposed by Britain in the 19th century. The Pakistani army also views the Afghan Taliban as a long term asset, unlike al-Qa'ida and the Pakistani Taliban, whom it sees as a threat. The ease with which militants armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade-launchers have been able to come close to closing the vital Nato and US supply line through the Khyber Pass in the past few weeks shows the danger to western forces in land-locked Afghanistan. Insurgents are able to move freely, not just among the mountains of the frontier but in Peshawar, the Pakistani city at the mouth of the Khyber.

Is the West being sucked into a confrontation between India and Pakistan?

This is a significant danger. Afghanistan is fast replacing Kashmir as the place where Pakistan and India confront each other. The Pakistani elite is highly sensitive to all signs of India increasing its influence in Afghanistan and possibly seeking to destabilise Pakistan by aiding insurgents in its Baluchistan region. This confrontation has intensified since the attack on Mumbai by 10 Lashkar-e-Toiba fighters who came from Pakistan in November. The Pakistani government may suppress these jihadi movements but it will not eliminate them because, as with the Afghan Taliban, it views them as long-term assets. It is also recalls with some bitterness that when it did reduce infiltration of insurgents into Kashmir by 85 per cent after 2004, it got very little in return from the Indian side. One of the most menacing aspects of the growing crisis in southern Asia is that conflicts involving Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are all beginning to merge.

Could the Taliban win in Afghanistan?

This is not really possible. The Taliban is hated by the Tajiks, Hazara, Uzbeks and other Afghan minorities to which most of the population belongs. It might be offered a share in power but, for ordinary Afghans, this may mean that they are sucked dry by the Taliban commanders as well as local government officials.

Should the Afghan government be left to sink or swim alone?

It should be supported but not turned into a colonial dependency. Reliance on a foreign power for military support and foreign aid carries with it disadvantages which Washington and London have never quite taken on board. It means there is no real incentive for citizens or officials to undertake reform because foreign powers will always bail out the government in Kabul.

Does the US intervention in Iraq have lessons for Afghanistan?

Yes, but not the lessons one might expect. The increased deployment of American troops in Iraq in 2007, and the much-publicised surge, achieved very little alone. The end of the Sunni Arab uprising against the US occupation and the Shia-Kurdish Iraqi government came because the Shia were winning on the ground. The situation in Afghanistan is very dissimilar. A more important lesson is that the violence in Iraq decreased when the neighbouring countries, notably Iran and Syria, no longer felt threatened. The same is true in Afghanistan. Above all, it needs to be recognised that Pakistan has real reasons to feel insecure and these insecurities must be addressed if the US wants to ensure there is a stable government in Kabul.

Should Nato countries be sending extra forces to fight the Taliban?

Yes...

* They will prevent the Taliban from expanding its authority over more of the country.

* They will allow more aid to be used to raise living standards and increase the popularity of the government.

* More troops will create islands of peace in which the Afghan government can begin to establish itself.

No...

* They will make the government in Kabul look like a foreign puppet.

* There are not enough troops and the Afghan government cannot fill the power vacuum left by the Taliban.

* Foreign aid cannot help because the Afghan administration is too dysfunctional and corrupt to administer the country honestly.

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SP December 15, 2008: The Taliban thought they had a decisive weapon when they adopted large scale use of roadside and suicide bombing three years ago. This effort was a bitter disappointment. Four years ago, there were only a few hundred roadside or suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan annually, and these had no major effect on the fighting. This year, there have been nearly 2,500 such attacks, over 80 percent of them roadside bombs. But about two-thirds of those roadside bombs were spotted and disabled before they could go off. The U.S. and British troops had transferred their Iraq counter-IED (Improvised Explosive Device, or roadside bomb) techniques and technology to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Taliban found that they were not as good at this IED stuff as the Sunni Arab terrorists in Iraq were. In 2005, when there were far fewer IED/suicide bomber attacks, 130 foreign troops were killed in Afghanistan. The foreign troops are the principal Taliban target, as it's a big deal for the Taliban to "cast out the infidels (non-Moslems)." Failure has been constant. Increasing the IED/suicide attacks this year by about eight times the 2005 level has yielded 277 dead foreign troops.

What is wrong here? Partly it's the foreign troops ability to deal with, and usually disable roadside bombs. Then there's the airpower. The foreign troops have more helicopters, and parachute drops of supplies (which have more than doubled compared to last year). So far this year, over 7,400 tons of supplies have been air dropped by U.S. Air Force C-130s and C-17s. That's more than was dropped in all of the last four years combined. In the last four years, over 10,000 tons have been dropped, with 98.5 percent of the drops being successful. Accuracy is important in Afghanistan, with all the hills, gullies and forests. Air dropped supplies have landed, on average, with 185 meters of the aim point. Where high accuracy is required, the air force has developed JPADS (Joint Precision Airdrop System) and ICDS (Improved Container Delivery System). Both of these are systems whereby pallets of supplies are equipped with GPS, and mechanical controls, to guide the direction of the descending parachute for pinpoint landings.

Before the development of GPS guided air drops, a large percentage of air dropped supplies were lost, either by falling into enemy hands, or into things that destroyed them (especially water). With the new delivery systems, it's possible to do night drops, which is preferred when you don't want to alert nearby enemy troops. Often, you can accurately drop pallets without the GPS systems, if you have a large flat drop zone, daylight, and calm winds. But if conditions are difficult, you now have GPS guided drops.

The Taliban are very frustrated with their inability to cut U.S./NATO supply lines, like they often did with the Russians in the 1980s. The Taliban are still at a big disadvantage when they try to fight it out with U.S. troops, and Taliban losses have gone up each year because of this. While the Taliban are making more attacks, mainly by planting lots of IEDs, they have less to show for it, except for increased casualties of their own. Worse, the Pakistani Army has been on the offensive against Taliban bases across the border, forcing Afghan Taliban to send gunmen into Pakistan to help out.

The Taliban are determined, but morale is suffering. Some tribesmen are muttering about the Americans being like the Mongols, unstoppable, and someone you must simply surrender to in order to survive. Afghans did that, and the Mongols eventually went away (leaving behind the hated Hazara tribes, who still resemble their Mongol ancestors.) But the Taliban are heartened by their success with manipulating foreign media, to at least make it look, from afar, like the Taliban are winning. That's something, isn't it?

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NZH Abdulrahman Ikhtiari beat almost insurmountable odds to bring his family to freedom. But their dreams turned to a nightmare.

Abdulrahman Ikhtiari clung to his family and prayed for their survival as the wooden boat taking them to their new life began sinking.

As the boat crammed with terrified refugees floated aimlessly on the Indian Ocean, he was hoping for another chance at life free from persecution at the hands of the Taleban in his homeland of Afghanistan.

Mr Ikhtiari would make it through this traumatic ordeal at sea, and find this prized new life for his family in Christchurch, only for it to be taken in a mindless act of violence a few years later. Two teenagers have been charged with Mr Ikhtiari's murder after he was stabbed in his taxi last weekend.

Old friends told his story at his funeral in his adopted home town yesterday. Seven years ago Mr Ikhtiari was facing death off the Australian coast on the dilapidated 20m fishing boat KM Palapa. Around him more than 400 other refugees, including pregnant women and toddlers, were crying and throwing up in the ocean swells.

