Hazara Nation

By Archie McLean, Canwest
Masto Khan and his family live in a tent made of canvas, mud and bits of foraged wood on a patch of land they don't own on the outskirts of Kandahar City. The emaciated goats grazing nearby are their only possessions.

``Right now, our lifestyle has completely failed,'' Khan says, glancing at the cluster of similar tents dotting the dirt field. ``There are hundreds of families here. It used to be that they all owned livestock and could feed their families. Now, if you ask them, they don't have a single heard of sheep.''

It wasn't always this way. Khan, 60, is a member of Afghanistan's Kuchi minority, a nomadic people who have roamed the central Asian plains for centuries. But a pair of droughts and 30 years of war have reduced a proud people to this hardscrabble and largely sedentary life.

In a country rife with poverty and political instability, the Kuchis may the poorest and least stable.

For years, they formed the spine of the Afghan economy. Their trading caravans bridged South Asia and the Middle East. According to the UN High Commission on Refugees, at one time they owned 30 per cent of the country's goats and sheep and most of the camels. They traded things such as dairy products, tea, sugar and wool with the sedentary people for food staples such as wheat and vegetables.

Many of them spent their summers in mountain pastures and their winters on the lowland plains.

``That life was so beautiful. We are starving for that life,'' says Kabul, a man who lives in a nearby camp.

But droughts - one in the early 1970s and another from 1998 to 2002 - killed as much as three quarters of the Kuchi's livestock. Landmines and bombings killed many others.

With few economic prospects, many Kuchis made their way to the cities.

Drought and war forced Khan Mohammed, 32, to Kandahar from nearby Helmand Province. What money he and his family have, comes from day labour in the city. A month ago, the owner of the land they live on told them they must leave.

``For god's sake, where will we go?'' he asked the owner, who plans to sell the land.

The owner hasn't relented, but Kuchis have long dealt with such problems, Mohammed says.

``We'll find another place, another way.''

Kuchis currently make up about 70 per cent of Afghanistan's 200,000 internally displaced people. Many live in camps like the ones outside Kandahar, others in UN camps in the city.

Because they are largely nomadic, Kuchis historically abstained from the country's politics, but under Afghanistan's constitution, they were given 10 seats in parliament. But despite supporting President Hamid Karzai in the 2004 presidential elections, Haji Wakil Abdullah, one of the Kuchi MP's, says they have seen little benefit.

Their best-known leader, Haji Niam Kuchi, even spent more than a year in US custody, including a stint in Guantanamo Bay.

Recently, Abdullah and the other Kuchi leaders met with Karzai, who is currently trying to shore up support for the upcoming presidential election. He promised them parcels of land, but although Abdullah plans to support Karzai, he has little faith the president will follow through.

``So far, nothing has been done for the Kuchi people,'' says Abdullah, who sports a neatly trimmed died black beard and a striking mustard yellow turban.

There is no reliable information on how many Kuchi's are in the country. Their greatest concentration is in the Registan Desert in the southernmost part of the country, where their camel trains still snake across the burnt red sand. Abdullah wants a census of the Kuchis done so they can get more representation and resources.

Their list of needs is long: basic health services, land and livestock, but Abdullah believes their number one priority is education. It's this lack of education he blames for the Kuchi's ties to the Taliban in some parts of the county.

In Wardak Province, southwest of Kabul, Kuchis have engaged in armed clashes with ethnic Hazara's over grazing land. The Hazara's are another historically oppressed group, Shia Muslims who are thought to have descended from Mongols who ruled the area in the 13th century.

The Hazaras say the Kuchis are targeting them with the help of the Taliban - fellow Pashtuns and Sunni Muslims - who want to stoke ethnic and sectarian tensions.

For their part, the Kuchis allege the Hazaras are propped up by Iran and are driving them from grazing land they have always used for centuries.

Abdullah believes the Kuchis have a role to play in the future of the country, if the government would only help them.

``The Kuchis are able to deal with every other tribe,'' he says. ``The Kuchis can even play a role in bringing the Taliban onside.''

The families living in camps outside Kandahar don't know who their political leaders are. In the short term, they want one of two things: livestock or land. If they get livestock, they will resume a partially nomadic lifestyle, if they get land, they will farm it.

Until then, it's hard for Khan Mohammed not to look backward.

``We used to have everything. Our hearts were full, our stomachs were full and our children were healthy.''

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Afghanistan is described as the Graveyard of Empires. The new US administration of Barack Obama expressed its concern regarding the dangerous situation in Afghanistan and this concern is only likely to increase as the winter season comes to an end and military operations between the two sides, that is the Taliban and the Allied Forces, are expected to resume.

It was apparent that the 45th Security Conference that was held in Munich at the beginning of February focused on finding a way out of the Afghan quagmire and an alternative route for weapon supplies because Pakistan is now vulnerable to all kinds of threats.

