Hazara Nation

VCS
‘Afghanistan is the most foreign country in the world," says William Wood, the American ambassador in Kabul. I ask if I may quote him on that. He hesitates, then says it's all right, then adds: "It's a ferociously foreign country."

Mountainous, landlocked and remote, populated by legendary warriors — Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek — historically rich but economically dirt poor, it has been in a state of turmoil for almost 30 years, since the Soviet invasion of 1980. "People here are used to violence," says Gen. David McKiernan, the United States Commander in Afghanistan. "But they also have been traumatized by violence."

By 1989, the Afghans had defeated the Soviet invaders — a great and consequential victory, achieved with assistance from the U.S. But once the Russians were gone, Americans and Europeans lost interest in Afghanistan. Warlords fought among themselves for land, power and wealth — mostly in the form of the poppies from which heroin is made.

In 1994, a group of provincial vigilantes led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, the administrator of a religious school, rose up against the chaos and corruption. He and his followers called themselves "the students" — the "Taliban" in the Pashto language.

The Taliban restored law and order. People welcomed that. The Taliban also had the support of Islamists entrenched in Pakistan's intelligence service. The Saudis approved as well. Before long, the Taliban's ultraradical agenda became apparent. Girls were no longer permitted to go to school. Women could not leave their homes unless covered from head to toe in a burqa and accompanied by a male. Singing, dancing, playing music, watching television, sports, even flying kites — an Afghan national pastime — were prohibited. Prayer five times a day became compulsory.

Those who transgressed were sentenced to amputations or executions in public. Traditional tribal leaders were murdered and replaced by fire-breathing mullahs who broke with Afghan tradition by combining religious and political power.

In March 2001, the Taliban dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan — giant statues, great works of religion and art, built in the sixth century. To the Taliban, these were pagan "idols" that deserved destruction. "It is purely a religious issue," then-Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawekel told a reporter.

The Taliban, wrote the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, represented a new kind of Islamic fundamentalist: "aggressive, expansionist and uncompromising in its purist demands to turn Afghan society back to an imagined model of seventh century Arabia at the time of the Prophet Mohammed."

At this same time, of course, the Taliban also was providing refuge to a Saudi exile by the name of Osama bin Laden. He was plotting another kind of assault against the despised infidels.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 slaughter, the Taliban remained loyal to bin Laden and al-Qaida. The result was an American-led invasion of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban.

Both bin Laden and Mullah Omar escaped, presumably to the wild reaches of western Pakistan. Today, Taliban forces — bolstered by Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis and other "foreign fighters" — are attempting to retake Afghanistan, using the same terrorist tactics that al-Qaida used in Iraq: assassinations, roadside bombs and, while I was in Afghanistan earlier this month, throwing acid in the faces of young girls walking to school. A European diplomat in Kabul notes that, this year, 900 Afghan policemen have been killed — an improvement over the 1,200 killed in 2007. "The Taliban are not sentimental people," he says.

Like other militant Islamists groups — Hamas and Hezbollah, for example — the Taliban acts locally but thinks globally. "We want to eradicate Britain and America," Ay'atulah Mahsoud, the emir of the Pakistani Taliban, has said, "and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York and London."

The available evidence suggests the vast majority of Afghans would not welcome the Taliban's return to power. Indeed, the Taliban has not managed to regain a single city. But they have been stepping up the violence.

In past years, fighting has slowed during Afghanistan's cold and snowy winter. This season, Gen. McKiernan plans to keep the pressure on. "If we allow enemy forces time to rest and relax over the winter," explains one of his commanders, "they will be back with a bang in the spring."

The hope — one can't yet say the expectation — is that Pakistan also will move aggressively against Taliban fighters within its borders.

"Do it right," an American general in Kandahar says, "and we won't have to come back here years from now."

— Clifford May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
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Go
During Afghanistan's 1960s hippy trail heyday, Band-e-Amir's six mineral-rich lakes and pink cliffs were the country's holiday paradise, visited by tens of thousands of domestic and foreign tourists every summer.

Swan-shaped pedal boats bob in the sapphire-blue lakes of Band-e-Amir as tradesmen peddle their wares on the shore. Then, as if from nowhere, two US Black Hawks roar low over the water.

Welcome to tourism Afghan-style, in one of the war-torn country's few national parks, about 80 kilometres (42 miles) from the town of Bamiyan where the Taliban destroyed the world's tallest Buddha statues in 2001.

"Before the war," sighed Shah Is'haq, a 68-year-old jewellery salesmen perched on the bank of the placid waters, "thousands of foreigners were coming here. The life, back then, was very good."


"Those days are now gone," said Is'haq, mourning Afghanistan's woes from the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, to the ensuing civil war, the 1996-2001 Islamist Taliban regime and now the US-led fight against Taliban insurgents.

The roads around the lakes were heavily mined by local militias and the Taliban in the 1990s, and only a dirt track is safe.

The journey from Kabul takes a bone-shaking 12 hours, and passes through some areas where attacks have taken place.

But the brightly coloured pedalos and trinket sellers at the lakes -- dubbed Afghanistan's Grand Canyon -- hint at growing efforts to bring back the golden tourist years despite the violence.

In Bamiyan city, Italian tourist Alessandro Califano said he was aware of the security problems in Afghanistan but had not faced any difficulties himself.

"I think it is a wonderful place," Califano, a museum curator in his native Rome, said at a hotel overlooking the niches in a huge sandstone cliff that once housed the two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues.

"Even if the Buddhas have been blown into the air, it has a certain aura. The natural setting is simply fabulous," he said.

"The only threat I faced here was finding a scorpion in the bath," Califano said, smiling. Otherwise it was "safe and pleasant".

Despite the destruction of the statues in March 2001, officials and residents argue that Bamiyan province can still claw back lucrative tourism.

The remains of the statues were declared a UN World Heritage Site in 2003, while the Afghan government has submitted the lakes for recognition on the same list.

Bamiyan city opened a rudimentary tourist centre in late October, backed by the New Zealand government which has a small military contingent there, and is now planning a map of key sites and an institute to train hotel workers.

"We are working on a project for Bamiyan tourism," said Habiba Sorabi, the provincial governor and the only woman to hold such a position in Afghanistan.

With the population mainly comprising Shi'ite Muslim ethnic Hazaras who loathe the Taliban, Bamiyan is a relative oasis of peace in Afghanistan.

This year for example, more than 1,000 "foreigners" visited the scenic valley and Band-e-Amir, the governor said over green tea in her hilltop office.

But getting central government funds to pave the bumpy road through green valleys and barren mountains from Kabul is a priority for getting tourists to the area, Sorabi said.

"So let's hope for the future," she said.

In Kabul, officials share the same hopes but admit that reviving tourism could be tough, with Afghanistan's infrastructure still in ruins and security suffering from the worsening Taliban insurgency.

Nearly 70,000 NATO and US-led troops are still in Afghanistan, and US president-elect Barack Obama has said that he plans to begin pulling US troops out of Iraq to switch the military focus to the Central Asian nation.

Under its five-year national development blueprint, the Afghan government says it plans to promote tourism and encourage private investment in the industry.

"We have the plans in front of us," Deputy Information, Culture and Tourism Minister Ghulam Nabi Farhai said in Kabul. "At this time the biggest challenge ahead is security."

He added: "If we have security, if we have good roads and hotels, Afghanistan with its beautiful landscape, its pleasant climate and rich culture and history will become a perfect place for tourists."

Muqeem Jamshedi, the owner of Afghan Logistics and Tours, one of the few tourism firms established in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban, says Bamiyan and the lakes should be on any tourist's wish-list.

"Bamiyan and Band-e-Amir are the must-go places," said Jamshedi.

More than 150 "foreign tourists" have visited the valley this year through his company, which provides transport, hotel and security services, he added.

A former journalist, Jamshedi set up the company months after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, with high hopes that tourists would soon flood his country.

But so far, he said, his dreams have yet to come true.

"Tourists can't bring security, it's the security which brings the tourists. I hope for that security," he said.
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CD
Afghan police have arrested 10 Taliban militants involved in an acid attack this month against 15 girls and teachers walking to school in southern Afghanistan, a provincial governor said Tuesday.
"Several" of the arrested militants have confessed to taking part in the acid attack, said Kandahar Gov. Rahmatullah Raufi. He declined to say exactly how many confessed.

High-ranking Taliban fighters paid the militants a total of $2,000 to carry out the attack, Raufi said. The attackers came from Pakistan but were Afghan nationals, said Doud Doud, an Interior Ministry official.


The attackers squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school in Kandahar city on Nov. 12. Several girls suffered burns to the face and were hospitalized. One teenager couldn't open her eyes days after the attack, which sparked condemnations from around the world.

Afghanistan's government called the attack "un-Islamic," and the United Nations labeled it "a hideous crime."

Kandahar is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban and is one of Afghanistan's most conservative regions, a place where women rarely venture far from home.

A Taliban spokesman earlier this month denied that Taliban militants were involved in the attack.

Girls were banned from schools under the Taliban regime, the hard-line Islamists who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.

The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban's ouster. Fewer than 1 million Afghan children, mostly all boys, attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly 6 million Afghan children, including 2 million girls, attend school today.

But many conservative families still keep their girls at home.

Raufi said that girls attending Mirwais Mena girls' school didn't attend class for three days after the attack, but that girls have since returned to class there.

Kandahar province's schools serve 110,000 students at 232 schools, Raufi said. But only 10 of the 232 are for girls. Some 26,000 girls go to school, he said.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia.
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MT
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has offered to provide security for the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, if he agrees to peace talks. Karzai made the offer despite the multi-million dollar bounty offered for the militant leader's capture by the United States. However, this offer was almost immediately rejected by the Taliban whose spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid said they felt secure in Afghanistan and did not need the protection offered by Karzai.

Many Afghan officials speak confidently about the practicality of the talks with the Taliban, ignoring the fact that Taliban don't easily compromise their radical religious values for political aims


Inside the Taliban

For most urban political movements talking and negotiating are important tools in the political process. The Taliban however is no urban political faction; they started as a rural movement, motivated by rather simple yet inflexible religious and tribal traditions. Nevertheless, shortly after their formation, the influence of Pakistan's Intelligence Service, the ISI, and foreign militants' political Islamist ideology significantly manipulated the Taliban's belief system and added to the complexity of the group's structure and national composition.

The assumption that the Taliban can be persuaded through "political concessions" to desist from violence, appears both logical and practical. But the assumption ignores the Taliban's radically different conceptualization of what is commonly regarded as "violence, insurgency or terrorism." To the Taliban these simply constitute "jihad," a defining and incontrovertible feature of their worldview.

During the Taliban rule, the international community vehemently opposed the regime's implementation of its interpretation of Sharia laws which included public execution in stadiums, stoning to death, amputation of limbs and flogging. But their most vociferous response to such global condemnation took the form of comments from their then foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Motawakel, that those disagreeing with a publicly enforced penal code were welcome to make donations toward a purpose-built "Islamic punishment facility."

The Taliban repeatedly displayed indifference to strong international criticism, including the condemnation of their destruction of Bamyan's historic statues of Buddha, which the Taliban believed to be un-Islamic. In addition, after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden to the United States, while according to Mullah Abdel Salam Zaief, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, they were confident that for this "America will destroy them."

This rigid attitude toward the international community occurred at a time when the Taliban's "Islamic emirate" was recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Proposal for Talks or Demand for Surrender?

The approach of the Afghan government to proposals for talks too, is confusing. Karzai, while offering protection to Omar, rejected the Taliban's condition of withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. In addition, insisting on the condition of "accepting the constitution and ending armed resistance" has been the overall stance of the Afghan officials (including Karzai) towards the Taliban.

However, this is not a new offer. The Afghan government had declared the same stance shortly after the fall of the Taliban; and in practical terms the government has been trying to persuade Taliban members to lay down their arms, accept the rule of law and join the peace process. In fact the main objective of the Afghan Commission for Promoting Peace, led by Sebghatullah Mojaddadi, speaker of the Afghan senate and a former president of the Mujahedin government, has been to convince the Taliban to comply with this requirement.

Therefore, in reality the Taliban could always have given up resistance, accepted the constitution and returned to normal life or even participated in legitimate political activities, as in the case of Mullah Abdel Salam Zaeif, formerly Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and his colleague Motawakel, ex-foreign minister, together with many other members of this group.

In other words, the Afghan government's stipulation to "lay down arms and accept the constitution" would seem, rather than an apparent prerequisite for talks with the Taliban, to be instead a merely re-phrased demand for surrender.

Position of Strength

It would seem that the Taliban view such repeated requests as inconsequential. Even the government's offer to protect Omar was immediately rejected, while they proclaimed their renewed resolve to wage "jihad" against both Afghan and foreign forces.

Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Afghan foreign minister, has on a number of occasions spoken of the government's "position of strength" in regard to talks with the Taliban. But considering the struggle of at least 150,000 members of the foreign and Afghan armies to fight the insurgency, it seems more likely to be the Taliban who enjoy this advantage.

It is very unlikely that the Taliban are going to engage in negotiations with the Afghan government at a time when international military commanders pronounce on the "un-winnable war against the Taliban." Afghan officials frequently ask the Taliban for talks while offering protection to their leader and the West is sinking deeper into an economic crisis which threatens to divert their attention from the problem of Afghanistan.
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independent
There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg.

Then there is the grim young man with the beard, also in the darkest pain, who looks at me with suspicion and puzzlement. He has a bullet wound in the abdomen, a great incision sutured up after the doctors found it infected. Two other young men, also bearded, cowled in brown "patu" shawls, sit beside this suffering warrior. They, too, stare at me as if I am a visitor from Mars. Perhaps that's what I am in Kandahar. Better to be a Martian than a Westerner in a city which in all but name has fallen to the Taliban.


