Hazara Nation

RW
"Note the difference in the bags" one of our GHNI staff in Afghanistan commented. "We had to pack the food in different bags while we traveled through Taliban country."

We go to the hard places.

The World Food Program estimates that 9 million Afghans face famine this winter. Afghan Members of Parliament are seriously warning the government and the international community that catastrophe is looming if nothing is done. GHNI anticipated a difficult winter and met with the Afghan Department of Disaster Preparedness to get permission to distribute food aid and find out the neediest areas. As a result, GHNI accomplished three distributions in January 2009: one in the remote mountains of Bamyan, one in the refugee camps outside of Kabul, and one in Ghazni, a dangerous south-west region of Afghanistan. Another shipment of food is on its way.

Ghazni

Deep and strong, the Taliban's hold on Ghazni keeps the people there isolated and un-reached from non-governmental organizations (NGO's). Then Global Hope Network received a hand-written letter from the south-west district governor asking for help. The winter months are harsh and families face starvation as they struggle for basic food items. So we went, and because of the generosity of many of you, we were able to bring in 15 tons of flour! Though the road was dangerous, we disguised the food bags and made it through safely. The governor was so thankful, and his people knew that they were not forgotten.

Bamyan

In the snow packed mountains of Bamyan, GHNI had to battle fierce weather that threatened to keep us from the remote villages. With great patience, we made it through the snow. GHNI works closely with the local government in Bamyan who conducted a survey for us. From this survey we had a list of 600 families in desperate need of winter assistance. They were grateful beyond words for the 11 tons of flour your contributions made possible for us to deliver.

Kabul

On the outskirts of Kabul, refugees huddle to keep warm in make-shift tents. They fled their homes and all they had in the Taliban held south. They have no where to go and no means to provide for their families. They've lost everything. Anxious for help, they look to NGO's like GHNI for any possible assistance. These refugee camps are the primary concern of the Department of Disaster Preparedness. So we went to them and distributed sacks of food. Again, your generosity has made it possible for us to reach these hurting refugees with Help and Hope. As they say in Afghanistan, "tashakor" –"thank you"!

TheAge murder suspect will be extradited to Western Australia after security guards had to force him from his Melbourne jail cell to face court.

Osman Ahmadyar, 32, of Dandenong, refused to budge from his cell to face the extradition hearing after being charged with the murder of Afghan refugee Abed Ahymad Shah, 29, in Perth.

Shah's body was found in a unit in the southern Perth suburb of Victoria Park by his housemate about 1pm (WDT) on Saturday.

Ahmadyar allegedly travelled from Melbourne to Perth before the murder and returned to Melbourne on Saturday.

Victorian police applied to extradite Ahmadyar to Perth to face a charge of murder, but the Melbourne Magistrates Court was told on Tuesday he was refusing to leave his cell and would not speak to anyone.

He had refused to speak to a legal aid lawyer, an interpreter or a psychiatric liaison officer, the court was told.

He had a major depressive illness but was not deemed catatonic.

After one magistrate stood down from the matter because he was not "robust" enough to force Ahmadyar out of his cell, the Afghan national was eventually brought to court by security guards.

He was handcuffed and looked down for the entire hearing.

At one point, he broke down when given a chance to speak.

Through an interpreter, Ahmadyar said he had spent most of his time in hospitals since coming to Australia from Afghanistan, but did not elaborate.

"I don't know what I did," he said through the interpreter.

After Ahmadyar's initial refusal to leave his cell, Magistrate Duncan Reynolds said he was not prepared to make an order to forcibly bring him to court and stood down from hearing the matter.

"I just can't see that I've got the power," Mr Reynolds said.

He suggested another magistrate might be "more robust" in meeting the police request.

Magistrate Elizabeth Lambden ordered Ahmadyar be extradited to WA to face Perth Magistrates Court on Friday.

InD A grim picture of spiralling violence and a disintegrating society has emerged in Afghanistan in a confidential Nato report, just as Barack Obama vowed to send 17,000 extra American troops to the country in an attempt to stem a tide of insurgency.

Direct attacks on the increasingly precarious Afghan government more than doubled last year, while there was a 50 per cent increase in kidnappings and assassinations. Fatalities among Western forces, including British, went up by 35 per cent while the civilian death toll climbed by 46 per cent, more than the UN had estimated. Violent attacks were up by a third and roadside bombings, the most lethal source of Western casualties, by a quarter. There was also a 67 per cent rise in attacks on aircraft from the ground, a source of concern to Nato which depends hugely on air power in the conflict.

The document, prepared by the Pentagon on behalf of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan and seen by The Independent, also reveal how swathes of the country have slipped out of the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government. According to a poll taken towards the end of last year, a third of the population stated that the Taliban had more influence in their locality.

The growing unpopularity of Mr Karzai, along with accusations of corruption against figures associated with his government, has led the new US administration to repeatedly warn the Afghan President he will lose Washington’s support in the coming national elections unless there are drastic changes. The military “surge”, say US officials, must be accompanied by significant improvement in governance with Mr Obama describing the Karzai government of being “detached” from what was going on in his own country.

Mr Obama acknowledged that the reinforcements, with the total numbers of extra forces expected to rise to 30,000, had been sent because “urgent and swift action” was required “to stabilise a deteriorating situation … in which the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and al-Qa’ida threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border.”

