The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
By Aunohita Mojumdar, Correspondent
posted December 8, 2010 at 5:08 pm EST
Kabul, Afghanistan —
Nine years and billions of dollars into the Afghanistan war the US government is eager to show progress.
The US government estimates 6 million refugees have returned to the country and some 7 million children are back in school. And then there is the widely cited claim that 85 percent of Afghans that have access to healthcare, as in this recent report from the US Agency for International Development: “USAID and other donors have worked so that now more than 85 percent of the population has access to some form of health care, up from 9 percent in 2002."
There's just one problem, say healthcare officials in Afghanistan. That claim, also peddled by the British government’s aid agency, the World Bank and at times by the Afghan government, isn't true. And healthcare workers say it's created a false sense of accomplishment that's actually undermining efforts to improve health services for Afghans.
Though it's been repeated over and over, it's not hard to see how unlikely it is. If 85 percent of Afghan's did have access to healthcare, Afghanistan would be ahead of every country in the region after three-decades of almost non-stop war.
RELATED Monitor coverage on Afghanistan
Both the Afghan government’s Minister of Health as well as the Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Afghanistan say that the claim is misleading. According to the Ministry of Health, which provided the initial data, the claim stems from a misunderstanding of the fact that 85 percent of Afghanistan's districts have at least one basic health facility.
However a district can cover vast tracts of mountainous terrain, leaving district health facilities inaccessible to millions of Afghans.
“It does not mean 85 percent of Afghans have access or easy access or avail themselves of health facilities,” says Peter Graaff, the head of the WHO mission in Afghanistan.
Essentially, that would be akin to saying that just because every state in the US had a hospital, 100 percent of Americans had access to healthcare.
“The coverage of the basic primary health services in Afghanistan falls perilously short of the requirements of the population, leaving millions of Afghans with no or limited access to basic healthcare” read a UN statement Dec. 5, adding that according to its tally, “only 52 percent of the rural population have access to a health facility within one hour walking distance.”
To be sure, accurate healthcare figures are difficult to come by. The National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment carried out by the Afghan government with international support last year is the most accurate sampling of access to healthcare and came up with an estimate of 60 percent access.
Afghanistan’s acting Minister of Health Suraya Dalil insists that continuing to cite the 85 percent as harming efforts to improve health services. “According to the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment around 60 percent of the population has access to health,” says Dr. Dalil. “I have questioned the 85 percent figure since I came into this office.”
Graaff says he implores aid officials not to use this statistic, “it is not wise to use these figures as a success story,” he says.
The false statistic has prevented adequate attention on the health sector from donors and the Afghan government says Dalil. The Afghan Finance Ministry, which channels much of Afghanistan's development aid, said: “You don’t need the money, you are well off. Donors tell us ‘you are so successful. You have reached 85 percent of the population. You don’t need additional resources,’ ” according to Dalil.
With a $10.92 per capita expenditure on health, Afghanistan is still way below a target of $15 to $30 per capita expenditure recommended by the WHO, especially for a country affected by protracted crisis. Other Afghan health indicators remain dismal.
“Although maternal mortality rates have been reduced from 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2002 to 1,400 deaths in 2010, Afghanistan still has the second-highest maternal mortality ratio in the world after Sierra Leone” a joint statement issued by UNICEF, WHO, and UNFPA said at the Geneva Conference on Millennium Development Goals. "The same holds true for soaring infant and child mortality figures, although there has been a slight improvement in these numbers as well.”
December 09, 2010
December 03, 2010
Karzai Security Contractor Ban Could Assist Humanitarian Aid Work
Eurasianet, October 28, 2010
President Hamid Karzai’s plan to shut down private security forces in Afghanistan has many military contractors and assorted peace-builders in a panic. But some humanitarian aid workers in the country contend that a ban isn’t such a bad idea.
For years, non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan have condemned the militarization of humanitarian work, and have struggled to define a role that is distinct from the armed, for-profit development contractors in the conflict zone. Yet usually, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), contractors, humanitarians and development entrepreneurs have all been lumped together under the generic “aid worker” rubric. The Afghan government’s planned prohibition on private security companies (PSCs) could change that, helping to differentiate the humanitarians from other forms of development work.
Foreign for-profit development contractors have threatened to pull out of Afghanistan, since the August decree issued by Karzai would prevent them from relying on private security companies for protection. Instead, they would have to depend on the Afghan National Police to provide security. The only exceptions would be for military bases and diplomatic missions.
The ban was originally scheduled to take effect on December 17. But on October 27, Karzai agreed to push back the implementation deadline by two months. Karzai’s administration has come under intense pressure from Washington to relent on the ban.
Representatives of various humanitarian aid organizations are not worried by the looming ban to anywhere near the same extent as are the for-profit contractors. Many have long been living with high risk in order to deliver their services. Some even say the demise of private security companies would be beneficial.
“To the extent that it [the ban] helps to de-militarize the environment and to the extent that it reinforces the government’s monopoly on the use of force, I think ultimately it would be a positive thing,” Nic Lee, director of ANSO (Afghanistan NGO Safety Office), a non-profit humanitarian project that monitors safety conditions for the NGO sector, told EurasiaNet.org.
“There is no type of armed action that is conducive to humanitarian activity,” Lee continued. “So the less armed activity you have is always going to improve humanitarian space and humanitarian access.”
Many aid workers say they have a moral duty to work without armed protection in order to maintain their neutrality in a conflict zone. Of the 2,000 Afghan and 360 international NGOs operating across Afghanistan, “less than six use the services of a PSC, most commonly to provide unarmed guards at offices and homes,” according to ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief), an NGO umbrella organization.
In a joint statement issued with ANSO on October 25, ACBAR sought to distance the non-profit NGO community from for-profit contractors, emphasizing “the ban on PSCs will have no negative impact on aid delivery by the vast majority of humanitarian NGOs.”
While NGOs rely on the communities where they work to ensure their safety, the for-profit “development contractors” often depend on PSCs. Donors support their work as part of NATO’s counter-insurgency strategy, thus bringing them between the military and Taliban militants, and also muddying the waters between non-profit humanitarian work and for-profit development.
These private development contractors receive the bulk of donor money flowing into Afghanistan largely from the US government’s development arm, USAID. Thus, major donors like USAID have been scrambling for a way to keep their “implementing partners” in the country. Some large USAID contractors like DAI (Development Alternatives, Inc.) have said they would have to close down some projects, if the ban is implemented. Other private development companies have complained to the US Embassy that their employees “will vote with their feet.”
Donors suggest that their ongoing discussions with the Afghan government will lead to a compromise. But Karzai, despite delaying implementation of the ban, still seems determined to lock private security firms out of Afghanistan, calling them a menace to stability.
Employing development contractors is a fundamental part of Gen. David Petraeus’ much-touted counter-insurgency strategy. Petraeus, the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, is said to be lobbying Karzai’s government for an exception to the ban that covers a wide array of peace-building activities.