They had paid thousands of American dollars for transport on the cramped fishing vessel from Indonesia to Australia, after travelling various routes from Afghanistan.

Mr Ikhtiari's cousin, Mohammad Ikhtiari, was on the boat with him. He remembers them praying together and the calmness his cousin displayed. But as the boat buckled and seawater poured in, they feared the worst.

"Maybe we die at any time. For three days we don't know. It was a very hard time," said Hamidullah Habibi, a friend of Mr Ikhtiari who was also on the boat.

Then, as the panic grew, some on board spotted a dark spot on the horizon and suddenly there was hope. The now famous Norwegian vessel Tampa came into view and the refugees cried with relief.

The refugees, short of food and water, slept in shipping containers or on the exposed deck of the Tampa as they awaited their fate.

Abdulrahman Ikhtiari had a better grasp of English than most, and was able to speak to the Tampa's captain as frantic negotiations were taking place over the radio. Eventually, they would travel to temporary detention on the Pacific island of Nauru under Australian military escort.

Mr Habibi remembers being shown a laptop computer by an Australian Army officer with the news to give them all hope. "It shows [then Prime Minister] Helen Clark wants to take 150 people who have families. We [were] very, very happy."

Abdulrahman's wife and five children were among those Tampa refugees accepted into New Zealand. They set up in Christchurch with others from the Hazara tribe who had been on board the Tampa.

Mr Ikhtiari had to spend a month in the Mangere Resettlement Centre before he could join them in May 2002.

Trying to adapt to the new culture and language was not easy, but his family at least had security.

Friend Baryalai Waziri said: "He was feeling very free, and feeling very safe in New Zealand. And he was very happy to get his children educated in New Zealand."

It was a tragedy that such a quiet family man who "never had a quarrel with people" should die like this.

Mr Waziri spoke to Mr Ikhtiari a week before he was killed and asked him how his taxi driving job was going.

"He said he was not happy with the business, but he had to do it because his wife is a student at the polytech studying language. He could not support the family with the benefit he was getting from the Work and Income."

"He said there was risk involved and there were lots of people who get very aggressive and they attack the driver."

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TheAUSEIGHT years after arriving in Australia as a stateless refugee on a leaky fishing boat, the man whose detention prompted a High Court judge to call for a bill of rights has urged the nation to back stronger human rights protection to prevent a repeat of his ordeal.

Ahmed Ali al-Kateb, who suffers persistent panic attacks and nightmares about life in Western Australia's Curtin and South Australia's Baxter detention centres, was pleased his case had helped to trigger discussion about a bill of rights.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland this week announced a national consultation headed by Jesuit priest Frank Brennan to canvass community attitudes to human rights protections.

Former SBS newsreader Mary Kostakidis, former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer and Aboriginal barrister Tammy Williams will help Father Brennan with the consultations next year.

Mr al-Kateb, 32, said he hoped basic rights would be enshrined in legislation to prevent the possibility of refugees being locked up indefinitely.

Recalling his time in detention, the still-shattered civil engineering student said: "They said we will not let you out.

"That goes on and on. I just believe that I'm waiting for my death. With the days, months and years, it really killed most things inside, it killed the hopes, the dreams, the innocent child inside me. My hope is that a bill of rights would stop that happening to anyone else."

A boat carrying Mr al-Kateb was intercepted by the navy on Ashmore Reef after leaving Indonesia in December 2000.

The son of Palestinian refugees, his journey began 10 years ago, when he left his birth country of Kuwait for Jordan after violence escalated against Palestinians.

After being denied an Australian protection visa, he asked to be sent back to Kuwait or to Gaza, where his family now lives. When no country wanted him, he asked to be released from detention.

But the High Court ruled the Government could detain him indefinitely.

In the lead-up to last year's election, then immigration minister Kevin Andrews finally granted him a permanent visa.

Mr al-Kateb's case is seen as a watershed, leading to agitation for greater human rights protections, although there are many leaders from both sides of politics who have argued just as passionately against a rights charter.

One of the majority High Court judges in the case, Michael McHugh, argued for a bill of rights to prevent legal rulings with "tragic" consequences.

For Mr al-Kateb, the High Court decision was the lowest point in his life.

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RH The United States has mired itself in the Great Game of Central Asia in a way that promises no easy escape.

There was a reason we did so, going all the way back to 1979. That is when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and the United States decided to help the Afghan people resist Soviet occupation. We spent billions of dollars, in league with the security forces of Pakistan, building up fundamentalist Islamic groups to fight the Soviets.

Fast forward to 2001. The fundamentalist group that took control of Afghanistan in the mid-'90s, the Taliban, had provided safe haven for a radical, largely Arab group, al-Qaida, which attacked the United States on Sept. 11. It was clear the Taliban had to go, a goal that U.S. military forces swiftly accomplished, though al-Qaida escaped to rebuild itself in the mountains of Pakistan.

The hostility of fundamentalist Afghans and Pakistanis toward the United States is an example of what is called blowback. Forces we helped unleash have turned against us, and now they are turning against the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis have used radical groups to harass their archenemy, India, by fomenting violence in the disputed region of Kashmir. But radical groups are now targeting Pakistan itself, forcing Pakistan to increase military pressure on al-Qaida, the Taliban and others in the mountainous border region near Afghanistan.

This is the mess where we find ourselves. The attack by Islamic radicals on sites in Mumbai last month is now being seen as an effort to enflame tensions between India and Pakistan in order to shift Pakistan's military attention away from the fight on the Afghan border and toward India. Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, is said to be seeking peace with India, and the unanswered question is whether Pakistan's military or security forces helped terrorists attack Mumbai as a way of curbing Zardari's peace efforts. For decades conflict with India has been the raison d'etre for the Pakistani military.

President-elect Barack Obama has promised to increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by about 30,000 in order to quell violence by the Taliban. Our main interest is in preventing Afghanistan from becoming a staging area for terrorism once again. But the violence in Afghanistan, as in Pakistan, will be hard to stop because it is rooted in a complex web of ethnic and religious conflicts. A recent article in The New Yorker magazine described how Hazara police officers are trying to fight the Taliban insurgency in the south. The Taliban is made up mainly of ethnic Pashtuns, and it is questionable whether use of Hazaras to fight Pashtuns is likely to result in a peaceful outcome, ever.

Afghanistan has never been a coherent nation. Even in the peaceful days under the former king, regional leaders had great power, and the Pashtuns exerted harsh control over Hazaras and others. The Pashtuns in both Afghanistan and Pakistan remain essentially uncontrollable, though in the days of Gandhi a great Pashtun leader, Khan Abdul Ghaffur Khan, was an ally of Gandhi's in nonviolence.

It is not clear whether Zardari's crackdown on terrorists in Pakistan can make rapprochement with India a reality or whether terrorism rooted in the Pashtun homeland will continue to entangle everyone. It is clear there is no easy way out of the Great Game.

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INTERVIEW:By Shih Hsiu-chuan (TT)

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) will today honor Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, with its 2008 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award for her dedication to improving the status of women in Afghanistan. As well as the award, Samar will receive a US$100,000 grant. Living in countries where women have long been denied education and health care, it is through perseverance that Sima Samar stays the course to assist people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now in war-torn Sudan.

“It’s really difficult, but I didn’t give up. I stand by my principles and beliefs because I think that nobody would give you rights as a gift, you have to earn it,” said Samar, internationally recognized for her devotion to human rights, especially on behalf of Afghan women.