The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently – stupidly – believed would vanish from Afghan society. But the Taliban insist they were not responsible for throwing acid in the face of the little girl in the second-floor ward at Meir Wais hospital. You know what she is thinking. You know what her parents are thinking. Who will marry this girl now, with her patchwork face of pain? Four men on a motorcycle threw acid at her and 13 of her friends on their way to school. Four were brought here, two dispatched immediately to the eye department. The Taliban deny any involvement. But they would, wouldn't they?

Khorea Horay is a victim of that other tormentor of southern Afghanistan, the forces of Western "civilisation" who dispense "collateral damage" to the poor and the illiterate of Kandahar province in their determination to bring "freedom" and "democracy" to the land that defeated both Alexander the Great and Ghengis Khan. The Americans air-raided her village of Shahrwali Kut in their battle against "terrorism"; a Taliban on a nearby hilltop appears to have fired a missile at Nato troops before our Western technology arrived to crush Khorea's village. "I looked downwards and my foot was in little pieces," she said. "They came from the sky and from the ground. It started in the afternoon and went on into the night." In all, 36 members of a wedding party were killed in Shahrwali Kut on 5 November. That's why she is one of the lucky ones. But luck is relative. Nato forces in southern Afghanistan have promised an inquiry. Needless to say, not a single Western soldier has visited Khorea's hospital ward to say sorry, even to offer a little compassion.

The two girls with amputations are very definitely victims of the Taliban. They were walking in the very centre of Kandahar when a suicide bomber exploded an oil tanker packed with explosives outside the council office which still – theoretically – belongs to the government. The target was Wali Karzai, governor of Kandahar, brother of President Hamid Karzai, a man still desperately denying that he is a local drugs warlord. He escaped. Six died. Of the 45 wounded brought to the Meir Wais hospital, almost all were women and children, many of them crushed by falling walls after the explosion.

The doctors lost only one of their patients, a senior police officer, while two bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, one of them a woman. The Taliban happily claimed responsibility for the bomb which tore their own people apart – and which allowed the Nato commander, US General David McKiernan, to pump out some familiar warspeak. "These cowardly acts reflect how dishonourable the insurgents truly are," he said. "No one can honestly say they are fighting for the people ...".

But who is "fighting for the people" of Kandahar? To its immense credit, the International Committee of the Red Cross is donating £1m a year to the Meir Wais hospital and 11 of its international staff are – incredibly – working full-time in Kandahar. Every other NGO has fled the Taliban city but the ICRC – in contact with "all parties", as the ubiquitous codicil goes – are dispensing medicines, surgical help and courage. They come from Switzerland, France, Ivory Coast, Hungary, New Zealand, Australia and other nations – and walk a tightrope in this terribly dangerous city. Anyone who still chastises the ICRC for its pusillanimous role in confronting the Nazi Holocaust of the Second World War should meet the brave men and women who work here.

A little girl is brought into the hospital in a green dress. "Isn't she beautiful?" Nola Henrya nurse from Australia asked us. "She fractured a bone, but it got infected. Now we will see if we can save her leg." Green-eyed, her tousled black hair falling over her face, the three-year-old sits on the cold concrete floor, eyeing us, half suspicious, half-mischievous, conscious of being the centre of our attention. They often arrive like this, too late for surgery or for cure. Many families arrive from the villages with children dying in their arms. "We are an uneducated people," an Afghan doctor told me with painful if unnecessary humility. "These people do not know what is wrong with their children and they wait till it's bad before they bring them here. By then, it is very bad." I look at one-year-old Nourallah. He is a skeletal creature as light as a pillow, his eyes glazing over at us within circles of skin.

And it is all too clear what is wrong with many of these children. They are dying of hunger. There is a mini-famine in the desolation of the deserts of Kandahar and Helmand. Malnutrition here is a kind of disease. So is fear. I talk to a young Afghan woman hospital worker, dressed in a burkha, educated in Pakistan, fluent in English. "I am afraid," she said. "We are all afraid. We all feel threatened. It's not just 'them' [she means the Taliban] but it's my own relatives, my aunt, my cousin. I do not tell them what I do. I just say I work in a hospital."

Across Kandahar, there is great anger. At the government's corruption, at the Nato occupation and their killings. Little is said of the Taliban. But who condemns those who are winning the war? Taliban officials now speak with near-courtesy of the Tadjiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras who were their sectarian enemies in the awful years of Taliban rule. "If they are against the occupation, they are all friends now," one of the wisest local residents said. There is a new vein of nationalism within the Taliban. "Twenty per cent of the population here are Shias and their mosques were turned into Sunni places of worship by the Taliban during their rule. But now the Shias are asking their mullahs what they should do if America attacks Iran, and their mullahs told them that if this happens, they should support the Islamic Republic and attack all American and Nato interests in Kandahar."

Beside the vast American airbase 20 miles away, a Nato metropolis adjacent to the most Islamist city in Afghanistan, the "international" airport sits in a slough of despond, its chain-smoking Afghan soldiers scarcely bothering to carry out security procedures on passengers, its echoing, empty departure lounges adorned with crude advertisements for tourist agencies that no longer exist and for an Afghan army which disappears from the roads after 4pm every day. I stood beside the runway yesterday, watching the armada of US air fleets roaring into the pale blue wintry sky, Russian-built transports and high-flying US reconnaissance jets and Kiowa helicopters and the softly landing Predators and Raptors, the hi-tech, broad-winged pilotless spotters and killers. The Predators look for the targets. The Raptors fire Hellfire missiles – manufacturers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. One Raptor returned with its missiles still locked to its wings. Was its mission aborted over Pakistan? Or Helmand?

Another took off. Two minutes later – I could still just see it – at 1,500 feet, US personnel at Tampa, Florida, would have taken over its flight path. It was 11.30 in the morning, a computer guiding its progress at 2am US Eastern Standard Time. Does the guiding hand on the other side of the world have any idea of the political direction in which this machine is flying? Or of the people it threatens.

Barack Obama wants to send 7,000 more American troops to this disaster zone. Does he have the slightest idea what is going on in Afghanistan? For if he did, he would send 7,000 doctors.
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SMH By Glenda Kwek.
Maria Mehr has just spent her first day as the only 21-year-old in year 10 at Condell Park High School.

But her age is not the only reason she stands out. While her classmates are spending their teenage years going to the movies and the beach, Mehr spent hers selling cigarettes on the polluted, dangerous streets of Tehran - forced to help support her desperate Afghan refugee family.

Mehr knows she stands out in her class of 15-year-olds and is nervous about her English, but says her first day at high school was one of the happiest of her life.

Mehr's journey to Australia from Afghanistan has been long and tumultuous. Her parents and six siblings spent more than

11 years in Iran after they fled the Taliban in Kabul in 1996. But their new home presented new difficulties and the family soon faced a day-to-day struggle to keep afloat through working on the streets of Tehran with no prospect of a formal education.

When Mehr's sister, Sania, now 16, asked why Iranian children wore identical clothes and carried a bag, she was told that they were on their way to school. "Why can't I join them?" she asked her mother. "My mum said to me, 'Because we are Afghani and the Iranian Government doesn't allow Afghanis to learn, to go to a school.' " The sense of rejection the Mehr family experienced during their years as refugees in Iran lingers. For these Afghan children, their only memory of their homeland was of being caught in conflict. When they arrived in Tehran they were deemed outcasts and deprived of financial, educational or social support. Forced to work illegally, the seven children and their father took to the polluted roads of the city, selling cigarettes and lollies. Many Iranians were resentful of refugees at a time of high unemployment. Iran has 1 million registered refugees and the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR estimates there are at least another million unofficially living there.

When Mehr's family arrived, unemployment was running at 12 per cent, and more than 20 per cent for those aged 15 to 29, who make up 36 per cent of the population. Even the UNHCR ended its education support to refugees in 2004, preferring instead to focus its resources on voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan.

Mehr tells how people on the streets would swear at her and her parents when they heard her conversing with them in Dari, their Afghan dialect. "The Iranian Government does not respect us, so the people look at the Government and follow," she says.

"I'm Muslim, but I wear the cross sometimes. You have to respect others," she says, fingering the cross around her neck.

Sania Mehr told of how, at five years old, she was spat at, hit and told that she was a "dirty Afghani who should go home" when she was working on the streets.

There are about 30,000 children, many under 15, who work on Tehran's roads. Throughout Iran they number 200,000, non-government organisations estimate. Like Mehr, many of them are Afghani. They have a high mortality rate - 100 to 150 die every month from malnutrition and disease, according to the Iranian newspaper Dowran Emrooz.

But there was a ray of hope. An Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel laureate, Shirin Ebadi, set up the Society for Protecting the Rights of the Child, which established a school and medical clinic staffed by volunteers.

Word spread quickly among the street children, and before long the Mehr sisters were attending English and Farsi (a Persian dialect) classes in a crumbling building in Soosh, a poor suburb in southern Tehran.

They quickly became familiar with the makeshift classrooms. Like the other children, they were happy to attend school whenever they could. It offered a respite from the heat and hard work of the streets, and they enjoyed the attention they received from the teachers and doctors, something often lacking in their interactions with other Iranians.

When the Herald visited the centre in May, children burst in and out of the single-storey building, their dust-covered clothes and slippers barely soiling the powdery walls already marked by years of neglect.

Two young Iranian doctors, Mohammad Tosefi and Mamak Hashemi, tended to the 30-odd children and family members who came to seek their medical advice.

When a lanky boy with a scarred cheek approached Dr Tosefi he set to work quickly, laying him down on a classroom table while reassuring him in a low voice. A curious group of children gathered around the pair, watching as the doctor placed leeches on the boy's cheek. "The skin's rotten," he said.

Dr Hashemi has been visiting the centre for more than two years.

"There are many problems with them [the children]," she says. "[The parents] are poorly educated and they don't know how to bring up their children and there are many cases of child abuse. Many of these children work. These are very bad things. They need love very much."

The sisters contributed to a magazine set up by one of their favourite teachers, Bahram Rahimi. It was his way of helping the refugee children express their thoughts about their old life in Afghanistan and their new life in Iran. The current editions are glossy with snazzy graphics, but Mehr still treasures the first edition, a black-and-white booklet, handfolded and stapled. Her voice softens when she flips to a story written by a young Afghan boy. "He is writing about his parents and how he is sad after they died in Afghanistan," she says. "I cried when I read it.

After five years of struggle in Iran, with Mehr's father earning only 200,000 tomans ($250) a month working at a mirror store, the family decided to leave Iran. But it took them years to find a way out. "We tried all the embassies but they always said no," Mehr says. "Even our uncle [who came to Australia 18 years ago] tried to help us come to Australia, but couldn't."

Rahimi referred them to a friend, who worked for the International Organisation for Migration. They were asked to write a letter about their situation and their father's fear of retribution from the Taliban if they returned to Afghanistan. Two years and four interviews later, the Mehr family obtained refugee visas from Australia. "We went to the Australian embassy to pick up our visas on 29 March, 2007," Mehr says proudly.

On May 2 last year the family arrived in Australia, with another 1401 Afghans, who were granted humanitarian visas in 2006-07, about 11 per cent of the total intake. They were provided with a Dari-speaking case officer and lived in government housing at Mount Druitt for three months, with assistance from Centrelink and Medicare.

The Mehrs now live in Sydney's south-west in a house rented from Granville Presbyterian Church. They live simply.

Yet Mehr knows her family is lucky. Many of her fellow Afghan friends remain in Iran, trapped in poverty, while others have returned to Afghanistan and are uncontactable. "After 10 years, we have had to start all over again," she says. "But I am very, very happy here."

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AT
Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) Chairman Wang Jin-pyng announced that Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and founder of the Shuhada Organization, has been selected as the winner of the 2008 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award (ADHRA).

Dr. Samar is recognized for her contributions to advancing human rights and especially women’s rights and welfare in Afghanistan. She will formally receive the Award sculpture and a grant of US$100,000 at a ceremony in Taipei on December 10th, International Human Rights Day.

Dr. Samar was the first Hazara woman to earn a medical degree from Kabul University. She fled to Pakistan in 1984 and remained in exile for 17 years, during which she founded the Shuhada Organization in 1989 to provide medical care and educational opportunities to Afghan women and children. Since 2002, she has served as the Chairperson of the newly established Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, laying the institutional groundwork for human rights protections in Afghanistan.


“Dr. Samar has devoted her life to fighting for freedom and democracy in Afghanistan, putting her life in immense risk and overcoming numerous obstacles,” said Chairman Wang, noting that the ADHRA and other awards which Samar has received not only represent international recognition of her contributions, but also help protect her personal safety in Afghanistan.

Dr. Samar was chosen from a pool of 30 candidates representing 18 countries, after a rigorous two-stage review process. Chairman Wang pointed out that since the ADHRA was established in 2006, it is especially noteworthy that the second and third annual Awards were both awarded to women. Last year’s (2007) ADHRA was presented to Burmese doctor Cynthia Maung, founder of the Mae Tao Clinic on the Thai-Burmese border.

Liao Dachi, member of the ADHRA preliminary review board and professor of political science at National Sun Yat-Sen University, commented on the harsh environment in which Samar has worked for Afghan women’s rights and welfare. Afghanistan faces a dire lack of medical and educational resources, and women lived under severe oppression during the Taliban’s rule.

Even today, life expectancy for women is only 43 years, and rates of adult female illiteracy remain extremely high. Samar has had to argue before international organizations such as the United Nations that mistreatment of Afghan women and children should be judged according to basic human rights principles, rather than characterized as traditional cultural practices, said Liao.

The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy established the annual Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award in 2006 to support individuals or organizations that have actively promoted democratic development or advocated human rights through peaceful means in Asia.

International members of the 2008 ADHRA final review board included: Dr. Nisuke Ando, former Chairman of the UN Human Rights Committee and Director of the Kyoto Human Rights Institute; Dr. Alex Boraine, Chairperson of the International Center for Transitional Justice and former Deputy Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Ms. Asma Jahangir, Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief; Mr. Alejandro Toledo, former President of Peru; and Dr. Cynthia Maung, founder of the Mae Tao Clinic and winner of the 2007 ADHRA.