Mr Karzai was informed of the new deployments in a telephone call on Tuesday. The Afghan leader had complained publicly at the weekend that he had not heard from the US leader since the inauguration almost a month ago.

The new US administration had indicated that it was prepared to talk to Iran about the Afghan situation and yesterday, Italy, which assumes the presidency of the G8 this year, said that Tehran would be invited to participate in a summit on Afghanistan. The Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: “We want to consider how to involve Iran, not whether to involve Iran.”

Nato has accused the Iranian regime of allowing weapons to be smuggled into Afghanistan while drugs go in the other direction, with some of the profits pumped back in to funding the insurgency. The UN’s International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report that due to overproduction of opium there has been a rise in the production of cannabis in Afghanistan. Many provinces which had been declared by the Afghan government and Nato to be free of poppy cultivation have switched to cannabis. The report stated: “The lack of security in Afghanistan has severely hampered government efforts to eradicate illicit opium poppy; a total of 78 persons involved in the eradication efforts lost their lives in 2008, a six-fold increase over the previous year. The increase in illicit cultivation of cannabis in Afghanistan is also a worrying development.”

Meanwhile, eight years after “liberation” and the fall of the Taliban, many Afghan people still lack basic amenities. Across the country 38 per cent of the population did not have access to medical facilities with the figure rising to 44 per cent in rural areas.

The Taliban has also carried out a violent campaign against education for children in many parts of the country, claiming it was being used for Western indoctrination, and targeting girls’ schools in particular as being against Islam. The Nato report states that “access to schools for both girls and boys varies across the country and is tightly linked to security. Degree of access to girls’ schools is also an ethno-geographic factor”.

Whereas 74 per cent of Uzbek, 73 per cent of Tajik and 72 per cent of Hazara girls are in a position to receive an education, it falls to 44 per cent among the Pashtuns and, in the conservative deep south of the country, in provinces like Helmand where British troops are based, no more than 24 per cent attend schools.

ana Greece's supreme administrative court, the Council of State, has revoked a ministerial decision denying asylum to an unaccompanied minor from Afghanistan, who had entered Greece as an illegal immigrant in November 2001.

The young man, then aged just 15, and had been arrested by the Kos coast guard when he attempted to enter Greece from neighbouring Turkey, unaccompanied by a parent or guardian. His application to be given asylum as a political refugee, claiming fear of persecution in his native Afghanistan due to his racial background and religion, had been denied by the then public order ministry three times.

Specifically, the boy claimed to be a Shi'ite Muslim of the Hazara tribe and that he had been forced to leave Afghanistan due to the civil war and the religious and political turmoil in his native country, believing that he would be personally targeted if he returned. He had also requested to be given a temporary residence permit on humanitarian grounds.

Since arriving in Greece, the youth had been living in a hostel for underage minors on Crete, where he had been attending classes.

The CoS revoked the ministry's decision as insufficiently justified, finding that the ministry had failed to observe laws that obliged it to investigate the validity of the claims put forward by the boy, who as a minor was entitled to a special protective status and guarantees under international, European and Greek laws.

The CoS decision noted, also, that the ministry had failed to assign a special temporary commissioner to the minor, as it was obliged to do.

Afghanistan has been called “the right war”; “a war we can win”; “the war we should have been fighting all along.” This should set off loud alarms because it suggests that military victory in Afghanistan will be nearly automatic if we just show up with enough troops. And, once again, some of our top military and political leaders are planning ahead for the last war; in this case, they’re trying to duplicate the so-called victory in Iraq.

Any notions of certainty are both frightening and naive. Frightening, because they’re founded in the belief that all we have to do is disengage our combat brigades from Iraq and redeploy them to Afghanistan to re-create the success we achieved eight years ago against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Naive, because they’re based on the recurring fantasy that 30,000 more U.S. troops will transform Afghanistan into an ersatz version of a Muslim democracy. Like Iraq.

Of course, Iraq today — despite claims from neocons and Clinton-Bush-era nation builders — is hardly stable, harmonious or peaceful, except when compared with the sectarian nightmare of Iraq from 2005 to 2007. However, even then, Iraq wasn’t Afghanistan; not even close. To begin with, Afghanistan is a honeycomb of ethnic groups and tribes. About half its people are Pashtuns, from more than 30 different tribes; an additional 25 percent are Tajiks; 18 percent, Hazaras; 6 percent, Uzbeks; 3 percent, Turkmen; 1 percent, Qizilbash; and about 7 percent are Aimaq, Arab, Kirghiz, Wakhi, Farsiwan, Nuristani, Baluch, Brahui, Qizilbash, Kabuli or Jat. The country has been described by journalist Tom Coghlan as “one of the most conservative, opaque and dizzyingly complex tribal societies on earth.”

Second, President Hamid Karzai’s “national” government has little to do with the lives of Afghanis outside Kabul and isn’t even recognized in every sector of that city. Classic counterinsurgency doctrine depends on an indigenous government we can support, but the current national government in Afghanistan doesn’t remotely qualify, unless one considers “worthy” a corrupt government bordering on a kleptocracy, with little real power over 90 percent of the country.

