Wednesday 13 July 2011

UK soldier killed in Afghanistan | UK news

  • Sunday 2 January 2011 10.54 GMT

  • Article history
British troops in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

 

British troops in Afghanistan. Photograph: Heathcliff O'Malley / Rex Featur

A soldier from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland, has become the first British military fatality of 2011 after being struck by a roadside explosion in southern Afghanistan.

He was killed on New Year's Day in Nahr-e Saraj, according to the Ministry of Defence. Next of kin have been informed, but he has not yet been named.

In a statement, the MoD said: "The soldier was killed when he was caught in an explosion while deployed on an operation to interdict enemy fighters and bring peace to the district of Nahr-e Saraj."

A spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel David Eastman, added: "He was part of an operation aiming to bring peace and prosperity to the people of a former insurgent haven, and has made the ultimate sacrifice in seeking a better life for others. He will remain in our thoughts and our deepest condolences go out to his family and friends."

The last British fatality of 2010 was of Warrant Officer Class 2 Charles Wood from 23 Pioneer Regiment RLC (Royal Logistic Corps), who was killed in Afghanistan on 28 December while helping clear improvised explosive devices.

More than a hundred UK servicemen have died in Afghanistan in each of the past two years. A total of 349 British soliders have been killed since operations began there in 2001. Nearly 2,300 members of the Nato-led force have perished over the same period. Of those, 1,444 were Americans. After the UK, Canada has suffered the most casualties with 154 killed. France has had 51 fatalities and Germany 45.

Military and civilian casualties are at record levels, with 711 foreign troops killed in 2010, by far the bloodiest year of the war so far. Attacks have spread out of Taliban strongholds in the south and east of the country into formerly peaceful areas further north.

Afghanistan's deputy counternarcotics minister, Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar, warned today that opium prices had almost doubled, raising fears that more farmers are turning to the illicit crop in the absence of profitable alternatives. The Taliban are alleged to earn as much as $400m (£256m) a year in revenues levied from drug production and trafficking, according to UN data.

Afghanistan hopes tribal uprising will bring peace | World news

  • Monday 3 January 2011 18.22 GMT

  • Article history
Royal marines attack Taliban insurgents in the Afghan city of Sangin

 

Royal marines attack Taliban insurgents in the Afghan city of Sangin. Photograph: Corporal Adrian Harlen/PA

Afghan and western officials are pinning their hopes on a tribal uprising to bring peace to the notoriously violent district of Sangin just three months after the UK left a town that had become a death trap for British troops.

The Taliban stronghold has been bitterly contested by insurgents and drug traffickers ever since British troops arrived in 2006, but today the government revealed that tribal elders, backed by some local insurgents, have agreed to stand up to the Taliban.

It was also announced that that one group of insurgents have already handed in their weapons in an attempt to join a local peace process in Sangin.

Under the arrangement, local Taliban fighters will stop attacking US and Afghan forces and will keep non-local insurgents out of the Sarwan-Qala area of the upper Sangin Valley, according to a spokesman for the Helmand governor Gulab Mangal.

Foot patrols by government forces will continue and local people will be expected to help clear areas of homemade bombs and tip off local police as to their whereabouts.

"There was no signed agreement but we believe this will create the opportunity for other Taliban fighters to come and join the government," said Daoud Ahmadi.

He said that the Afghan army, police and US forces were all represented at the traditional tribal shura last Saturday and that some of the tribal elders had been given authority by the local Taliban to speak on their behalf.

The elders were members of the Alikozai tribe, the largest single tribe in the district. The Taliban crushed a previous Alokozai uprising against them in 2007 which failed largely due to the lack of support from Nato forces and the government.

Major General Richard Mills, whose US Marines took charge of Sangin from the British in September, said this time the elders would be able to resist the Taliban.

"The insurgents have already begun to strike back savagely at those who desire peace but so far the elders remain steadfast," Mills said.

The architects of the Nato strategy in Afghanistan have long hoped that they might be able to replicate the sort of "tribal awakening" that benefitted US forces in Iraq, although a previous arrangement with the Shinwari tribe in the east of the country ended in failure.

A spokeswoman for the US-led International Security Assistance Force said that coalition was "cautiously optimistic" about the Sangin deal but were reluctant to "overblow" its importance.

"It's to be welcomed because this has been an initiative that originated not from us but from locals who decided that it was in their best interest to support their local government," she said. "Is it going to be a sustainable bit of progress? We don't know."

Separately officials in Helmand said that a group of eight insurgents from Sangin had surrendered their weapons to the government and joined a local peace process.

The group, led by Mullah Abdul Bari, gave up weapons including a rocket and four machine guns.

In a statement Mangal's office said that eleven other insurgents have announced they will stop fighting in the town of Musa Qala "because they know that they cannot win". It also said that a group of six insurgents had joined the side of the government in the district of Marjah, scene of a major operation by Nato forces early last year.

Even before Mangal took up his position in Helmand in 2008 he made clear his determination to reach out to insurgent groups but until recently has had little to show for his efforts.

But locals in Helmand did not think that the defection of Abdul Bari's group was a significant setback for the Taliban.

Family tribute to soldier killed on New Year's Day | World news

  • Monday 3 January 2011 19.15 GMT

  • Article history

Joseva Vatubua

Private Joseva Saqanagonedau Vatubua, who died in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on New Year's Day. Photograph: Ministry of Defence/Crown Copyri/PA

 

The family of a British soldier originally from Fiji who died in an explosion in southern Afghanistan paid tribute to him today, saying he was "a hugely loved man".

Private Joseva Saqanagonedau Vatubua, 24, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, was killed on Saturday near the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province.

In a statement released through the Ministry of Defence, his relatives said: "As a family we can't put into words how proud we are of Joseva. He loved his job and he loved being in the family of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

"Joseva was a keen rugby player and he was proud to play for the Army Sevens team. He was also a member of the Battalion's Fijian Choir and he has sung in Canterbury Cathedral. Joseva is a hugely loved man who we will always miss but never forget."

Afghan health system being 'propped up' by unpaid volunteers | Global development

  • guardian.co.uk,

     

    Tuesday 4 January 2011 14.58 GMT

  • Article history
An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine

 

An Afghan health worker administers polio vaccine to a child Photograph: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images

More than 22,000 community health volunteers in Afghanistan are vital to the country's health system but some are beginning to wonder if they might provide a more effective service if they were paid, and had formal work contracts.

 

From the implementation of immunisation campaigns to the delivery of basic healthcare services and dissemination of critical health messages, the health volunteers, also known as community health workers (CHWs), are "first line healthcare providers", officials say.

 

"If we are to see Afghanistan's public health system stand on its own two feet, we have to develop a system that can sustain the interest and commitment of CHWs who are, in fact, volunteers," said Suraya Dalil, the acting public health minister.

 

"If we don't remunerate their work or fail to provide facilities for them, I think we will risk losing a very precious health asset in this country," Sayed Habib Arwal, director of the community-based health care department in the health ministry, told IRIN. "CHWs are saving lives, reducing diseases and enhancing awareness about health issues. We would be unable to sustain the existing healthcare system without them."

 

Every community health volunteer/worker undergoes a six-month, free-of-charge, health ministry training course which equips them to provide basic and emergency health services and advice.

 

MDGs

The World Health Organisation (WHO) appears to back the above stance of health officials: "We really need to train more female CHWs and community health supervisors and bring them into the workforce if we are to achieve millennium development goals (MDGs) four and five targeting maternal and child health in Afghanistan," Peter Graaff, WHO representative in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying in a joint press statement on 5 December.

Despite reported progress in the health sector thanks to donor funding and NGO activities over the past eight years, Afghanistan still has some of the worst health indicators in the world: Every day almost 50 women die during pregnancy or childbirth; one in every five children dies before their fifth birthday. A lack of skilled health workers - only two doctors per 10,000 people, according to WHO - particularly in insecure and rural areas, is resulting in serious health problems.

 

Over the next five years, the Ministry of Health plans to reduce infant and maternal mortality by 50% and expand basic healthcare services to 95% of the country. Achieving these MDG objectives will require almost $1bn, thousands of additional health workers and volunteers, and increased collaboration with NGOs, officials and experts say.

 

The country spends about 5% of its gross domestic product ($11.6bn in 2007) on health, and relies extensively on donor funding for the health sector.

Australian escapes death sentence after paying Afghan family | World news


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    Wednesday 5 January 2011 19.49 GMT

  • Article history
Robert William Langdon

 

Robert William Langdon is escorted to ther appeal court hearing in Kabul

An Australian private security guard who murdered an Afghan worker has escaped the death sentence by paying the family of his victim $100,000 (£65,000), court documents reveal.

The former Australian soldier was handed the death sentence last January after a Kabul court found him guilty of shooting an Afghan colleague before making a crude attempt to make the crime look like a Taliban attack.