Born in 1957, Samar is the first woman from the Hazara minority — a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan — to obtain a medical degree. She graduated from Kabul University in 1982, when the country was under Russian control following the 1979 invasion.

After graduation, she practiced medicine at a government hospital in Kabul and provided treatment to patients in remote areas of central Afghanistan.

She defied her father’s demand that she return home and accept another arranged marriage after her first husband disappeared in 1984 following his arrest by the communist regime. She instead fled to Pakistan to work with Afghan refugees facing a dire lack of medical and education resources, particularly women forbidden to see male doctors or attend school.

The Afghan physician said she decided early on to fight for women’s rights and equality as she experienced discrimination as a woman in her family and also in school when she was young, prompting her to “study hard to go to college” and become “more or less tough on my work.”

“And honestly, the pressure on me, it is hard to resist. At one time it was really hard. They really wanted to kill … and it was very difficult time, but I did resist. Because I thought, if I give up, then they will repress others very soon, quickly,” she said.

She returned to Afghanistan in December 2001 to become the deputy prime minister and minister of women’s affairs for the interim administration after the removal of the Taliban regime, being one of only two women Cabinet ministers in the transition government.

Samar was appointed to the most senior position ever held by a woman in Afghanistan, but her political career was cut short in June 2002 when she was accused of questioning Islam, especially Shariah Law, following an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. Samar said she was misquoted.

“What I said was I don’t believe in the Taliban style of Shariah, which is the misinterpretation of free Islam. [The newspaper] misquoted me that I don’t believe in Shariah Law … But, that [the interview] was just a reason. It was all because that I kept calling for justice and they didn’t like it,” she said.



Then-interim leader Hamid Karzai, who was elected president in 2004, told Samar she must move to either lead the foreign affairs ministry or the human rights commission after a group of people at an assembly, or Loya Jirga, shouted “we don’t want her. She is not Muslim.”

As she pursued human rights for all, Samar put her and her family members’ lives at immense risk, facing continuous death threats until now, but she remains undeterred.

“It’s not an easy life. But as I said, that as a human being, you would die one day anyway. So if you die for something positive, it’s much better,” Samar said.

Samar said that she just “ignored” the threats from different groups of fundamentalists most of the time but she did try to be more cautious about her safety “because I really want to continue my work on educating people, and especially the girls.”

“If girls are educated, they will understand what’s their rights, and they will fight for their rights. Without half of the population not being educated, we can not move the society forward,” she said.

Under Samar’s leadership, the Shuhada Organization, founded in 1989, now operates twelve clinics and four hospitals in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as 71 schools in Afghanistan and three schools for Afghan refugees in Quetta, Pakistan, educating over 48,000 girls and boys.

Believing that education is “the main tool to change the mentalities and the whole behaviors within the society,” Samar said that if people were educated, the war in Afghanistan would not have lasted so long, Islam would not have been misused and there wouldn’t be suicide attacks.

“Educated people will not accept what the political leaders preach and used by them under the name of Islam and jihad,” she said. “The problem in Afghanistan is lack of education.”

Samar said the situation in Afghanistan has improved since 2001 as the new Constitution includes an equal-rights provision for women and girls now comprise 30 percent to 35 percent of the total number of students enrolled in school, which was not the case during the Taliban.

However, there is still a long road ahead, she said.

“For the women to be able to exert their rights, the Constitution should become reality, not in the paper. There aren’t enough school facilities, books and trained teachers. A lot of women still do not have access to health care. And the security situation is getting worse,” Samar said.

“Some of the districts are still under the control of Taliban where children, especially girls, can not go to school, health service is not in very good shape, and most of the non-governmental organizations [NGOs] can not go to the areas because of the kidnapping problem. There is lack of law enforcement. On top of these, suicide attacks stop people on the roads and intimidate the people,” she said.

In 2005, Samar was appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights for Sudan, extending her efforts for human rights to another country facing a difficult situation.

Citing what happened in Afghanistan when the Russians left in 1992 as an example, Samar said that neither isolation nor sanction could help a country.

“At that time when the pro-Russian government continued to be in power until 1992 and when the mujahedeen government was formed in Pakistan and Central Afghanistan, the whole international community left Afghanistan, including the NGOs. Afghanistan became isolated, a training ground for terrorists and a place of opium production,” she said.

“Supporting human rights is the responsibility of every person,” Samar said.

Asked about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent remarks that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is not welcome to visit Taiwan at this time, Samar said she was not able to comment on that because she was traveling and didn’t know the details.

“I would have commented on that if I knew the whole background of the story,” she said, but she restated her belief that it’s everybody’s responsibility to promote human rights.

Samar, who has received numerous awards for advocating human rights, suggested that young people not familiar with countries like Afghanistan and Sudan get to know them through reading, traveling or volunteering for NGOs in the countries.

“Young people in Taiwan or in Afghanistan or in any other parts of the world are the owners of this world, the futures of this world. They have to be more respect for human rights and human dignity so they will be more responsible for a peaceful future for this planet,” she said. Read the full story

Theage

A refugee who was refused entry to Australia amid the Tampa scandal in 2001 has been killed working as a taxi driver in New Zealand.

Abdulrahman Ikhtiari fled persecution in his native Afghanistan seven years ago.

One of 438 asylum-seekers rescued by the MV Tampa from a sinking fishing boat off WA in August 2001, he was refused entry to Australia and subsequently taken to New Zealand.

The 39-year-old father-of-five was killed during a night shift in Christchurch on Saturday night. He was found in his taxi with a single stab wound to the chest.

Police had yet to find two men believed to have been the United Taxi driver's last fare, press.co.nz said.

The United Taxis fleet does not have alarm systems or cameras.

Ikhtiari's home in Bryndwr was a sombre scene yesterday, press.co.nz said.

More than 30 taxi drivers and members of the Afghan community were at the home to lend support to the family.

Ikhtiari's wife, Ziagul, and his children aged six to 14, had been moved to a different address and were suffering extreme distress.

A family spokesman, who declined to be named, expressed concern for Ikhtiari's widow, who was "very frail".

"She can't cope," he said.

Christchurch man Ali Tausif said Ikhtiari was known in the Christchurch Muslim community as a "very quiet, polite person".

Hagley Community College associate principal Rex Gibson said members of Ikhtiari's extended family worked at the college and Ikhtiari volunteered at the school's refugee homework program.

Ikhtiari came to New Zealand after persecution of his Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan by the ruling Taliban.

He was aboard the container ship the MV Tampa which created international headlines when it rescued him and more than 400 other Afghan refugees from a distressed fishing vessel but then was refused access to Australian ports.

New Zealand took 131 of the 438 asylum-seekers (including about 40 unaccompanied boys) rescued by the Tampa.

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WHEN Maryam Hossein releases the handbrake and pulls away from the kerb for her first driving lesson, it will be more than just her maiden journey behind the wheel.

For the 23-year-old refugee it will be the latest step in a journey that began when her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan for Iran during the Russian occupation in the early 1980s.

By learning to drive, she is doing something once virtually impossible for women in her home country — and fast-tracking her integration into Australian society.

She is not alone; Ms Hossein is one of 28 Afghan women, including her 41-year-old mother and 19-year-old sister, attending a driving school in Dandenong designed to help recent refugee arrivals gain their licences.