Third, our military presence is a double-edged sword. No country likes to be occupied, patrolled or garrisoned by a foreign military. Our own Founders didn’t take very well to it 233 years ago. The presence of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to suppress violence and promote peace is often the match that ignites the violence and resistance in the first place. Afghanis have always opposed the presence of large numbers of armed outsiders, and our troops, no matter how well intentioned, will be viewed the same way that Macedonian, British and Soviet troops were viewed in the past.

Before the United States commits its already stretched and weary forces, financial resources and battered reputation to another colossal geopolitical blunder, Congress and the Obama administration need to begin at the beginning and take the time to absorb a little history and contemporary culture of Afghanistan. Against a backdrop of knowledge, we need to ask and answer some very practical questions about our expectations there, including:

• What can we realistically achieve? What kind of Afghanistan do we want to leave behind?

• Must it be a working democracy with freely elected officials and a centralized government?

• Would it be sufficient to leave a region able to deny terrorists safe haven?

• What agreements with Pakistan will be necessary to curb or end the ability of Al Qaeda to commute to work from Pakistan?

• What will our relationship be with the Taliban?

• What will that require? How many troops and other military resources, at what cost and for how long?

Thoughtful and careful consideration of circumstances, goals and alternatives before committing to a course of action was supposed to be one of the hard lessons we learned in Vietnam more than 40 years ago and, again, in Iraq six years ago. Absent a clear and achievable objective and a realistic assessment of the cost to achieve the objective, the United States should not commit a single additional soldier, sailor, airman or Marine to Afghanistan.

So what is a “clear and achievable objective”? A starting point would be to simply ensure that Afghanistan is not a terrorist safe haven for groups with the ability to attack the United States. In other words, Afghanistan would become a counterterrorism, rather than counterinsurgency, operation.

Pursuit of this limited goal does not mean walking away from Afghanistan or abandoning its people. The United States could still provide substantial financial, logistic, intelligence and other support to an Afghan government and security forces. It would, however, be a critical step toward a realistic approach to American goals in Afghanistan and a step away from a fanciful and messianic vision of “fixing” a nation that is simply not fixable by outsiders.

By REP. NEIL ABERCROMBIE/ Politico
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) is chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces. Read the full story

GL he Australian Hazara community protested in Canberra on February 3 to strongly condemn the continued killing of Hazara people in Quetta City, Pakistan, by Taliban and al Qaida-backed religious extremists.

The obstacles to romantic love in Afghanistan are numerous, but so too are the people who try.
It’s reassuring to know that Cupid strings his little bow as often in Afghanistan as elsewhere.

And while love is never a simple proposition, the Afghans delight in making it as complicated as possible.

Here are four of their stories:

Burqa no barrier

Aman, a 19 year old with good prospects and an attractive face, caught the eye of Fatima, the unmarried girl next door. Wrapped in her sky-blue burqa, she would arrange to linger by her gate when he left his house, and began passing him notes, which amounted to blatant seduction by the standards of the time.

Given Aman’s romantic disposition and frustrated libido, it was not long before they were an item. There were more notes, and furtive meetings at the market, when Fatima could get out of the house. They even, shockingly, held hands sometimes when the Virtue Police were not around.

If caught, it would have meant disaster, dishonor, a beating or worse.

“Several times we passed her father on the street,” Aman laughed. “He never knew. One burqa looks the same as another.”

Fatima began pressuring Aman to marry her. Aman, a student, was in no position to take on a wife, and Fatima broke off the relationship.

A few years later, once the Taliban had gone, Aman was approached by a strange woman on the street. She was quite a bit older than he, perhaps 35 or more, with a plain face and a round, matronly body.

“Don’t you know me?” she smiled. Her voice gave it all away. It was Fatima.

“I was shocked,” he said. “This old woman was my former love!

"You see,” he added wistfully, “In the three years we were together, I never saw her face.”

Romeo and ... Leili?

Afghans have a taste for tragedy, not surprising, given their history. Every child knows the story of Majnoon and Leili, star-crossed lovers who met, fell in love, and were separated by family squabbles. It ends of course, in death and madness.

Aziz was a modern-day Majnoon. He and Shukria fell in love in high school. She was a flashing, dark-eyed beauty, he a brooding Heathcliff type. They were both headed for medical school when the Taliban took over their northern city. Along with music, kite-flying and photography, the Taliban put an end to female education, and Shukria was closeted at home.

But the north was much more difficult to subdue than Kabul. Aziz went on to study medicine, and became something of a renegade. He and his classmates made moonshine in the X-ray lab, had secret music parties and continued their banned but beloved pastime, gambling.

Shukria’s father also loved a good game of cards, until he lost a great deal of money one night to a very nasty man. He could not pay, so resorted to the time-honored Afghan tradition of baad — settling debts and disputes by giving away commodities like sheep, goats or girls.

Shukria became the wife of a man older than her father, and Aziz was in despair.

“I could not give her up,” he told me one night, over an illegal bottle of wine. “I arranged to meet her secretly.” The two began an affair – no more chaste looks and smiles, they became lovers. Aziz would go to her house at night, while her husband was out drinking or gambling. Under the Taliban, they would have been executed if they were caught.

For more than a year they continued their liaison dangereuse. Then Shukria vanished.

Aziz suspected that her husband had found out and murdered her. Honor killings are still frequent in Afghanistan, and are seldom punished.