Even the United Nations is reviewing its programs to assess the ban’s potential impact. With UNAMA (the UN’s umbrella organization in Afghanistan) playing an overt political role, the mission has suffered increasing attacks. An attack on a UN guesthouse in Kabul last October left six international UN workers dead. On October 24, UN security repelled an attack on a UN guesthouse in Herat, killing four armed insurgents. The UN hopes its own security forces will be exempted from the new rule.
Not all donors use private security companies. The Indian Embassy, which has suffered two massive suicide bombings in the past three years, uses a combination of ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police, an Indian government paramilitary organization) and Afghan National Police to guard the embassy, as well as its projects.
The Canadian government also indicated that a ban would have a minimal impact on aid operations that it sponsors. “Most of our development assistance implementing partners do not use private security firms,” a spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy said, adding that Ottawa had sought an implementation plan that would allow the international community to remain in Afghanistan while respecting the goals of the presidential decree.
President Hamid Karzai’s plan to shut down private security forces in Afghanistan has many military contractors and assorted peace-builders in a panic. But some humanitarian aid workers in the country contend that a ban isn’t such a bad idea.
For years, non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan have condemned the militarization of humanitarian work, and have struggled to define a role that is distinct from the armed, for-profit development contractors in the conflict zone. Yet usually, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), contractors, humanitarians and development entrepreneurs have all been lumped together under the generic “aid worker” rubric. The Afghan government’s planned prohibition on private security companies (PSCs) could change that, helping to differentiate the humanitarians from other forms of development work.
Foreign for-profit development contractors have threatened to pull out of Afghanistan, since the August decree issued by Karzai would prevent them from relying on private security companies for protection. Instead, they would have to depend on the Afghan National Police to provide security. The only exceptions would be for military bases and diplomatic missions.
The ban was originally scheduled to take effect on December 17. But on October 27, Karzai agreed to push back the implementation deadline by two months. Karzai’s administration has come under intense pressure from Washington to relent on the ban.
Representatives of various humanitarian aid organizations are not worried by the looming ban to anywhere near the same extent as are the for-profit contractors. Many have long been living with high risk in order to deliver their services. Some even say the demise of private security companies would be beneficial.
“To the extent that it [the ban] helps to de-militarize the environment and to the extent that it reinforces the government’s monopoly on the use of force, I think ultimately it would be a positive thing,” Nic Lee, director of ANSO (Afghanistan NGO Safety Office), a non-profit humanitarian project that monitors safety conditions for the NGO sector, told EurasiaNet.org.
“There is no type of armed action that is conducive to humanitarian activity,” Lee continued. “So the less armed activity you have is always going to improve humanitarian space and humanitarian access.”
Many aid workers say they have a moral duty to work without armed protection in order to maintain their neutrality in a conflict zone. Of the 2,000 Afghan and 360 international NGOs operating across Afghanistan, “less than six use the services of a PSC, most commonly to provide unarmed guards at offices and homes,” according to ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief), an NGO umbrella organization.
In a joint statement issued with ANSO on October 25, ACBAR sought to distance the non-profit NGO community from for-profit contractors, emphasizing “the ban on PSCs will have no negative impact on aid delivery by the vast majority of humanitarian NGOs.”
While NGOs rely on the communities where they work to ensure their safety, the for-profit “development contractors” often depend on PSCs. Donors support their work as part of NATO’s counter-insurgency strategy, thus bringing them between the military and Taliban militants, and also muddying the waters between non-profit humanitarian work and for-profit development.
These private development contractors receive the bulk of donor money flowing into Afghanistan largely from the US government’s development arm, USAID. Thus, major donors like USAID have been scrambling for a way to keep their “implementing partners” in the country. Some large USAID contractors like DAI (Development Alternatives, Inc.) have said they would have to close down some projects, if the ban is implemented. Other private development companies have complained to the US Embassy that their employees “will vote with their feet.”
Donors suggest that their ongoing discussions with the Afghan government will lead to a compromise. But Karzai, despite delaying implementation of the ban, still seems determined to lock private security firms out of Afghanistan, calling them a menace to stability.
Employing development contractors is a fundamental part of Gen. David Petraeus’ much-touted counter-insurgency strategy. Petraeus, the commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan, is said to be lobbying Karzai’s government for an exception to the ban that covers a wide array of peace-building activities.
Even the United Nations is reviewing its programs to assess the ban’s potential impact. With UNAMA (the UN’s umbrella organization in Afghanistan) playing an overt political role, the mission has suffered increasing attacks. An attack on a UN guesthouse in Kabul last October left six international UN workers dead. On October 24, UN security repelled an attack on a UN guesthouse in Herat, killing four armed insurgents. The UN hopes its own security forces will be exempted from the new rule.
Not all donors use private security companies. The Indian Embassy, which has suffered two massive suicide bombings in the past three years, uses a combination of ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police, an Indian government paramilitary organization) and Afghan National Police to guard the embassy, as well as its projects.
The Canadian government also indicated that a ban would have a minimal impact on aid operations that it sponsors. “Most of our development assistance implementing partners do not use private security firms,” a spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy said, adding that Ottawa had sought an implementation plan that would allow the international community to remain in Afghanistan while respecting the goals of the presidential decree.
Karzai Puts Peace Hopes in Hands of Warlords
Eurasianet, October 12, 2010
The High Peace Council, Afghanistan’s new vehicle for promoting reconciliation between President Hamid Karzai’s administration and Taliban militants, is set to convene on October 13. But even before its first session gets underway, civil society activists in the country are condemning the council as a charade.
The council comprises 70 members -- all appointed by Karzai. The president has indicated that the council will have broad authority to engage Taliban representatives in the search for an end to the Islamic militant insurgency. The council’s specific powers and duties have not yet been defined, although members on October 10 chose a chairman, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. An ethnic Tajik, Rabbani is closely associated with the Jamiat-e Islami faction, which gained fame for its resistance to Soviet occupying forces during the 1980s.
It is unclear whether the High Peace Council will act as an advisory body or whether its decisions will be binding and subject to oversight. “The commission will develop its own rules and procedures,” presidential spokesman Waheed Omer said during a September 28 news conference, referring to the body’s powers of enforcement. The council’s only clear function is to administer the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, some $500 million in donor money earmarked to reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers. Western donors announced the fund in January.
Like Rabbani, many of the council members played prominent roles in 1992-1996 factional fighting that followed the collapse of Afghanistan’s Moscow-backed Communist regime. Several council members are suspected of having carried out human rights violations, but have never been convicted. Most members also were involved in efforts to resist Taliban attempts in the mid-1990s to establish control over all of Afghanistan.
The fact that the Peace Council is packed with past fighters does not inspire confidence among non-governmental organization (NGO) activists in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented show of unity, over 300 NGOs publicly criticized the composition of the council, saying a number of the members had “better experience in war rather than peace.” The composition of the council could “not only slow down the progress of the peace process but will ultimately result in its failure,” the NGOs said the October 4 joint statement.