"This is a very good opportunity for Afghani women," she said. "All of the things we need in life, like going to the doctors or school, mean that we have to drive."

Traditionally, very few women drove in Afghanistan's male-dominated society, a situation that worsened under Taliban rule when they were denied the right to drive and forced to remain at home.

This has caused problems for the Afghan community in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, which comprises around 3000 families.

Female-only families such as the Hosseins have been practically immobile and unable to get access to the services needed to integrate into society.

"It was causing a lot of stress as men were under pressure to handle the settlement process for their families and provide for them financially with houses and cars while the women were totally dependent," said Abbas Amiry, co-ordinator of the driving school.

"By running this course we want to give women the opportunity to drive and at the same time increase their self-confidence and self-worth so that they really feel part of the community here in Australia."

The driving school is run by the Association of Hazaras in Victoria, assisted by $19,700 in funding from the Transport Accident Commission and a car provided by Adult Multicultural Education Services.

It is already oversubscribed. The women, who range from 18-year-olds to mothers with five or more children, is halfway through a series of sessions run by senior community members, alongside Vic Roads, Victoria Police and Ambulance Victoria, in which they are taught road rules and driving theory. It is an essential precursor to taking control of a vehicle as not only do they come from a country without road rules but, according to Aisha Mahboob, a female Afghan driving instructor from Hampton Park, some women she has taught had never sat in a car before moving to Australia.

Ms Mahboob, who moved to Australia 11 years ago, has helped about 50 Afghan women learn to drive since becoming an instructor in 2006, often giving lessons for free.

She said: "The women can handle the car very well after just five lessons, but they don't know the rules of the road so this course is very important.

"Most have realised they need to drive to get their kids to school or to get to work and now they have the chance to get up and do it."

Once the women have finished learning the theory, the driving school will fund their first five lessons with Ms Mahboob. After that, they hope members of the local community will come forward to act as volunteer trainers.

Mr Amiry says plans are in place to bring in professional instructors who will train people to act as mentors who can guide the women through extra hours of driving practice as they work towards qualification.

"We need the support of the mainstream community," he said. "I came to Australia on a boat and entered society as a TPV holder, which meant I couldn't go to school without paying, but I received amazing support from volunteers.

"They made a huge difference to my life and I hope people will be willing to help us again."

Ms Hossein, from Dandenong, who supports her mother and younger sister, said: "I'm very happy to have this chance.

"It would have been very expensive for us to learn to drive with another company, but now we are able to learn a lot."

The age

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GHOLAM Ali spent 18 months in detention on Nauru after being rescued by the Tampa in August 2001, but is so determined to reach Australia he paid people-smugglers thousands of dollars to try again

Mr Ali, 45, was deported to Afghanistan after his time on Nauru as part of the Howard government's Pacific solution for asylum-seekers.

He says he was among the 433 people rescued by the Norwegian freighter from a sinking 20m fishing boat north of Christmas Island.

After the rescue, the Tampa's captain, Arne Rinnan, was refused permission by Australia to offload the boatpeople, most of them ethnic Hazaras from Afghanistan.

The incident led to international condemnation but scored domestic political points for John Howard ahead of that year's election.

But the father of four now pins his hopes on Nauru's abandonment as a refugee processing centre and the Rudd Government's abolition of mandatory detention. Little matter that his second attempt has so far also ended in failure.

"If people in Australia know I was on the Tampa, I hope they will know I am a good person and accept me now," Mr Ali says at an immigration detention centre at Dowa on the Indonesia island of Sulawesi, where he was arrested eight months ago.

"If I wasn't really in danger in Afghanistan, why would I try again after I saw death in the face on the Tampa.

"If the government has changed, I'm very happy; I find some hope now, that maybe this Government will pay some attention to me, it might help me."

Mr Ali is part of a new wave of asylum-seekers that has seen five boats intercepted in Australian waters in the past two months, but despite his optimism the Rudd Government was yesterday maintaining its tough rhetoric.

Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus pledged that Canberra's policy would stay as tough as the Howard government's. "There will be no diminution in the border patrol effort over the Christmas period," he said.

Of the five asylum-seeker boats intercepted in the past two months, four were from Indonesia and one probably arrived directly from Sri Lanka, he said.

In the latest interception, on Tuesday, a vessel believed to be operated by Indonesian-based people-smugglers was intercepted carrying 35 passengers and five crew near Ashmore Reef, off northwest Western Australia. They are being taken to Christmas Island for processing.

The five boats intercepted this year compare with five last year and six in 2006.

Efforts to crack down on people-smuggling had not been aided by corrupt officials at the Indonesian embassy in Kabul processing visas for Afghans, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said.

As revealed in The Australian yesterday, embassy officials in Kabul have been demanding up to $US1500 in cash for Indonesian visas, marking the first leg of a journey asylum-seekers hope will end in Australia.

Senator Evans was unable to confirm whether any action had been taken to stamp out the racket. "I'm aware there's been a visa scam in Kabul," he said

"We remain aware and the Indonesian Government remains aware of it. But it's a matter for them to resolve."

Senator Evans said the Government had "reinvigorated" efforts with Indonesia to eradicate people-smuggling. "It has remained a major threat to us throughout the year. Numbers of arrivals have gone up and down but activities have been maintained, our efforts at interdiction have been maintained," he said.

Mr Ali carries with him a photograph of a friend, Mosa Nazari, who he says was killed by ethnic Pashtun fighters after they were sent home from Nauru to Afghanistan's troubled eastern province of Ghazni. After 18 months in Ghazni, Mr Ali said, he paid a people smuggler $US6000 to get him to Indonesia via Malaysia for the second attempt. All went well, including a boat trip from Kuala Lumpur to Medan, the capital of North Sumatra, but arriving in Indonesia without a visa - or even a passport - was a mistake.

"The smuggler took my passport in Malaysia and said he would organise the visa. He cheated me," he said. He has since been telling his wife, still in Afghanistan with their children, to wait, even though she is nervous. After a month in Jakarta, Mr Ali flew to Kupang in West Timor, where he was arrested and eventually taken to the refugee processing centre in Gowa, outside the South Sulawesi capital of Makassar.

He shares the facility with 68 others - a handful of Afghans, who are all ethnic Hazaras like Mr Ali, as well as stateless Kurds, Iraqis, Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Vietnamese.

Another Afghan at the centre, Mohammad Taleb, said the Rudd Government's immigration policy changes were welcome news. "We already made the decision to go to Australia," he said. "We know it's dangerous but a whole part of my village was killed. What else can we do?"

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The AUS
CORRUPT staff at the Indonesian embassy in Kabul are selling visas for $US1500 ($2350), the starting point in an organised people-smuggling racket, according to members of the Afghan community in Australia.

The Immigration Department has been advised of the allegations and has notified Indonesian authorities.

On Monday, The Australian reported that the International Organisation for Migration chief-of-mission in Indonesia Steve Cook had identified a "considerable" increase in people-smuggling activity - a trend he in part attributed to changes to Australia's refugee policy.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said that while there had been an increase in people-smuggling, it was not due to the policy change.

Hassan Ghulam, an ethnic Hazara community leader living in Brisbane, said worsening security in Kabul had forced the price of the Indonesian visas up from $US1200 four months ago to the current price of $US1500.