He had no word for seven years. By then the Taliban had toppled, and the wonders of the modern age had come to Kabul. Aziz, who in the interim had become a doctor, learned English and turned into a computer whiz, was online late one evening when he received an e-mail from Shukria. She was in London, sans husband, and wanted to establish contact.

Yahoo became their motel room in cyberspace, and they chatted for hours. Sometimes he would arrive for work red-eyed and unshaven, having stayed up all night with his London lady love.

“So go and marry her,” I suggested. He just shook his head. “She is not for me,” was all he would say.

Perhaps the taint of scandal still clung to the pair, or perhaps Aziz had grown too comfortable with his role as tragic hero. They never saw each other again.

Childhood sweethearts

Sometimes things do work out, in an Afghan sort of way.

Rahman and Belquis were first cousins, and had grown up together. Childhood playmates, they realized when they reached puberty that they had also formed a deeper attachment.

First cousins marry all the time in Afghanistan. It cuts down on bride prices, and you know you’re marrying into a good family. Doctors warn in vain of genetic consequences, but a hefty percentage of all marriages are between relatives.

Rahman could not say that he wanted to marry Belquis – such directness in matters of the heart is frowned upon. Instead, he began to make noises that it was time to find him a wife. When, as expected, his mother suggested Belquis, he pretended reluctance, but finally agreed. That was enough to seal the deal. They were duly affianced.

Then the trouble started. As cousins, they could meet, talk, even touch, but as fiances, they were not allowed to see each other or even to correspond for the next three years. Rahman’s mother would make visits, and occasionally bring him a photo, but he could not so much as hear Belquis’s voice.

Finally, the day arrived. Afghan weddings are almost invariably segregated. The men are on one floor, the women on another. The men dance the furious atan, the women sit and chatter about children, housework, or, of course, men.

Rahman and Belquis saw each other only late that night, when the mullah came to recite the nikaa, or blessing. They kissed the Koran, sat under a veil and looked together into a mirror, where their eyes could meet for the first time in three years.

The pair are happily married, with a healthy baby boy who looks just like both of them.

Love and other disasters

A final, cautionary tale: Be careful what you wish for.

Gul Ahmad was working in his father’s fabric store in Kandahar when Fawzia came in. They began speaking. He made a bold proposition – could he see her face? So she raised her burqa, and a spark caught fire — the two were in love.

But soon after, Gul Ahmad was forced to join the Taliban — his family having been "taxed" one son for the cause. He spent several months with the group, until the American invasion set him free. He made a run for home, to marry Fawzia.

In the meantime, his father had arranged for his engagement to a cousin. He tried to refuse, but the deal had been made. His Gul Ahmad wanted Fawzia to become his second wife — Afghans by law are allowed four.

But Fawzia was heartbroken. Her family would not agree to the less prestigious second-wife position, and said no to the match. Fawzia refused to marry anyone but Gul Ahmad.

The standoff continued for more than six years. The two could not meet, but in the remarkable post-Taliban freedom, he was able to speak to her by phone, sometimes as many as 10 times a day.

Just a few months ago, Fawzia’s father finally relented, most likely because the poor girl was getting a bit long in the tooth to fetch a good bride price.

Gul Ahmad scraped together the $20,000 needed for a wedding, and he now lives with both wives in his family compound.

AgNews More than 80 percent of Afghanistan’s livestock production, consisting primarily of sheep and goats with a smattering of cattle, originates with that country’s traditional nomadic herdsmen, the Kuchi.

For 2 ½ years, the Texas A&M System has been involved in a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded agriculture project to help the Kuchi (pronounced koo-chee), who number about 3 million throughout Afghanistan, improve their livelihood.

The Pastoral Engagement, Adaptation and Capacity Enhancement, or PEACE, project was created to help the Kuchi improve livestock production, manage rangeland and natural resources, and use modern technology to their advantage. The project also helps them address tribal clashes by using conflict resolution techniques.

“There’s a renewed emphasis in Washington toward putting time and resources, including non-military assistance, into Afghanistan to help stabilize that country and secure the future for the Afghan people,” said Dr. Edwin Price, director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture. “The PEACE project has been working toward that goal, as well as helping secure our own peace by improving grass-roots relations with the Afghans.”

Drs. Catherine Schloeder and Michael Jacobs, research scientists with Texas A&M’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, have been working on the project since the fall of 2006. The pair previously spent almost a decade working with a non-profit organization helping nomadic herders in Ethiopia and communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“We chose Catherine and Michael for the PEACE project because they were familiar with working in challenging environments and had the scientific and social background to help the Kuchi,” said Dr. Steven Whisenant, head of the college’s department of ecosystem science and management.

Whisenent said other project partners include the Texas AgriLife Research Center for Natural Resource Information Technology, University of California-Davis, Mercy Corps, Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Temple, and the Borlaug Institute.

"Efforts like the PEACE program require collaborations among many individuals,” Whisenant said. “The breadth of expertise within the university and Texas AgriLife Research make it possible to bring novel ideas to solve real-world problems.”

“Basically what we’ve been doing through the project is helping the Kuchi reduce the variety of risks associated with their livelihood, producing and selling livestock,” said Jacobs, who serves as lead researcher and chief of party for the project.

Years of conflict and drought have severely affected Afghanistan’s livestock sector, Jacobs said. Improving it depends on the Kuchi developing better rangeland management techniques, improving their animal production practices and enhancing how they market their livestock.