“We have the usual faces,” said Nargis Nehan, Director of Equality for Peace and Democracy, a civil rights group. “We have been calling them warlords, and now they are on a list to bring peace and democracy. The list does not have any of the people who are working for peace and democracy.”
Defending Karzai’s selections, Omer, the presidential spokesman, said that council members “have their own importance and influence on the peace process.”
Of the 70 members, nine are women and only a handful come from the non-governmental sector, critics say. Perhaps the most notable figures omitted from the council are reconciled Taliban leaders, including Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil and Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.
Publicly, the international community has welcomed the High Peace Council. Only Norway has noted concern about its “narrow composition.” But many foreign observers and diplomats stationed in Kabul are quietly dismayed.
“The composition […] reflects the group of people who President Karzai thinks are power brokers and is a reflection of the current set-up of the ‘Karzai Coalition.’ It is Kabul and government-centric,” Thomas Ruttig co-director of the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent think-tank in Kabul, told EurasiaNet.org. “Most of the people are those he [Karzai] is consulting anyway.”
The council “is an effort to placate the international community with the names they know,” Ruttig continued. “It is not good enough.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a European diplomat said the High Peace Council was comprised simply of “the usual suspects and that, in itself, is not encouraging. These are the people who have been in charge for the past nine to 10 years. They fought the Taliban. Why would the Taliban want to talk to them?”
The High Peace Council, Afghanistan’s new vehicle for promoting reconciliation between President Hamid Karzai’s administration and Taliban militants, is set to convene on October 13. But even before its first session gets underway, civil society activists in the country are condemning the council as a charade.
The council comprises 70 members -- all appointed by Karzai. The president has indicated that the council will have broad authority to engage Taliban representatives in the search for an end to the Islamic militant insurgency. The council’s specific powers and duties have not yet been defined, although members on October 10 chose a chairman, former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. An ethnic Tajik, Rabbani is closely associated with the Jamiat-e Islami faction, which gained fame for its resistance to Soviet occupying forces during the 1980s.
It is unclear whether the High Peace Council will act as an advisory body or whether its decisions will be binding and subject to oversight. “The commission will develop its own rules and procedures,” presidential spokesman Waheed Omer said during a September 28 news conference, referring to the body’s powers of enforcement. The council’s only clear function is to administer the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, some $500 million in donor money earmarked to reintegrate Taliban foot soldiers. Western donors announced the fund in January.
Like Rabbani, many of the council members played prominent roles in 1992-1996 factional fighting that followed the collapse of Afghanistan’s Moscow-backed Communist regime. Several council members are suspected of having carried out human rights violations, but have never been convicted. Most members also were involved in efforts to resist Taliban attempts in the mid-1990s to establish control over all of Afghanistan.
The fact that the Peace Council is packed with past fighters does not inspire confidence among non-governmental organization (NGO) activists in Afghanistan. In an unprecedented show of unity, over 300 NGOs publicly criticized the composition of the council, saying a number of the members had “better experience in war rather than peace.” The composition of the council could “not only slow down the progress of the peace process but will ultimately result in its failure,” the NGOs said the October 4 joint statement.
“We have the usual faces,” said Nargis Nehan, Director of Equality for Peace and Democracy, a civil rights group. “We have been calling them warlords, and now they are on a list to bring peace and democracy. The list does not have any of the people who are working for peace and democracy.”
Defending Karzai’s selections, Omer, the presidential spokesman, said that council members “have their own importance and influence on the peace process.”
Of the 70 members, nine are women and only a handful come from the non-governmental sector, critics say. Perhaps the most notable figures omitted from the council are reconciled Taliban leaders, including Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil and Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.
Publicly, the international community has welcomed the High Peace Council. Only Norway has noted concern about its “narrow composition.” But many foreign observers and diplomats stationed in Kabul are quietly dismayed.
“The composition […] reflects the group of people who President Karzai thinks are power brokers and is a reflection of the current set-up of the ‘Karzai Coalition.’ It is Kabul and government-centric,” Thomas Ruttig co-director of the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent think-tank in Kabul, told EurasiaNet.org. “Most of the people are those he [Karzai] is consulting anyway.”
The council “is an effort to placate the international community with the names they know,” Ruttig continued. “It is not good enough.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a European diplomat said the High Peace Council was comprised simply of “the usual suspects and that, in itself, is not encouraging. These are the people who have been in charge for the past nine to 10 years. They fought the Taliban. Why would the Taliban want to talk to them?”
Is UN’s 'Collective Ambiguity' Just Another Term for Surrender?
Eurasianet, October 16, 2010
Inside the United Nations’ Kabul offices, senior officials have coined a phrase for how they are approaching Afghanistan’s September 18 parliamentary elections and the ongoing vote count: “constructive ambiguity.” The term, critics of the UN’s stance say, indicates that the organization is giving up on the Afghan democratization process.
By all appearances, the September 18 parliamentary elections, just like last year’s presidential vote, were tainted by ballot-stuffing and other dirty tricks. Since polls closed two weeks ago, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has received over 3,000 complaints. Roughly half of them, according to election officials, could potentially impact the outcome of MP races. Preliminary results are expected on October 8 and final results by the end of the month.
Prior to the election, foreign political observers held up the parliamentary vote as a crucial democratization test. Now that it’s clear that this legislative election didn’t mark much of an improvement over previous votes, the international community seems satisfied to merely acknowledge the “achievement” of the vote being held, given the growing level of violence in the country associated with the Taliban insurgency.
A diplomat familiar with UN thinking lauded the “constructive ambiguity” approach, saying it gave the UN needed flexibility. It allows the UN to quietly prod the Afghan government to act more responsibly and transparently, while enabling the organization to keep its hands clean in a messy process, the diplomat explained.
The term can also be used to justify a hands-off approach to the ballot-counting process. For the first time in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban history, the UN is not taking responsibility for the vote’s credibility, or the conduct of an independent assessment. This position on the parliamentary vote tally stands in sharp contrast to the presidential elections in 2009, when the international community focused on the extensive ballot fraud (1.5 million votes out of a total of 3.6 million were cancelled in the end). Ultimately, disagreement over the seriousness of the electoral fraud during the presidential election prompted a shake-up of the UN’s top leadership in Afghanistan.
The fallout from 2009 also soured relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community. The president, according to insiders, is said still to be holding a grudge for being forced by donor states to prepare for a second round of polling. (The second round never actually took place, as Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew before polling day).
This time around, the UN, which leads the international community’s involvement in Afghan elections, apparently thought it expedient to be quiet. Back in April, the new head of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Staffan de Mistura, certified the merit of Afghan government plans for making elections more credible and transparent and recommended to donors to release funds for the electoral process. However, this time -- unlike the comprehensive monitoring it carried out in 2009 along with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) -- the UN declined to involve itself in monitoring the parliamentary balloting.