The Shuhada Organization aims to provide Afghan women and children with medical care and educational opportunities. It is the oldest Afghan non-governmental organization and the largest woman-led NGO in the region. Under Samar’s leadership, Shuhada now operates 12 clinics and 4 hospitals in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as 71 schools in Afghanistan and 3 schools for Afghan refugees in Quetta, Pakistan, educating over 48,000 girls and boys.

Dr. Samar is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the 1994 Community Leadership Award from the Roman Magsaysay Foundation in the Philippines, the 2001 John Humphrey Freedom Award from Rights and Democracy in Canada, and the 2004 Eleanor Roosevelt Award from the Feminist Majority Foundation in the United States.
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Source: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Ref - ComCo/KAB08E2943
- Access to remote areas remains a major problem in most parts of the country
- The ICRC response to the needs of people affected :

Dear colleagues,

The security situation in Afghanistan has worsened over the last year and a half, and the armed conflict has remained intense in 2008. Regular fighting between armed groups and national and international forces has continued in more than half of the country. Even in provinces not affected by open combat, roadside bombs and suicide bombings are regular occurrences. Early this year, fighting in the west of Afghanistan became as intense as it had been in the south, south east and east. Hostilities continue to claim the lives of Afghans, international aid workers and foreigners. Access to remote areas remains a major problem in most parts of the country. The ICRC continued to respond to the needs of people affected by the armed conflict, though security constraints still hamper humanitarian operations in many areas. At the same time, the ICRC continued to remind all those involved in the conflict of their obligations to respect civilian life and property.


In Miwais Hospital in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, the ICRC has a team of about 11 medical-health expatriates working in different sectors of the hospital with their Afghan counterparts. The ICRC is setting up emergency departments for surgery, for paediatric and medical cases.

In eastern Afghanistan, the ICRC continued to monitor the situation of the refugee families coming from Pakistan (Bajaur Agency) into Kunar Province.

The ICRC has already carried out two rounds of emergency material assistance distribution. An ICRC medical-orthopedic team has also visited the area where the refugees are staying.

In north and north-western Afghanistan, the ICRC and the Afghan Red Crescent Society are carrying out an important emergency humanitarian response in benefit of vulnerable families affected by this year's drought-food crisis.

Please find further information of the ICRC's action in Afghanistan below.

Best regards,

Graziella Leite Piccolo
Communication Coordinator
ICRC Kabul

ICRC Afghanistan Facts and Figures JANUARY-OCTOBER 2008

People Deprived of their Freedom and Restoring Family Links

The ICRC visits detainees held as a result of conflict by the Afghan authorities and international forces (US and NATO) to regularly assess the conditions of detention, the treatment of detainees and respect of fundamental judicial guarantees. It also helps families trace relatives with whom they lost contacts. It:

- carried out 284 visits in 83 places of detention holding 12,508 detainees; followed up individually 3,100 persons arrested in relation with the conflict or the security situation, of whom 1,310 were visited for the first time and registered; provided assistance to 192 released detainees to travel home;

- with support of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, it collected over 14,168 Red Cross Messages (RCMs) and distributed more than 14,221 RCMs, mostly between detainees and their families;

- started the video-teleconference program allowing for the first time detainees at US detention facility in Bagram to speak and see their family members. Until October, 1,735 video calls were made;

- started the face to face visit for detainees held in Bagram, following lengthy dialogue with the US authorities, Since October, the ICRC facilitated the access of the families of 29 detainees.

Ensuring respect for International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

The internationally recognised ICRC's mandate provides for monitoring the respect of IHL by persons bearing arms. In that respect, the ICRC enters into confidential dialogue with all parties to the conflict. Alleged abuses against all persons not taking part in the hostilities are confidentially discussed with relevant authorities in an effort to prevent recurrences and to minimize the effects of war on the population. In line with its independent action, the ICRC has acted as a neutral intermediary in prison riots and has facilitated the collection of bodies from the battlefield, allowing the respective families to complete their mourning.

Health and Hospital Care

The ICRC supports and trains national health authorities at hospital level in JPHH1 in Jalalabad, Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar and Sheberghan Hospital in Jawzjan. It maintains their capacity to provide essential and quality surgical services to victims affected by the conflict or other emergencies.

In Kandahar, the ICRC, in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), started to implement the Essential Package of Hospital Services.

These three hospitals:

- provided services to 42,670 in-patients and 200,100 outpatients and performed 17,218 operations;

- provided ad hoc medical supplies to hospitals such as Afghan National Army 400-beds hospital, Aliabad, Istiqlal, Infectious Diseases Hospital, Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital, Geology Centre, Maiwand and Herat hospitals and the Central Blood Bank and Radiology Department at MoPH level; a war wounded kit (helps up to 50 people) is regularly pre-positioned at the MoPH for emergency events;

- provided supplies, financial support and supervision to 9 Afghan Red Crescent clinics in Afghanistan that gave consultations and provided vaccination to women and children.

War Wounded Assistance

Recalling the right of every war wounded to receive medical assistance and in line with its humanitarian action, the ICRC has provided 911 emergency consignments for first aid and pre-hospital care for war wounded in remote areas of the country, where other health structures are not available.

Rehabilitation for the Disabled

Since 1988, the ICRC has been involved in orthopedic and rehabilitation assistance and social reintegration of disabled people, from landmine victims to those with motor impairment due to any cause. Some 86,165 patients (over 33,643 amputees) have been assisted since then. The ICRC runs six orthopedic centres in Kabul, Mazar, Herat, Gulbahar, Faizabad and Jalalabad. They have a home care service for spinal cord injured patients to offer the paraplegics and their families medical, economic and social support. The centres:

- registered 5,093 new patients and made 11,773 prostheses and orthoses;

- provided 142,276 physiotherapy treatments;

- granted micro credit loans to 422 patients to start their own business, trained 203 in various jobs;

- assisted 1,246 spinal cord injured patients. In Kabul only, 3,495 homecare visits were carried out.

Water and Habitat

The ICRC's work includes re-establishing urban and rural water networks, sanitation projects and rehabilitation work in hospitals and detention places as well as hygiene promotion and environmental health training.

- urban water supply: completed one project in Jalalabad targeting 10,000 people and continued three water supply/sanitation projects in Herat and Kandahar that will target 44,000 individuals;

- rural water supply: completed four projects and continued to work on three other projects in Bamyan. these projects target about 13,000 individuals; completed a project in Mazar (4,800 individuals) and continued to work on three projects in Almar, Chemtal and Old Baghlan targeting about 29,000 individuals and one project in Kunar aimed at supplying water to 5,200 individuals;

- continued to ensure basic water and sanitation conditions in detention places in Kabul and Herat and Takhar provinces for over 3,340 detainees and completed similar work in Jalalabad, Badakhshan, Kapisa, Farah, Baghlan, Samangan, Sheberghan, Sar-e Pul and Mazar provinces for over 2,000 detainees;

- held 911 hygiene education sessions to 13,414 people in public places (hammam, school, mosque) and provided education and practical advices to 5,029 households (26,377 individuals). On the Hand Washing Day, the ICRC distributed soap for 2, 519 families;

- continued to upgrade and maintain the general infrastructure of Kandahar hospital and to maintain that of the surgical wards of Jalalabad (JPHH1).

Emergency Material Assistance

The ICRC provides emergency assistance to people displaced and living without shelter due to the armed conflict and to those severely affected by natural disasters. These are distributed to beneficiaries with the ARCS's support. The emergency assistance consisted of:

- 9,701 food kits (rice, beans, ghee, salt, sugar and tea) and 7,693 non-food kits (tarpaulins, blankets, jerry cans, kitchen sets and soap) to 11,341 displaced families (79,027 individuals) affected by the conflict in Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces, in southern Afghanistan as well as in Kunar province (refugees from Pakistan) and other parts of eastern and central Afghanistan, and 1,918 families (13,426 individuals) affected by heavy snow falls and harsh cold temperatures in all parts of the country during the last winter, but particularly in the west;

- 18,945 families (132,615 individuals) affected by this year's severe drought received the same number of food kits (rice, beans, ghee, sugar, salt, and tea) in the provinces of Kunduz (10,063 families in the rain fed areas of Khanabad and Dashte Archi districts) and in Balkh (8,882 families in the rain fed areas of Chemtal and Sholgara districts).

Promotion of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

The ICRC's mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening compliance with IHL.

The ICRC held:

- 162 dissemination sessions for 4,161 members of provincial authorities, community elders, religious circles, journalists and university students;

- 75 sessions for 2,491 officers, sergeants and soldiers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police and 52 meetings with Afghan military authorities, international mentors and legal advisors' groups working in the ANA's training.

Cooperation with the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) and Mine Risk

Education

The ICRC assists the ARCS technically and financially to build its capacity to deliver various programmes and services to the community.

The ICRC:

- supported 285 training sessions for 4,121 Community Based First Aid volunteers;

- provided 38,358 first aid kits to 16,956 ARCS Community Based First Aid (CBFA) volunteers, retrained 1,007 CBFA team leaders and trained 2,447 new volunteers in Kabul and provinces;

- completed 267 Food for Work projects that benefited 178,787 families;

- supported 371 trainees and their 181 teachers in the ICRC’s vocational training programme;

- supported 6 training sessions for 63 dissemination staff; held 11,416 information sessions for 114,167 persons coming to the ARCS health clinics for treatment.

The ICRC partially supports the ARCS mine risk education program with the aim to prevent injuries and fatalities caused by mines and explosive remnants of war.

The mine action teams held:

- 14,521 Mine Risk Education sessions in 3,917 locations for 118,252 adults and 221,922 children.
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Source: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA
Press Conference by Adrian Edwards, Director, Communications and Public Information; Dr. Nilab Mobarez, UNAMA Spokesperson's Office (near verbatim transcript)

UNAMA REACHES OUT TO BAGHLAN PROVINCE WITH NEW OFFICE

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) opened its 18th office on Saturday in Pul-i-Khumri, the provincial of Baghlan.

Our new office will play a crucial role in the coordination of development efforts, monitoring of human rights issues, strengthening of good governance and the rule of law, assisting local institutions in combating corruption and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, presided at the opening. A press release is on the side table.


FOOD DISTRIBUTION

WFP's winterisation activities are currently ongoing throughout the country, with the pre-positioning and distribution of 36,000 tonnes of food.

On 3 November, under the food-for-work programme, WFP distributed over 15 tonnes of food items, including wheat, cooking oil, lentils and salt to 250 workers for the construction of a flood protection wall in Gurziwan district, Faryab.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs advises that the ICRC has commenced the distribution of relief food packages to over 10,000 people in Dawlatabad and Shirin Tagab districts.

In addition, ICRC has provided ten water tanks for the delivery of potable water to Astana valley, Shirin Tagab district.

On 4 November, in Dai Kundi, WFP had distributed food for 15,000 students in Kitti district.

The International Organization of Migration (IOM) and UNHCR are targeting displaced families and vulnerable households with non-food items and fuel.

300,000 ADULTS TO BE PROVIDED WITH LITERACY EDUCATION IN NINE PROVINCES

300,000 adults, 60 per cent of whom will be women, will be given the chance to benefit from literacy education as well as skills development and income generation opportunities in Badakhshan, Balkh, Bamyan, Dai Kundi, Ghor, Nangarhar, Paktika, Samangan and Wardak over the next three years.

The Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan programme is now in its preparatory phase to start massive literacy intervention in nine provinces from early 2009.

A pilot programme will be launched tomorrow in Bamyan province to test the operational methodologies of the programme.

The second phase of the Enhancement of Literacy programme is expected to start from 2010 and will target another 300,000 adults in nine other provinces of Afghanistan.

Further information can be found in a press release on the side table.

IOM PROVIDES CLEAN WATER, SANITATION FOR RETURNEE COMMUNITIES

A nationwide water and sanitation initiative designed to support communities hosting returnees from Pakistan and Iran was launched last week by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Government of Afghanistan.

IOM with financial support from Japan will help local authorities provide 114 water points and 342 latrines, benefiting some 20,000 people in Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Kunduz, Bamyan, Kabul and Nangarhar provinces.

This programme aims to promote population stabilisation through community-based activities as part of IOM's Socio-Economic Reintegration of Afghans Returning from Iran and Pakistan (RARIP) programme.

The launch follows the signing of a tripartite agreement between IOM, the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and the Ministry of Finance last week to provide water and sanitation facilities in areas with high numbers of returnees.

UNMACA: COMMUNITY BASED MINE CLEARANCE PROJECTS LAUNCHED IN KUNAR AND HELMAND PROVINCES

Two community based mine clearance projects were launched in eastern and southern provinces last week. Field offices have now been established in these areas and de-miners were recruited from the affected communities.

These schemes are effective because de-miners come from and are part of the community. This again underlines the importance of grass roots involvement to see success.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

AFGHANISTAN TIMES [translated from Pashto]: My question is about the recent abductions and killings of internationals in Kabul. Don't you think that these were carried out for political motives? Isn't it a new technique and a threat to foreigners in Kabul?

UNAMA [translated from Dari]: In most cases the abductions appear to us to be purely criminal in nature and not related to the insurgency. Overall we have seen a decrease in security incidents countrywide over the past week except in the south. Asymmetric attacks have continued and as you all know we are seeing a higher than normal level of kidnappings in some areas – including affecting the aid community. We're all relieved to see the recent releases of two female journalists.

And on the other part of your question about the implications of these incidents on the aid community: in no way does it affect our commitment to the people of Afghanistan and we remain committed and will be with the people of Afghanistan.

RFE/RL [translated from Dari]: Recently we heard about the execution of some of the prisoners in Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul. Do you think the judiciary in Afghanistan has matured enough to sentence a criminal to death? And how effective will these executions prove to be in reducing criminality?