On January 26 in the Belgian capital of Brussels, NATO’s Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called upon the United States and NATO member states to deal directly with Iran in order to build a regional consensus that would include Afghanistan, India, China and Iran. He also called upon NATO states to cooperate with Iran bilaterally so as to find an alternative supply route for NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan.

For a long time, US military and NATO figures have striven to come up with an alternative supply route for Afghanistan because the [current] routes pass through the seaport of Karachi, or Khyber or Chaman to reach Afghanistan. Despite that they are short and inexpensive, they have become very dangerous. Today, airplanes are being launched from US aircraft carriers located in the sea to accompany freighters transporting weapons and protect them from any potential attacks from the Pakistani Taliban and Jihadists. The US military leadership considered routes via Central Asia or the Caucuses and saw that the closest point is the Port of Chah-Bahar in Iran.

Iran feels that the time is right for it to contact its enemies i.e. the United States and the Taliban, as both parties require its help in dealing with the other. But if NATO member states such as Italy and Canada agree to transporting supplies through the port of Chah-Bahar to the NATO bases in Herat and Kandahar then these supplies might be subjected to attacks or might be stolen in Nimruz by Iranian-backed armed militants. This is what happened to British forces in Basra, south Iraq; they were subjected to attacks at the hands of armed militants supported by Iran. Iran is turning a blind eye to the activity of extremist elements in the Taliban in the Afghan provinces of Farah and Nirmuz and in most cases these [elements] seek refuge in Baloch regions in Iran. Some armed groups in northwest Afghanistan have excellent ties with Iran and receive weapons and ammunition from it in order to confront NATO forces in Afghanistan.

After Scheffer’s statement, General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command said that Iran and the US have common interests in [stabilizing] Afghanistan. That was followed by the US Department of Treasury’s decision to add the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) to the list of terrorist organizations. This party, the members of which are Iranian Kurds, launches attacks every now and then inside Iran and its target is to overthrow the Imamate regime in that country. However, this step does not eliminate the internal concern in Iran since the Mujahideen-e-Khalq movement remains based in Camp Ashraf in Iraq and Washington refused to surrender the group to Iran or Iraq. Moreover, Tehran demanded assurances that this group will not reorganize its ranks and threaten the Iranian regime. The European Union removed Mujahideen-e-Khalq from the list of terrorist organizations giving its members the opportunity to claim political asylum in Europe so that the US and Europe can keep Mujahideen-e-Khalq as a playing card with which they can bargain with Iran, which has its own playing card in Afghanistan in the form of some Taliban and Al Qaeda members.

In preparation for a new US strategy towards Afghanistan, which will be finalized by April, a high-level meeting is being held this week to discuss the Afghan-Pakistan borders. The US Secretaries of Defense, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton, will take part as well as the US Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, and Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pakistan will send its foreign minister, head of military and head of intelligence to attend the meeting and Afghanistan will send its foreign minister.

However, Afghanistan continues to be Russia’s playfield. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] conference on Afghanistan had been distributed. It is due to take place on March 27 in Moscow. As part of the strategic game between Moscow and Washington, the former succeeded in convincing Kyrgyzstan to shut down the US Manas airbase in the country. Washington is opposed to this conference.

Moreover, Iran is a playing card in the hands of Moscow, and Russia does not want America to have the pleasure of having complete control over Afghanistan because Russia, in return for allowing America to prove that it can achieve its goals in Afghanistan, wants Washington to communicate with it on everything that concerns the republics of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European states close to it. In other words, it is not enough for Russia that Washington withdrew from setting up an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Rather, it wants to further strengthen the idea that it has inherited the power and influence of the former Soviet Union over these countries and that it has control over the Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran. Also, it wants to hints that it can sell long-range missiles to the Islamic Republic.

What is new however is that China has entered the Afghan sphere, standing by Pakistan and lessening the euphoria that Iran was experiencing as it believed that it will be the alternative that the US requires regarding its borders, its roads and its mercy. The ruling Communist Party of China sent an invite to the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami party headed by Qazi Hussein Ahmed who headed to Beijing on February 7 as the head of a high-level delegation made up of eight members.

China hosted US Secretary of Defense Hillary Clinton recently and welcomed Holbrooke’s mission and called for extending it to include India. China believes that without the cooperation of Pakistan, America will not win the war on terror in South Asia and for there to be stability in Pakistan, the tension between it and India must be alleviated by finding a solution to the Kashmir issue. India rejects any intervention from a third party but China fears that India will utilize the Tibet issue as the 50th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution of Tibet approaches.

The Chinese invite to the head of the Jamaat-e-Islami is an attempt to strengthen its ties with new players in the region, especially after the development that has taken place in the Swat Valley between the Pakistani government and its Taliban.

Ideologically speaking, Jamaat-e-Islami is part of the international Islamic movement and has good ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. Its relationship with the Chinese is nothing new as at the end of the 1980s, at the order of Pakistani intelligence, Qazi Hussein Ahmed visited China to convince Muslim separatists there to end the rebellion.