But it emerged this week that Robert William Langdon persuaded two supreme court judges that he should be allowed to live after the family of the dead man, who was known as Karimullah, accepted a large compensation payment raised by Langdon's relatives in Australia.

However, the payment, known in sharia law as ibra, was not enough to commute the whole sentence, so Langdon will face 20 years in Kabul's notorious Pol-e-Charki prison, home to Taliban and al-Qaida inmates as well as criminals. The jail term is thought to be the longest given to a westerner in Afghanistan since the toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001.

At the time of the killing in May 2009, Langdon was working for Four Horsemen International, a private firm which works with the US military and specialises in protecting military supply convoys.

According to the Afghan court's two-page judgment on the case, which has been seen by the Guardian, the killing took place during a routine journey with a supply convoy through hostile territory south-east of Kabul.

About 60 expatriate and Afghan guards were travelling with the convoy when they were ambushed by insurgents. After stopping in the capital of Wardak province Karimullah argued with Langdon that it was too dangerous to continue and they should wait until the following morning. During the argument Langdon shot Karimullah as he sat in the cab of his vehicle.

Another foreign contractor was ordered to move the vehicle containing Karimullah's dead body to an isolated area out of town where the guards were ordered to fire their weapons into the air "in order to make it look like an enemy attack".

The vehicle was torched with the help of a grenade thrown by Langdon.

Langdon hurried back to Kabul, where he withdrew $10,000 from his Afghan bank account and tried to board a Dubai-bound plane. However, he was arrested by airport police after some colleagues raised the alarm.

Langdon, who was sentenced to death by two different courts, had argued that he acted in self-defence after thinking Karimullah, who was sitting in a car, was reaching for his own gun.

"He reached across, and I am ex-military, so it was like bang-bang-bang-bang," Langdon said at his appeal. "I didn't have time to think. We had just been hit, we didn't know what was happening and everyone was antsy."

Namatullah Hafizi, head of the attorney general's punishment department, said withdrawing the death sentence was justified given the family's ibra payment, but said that such a ruthless crime deserved a long jail sentence, particularly given Langdon's "cruel" desecration of the corpse.

"Burning the body in our religion is a serious action," he said.

Langdon will serve his sentence in Pol-e-Charki prison alongside just a handful of other foreigners, mainly drug smugglers and murderers.

Langdon's family have not commented on the case and the former soldier himself has shied away from the media since his arrest.

Security firms are widely despised in Afghanistan, where they are blamed for fuelling corruption and behaving with impunity even when their activities lead to innocent members of the public being injured or killed.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has repeatedly called for security companies to be closed down.

The international community has developed a plan to gradually make such firms redundant over time.

Afghan suicide bomber hits bath house | World news


  • Friday 7 January 2011 12.16 GMT

  • Article history
southern Afghanistan

 

The blast reflected the continuing instability in Afghanistan, particularly in the southern part of the country. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

A suicide bomber killed 17 people at a bath house in the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldak as men gathered to wash before Friday prayers, according to a provincial official. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying their target had been the deputy of an influential border patrol commander.

Also today Nato announced that three of its troops were killed in roadside bombings, underscoring the continuing threat the Taliban pose despite a stepped-up coalition offensive.

The midday bombing killed 16 civilians and a police inspector. Spin Boldak is near the Pakistani border, about 70 miles east of the provincial capital Kandahar. Another 23 people were wounded and officials said many of them were transported to Pakistan for treatment.

A Taliban spokesman in the south, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, said the attack targeted the second-in-command of the local border patrol. Afghan officials could not say whether he was the police inspector killed.

President Hamid Karzai, whose government has been battling the Taliban while trying to bring them to the negotiating table, called the bombing a "brutal" and un-Islamic act. "Those behind this attack should know once again that the blood of the Muslim people has been spilled. It will not have any other result."

The blast reflected the continuing instability in Afghanistan, particularly in the Taliban's traditional southern stronghold, scene of some of the fiercest fighting of a war approaching the start of its 10th year.

Nato has bolstered its forces in the south but the insurgents have been able to stand their ground there while expanding their operations to other parts of Afghanistan once considered relatively safe.

The proximity of today's attack to the Pakistani border hints at the tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban leadership is believed to be based in the Pakistani city of Quetta, 60 miles east of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Afghan officials have said repeatedly that allowing the insurgents to operate from within Pakistan is a threat to both countries.

The latest Nato deaths raised to nine the number of coalition forces killed this year and marked a grim start to 2011. Last year was Nato's deadliest in Afghanistan – 702 service members were killed.

Nato has roughly 140,000 troops in the country but is struggling to quell the insurgency. Coalition officials estimate Taliban numbers at 25,000 – roughly unchanged despite the international force's stepped-up offensive against insurgent leaders and rank-and-file fighters. The US said this week it would send in an additional 1,400 combat marines.

The intensified effort is critical for Nato. Barack Obama plans to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in July and Nato combat troops are scheduled to pull out of the country by 2014, handing over full security operations to the Afghan authorities.

British troops move out of Helmand | UK news


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    Friday 7 January 2011 15.22 GMT

  • Article history
British troops with the Household Cavalry, which is now in Maiwand district in Kandahar, Afghanistan

 

An Afghan patrol by British troops with the Household Cavalry, which has been deployed to Maiwand district in Kandahar. Photograph: Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

British troops have established a permanent presence outside Helmand province for the first time since 2006 in an effort to secure a key road that runs through one of Kandahar's most violent districts, according to US and UK officials.

Since mid-December troops from the Household Cavalry have been operating on a 12 mile stretch of Highway 1 in Maiwand district where they are overseeing patrols and checkpoints alongside soldiers from the Afghan army.

Maiwand is one of the last areas affected by the US troop surge. British troops were asked to oversee its western part so that US troops could be sent elsewhere in Kandahar province.

The UK's involvement in the province, which will continue for six months, has been kept quiet until now, in part because of sensitivities about British troops operating outside the area controlled by Task Force Helmand, the UK-led military mission in southern Afghanistan.

Substantial numbers of British pilots and support staff are based at Kandahar airfield and a portion of the UK force has acted as a roving air assault team across the south for years. But since 2006 the vast majority of UK soldiers have been concentrated in Helmand under British command.

After years of being the main international presence in what became known as Helmandshire, the UK's role has been reduced by a surge of thousands of US marines into the province and neighbouring Kandahar.

With so much UK blood and treasure spent in Helmand, British officials fought against American suggestions last year that UK forces should be entirely redeployed outside Helmand.

In the end the UK clung on to full authority over three districts: Nahr-e Saraj, Nad-e Ali and Lashkar Gah.

Under the arrangement in Maiwand, which neighbours the area under UK control, British troops fall under the authority of US-led Regional Command South.

"No boundaries have been permanently changed and RC South will still maintain all governance and development responsibilities in Maiwand," a US marine corps spokesman said.

During a visit to Afghanistan this week the British defence secretary, Liam Fox, insisted Britain was happy to operate outside Helmand and in a subordinate role.

"We want to be a good Nato partner and that's why we are on Route 1 at the moment," he said. "We don't see our bit of Helmand as being a unique British territory. We are here as part of Nato and people need to grasp that."

Maiwand is almost halfway between Helmand's regional capital of Lashkar Gah and Kandahar City. It represents the final element of a much-delayed strategy, first drawn up more than a year ago, to clear insurgents from the critical road that links southern Afghanistan's two major cities.

The British are not taking on an easy task in Maiwand, which was one of the last remaining Taliban strongholds to be tackled by US marines.

The Taliban were well entrenched in Maiwand – a district that in the 19th century was the scene of one of the most disastrous confrontations between British troops and Asian forces. Nearly 1,000 soldiers were killed at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880.

British and American officials have refused to say how many troops are stationed in Maiwand but said so far there had been few serious incidents or Taliban attacks.

Pakistan will implode if the US does not leave Afghanistan | Comment is free | The Observer

  • Imran Khan
    • The Observer,

       

      Sunday 9 January 2011

    • Article history
Salman Taseer

 

Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was assassinated last week. Photograph: Niklas Hallen / Rex Features

The assassination of Salmaan Taseer has shown only too clearly the growing extremism in Pakistan, the radicalisation of its society and the polarisation that is taking hold. This is not just between the religious and the secular, but also the polarisation that the "war on terror" has caused between the various religious sects.

There were no Pakistanis involved in 9/11 and al-Qaida was then based in Afghanistan. The only militancy we were suffering was among the tribal groups who had fought against the Soviets and whose idea of jihad was a war against foreign occupation. Yes, there was sectarian violence, but suicide bombers were unheard of.

So after 9/11, when General Musharraf chose to ally with the Americans in the "war on terror", it was a fundamental blunder. Overnight he turned the jihadi groups created to fight foreign occupation from supporters into enemies, people prepared to fight the Pakistani army because of its support for the US invasion.