UNAMA [translated from Dari]: SRSG Kai Eide is meeting the President today and we understand that this issue will be on the agenda. As you may know, the UN General Assembly voted in December last year in favour of a worldwide moratorium on executions. Afghanistan was among those who voted against.

Regarding the judiciary in Afghanistan, it is still in the process of being rebuilt. We all want to see it working well.

PAJHWOK: Is UNAMA concerned about the recent executions? And secondly please comment on the UN vehicle that recently went missing.

UNAMA: I believe I've already commented on the first question. On the second question, we can confirm that one of the UN's cars was stolen and security measures are in place to locate the missing vehicle. Car thefts are of course not unique to the UN or Afghanistan.

ALL INDIA RADIO: I would like to know the progress of the World Food Programme here in Afghanistan. The winter has set in and in a couple of weeks many areas will be inaccessible. Do you think all the regions have sufficient food stock for the upcoming winter?

UNAMA: On the winterization food activities, I refer you to the updates for Faryab and Dai Kundi and Badakshan we provided last week. There are some districts in these provinces that are difficult or nearly impossible to reach in the winter. The work to preposition food for the winter programme is going on throughout the country. 36,000 tonnes of food from WFP has already been allocated for this purpose to be pre-positioned and distributed throughout the country and out of this 36,000 tonnes of food, 38 per cent has already been pre-positioned in those areas. I do not have the latest update on the remaining part but I may have more details later. To conclude, not only WFP but also the Government and the Afghan Red Crescent and ICRC are also involved in these activities and we are hopeful we will be able to reach all those areas and meet the food needs of all the people in the winter.

ARIANA TV: You said that the United Nations is supporting executions as the people of Afghanistan are doing according to the resolution. Would you like to give more clarifications on the moratorium and if you do agree with the executions of assassins and kidnappers in order to prevent crimes?

UNAMA (ADRIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS): Allow me to correct you on what was actually said: A General Assembly resolution was passed on 18 December 2007 by 187 of the 192 UN member states. This resolution called for a suspension, or moratorium, on the death penalty worldwide. 104 member states voted in favour of the resolution and 54 member states voted against. One of those who voted against was Afghanistan. We can provide you with a copy of that resolution.

8 AM DAILY NEWSPAPER [translated from Dari]: You said security incidents have been reduced in Kabul recently. I would like to know whether this is happening just in Kabul or also in other parts of the country and what are the reasons behind it?

UNAMA [translated from Dari]: There has been a decrease in security incidents throughout the country. And I think it has been due to the efforts of the security forces.

UNAMA (ADRIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS): If you look at the situation over the past ten days or so you will see differences in some areas of the country. In the southern region we saw an increased number of incidents, in other areas we saw static levels or decreases. So overall, and as Nilab said, there has been a net decrease.

IRIB: There are talks about changes in Afghanistan and a change of strategy in Afghanistan. Does the UN see the need for change in Afghanistan and if yes in which areas?

UNAMA (ADRIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNCIATIONS): You are absolutely correct that there is talk of fresh initiatives and new strategies. Our perspective is that for any new initiative to succeed, the needs of the Afghan people must come foremost. People want security, and they want jobs and development. What we seek to communicate to everyone is that Afghanistan has to be seen as a country, not as a conflict.

BBC [translated from Dari]: You said that you are concerned about insecurity in the country. What negative impact do the recent security problems have on the activities of the international organizations?

UNAMA (ADRIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS): I'd like to take a little of your time to try and give you the context here. If you recall back in 2004 and early 2005, Afghanistan's expected trajectory was thought to be in the direction of deepening stability and a development takeoff, following the initial period of recovery and reconstruction.

But as you all know in late 2005 and early 2006, we saw the start of a change in circumstances with the uptake in the insurgency. Against earlier expectations, Afghanistan entered a period of reignited conflict, leading to where we are today. This is our understanding of the situation, and it's this conflict that is robbing people of the development takeoff they had every right to expect. Continuing insecurity makes it difficult for humanitarian workers, for aid workers and for development workers to do their jobs. Just as an example: if you build a school where there is a risk of it getting burnt down you will need protection for the builders, you will need protection for the school. And if the school gets burnt down, and you have to rebuild again the costs go up further and nothing is delivered but a single school. I'm sorry for such a long answer but it is important for people to understand the context.

Even in such an environment it is our view that there is serious progress in many areas. These include the areas of education, in health and that five million individuals – refugees – have returned to Afghanistan. You have progress in Information Technology (IT) and you have huge progress in the media sector, notwithstanding difficulties. So there are positives happening in Afghanistan even in a difficult environment, and it is those we want to build upon.

PRESS TV: US President-elect Barack Obama in his presidential campaign mentioned about an increase in the number of US troops in Afghanistan particularly in its southern parts. What is the stance of your organization on the increase in the number of troops and will it be the best approach to the growing instability in Afghanistan?

UNAMA (ADRIAN EDWARDS, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS): I don't want to comment on one member state's policies in particular. I will just say this though: that if the need for Afghanistan is for better security then we need more security provided. If you have been here in the past weeks you may have heard the UN Special Representative talking about other needs too. These needs include what we call a "political surge": a huge push behind accelerating growth of institutions, accelerating growth of processes that may lead towards peace in Afghanistan. Since 2002 we have been saying there can't be a military solution alone in Afghanistan and that very much remains our view now.

IRIB: [translated from Dari]: You mentioned about the process that needs to be looked at that leads to peace. What do you mean by this peace process? Is it a political process, which would include talks with the Taliban and Government opponents or do you point to construction or any particular process?

UNAMA [translated from Dari]: If you look at the complexity of Afghanistan, for example, security has many dimensions so it requires different approaches. For instance, rising crime does not have any link to terrorism. Therefore, there are different strategies and the UN has always said that without underestimating the military operations, it is very important to have political and social outreach to bring peace in Afghanistan. We have always said that we want to be close to the people of Afghanistan and this will definitely help stability in Afghanistan. On the other hand the humanitarian actions are very important. So you could see that several different efforts like providing humanitarian assistance to the community are contributing. In regards to the reconciliation process, based on our mandate if the Government of Afghanistan will request us to help then we are ready to provide services.


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ISN
There has been no western outcry against Saudi Arabia’s mediation between the Taliban and the Afghan government. On the contrary, the Mecca talks were accompanied by senior British and US officials indicating that such discussions were an evitable part of ending the war in Afghanistan. Only one country has denounced the meeting as an unacceptable capitulation to terrorism and extremism: Iran. This position reflects the untold story of Iran’s tussle with Saudi Arabia for regional influence.

The talks, held at the behest of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, took place in Mecca during the final three days of Ramadan, which ended on 29 September. Those present included Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Muqrin and his predecessor Prince Turki al-Faisal; Nawaz Sharif, the leader of Pakistan’s opposition and a man with very close links to the Saudi monarchy; and Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the foreign minister of the former Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Though the talks were exploratory and did not mark the start of a formal peace process, in the days afterwards US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that negotiations would ultimately be part of the end of the Afghan conflict likening this to the situation in Iraq, where the US sought peace with Sunni Muslim insurgents. Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the departing British commander in Afghanistan, declared that the war could not be won militarily. Karzai said the Afghan people were sick of the conflict. All this implied that the Taliban could be accommodated in a negotiated settlement.

The prospect of some sort of Taliban rehabilitation received a much frostier reception in Tehran. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki urged the US against talks, saying that the Taliban’s extremism could not be confined to the Middle East and West Asia. Iran’s ambassador to the UN said that negotiations would make Afghanistan even less stable. The chairman of Iran’s parliamentary foreign policy and national security committee said the talks would spread terrorism.

Iran despises the Taliban for three reasons. The first is sectarian. Iran is a Shia theocracy, whereas the Taliban are Sunni extremists who view Shias as heretics. In August 1998 Taliban fighters slaughtered thousands of Shia Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif. The Hazaras were closely aligned with the Northern Alliance, an Iranian-backed rebel coalition dedicated to fighting the Taliban; the conflict between these sides saw more than a million Afghan refugees flee to Iran.

Not surprisingly, Iran welcomed and assisted the Taliban’s downfall in 2001. Writing in the Boston Globe in late October, Lawrence Korb, Ronald Reagan’s former assistant defense secretary, noted that Iran helped US forces to depose the Taliban regime and then pledged US$560 million in reconstruction aid to Karzai’s government, which lifted the restrictions imposed on Shia practices by the Taliban. Iran has no desire to see this situation reversed.

Stopping the drugs money

A second reason for Iran’s posture is the Taliban’s involvement in the production and shipment of Afghan opiates. Iran’s impact on the Taliban’s drugs revenue is one of the untold stories of the war on terror. Even the US has praised Iran’s efforts against narcotics. “There is overwhelming evidence of Iran’s strong commitment to keep drugs leaving Afghanistan from reaching its citizens,” said the U.S. State Department’s 2008 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR). “As Iran strives to achieve this goal, it also prevents drugs from reaching markets in the West.”

The report noted that Iran has recorded “excellent” rates of drug seizures in recent years and that the US has approved licenses for US anti-drugs NGOs to work in Iran. It also noted that Iran has deployed unmanned surveillance vehicles, real-time commercial satellite imagery, and night vision equipment against the smugglers - and that some of this equipment was supplied by the West.

Iran has been particularly blighted by the $4 billion Afghan opium trade. The Taliban receive money and arms from heroin smugglers in return for protecting their poppy fields and trade routes. Typically, the smugglers pack bails of raw opium or semi-processed heroin onto trucks or camel trains in Pakistan and then try to cross Iran’s south-eastern border. Once in Iran, the heroin travels north-west towards Europe via Turkey, but hundreds of thousands of young Iranians have become addicted en route. Parts of the south-eastern state of Sistan-Balochistan are a virtual war zone due to battles between state forces and heavily armed smugglers. Thousands of Iranian security forces have been killed in these encounters.

The INCSR report made no reference to an alarming development in the drugs war, one that threatens the political stability. It is Jundallah, a rebel group fighting for an autonomous Balochistan, but one clearly connected to the heroin rings. Jundallah is drawn from Iran’s Baloch minority, a mostly Sunni ethnic group, which straddles the Iran-Pakistan border. Some in the US and Pakistan have suggested the Baloch rebels are a tool of the Central Intelligence Agency, perhaps controlled from the CIA’s station in Muscat, but the Iranians have another theory: Saudi Arabia is behind Jundallah.

The battle for Pakistan

A third reason that Iran dislikes the Taliban is because it sees the militia as a tool of Arab influence in West Asia. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were among only three countries, the other being Pakistan, to recognize the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan. The name “Taliban” - the students - stems from the original Taliban having studied at Saudi-funded religious institutions set up in Pakistan in the 1980s. Despite the Taliban’s many atrocities, Riyadh only broke relations with the Taliban government two weeks after 9/11.

Iran sees a Saudi hand in Jundallah, another Sunni group connected to the Taliban and its opium revenue. On 22 October 2008, Press TV, a mouthpiece of the Iranian government, published a commentary entitled, “The princes of shadows: How to sponsor terrorism Saudi style.” Its author, Arash Parsa, accused Arab governments of colluding with Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) in the Jundallah rebellion.

Parsa queried the ease with which reporters from the Dubai-based al-Arabiya television arranged interviews with Abdul Malik Rigi, Jundallah’s leader, even though Pakistan has been unable to trace him. Al-Arabiya referred to the group as a “popular resistance movement” and broadcasted footage of Jundallah beheading captured Iranian servicemen, prompting Iran to expel al-Arabiya’s Tehran bureau chief. Parsa went on to allege that Pakistan’s ISI is financially supported by Riyadh and is in league with Jundallah.

Iran is locked in a battle with the Saudis for influence in Pakistan. Tehran is favorably impressed by Pakistan’s new president Asif Zardari, who hails from a Shia Baloch family. Zardari’s prime minister and foreign minister are both drawn from Pakistan’s majority Barelvi sect, a syncretic form of Sunnism that shares elements with Shiism (such as the worship of saints). Zardari has publicly pledged himself to the war against the Taliban and has also forsworn violence against India, an old Iranian ally. Since he took office in September, Pakistan’s army has waged its most effective campaign against the Pakistan-based Taliban to date, killing as many as 1,000 militants during a summer offensive in the Bajaur tribal agency.

The Saudis, on the other hand, are heavily invested in the career of Nawaz Sharif, Zardari’s main rival. Sharif lived in well-appointed exile in Riyadh for seven years until 2007, when the personal intervention of King Abdullah forced Islamabad to allow Sharif’s return and his resumption of political life. The former prime minister is viewed with great suspicion by the US, which has great reservations about his record, not least his decision to conduct nuclear tests in 1998 and his courtship of Islamist votes.

Sharif is a vocal critic of Pakistan’s role in the war on terror and he is a leading advocate of talks with the Taliban. Sharif was instrumental in bringing about the Mecca meeting and his role helped to boost his political stature at home. Sharif is also leading efforts to persuade the Saudis to allow Pakistan to defer paying for oil shipments, which Saudi Arabia used to tolerate while Pakistan was subject to its post-nuclear sanctions.

Riyadh has so far refused to extend this “oil facility” to Zardari’s government, which faces an economy close to collapse. Sensing an opportunity, Iran has stepped in to offer a similar deal. In June Iran announced it would begin to export 1,100MW of electricity to Pakistan each year. One hundred megawatts would go to the new Gwadar deep-sea port on Pakistan’s Makran coast, despite the port being in direct competition with Iran’s India-backed Chahbahar port. Iran is also eager to pipe natural gas through Pakistan to India, though this project has been delayed by Delhi’s stalling.

Iran hopes that such endeavors will encourage peace between India and Pakistan and allow the latter to devote more resources to destroying the Taliban. Conversely, Sharif and his Saudi backers hope to preserve the Taliban in some form as a means of projecting influence into Afghanistan. This explains their eagerness for a negotiated settlement, and Iran’s opposition to such a deal.