In Afghanistan, Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami has deep-rooted ties with Hizb-e-Islami headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and has ideological ties with Jamiat-e-Islami headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan headed by Abdul Rabi Rasul Sayyaf.

China’s stance on Jamaat-e-Islami does not contradict its stance on the Taliban in Afghanistan; it sees no problem in the Taliban participating in the government as part of a political settlement, just as in its meeting with Hillary Clinton, Beijing urged Washington to be more flexible with the current circumstances in Afghanistan. Also, because Afghanistan is lacking the modernity required for a state, China has come to believe that Afghanistan cannot be a unified state. Many other decision-making circles in the US and Britain agree that the new direction that should be taken in Afghanistan that may bring about a solution is to reduce the centralization of authority by allowing the Taliban to have some responsibility in running all Pashtun regions. This can also be applied to Hazara and Tajik areas.

The Chinese will take part in the SCO conference to be held in Moscow, and Iran and India will also take part as observers. It realizes that the fate of US strategy in Afghanistan is not set in stone in its confrontation against rebellion, and at the same time it knows that America’s long-term goal in Afghanistan might be strategic because it is the point where Europe meets Asia. The short-term goal is to eliminate the Al Qaeda organization whilst at the same time it does not want NATO member states to fail in their first military operation outside of Europe.

China has begun to strengthen its position regarding Pakistan-Afghanistan and will observe the Russian-US conflict in the region. It wants to curtail India’s support for Tibet by ensuring that there is more stability in Pakistan than in Afghanistan.

The Afghan field is packed with key players: America, Russia, and China. Pakistan will remain the fundamental passageway to Afghanistan. As for Iran, its role in Afghanistan has been marginalized by the ongoing bargaining between Moscow and Washington. We will know its direction when the foreign ministers of the two countries meet on March 6.

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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.

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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

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.

“This is really hard,” he said a few weeks after the wedding, shaking his head. “One wife is trouble enough.”
By Jean MacKenzie - GlobalPost Read the full story

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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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Afghanistan on Thursday announced presidential elections for Aug. 20, hoping a U.S. troop surge will improve security at a time when violence is at the highest levels since the overthrow of the Taliban.

Below are facts on five candidates expected to run in the presidential election. [For full story on election, click on ID:nISL383254].

Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's first elected president, since 2004:

* The 51-year-old Karzai, is an ethnic Pashtun from the same tribe as the Afghan royal family. He received a masters degree in Political Science in India in 1983 and then joined a small monarchist faction of the anti-Soviet mujahideen in Pakistan.

He served as deputy foreign minister after the fall of the Soviet-backed government in 1992.

At first supporting the Taliban, Karzai later worked from pakistan to overthrow the austere Islamists, returning to Afghanistan in late 2001 where he was appointed president of the country's interim government.

Karzai became the first democratically elected leader of Afghanistan in 2004. Endemic government corruption, slow development and civilian casualties caused by foreign forces, have eroded his public support. Karzai has hinted at running in the election, saying he has "a job to complete".

Ali Ahmad Jalali, former interior minister, 2003 to 2005:

* The 68-year-old Jalali, an ethnic Pashtun, received a masters degree in Military Science in Kabul in 1966. Jalali was a top military planner with the Afghan resistance after the Soviet invasion, and a colonel in the Afghan army.

He became a U.S. citizen in 1987 and apart from the years he served in Karzai's government, has lived in the U.S. where he is a professor at the National Defense University, Washington.

Dr. Ramazan Bashardost, member of parliament and planning minister, 2004 to 2005:

* The 43-year-old Bashardost is an ethnic Hazara who spent more than 20 years in France, where he received masters degrees in Law, Diplomacy and Political Science and a PhD in Law.

Openly criticising the government and accusing ministers of corruption, Bashardost has modelled himself as a man of the people. While briefly serving as planning minister, Bashardost was critical of the role of aid agencies in Afghanistan and later resigned under government and foreign pressure.

Bashardost is the only person who has said openly he will stand in the election and runs his campaign from a tent opposite parliament.

Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institute and finance minister, 2002-2004:

* The 59-year-old Ahmadzai, an ethnic Pashtun, received a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Ahmadzai has spent more than two decades outside Afghanistan where he worked at different universities and the World Bank.

In 2002, he served as special adviser to the United Nations and later as finance minister under Karzai. In 2005, Ahmadzai founded the Institute of State Effectiveness in the United States aimed at promoting effective government. Ahmadzai lives in the United States but visits Afghanistan regularly.