Musharraf then made a second mistake in sending the army into the tribal areas. Our own tribespeople immediately rose up in revolt. Rather than co-opting these people – and, remember, every man is armed – we made new enemies. Then along came the American drones to kill more of our people. Soon, the American "war on terror" was seen as a war on Islam by the majority of Pakistanis and certainly by the Pashtuns in the tribal areas. Terror and extremism intensified.

Every year extremism gets worse, our society becomes more radicalised and the bloodshed grows. This is how you must see the context of this assassination. Society is now so polarised that because Taseer criticised the blasphemy law he was seen as criticising Islam. But that was not what he said. This assassination would not have happened before the "war on terror".

Imams of different sects are being killed now, and mosques and churches bombed. The fanaticism keeps getting worse. As disturbing as Taseer's assassination is, just as disturbing is the way his assassin has become a hero. That is why this whole thing is so dangerous, it shows where we are headed.

I have been predicting this from day one. There is no military solution in Afghanistan, only dialogue, so the supreme irony is that in siding with the Americans all we have done is send the levels of violence up in Pakistan. The "war on terror" has weakened the state and then, thanks to the George Bush-sponsored National Reconciliation Ordinance in 2007, which allowed an amnesty for all the biggest political crooks, we now have the most corrupt government in our history. The "war on terror" is destroying Pakistan.

Clemenceau once said: "War is too important to be left to the generals." He was right; for us it has been a disaster. There is incredible anti-American sentiment here, and the drone attacks only fuel that hatred. We need a change of strategy, otherwise the worst-case scenario will be achieved here; an unstable nuclear state.

It's not a question of there being no room for moderates, it's that moderates are being pushed towards extremism. Taseer didn't say anything anti-Islamic, he just questioned the blasphemy law and whether it should be used to victimise innocent people. His death has caused many moderates to think there is no point in being a martyr. If it makes people such as myself think twice about what we say, then where does that leave us? We are all now at risk.

Crime in Pakistan is now at a level that breaks all records. Yet 60% of the elite police forces are now employed protecting VIPs. Where does that leave ordinary people? Young Pakistanis are being radicalised and the Taliban grow in strength. The US is no longer fighting just the Taliban, it is fighting the whole Pashtun population.

The consequences for Pakistan, with its population of 180 million, are enormous. And there is an impact, too, on Muslim youth in western countries. Graham Fuller, the CIA chief of staff in Kabul, wrote in 2007 that, if Nato left Afghanistan, Pakistan security forces could overcome terrorism and extremism. But, as long as the Americans push Pakistan to do more in the tribal areas, the situation will worsen – until Pakistan itself implodes.

London theatre troupe to perform play on Afghan history for US military | World news


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    Sunday 9 January 2011 18.10 GMT

  • Article history
General Sir David Richards

 

General Sir David Richards, head of Britain's armed forces, has urged his US counterparts to see The Great Game. Photograph: David Rose / Rex Features

The world's most powerful military machine, bogged down in Afghanistan, is to seek help from a troupe of actors, directors and playwrights from a small north London playhouse.

The Pentagon has asked Kilburn's Tricycle Theatre to perform The Great Game, a series of plays, interspersed with extracts from interviews, covering 150 years of Afghan history. The idea was taken up by America's top brass after the plays were seen by General Sir David Richards, head of Britain's armed forces, earlier this year.

Richards, who took a group of Sandhurst cadets– future officers who will be sent to Afghanistan – to watch the three-part, seven-hour production, said: "The Ministry of Defence as a whole, and certainly the armed forces desperately want to understand the country well, and this series of plays – if I had seen it before I had deployed myself in 2005 for the first time – would have made me a much better commander." Richards headed the international security force in Afghanistan.

The Great Game covers the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century, the Soviet occupation of the country, US support for the mujahideen fighters, and the rise of the Taliban.

Lieutenant Commander Ryan Perry, a spokesman for the US joint chiefs of staff, said interest in the production was sparked by several officers, including Brigadier General John Nicholson, who saw The Great Game during its US tour in September. "They felt it could serve as a learning tool for anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of Afghanistan," he told the Washington Post.

Nicolas Kent, co-director of the production with Indhu Rubasingham, said: "Despite Obama's Afpak policy hardly featuring in the November US elections, the recent Tricycle Theatre tour there taught us that there was a huge hunger for knowledge about Afghanistan and the current conflict from both the public and the military in America."

The lecture theatre in the huge Pentagon complex was too small for the production so the Pentagon has booked Washington's Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall to show the play to the US military over two days next month.

The production is sponsored by the British Council and the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which was set up by an ABC television journalist who was badly hurt while covering the Iraq war to support wounded soldiers and veterans.

Special accommodation will be made in the theatre for the expected large number of disabled theatregoers. "We've talked a lot about that with the department of defence. We're going to extend invitations to those hospitalised and receiving outpatient treatment," the Woodruff Foundation's executive director Rene Bardorf told the Post, referring to troops recuperating at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Centre. "For the young warrior, certain parts of the play[s] would make very good sense," she said.

Three Afghan police killed in Nato air strike | World news

  • Monday 10 January 2011 13.09 GMT

  • Article history
An Afghan policeman in Kabul

 

An Afghan policeman in Kabul. Almost 1,300 police officers were killed in Afghanistan last year, according to the Afghan government. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA

A Nato air raid in central Afghanistan may have killed three Afghan police officers and wounded three others, the third such incident in fewer than five weeks.

Foreign troops on patrol in Daykundi province yesterday called in an air strike after seeing nine people setting up what appeared to be an ambush, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said. It was later determined the raid may have targeted Afghan police, it said.

"While we take extraordinary precaution while conducting operations to avoid friendly casualties, it appears innocent people may have been mistakenly targeted," a senior Isaf spokesman, Colonel Rafael Torres, said in a statement.

The air strike in Daykundi, a remote province west of Kabul, is the third such incident in more than a month. Civilian casualties and the mistaken killing of members of the Afghan security forces have been a frequent source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and western military forces in a war now in its 10th year.

On 8 December, the Afghan defence ministry condemned a foreign air raid in Logar province in which it said two of its soldiers were killed and wounded five.

On 16 December, the defence ministry said a US air strike in southern Helmand province killed four Afghan soldiers.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan with record casualties on all sides. Last year, 711 foreign soldiers were killed, according to monitoring website iCasualties.com, up from 521 in 2009.

Afghan security forces have been hit even harder. A total of 1,292 police and 821 soldiers were killed in 2010, according to the Afghan government.

Ordinary Afghans, however, have borne the brunt of the fighting. The UN has said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 wounded in the first 10 months of last year, a 20% increase on 2009.

The government has said 5,225 insurgents were killed last year.

Meanwhile, in southern Kandahar, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives as Afghan police surrounded his vehicle in Spin Boldak this morning, killing two policemen and a civilian, the interior ministry said.

The police had pursued the bomber after deciding his vehicle looked suspicious, it said. Police had earlier said three policemen had been killed.

Spin Boldak, a major crossing point on the border with Pakistan, has seen frequent militant attacks.

On Friday, a suicide bomber killed 17 people, including a police commander, and wounded 21, inside a public bathhouse, the worst insurgent attack since late July.

Separately, foreign and Afghan troops killed more than 10 suspected insurgents during a raid in the northern province of Kunduz on Sunday, Isaf said in a statement.

The Taliban-led insurgency has spread out of its traditional strongholds in the south and east over the past two years into once peaceful areas of the north and west. The north, in particular, has become a deadly new front in the war.

Time to follow Fields' example and quit Afghanistan | Pratap Chatterjee | Comment is free

  • PratapChatterjee
    • guardian.co.uk,

       

      Tuesday 11 January 2011 23.30 GMT

    • Article history
Arnold Fields resigns as head of Sigar, 10 January 2011

 

Maj Gen Arnold Fields, in charge of overseeing the billions of dollars being spent to rebuild Afghanistan, announced his resignation from his post at Sigar on 10 January 2011, just a week after he fired two of his top deputies in a major shakeup of the organisation. Photograph: AP Photo/Haraz N Ghanbari

Arnold Fields, the special inspector general for Afghanistan, announced his resignation late on Monday evening – news that has virtually disappeared among all the other headlines from the Arizona shootings to Joe Biden's surprise trip to Kabul. Yet the departure of the top US official who set up Sigar, the office charged with making sure that the $56bn that has been spent in Afghanistan was not wasted has the potential to be a milestone in the war in that country.

Fields, a former major general in the US Marines, has been under public attack for over 18 months. Critics from Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, to Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, have been calling for his resignation for months, as have watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight.