Ultimately, the winner of this strategic tussle will be decided by the US, whose dedication to destroying the Taliban is beginning to wane. Some in Washington, like Korb, believe that Barack Obama’s new administration should embrace Iran, whose strategic priorities clearly overlap in part with those of the US. Others, however, remain convinced that Iran is a greater long-term problem than the Taliban, and that the US would be wise to balance Iranian influence with the Sunni hardliners preferred by Riyadh.

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"We got him!" screamed Afghan archaeologist Anwar Khan Fayez as he leapt from the pit beneath the towering sandstone cliffs, where the Bamiyan Buddhas once stood.

Seven years after Taliban militants blew up the two 1,500-year-old statues in a fit of Islamist zealotry, a French-Afghan team in September uncovered a new, 19-meter (62-foot) "Sleeping Buddha" buried in the earth.

The news that a third Buddha escaped the Taliban's wrath has caused excitement in this scenic valley, where the caverns that housed the ruined statues are an eerie reminder of Afghanistan's past and present woes.

"It was a happy moment for all of us when the first signs appeared. Our years-long efforts had somehow paid off," Fayez told AFP.

The team, led by France-based archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi, made the find while hunting for a lost 300-meter reclining Buddha mentioned in an account by seventh-century Chinese monk Xuan Zang.


The Afghan-born Tarzi began mapping the site nearly 30 years ago but decades of conflict and the rise of the 1996-2001 Taliban regime put the search on hold.

Then in March 2001 came the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, until then the world's largest standing Buddha statues.

Hewn into the cliffs in the sixth century by Buddhist pilgrims on the famed Silk Route, the statues had survived attacks by several Muslim emperors down the ages, while even Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan had spared them.

But with the backing of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda movement, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar declared that they were idols that were against Islamic law.

Defying international appeals, the Taliban spent a month using first anti-aircraft guns and then dynamite to obliterate them.

Saddened but with renewed determination, Tarzi and his team returned soon after US-led forces and the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban in late 2001 to renew their search for the giant missing Buddha.

What they found instead, in September this year, were parts of a previously unknown, smaller Buddha figure, including a thumb, forefinger, palm, parts of its arm, body and the bed on which it lay.

"This is the most significant find since we started here," Abdul Hameed Jalia, the director of monuments and historical sites for Bamiyan province, told AFP at the excavation site of the new 19-meter Buddha.

"At first they found part of the leg but they weren't sure what it was," said Jalia. "But when they found more, Mr Fayez screamed out of happiness and ran to our office to find Mr Tarzi."

Fayez said the head and other parts were largely destroyed, possibly by Arab invaders in the ninth century.

"We have not found the whole statue. But we can tell from other parts that it appears to be 19-meters long," Fayez said.

The site has now been covered with earth to protect the Buddha from both the ravages of the harsh Afghan winter and from the attention of antiquities thieves.

Tarzi told AFP in an e-mail that he and a number of French colleagues aimed to return next summer to dig out the rest of the statue.

Meanwhile, there are fresh clues about the 300-meter Buddha, officials say.

What appear to be the remnants of a gate complex that may have led to the statue have been discovered under an apparently collapsed section of cliff between the two holes left by the Taliban.

"Mr Tarzi's team has found signs that indicate that the big lying Buddha is there and has 70 percent hopes that they will find it," said Najibullah Harar, head of Bamiyan's information and culture department.

Amid hopes that they could one day be rebuilt, Afghan, Japanese and German teams are also stabilizing the sites of the destroyed statues -- the bigger 55-meter figure known as Salsal and the 38-meter statue known as Shahmama.

Boulder-sized chunks of the Buddhas still lie where they fell, each individually labelled. Ghostly outlines of the two figures are still etched in the rockface and twisted metal shell casings litter the ground.

Archaeologists' efforts have been helped by the fact that Bamiyan -- inhabited by Shia Muslims from the Hazara ethnic minority that was once persecuted by the Taliban -- has been a relative oasis of calm.

But ongoing debate over whether to reconstruct the Buddhas reflects the uncertainties that haunt post-Taliban Afghanistan.

"It is the desire and the wish of the Bamiyan people to see, if not both, then at least one rebuilt," Habiba Sorabi, the governor of Bamiyan province, told AFP in an interview at her office overlooking the statues.

Rebuilding the Buddhas could help foster a tourist industry in the desperately poor region, which lies 200 kilometers (124 miles) northwest of the relatively prosperous capital Kabul, she said.

UNESCO declared Bamiyan a World Heritage Site in 2003 and there have been discussions with international partners about using the process of anastylosis, by which ruined monuments are reassembled from old fragments and new materials.

"But unfortunately the central government does not want to work on it," added Sorabi, who is the only female provincial governor in Afghanistan. "It is a shame."

Copyright 2008 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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GaM
Insurgents and bandits waged deadly battle over kidnapped CBC journalist, who says she was chained and blindfolded in a small cave

A violent tug-of-war between insurgents and criminals broke out in lawless districts of Afghanistan as armed factions struggled for control of a Canadian journalist during her kidnapping ordeal, according to Taliban sources.

Mellissa Fung, 35, a reporter for CBC television, was released unharmed on Saturday, and details are starting to emerge about the men responsible for keeping her chained and blindfolded in a cave.

A Taliban spokesman denied the insurgents held her and Afghan intelligence officials hinted that her captors were criminals. But insurgents from Wardak province, west of Kabul, said their band of Taliban fighters was among the groups that staked a claim to the valuable hostage. She changed hands at least twice, they said, and at least one Taliban fighter was killed in the squabbling over her fate.


Kidnapped foreigners in Afghanistan have previously been ransomed for up to $3-million, sometimes with an exchange of prisoners. Canadian authorities have denied any ransom was paid for Ms. Fung, but The Globe and Mail has learned that at one point her captors demanded $5-million.

Ms. Fung herself made promises of cash payment, the insurgents said.

“She was telling us, ‘What do you want from me? If you want money, I will call Canada and bring you money,'” one of the Taliban involved said.

Such a prize inspired fierce competition among the motley assortment of armed groups that hold sway outside of Kabul. The insurgents' version of their struggle over Ms. Fung cannot be verified, but they spoke at risk to their own safety – and, unlike the usual self-aggrandizing anecdotes told by Taliban fighters, it's a story of how their plans failed.

Her initial kidnappers seemed to have fared even worse, succeeding only in holding her for a few days. They were apparently local bandits who jumped out of a van and grabbed Ms. Fung on the afternoon of Oct. 12, as she was returning from interviews at a camp for displaced people on the west side of Kabul.

Haji Abdul Wahab, a tribal elder who said he represents about half the 750 families at the camp, said he remembered the young Canadian journalist who visited with a driver and translator. Investigators visited the camp the next day to ask questions, the tribal elder said, but he had no information about who kidnapped her.

But authorities may have known Ms. Fung's approximate location in the early days of her captivity, because her kidnappers were allowing her to speak on a mobile phone. It's well known in Afghanistan that international forces have sophisticated means of tracking phone signals.

The Canadian Press has reported that elite commandos were so confident of her location that they planned a rescue mission, but aborted the plan on Oct. 15 because of a U.S. raid to rescue another hostage in a separate kidnapping.

That date coincides with the day the Taliban first heard that the criminals who captured Ms. Fung were growing nervous and planning to move her from Laghman province near the capital city to a location in Wardak province farther away from international forces. The Taliban said they intercepted Ms. Fung along with the original kidnappers, although they later released the bandits.

The insurgents say they took Ms. Fung to a hideout in a mountainous part of Wardak that is largely beyond government control. The province is also influenced by Hizb-i-Islami, a militia allied with the Taliban, and a local Hizb-i-Islami commander who spoke some English appears to have helped interpret for Ms. Fung.

She was initially eager to talk, but the insurgents said she later became reluctant to speak as she showed signs of worry about the situation.

“There was bombing and fighting near her,” a Taliban fighter said.

“She became very unhappy, very depressed, full of anxiety.”

By contrast, Ms. Fung seemed calm as she described her captivity in a videotaped conversation this weekend with Amrullah Saleh, chief of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service.

Ms. Fung said she was not abused, but placed in a small underground cave, connected to the surface by a tunnel.

“The cave was very, very small,” she said.

“Could you stand in the cave?” Mr. Saleh asked.

“Barely, and I'm short.” At times she was blindfolded, she said, and her hands and feet were bound with chains. Her captors used the restraints in the final week, she said, when they seemed to be growing worried.

“When did they start to become nervous and angry?” Mr. Saleh asked.

“A week ago,” Ms. Fung said.

“That's exactly when we found out,” Mr. Saleh said.

That time frame also fits roughly with the Taliban's description of when they lost control of Ms. Fung. The Taliban said they argued with local bandits about how to divide the spoils from any ransom, and couldn't agree about whether to ask for only cash or include a demand for prisoners.

The insurgents said a band of gunmen loyal to an ethnic Hazara warlord named Farotan attacked the Taliban, killing one Taliban fighter and injuring two, including an insurgent commander who escaped with minor injuries to his foot.

The Hazara warlord had fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s as part of the Hizb-i-Islami militia, but now operates as an independent strongman.

It's not clear what happened next, whether Farotan gained control of Ms. Fung or only chased Taliban fighters from the area.

Afghan security forces were detaining many suspects as part of their investigation, and authorities believe that process was instrumental in Ms. Fung's eventual freedom.

Two of the people swept up in the dragnet were the CBC's translator, Shakoor, and his brother who was working as a driver for Ms. Fung.

John Cruickshank, publisher of CBC News, told a news conference this weekend that the Canadian embassy has informed Afghan authorities that Shakoor is a local employee who has done good work in the past. A well-known figure in Kabul media circles, Shakoor has served the CBC for years. He remains in the custody of Afghan investigators who are notorious for torturing suspects.

“We are concerned about him,” Mr. Cruickshank said. “That's one of our next tasks.”
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ABC
Federal Immigration Minister Chris Evans says he has no plans to meet a group of detainees reported to be on a hunger strike.

The Refugee Action Coalition says more than 100 detainees at Sydney's Villawood detention centre are refusing food in protest against Australia's immigration laws and are seeking a meeting with Senator Evans.

"They're actually meeting to draw up a delegation of people who would be available to meet with the Minister to try and sort out the problems," spokesman Ian Rintoul said.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister says it is unclear how many people are on a hunger strike but Immigration Department officials will visit Villawood to hear their concerns.

The spokesman says two-thirds of the 126 people held at Villawood are visa overstayers who have no right to be in Australia.

He says food and water are constantly available and the people on the hunger strike are under medical observation.
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Author:Greg Bruno
Introduction

In the hunt for a new strategy in Afghanistan, U.S. military commanders are studying the feasibility of recruiting Afghan tribesmen (LAT) to target Taliban and al-Qaeda elements. Taking a page from the so-called "Sunni Awakening" in Iraq, which turned Sunni tribesmen against militants first in Anbar Province and then beyond, the strategic about-face in Afghanistan would seek to extend power from Kabul to the country's myriad tribal militias. Gen. David Petraeus, the former top commander in Iraq who now heads U.S. Central Command, has talked openly of this ground-up approach, telling the New York Times that "in certain areas local reconciliation initiatives hold some potential." But other military leaders and regional analysts warn that while reliance on Afghan tribes could prove effective in some regions, the strategy is also fraught with pitfalls that have the potential to further destabilize the country.

"There's always concerns that it has to be done correctly," Gen. David D. McKiernan, the current commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in October 2008, "or you get back into the problems of armed militias, of support to warlords, of corrupt practices."

A New Strategy?

Gen. Petraeus has ordered a formal review (WashPost) of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan that will focus on at least two themes: possible government reconciliation with the Taliban; and cooperation with neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Iran. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Budapest in October 2008, said he favored some form of reconciliation in Afghanistan, though he acknowledged not knowing "how it would evolve." A week later, during a speech at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, Gates was unequivocal in his support of bringing tribal elements into the fold. "At the end of the day the only solution in Afghanistan is to work with the tribes and provincial leaders in terms of trying to create a backlash ... against the Taliban," the defense secretary said.

"At the end of the day the only solution in Afghanistan is to work with the tribes and provincial leaders in terms of trying to create a backlash...against the Taliban." —Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates

If U.S. commanders do turn to Afghanistan's tribes-a similar strategy is already being employed by Pakistan in that country's tribal regions-it would amount to a significant reversal for Washington and for the war's planners. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested in December 2007 that international forces should "increase our support for community defense initiatives" such as the Afghan arbakai-networks of tribal militias that serve as voluntary village defense forces in the country's southeast. But the idea was initially given little credence by Brown's American counterparts. In January 2008, for instance, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, McKiernan's predecessor as commander of NATO forces, told the Financial Times that the British proposal was potentially disastrous. "What we should not do is take actions that will reintroduce militias of the former power brokers," McNeill said. As recently as September 2008 U.S. military commanders maintained that relying on tribes was a bad idea, according to a report (PDF) from the Congressional Research Service. Now, Seth G. Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, says bringing Afghan tribes into the mix may be the only way to restore stability, though he and other experts stress a tribal strategy would be only part of a potential solution.

Afghanistan's recent history has been dominated by war and central control. But this pattern is relatively recent. For instance, during the reigns of Mohammed Zahir Shah (1933-1973), and the Taliban (1996-2001), central authorities ceded significant power to tribal leaders. "Part of the recipe for stability [during Zahir Shah's tenure] was a competent, legitimate central government that had the ability to establish order in urban areas of the country ... and a tacit agreement with local tribes, subtribes, and clans in rural areas of the country," Jones says. "Finding some medium between the two is what has kept Afghanistan stable in its stable periods."