“Another very important aspect of the project’s risk-management work in Afghanistan is providing help with conflict resolution,” Jacobs said.

For years, the Kuchi and Hazara have had conflicts over access to important rangelands in four provinces of Afghanistan. Rangelands constitute about 75 percent of Afghanistan’s total land area and are critical to supporting irrigated agriculture in Afghanistan’s lowlands.

Project personnel, working in cooperation with one of President Karzai’s advisors and the Independent Department for Kuchi Affairs, have provided a number of conflict resolution workshops to Kuchi and Hazara tribal leaders. Workshops address effective communication, mediation, negotiation and additional skills and techniques for settling disputes.

“The conflict resolution portion of the project has been a very important and successful effort, and the Kuchi have employed the techniques they have learned to handle conflicts at a local level,” Jacob’s said.

Livestock issues also are addressed through the project by way of “herder alliances” and by facilitating shuras at a provincial level. Shuras are traditional informal courts held by Afghan clan and tribal leaders to address and resolve issues of community interest.

The project has also been successful at employing new technology to help the herders make better decisions regarding their livestock, added Schloeder, a research scientist working in the capacity of pastoral ecologist.

“We’ve been collecting data to monitor the quality and quantity of forage on Afghanistan’s rangelands, Schloeder said. “We’re showing the Kuchi how modern technology can facilitate the decision-making process with respect to when and where to move their livestock, and when to sell them.”

Schloeder said one of the most important new technologies being employed through the project is a livestock early warning system. The system, developed by rangeland and livestock specialists from Texas A&M, was first used in conjunction with another USAID-funded project serving East Africa and Mongolia. The work of adapting the system’s technology is being done by Schloeder and other scientists from Texas A&M and AgriLife Research.

The system uses satellite-based weather technology in combination with field data to provide information on forage conditions for livestock, enabling pastoral communities to reduce the negative effects of weather, especially drought. It provides timely information on rangeland productivity and can predict the anticipated quantity of rangeland forage as long as 90 days in advance.

Due to security issues and other limitations, data collection has been focused on 10 provinces in the central highlands and northern portion of Afghanistan, Schloeder said.

“Using data from the early warning system, Kuchi herders will be able to better protect their livestock and understand where and when rangeland conditions are changing and what they need to do to adjust to those changes,” she said.

Since October 2006, the project has been collecting rangeland information in accessible provinces during the forage growing seasons, Schloeder said. Sufficient data has now been collected to make predictions for the Kuchi to use for this coming growing season, March through July.

Data collection has been accomplished with the help of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, graduates from the Kabul University and Kuchi herders and leaders.

Schloeder said another important piece of technology introduced through the project has been near-infrared spectrometry. This technology is being used to assess the nutritional quality of Afghanistan’s rangeland vegetation, producing a “spectral profile” of crude protein and digestible organic matter in forages faster and cheaper than more traditional analytical methods.

“Since we’ve been in Afghanistan, we’ve engaged Kuchi leaders and herders and over time have gained their trust,” said Jacobs. “They are very appreciative of our help and have been cooperating with us and working hard to build up the Afghan livestock sector. This is one of the true success stories coming out of that country.”

“The economic and social benefits of international agriculture programs like these are important to the stability of the countries they serve,” said Price. “Dr. Norman Borlaug, for whom our institute is named, has said many times that the destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind. And a decent standard of living is what the PEACE project is helping the Kuchi achieve.”

Borlaug, a distinguished professor at Texas A&M since 1984, is known as the father of the Green Revolution, and has received both the Nobel Peace Prize and Congressional Gold Medal.

TheNation As the coalition I'm working with--Get Afghanistan Right--continues to make the case that the Obama administration would be wise to rethink its plan to escalate militarily in Afghanistan, I've tried to engage the arguments made by some feminists and human rights groups who believe that such an escalation is necessary to protect Afghani women and girls. I share their horror when I read stories like this one by New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins describing an acid attack against girls and women--students and their teachers--at the Mirwais School for Girls. But how will escalation or increased US troop presence improve their security or make their lives better?

I thought it would be important to speak with someone who has experience working on the ground with Afghan women's organizations. Kavita Ramdas is President and CEO of the Global Fund for Women. For 15 years she has worked with groups like the Afghan Institute for Learning--which serves about 350,000 women and children in their schools, health care centers, and human rights programs.

This is what Kavita said:

We're hearing from groups we've worked with for over a 15 year period now, on the ground inside Afghanistan and with Afghan women's groups and Pakistan as well.

First, I think it's remarkable that our approach to foreign policy --not just for the last eight years, but with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan in general over the last thirty years--has been almost entirely military focused. There hasn't been any willingness to take a cold hard look at how effective or ineffective that strategy has been in whether or not it has helped stabilize the country. And there has been much less attention paid to whether this militaristic approach has done anything positive for the women of Afghanistan. It's doubtful whether America's foreign policy has ever had the welfare of Afghan women at heart. As many Afghani women have said to us, 'You know, you didn't even think about us 25 years ago,' and then all of a sudden post 9-11, we're sending troops to Afghanistan and ostensibly we're very concerned about women. But there's very little willingness to really look at the implications of a military strategy on women's security. It is very important to begin with the following question: If the strategies that we used up to this point have not succeeded in ensuring the safety and well being of women and girls, what makes us think that increased militarization with 30,000 additional US troops is somehow going to improve the situation and security of women in Afghanistan?