The nadir of his two-year tenure came last November when McCaskill invited six other inspector generals to testify at a hearing on his failures. Instead of addressing the specific charges, such as why his agency had only audited four out of 7,000 contracts issued to date, Fields chose to focus on his childhood as an African American in South Carolina.

"I raised up hard, ladies and gentlemen, in poverty myself. I worked for less than $1.50 a day – about what the average Afghan makes today in year 2010," Fields told the packed room, his voice shaking. "I wish that someone had brought $56 billion to bear upon my life … (but) the day President Kennedy was buried, which was a no school day for me, my brother and I shovelled stuff out of a local farmer's septic tank with a shovel for 75 cents per hour for the two of us."

"I don't mean to be cruel," McCaskill told Fields at the time. "I don't think you're the right person for this job." She noted that the $8.2m that Fields claimed to have recovered or saved paled in relation to the $46m that his office had spent. By comparison, the US Agency for International Development's inspector general claimed to have recovered or saved about $149m, with a budget of just $10m. But Fields remained defiant, telling reporters: "The Marine Corps taught me not to quit."

Fields is not the only one to claim good intentions and a dogged determination to succeed in Afghanistan. Indeed, the commander-in-chiefs – President Barack Obama and his predecessor George Bush – have also declared their commitment to fixing Afghanistan's desperate poverty. Like Fields, both poured much time, money and even lives into this effort.

But unlike Fields, who took stock of his losses last night and called it quits, the same is yet to be said of his bosses at the White House, and officials at the Pentagon and USAID, who continue to pour good money down the drain by paying expensive contractors who have achieved very little, and may even have been counter-productive.

A few weeks before before Fields resigned, USAID awarded Black & Veatch from Kansas a no-bid contract worth $266m to provide electricity to Kandahar and Helmand provinces. Yet this company was the very one that both USAID and Sigar had criticised for billing $300m for the Tarakhil power plant outside Kabul, which should have cost $100m and was over a year behind schedule.

In December, DynCorp, the company that has so far failed to produce a reliable police force in Afghanistan, was awarded a new contract with the US Army worth up to $1bn. "With corruption, incompetence and illiteracy within the police force a persistent obstacle to turning over security responsibilities to the cops by 2014, Nato has revamped much of its training efforts – except, apparently, the contractors paid lavishly to help them out," wrote Spencer Ackermann in the Danger Room blog. Within Afghanistan, US forces continue to work closely with characters like Abdul Razziq, whom US officials regard as "presid[ing] over a vast corruption network that skims customs duties, facilitates drug trafficking and smuggles other contraband." (Razziq denies the allegations.)

The White House has an opportunity now to fill the vacant post at Sigar with someone who can aggressively pursue what has happened to the $56bn spent so far in Afghanistan, and who can make sure that bad contractors get their act together or lose their lucrative deals.

There is another opportunity, too: the White House could follow Fields' lead in examining its own leadership. The failure to deliver the promised transformation of Afghanistan over almost a decade suggests that the problem may be much greater than one ineffectual inspector general. It may rather lie with the generals at Pentagon and diplomats at the state department who have never been effectively challenged over their own policies in Afghanistan.

Fixing Afghanistan is not a job that Obama or his successors will be able to achieve by 1 July 2011, or even by 2014; it is a job for Afghans themselves and their regional neighbours to plan and implement for themselves. Throwing money at the problem has not proven to be the solution. The solution lies in experience, competence and the ability to know when, in fact, to quit – as Fields has belatedly recognised.

Suicide bomber kills two in Afghanistan capital | World news

  • Wednesday 12 January 2011 07.29 GMT

  • Article history
Suicide bomb blast site in Kabul

 

Afghan workers clean the site of the suicide bomb attack in Kabul. Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up next to a minibus carrying intelligence service staff in the Afghan capital today, killing at least two people and wounding more than 20.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the rush-hour blast, which shattered the windows of dozens of houses and buildings on a busy street in the western part of Kabul.

Afghan security officials are frequently the target of bombings and shootings. Last month, two insurgents strapped with explosives ambushed a bus carrying Afghan army officers on the outskirts of Kabul, killing five and wounding nine.

Mohammad Zahir, the capital's chief of criminal investigation, said today's bomber struck the bus as it carried the intelligence service employees to work, killing two. The head of Kabul hospitals at the public health ministry, Kabir Amir, said one body had been received so far, and that more than 20 people had been wounded.

Police and intelligence service officers cordoned off the site of the explosion, where the suicide bomber's body and his destroyed motorbike lay next to the damaged bus.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the blast.

Nato sent more than 30,000 extra troops into Afghanistan last year to put pressure on the Taliban's traditional strongholds in the south, but the insurgents have extended their operations elsewhere, striking across the north and east.

An extra contingent of 1,400 US marines is to be deployed in the coming months in the southern province of Helmand, which along with neighbouring Kandahar province have experienced some of the fiercest fighting.

Today's suicide bombing was the second claimed by the Taliban this week. On Monday, a suicide attacker blew up his car next to a border police convoy near Spin Boldak, a Kandahar provincial town bordering Pakistan, killing two officers and a civilian.

Tonight's TV highlights: Human Planet | Men Of Rock | The Great Outdoors | The Brain – A Secret History | The Good Wife | Restrepo: Outpost Afghanistan | Television & radio | The Guardian

  • The Guardian,

     

    Thursday 13 January 2011

  • Article history
HUMAN PLANET - Oceans watch this

 

Milking the drama ... Human Planet Photograph: Timothy Allen/BBC/BBC

Human Planet
8pm, BBC1

This prestigious new series looks at how people have adapted to every habitat on the planet, from the poles to the deserts, the oceans to the jungles. There's no way it can fail to be impressive, with its epic HD photography and diverse locations, but it's laden with a sense of self-importance, as the pompous narration from John Hurt and over-cooked Nitin Sawhney soundtrack milk every dramatic moment for all it's worth. The opener examines how mankind has, if not exactly colonised the oceans to live in, developed an intimate relationship with them. MS

Men Of Rock
9pm, BBC2

According to Iain Stewart, "the story of the entire planet" is written into Scotland's landscape. Perhaps because of this, Scots have played a key role in the development of geology. Profiling key figures in the science, Stewart begins with its roguish Georgian founding father, James Hutton. On top of his conclusion that the Earth was much, much older than most people at the time believed, Hutton's key insight was to see our world as a dynamic system, a finding he arrived at via what to a lesser mind would have been unpromising observations about topsoil and cooling glass. JW

The Great Outdoors
10pm, BBC2

Doing for rambling what Rev did for inner-city religion, The Great Outdoors debuted on BBC4 last autumn and now BBC2 is repeating the three episodes. Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil's charming sitcom meets a group of walkers led by Mark Heap just as they're joined by pushy new member Ruth Jones, who tries to make the gang go her way. Often literally. Also rambling are Katherine Parkinson, Steve Edge and Stephen "Skoose from Whites" Wight.

WD

The Brain – A Secret History
9pm, BBC4

In Michael Powell's classic psychological thriller Peeping Tom, a psychologist turns his son into a voyeuristic serial killer though his experiments in fear. These kinds of mind control tests weren't just the product of screenwriter Leo Marks's imagination; in the second part of this excellent little series chronicling the (often) traumatic history of experimental psychology, Dr Michael Mosley studies footage of a baby boy who has been taught to fear objects, and meets surviving participants of other scientific trials designed to explore human emotions. AJC

The Good Wife
9pm, More4

As substantial as froth is ever likely to get, US show The Good Wife entered its second season last week with some interesting problems to resolve. First, though, a brief catch-up. Much inspired by the figures of noble wives in American political life standing by their sexually errant husbands, The Good Wife explores exactly this terrain: when her husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth) is caught in a scandal that leads to his imprisonment, his wife Alicia stands by him – and goes back to work as a lawyer. Now out of prison, Peter is due to stand for office again, and this week it's he who is the victim of some dirty tricks. JR

Restrepo: Outpost Afghanistan
12 midnight, National Geographic

Another chance to see the richly deserving winner of the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. Vanity Fair journalist Sebastian Junger and Brit photographer Tim Hetherington spent a year embedded with a platoon from the 173rd Airborne in the deadly Korengal Valley, Afghanistan; this is the shocking and extremely moving result. Yes, we get to see firefights with the Taliban, but more powerful are the interviews with survivors, whose eyes betray something terrible and sad.

Phone app aims to bridge language gap for US troops in Afghanistan | World news | The Guardian


  •  

    Thursday 13 January 2011 14.15 GMT

  • Article history
U.S. Army's Dagger Company talk to a village elder

 

An interpreter, right, helps a US soldier talk to a village elder in Kolack in the Pesh Valley in Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Photograph: Tim Wimborne/Reuters

A smartphone app is being touted as the potential solution to the yawning linguistic gulf between US soldiers in Afghanistan and the Pashtun villagers they are trying to win over.