Kabul Takes the Lead

The rise in violence that began in 2006 has led U.S. commanders to explore a ground-up approach, but details on how a tribal reconciliation program might work are still being hammered out. About the only certainty, experts say, is that any reconciliation program must be managed and implemented by the Afghan government. "This needs to be an Afghan-led effort on how to engage the tribes and what the incentives are and how to use the traditional tribal authorities to help with community security and community assistance," Gen. McKiernan told reporters in October 2008. Kabul is already showing leadership on alternate strategies; it pledged alongside Pakistani officials to begin talks with Taliban groups, another strategy Washington was slow to endorse.

What we should not do is take actions that will reintroduce militias of the former power brokers." —Gen. Dan McNeill, former NATO commander in Afghanistan

Yet some observers have been critical of the Afghan-led approach in the past. In June 2006 President Hamid Karzai authorized arming arbakai in southern and eastern Afghanistan to secure the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The region is predominantly Pashtun-the major ethnolinguistic group that dominates the country's south and east. Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said at the time that the initiative was aimed at recruiting local militiamen into the national police force (RFE/RL). The minister said the program would not undermine international disarmament efforts, such as the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) and Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) programs. But Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, said at the time that Karzai's move was a "complete reversal" of efforts to strengthen the central government, and predicted that arming Pashtun militias in the south would renew tribal rivalries that had been dormant for years; some analysts believe that has happened.

Similar concerns were raised in October 2008, as talk of a U.S.-backed effort intensified. General Nur-al Haq Olumi, a member of parliament from Kandahar Province, told the Kabul-based daily Payman, according to a translation by the BBC, that distributing guns in the south while simultaneously supporting national efforts to disband and disarm militias was contradictory and potentially destructive. The Afghan paper Hasht-e Sobh, also translated by the BBC, underscored the point in an editorial: "The fact that these forces may become new warlords is not mere speculation. It is an irrefutable truth." Others fear that by arming Pashtun tribes, rivalries could be reignited; they point to unresolved conflict between the Hazara minority and nomads in central Afghanistan as a possible source of friction. Aware of the risks, Karzai has relocated warlords to stem regional violence. One example: He appointed as minister of energy the veteran mujahedeen commander Ismail Khan, who once controlled a sizeable portion of the country from his northwestern base of operations in Herat Province.

Leveraging Ancient Support

Framing these regional power struggles-and any new ground-up strategy-are a complex and baffling array of tribal actors. Pashtuns are represented by dozens of major tribal groups (though two "super tribes," the Durrani and Ghilzai, have historically been among the most influential) with hundreds of subtribes. The most sought-after partnership discussed in any potential U.S.-NATO-Afghan tribal cooperation would involve the arbakai. Akin to local police and courted by the Karzai government, the arbakai defend communities and enforce the decisions of tribal councils, or jirgas. A September 2004 report (PDF) by the International Legal Foundation describes their traditional duties: "In ancient Aryan tribes, the Arbakai led groups of warriors in wartime and maintained law and order in peacetime. Today, they take orders from a commander. They are given considerable immunity in their communities and cannot be harmed or disobeyed. Those who flout these rules are subject to the punishments set by the Arbakai organization." More recently, these self-regulating militias have been especially adept (Economist) at keeping the Taliban at bay in areas where tribal structures are strongest. Pashtun tribes adhere to an ancient code of honor and revenge known as Pashtunwali; the Taliban have struggled to promote their vision of sharia law in Pashtunwali regions, the Economist notes. But experts say it would be premature to assume Pashtun militias would be open to cooperating with international forces: Pashtun disdain for outsiders is not discriminatory.

"This needs to be an Afghan-led effort on how to engage the tribes and what the incentives are and how to use the traditional tribal authorities to help with community security and community assistance." —Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan

Non-Pashtun tribes and warlords dominating northeastern and western regions of the country are even more of a wild card, analysts say. Jake Sherman, a former UN official in Afghanistan, writes in a 2005 assessment of Afghan warlords that Badakhshan and Takhar Provinces in the country's northeast have historically been hotbeds for unofficial militias (PDF). The center of Soviet resistance in the 1980s, these mountainous provinces have been home to tens of thousands of militants, many led by independent commanders with little regard for local and central governmental structures. Jones, the RAND analyst, says one issue Western commanders will have to reconcile is that a bottom-up approach, by design, will empower local actors "at the expense of the central government." That shouldn't be a deal breaker, however. "That's just the way Afghanistan has historically worked, including in its periods of peace," Jones says.

Complex Tribal System

NATO commander Gen. McKiernan says turning to tribes will not be fast or easy; many have been engaged in isolated struggles for decades, and arming the wrong ones could return Afghanistan's warlords to power. "What I find in Afghanistan ... is a degree of complexity in the tribal system which is much greater than what I found in Iraq years ago," he said. "I would not want ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] military commanders to be trying to decide which tribe should they support without letting the Afghan government do that. It's simple as that."

Part of the reluctance for a heavy U.S. hand is perception: the United States and its allies do not want to be seen as meddling in the affairs of tribes and clans that have historically opposed outsiders. But beyond perception is sheer complexity; Western commanders may need Afghan expertise. Maps of Afghan tribal divisions in the south (PDF) and east (PDF) illustrate the intermingling factions within Afghan society. Jones says coercing tribes to side with coalition forces will require manipulating regional allegiances and tribal motivations, a strategy the Taliban employed with acumen during their rise to power in the late 1990s.

And still, Afghan experts dispute whether reliance on such networks can succeed. Peter Bergen, a terrorism analyst and a fellow at the New America Foundation, says he sees potential positives with employing a strategy similar to the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. "Ordinary Afghans tend to trust their tribal shuras [councils] to solve their problems, and these 'Sons of Afghanistan' could fill the security void (PDF) until the Afghan army and police grew in size and ability so as to be able to secure the country-a process likely to take many years," Bergen writes. But Bergen shares the concern that a reckless approach could fuel a return to warlordism. CFR Senior Fellow Daniel Markey sees another reason for caution. He says as tempting as it may be to transfer successful strategies from one war to another, Afghanistan is not Iraq. "It falls into the question of hierarchical versus egalitarian social structure," Markey says, comparing Iraq with Afghanistan. "What does bribing somebody get you? If you bribe a person in an egalitarian structure ... even if he seems to be a tribal elder, you may get almost nothing" in return.
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asahi

Afghans seeking refugee status in Japan are finding themselves backed into a corner, faced with a government that appears unsympathetic to their plight and the resurgence of the Taliban, from whom they fled, at home.

Denied refugee status and unable to return to Afghanistan, where the Taliban-led insurgency has destabilized conditions, many live in limbo.

Some have been driven to the edge, developing mental illnesses or attempting suicide.

The number of Afghans seeking refuge here started to swell in the late 1990s, as the fundamentalist Taliban took power. Formed mainly of ethnic Pashtun, the Taliban set about persecuting other ethnic groups in the landlocked country and imposing its extreme form of Islam.

According to Justice Ministry figures, 256 applications for refugee status had been filed by Afghans here at the end of 2005. Just 23 applicants were recognized as refugees, and 87 were granted special residency permits due to "humanitarian considerations."

The tally is a far cry from the number accepted in other industrialized countries. According to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, as of the end of 2007, Germany had accepted 24,236 Afghan refugees, Britain 23,565 and the Netherlands 17,296.

Despair over his uncertain future drove asylum seeker Manocheher, 34, to start a hunger strike in mid-September.

"The Japanese government does not recognize me as a human being," he said. "I'm exhausted."

For now, Manocheher has found shelter at a Catholic church in Osaka.

He belongs to the Hazara ethnic group, which was persecuted under Taliban rule, and said his older brother was taken by Taliban in the early 1990s, and he has not seen or heard from him since.

After fleeing across the porous border to Pakistan, Manocheher helped to import used Japanese cars. He arrived in Japan on a short-term visa in late 2000 and managed to extend his stay.

He applied for refugee status the following year but was rejected. He was ordered to be deported back to his country.

While he filed suit seeking a nullification of the deportation order, the Osaka District Court upheld the order in September 2007. The presiding judge ruled that Manocheher was not likely to face persecution as the Taliban regime had been toppled in the U.S.-led war.

Manocheher took his battle to the highest levels of the court system, but the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in October.

He has been granted a provisional release from detention pending deportation by the Osaka Regional Immigration Bureau, but is banned from working and is ineligible to apply for national health insurance. He is also prohibited from leaving Osaka Prefecture without permission.

Manocheher, in his severely weakened state, ended his hunger strike after 20 days following a dream in which he "saw" his mother. He had lost contact with her since last seeing her about 15 years ago.

With tears in her eyes, his mother chided him and told him to "eat properly" in the dream. The next day, he agreed to let an Afghan friend feed him.

The despair felt by Manocheher is not uncommon among Afghans. In 2002, a 28-year-old man seeking refugee status committed suicide in Aichi Prefecture after apparently agonizing over the prolonged process and his inability to pay medical fees without national health insurance coverage.

In 2004, an Afghan man received hospital treatment in Tokyo after cutting his arms with a box cutter and swallowing the blade in an attempted suicide. His application for refugee status had just been rejected.

Supporters say at least one other man is receiving psychiatric care.

"We need to create a system under which they can live without fear," said Atsuko Matsuura, a member of the Social Action Center of Catholic Archdiocese of Osaka based in the city's Chuo Ward.

Meanwhile, an official with the Justice Ministry's Immigration Bureau said the government "objectively takes into consideration the current situation of the country in question" before deciding whether to deport an asylum seeker.

"As a result, there are cases where it takes time to reach a conclusion," the official said.(IHT/Asahi: November 4,2008)
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TheAge

IN THE depths of the harsh Afghan winter early this year, Abdul Azmin Rajabi took an Australian with him on a pilgrimage to the graves of his two daughters.

Mr Rajabi placed his hands on the snow-covered tombstones marking where his children now lie, and told Phil Glendenning, the director of the Edmund Rice Centre: "I put my life in danger to help my family, to help my children, but I couldn't."

Mr Rajabi is one of 400 Afghans Australia rejected under the Howard government's "Pacific Solution". His story, along with many others, is told in a documentary, A Well-Founded Fear, to be screened on SBS next month.

He had reason to fear the Taliban in 2001. His family had connections to the previous communist government, and as if this wasn't reason enough for the Taliban to want him dead, he had given up his Islamic faith and had married outside his tribal group.

The Taliban came looking for him and captured his father, who refused to say where his son was. So he was beaten with electrical cords. "When he came home he was unable to walk or talk or sit," the son says in the documentary.. "His entire body was blackened with bruises."

He died two days later. So Mr Rajabi fled to Australia, leaving behind his wife and children, in hiding in Iran, waiting until they could join him.

How his two young daughters came to be killed by the Taliban a year later is a tragic consequence of Australia's refusal to grant this Afghan father asylum when he came begging for refuge, say the makers of the documentary.

The decision to embark on such a perilous journey to Australia, aided by people smugglers, was a hard one. "I consoled myself hoping that, although separated from my family, at least I would find a way to keep myself and my family alive," Mr Rajabi says.

Mr Rajabi, a member of the persecuted Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan, arrived on Nauru in late 2001, where his claim for asylum was rejected and he was given no right of appeal.

He tells Mr Glendenning, whose search for rejected asylum seekers is at the heart of the program, that Immigration officials told him it was safe to go back. They offered to give him $2000 to return "voluntarily", or face indefinite detention. "They told us that even if we stayed there for 10 years we would never be accepted."

So in late 2002 Mr Rajabi went back. Four months later he was at home with his family in a town outside Kabul when an explosion ripped through the walls and windows of his house. He describes in the documentary how first there was one bang, then another. Shrapnel tore through the window, killing his daughter Yalda. Rowna, his youngest daughter, died a few minutes later.

It was a grenade attack, believed to be by the Taliban who, according to local medical authorities and newspaper reports, targeted the family.

Mr Rajabi drops his head into his hands and breaks down, unable to go on.

Today he lives with the remainder of his family in Pakistan, where he can't send his sons to school for fear of their safety.

He only came to Kabul so he could tell Mr Glendenning, and Australia, in person, what happened to him. "We could only speak from our heart, which we did," he says of the account he gave to Australian officials seven years ago, but which they didn't want to believe.

Mohammed Rizae is also a Hazara Afghan who was rejected by Australia. He believes this had something to do with the translators used by Immigration officials on Nauru who were all Pashtuns - the same ethnic group as the Taliban.

He was too scared to tell the translators some aspects of his story, such as the fact he is Ishmaili, a member of the pacifist Islamic sect targeted by the Taliban and the nomadic Kuchis, who are also Pashtuns.

Mr Rizae's grandfather had refused to fight the Soviet-backed communists. He was publicly hanged by the Taliban in a bazaar.

But Australian officials told Mr Rizae there were inconsistencies in his testimony, and they were unable to substantiate his fear of persecution because Afghanistan was now safe.

So in 2002 Australia sent him back to Afghanistan, where he was forced to flee to Pakistan because his old enemies returned to pursue him again. Today his province is in the hands of the Taliban.

"Those places where we live are not and never were secure," he tells Mr Glendenning.

Mr Rizae now spends his days moving between Pakistan and Kabul.

There are many other stories.

Gholam Payador, also an Hazara Afghan sent back to Afghanistan by Australia in 2002, holds up a photo of himself and two other Afghans standing together on Nauru. The other men are now dead, he says. One was shot by two men on a motorcycle.

Mohammed Hussain, another Afghan rejected by Australia, also meets with Mr Glendenning. "I was forced to leave this country, and seeking refuge in Australia worsened my crime," he tells him.