“There is a very strict rule which exists,” de Mistura told EurasiaNet.org on September 14. “If you are part of organizing elections and supporting the organization of the elections you cannot be part of the monitoring and observation. In other words, we start having what is called a conflict of interest.”
Asked about the monitoring role in 2009, de Mistura said “that was a mistake last year. The rule is if you are part of organizing it, supporting it, you are not part of observing it.” De Mistura also suggested that other international observer missions were ineffectual, adding, “By the way, foreigners do not speak the language.” Domestic observers are more appropriate, he stressed.
Most donor nations took a hint from the UN. Long before the process began this year, Western diplomats based in Kabul made it clear that their governments would not say anything critical of the elections. In particular, the EU, which deployed a high-profile 10 million-euro observation mission during the 2009 presidential election, merely sent an election assessment team (EAT) this time around. The EAT was widely seen as under-prepared for its task and is not expected to make a public assessment on the conduct of the voting.
Moreover, immediately following the controversial presidential election, the international community conditioned its financial assistance for the parliamentary elections on the implementation of electoral reforms. But as the legislative voting approached, this demand was shelved and donor nations provided approximately $150 million in support.
In the eyes of Afghan democratization advocates, the UN’s constructive ambiguity stance is a disaster. The most respected domestic election observer mission, FEFA (Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan) urged the international community to play a robust role in the post-election process.
Specifically, FEFA said in a statement that the international community needed to “denounce identified acts of fraud, regardless of their perpetrator, and provide technical assistance to the ECC and IEC [Independent Election Commission] in verifying the results of the elections and carrying out investigations.”
While the donor community is providing these electoral bodies with technical and financial support, this assistance has not enabled adequate transparency in counting and fraud mitigation, making it difficult even for independent observer groups to gauge the credibility of the process, say analysts. De Mistura has tacitly sought to downgrade expectations by repeatedly stating the elections are likely to be imperfect because “we are not in Switzerland. We are in Afghanistan.”
Some non-governmental activists have equated the UN stance with an act of surrender. Commenting in the Afghan magazine “Killid” on October 2, Thomas Ruttig, co-director and senior analyst at the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent think-tank in Kabul, suggested that the popularity of the “Switzerland mantra” is “because the West is mentally on its way out of Afghanistan already” and the elections “were its farewell performance; it has decided to play a role in the wings only.”
At a September 16 news conference, Abdullah Abdullah, the defeated presidential candidate in 2009, hinted that the international community was trying to distance itself from a job poorly done. “They are aware of the shortcomings and they don’t want to be associated with it,” he said.
But Abdullah added that history would not forget the international community’s bungling. “To show a hands-off attitude will not lessen the responsibilities which the international community has toward the people of Afghanistan, or of member states towards their own citizens, because, after all, this election is also being funded by the money from the international community,” Abdullah said.
Inside the United Nations’ Kabul offices, senior officials have coined a phrase for how they are approaching Afghanistan’s September 18 parliamentary elections and the ongoing vote count: “constructive ambiguity.” The term, critics of the UN’s stance say, indicates that the organization is giving up on the Afghan democratization process.
By all appearances, the September 18 parliamentary elections, just like last year’s presidential vote, were tainted by ballot-stuffing and other dirty tricks. Since polls closed two weeks ago, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has received over 3,000 complaints. Roughly half of them, according to election officials, could potentially impact the outcome of MP races. Preliminary results are expected on October 8 and final results by the end of the month.
Prior to the election, foreign political observers held up the parliamentary vote as a crucial democratization test. Now that it’s clear that this legislative election didn’t mark much of an improvement over previous votes, the international community seems satisfied to merely acknowledge the “achievement” of the vote being held, given the growing level of violence in the country associated with the Taliban insurgency.
A diplomat familiar with UN thinking lauded the “constructive ambiguity” approach, saying it gave the UN needed flexibility. It allows the UN to quietly prod the Afghan government to act more responsibly and transparently, while enabling the organization to keep its hands clean in a messy process, the diplomat explained.
The term can also be used to justify a hands-off approach to the ballot-counting process. For the first time in Afghanistan’s post-Taliban history, the UN is not taking responsibility for the vote’s credibility, or the conduct of an independent assessment. This position on the parliamentary vote tally stands in sharp contrast to the presidential elections in 2009, when the international community focused on the extensive ballot fraud (1.5 million votes out of a total of 3.6 million were cancelled in the end). Ultimately, disagreement over the seriousness of the electoral fraud during the presidential election prompted a shake-up of the UN’s top leadership in Afghanistan.
The fallout from 2009 also soured relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community. The president, according to insiders, is said still to be holding a grudge for being forced by donor states to prepare for a second round of polling. (The second round never actually took place, as Karzai’s challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew before polling day).
This time around, the UN, which leads the international community’s involvement in Afghan elections, apparently thought it expedient to be quiet. Back in April, the new head of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Staffan de Mistura, certified the merit of Afghan government plans for making elections more credible and transparent and recommended to donors to release funds for the electoral process. However, this time -- unlike the comprehensive monitoring it carried out in 2009 along with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) -- the UN declined to involve itself in monitoring the parliamentary balloting.
“There is a very strict rule which exists,” de Mistura told EurasiaNet.org on September 14. “If you are part of organizing elections and supporting the organization of the elections you cannot be part of the monitoring and observation. In other words, we start having what is called a conflict of interest.”
Asked about the monitoring role in 2009, de Mistura said “that was a mistake last year. The rule is if you are part of organizing it, supporting it, you are not part of observing it.” De Mistura also suggested that other international observer missions were ineffectual, adding, “By the way, foreigners do not speak the language.” Domestic observers are more appropriate, he stressed.
Most donor nations took a hint from the UN. Long before the process began this year, Western diplomats based in Kabul made it clear that their governments would not say anything critical of the elections. In particular, the EU, which deployed a high-profile 10 million-euro observation mission during the 2009 presidential election, merely sent an election assessment team (EAT) this time around. The EAT was widely seen as under-prepared for its task and is not expected to make a public assessment on the conduct of the voting.
Moreover, immediately following the controversial presidential election, the international community conditioned its financial assistance for the parliamentary elections on the implementation of electoral reforms. But as the legislative voting approached, this demand was shelved and donor nations provided approximately $150 million in support.
In the eyes of Afghan democratization advocates, the UN’s constructive ambiguity stance is a disaster. The most respected domestic election observer mission, FEFA (Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan) urged the international community to play a robust role in the post-election process.
Specifically, FEFA said in a statement that the international community needed to “denounce identified acts of fraud, regardless of their perpetrator, and provide technical assistance to the ECC and IEC [Independent Election Commission] in verifying the results of the elections and carrying out investigations.”