After a decade of relying on interpreters, the US military is testing a simultaneous translation programme that runs on an ordinary smartphone.

Developed by US defence department scientists, it can translate from English into Dari and Pashto, the two main languages of Afghanistan, and back again.

Transtac (short for "translation system for tactical use") is being tested by members of the 101st Airborne Division in the eastern province of Paktika.

David McKim, an intelligence officer with the US army, said the system was in a six-month test phase, with just a handful of devices likely to see action in Paktika.

"The idea is to give soldiers the ability to communicate, even if it is just on a basic level, with the Afghan people when an interpreter isn't available," he said.

Breaking down barriers and building trust between foreign soldiers and Afghans is one of the key ambitions of the counter-insurgency strategy being pursued in the country. But when kitted out with bulky body armour and blast-resistant sunglasses, US soldiers attempting to influence Afghan hearts and minds often look more like beings from another planet.

High-tech smartphones alone are unlikely to bridge the cultural gap, but the technology does seem to be a big step forward from the earlier "Phrasealator" employed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The relatively crude device simply contained a list of standardised, pre-recorded sentences and words that developers thought soldiers would find useful.

But although soldiers could choose a variety of phrases in English – which would then be reproduced in Arabic or Pashto – they could not translate the reply.

Good interpreters are scarce in the US military, which has been forced to pay huge salaries to attract Afghans who have adequate language skills and are prepared to undertake the dangerous work of foot patrols in a war whose hallmark weapon is the hidden roadside bomb.

The US also offers the best and longest-serving "terps" the chance to apply for US citizenship. Afghan-American citizens are also recruited, although there have been cases where middle-aged "cultural advisers" have struggled to keep up with their super-fit military colleagues.

Afghan women fear for the future | Life and style | The Guardian

 

  • Friday 4 February 2011

  • Article history
Women attend a concert in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan

 

Women at a concert in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Under the Taliban, they would have been banned. Photograph: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

When Zainab Salbi was in Afghanistan this summer she met a woman whose story she could not forget. Married at 15 and widowed by 16, Zarqouna was banned, like all women, from working or even leaving her house unaccompanied during the Taliban regime of the 1990s. One day, needing food for her baby, she defied the law to sell hats in the street, only to be caught by local Taliban members and beaten with the one pair of shoes she possessed.

When the allies invaded in 2001 and the Taliban were toppled, Zarqouna's life was transformed. She started work, sent her daughter to school and is planning to send her to college. But her new-found freedom and that of many Afghan women could be at risk if, as Salbi – founder of Women for Women International, an organisation that supports women in war-torn countries – and other campaigners fear, the allies pull out from Afghanistan without insisting on guarantees for women's rights.

This year will see the 10th anniversary of the US and UK's military intervention in the country. After a decade of war, and with no sign of the insurgency ending any time soon, western governments are talking about bringing their troops home as early as next year. Meanwhile, with the Taliban still controlling parts of the country and unlikely to be defeated, the Afghan government is making plans for reconciliation and reintegration with the hardline militia. This, fear Afghan women, could mean a reversal of all the hard-won improvements of the last few years.

Although Afghan women's rights were a prominent part of the rhetoric of invasion, today the treatment of women under the Taliban is increasingly being dismissed as part of local culture. This apparent change in attitude in the west is seen as a consequence of the British and US governments' desire to extricate themselves from a messy, expensive and time-consuming war. In November, David Cameron stressed he was taking a more "hard-headed" approach to the country. "We are not there to build a perfect democracy, still less a model society. We are there to help Afghans take control of security and ensure that al-Qaida can never again pose a threat to us from Afghan soil."

Today, according to Salbi, who has testified before the US senate, there is little appetite among US politicians for protecting women in the region, despite support from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. Instead, she says: "There is a clear, clear opinion that women's rights were a) not that relevant and b) irreconcilable with peace in Afghanistan."

Samira Hamidi, director of the Afghan Women's Network – an umbrella organisation for more than 600 women's rights groups and NGOs – has also noticed this increasing lack of interest and fears that once the troops pull out, the west will turn its eyes away from Afghanistan, even though "the insurgents still kill children, they still put poison in the food of school girls, they throw acid in the face of school girls, they burn schools. They still exist."

"Something most American male politicians have said – 90% of them – is that it's just their culture and we can't do anything about it," adds Salbi.

Deniz Kandiyoti of the School of Oriental and African Studies' gender studies department disputes these claims that the culture is to blame. "These people have been tossed to the wind and displaced, the old society has been eroded. Girls being given away to pay for opium debts, that's hardly traditional. Now it is the people with the guns, the money, and the drugs runners who have power," she says.

Few would argue that improvements have been made in women's rights in the last decade. On a recent visit to the UK, Hussan Ghazanfar, Afghanistan's minister for women's affairs, outlined the progress made: 57% of women and girls now go to school, and 24% of health sector workers and 10% of the judiciary are female.

Yet activists say improvements are patchy and far from ideal – with healthcare, social care and freedom unavailable to many poverty-stricken rural women, many already living in Taliban-controlled areas. Even Ghazanfar admits: "Life is different in the countryside – the literacy level is different, traditional customs are stronger, and women have no financial or economic freedom there."

Hamidi says most women she speaks to "are tired of war and killing", and fearful of the future. "If the situation goes bad again the women here have nowhere to go."

A suicide bomb attack in Kabul last weekend that killed Hamida Barmaki, a law professor and commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, along with her husband and four children, illustrates the everyday danger in Afghanistan, while the release of footage showing the stoning of a couple in Kunduz province reveals the extent of the plight of women in areas controlled by the Taliban.

Politician Malalai Joya, dubbed the "bravest woman in Afghanistan" for speaking out against the warlords in the government after being elected to the Afghan national assembly in 2005, warns: "The situation of women is a disaster. Men and women today are squashed between three enemies – the Taliban, the warlords and also the occupation forces who are bombing from the skies and killing civilians, women and children. Now the Taliban are being invited into the government – there is no question the situation of women will be more disastrous and more bloody."

Orzala Nemat, a human rights activist who risked her life to set up a secret network of literacy classes for girls under the Taliban regime, agrees that the situation has worsened since 2006 with the revival of the Taliban. "Places which were very safe last year are very unsafe now," she says. "If this conflict is not winnable, we need a political settlement."

Last summer, the Afghan government created a peace council to pursue talks with the Taliban. Ghazanfar says there are safeguards to protect the women in any deal, with the government of Afghanistan insisting the Taliban abide by the country's constitution, which enshrines women's rights.

But Kandiyot is among those worried about the direction negotiations are taking. She points out that the Taliban continue to reject the constitution, and that the document includes a clause that says no law can contradict the principles of Islam. "And who decides what these principles are?" she asks. "It is the supreme court, which is full of hardline clerics."

Salbi, meanwhile, says informal, closed negotiations have already begun between a small group of politicians and the Taliban, with women's rights being traded as collateral. She describes one of "the advisers in the process" talking of women's "mobility and attire" being an area for "compromise".

The government itself has appeared keen to promote what it sees as improvements in the Taliban's hard line on women, possibly in a bid to make negotiations seem more palatable. Earlier this year the education minister, Farooq Wardak, insisted the Taliban leadership was prepared to drop its ban on girls' schools.

Yet Rachel Reid, Human Rights Watch's Afghanistan researcher, says: "There may be some low-level Taliban leaders who negotiate with communities that want girls' education, but there is no evidence to suggest that the leadership has done a U-turn."

She points out that the ministry's own statistics show that 20 girls' schools were bombed or burned down between March and October 2010. At least 126 students and teachers were killed in the same period – an increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, night letters – missives containing terrifying threats – are still being sent to working women in Taliban-controlled areas. One sent to a teacher in a girls' school read: "We warn you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we will cut the heads off your children and shall set fire to your daughter."

President Hamid Karzai's government has traded women's rights for political power in the past. The Shia personal status law in 2009 was only toned down after women took to the streets in protest, sparking an international outcry. If implemented it would have meant women from the Shia minority sect could not leave their homes without their husband's permission or refuse them sex – making rape within marriage effectively legal. Other campaigners point to the president's pardoning of two men sentenced by the supreme court for brutally gang-raping a woman in public.

The Taliban are not the only group in Afghanistan keen to destroy women's rights, says Nemat. "Westerners think the only enemy Afghan women have is the Taliban, and when they go we will be liberated. But Afghan women have many men who are scared of women having power. These are warlords, conservative clerics, many powerful authorities sitting in key government positions."

In this anti-female environment violence against women in general is rising daily, fuelled by the war, the poverty it brings, and the conservative values it leaves behind, according to Hamidi. Refuges are attacked in the media, while anecdotal evidence suggests that self-immolation, domestic violence and suicide among women are increasing.