A self-described poet who was working in a coalmine, he disappeared soon after he met the filmmakers. Eyewitnesses saw him taken out from his workplace by gunmen who put him into a 4WD vehicle with blackened windows. Mr Glendenning said he is still missing and there are grave fears for his life.
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FP

President Hamid Karzai’s appeal to the fugitive Taliban Amir, Mullah Omar, “to return home under guarantees of safety to help bring peace to Afghanistan”, proves that Taliban have become indispensible and a force to reckon in Afghanistan’s polity. Their attacks and suicide bombings have played havoc with life, property, peace and stability in Afghanisatan. They have a vengeful mindset, yet Karzai believes that he can bring them on board for the good of Afghanistan. In an interview to Geo TV on Sept 30, 2008 President Karzai said: “I propose Mullah Mohammad Omar to get back to Afghanistan. I will be wholly and solely responsible for his security and I shall be answerable to the whole of the world on his behalf.” Hamid Karzai’s offer of negotiations, and to give the NATO-ISAF forces safe passage out of Afghanistan, demonstrates his fear and frustration of US-led war on terror. But this statement has implications for the future of Afghanistan. If Taliban could play their cards well, they could be Karzai’s partners in ruling Afghanistan. Taliban should come to the negotiating table and demand general elections in Afghanistan,

under the auspices of OIC. Taliban would win the elections in several provinces. They are especially active in the seven provinces adjacent to Pakistan’s border. Hamid Karzai is an able ruler in his own right, but his position is tenous without US-NATO backing. He will run for his life the day US-NATO troops leave Afghanistan. Sensing victory in the long run, Mullah Omar is acting tough, in the belief that time is on his side. Karzai’s offer of peace talks has been rejected by a Taliban spokesman, saying “there would be no negotiations until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.” This means that fighting, bloodshed and violence will continue in Afghanistan for a long time. Since three decades when 1978, Afghanistan was invaded, by the Soviet Red Army. One million Afghan citizens were killed and an equal number injured and maimed by bombings and missile attacks on undefended villages and mines planted and sprayed on villages and towns, killed and maimed thousand, mostly children. The Afghans fought back and threw the Red Army out. The defeat of the mighty Red Army triggered the collapse of Soviet Union. With the Soviet defeat, Afghan warlords and drug mafia’s indulged in loot and plunder till the Taliban conquest of Kabul in October 1996. The Taliban fighters under Mullah brought peace, but Taliban rule was ruthless, vicious and merciless. Mullah Omar wanted to impose Islamic Sharia by the sword and rifle butts and bullets. Mullah Omar welcomed Osama bin Laden, whose 25000 fighters helped the Taliban to consolidate their hold over entire Afghanistan.
Taliban rule was harsh, brutal, obscurantist and cruel. Mostly illiterate Taliban started killing and beating the people into submission. They massacred ethnic minorities viz Hazara’s, Uzbecks, and Shia’s in the name of Islam. Afghan women were their target of religious frenzy. They tram0pled on the rights of women in the name of Sharia. Taliban are Sunni Pushtun’ keen on ridding Afghanistan of ethnic and religious minorities. Mullah Omar rose from a village Mullah to all powerful Taliban leadership. He claimed to have visions of God and Prophet Mohammad (pubh). Osama –bin -Laden was his honored guest. When the Twin Towers in New York and Pentagon were attacked by Al-Qaeda, by flying passenger planes into them, and killing three thousand innocent people, the Taliban expressed glee instead of remorse. This and their fanaticism and support for terrorism infuriated the West, especially America. President Bill Clinton ordered the air invasion of Afghanistan. During the last eight years of bombings and land attacks hundreds, thousands of Pushtun’s have been killed, but the Taliban could not be defeated. Amazingly despite US--NATO Occupation the Taliban militants have continued the resistance. Taliban attacks on ISAF intensified in 2007, and have taken a heavy toll of US and NATO troops, and Afghan National Army soldiers. About 1000 NATO and US personnel have been killed, including 700 US soldiers and officers. Thousands of Afghan National Army soldiers have died as the insurgency intensifies.Taliban insurgency has demoralized the Karzai regime, and the ISAF commanders and troops. British Army officers in Afghanistan, including top British Commander Brigadier Mark Carleton have expressed the danger of a Taliban victory, stating that ,” It is not possible to win the war against the Taliban. A deal with the Islamic militants might have to be reached to end the insurgency”. White Hall and US generals have denied any ideas of a deal, or pulling out of Afghanistan, reiterating resolve to dig in for a long stay. Rigid stance of the Taliban or US-NATO is unwise.
People of Afghanistan are paying a heavy price because of Taliban and the United States rigidity and inflexibility. On Sept 25, NWFP Governor Owais Ghani stressed that the US should talk to Mullah Omar in order to negotiate peace in Afghanistan. Urging the US to talk to militant commanders in Afghanistan to establish peace, Owais Ghani said: “They have to talk to Mullah Mohammad Omar, certainly; and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Jalaluddin Haqqani groups. The West must accept that the Mullah Omar is not dead, and he is a political reality. The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all the political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the Afghan political dispensation,” said the NWFP governor in an interview with a London-based newspaper. Owais Ghani’s proposition to initiate peace talks with the Taliban came at a time when the Karzai administration is clearly losing administrative control even on Kabul. Increasing numbers of better trained and better equipped Taliban cadres have stepped up hit-and-run operations into southern and eastern Afghanistan in order to demoralize the army and police force. Their deadly attacks have been focused on members of the Afghan army, police, government departments and the foreign aid workers. The Taliban have avoided direct confrontations with the US-led allied forces, lest they pursue them into Pakistani territory.
The Taliban fighters are better organized and their fighting skills have improved, a fact conceded by the NATO forces during briefings to the US high command. The Taliban insurgency at present is largely restricted to seven provinces, all straddling Pakistan’s north-western frontiers. This explains why Pakistan gets the blame for the heightened level of Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. American politicians and generals are talking tough, despite increased losses in men and material. They do not feel remorse or sympathy with the people of Afghanistan, who are at the receiving end of this unending war. In his speech at the National Defense University in Washington, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "The US has to act against terrorists hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. Barak Obama, likely to be the next US president has reiterated US Army pullout from Iraq, but surge in Afghanistan to defeat the militants. He firmly believes that terrorist safe heavens along the border in Pakistan must be wiped out. With the change in Washington, missile bombings by US drones are likely to intensify. Republican nominee John Macain calls Afghanistan as “Al-Qaeda central.” He has promised to” hunt Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell”. He advocates permanent US stay in Afghanistan till the Taliban are crushed. The people of Afghanistan will continue to suffer becauwe of such aggressive and hostile attitude. With the near failure of military plans, American is reviewing its military strategy. So far the US-led NATO forces have failed to uproot the Taliban fighters. Taliban attacks and increased ISAF-US casualties prove that the Taliban are gaining strength. Taliban supported by war lords and drug mafia’s have adequate resources. They are regrouping and re-organizing for attacks on towns and cities. Pitched battles prove the point.
The resurgence of the Taliban fighters, who had melted into the countryside after the US invasion of Afghanistan, has even surprised the American military strategists. The insurgency is getting bloodier and deadly and costing the allied forces heavily. Bloody suicide attacks, ambushes, roadside bombs and bold and brazen assaults on the NATO and ISAF troops in the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan are a daily occurrence. Mullah Omar and Taliban militia, have fixed the 2010 summer deadline for a complete takeover of the war torn country. Despite heavy casualties, Taliban continue to attack. They are motivated and well supplied with weapons, munitions and explosives, but defeating US-NATO-ISAF-ANA (Afghan National Army) is not a childs play. The Taliban are dispersed across Afghanistan, lack telecommunications, yet their command and control structure is working. But this is a nebulous and weak position. The Taliban have lost many top military commanders including Mullah Dadullah Akhund and Mullah Akhtar Osmani.

Misssile bombings by US drones are taking a very heavy toll of Taliban commanders and fighters. Mullah Omar is a fugitive and is in hiding. The Taliban chief is alive and functional, but in no position to assert his leadership over entire Afghanistan. Being a fanatic is one thing, but a realist another. He has been sending war directives and instructions to his field commanders from his hideout through audio-tapes, letters and verbal messages. Such a guerrilla organization is unlikely to prevail in the short term. Where is Mullah Omar? It is seven years since Mullah Mohammad Omar, vanished into the trackless terrain outside Kandahar. The American intelligence agencies repeatedly claiming that one of the most wanted fugitive, who has a $10 million FBI bounty on his head, is guiding his forces while hiding somewhere in Quetta. Such naïve intelligence findings is a failure of intelligence agencies to find the most wanted fugitive after Osama Bin Laden. If Americans catch Mullah Omar, they will put him in Guatanobay prison, disregarding assurances given by President Hamid Karzai. So Mullah Omar is not going to surface unless all foreign forces leave Afghanistan While invading Afghanistan in Oct 2001, the US stated objective was to eliminate the Taliban militia, to catch Osama bin Laden and prominent al-Qaeda members and establish a Northern Alliance led regime in Kabul. However, seven years later, as the Bush era is coming to its fag end, it has failed to achieve any of these targets, especially uprooting of the Taliban. Pentagon, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are busy reviewing earlier plans of troop surge in Afghanistan, on the Iraq pattern. They argue that Afghan surge is unlikely to work and “isn’t in the works. Rugged terrain and lack of sufficient troops have led Pentagon to consider special operations teams to zero in on Taliban hiding in caves, culverts and narrow valleys.

There are signs that the US military is scaling down its goals in Afghanistan. Senior Pentagon generals are studying proposals to dispatch teams of “highly trained special forces” to target the most violent Taliban insurgent’s and militant bands on both sides of the border.” These new proposals are an acknowledgement of senior US military brass, that large scale influx/surge of conventional forces is unlikely in the near future, because US troop commitments in Iraq. It clearly reflects acknowledgement of set backs against Taliban. There is intense debate in the Pentagon, about the best way to fight and defeat the Taliban. As the security situation worsens in Afghanistan, US military officials are increasingly arguing that an Iraq style of troop surge plan would not work in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s rugged geography, and the history of Pushtuns to rule from Kabul, calls for an urgent review of military policy and plans. In Iraq the population is urbanized and educated. Iraq is a wide flat country, with plains of Tigris and Eupharates river valleys. Afghanistan is mountainous and rugged. and Pushtuns are un-educated, wild but intellilgent. Many American writers call them “cow-boys in turbans”. They have been engaged in resisting and ambushing foreign invaders since centuries. The remote villages in the mountains are hard to reach with large formations of conventional troops. Now Pentagon generals reason that “Afghanistan is a different place and to surge forces doesnt necessarily fit”.
Pentagon generals agrees that Afghanistan is the greatest challenge of General David.H. Petraeus, the new C-in-C of US Central Command, which over sees the war in Afghanistan. Highest death rates of US and ISAF forces have compelled Pentagon to review its military policy in Afghanistan, which seemingly has failed. Washington needs to review not only its military policy, but more importantly its political policy in Afghanistan. Washington should ponder the possibility of bringing on board Mullah Omar and the Taliban. 2009 is likely to be a crucial year for the United States, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and off course for the Taliban. US and ISAF is not likely to pullout. Can the Taliban impose unacceptable losses on foreign troops when they lack air power? Air Force is the strongest factor of advantage to the US led ISAF and NATO forces. The well trained Afghan National Army of two lakhs (200000) will be a force to reckon when fully operational. It is an army dominated by ethnic and religious minorities.

It is far from reality that the Taliban can defeat and crush US-NATO-ISAF-Afghan National Army. Both Taliban and the US-NATO-ISAF-ANA are in a no win position. Taliban will become a force to reckon with, and should be brought on board. Sixty percent Pushtun’s are a majority in Afghanistan, and must not be denied their just rights. Both foreign troops and the Taliban can go on bombing and killing, but to no avail. Both Mullah Omar and the next US President should heed the advice of NWFP Governor Owais Ghani. War is no more the solution to the situation in Afghanistan. Dialogue is.
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TheAge

SURPRISED refugee lawyers have praised the Department of Immigration for moving swiftly and co-operatively to assess the protection claims of 26 Afghan and Iranian asylum seekers on Christmas Island.

Initiatives that include tree-planting proposals, tearing down fences and sending the kids to a local school have provided the first snapshot of immigration detention on Christmas Island under the Rudd Government, while the $396 million detention centre sits empty.

In the first test of how the Rudd Government would deal with asylum seekers arriving by boat, Steven Glass, a volunteer for the Refugee Advice and Casework Service who spent a week on Christmas Island, said he had never seen anything like the dramatic change in attitude of both Department of Immigration and Citizenship officers and the GSL guards.

"It was not exactly anything physical," said Mr Glass, a legal casework veteran of mainland detention centres under the Howard government.

"It was all about 'How can we help?' I have to say it took a bit of adjustment."

He cautioned that it was "so far, so good" but the government seemed committed to moving swiftly to resolving the cases.

"My sense is they are trying to avoid a repeat of the lengthy detentions of the past that went on for years and people went crazy."

The asylum seekers are almost all Afghan men, with eight under the age of 18 and most of the interviews were conducted in Dhari. Mr Glass would not discuss specifics of their claims or the route they took to reach Australia. "The claims are not necessarily all the same, but do have some common themes. Most are Hazara or Shia."

On Christmas Island, the asylum seekers are being held at the old detention centre, while the $396 million centre that looks like a high security prison built remains empty.

"The starting point is it is still a detention centre and no one wants to be in one. But a number of the asylum seekers are not behind fences and the kids are all going to the local school. My overall impression is DIAC and GSL are going to whatever lengths they can to make conditions as good as possible," Mr Glass said. "They are looking at planting trees, tearing down fences."

The asylum seekers have access to sporting facilities, television and the children go to the local school.

Susan Mayer, co-ordinator of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, a community legal centre specialising in refugee law, said the Department of Immigration approached her the day after the first boat landed on Ashmore Reef to assemble a team of volunteer lawyers.

"I think the Department of Immigration has done well in terms of the speed and commitment to getting a taskforce together, there was a sincerity with which they did it."

Under Section 46A of the Migration Act, asylum seekers arriving on Christmas Island have no right to make an application for a protection visa in Australia except with the minister's consent.

Legally, this process is an application to the minister for consent to apply.

"There has never been a process for doing this before because the previous government didn't entertain such applications. The new minister is entertaining these applications," Mr Glass said.

"Their wellbeing is absolutely fine. We have relatively good access to them, it would be better if they were in Villawood."