While the donor community is providing these electoral bodies with technical and financial support, this assistance has not enabled adequate transparency in counting and fraud mitigation, making it difficult even for independent observer groups to gauge the credibility of the process, say analysts. De Mistura has tacitly sought to downgrade expectations by repeatedly stating the elections are likely to be imperfect because “we are not in Switzerland. We are in Afghanistan.”
Some non-governmental activists have equated the UN stance with an act of surrender. Commenting in the Afghan magazine “Killid” on October 2, Thomas Ruttig, co-director and senior analyst at the Afghan Analysts Network, an independent think-tank in Kabul, suggested that the popularity of the “Switzerland mantra” is “because the West is mentally on its way out of Afghanistan already” and the elections “were its farewell performance; it has decided to play a role in the wings only.”
At a September 16 news conference, Abdullah Abdullah, the defeated presidential candidate in 2009, hinted that the international community was trying to distance itself from a job poorly done. “They are aware of the shortcomings and they don’t want to be associated with it,” he said.
But Abdullah added that history would not forget the international community’s bungling. “To show a hands-off attitude will not lessen the responsibilities which the international community has toward the people of Afghanistan, or of member states towards their own citizens, because, after all, this election is also being funded by the money from the international community,” Abdullah said.
Parliamentary Elections a Critical Point for Kabul
Eurasianet/ October 17
Afghanistan’s parliamentary election on September 18 is shaping up as a critical democratization test. Over the past five years, parliament has acted as virtually the only check on President Hamid Karzai’s authority. Experts are wondering whether the legislators who are elected in the upcoming voting will keep on acting as a counterweight to executive authority.
Karzai has steadily accumulated influence over the Afghan political process during his years in power. But the controversial way in which he secured reelection in 2009, amid allegations of widespread fraud, weakened his political image and heightened concerns about persistent government corruption. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
MPs for the better part of the year have been impeding Karzai’s political agenda, most notably by withholding confirmation for many of his picks for cabinet positions.
At stake in the September 18 voting are 249 seats in the lower house of parliament. Almost 2,500 candidates are registered. Not surprisingly, Karzai has been working diligently to increase the chances that the elections will produce a legislative branch that is more pliant to his wishes. Political observers are worried that such a result could have damaging consequences for the democratization process.
“While pre-election politicking […] has generated a prominent (and very public) chasm between the Wolesi Jirga [lower house of parliament] and the Karzai administration, under the surface exist connections between MPs and the executive that threaten to strip the parliament of any monitoring or oversight capacity that it currently has,” writes Anna Larson in a recent report on the elections published by the respected Afghan Research and Analysis Unit (AREU).
The country’s unwieldy electoral system impedes political parties from contesting polls. The result is a fragmented polity, in which parties have a hard time coalescing into nationwide political forces. As a result, Afghan politics since the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul in late 2001 has been characterized by loose and shifting coalitions, hampering parliament’s ability to check the executive branch.
Despite the obstacles in the way of political parties, factions do exist. But some prominent leaders of major factions, such as Uzbek strongman General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq, are floundering. Having supported Karzai in the 2009 presidential elections, they now find themselves largely sidelined, with few of Karzai’s political promises having been fulfilled. As a result, their political leverage in the parliamentary election campaign has been greatly reduced. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
In addition, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, in contrast to a year ago when he emerged as the de facto leader of the opposition by challenging Karzai for the presidency, has seen many of his supporters drift away, co-opted by Karzai’s shrewd political maneuvers. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
First-time candidate Haroun Mir is well aware of parliament’s limitations and Karzai’s ongoing efforts to secure a more biddable legislature. “Instead of strengthening legal institutions, President Karzai has built parallel institutions and processes like the peace jirga and the high council for peace which have no place in the constitution. In doing so he has undermined parliament,” Mir told EurasiaNet.org.
Mir fears that money, muscle and fraud will mar the forthcoming elections. If that happens, Mir added, irreparable damage could be done to the country’s democratization hopes. “They [Karzai supporters] are doing everything they can to get a majority. Fraud will happen no doubt. It will be widespread in the South. But if we don’t take the fight [to parliament], if we leave the spaces empty, we could lose everything,” he said.
“This could be the last chance for Afghanistan,” Mir continued. “If we can not change the situation, bring some hope, Afghanistan could slide into chaos, into civil war.”
Though his political career began with the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban network of which Abdullah was a key member, Mir is now disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of the opposition and has parted ways.
Asked about the weak state of his opposition, Abdullah told EurasiaNet.org that he expects “at least 60 MPs” to form a loose confederation under his leadership, called the Coalition of Hope and Change, after the vote. Within the fragmented parliament, a bloc of 60 (out of 249 seats) could wield considerable influence, if it proves cohesive.
Many experts are skeptical that Abdullah’s efforts to form such a parliamentary faction will work. MPs are expected to remain likely to form coalitions according to expediency, especially when they stand to benefit personally and financially, observers say. Without a powerful party system, MPs are not bound to follow any particular line, leaving them open to pressure and patronage from the Karzai camp.
About 80 percent of incumbent MPs are seeking reelection. Also in the running, noted Noah Coburn in a separate AREU report, “are a group of influential commanders who chose not to run in 2005.” These commanders now see the “clear financial benefits of securing a seat and feeling reassured by a continued culture of impunity.”
Afghanistan’s increasingly dangerous security environment promises to create challenges on election day. Election officials indicate that close to one out of six polling centers are unlikely to operate on September 18 due to the threat of violence. A prolonged ballot-counting process also could create opportunities for fraud, some observers say. Preliminary results are not expected until October 8, and official tallies may not be announced until Halloween.
Afghanistan’s parliamentary election on September 18 is shaping up as a critical democratization test. Over the past five years, parliament has acted as virtually the only check on President Hamid Karzai’s authority. Experts are wondering whether the legislators who are elected in the upcoming voting will keep on acting as a counterweight to executive authority.
Karzai has steadily accumulated influence over the Afghan political process during his years in power. But the controversial way in which he secured reelection in 2009, amid allegations of widespread fraud, weakened his political image and heightened concerns about persistent government corruption. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
MPs for the better part of the year have been impeding Karzai’s political agenda, most notably by withholding confirmation for many of his picks for cabinet positions.
At stake in the September 18 voting are 249 seats in the lower house of parliament. Almost 2,500 candidates are registered. Not surprisingly, Karzai has been working diligently to increase the chances that the elections will produce a legislative branch that is more pliant to his wishes. Political observers are worried that such a result could have damaging consequences for the democratization process.
“While pre-election politicking […] has generated a prominent (and very public) chasm between the Wolesi Jirga [lower house of parliament] and the Karzai administration, under the surface exist connections between MPs and the executive that threaten to strip the parliament of any monitoring or oversight capacity that it currently has,” writes Anna Larson in a recent report on the elections published by the respected Afghan Research and Analysis Unit (AREU).