"This is because the people are very eager to leave to Indonesia and then try their luck with a smuggler and get on a boat to come to Australia," Mr Ghulam told The Australian.

More than 100 visas had been issued so far, he said, basing his estimate on information provided by members of the Afghan community in Australia and those still in Afghanistan.

Impoverished Afghans wanting a better life in Australia were selling their worldly possessions to buy a visa, he said.

The process involved paying a middleman with contacts inside the Indonesian embassy, Mr Ghulam said.

After the cash was handed over it normally took between 24 and 48 hours for the visa to be issued.

Mr Ghulam said Australian officials had known about the visa racket for months. A spokesman for the Immigration Department yesterday confirmed it was aware of the reports.

A senior Indonesian Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be named, did not deny the claims.

"Whatever is the case, these are forged or illegal visas because we have a strict code of issuing visas from conflict areas," the official said.

"If this is the case, we will conduct our own investigation. This will be a good opportunity to clean out our house from our side."

The official said Jakarta was committed to co-operating with the Rudd Government in tackling the problem of people-smuggling. In Indonesia, an official from the sub-directorate for immigration and detention, Ahmad Khumaidi, confirmed there had been a slight rise in the number of Afghan irregular migrants arriving in Indonesia.

An irregular migrant either lacked immigration permits or was in the country on a lapsed one, he said.

Mr Khumaidi, who was unaware of the reports that visas were being sold illegally from Kabul, said 15 Afghan would-be asylum-seekers had been detained by police on November 3 in Serang, West Java, as they were preparing to leave for Australia.

The revelations come at a sensitive time for the Rudd Government. The Opposition charges that there has been a recent surge in boatpeople arriving from Indonesia.

In question time on Monday, Kevin Rudd said there had been only four boat arrivals this year carrying a total of 48 passengers.

"The critical question is how we co-operate with our friends in the international community, most particularly in the Republic of Indonesia, in dealing with this challenge," the Prime Minister said.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said people smugglers were moving "up the supply chain" and recruiting customers directly from source countries, making it harder for authorities to track their movements.

Yesterday, the Liberal Party moved to shore up its tough reputation on border security following the release of a dissenting report by two backbenchers calling for a radical overhaul of mandatory detention.

Malcolm Turnbull addressed a session of the joint partyroom in Canberra yesterday, telling his colleagues there had been no change in the Coalition's position on the subject.

"We are the party of secure borders," the Opposition leader said.

"We must not encourage people smugglers."
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KT
After three decades of conflict and persecution capped by one of history’s most heinous acts of vandalism, Bamyan in central Afghanistan, is sprucing itself up for the more adventurous tourist.

Becoming the country’s first declared mine-free province as hoped in 2009 will hardly attract sightseers in itself. But improved accommodation and transport from Kabul, renewal of the alcoves of the giant sixth century Buddha statues that the Taliban dynamited in 2001, and development of more sites can boost its pulling power.

‘There is good potential, Bamyan already has lots of attraction, even without marketing,’ said Amir Foladi, head of the Bamyan Ecotourism Programme being implemented by the Kabul-based Aga Khan Development Network and the provincial administration.

Building on the good security Bamyan offers compared with the rest of the country, the drive aims to draw visitors beyond the vacant yet impressive sandstone alcoves and the famous Bande Amir lakes, which form the country’s first national park.

‘They come to Bamyan to see the (former site of the) Buddhas and visit Bande Amir and then they go - they don’t realize there are other sites that are just as important,’ the official said, standing at the mysterious hilltop ruins of the Forty Towers Fort in Kiligan in western Bamyan.

As with many relics in this isolated part of the country, little is known about the crumbling mud and stone edifices. Experts can say only that they were built by the Kushan civilization at least 900 years ago, when Bamyan lay on the Silk Road trade route to the West.

Also ripe for promotion is the scenic Aajar Valley, the now protected hunting domain of the late Afghan King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Visiting also involves a long road trip, so there are plans to create a network of family-run guesthouses to reduce the travel burden.

Roads are under construction with international assistance. But for now travellers bounce by in SUVs past timeless scenes of turbaned Hazara men driving loaded donkeys, and the occasional tank wrecks left from the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Any discomfort is offset by the stunningly gaunt beauty of Bamyan’s red-tinted mountains, gorges, plains and villages, all presented for enjoyment within a unique pocket of security.

Physically distinctive from the ethnic Pashtuns who form the core of the Taliban, the Hazaras - descendants of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan - are Shiite rather than Sunni Moslem.

Their brutal persecution by the Taliban during the radical militia’s rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 means that today they guard their territory with great efficiency, aided by Bamyan’s small contingent of troops from New Zealand.

To help open the door to the outside world, a major asphalt road, running here 240 kilometres north-west from Kabul, is expected to be built in the next three years. And a small international airport will eventually replace the landing strip that now serves the province.

Bamyan received more than 3,000 foreign visitors and 30,000 Afghan visitors in 2005 before the security situation took a turn for the worse in Afghanistan overall, Foladi said.

But the provincial government seeks to exceed that number next year, accommodating guests in Bamyan town’s five modest hotels, including one Japanese-run three-star hotel.

Independent tour operators say there is a steady demand to come here.

‘Bamyan is one of the most unique and famous tourist destinations in Afghanistan, everyone who booked a tour with us wanted it to be included,’ said Muqim Jamshady, director of Afghan Logistics, the country’s first commercial tourism company.

‘We had a lot of clients and we didn’t have any security problems in Bamyan,’ he added, while advising strongly against any backpacking ventures in the current climate.

Interest will likely grow in 2009 with the planned restoration and display of a 19-metre Sleeping Buddha that lies near the main alcoves cut into the cliff face above the town.

Unearthed this year by French and Afghan archeologists, the find reinforces hopes of locating a horizontal effigy measure more than 300 metres that was documented by Chinese monks in the eight century.

Meanwhile, there have been proposals to use some of the dynamited rubble remains to recreate the two large Buddhas that were modelled in mud mixed with straw and coated with stucco and stood 53 and 38 metres tall.

Alternatively, Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata is negotiating with the Afghan government to project a series of giant Buddha images on the cliff with multicoloured, solar and wind-powered lasers in a weekly show.

‘We will be able to revive the great creative spirit of mankind which produced the Great Buddha of Bamyan centuries ago,’ says the artist of his project, which if finalised could be launched in 2012.

For now, the alcoves are still sadly bare but their lure is strong.

The New Zealand troops are also used to hosting a steady procession of curious visitors to the site, from NATO top brass to US First Lady Laura Bush in June.

Bamyan is ‘one of those parts of Afghanistan that I think everyone has watched and looked at over the years since we first heard about the Buddhas,’ Bush said.
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NY
An ethnic-minority force enters a Taliban stronghold
In late 2007, in Pashmul, a tiny cluster of villages in southern Afghanistan, Muhammad Khan began his tenure as the police commander by torching all the hemp in a farmer’s field. Farmers in the area had grown plants up to seven feet tall, and, being teetotallers, like many Afghans, they smoked hashish constantly. Afghan soldiers and policemen in the area also smoked, to the exasperation of the NATO troops who were training them. But Khan wasn’t from Pashmul and he didn’t smoke. He ordered his men to set the harvest ablaze, moved upwind, then turned his back and left, with an expression of indifference.