The second question is, what has been the role of the existing troops in Afghanistan with regard to the situation and the security of women? In general, what happens when regions become highly militarized, and when there are "peace-keeping forces," militias, as well as foreign troops--which is NATO and the United States, primarily? In most parts of the world, highly militarized societies in almost every instance lead to bad results for women. The security of women is not improved and in many instances it actually becomes worse.

What do I mean by that? Take for example Afghanistan. In 2003, almost every woman's group I met with in Afghanistan, which was already a few years after the initial invasion, said that although they were very grateful for the fact that the Taliban was gone, the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan in general and in Kabul in particular had highly increased the incidence of both prostitution as well as trafficking-- it's not one in the same thing. Prostitution in the sense of--being something "voluntary" because very poor women and girls would come down, particularly from the countryside where villages are in a state of absolute dire impoverishment...there's very little to eat, very little production...I talked to so many women and women's organizations who've said, young girls sleep with a soldier in Kabul for $40, $50, which is more than their mothers could make as a teacher in a full month. That's the incidence of prostitution as a function of--people call it in the women's movement "survival sex." The trading of sex for food on a survival basis.

Then there is also trafficking which actually also increases because when there are military settlements, camps, barracks...criminal elements start bringing in women--forcibly or coercing them under other guises. Girls--in this case mainly from the Uzbek and Hazara tribes, as well as a number of Chinese girls in Kabul--are actually trafficked in to fill the "needs" of foreign troops. Very few Afghans can afford to actually pay for these kinds of services, so you have a situation where the main customers are the military troops.

Then you put on top of this the fact that there are all kinds of other armed militias and gangs moving around freely in the countryside because the more foreign troops there are, the more resistance there is going to be from indigenous forces--whether it's the Taliban, different kinds of mujahideen, different groups of ethnic tribal factions. Throughout history, whenever foreign troops are present, there will be resistance against those foreign troops in one way or another.

Those militias and militant groups are also armed, roaming and wandering, going randomly into villages, and targeting women as they please by sexually assaulting and raping. As for the incidents that you've been hearing about--whether it was the girls who got acid splashed on their faces that you read about in The New York Times-- these incidents have been going on for the last four or five years across the country. Girls going to school and teachers have been attacked, and under very various pretexts. Either the Taliban, mujahideen or various factions are attacking them for being "morally loose" or "promiscuous." These people are armed--and because war tends to infuse large amounts of testosterone into large groups of men, living and wandering around together--this does not create the safest of environments for girls in villages, for schoolteachers, for women of any kind--women working in the fields. And so, what we've been hearing reports of are random sexual attacks on women in villages, on girls walking to school, on teachers or other women who are working. So, attacks on women have increased, for all sorts of reasons--the most common one that we hear in the West is "Oh, these Islamic fundamentalists don't want women to work or study and so they're attacking them." But there are plenty of people who don't really care whether it's about Islam or not, they're just interested in showing their power by sexually abusing women.

One has to be very clear-eyed about why we are sending 30,000 troops. Quite frankly from a US government perspective, it's because we believe that the "bad guys"--Al Qaeda--are running riot in Afghanistan and somehow that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the extremists in Pakistan are all one in the same, and they're all collectively bad guys, so we need to go fight them.

I wish we could say to President Obama, "Yes Afghanistan needs troops--but it needs troops of doctors, troops of teachers, troops of Peace Corps volunteers, and troops of farmers to go and replant the fruit orchards. For anyone who grew up in India or Pakistan, Afghanistan was the place where you bought the best, incredible dried fruit in the world. Those orchards have been completely devastated. Afghanistan was not a country that just grew poppy for opium sales. It was a country that was forced into selling opium because it had nothing else.

So, we need a different kind of troop deployment in Afghanistan, we need a massive deployment of humanitarian troops. We need to invest in Afghanistan's economic infrastructure, in its agriculture. These are villages where people are literally not able to piece together anything that comes close to a subsistence living. Afghanistan is a country in which the maternal mortality rate is the second highest in the world after Sierra Leone. Why are we not sending in teams of doctors and midwives to train local women? We're not talking about a German Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. Instead, we're talking about--without a very clearly defined "enemy"--sending in 30,000 troops to look for this shadowy enemy and we're not even clear about what that enemy represents. Afghanistan has a very long and very proud history of having thrown out every foreign invader that was ever unfortunate enough to try to subdue them. Yet every political leader suffers from this historical amnesia, and seems to lack the willingness to look at the core structures within Afghanistan society. Afghanistan is a very non-centralized nation of very unique and independent small groups and clans that have never had a formally centralized government.

Returning to this argument that sending in troops is being done because, "we have to save the women," is exactly what George Bush cynically did in his use of that as a kind of justification. I think the Obama Administration has to be very, very careful not to fall into this trap. Yes, there is an incredible need to make a difference in Afghanistan, but more military presence is not the solution. More presence, yes. More dialogue, yes. More engagement with both Pakistan and Afghan leaders and different factions, yes. More genuine investment in the long-term economic growth and development in Afghanistan, absolutely. But none of that is what is being promised. What is being promised is 30,000 US troops and the accompanying support systems, including the Halliburton companies that will supply, feed and look after them.