Dr. Abdullah, Afghan foreign minister, 2001-2006:

* The 48-year-old Abdullah obtained a medical degree from Kabul University and worked as an ophthalmologist until 1985. A year later he joined the Panjshir Resistance Front against the Soviets and served as an adviser to the late Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Abdullah was foreign minister of the Northern Alliance from 1998 onwards, and after Massoud's assassination in 2001, became a dominant figure in the alliance. He was appointed foreign minister under Karzai's interim government, a position he held until 2006. He is seen as a prominent leader of the northern ethnic Tajiks, but himself is half Pashtun.
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Afghanistan threatens to destroy Barack Obama's presidency. Lost in the Inauguration euphoria this week is that our celebrity-in-chief is poised to commit a massive strategic military blunder - one that will squander American blood and treasure, and perhaps mark the end of our superpower status. The United States is sleepwalking toward disaster.

Mr. Obama vows to transfer troops from Iraq into southern Afghanistan. Facing a resurgent Taliban, he wants to replicate the successful "surge" in Iraq by infusing 20,000 to 30,000 additional soldiers. In particular, Mr. Obama seeks to bolster NATO forces around Kandahar, and stem the growing tide of guerrilla attacks.

The centerpiece of his foreign policy - and that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - is that Iraq was "the wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place." He believes Afghanistan is the central front in the war on terrorism: It is in that mountainous, unruly land that America's enemies must be vanquished. Mr. Obama is convinced that, by crushing the Taliban insurgents, a decisive victory can be won against Islamist extremism. He is wrong. Sending more troops will only perpetuate mistaken Bush administration policies.

The decision to topple the Taliban regime was the right one: It provided a safe haven for al Qaeda, which enabled the terror group to launch the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The U.S. intervention dismantled its training camps. Countless terrorists were killed or captured. Al Qaeda's senior leadership was decapitated. Moreover, for years, jihadists had struck American targets with impunity - the 1979 kidnapping of U.S. diplomats held as hostages in Iran, the mass murder of 241 U.S. service personnel in Beirut, the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center, the 2000 suicide strikes on the USS Cole. By invading Afghanistan, President Bush sent a necessary message around the world: America would hit back - and hit back hard. Also, Washington dislodged a medieval theocratic state, where homosexuals were routinely executed and women enslaved, and replaced it with a pro-American democracy. Mr. Bush liberated 23 million Muslims from tyranny.

By 2005, America had achieved all its strategic objectives in Afghanistan. Yet, instead of declaring mission accomplished and slowly pulling out American forces, Mr. Bush did the very opposite. He embarked upon nation-building. Washington sought to rebuild Afghanistan's economy, resuscitate its agriculture, destroy its flourishing heroin trade, entrench women's rights and establish an independent judiciary and the rule of law.

Most foolishly, the administration helped to transform the country into a centralized unitary state, where power is consolidated in the hands of a strong president and a vigorous executive branch. The result has been a violent backlash among numerous tribal chiefs and religious leaders.

From its creation in the 18th century, Afghanistan has been an ethnic and linguistic patchwork - more of a fractious collection of bickering warlords and Muslim clerics than a coherent nation. The only form of government suitable to it is a loose federation where economic, cultural and political authority is devolved to its diverse tribal regions and provinces.

The absence of a decentralized power structure is now fueling the insurgency. The country's ethnic Pashtuns, who form more than 42 percent of the population, are seething that the Bush administration decided to prop up President Hamid Karzai's corrupt and inefficient government. Rather than fostering a power-sharing arrangement among the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara Shi'ites, the United States has put all its political eggs in one basket - Mr. Karzai. But he is not Afghanistan's George Washington. Instead, Mr. Karzai is an incompetent thug. He possesses no national constituency and has failed to impose central-government control over most of its territory. The administrative bureaucracy is a giant parasite, sucking billions in foreign aid - where large chunks are being stolen and siphoned off by greedy apparatchiks - while doing little to build modern roads, schools and hospitals. The Afghan army and police forces are corrupt and ineffective, reluctant to fight the insurgents.

The key to success is not an infusion of American troops; it is the recognition that local warlords - like in Iraq - must be co-opted and given a real stake in Afghanistan's future. The Taliban are hated by too many Afghans to return to power. In fact, a large segment of the Taliban is not even anti-American. They are Pashtun nationalists, who feel marginalized by Mr. Karzai's regime.

Nation-building is not the answer. It is the problem. America has embraced an open-ended, impossible mission. Washington's primary national interest is not to plant modern institutions on Afghanistan's stony soil, but to prevent it from becoming a haven again for Islamist training bases. For this, nimble special forces are sufficient, provided they are nearby and ready to strike.

Mr. Obama, however, promises to Americanize the war - with no end in sight. He will pour even more troops into a bloody quagmire, while the Afghan military sits on the sidelines. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires; it humiliated the mighty Soviet Red Army and brought the British to their knees.

The establishment media have cast Mr. Obama as the 21st-century version of President John F. Kennedy - a sophisticated internationalist, whose inspirational leadership and soaring rhetoric will restore liberalism both at home and abroad. They have no idea how accurate their comparison is. Kennedy was not only inexperienced but reckless. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. More importantly, it was Kennedy who gave us Vietnam, a military disaster from which America has never truly recovered.