The country’s unwieldy electoral system impedes political parties from contesting polls. The result is a fragmented polity, in which parties have a hard time coalescing into nationwide political forces. As a result, Afghan politics since the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul in late 2001 has been characterized by loose and shifting coalitions, hampering parliament’s ability to check the executive branch.
Despite the obstacles in the way of political parties, factions do exist. But some prominent leaders of major factions, such as Uzbek strongman General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq, are floundering. Having supported Karzai in the 2009 presidential elections, they now find themselves largely sidelined, with few of Karzai’s political promises having been fulfilled. As a result, their political leverage in the parliamentary election campaign has been greatly reduced. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
In addition, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, in contrast to a year ago when he emerged as the de facto leader of the opposition by challenging Karzai for the presidency, has seen many of his supporters drift away, co-opted by Karzai’s shrewd political maneuvers. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
First-time candidate Haroun Mir is well aware of parliament’s limitations and Karzai’s ongoing efforts to secure a more biddable legislature. “Instead of strengthening legal institutions, President Karzai has built parallel institutions and processes like the peace jirga and the high council for peace which have no place in the constitution. In doing so he has undermined parliament,” Mir told EurasiaNet.org.
Mir fears that money, muscle and fraud will mar the forthcoming elections. If that happens, Mir added, irreparable damage could be done to the country’s democratization hopes. “They [Karzai supporters] are doing everything they can to get a majority. Fraud will happen no doubt. It will be widespread in the South. But if we don’t take the fight [to parliament], if we leave the spaces empty, we could lose everything,” he said.
“This could be the last chance for Afghanistan,” Mir continued. “If we can not change the situation, bring some hope, Afghanistan could slide into chaos, into civil war.”
Though his political career began with the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban network of which Abdullah was a key member, Mir is now disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of the opposition and has parted ways.
Asked about the weak state of his opposition, Abdullah told EurasiaNet.org that he expects “at least 60 MPs” to form a loose confederation under his leadership, called the Coalition of Hope and Change, after the vote. Within the fragmented parliament, a bloc of 60 (out of 249 seats) could wield considerable influence, if it proves cohesive.
Many experts are skeptical that Abdullah’s efforts to form such a parliamentary faction will work. MPs are expected to remain likely to form coalitions according to expediency, especially when they stand to benefit personally and financially, observers say. Without a powerful party system, MPs are not bound to follow any particular line, leaving them open to pressure and patronage from the Karzai camp.
About 80 percent of incumbent MPs are seeking reelection. Also in the running, noted Noah Coburn in a separate AREU report, “are a group of influential commanders who chose not to run in 2005.” These commanders now see the “clear financial benefits of securing a seat and feeling reassured by a continued culture of impunity.”
Afghanistan’s increasingly dangerous security environment promises to create challenges on election day. Election officials indicate that close to one out of six polling centers are unlikely to operate on September 18 due to the threat of violence. A prolonged ballot-counting process also could create opportunities for fraud, some observers say. Preliminary results are not expected until October 8, and official tallies may not be announced until Halloween.
Afghan vote a foregone conclusion
Asia Times, September 17
KABUL - As Afghans go to the polls to elect a new parliament, the result is already a foregone conclusion. Far from handing power to one political party, voters will return 249 individuals who must act as a de facto and fragmented opposition with little hope of setting out viable alternatives to the government's agenda.
In the country's party-less system, political allegiances are ever shifting - changing from policy to policy - and groups of MPs have often used their spoiler ability to extract concessions rather than shape administrative agendas. Realizing that the only leverage is their ability to block the government, MPs have come together to oppose sections of the budget, appointments to high office, including the cabinet, and critical legislation that the government wants to pass.
The legislative body has been a thorn in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's side. He will be looking for the September 18 polls
to help consolidate his power after reports that prominent opposition leaders have been co-opted by the government in recent months, analysts say.
''While pre-election politicking […] has generated a prominent (and very public chasm) between the Wolesi Jirga [lower house of parliament] and the Karzai administration, under the surface exist connections between MPs and the executive that threaten to strip the parliament of any monitoring or oversight capacity that it currently has,'' Anna Larson wrote in a report by the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).
Major government initiatives - such as the move towards negotiations with the Taliban or the cross-border peace jirga - have completely bypassed parliament for a "wider" consultation with the people, inherently implying its non-representative nature.
Former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, a key member of the Northern Alliance, which includes Karzai challenger Abdullah Abdullah, have made peace with Karzai. Though Abdullah was sharply critical of the peace jirga held in June, Rabbani agreed to chair it, taking the steam out of opposition to the event. In the week preceding the election, another Northern Alliance member, the current speaker of the lower house of parliament, Younus Qanooni, was forced to deny he had struck a deal with Karzai in return for continuing in the post. Qanooni is a sharp political operator whose skills have honed parliament’s oppositional tactics.
Several key players may be considering their political options since no one is quite sure what the elections will throw up. Insecurity, fraud, and doubts over Afghan voters' eagerness and ability to exercise their right to vote, all present a range of unpredictables.
The country's Independent Election Commission, which has distributed 17.5 million voter registration cards for Saturday's ballot, puts the voting population at about 12.5 million, while the UN says the eligible voters number 10.5 million, based on past voting. Added to that uncertainty is that 15% of voters have been potentially disenfranchised by the pre-polling decision not to open more than 1,000 polling stations which cannot be secured due to the ongoing conflict.
The difficulty of arriving at anything more than a guesstimate of the voting population is not merely statistical trivia but at the heart of the challenge of mounting elections in a complex situation. There is no method of cross-checking a voter registration card against a voter roll to eliminate fraud. This makes it impossible to gauge the real voter turnout, so there is no available measure of participation in the democratic exercise.
Unlike most elections, where the candidate tries to meet as much of the electorate as possible, for many of Afghanistan's prospective parliamentarians, campaigning has meant their going into hiding or leaving their constituencies to safeguard themselves from kidnapping and attacks by anti-election elements. Yet enthusiasm for the election is high, with more than 2,500 candidates seeking seats including tailors, newscasters, singers and businessmen.
A new crop of influential militia commanders has also entered the fray, according to Noah Coburn, writing for the AREU. Having chosen not to run in 2005, they have now seen the ''clear financial benefits of securing a seat and feeling reassured by a continued culture of impunity,'' Coburn said.
According to reports, some candidates have sought support from insurgents or even asked them to target their opponents. Direct violence between one candidate against a rival has also been reported.
Equally problematic is the issue of how free and fair the contest will be, a year after the 2009 presidential elections that were characterized by widespread fraud. Last year, ballot boxes in many areas were stuffed, while areas of high insecurity saw "ghost" polling stations that did not open or see any voters yet returned full ballot boxes.
Electoral fraud was not limited to ballot-box stuffing. The counting stage provided many steps that could be compromised. These included tamper-proof bags to transport votes that were tampered, tally sheets that did not tally, and triggers to alert to suspicious voting patterns that failed to be triggered during counting, according to Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan Analysts Network, who has dissected incidents of fraud in a recent report.