This then creates another effect which is very important to remember. You then have a group of people, who are foreigners, who do not speak or understand your language or your culture, who are allegedly there fighting the bad guys, who are members of your own people. These "outsiders" feel like occupiers - they live in relative comfort with access to food -all the trappings of what looks like a luxurious life. When the vast majority of that population is living on less than $1 a day. This creates a huge amount of resentment. You walk around any of these American camps in Iraq or Afghanistan -- huge areas of land which are cordoned off--and there are SUVs and guys full of body armor and machine guns. Inside it's like a little America with the PX, hamburgers, and TV for the troops to watch whatever they want. Meanwhile, outside, Afghan children on the street are still playing with cluster bombs that were dropped by the American army in 2001--they risk being blown up, and losing their sight, their limbs, their fingers.

I think about how this country has been systematically denuded of its core resources--both human capital and natural capital, and it makes me grieve. Kabul used to be a place with incredible trees. Everybody who lives there now will tell you all the trees have gone. What Afghanistan needs is truly a massive Marshall Plan. No one is talking about that. I don't see anyone holding this government of Hamid Karzai accountable for what is absolutely endemic corruption. You talk to any women's groups and they will tell you that in order to go to a meeting in any ministry, just to get into the door, you have to pay a bribe. To go to the 1st floor you have to pay a bribe, to get into the room you have to pay a bribe. It is at a level of corruption that is truly extraordinary.... Do we want a situation in which the Afghani people will actually welcome the return of the Taliban because it will finally usher in some kind of law and order?

We have to be very careful in making these assumptions. Another question I would ask is to what degree has there been any consultation with any aspects or representatives of Afghan civil society, i.e. women's rights organizations, human rights organizations on the ground in Afghanistan, or with teachers, doctors, professionals about what is needed in Afghanistan today? Or, with others who have any sense of whether the presence of these additional foreign troops will simply serve to isolate someone who is already seen as a puppet of the Americans? Or will it give him any credibility? I doubt it will give him any credibility. And then what?

What would you say to those who say, "I agree with you that we need humanitarian troops -- troops of doctors, troops of midwives, etc. But we can't do that until there's more security and the only way to get more security is to send more troops"?

I actually think that is just a bogus argument. This is not to say that these places aren't dangerous or difficult--but to Third World ears it sounds like the argument of Westerners who don't want to put their own lives at risk. When I went to Kabul in 2003, India had sent doctors, nurses, buses--and it was really interesting to see the difference amongst common Afghans, how they saw where US money had gone and where they saw Indian money had gone. Indian development aid was seen in the fleet of over 150 Tata buses--Tata is a company that manufactures buses and cars in India--over 100 buses had been sent over land through Pakistan. Pakistan actually allowed safe passage of those buses. And they were the buses that actually connected cities to each other. And every day Afghans took those buses to go to work, they used them to get around. And they had a sign--[the buses] just said Tata --and everyone knew those buses were from India. Kabul hospital has about 60 or 70 Indian doctors and nurses who were sent by the Indian government and they are assigned over there. Now, is it just that "Third World" peoples' lives are less important so it doesn't matter, so we can send them into insecure situations? I bet you if you asked the Cuban government to send doctors to Afghanistan, they would. I'm not sure the American government would like to have them there but I'm sure they would go. I think saying "we have to wait until it's secure and we can't send anybody", it's a very weak argument. And, of course, you don't just send anyone, either troops of soldiers or troops of humanitarian workers without asking what local people want and what their priorities are. You sit down, like in 2002 when different groups came together to write a constitution. You see what is and isn't working in Afghanistan. Bring all the warring factions together--at least ask--which hasn't even been tried!

We're just accepting that the way to get security is with the presence of more guns. If I have more guns than you then that makes me secure. It actually doesn't. It doesn't make us more secure. Because as soon as the other person gets more guns he's going to come and try to take you out any way. We know this from gang warfare. This is how gangs operate in urban centers of the United States. Having more weapons and more troops doesn't necessarily make you more secure.

What makes you secure is feeling that you have some legitimacy and some credibility amongst people in the communities where you live. Right now I don't think the Americans have a shred of that credibility. The US did have that credibility right after the fall of Taliban. Things had gotten so bad that even though people knew that the US came out of selfish reasons post 9-11, they were still willing to give the US the benefit of the doubt. And at that point the US moved on to Iraq--instead of investing in the rebuilding of Afghanistan--which really it owed Afghanistan after the 35 years of misery that it put Afghanistan through by "fighting a proxy war against the Russians via Afghans." We didn't commit any troops in that last hot war of the cold war era. No Americans were killed fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. But they certainly seeded a global jihad. US funds and Saudi funds supported a military dictatorship in Pakistan and put people like Osama Bin Laden and others through the ISI training camps, where they learned to fight the "godless communists". Now they have turned their sights on their erstwhile funders--the US and its allies are now the infidels.

Although it does not seem like it, I believe that there are real alternative options that could be considered by President Obama and this new administration. Given all the goodwill in the world towards Obama right now, there is a little window of opportunity, in which I believe other nations would give the new administration the benefit of the doubt. If they said, "Let's sit down with Pakistan and Afghanistan; and Iran has to be part of that conversation too and talk about what we can do to try to improve the situation.