Mr. Obama is now following Kennedy's footsteps. Afghanistan will be his Vietnam. And when the body bags of dead American soldiers start coming home, Mr. Obama's liberal base will turn against the war - just as they did in the 1960s. This will split his party and break his presidency. He lacks the stomach for a protracted campaign. He will cut Afghanistan loose - just as the liberals cut Vietnam loose.

The result will be not only another major defeat. It will mean the loss of U.S. prestige and credibility on the world stage, the moment America becomes a paper tiger - a toothless great power unable and unwilling to win its wars. This is the real "change" that awaits us.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times.

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Gul Agha Sherzai (whose name is completely made up to make himself sound cool), is a man with a sketchy past: he was one of the main warlords controlling Kandahar in the early 90s who did such a great job running the city that the Taliban either murdered or chased out of town all the men he was associated with to uproarious cheers. Since then, he’s moved north and east, netting himself a province with a truly remarkable agricultural sector—Nangarhar is either one of the most poppy-ridden, or most poppy-free, of Afghanistan provinces, depending on the previous wheat harvest and the performance of Sherzai’s own poppy farms in Kandahar—and become Afghanistan’s Man of the Year. According to local accounts, Sherzai is either “better then those who don’t do nothin for the people n alwayz think for their pocket,” or making himself rich by organizing some of the bribe checkpoints truck drives going through the Khyber (when it’s open) must transit.

There are other stories: he’s either great for building roads and trying to fix the police, or he’s corrupt for being too “usy with musicians, dancing boys, handsome musician are all around him, parties, bribery, collecting money.” He’s a mixed bag, in other words. So guess who Barack Obama invited to his inauguration? Certainly not Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. No, according to Baktash Siawash he invited Sherzai.

Obama select four Afghan politicians to participate in his ceremony which Gula Agha Sherzai, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Dr. Ali Ahmad Jalali are the invited persons.

To build off Christian’s good rumination on Afghanistan’s forthcoming Presidential election, these men are likely to run in the election. Contrasted with Seth Jones’ rather shallow defense of US-backed puppets, these names might represent the new power elite in Afghanistan, at least as far as America is concerned. It might even be a good thing, since Karzai has not yet shown himself to be an effective enough leader to break the hold of corruption and narcotics on the country (his brother probably doesn’t help).

But my big question is: how are these other men any better? Sherzai has obvious shortcomings; Abdullah Abdullah is a Tajik and was a close advisor to Ahmed Shah Massou and this not too attractive to the Hazaras and many Pashtuns; Ashraf Ghani kinda sorta broke Afghanistan the last time he tried to assert a role in its affairs (as a participant in the Bonn process); Ahmad Jalali is a wonderful scholar (he cowrote The Other Side of the Mountain with Les Grau), but who knows what his leadership skills are, or how popular he is in Afghanistan itself as compared to the American classroom?

Indeed, and Christian said this in his post, it is a practical impossibility to find an Afghan without some kind of crazy problem that probably should preclude him from assuming office. Then again, American politicians have the same sorts of problems… just, they usually have fewer bodies in their wakes. Regardless, as Baktash notes, it is indeed remarkable that these men had the honor of attending Barack Obama’s inauguration, and not the current president (and supposed front-runner) Hamid Karzai. That in and of itself is a pretty remarkable statement of faith.

So, where does that part about strengthening the central government of Afghanistan come into play again?

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AlertNet Voter registration in parts of Afghanistan's violence-ridden south will not take place until Afghan security forces can protect registration offices from insurgent attacks, a senior electoral official said on Thursday. Voter registration in south Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces started on Monday, but civilians in four districts of Helmand province will not be able to register their vote for the upcoming presidential elections because of inadequate security.

"There are four districts in Helmand ... where we are not able to start voter registration because the government has no physical presence there," said Daoud Ali Najafi, chief electoral officer at the Independent Election Commission (IEC).

Washington is planning to send up to 20,000 extra troops to southern Afghanistan this year to help secure the elections and strengthen some 18,000 mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops, who have struggled to contain the Taliban insurgency. Najafi said the IEC were pressing the Ministry of Defence to get Afghan security forces to the districts -- Sangin, Kajaki, Garmsir and Baghran -- in Helmand, where mainly British troops are deployed. The IEC says it has completed three phases of voter registration so far, covering north, central and east Afghanistan, but even in those regions, their teams could not reach three districts because of poor security. Almost all fighting in Afghanistan takes place in the south and east, which are populated mainly by Pashtuns, the traditionally dominant ethnic group.

Many Pashtuns are angry at their perceived exclusion from power and alleged abuses by foreign troops. Najafi dismissed as rumours the suggestion that north Afghanistan, which is populated mainly by ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks, would have a disproportionate share of votes in the presidential elections, compared with the mainly Pashtun south. Access to funding and insecurity were the main obstacles preventing the IEC from gaining access to remote areas.