Khan and his police officers are members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority, identifiable among Afghans because of their Asiatic features; the population they patrol is Pashtun. Hazaras are mostly Shia, with a history of ties to Iran, whereas most Pashtuns are Sunni and have turned to Pakistan for support. Over the past century, the two peoples have fought periodically, and the Hazaras, who are thought to make up between nine and nineteen per cent of Afghanistan’s population—the Pashtuns make up nearly half—have usually lost. On the border between the Hazara heartland, in the country’s mountainous and impoverished center, and the Pashtun plains in the south and east, conflicts over grazing land are common. But, working alongside NATO soldiers, Hazara police units are now operating far to the south of these traditional battlegrounds and deep into Pashtun territory.

The Pashmul base is just outside the city of Kandahar, in one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous regions. Last year, the Taliban all but wiped out the Afghan National Police, or A.N.P., squads there. Deploying Hazaras in this region is a risky move, and comes at a time when Taliban bombings and assassinations are making clear the failure of the U.S.-led NATO coalition and the Afghan government to secure the country. Recently, a draft of a National Intelligence Estimate said that increasingly effective insurgent attacks and widespread corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government have eroded the government’s authority, and concluded that the country is in a “downward spiral.” And a leaked diplomatic cable quoted the British Ambassador as saying that “the presence of the coalition, in particular its military presence, is part of the problem, not part of its solution.” If the coalition were to leave, the country would be left with the ragtag Afghan National Army, or A.N.A., which deploys wherever it is needed to fight the Taliban in counter-insurgency battles, and the A.N.P., which is responsible for street-level law enforcement and now bears the brunt of the Taliban insurgency. (Last year, nearly four times as many Afghan police were killed as soldiers.) Among Afghans, the A.N.P. has become known for incompetence and corruption. Units like Khan’s, made up of a despised minority with an unsparing attitude toward those they police, embody many of the paradoxes involved in trying to bring order to Afghanistan’s ethnically fissured society.

In July, I visited Pashmul’s police base, a small installation about twice as large as a tennis court and surrounded by ditches and razor wire. Nearby are crumbling Pashtun villages of mud-brick homes, sprinkled with trash and unexploded ordnance. Pashmul is ideal terrain for an insurgency. The main sources of livelihood, other than hemp and poppies, are grapes and pomegranates, and, during the summer fighting season, foliage in fields and orchards provides cover for insurgents. Because farmers are too poor to use wooden frames in their vineyards, their grapevines are supported by deep furrows cut in the earth; thus in an apparently empty field hundreds of Taliban may be hidden. Grape huts, scattered around the fields, have mud walls thick enough to stop bullets, and narrow ventilation slits that can accommodate rifle barrels. Fighting has caused many Pashmul residents to flee to a temporary camp in the desert, from which they trek several miles each morning to cultivate the fields.

Khan’s police unit patrols a war zone, and the men often do the work of soldiers rather than of normal beat police officers. Although the Army lends support when the police encounter armed resistance, the soldiers then retreat to a base outside Pashmul. On most days, the police patrol the alleys alone, except for a few Canadian soldiers whom NATO has assigned to train and mentor them. Taliban snipers routinely fire at the base’s wooden guard towers, and the Hazara policemen fire back. They watch the rickety pickups that pass on a paved road along the base’s eastern edge, on the lookout for suicide bombers. Khan’s men know the faces in each village, but they remain an alien presence. One man, who sold goats to the Hazara policemen, would say hello to the patrol when it walked past his home; his corpse later turned up in the next village.

Now in his late twenties, Muhammad Khan has an intense manner and an unsettling stare. When I met him, he gave me an appraising look, his glare landing on the book in my hand, Paul Theroux’s “My Secret History.” Khan asked me, in Persian, what I was reading, and, struggling to recall the word for “novel,” I said it was “a book.” He gave me the same suspicious look I later saw when he confronted frightened farmers about insurgents in their fields. “That much I can see,” he said. “Is it a novel?”

Khan’s directness enables him to work efficiently with his Canadian supervisors—particularly Mike Vollick, a warrant officer stationed at Khan’s police base. An infantryman, Vollick is thirty-seven and of medium height, with sturdy arms that, when I met him, five months after his arrival in Pashmul, were scabby from dozens of sand-fly bites. The Canadians and the Hazaras communicate reasonably well, although they mostly use a translator and don’t have more than a few dozen words in common, most of which describe military equipment. Vollick considers Khan the most effective Afghan police commander he has seen, and an ideal candidate for district police chief, although, given Khan’s inability to speak Pashto, the local language, and the strength of Pashtun prejudice, this would be an unlikely appointment.

Khan enforces high standards—the men’s blue-gray uniforms are tidy, and military routine is strictly followed—which are all the more impressive given the lack of discipline and infighting in most Afghan police units. The men enjoy the slightly giddy camaraderie of a team under permanent siege, and they are bold fighters, though their zeal often exceeds the behavior that might be expected of a group given the task of winning the trust of an uneasy citizenry. Once, when Vollick called off a planned patrol into Taliban territory for tactical reasons, he had to assuage the Hazaras’ sense of honor by explaining why he had not led the group into battle.

The day before I arrived, Vollick and Khan, after months of long-range firefights across fields and vineyards, had planned an ambush of Taliban who, villagers said, sometimes gathered at a cemetery some five hundred yards from the base. The Hazaras took up a position near the cemetery, and soon two men carrying heavy blankets rounded a corner and passed a mud wall. Vollick stayed back to watch how the policemen behaved. They passed the first test by not immediately killing both men. But as soon as Khan’s men called for the Talibs to halt, they dropped the blankets and raised Kalashnikov assault rifles that were hidden underneath. The Hazaras outdrew them, and one policeman—who looked several years younger than his stated age of eighteen—emptied an entire magazine at one of the men, who fell dead with more than twenty bullets in his chest. The other man scrambled away, wounded.

The Hazara men had never been this close to their enemy before, and they were eager to pursue the wounded man. But Vollick shouted at them to stay where they were, fearing that they would be led into a trap. “They were losing their minds, they were so excited,” Vollick told me later.

The dead man wore an orange skullcap, a loose shalwar kameez, sandals that the Hazaras identified as Pakistani, and Chinese military webbing that held his ammunition and weapons. Vollick found a small book of names and phone numbers, as well as a rusted rifle whose stock had been shortened for easy concealment. Moments later, the group heard shots nearby. Another patrol had encountered a third insurgent, and two policemen killed him at point-blank range.

Soon, insurgents began shooting wildly from a concealed position. Vollick ordered a retreat, and the group ran through the alleys toward the base. The policemen moved with their Kalashnikovs raised, and Vollick shouted at them to lower their weapons, to avoid shooting innocent farmers. The group returned with no casualties other than its composure and professionalism; the Hazaras had behaved more like a paramilitary group than like a professional police team. They hung the rusty rifle on a wall as a trophy. In the next days, every Hazara I met pointed to it with pride. That evening, they listened eagerly to the Taliban’s radio channels, which featured confused messages about someone named Bashir. Villagers later reported that the wounded man had died.