What are the priorities of the people of Afghanistan? What do they most need at this time?"

I'm quite sure that the people of Afghanistan would not say that what we most need is 30,000 American troops eating food enough to feed each of our families ten times over.

PT (Quqnoos)-Afghanistan`s push to rebuild its shattered infrastructure received much needed support today with a further $266 million in grant financing from the Asian Development Bank

Four project agreements targeting energy, road transport, and the agricultural sector were signed at a ceremony in Kabul attended by Afghan Finance Minister Anwar Ul Haq Ahady and representatives of ADB.

A $164 million grant, part of ADB`s $570 million Energy Sector Development Investment Program, will finance a 60 kilometer transmission line from Kunduz to Taloqan, the distribution of power in Kunduz and Baghlan municipalities, the development of small hydropower plants, and a gas project in Sherberghan.

In the transport sector, a $60 million grant will help upgrade some 400 kilometers of national roads and maintain another 1,500 kilometers of paved roads.

The grant, part of ADB`s $400 million Road Network Development Program, will also provide funds to cover cost increases in sections of the Ring Road currently under construction.

In the agriculture sector, a $30 million Agriculture Market Infrastructure Project will develop market facilities and help establish standards in the livestock and horticulture industries.

The project will invest in five slaughterhouses as well as a number of small-scale packing, grading and cold storage facilities for the horticulture sector.

The project also will establish laboratories to certify product quality, provide technical support for domestic and export product markets and help build the capacity of the government to create and implement sanitary standards.

At the signing ceremony Finance Minister Anwar Ul Haq Ahady praised ADB`s focus on developing Afghanistan`s infrastructure.

"ADB`s investments are helping to provide the foundation for sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction", the Minister said.

Craig Steffensen, Country Director of ADB`s Afghanistan Resident Mission, stressed that the $266 million in grants underscores ADB`s long-term partnership with Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan is a founding member of ADB, and we are deeply committed to supporting its reconstruction and development," Steffensen said, adding that the investments in Afghanistan`s energy, road transport, and agriculture sectors can be maximized with increased attention to timely project implementation.

Japan`s ambassador to Afghanistan, H.E. Mr. Hideo Sato, welcomed ADB`s new energy sector project, which will be complemented by a $12 million grant investment project that will construct mini-hydroplants in Badakhshan and Bamyan provinces.

The project will be financed through the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, administered by ADB.

ROL From a makeshift compound in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul, professor Bruce Keith watched as thousands of young men from every corner of the war-torn country showed up to take a test.

A high score on the entrance exam, similar to the SAT, could earn them a spot at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan, a fledgling officer-training program offering bachelor's degrees and commissions with the Afghan national army.

"It's an extraordinary opportunity for the kids who are selected," said Keith, who teaches sociology and serves as associate dean for academic affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He volunteered, along with a rotating team of West Point colleagues, as a mentor at the new Afghan-run academy.

Keith is accustomed to the highly competitive application process at West Point, but he'd never seen anything like that entrance exam in Afghanistan.

On a sweltering outdoor field of concrete, proctors lined up more than 1,000 metal folding chairs.

Afghans arrived from every province and ethnic group. Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks — any unmarried man under the age of 24 could apply. They filled all the chairs.

"We had (applicants) walking several days to arrive at the military academy, just so they would have the opportunity to participate in this selection process," Keith said.

Each man got a tiny pencil, "like the size you get at a golf course. ... No desks. No breaks."

Candidates worked on their exams for hours, vying for only 270 spots and a small window to a future.

Four years later, on Jan. 25, 84 of those candidates graduated in the Afghan academy's first commencement. President Hamid Karzai presented an officer's saber to each of them. Now they owe 10 years apiece to the Afghan national army.

Every grad also carries a rare document — a college diploma — and with it, the hopes of a weary nation.

As the United States contemplates sending more divisions to Afghanistan, the country struggles to become a viable place. It needs a solid military, but also sophisticated academia. Decades of war with the Soviets, then the Taliban, destroyed the country's professional class. There's no one left to teach or trade, to build roads and bridges.

"An entire generation of engineers is missing," said Col. Stephen Ressler, a civil engineering professor at West Point who volunteered at the Afghan academy in 2007. He helped cobble together the few remaining Afghan instructors and build a new curriculum.

The men and women he worked with, Ressler said, "knocked my socks off with their enthusiasm." Though largely self-taught, their technical skills were good, and they'd learned English, under Taliban rule, by surreptitiously listening to BBC radio. Putting these professionals to work, Ressler said, will buffer a resurgent Taliban.

The Afghan academy's numbers have grown steadily since its inception in August 2003. More than 1,100 cadets will be enrolled by March, including 40 medical students and 10 women. By 2011, at least 10 percent of the student body should be female.

That's rapid progress. But against the backdrop of Afghanistan's many ills — a booming opium trade, deep tribal divisions and a U.S. presence in flux — is the academy's success just a dose of aspirin?

"I think people throughout the country see great value in the military academy," said Keith. "It's a huge cultural shift. You can't turn that over in a night."

The Army team insists the Afghans are in control and maintaining a body of students and faculty that reflects the country's ethnic makeup.

"What you have to do is put the onus of learning on the Afghans," Keith said. "It's going to be messy. It's going to have all kinds of problems, but the reality is, it's going to be better than what we brought over because it will be theirs."