Donors pledged $47 million to prepare for the presidential elections, a date for which has not been fixed but is likely to be in September, at a meeting on Monday, Najafi said, adding he did not know when the IEC would receive the money. "We cannot announce the date of elections, they depend on security and financial problems and we don't have the solutions for those yet," Najafi told a news conference. So far 3,606 people have registered to vote in Helmand since Monday, and the IEC hopes the process of registering voters in the provinces of Nimroz, Uruzgan and Kandahar will take about one month. Read the full story

The Taliban are shifting strategy in response to heavy losses fighting foreign troops. The Taliban has not been able to come up with a counterstrategy for the smart bomb and UAVs, which give foreign troops an unassailable advantage in battles. The word has gotten around, and Afghans are demanding more money to take up arms and join a bunch of Taliban. The Taliban still need these large groups of armed men. Just threatening Afghans about their girls schools, video and music stores, and not having a beard, does not work unless you can show up once in a while with a large bunch of armed friends, and punish those who defy you. But over 5,000 Taliban fighters were killed last year, and about as many badly wounded or arrested. Some of these were actually working for drug gangs, who employ a lot of the groups of armed men prowling the countryside. But both the drug gangs and Taliban are united in their desire to keep Afghan and foreign troops out of southern Afghanistan, and often collaborate in that effort. They share information, and the wealthier drug lords often subsidize the Taliban payroll (Holy War or not, the Taliban have to live and that takes cash).

U.S. troops have been operating in Afghanistan for eight years now, and have established special training courses back in the United States to prepare troops for the unique combat situations they will encounter. Over 100,000 U.S. soldiers and marines have served in Afghanistan, and these are usually the instructors for these preparation courses. Most of these troops have also served in Iraq, and they know they must warn Iraq veterans to forget about some skills and tactics that worked in Iraq, but won't in Afghanistan. There are also special courses for commanders, who must be prepared to deal with tribal politics in Afghanistan, which is somewhat different than it is in Iraq. The U.S. Army has collected so much information on troops dealing with Afghans that it has created an online simulation (it looks like a video game) where players can realistically interact with Afghans in a wide variety of situations. This helps to eliminate a lot of opportunities for misunderstandings because of cultural differences.

At the same time, the troops in Afghanistan now are trying out new tactics for taking down the Taliban and drug gangs. The U.S. is expanding its intelligence operations in Afghanistan, bringing in a lot of the equipment, and specialists, who were so useful in Iraq. The U.S. Army has developed intelligence tactics that provide "information dominance" that makes it difficult for the enemy to carry out attacks (without the U.S. knowing about it), and more vulnerable to American raids and sweeps. The information based tactics concentrate on capturing or killing the enemy leadership and specialists (mostly technical, but religious leaders and media experts are often valuable targets as well). The Australian commandos have specialized in this approach, and made themselves much feared by the Taliban (who will make an extra effort to avoid dealing with the Australians). The U.S. and NATO commanders know that the Taliban leadership is in trouble, with a new generation of leaders only recently shoving the older guys (veterans of the 1980s war with Russia) out of the way, and introducing more vicious tactics (more terrorism against reluctant civilians). This is backfiring, as it did in Iraq, and the Taliban leadership is not having an easy time trying to come up with a new strategy. One strategy that is working is making a big deal whenever foreign troops kill Afghan civilians (about 80 percent of civilian deaths are caused by the Taliban, but that has successfully been played down, a real spin victory for the Islamic radicals). This has caused NATO commanders to issue increasingly restrictive rules of engagement to their troops, which the Taliban eagerly exploit to save their butts in combat.

The U.S. cultural training for troops concentrates on the Pushtun minority, which has created the Taliban (mostly from a few tribes around Kandahar) and most of the violence (over 80 percent of the Afghan heroin and opium is produced by Pushtun tribes, and lot of "Taliban" violence is actually drug related). The Pushtun account for about 40 percent of the Afghan population (12 out of 30 million), and have 25 million more Pushtun just across the border in Pakistan. There are also some Pushtun in eastern Iran, but the Iranians are trying for force all these refugees from the 1980s war with Russia, to move back to Afghanistan. The Pushtun have long (we're talking thousands of years) dominated the region. Not as rulers, the Pushtuns are constantly fighting each other, but as a force that will unite if anyone else tries to dominate them. Modern Afghanistan (only a few centuries old) came about when non-Pushtun tribes to the north (Uzbek, Hazara, Tajik) agreed to become allies with the Pushtuns in order to keep foreigners (Russians, Iranians, British) out of their little piece of the world. Although the Pushtuns were the minority, they were the largest minority, and it was understood that the Pushtuns would take the lead. So the king of Afghanistan, has almost always been a Pushtun. So is the current president of Afghanistan. But the Pushtuns believe that president Karzai is too generous to the "lesser (non-Pushtun) tribes" who backed Karzai in the elections (and political bargaining) in becoming president. The Pushtun resent the presence of foreign troops because these heavily armed outlanders threaten Pushtun domination of the northern tribes. In many ways, the current war in Afghanistan is a struggle between the northern (non-Pushtun) tribes and the Pushtun. Many of the Afghan soldiers and police are from the north, and very few of the foreign troops are of Pushtun ancestry. The Taliban is further weakened by the fact that most Pushtun tribes do not back the Taliban (on most days, such attitudes seem to change with the weather in Afghanistan.)