In December, a UN report on "harmful traditional practices" revealed that 57% of Afghan marriages are child marriages (where one partner is under the age of 16) and cited the case of an orphaned 13-year-old girl who was bought by a 65-year-old man for $3,000 (£1,895).

Then there are the honour killings and the fact that women and girls who run away – to escape forced marriages or violence – are often arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned, usually under a charge of attempting to commit zina (sex outside marriage).

Campaigners say the only hope for women is to give them a chance to fight for their rights at the negotiating table. But with little political will among Afghan politicians, pressure for this must come from abroad, says Hamidi. "If we are going for a negotiation involving insurgents who don't believe in women's rights and there is no commitment from the international community [to help women] . . . we may go back to the years when Taliban were ruling this country." And even Ghazanfar seems to echo this when she says: "Afghan women need and require peace with justice. This is our request to the world and international communities."

The alternative could be terrifying, says to Salbi. "'One Afghan woman said to me, what would it take for the allies to know that by abandoning us, it will hit them later on? That violence that manifests itself with us will spread. The Taliban started with us, then Afghan men, then America, and the world."

Nemat is more sanguine about the possibility of western troops pulling out soon, believing the only hope is for women to fight for themselves. "As someone who has worked under the Taliban, I don't believe there will be a return [of their rule] in the same way as in the past," she says. "They won't silence our voices. We will not sleep and stay passive in our homes. We will continue to struggle."

Soldier dies in shooting accident in Helmand | UK news

  • The Guardian,

     

    Saturday 5 February 2011

  • Article history

A British soldier died in an "operational accident" in Afghanistan yesterday, the Ministry of Defence said. The soldier, from 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment, was serving in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand.

The MoD said the accident was being investigated, but it is understood the solder died in hospital.

Next of kin have been informed. Lieutenant Colonel David Eastman, spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "It is my sad duty to report the loss of a soldier from 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment.

"The soldier was operating in the Nad-e Ali District of central Helmand province when he died as a result of an operational accident, which is currently under investigation.

"He has forfeited his life for the greater good, bringing hope to a people struggling to live their daily lives in peace – his place in our thoughts is assured.

"Our heartfelt condolences are with his family and friends at this time of great loss."

A total of 351 UK military personnel have now died in Afghanistan since operations began in 2001.

The latest death brings the number of troops who have died as a result of accidents, illness, non-combat injuries or who have not yet officially been assigned a cause of death to 42.

What's your advice for Afghan women, Hillary Clinton? | Samira | Comment is free

  • headscarf silhouette

    •  

      Saturday 5 February 2011 14.00 GMT

    • Article history
Hillary Clinton Hamid Karzai 2010

 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talk while walking in a private Georgetown garden in Washington, DC, May 2010. Photograph: Reuters/Cliff Owen

The Afghan Women's Writing Project began in May 2009 with the goal of nurturing the often-silenced voices of Afghan women. This article is a call to the US government from one of the first writers to join the project.

Dear Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,

My name cannot be shared here. I am an Afghan woman of many struggles, now in hiding in my own homeland. I finally had an opportunity to go to a university in the United States in January and continue my education. But at the US Embassy in Kabul, my visa was rejected after the interviewer asked me, "Do you have the intention to come back to Afghanistan?" When I said no, she told me, "I am sorry; it is against the law. We can't give you any visa."

Secretary Clinton, I am against the law in my country, too. I am against the culture and customs of my country, against the respect of the elders, against those Afghan males who proudly deny the freedom of others. I refused to marry my 40-year-old uneducated cousin who wanted to pay money to my family and buy me like a piece of cloth. My uncle, the father of that cousin, has threatened my life because I defied him. I have held onto my courage to stand up against them, with the support of American friends who helped me buy freedom and then helped me get a scholarship and find a host family in the United States.

Of course, I want to return to my country, my home, and help other women like me. I want to write about the real lives of Afghan women who have suffered more than me and who have not been heard. I want to live in every province of our country, and to discover how our women can make a change in their lives. I also know we need educated women in Afghanistan. I want to be an independent woman and work for Afghanistan and our generation. I want to do this, but I also want to be safe. If I cannot do this, then I will feel I have finally failed.

I know I am not the only Afghan woman who suffers from this kind of situation, and the United States can't help every Afghan woman gain her education. On the other hand, I know that only with a storm of knowledge and wisdom can we escape from violence. Only after we bring a change in our lives, can we save the lives of others.

I am tired and can't explain the entire story of this bare life of mine, but I did want to share these latest efforts with you. I don't write to you only because you are the secretary of state of the United States of America. I write to you because you are a woman. As a woman, what do you advise me? And your president is the father of two daughters. If I were his daughter, what would be his advice for me? Should I continue to fight?

Sometimes, I ask myself, why? Why do I want so much to study? Why can't I accept what is considered enough in our country? Why can't I be a good mother, serve my family, make a happy home? Dad wanted me to be a doctor. He said in this way, I could help other women, because in most of the Afghan provinces, women are not allowed to visit a male doctor. I tried, but I couldn't become a doctor. Though I failed at that, I found I could write. And then I understood I could heal with my writings.

Inside my heart, there is a war, and it is part of the same war that your country began fighting here after 11 September 2001. Although my life has been as a thunderstorm without end, I want my freedom, and I trust my courage and strength. With hopeful hands, I write; with worried legs, I walk to try to find a new tomorrow and, with my arms, to dig a grave to bury the violence against the women of my country.

I love the people of your country, but I don't think enough has been done by your government to secure freedom for Afghan women. As long as stories of cruelty against Afghan women remain in newspaper headlines, we can't stop. We can't be satisfied.

As I try to find a new direction for myself and other Afghan women, I hope for counsel from you.

With the greatest of respect,

Samira

The Longest War by Peter Bergen | Review | World news


    • Sunday 6 February 2011

    • Article history
Afghanistan Helmand sandstorm

 

A sandstorm envelops a young US Marine in Helmand province, Afghanistan. Photograph: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters

On around the fifth day of the demonstrations in Cairo, there was a rapid but revealing exchange on CNN. Presenter Wolf Blitzer introduced the channel's national security analyst Peter Bergen, "the author of the new and best-selling book The Longest War and expert on the Middle East". After recapping recent events in Egypt, he asked his guest, "Where, if at all, does al-Qaida fit into this entire equation?" Bergen replied, slightly taken aback, "I would say not at all."

  1. The Longest War: America and Al-Qaeda Since 9/11

  2. by

    Peter L. Bergen


  3. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

This is not the first time Bergen has had to field such startling questions about al-Qaida or Islamic militancy in general. Since first becoming interested in the topic in the mid-90s, and meeting Osama bin Laden in 1997, Bergen has, through his books, journalism and lecturing, established a reputation as one of America's foremost al-Qaida experts. Though there are some with a more specialised knowledge of certain corners of the vast field that is "jihadi studies", few rival Bergen's overall knowledge or ability to explain, patiently and intelligibly, complicated concepts to people whose knowledge of the subject is, at best, variable. He is also one of the very rare such figures to consistently spent time on the ground: in Pakistan, in Afghanistan, and most recently in Egypt.

The Longest War is ambitious both in scope and aims. It sets out to chart "the enduring conflict between America and al-Qaida". Its goal, the author says, "is to tell a history of the 'war on terror' in one volume." In particular it aims to tell the story from all sides. Events in the US have been well covered by a series of instant histories by Bob Woodward and through the wonderful American tradition of senior figures releasing detailed memoirs soon after leaving office. Though some of the material in The Longest War is familiar, Bergen, through interviews with lesser-known figures, particularly from the world of counter-terrorism, adds much to what is already known.

However, it is on the other side that the book is revelatory. The internal workings of bin Laden's group are still largely obscure, at least to the general public, and Bergen does a fine job of negotiating the maze of personalities and ideologies to explain the various evolutions al-Qaida has undergone.

One valuable early point is that the 9/11 attacks were deeply controversial within al-Qaida itself, and the broader Islamic militant community. Many believed that to risk the overthrowing of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the consequent loss of a safe haven was a mistake. Noman Benotman, a Libyan former militant and Afghan veteran, now in London, told Bergen that "the tactics took over the strategy". Some, though far fewer, believed it was theologically unjustified.

These debates, often acrimonious, continued. By 2007, senior figures, among them founder members of al-Qaida and senior Gulf clerics with strong militant credentials, were renouncing violence, or at least bin Laden's leadership. Another debate within militant ranks was over whether to favour an "open front" strategy, where non-conventional but overt campaigns would aim to "liberate" territory, or a broader, decentralised strategy, which would aim to spark a "global uprising" and a host of miniature al-Qaidas would spring up. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the latter was the brainchild of Syrian-born Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, better known as Abu Musab al'Suri, who was one of those in Afghanistan pre-9/11 who was deeply suspicious of bin Laden and his pretensions to primacy within the world of Islamic extremism.