There is a high likelihood of fraud repeating itself due to a lack of any punitive measures put in place following last year's elections. The maximum penalty imposed was the blacklisting of some election officials, so the cost of attempted fraud in the current ballot is extremely low.
The crowning absurdity of the Afghan elections however is the voting system. Neither the preferential list system, nor the single-non transferable vote, it combines the worst of both, preventing political consolidation. The result is a fragmented and weak polity. Supporters of the system say Afghanistan first needs stability, while critics say the fragmented polity is one of the causes of continuing instability as it prevents the growth of a healthy democracy.
Either way, the final result is not political groups, agendas, manifestos or visions for Afghanistan's future within the parliament, but a collection of 249 individuals unbound by allegiance to any group.
KABUL - As Afghans go to the polls to elect a new parliament, the result is already a foregone conclusion. Far from handing power to one political party, voters will return 249 individuals who must act as a de facto and fragmented opposition with little hope of setting out viable alternatives to the government's agenda.
In the country's party-less system, political allegiances are ever shifting - changing from policy to policy - and groups of MPs have often used their spoiler ability to extract concessions rather than shape administrative agendas. Realizing that the only leverage is their ability to block the government, MPs have come together to oppose sections of the budget, appointments to high office, including the cabinet, and critical legislation that the government wants to pass.
The legislative body has been a thorn in Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's side. He will be looking for the September 18 polls
to help consolidate his power after reports that prominent opposition leaders have been co-opted by the government in recent months, analysts say.
''While pre-election politicking […] has generated a prominent (and very public chasm) between the Wolesi Jirga [lower house of parliament] and the Karzai administration, under the surface exist connections between MPs and the executive that threaten to strip the parliament of any monitoring or oversight capacity that it currently has,'' Anna Larson wrote in a report by the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU).
Major government initiatives - such as the move towards negotiations with the Taliban or the cross-border peace jirga - have completely bypassed parliament for a "wider" consultation with the people, inherently implying its non-representative nature.
Former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, a key member of the Northern Alliance, which includes Karzai challenger Abdullah Abdullah, have made peace with Karzai. Though Abdullah was sharply critical of the peace jirga held in June, Rabbani agreed to chair it, taking the steam out of opposition to the event. In the week preceding the election, another Northern Alliance member, the current speaker of the lower house of parliament, Younus Qanooni, was forced to deny he had struck a deal with Karzai in return for continuing in the post. Qanooni is a sharp political operator whose skills have honed parliament’s oppositional tactics.
Several key players may be considering their political options since no one is quite sure what the elections will throw up. Insecurity, fraud, and doubts over Afghan voters' eagerness and ability to exercise their right to vote, all present a range of unpredictables.
The country's Independent Election Commission, which has distributed 17.5 million voter registration cards for Saturday's ballot, puts the voting population at about 12.5 million, while the UN says the eligible voters number 10.5 million, based on past voting. Added to that uncertainty is that 15% of voters have been potentially disenfranchised by the pre-polling decision not to open more than 1,000 polling stations which cannot be secured due to the ongoing conflict.
The difficulty of arriving at anything more than a guesstimate of the voting population is not merely statistical trivia but at the heart of the challenge of mounting elections in a complex situation. There is no method of cross-checking a voter registration card against a voter roll to eliminate fraud. This makes it impossible to gauge the real voter turnout, so there is no available measure of participation in the democratic exercise.
Unlike most elections, where the candidate tries to meet as much of the electorate as possible, for many of Afghanistan's prospective parliamentarians, campaigning has meant their going into hiding or leaving their constituencies to safeguard themselves from kidnapping and attacks by anti-election elements. Yet enthusiasm for the election is high, with more than 2,500 candidates seeking seats including tailors, newscasters, singers and businessmen.
A new crop of influential militia commanders has also entered the fray, according to Noah Coburn, writing for the AREU. Having chosen not to run in 2005, they have now seen the ''clear financial benefits of securing a seat and feeling reassured by a continued culture of impunity,'' Coburn said.
According to reports, some candidates have sought support from insurgents or even asked them to target their opponents. Direct violence between one candidate against a rival has also been reported.
Equally problematic is the issue of how free and fair the contest will be, a year after the 2009 presidential elections that were characterized by widespread fraud. Last year, ballot boxes in many areas were stuffed, while areas of high insecurity saw "ghost" polling stations that did not open or see any voters yet returned full ballot boxes.
Electoral fraud was not limited to ballot-box stuffing. The counting stage provided many steps that could be compromised. These included tamper-proof bags to transport votes that were tampered, tally sheets that did not tally, and triggers to alert to suspicious voting patterns that failed to be triggered during counting, according to Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan Analysts Network, who has dissected incidents of fraud in a recent report.
There is a high likelihood of fraud repeating itself due to a lack of any punitive measures put in place following last year's elections. The maximum penalty imposed was the blacklisting of some election officials, so the cost of attempted fraud in the current ballot is extremely low.
The crowning absurdity of the Afghan elections however is the voting system. Neither the preferential list system, nor the single-non transferable vote, it combines the worst of both, preventing political consolidation. The result is a fragmented and weak polity. Supporters of the system say Afghanistan first needs stability, while critics say the fragmented polity is one of the causes of continuing instability as it prevents the growth of a healthy democracy.
Either way, the final result is not political groups, agendas, manifestos or visions for Afghanistan's future within the parliament, but a collection of 249 individuals unbound by allegiance to any group.
Extracting Change in Afghanistan’s Development Quagmire
Eurasianet/July 29, 2010
The girls’ high school under construction in Jabal Seraj could have turned out like any other development project in the area: crumbling and dangerous. Afghanistan is littered with poor-quality buildings sponsored by foreign donors. The projects are often sub-contracted -- several times -- to a final implementer who maximizes profits using cheap labor and sub-standard materials.
But not the Girls’ High School of Jabal Seraj. This community in Parwan province, north of Kabul, succeeded in getting the building contractor to replace approximately 10,000 sub-standard bricks and double the thickness of the metal sheeting on the roof.
Though sub-standard construction and corruption are endemic to many developing countries, in Afghanistan accountability is almost impossible to establish. Eighty-percent of donor money flows outside the government. Donors are responsible to taxpayers in their home countries and not to their Afghan beneficiaries. Project implementers are accountable to the donors and not to communities. The beneficiaries have few means of pressuring for improvements, and this has meant few checks on the rampant corruption that, literally, eats away at the entrails of projects. Most donors lack efficient monitoring resources to ensure effective project implementation.
In an effort to empower local communities and help them to receive the promised aid, Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), a non-governmental organization, initiated a local monitoring project in 2007.
The organization approaches a community to explain the concept, says Pajhwok Ghori, in charge of community-based monitoring at IWA. “The community chooses honest [local] people they trust,” he says. Then, in a workshop, these monitors learn how to determine if a project is being implemented according to the designated specifications, and, if not, how to approach the donor. “The local community then selects which particular project is important to them and needs monitoring.”