The northern tribes remember that, when September 11, 2001 happened, they were still fighting the Taliban government that had not yet gained control over all of Afghanistan (the "Northern Alliance" of non-Pushtun tribes was still holding out). The United States sent in a few hundred Special Forces and CIA operators, a hundred million dollars in cash and a few thousand smart bombs to help the Northern Alliance out, and the Taliban were broken and fleeing the country within two months. The northern tribes don't mind Pushtuns getting the top jobs in the government, but are no longer willing to meekly follow the Pushtun lead blindly. The Pushtun see it differently, claiming (with some truth) that they did most of the fighting against the Russians in the 1980s, and that many of the northern tribes cut deals with the Russians (as did some Pushtun tribes, something the Pushtuns don't like to talk about). That had more to do with Afghan politics, (the northern and southern tribes disagreed on how to deal with Russia and modernization) than with anything else. Then came the Taliban (a cynical invention of the Pakistanis, created from Pushtun refugees convinced that a Holy War would bring peace to Afghanistan). Meanwhile, the heroin trade (growing poppies and using a chemical process to turn the sap from these plants into opium and heroin) moved from Pakistan (where the government saw it as a curse) to Afghanistan. Many of the same tribes that produced the refugees who became the Taliban, also produced the most successful drug lords. The Pushtun are many things, including well organized and ambitious.

Now both the Taliban and the drug gangs are under attack, and the Pushtun blame the northern tribes and their foreign allies. Outsiders don't see it this way, but most Afghans do. To the Pushtuns, anyone who is not Pushtun is "them." Same deal with the northern tribes, who are weakened by their lack of ethnic and tribal unity (the Uzbeks are Turks, the Hazara are Mongols and the Tajiks are, like the Pushtuns, cousins to the Iranians and Indians). Thus no matter how successful the Taliban might be in the south, among their fellow Pushtun (many of them anti-Taliban), they still have to face the northern tribes, who now have powerful foreign allies that proved invincible in 2001, and can do so again if called on.

The Taliban are trying to adopt the Iraq "bombs not bullets" strategy against the unbeatable foreign troops. The use of roadside and suicide bombings are up. But these tactics don't kill enough foreign troops to make a difference, unless the foreign media can be manipulated into declaring the bombing losses as proof that the war in Afghanistan is hopeless. The Taliban are having some success from that, but victory is elusive. That's because the foreign troops themselves know that the Taliban are playing a weak hand and this story keeps getting out to confuse a public accustomed to all the gloom and doom reporting about Afghanistan. The British and Dutch have recently conducted successful "anti-leadership" campaigns, which disrupted Taliban operations by capturing or killing leaders and destroying bases (caches of weapons, food and equipment) and destroying buildings used by the Taliban (if it was determined that the owners had willingly rented space to the terrorists). When it is known that the Taliban are forcing the locals to provide aid, the troops just go after the Taliban, and win points with the locals for chasing out these nasty "outsiders."

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Having already fought against the Taliban in his two years in the Afghan army, Gul Mohammad has little trouble picking up the tricks of his new American-issue automatic weapon.

What concerns the young soldier is whether he will be able to rely on the weapon when it counts, as he has done so often before with its Russian equivalent, a Kalashnikov AK-47, favoured in central Asia for decades.

"The worst thing for a soldier would be if his gun were to fail in the middle of a battle," says Mohammad, speaking during a break in weapons training at the base of his 205 Atal (Hero) army corps in southern Kandahar province.

The corps numbers about 20,000 soldiers drawn from across the country to fight the fierce Taliban in their heartland -- the four provinces of the rugged south, one of the most intense battlefields of the extremist insurgency.

In a hangar at Camp Hero, 50-60 troops have been split into small groups, each with a former US Marine or army soldier introducing them to M-16 rifles and M-249 light machine guns, standard-issue weapons in most NATO countries.

After driving out the Taliban regime in late 2001, the United States started to build Afghanistan a new army to replace the illegal militia forces loyal to regional warlords who were ruling the country from different power bases.

The country's previous army had been formed during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation into a force of around 200,000 men.

But it was destroyed in the 1992-96 civil war when various ethnic-based factions -- armed and funded by the United States, Pakistan and other nations to fight the Soviets -- turned on each other.

The new Afghan army brings together young men of the country's seven ethnicities in a test of national unity.

With mainly US funding and training it now numbers roughly 80,000 men with plans for its expansion to 134,000 by 2012 -- a priority in efforts to beat the Taliban insurgency that last year was at its most intense yet.