Two days later, Vollick, sitting in the base’s kitchen, with his back to a wall of M.R.E.s and granola bars, described the operation as a success. Police had subsequently picked up a suspected insurgent leader in the area, and Vollick ascribed the capture to Taliban panic resulting from the ambush. “We hit them when we chose, and they had no idea who did it or how,” he said. When he said “we,” he gestured to the Hazaras’ sleeping quarters, twenty feet away. “It was a psychological victory.” The Hazaras I spoke with described the sprint back to the base, easily the most dangerous moment of the ambush, with nonchalance. Muhammad Hussein—the boy who killed the first Talib—chain-smoked as he described it. “It wasn’t that serious,” he said. “They launched one rocket, but it was far from us.” But Vollick, a professional warrior, remembered the sprint differently. “We were running for our fucking lives,” he said.

The Hazaras trace their bloodline to soldiers of Genghis Khan who settled in Afghanistan in the thirteenth century. Some scholars doubt this pedigree, but Hazara mothers remind their children of their Mongol heritage by addressing them as “bachah-ye Moghol”—“child of Mongols”—to teach them good manners. In the late nineteenth century, the Hazaras were among several groups who revolted against Abdur Rahman Khan, Afghanistan’s Pashtun king. They lost badly, and Khan built towers of Hazara skulls as a lesson to the survivors. Most of the surviving Hazaras fell into poverty, doing the work of draft animals and slaves. Pashtun nomads seized Hazara-held pastures and farmland at the southern foot of the mountains in central Afghanistan.

The British noted the Hazaras’ role as servants and manual laborers in Kabul, and saw an opportunity. The Orientalist Edward Balfour, though he described the Hazaras as “unblushing beggars and thieves,” went on to write, “Some of the clans have a military repute; they would make good soldiers, and might have risen to distinction, but they are disunited.” Lord Kitchener directed the Indian Army to create a unit of Hazaras, along the lines of the Nepalese Gurkhas, and in 1904 the 106th Hazara Pioneers was formed. Known for fine marksmanship, the regiment fought in France in the First World War and in Baghdad in the early nineteen-twenties.

During the rest of the twentieth century, Pashtuns further encroached on Hazara land, and extremist Sunni clerics declared the murder of Hazaras a righteous act. In the nineteen-eighties, the Soviet occupation largely spared the Hazara homeland, but they mounted an insurgency nonetheless, singing revolutionary songs whose villains were Pashtuns rather than Soviets. By the nineteen-nineties, when the Sunni Taliban formed around Mullah Omar, the Hazaras had found an Iranian-backed Shiite, Abdul Ali Mazari, to oppose him. Mazari led Hazara attacks on the Taliban, but, in 1995, he was captured, tortured, and thrown from a helicopter near Ghazni, southwest of Kabul. After Mazari, no Hazara leader reached national prominence until the formation of the Karzai government, in 2002. During the Taliban ascendancy, Muhammad Khan and all his men lived in Iran, as refugees. Khan himself has spent twenty years there—most of his life—and he speaks with a slight Iranian accent. Having been treated poorly as refugees, these Hazaras have no lingering fondness for Iran, but they have benefitted from the country’s superior educational standards. This, together with their determination to reëstablish themselves in what some Hazaras regard as their ancestral homeland, makes them effective janissaries for NATO.

The formation of police units like Khan’s gives the Hazaras greater authority outside their own territory than they’ve had in a century. It is also a classic counter-insurgency gambit. Tom Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, who has undertaken a book-length study of NATO in Afghanistan, compares it to the American use of Shiite militias to fight Sunni insurgency in Iraq. “It’s a common tactic in irregular warfare situations to pit the rivalries of an ethnically diverse populace against each other,” he told me. The difficulty is finding a way to avoid unleashing a dispossessed minority on a rampage of revenge against the group it is asked to control.

Alessandro Monsutti, an anthropologist who has studied the Hazaras, fears that the short-term gain of the Hazara units’ efficacy may be outweighed by long-term harm. “They’re very efficient for narrow, military targets,” he told me. “But what about rebuilding the country?” Donnelly, too, acknowledges that the use of ethnic militias could lead to explosive retribution when NATO leaves Afghanistan. (European use of privileged local minorities in colonial Africa contributed to the continent’s most destructive post-colonial wars, including the Rwandan genocide.) The Hazaras have not, historically, fared well in combat with the Pashtuns, although the policemen at Pashmul seem eager to try their luck. When Vollick asked them where he could get more police like them, they replied that they could raise a militia of a thousand men in their homeland, in Daykundi Province.

At the command level, the decision to exploit one of Afghanistan’s least noted and most bitter ethnic rivalries seems to have been improvised rather than planned. I asked Brigadier-General Denis Thompson, the top Canadian commander, about Khan’s unit, and he emphasized the similarity between Hazaras and Pashtuns, rather than the differences. “The advantage of any Afghan, regardless of their ethnicity, is that they get a better measure of what’s going on on the ground than we could ever get,” he said. “They know when something is amiss in this district.” No NATO officer I met seemed to appreciate the full significance of the Hazara-Pashtun rivalry.

At least in the short term, the deployment of Hazara police in Pashtun areas seems to have worked well, especially in the context of the ineffectiveness of Pashtun units and the area’s slide toward Taliban control. Less than a mile from the Hazaras’ base, the Taliban have trenches and permanent defensive positions. Vollick told me that beyond the trenches there were recreation areas and field hospitals for insurgents, a safe area invaluable for launching attacks on the city of Kandahar.

The Afghan security forces can blame at least part of their failure on geography. The Pashmul region is near Pakistan and is a common first stop for foreign fighters. Historically, too, it has been a center of insurgency. According to one NATO officer, the Soviet occupation never really controlled Pashmul’s district, despite assigning an entire division to it. And it was at Singesar, a village west of Pashmul, that, in 1994, Mullah Omar organized the militia that became the Taliban. The village remains a Taliban center, and last May NATO opted to abandon it, after deciding that the effort of maintaining the small base there could not be justified in terms of resources. No NATO or Afghan government soldier has stepped openly into Singesar since.

Still, policing efforts have been greatly hindered by the fact that indigenous police forces who worked with Vollick before Khan’s unit came to the region shirked their duties and sometimes even collaborated with the Taliban by letting them pass armed through checkpoints. “The Pashtuns just want to eat, sleep, and collect a paycheck,” one Canadian soldier at Pashmul told me. “They come here and they know the people here. And they’d say to each other, ‘If you find a weapon, don’t tell the Canadians.’ ” At one point, the Pashmul base experimented with a mixture of Pashtun and Tajik police, but the unit, after sustaining severe losses at the hands of the Taliban, refused to leave the base. When finally shamed into patrolling, they sang songs as they marched, and wrapped plastic flowers around their rifle barrels.

Soon after I left the Hazara police camp, I had the opportunity to see how an ethnically mixed security force operates, on a mission with the A.N.A. About a mile from Vollick’s base, at the border of a large vineyard and a garden of hemp plants, I met Captain Simon Cox, a ten-year veteran of the Canadian Forces, who had spent a few months mentoring A.N.A. units. Two days earlier, NATO artillery strikes had destroyed a Taliban position. Footage from a Predator drone suggested that Taliban soldiers had suffered serious injuries and that, more interestingly, villagers had surrounded and stoned wounded Talibs as they tried to crawl away. Cox’s mission was to lead soldiers to the village to find out what had happened, and to see whether they could harness any anti-Taliban feeling. Some areas haven’t seen a patrol in years, so even farmers who might sympathize with the government lack any guarantee that the government will protect them if they oppose the Taliban. “How are these people supposed to know about their government and support it when there’s no police there?” Cox asked.