This argument reflects a broader one among analysts over the centrality of al-Qaida in contemporary militant Islam. Bergen is very clear: al-Qaida and bin Laden remain critical. They are at the centre of many plots, providing leadership, inspiration and focus. In the unlikely event of the capture or killing of bin Laden – and Bergen surgically slices away the bombast to reveal the deep inadequacies of the hunt for the fugitive terrorist – a huge hole would be left.

Here, Bergen perhaps goes too far. Certainly al-Qaida continues to play a major role, particularly in adding the practical knowledge and strategic focus that turns a "bunch of guys" into a terrorist cell. But if the radicalisation process is traced further back, other elements become much more important, not least personal acquaintances and the ideological environment in any given community.

A survey of militant Islam around the world shows how limited bin Laden's influence is on the broader movement, despite the media attention he receives. Though new groups in Somalia and the Yemen are linked, tenuously, to the "AQ hardcore", many others – in Iraq, Indonesia, Algeria, Morocco, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan – are not. If these groups have sometimes come close to al-Qaida's vision in ideological terms, they would not necessarily evaporate if bin Laden was removed from the scene. Indeed, the current interest of Pakistani groups such as Lashkar e-Taiba or Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami in global agendas could be read as a sign of the end of al-Qaida's monopoly on international campaigns.

This debate has huge implications for the current crisis in Egypt, in which al-Qaida, as Bergen told Blitzer, has played no role whatsoever. Rather than asking about al-Qaida, Blitzer should have been asking about Islamism more generally. One of the most striking developments over recent years in the Middle East has been the growing conservatism, political, social and religious, of much of the population. Often this has been in opposition to the westernised values and lifestyles of an elite unwilling to share power and wealth with the expanding urban middle class. In Egypt, democracy is seen as a tool to oust that elite.

Quite what will follow is uncertain. The critical question is the extent to which the population share the social values of the educated, media and tech-savvy activists who have so far been driving events. Though the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organisation founded in Egypt in 1928, would probably win only a third of votes in a free and fair election, it is likely that a "mild or moderate" Islamist worldview is shared by a greater proportion of people.

One possibility is an evolution along the lines of Turkey, where an ongoing tension between new conservative, religious moderates and an old secular elite has neither derailed economic growth nor destabilised the country. But other less positive outcomes are entirely feasible. The biggest problem for reformers in Iran, too, is bringing on board the country's reactionary rural and working-class constituency, who are still suspicious of anything that smacks of westernisation.

A second element is worth remembering. Bergen recounts the history and roots of "the longest war" (that there is still no commonly agreed name for the conflict reveals much about the lack of clarity as to its real nature and even the identity of its participants). It is a conflict that is often described as "generational", meaning that it will last for somewhere between 20 and 25 years. However, there is another sense in which generations play a role. Looking at some of the regions hit by violence associated with militant Islam in recent years, such as Iraq or Saudi Arabia, it is clear that the revulsion most people feel when they see what radical campaigns at home actually mean was the crucial factor in the failure of extremists to convince communities to heed their call-to-arms. The same was true of Algeria and Egypt in the 90s. Yet those out on the streets in Cairo and Alexandria are extremely young. In Egypt, 29% of the population is aged between 15 and 30. Most barely remember the hideous brutality that accompanied the militant campaigns of 15 or 20 years ago. They may, if their aspirations are not met in this new period of change, be tempted to turn once more to the bomb and the bullet.

But to understand "the equation", as Blitzer put it, you need to understand al-Qaida, and Bergen, with this detailed, serious, scrupulously fair, perceptive and sometimes startling work has made a significant contribution to us doing exactly that.

Separating the Taliban from al-Qaida | World news

Taliban in Baghlan

Taliban fighters. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad for the Guardian

The Munich Security Conference adopted its characteristically upbeat tone on Afghanistan once again this year. From President Hamid Karzai down, one speaker after another agreed that the strategy was working and steady progress was being made.

Karzai himself insisted his people were telling him that security was better than the year before, which was in turn better than the year before that.

For another point of view, it is worth taking a look at a new paper out today by New York University's Centre on International Cooperation. It is titled: "Separating the Taliban from al-Qaida; the core of success in Afghanistan" and essentially argues that the current "surge" is taking the US and Nato further away from that critical goal.

The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn are researchers and writers based in Kandahar, and consequently have better access to the Taliban that just about anyone else writing on the subject.

They point out that when Osama bin Laden and his followers arrived in Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996, they landed in Jalalabad where they were hosted by mujahedin commanders bin Laden knew from the war against the Soviet Union, not by the Taliban.

En route to capture Kabul in September 1996, the Taliban took Jalalabad, thus inheriting custody of bin Laden and the group around him.

When the Taliban did inherit al-Qaida, they were split on how to deal with it. While Mullah Omar saw bin Laden "as an important connector to the wider Muslim world", a group around Mullah Mohammad Rabbani viewed him as nothing but trouble and an obstacle to international recognition. But Rabbani died in April 2001, marginalizing the internal opposition to the link and effectively sealing the fate of the Taliban regime.

When the US and its allies attacked, many Taliban went back to their villages, but the Bush policy of making no distinction between Taliban and al-Qaida meant they were often tracked down by US Special Forces. Sitting it out was not an option.

The paper makes the argument that the Taliban insurgency was avoidable and that separating the old-school Taliban leaders from al-Qaida is not impossible. It lists the signs the Taliban have sent to that effect, but says the leadership will play that card at the end of negotiations, not at the start.

The authors even quote "a senior Taliban political strategist" as envisioning the movement one day conducting counter-terrorist operations against al-Qaida, with US special forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

While this idea seems impossible to implement at present, it signifies considerable flexibility within the senior Taliban leadership

However, the authors argue that the 'decapitation strategy' pursued by US and Nato troops under General David Petraeus is making an eventual deal less likely. While there is ample manpower to fill the places of Taliban commanders killed and captured, the influx of more ideological and less nationalistic young members has weakened the leadership.

The likely outcome Strick and Kuehn say, is "a still growing and ever more radical and largely leaderless insurgency".

If a political settlement is indeed being sought, there is little sense in trying to destroy the organisations one wants to talk to

This argument is portrayed as dangerously illogical by most of the US and Nato military leadership, who say the Taliban will never negotiate unless and until they feel they are losing.

I talked to a member of the international contact group in Munich over the weekend who took a middle view. Military pressure is essential he says, but he could see a situation in which the pressure, and the manner in which it is applied, becomes counter-productive. "That time is approaching," he said.

Afghan officer who shot British soldiers took drugs, inquest to be told | World news

  • guardian.co.uk,

     

    Monday 7 February 2011 17.43 GMT

  • Article history
AFGHAN NATIONAL POLICE

 

A soldier giving evidence at the inquest said the Afghan police officers 'would come and go as they pleased'. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

An inquest into the deaths of five servicemen shot dead in Helmand by a rogue local police officer is to hear evidence that the gunman and his colleagues frequently took drugs as they worked alongside British forces.

The inquest will also hear concerns that members of the Afghan National police (ANP) being mentored by British soldiers were often ill-disciplined and sometimes refused to co-operate.

It will look at how the mentoring scheme between British soldiers and local police officers in Helmand operated and examine if there was a failure by the UK government to keep the men safe.

The five men, Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, Sergeant Matthew Telford and Guardsman James Major, all of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, died alongside Corporal Steven Boote and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith from the Royal Military police on 3 November 2009.

Today's review in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, heard that the men were sitting on steps at a checkpoint code named Blue 25, in the Nad-e-Ali district, when they were killed. They were "relaxing in the sun" at the time and were not wearing body armour or carrying weapons.

It was decided at the review that issues to be covered during the full inquest will include what was known about the attitude of members of the ANP to the British forces and intelligence about whether extremists had infiltrated the police. It will also look at how the attacker, identified only as Gulbuddin, ended up working with British troops.

The review heard that there was no evidence the attack was "drug-induced", but the assailant was a cannabis-user.

Wiltshire and Swindon coroner, David Ridley, said there was a "cultural difference" between British troops and local forces and compared the use of cannabis and opium by Afghan forces to their British counterparts smoking cigarettes.

Paul Kilcoyne, who is representing two of the families of the men who were killed, said: "You're dealing with a situation where British forces are placed in juxtaposition with Afghan nationals."

Kilcoyne said the police officers were not having the "occasional puff" – there were occasions when they "couldn't walk straight … These are people with weapons."

One soldier who is due to give evidence at the inquest has said that the Afghan police officers could "come and go as they pleased". Sometimes they did not turn up at all and refused to carry out some patrols. At times they refused to talk with their British mentors.

It emerged during the pre-inquest hearing that an interpreter had claimed to have heard a second weapon being used in the attack, but witnesses insist that there was only one gunman.