The US military has regularly praised the progress of the new Afghan army, although critics question the loyalty of the troops, a significant AWOL rate and the lack of quality leadership.

The army started leading some anti-insurgent military operations early last year, but US and NATO troops still control most of the action.

"Leading independent operations indicate that we have improved," says the commander of 205 Atal, General Sher Mohammad Zazai.

"Our enemies are no longer able to confront us face-to-face. When we go into an area, the enemy leaves that area. If he chooses to fight us, they suffer casualties."

A programme launched in late 2007 aims to replace the AK-47s with US-made rifles and machine guns, and supply the Afghan forces with Humvees, the main vehicle used by the US military.

This means the Afghan army will get around 104,000 M-16 rifles, 4,300 machine guns, 2,250 grenade launchers, 4,000 armoured Humvees and 660 Humvee ambulances, says Lieutenant Colonel Christian Kubik, spokesman for the US military training programme.

Most of the M-16s are refurbished Marine Corps weapons and about 2,200 were donated by the Canadian government, he says.

The total cost for these weapons alone is about 60 million dollars, with the Humvees costing about 760 million dollars, he says.

The Afghan government had requested the M-16s, which are considered more accurate and reliable than the AK-47s, Kubik says.

The M-16 "provides a well-trained Afghan soldier a distinct advantage over an insurgent with an AK-47 of dubious origination," he says.

This news should reassure Mohammad, the soldier getting the hang of his new weapon, who says he takes pride in being part of the developing army.

"I have fought countless battles with Taliban," says the ethnic Hazara at Camp Hero, which is in a Pashtun area.

"They are good fighters, but we are even better," he says.

"I think I'm doing the right thing, defending my people and my country."

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AlertNet The legitimacy of Afghan elections this year could be jeopardised if dominant ethnic Pashtuns fail to vote due to poor security and disenchantment with President Hamid Karzai, raising the prospect of even worse violence.

Fighting is already at its heaviest since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001, but almost all battles are in the south and east; areas populated by Pashtuns, many of them angry at their perceived exclusion from power and alleged abuses by foreign troops.

If Pashtuns feel more disenfranchised after the polls due in September, the impoverished and traumatised country could be polarised further still and violence could reach new peaks.

"Pashtuns are less likely to participate in elections because of bad security and yet they represent the largest part of the Afghan population," said Wahid Mojdah, a political analyst and expert on the Taliban.
"For 150 years the Pashtuns have been in government in Afghanistan, in every phase that Pashtuns have been out of power there has been war in Afghanistan," he said.

Recognising that Pashtun participation is key to ensuring success in the presidential election, the United States is to deploy most of its planned 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to secure the south.
"With the introduction of two additional brigades, the regional commander in the south should have sufficient manpower to ensure successful elections," said one U.S. defence official at the Pentagon, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Karzai, a Pashtun from the southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, has lost a good deal of public support due to his failure to improve security and clean up endemic official corruption since he was elected in 2004. "There's a clear sense that people haven't been given what they were promised.
It was implied there would be stability and democracy and I don't think that has happened at all," said an international analyst in Afghanistan, who declined to be named. Many Pashtuns also feel Karzai has given too much power to northerners who helped U.S. troops oust the Taliban. NORTH AND SOUTH In a country where even voting for the Afghan equivalent of Pop Idol was clearly split along ethnic lines, the next presidential election is likely to be similar to the last when results closely mirrored the country's ethnic divisions.

The first hurdle is the registration of voters which begins in the southern Pashtun heartlands in eight days time. A senior electoral official said if security did not improve in the south, voter registration would be low. In Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, the Taliban have made great inroads in the last two years, but it is still more secure than the volatile southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand. Even so, election officials were not able to reach large parts of heavily populated, but remote Pashtun districts of Ghazni because of the strength of the Taliban there, Habib Rahman, head of the provincial council, told Reuters.

By contrast, voter registration in the mainly ethnic Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek provinces of the north has already been completed without major incident. "It's completely different from the south, we could provide security for the voters even with just one or two policemen, but you cannot do the same in the south," said Mohammad Omar Sulaimani, governor of Kunduz province in the north. A possible rival Pashtun candidate to Karzai could also split the vote in the south and east and, were it not for the deep divisions among the minority groups, could lead to an upset.

"An Uzbek, a Hazara or Tajik winning would destabilise the country," Mojdah said. "It's unlikely this would happen, but if it does it will lead to many problems in Afghanistan ... the Taliban do not want a U.S.-style democracy here." Low voter registration in the south might not necessarily mean a low turnout in the election as those who still have voting cards from the 2004 poll can use them instead and officials admit it is impossible to know how many have kept their old cards. Tight security then only needs to be imposed on election day itself, diplomats say.

If close to 100,000 foreign troops and some 140,000 Afghan security forces cannot secure the country for "just one goddamn day", a senior Western diplomat said, then "what the hell are we doing here?" (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi and Jon Hemming in Kabul and David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Dean Yates) Read the full story