He said the policy of keeping people offshore for processing depended on your political viewpoint on border security but so far it was proceeding swiftly.
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BBC

A harsh winter is in store for the people of Afghanistan where many are affected by poverty and drought, reports Damian Grammaticas from the Saighan Valley.

Syed Shah is a man with a proud, striking profile: a thick, black turban perched above a long, high forehead; fierce, hooded eyes, a mouth drawn down slightly at the corners, and a thick white beard.

His face is almost as worn and weathered as the stark mountains that surround his fields.

At 80 years old, Syed Shah has lived through all Afghanistan's turmoil. He has seen foreign invaders come and a royal dynasty go, Afghan armies plunder and murder, his nation wrecked by wars.

"In all my life, I have never seen anything as bad as this," he told me, his arm sweeping round in a gesture that took in the high mountain valley that is his home.

We were standing in the middle of Syed's fields. The earth was rock solid, dry, riddled with deep cracks.

Just a few sad and withered stalks poked out of the ground, some sheep trying to chew on them.

Harvest decimated

Syed's younger brother Abdul stepped forward. "We should have harvested over a ton of wheat," he told me, "but we've only managed to get a tenth of that this year."

The brothers have 30 mouths in their family to feed.

Already they know that they only have enough grain to last two months of the coming winter, which could be six months long.

They will need food aid to survive. Afghanistan is in the grip of one of the worst droughts many can remember.

The Saighan Valley, high in the central highlands, has been hit particularly hard. All around it is like a moonscape, bare, brown fields, dry gullies, and jagged mountains stripped of vegetation.

Erosion means you can see clearly how the rocks have been formed in layers over millions of years, stripes of pinks, greys, browns and oranges running through the mountains.

Up here Afghans rely on the winter snows to recharge the ground water. But for six of the past seven years there has not been enough snow. This year was the worst of all.

Some villages do not even have drinking water. Since nine out of every 10 Afghans rely on farming for survival, the drought means a serious food crisis is looming for millions.

Of course, seven years is exactly the length of time US-led forces have been in Afghanistan, since they drove the Taleban from power.

Up in the Saighan Valley, they see the drought almost as a metaphor for the failure of the international community to bring change to Afghanistan.

Syed Shah told me that in seven years, his village has had almost no aid or assistance whatsoever.

The brothers warned us not to travel any further down the valley, as the Taleban have spread back into the next district. Just two days earlier, they had set off a sophisticated roadside bomb, in an attempt to blow up some Nato soldiers.

Like most people in Bamiyan Province, Syed and Abdul are ethnic Hazaras, no friends of the Taleban. But the Taleban are slowly encircling Bamiyan.

Taleban incursions

The two main roads linking the province to the capital have, in the last six months, become too unsafe to drive down.

Even Afghans get stopped at checkpoints, and questioned by fighters looking for anyone working with the foreigners.

It took us a bone-shaking, three-hour drive over a high mountain pass to reach the provincial capital.

There we met Habiba Saraby, the Governor of Bamiyan. She has a kind, smiling face, but her frustrations rise to the surface quickly.

She told me she has been asking the government to build a dam in Saighan for the past three years so the valley could have water.

Nothing was done even though there were millions of unused dollars in the ministry of water's budget.

The Taleban have now appointed their own rival governor of Bamiyan.

"I know," Ms Saraby said, smiling. "I've asked the Americans to put some troops in the area where he operates. They could finish this problem quickly, but nothing has been done."

Her biggest frustration of all is over food aid. She has asked for 10,000 tonnes of grain to feed people through the winter. She has been told the government can only spare half that amount.

One of Afghanistan's poorest regions, Bamiyan has also long been considered one of the safest too.

Governor Saraby said all the foreign attention goes to provinces with worse security problems, so areas like hers get no reward for their loyalty to the central government.

But it means that Syed Shah and his brother Abdul face a bitter winter.

When the snow comes and the mountain passes are blocked, their food will dwindle, but Bamiyan won't have enough aid stockpiled to feed them.

So the brothers and their family will probably question what good the foreign involvement in Afghanistan is really bringing.
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Time

A major art exhibition has opened in the Afghan capital Kabul. Given its location in a war-torn country known better for anarchy than aesthetics, this is remarkable. But even if one were to ignore that fact, Living Traditions, an exhibition of contemporary pieces from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is extraordinary on its own merits as a moving meditation on modernity, tradition, beauty and horror.

Running until Nov. 20 at the elegant Queen's Palace, in the newly renovated gardens of the Mughal era Emperor Babur, the exhibition has been expertly brought together by former Tate Gallery curator Jemima Montagu, and features modern interpretations of two genres that have long defined the region: calligraphy and miniature painting. "I wondered if it was possible to bring contemporary art to Afghanistan while at the same time going back to the traditions of the past and seeing how they still have links to modern day," says Montague, who now works with Turquoise Mountain, a foundation dedicated to revitalizing Afghanistan's cultural heritage.

Among the 15 participating artists is British-Iranian Jila Peacock, who plays with the Persian calligraphic practice of turning poetic verses into images of plants and animals. Peacock takes this one step further, breathing life into the images through mesmerizing animation accompanied by music and readings from the 14th century poet Hafez.

The work of Khadim Ali, an Afghan born as a refugee in Pakistan, incorporates classical miniature techniques honed at Lahore's renowned National College of Arts. He uses the flat planes, thick gouache, gold leaf and impeccable brushwork, all typical of 18th century Mughal miniatures, to portray scenes from the Shahnameh, a Persian epic familiar to Afghan children. Ali is a member of Afghanistan's Hazara minority, and his people's persecution by the Taliban during the late stages of the civil war is also reflected in the dark panels of his miniatures. His Herculean hero, Rustam, is ambiguous, portrayed as a demonic figure with horns and a monster's face, often bristling with an arsenal of modern weapons — AK-47s, bayonets and grenade launchers. This is an allusion to Taliban videos in which militants declare themselves to be the new Rustam. Nothing is sacred, Ali seems to be saying. Even heroes can be co-opted.

Another renowned miniaturist, the Pakistani Muhammad Imran Qureshi, has contributed an installation entitled "Changing Times." In the pools of light coming through the exhibition venue's French windows, he has painted the delicate foliage common to traditional miniatures. They were executed at different moments of the day, indicating the passage of time, but also the ravages of history: it is as if the building's marble floors are witnesses to Afghanistan's eras of light and destruction. Some are filled in completely, others are more fragmented, as if indicating the slow state of reconstruction in Afghanistan today.

Qureshi, who teaches modern miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore, was nervous at first about coming to Afghanistan. But this exhibition, bringing together work from three countries that suffer contentious relations even if they share a common heritage, has opened his eyes, he says. "We all live next door to each other, but there is no communication between our peoples. This experience may be able to bring about understanding, tolerance and the beginnings of change."
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csmonitor

Some tribes have forced insurgents from their area, but many risks remain.

With sticks, knives, and 600 men drawn from his own tribe, Hajji Malik Zahir did what the armies of Afghanistan and America could not: He drove the Taliban from his district.

Now, the United States increasingly wants to encourage other tribal elders in Afghanistan to do the same. In what is taking shape as a substantial policy shift, it wants to use tribes to bring law and order to the vast areas of the country beyond the government's authority.

The successful uprising of tribal chiefs in Iraq against Al Qaeda – the "Anbar Awakening" – has created momentum, as has endemic corruption in President Hamid Karzai's government.

The government is not competent enough to deal with the dire threats now facing Afghanistan, says Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corp., a security consultancy in Arlington, Va., that works with the Pentagon. "This means working with the tribal leaders," he says.

Such a policy promises great risk and reward. Done carelessly, it could unleash the tribal and ethnic forces that led to civil war in the early 1990s, warns tribal leader Mr. Zahir, as well as analysts. Yet his experience – and that of aid agencies and local law-enforcement officials – suggests that tribal elders can often deliver results that the government alone cannot.

In a Pentagon briefing last week the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, said: "It seems to me that, with the lead of the government of Afghanistan, engaging those tribes and connecting them to governance – whether it's at the provincial level or the district level – seems to be a smart thing to do to assist with the security of a huge country."

US fears reviving civil war

It has taken Washington seven years to get to this point, largely because of the tremendous dangers and complications inherent in such a policy.

As recently as the 1980s, America was arming and training local fighters in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet Army. The result was four years of civil war after the Soviets withdrew, as the new warlords fought each other, killing thousands. The chaos led to the rise of the Taliban.

Moreover, Afghanistan is an enormously complex web of intersecting tribal and ethnic allegiances that must be negotiated with great delicacy. Bolstering one Pashtun tribe in eastern Afghanistan, for example, could upset Tajiks and Hazaras in the north – who feel that their old foes are being strengthened – as well as rival Pashtun clans in the south.

For this reason, a consensus is emerging here and in Washington that whatever program emerges must be run by the Afghan government itself – perhaps by the police or Army.

"I would not want [NATO] military commanders to be trying to decide which tribe should they support without letting the Afghan government do that," said General McKiernan.

But the US has been left with little choice but to look at new options. For seven years, the US has sought to strengthen the central government as a bulwark against these potentially divisive forces. Despite billions of dollars of investment, however, chronic corruption and other factors have prevented the Afghan government from establishing the rule of law beyond the largest cities.

Meanwhile, the security situation is worsening. The Taliban are succeeding in bolder and larger attacks, such as the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

"For all the talk about building up the Afghan National Police, nobody believes that it will have the resources to deal with [the insurgency] in time," says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Turning to tribal leaders and their volunteer fighters, called arbakai, "is the only way to get the numbers."

Afghan arbakai push out Taliban

A year ago in Nangarhar Province, they were sorely needed. Taliban fighters had returned to the caves of Tora Bora – the last known Afghan hideout of Osama bin Laden in 2001. From Tora Bora, they struck American forces in the district. In one ambush, they disabled an American Humvee that later had to be recovered by Afghan soldiers, says Zahir, the elder.

Then, after an attack on the district headquarters itself, Governor Gul Agha Sherzai asked Zahir, a member of his administration and an elder from the area, what could be done.

First, Zahir talked to the elders of the district. Then he delivered his message to Governor Sherzai: "I told Sherzai to go back to Jalalabad, and I will be able to defend my area."

"I don't need a tank, I don't need a plane, I don't even need a single bullet," he recalls saying to the governor. "I will use sticks and I will use the guns my people have to defend themselves."

Together with the elders, Zahir collected 600 volunteers. "But as soon as they [the Taliban] had learned what we decided, they left," Zahir says.

It is efforts like these that the US is seeking to formalize and make part of a coherent Afghan strategy – a dramatic shift from even a year ago.

In January, Gen. Dan McNeill, then commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, dismissed the idea of supporting arbakai as applicable only in a few provinces, "and it's not likely to work beyond those geographic locations."

Tribal bonds: not always reliable

This remains a concern. The arbakai are strongest in the southeastern provinces adjacent to Pakistan's tribal areas, like Nangarhar. In the south, the opium trade has corrupted and weakened tribes, making any tribal-based solution there more difficult.

Many tribes will want greater support to fight insurgents, namely weapons, says Mohammed Asif Karimi, a researcher at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, a think tank in Kabul.

If so, this must be done through a transparent program where weapons and warriors are registered with the central government, allowing it to monitor and manage its tribal forces. The idea of funding and forming militias that could be deployed throughout Afghanistan, Mr. Karimi says, would be tantamount to warlordism.

The government "should support groups that succeed – don't support groups you can't trust," says Mr. Cordesman, the analyst. "They will be loyal to the central government because it is the one supplying them."

The payment need not be in guns or cash. It can also come in the form of development.

Khan Mohammed Mohmand works in Nangarhar, building roads and irrigation channels as a coordinator for a US-funded effort to give farmers alternatives to growing poppy.

Before he begins a project, he sits down with the local elders. "I tell them, 'We are working in your area as long as you promise the security of our staff,' " he says. "If you don't have that guarantee, you can't even go there, much less work there."

With it, however, they have been safe. Only once in the four-year program have any workers been kidnapped. When five staffers were abducted three months ago, Mr. Mohmand appealed not to the government or to the US Army, but to the elders. The workers were returned in five days and without ransom.

"You have to stay with them and show them your commitment," he says.

In a culture founded upon jirga – the process of sitting down and resolving disputes though exhaustive talks – there are few shortcuts to establishing the trust and respect that bring security.

Winning local leaders' trust

When Col. Jalil Shamal of the Afghan National Police took command of Sorobi district in Kabul Province last month, he was coming to an area under siege.

Within the deep cleft of the Sorobi Gorge, where the highway between Kabul and the Pakistani border snakes between bare rock walls, Taliban fighters had blown up four tanker trucks bringing fuel to coalition forces.

Earlier in the summer, the Taliban had ambushed a team of French special forces on the border of the district, killing 10 in a complex maneuver that highlighted the Taliban's growing confidence and capabilities.

Yet Colonel Shamal's first order of business was to call together the elders of the district. In the following days, Shamal attended their weddings and their funerals. On Eid, a principal holiday on the Muslim calendar, he made all his top officers attend prayers in local mosques.

"I tried to find a way to convince [the elders] that the police is at their service," he says. "I told them, 'Whatever decisions you make in your area, I accept it, but you have to be in control of law and order.' "

Sorobi police commander Shamal has depended upon the tribes to do just that, and there has been no attack in Sorobi since he took command. "The villagers promised me, 'As long as you are here, nobody will be able to attack the highway. If the Taliban come, we will tell them to leave, and if we cannot make them leave, we will tell you in advance,' " he says.

Along the highway, trucker Bacha Khan agrees that the security situation has improved. "Things have gotten better since Eid," he says.

To Shamal, the tribal leaders became the connection between the people and a government that was increasingly perceived as distant and self-serving.

Shamal says: "When the people don't come to the government and when the government does not change its relation with the people, that creates a darkness, and that darkness existed in Sorobi."
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