The men on duty were not inattentive, but they seemed fundamentally unserious. They lacked initiative, and sat back and murmured to one another while the Canadians interviewed a local farmer. The Canadians barely spoke with their A.N.A. contingent at all, and the Afghan soldiers seemed to regard it as their principal duty to stand in place while the Canadians conducted their search.

The team cornered a farmer, who confirmed that some villagers had persuaded the Taliban to set up their heavy machine gun in another area, in case the Canadians sent in artillery to destroy the position. The team seized on the disclosure as a sign that the villagers could rise up against the Taliban. The farmer shook his head. “No,” he said. “We can argue with you. Not with them. If we say just one thing against the insurgents, they will come and kill us.”

“Have the insurgents come back to say that to you?” the Canadian asked.

The farmer leaned in and looked around. “They always come here.”

Soon afterward, Cox received word that some insurgents were just a few hundred yards away. An unmanned aerial vehicle had spotted men clustering south of us, across a vineyard and near a suspected weapons cache. Cox summoned an A.N.A. quick-reaction force, to support an assault against the position. Half an hour later, no one had arrived, and Cox was furious. He yelled at his counterpart in the Afghan forces, stabbing his finger at the soldier, who was suppressing a laugh: “I’m asking you if they’re ready to come here and help us fight. If you want to take this job half-assed, then fucking get out of the Army.”

When the Afghan quick-response force arrived, its soldiers stood looking dazed. We started to move toward the insurgents’ position by fanning in two directions—one of the most basic tactical maneuvers an infantry unit can attempt. The Afghans now looked slightly frightened—less of the Taliban ambush than of their officer, an Afghan captain trained by Green Berets. As he issued commands through a radio, the soldiers moved down the road and into the vineyard, correctly enough but with uneasy attention to detail, like a troupe of dancers staring at their feet. When we had closed half the distance, I crouched in a furrow, amid grapevines, until a soldier ahead of me—a stubbly, spindly man with a backpack full of rocket-propelled grenade warheads—yelped “Gun!” and pointed at the ambush point.

Seeing a weapon triggered the rules of engagement, and we ran toward the position. I kept my head low, looking at the ground a few steps ahead of me to avoid I.E.D.s. We leaped over an irrigation ditch, and, when I looked up to make sure I was still running in the right direction, I saw the soldier again. He had his grenade-launcher in one hand and, in the other, a colossal bunch of grapes, which he had started to eat. By the time we arrived at the place where the surveillance had spotted the insurgents, the Taliban had long since vanished back into the surrounding villages. As we stood in the empty Taliban position, I noticed that most of the Afghan soldiers carried grapes that they had picked up during the maneuver, and that they looked pleased.

Khan and Vollick’s relationship is rare and exemplary among NATO soldiers and their Afghan counterparts. Other commanders in Vollick’s position have had to pressure their Afghan counterparts to lead their men into unfriendly areas. Vollick is able to rely on Khan’s initiative. Khan keeps the watchtowers manned, and insures that policemen are properly armed for patrolling. During planning, Vollick and Khan discuss tactics and the day’s operations, and when they leave the base they walk together, conferring about which houses they need to inspect more closely, and which villagers are lying.

While in Pashmul, I followed a routine patrol. It was a couple of days after the ambush, and the men marched in an evenly spaced, disciplined line, with Khan and Vollick near the front and Khan’s second-in-command in the rear. The Canadians wore brown camouflage and a standard array of body armor and ammunition. Khan wore a ballistic helmet, but several other Hazaras wore nothing but their uniforms and a few ammunition magazines.

Within minutes of leaving the base, we were twisting through Pashmul’s narrow mud-walled alleys. Khan sometimes called out the name of his second-in-command over the radio to make sure that both ends of the patrol remained in touch. The men fell silent, and for ten minutes at a time communicated only in gestures, punctuated by the single word harakat, “movement,” passed down the line to signal that the group should continue forward. They were watchful because of the possibility of an ambush— Taliban spotters monitor the patrols from the moment they leave the base—but also, it seemed, because alertness appealed to them. They sometimes sprang off the path recklessly to inspect a piece of suspicious trash, and they burst through doors, hoping to surprise anyone hiding inside. On that morning, though, the village was empty and silent. Khan and Vollick went to a suspected Taliban flophouse; the only sign of human habitation was a wooden table in the courtyard, with tomatoes on top, drying in the sun.

When the patrol encountered residents, Khan and Vollick asked them about Taliban in the area, and received jittery and unhelpful answers. Neither spoke Pashto, but through a translator they managed to perform a kind of good-cop, bad-cop act. Vollick approached two old men sitting outside a house, and asked about Taliban. The response was cordial but evasive. Vollick repeated a line, familiar by now to the villagers, about NATO’s desire to make sure the government could meet their needs for schools and wells. While the men spoke, Khan rolled his eyes in operatic boredom and instructed his men to search the building and to frisk every passerby. The villagers obviously regarded Khan and Vollick as equally foreign. They denied any knowledge of Taliban activity, but, as Khan’s aggressiveness and suspicion grew, they gave Vollick more and more desperate excuses for not coöperating—they were afraid, they said, and hadn’t seen any insurgents anyway. Two other men and a teen-ager looked at us over the walls, perhaps close enough to report back to insurgents on what was said.

The next evening, I watched the sunset from one of the guard towers with Khan, Vollick, and Abbas, a senior Hazara policeman in his late twenties. When cars rolled by on the paved road next to the tower, Abbas stared the occupants down, his hand on his machine gun.

Khan and Vollick leaned on a parapet and chatted, as one commander to another. Through a translator, Khan argued with Vollick, and even flatly disagreed with him. When Vollick claimed that an area had a weapons cache, Khan spoke with authority, citing a lack of armed Taliban presence. “There’s no weapons cache. If there were, they’d fight for it every day, ” he said. From the way he spoke, it was clear that the Hazaras saw their work as less a matter of policing fellow-citizens than of patrolling enemy territory.

Abbas stayed silent nearby. When Khan and Vollick left for dinner, he told me that he had another four or five months left before his next ten-day leave. He seldom talks to his wife and daughter, because his hundred-dollar monthly salary won’t pay for a calling card. “Afghanistan’s broken,” he said. The weak economy, he told me, had driven him to join the A.N.P. As for relations between Pashtuns and Hazaras, he said, “We like Pashtuns, but the Pashtuns don’t like us. We’d like Persian people and Pashtuns to get along, but they don’t want it.”

Below us, the off-duty policemen were singing songs to the accompaniment of a guitar made from an old camping-fuel can. From the tower, Abbas scanned the road and peered into a thermal imager that showed a night-vision image of the cemetery, from which someone had shot at the base earlier in the day.

In the fading light, he examined a car full of nervous Pashtuns as it drove past. “Taliban?” I asked him. “I don’t know,” he said. Later, two men and a boy walked by harmlessly, and he tapped me on the shoulder. “Those are Taliban. See them?” They wore black-and-white turbans, and may well have been Taliban. Or they could have been just farmers. “Is the boy a Talib?” I asked. “Future Talib,” he said, and raised the binoculars to his eyes.
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