Concern was also expressed by the family of Major about the length of time it had taken for medics to get to him – about 20 minutes.

The full inquest is due to take place in April or May.

TV review: Outcasts, Storyville: Afghan Cricket Club - Out of the Ashes | Television & radio


  • Tuesday 8 February 2011 14.27 GMT

  • Article history
Ashley Walters and Hermione Norris in Outcasts

 

Ashley Walters and Hermione Norris in Outcasts Photograph: BBC/Kudos Film and Television/Joe Alblas

It is the year 2040 and a group of pioneering humans have been living on a distant planet for the past 10 years, following some serious trouble back home. They don't even know if Earth is still there any more, but a second transporter ship – maybe the last one ever – is about to arrive.

That's the set-up of Outcasts (BBC1), the eight-part sci-fi drama that had its gritty (you could taste the dust in your mouth) debut last night. The outcasts have named their new home planet Carpathia – in honour, as their leader President Tate mentioned, of the steamship that rescued hundreds of Titanic survivors from the icy Atlantic. Nobody seems to have pointed out that RMS Carpathia was itself sunk by a U-boat six years later, making it a potentially ironic choice, but maybe they don't have Wikipedia on their planet, like I do on mine.

In any case, morale is low enough already. There's a distinct lack of gaiety in the compound of Forthaven, Carpathia. The accommodation looks like a Travelodge on special measures. Clothes are limited to a drab range of muted greys and olives, as if everybody grabbed their stuff off the same Debenham's sale rail. And there's unrest: Mitchell Hoban, a rogue member of the expeditionary force, means to lead a faction into the Carpathian hinterlands to start a breakaway settlement. His wife, a member of the police force, is spying on him. And he knows that she knows.

As often happens with an imaginary world this complicated, there was a tendency to force-feed the viewer information: a glimpse of Hoban's medical file told us he suffered from "maladjustment and multiple personality disorder"; Dr Stella Isen was referred to as a "feminist academic"; she has a brain-reading machine she uses both to solve crimes and watch old memories of the husband that she left on Earth. Plucky PAS officer Fleur is accused of "idealism"; her PAS colleague Cass has a secret; PAS stands for Protection and Security; President Tate lost his kids to some disease a while back; he has a secret, too.

That's not to say that Outcast was without its surprising twists. They weren't afraid to introduce a main character, give him a back story, put him into direct conflict another main character, then just kill him. There are already three fewer Carpathians to keep track of. It gives the drama an extra edge when you think anyone could go at any time. Clearly anything can happen in this brave new world. One gets the impression almost all of it will be bad. Now I've been educated, I can settle back and enjoy episode two.

Taj Malik learned his cricket in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, his family having left Afghanistan after the Russian invasion in 1979. In 2001, Taj returned to his homeland to coach the Afghan national cricket team, in the fond hope of getting them to the World Cup.

Storyville: Afghan Cricket Club – Out of the Ashes (BBC4) joined this quest in 2008, with the team about to set off for a tournament in Jersey. One felt that winning might be a tall order. Taj's opening batsman was his brother. The team included a bodybuilder named Gulbadeen who appeared to be new to the game. He wasn't alone. The president of the Afghan Cricket Association, who had a man with a gun standing behind him, spoke of sport uniting people and instilling pride, then said, "But to be honest I had no idea about this cricket until recently."

Taj, by contrast, seemed comfortable nowhere but on a cricket pitch. It was terribly endearing to watch him try to look unruffled as he used an airport escalator for the first time, or to test his English on bemused Japanese strangers.

On the pitch the players had passion, but lacked discipline and, at times, sportsmanship. "Why did you ask me to play with a fucking bisexual?" screamed one, after being run out. But they beat Japan and Jersey, advancing to the next round. A less complex documentary might have ended as the players did their whirly victory dance on the pitch, but this one went on to see Taj replaced by a former Pakistani test player, as qualification became a real possibility. Life-affirming and heartbreaking by turns, Out of the Ashes had everything – except cricket. I know it had to appeal to people who know nothing about the game, but still – I'm more or less in that group, and even I would have liked to know the score.

Bomb disposal expert appeared 'under pressure' before he died | UK news

  • Wednesday 9 February 2011 14.21 GMT

  • Article history
Olaf Schmid

 

Bomb disposal expert Olaf Schmid was killed in an explosion in Afghanistan on the eve of his return home in Ocotber 2009. Photograph: David Gill

An "inspirational" bomb disposal expert appeared under pressure and rushed on the day he died in an explosion in Afghanistan, an inquest has heard.

Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid disarmed 64 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) before he was killed on the eve of his return home in October 2009.

Corporal Thomas Stace said Schmid, 30, of the Royal Logistic Corps, had been "somewhat impatient" as he defused explosives on the day of his death.

The pressure was not imposed by army chiefs, he said. "I think he was under pressure to deal with them all and that it was a self-imposed pressure," Stace said on Wednesday in written evidence to the hearing in Truro, Cornwall.

Sapper Craig Butterworth, who witnessed the death, described Schmid as a "total inspiration" but also noticed signs of stress.

Schmid's widow, Christina, watched as Butterworth paid tribute to the bomb disposal expert. "He was an inspiration to the team and a total professional," his written evidence, read out in court, said. "Whoever takes his position has some big shoes to fill."

Schmid had been attending to a suspected IED when Butterworth heard a blast and a comrade shouted: "Oz is dead", the inquest heard.

It was suggested the mindset of Schmid, who was posthumously awarded the George Cross, may have been shaped by the fact he would be soon going home.

At one point, while pulling up a suspected IED wire, he turned to a colleague and said: "Don't look at me, you did not see this," the inquest heard.

Butterworth added: "On that day it occurred to me that he was slightly rushed. I could only think that this was because it was his last day before going home for rest and recuperation."

Lance Corporal Steven Fisher also gave written evidence to the hearing, suggesting some of Schmid's actions on the day had been "out of character". Fisher said his colleague had been "clearly getting frustrated".

The inquest continues.

Afghan insurgents target moderate Islamic university | World news


  •  

    Wednesday 9 February 2011 16.46 GMT

  • Article history
Afghans walk past a bus damaged by a bomb in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan

 

Afghans walk past a bus damaged by a bomb in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. The bus had been carrying police academy trainers. Photograph: Rahmat Gul/AP

An Islamic university in eastern Afghanistan established by Cambridge University's Muslim chaplain has been bombed by insurgents, in an apparent attempt to snuff out its efforts to provide a moderate religious education to young Afghans.

The Jamiyat'al-Uloom'al-Islamiya in the once peaceful city of Jalalabad was attacked on Tuesday evening, when a powerful bomb hidden near the entrance buckled heavy metal gates and destroyed nearly all the building's windows. Several students and staff were wounded by flying glass, but no one was seriously hurt.

The university was established in 2009 by John Butt, an Englishman who converted to Islam in 1970 and has worked for decades in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a journalist and religious scholar. The 69-year-old also serves as Cambridge University's Muslim chaplain.

The city was struck by three other bombs on Tuesday, including an attack on a bus carrying policemen and the son of a leading political family in the province. The rash of bombings reflects the growing clout of militants in a prosperous trading town which also suffered a series of mysterious bomb attacks on music shops last year.

Butt studied at the influential Deoband madrasa in India after converting to Islam in 1970 and proudly calls himself a "Taliban", which, he points out, simply means "religious student".

However, the moderate brand of Islam promoted by the white mullah from England is regarded as a threat in militant circles and in recent weeks the university had been receiving "night letters" of the sort routinely used by insurgents to intimidate people.

Butt said the notes accused the university, and three other local madrasas, of "spreading western propaganda and poisoning the minds of the young generation in Afghanistan".

The notes also said the institution was trying to "sideline jihad with our emphasis on the peaceful propagation of the word of God".

"We are up against people who want to destabilise Afghanistan and people who set a lot of store by the militant ideology which has infiltrated into Afghanistan over the last 30 years," Butt said.

The attack follows a similar bombing in Jalalabad eight months ago at a media training centre operated by Butt's PACT radio station, which promotes moderate Islam on both sides of the nearby border with Pakistan.

Both that attack and the recent night letters have led some of the university's 120 students to drop out, and Butt said the bomb attack would probably further demoralise the institution.

Butt has been living and working in the now war-torn region ever since he travelled from England to Afghanistan on the hippy trail in the late 1960s, although he has become somewhat despairing at the difficulty of working in a country where security has declined sharply in recent years.

He believes "contemporary" religious education, which includes practical subjects such as business studies, as well as the traditional study of Islam, can help reduce the radicalisation of young people and give them different career options.

He also hopes to provide an alternative for young people who might otherwise travel to madrasas in Pakistan, some of which operate as indoctrination and recruitment centres for Taliban fighters and suicide bombers.