IWA provides technical help -- for example, engineering experts -- but no salaries, says Lorenzo Delesgues, the co-director of IWA. “This is to ensure that the monitoring process can be sustainable” even without IWA.
In Jabal Seraj, most of the monitors are schoolteachers, thus ensuring respect. “Often the engineers or the construction company pocket the money and carry out bad construction,” says Mohammed Maroof, a local monitor. “Look at the [nearby] Ishkabad School, for example. That, too, was a girls’ school. The wall cracked and broke after barely a year. The girls still have to use that school.”
“This monitoring project has really helped the people,” says Abdul Matin, another project monitor. “Can you imagine what kind of a school would have been constructed here without our intervention? The bricks they were using initially were crumbly; the walls would not have been sturdy. It is difficult sometimes to ask questions and some project implementers do not like the questions. But eventually they have to give the answers.”
The IWA program has an escalating scale of accountability. If the monitors cannot affect change where needed, the community gets involved. If the implementer still does not respond, the community puts pressure on the next link up the chain and so on all the way to the donor.
Some donors have been responsive. Captain A. Heather Coyne, a United States Army reservist who is the NGO/international organizations liaison with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Training Mission Afghanistan (NTMA), has worked with the IWA monitoring project to see how community monitoring can be expanded to NATO-financed police training projects. Her idea is not just to ensure better quality construction, but to use the monitoring method to build a stronger relationship between the police and the local communities.
“We are going to be providing access to IWA for all of our police station construction, so that communities can build confidence [in] police issues, and so that police can see that the community may be an asset to them. We're hoping that communities will use the monitoring process as a way to build more constructive relationships with their police force, as well as making police more accountable and responsive,” Coyne says.
IWA itself has expanded the monitoring from its pilot project in Parwan and has similar projects in Balkh, Nangarhar and Herat provinces. Initially, one of the toughest hurdles was to make communities understand that IWA was not yet another cash-rich NGO handing out goodies.
“We had to tell people, ‘We are not here to pay you; we are not here to build the project,’” says Ghori. “In the beginning, people were skeptical and were not sure they could bring change, but now they are hopeful and more communities are coming and asking for this training. What we want is not just a social audit but social change.”
The monitors’ liaison in Jabal Seraj, IWA employee Haji Ghulam Rasool Khan Gulbahari, says defeating corruption must start at a local level. “We may not be able to stop the corruption at the highest levels by what we do. But even if we cannot end 100 percent of corruption, we can still stop 80 percent. We cannot reach the Arg [the presidential palace], but we can stop the corruption that is happening here in our area.”
The girls’ high school under construction in Jabal Seraj could have turned out like any other development project in the area: crumbling and dangerous. Afghanistan is littered with poor-quality buildings sponsored by foreign donors. The projects are often sub-contracted -- several times -- to a final implementer who maximizes profits using cheap labor and sub-standard materials.
But not the Girls’ High School of Jabal Seraj. This community in Parwan province, north of Kabul, succeeded in getting the building contractor to replace approximately 10,000 sub-standard bricks and double the thickness of the metal sheeting on the roof.
Though sub-standard construction and corruption are endemic to many developing countries, in Afghanistan accountability is almost impossible to establish. Eighty-percent of donor money flows outside the government. Donors are responsible to taxpayers in their home countries and not to their Afghan beneficiaries. Project implementers are accountable to the donors and not to communities. The beneficiaries have few means of pressuring for improvements, and this has meant few checks on the rampant corruption that, literally, eats away at the entrails of projects. Most donors lack efficient monitoring resources to ensure effective project implementation.
In an effort to empower local communities and help them to receive the promised aid, Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA), a non-governmental organization, initiated a local monitoring project in 2007.
The organization approaches a community to explain the concept, says Pajhwok Ghori, in charge of community-based monitoring at IWA. “The community chooses honest [local] people they trust,” he says. Then, in a workshop, these monitors learn how to determine if a project is being implemented according to the designated specifications, and, if not, how to approach the donor. “The local community then selects which particular project is important to them and needs monitoring.”
IWA provides technical help -- for example, engineering experts -- but no salaries, says Lorenzo Delesgues, the co-director of IWA. “This is to ensure that the monitoring process can be sustainable” even without IWA.
In Jabal Seraj, most of the monitors are schoolteachers, thus ensuring respect. “Often the engineers or the construction company pocket the money and carry out bad construction,” says Mohammed Maroof, a local monitor. “Look at the [nearby] Ishkabad School, for example. That, too, was a girls’ school. The wall cracked and broke after barely a year. The girls still have to use that school.”
“This monitoring project has really helped the people,” says Abdul Matin, another project monitor. “Can you imagine what kind of a school would have been constructed here without our intervention? The bricks they were using initially were crumbly; the walls would not have been sturdy. It is difficult sometimes to ask questions and some project implementers do not like the questions. But eventually they have to give the answers.”
The IWA program has an escalating scale of accountability. If the monitors cannot affect change where needed, the community gets involved. If the implementer still does not respond, the community puts pressure on the next link up the chain and so on all the way to the donor.
Some donors have been responsive. Captain A. Heather Coyne, a United States Army reservist who is the NGO/international organizations liaison with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Training Mission Afghanistan (NTMA), has worked with the IWA monitoring project to see how community monitoring can be expanded to NATO-financed police training projects. Her idea is not just to ensure better quality construction, but to use the monitoring method to build a stronger relationship between the police and the local communities.
“We are going to be providing access to IWA for all of our police station construction, so that communities can build confidence [in] police issues, and so that police can see that the community may be an asset to them. We're hoping that communities will use the monitoring process as a way to build more constructive relationships with their police force, as well as making police more accountable and responsive,” Coyne says.
IWA itself has expanded the monitoring from its pilot project in Parwan and has similar projects in Balkh, Nangarhar and Herat provinces. Initially, one of the toughest hurdles was to make communities understand that IWA was not yet another cash-rich NGO handing out goodies.
“We had to tell people, ‘We are not here to pay you; we are not here to build the project,’” says Ghori. “In the beginning, people were skeptical and were not sure they could bring change, but now they are hopeful and more communities are coming and asking for this training. What we want is not just a social audit but social change.”
The monitors’ liaison in Jabal Seraj, IWA employee Haji Ghulam Rasool Khan Gulbahari, says defeating corruption must start at a local level. “We may not be able to stop the corruption at the highest levels by what we do. But even if we cannot end 100 percent of corruption, we can still stop 80 percent. We cannot reach the Arg [the presidential palace], but we can stop the corruption that is happening here in our area.”
August 28, 2010
Afghanistan: No solution in sight
Times of India, July 10
The arrival of General David Petraeus in Kabul and the commotion of General Stanley Mc-Chrystal losing his job caused quite a clatter internationally with speculation on whether the new General, who was actually the old General - both in seniority and in terms of the genesis of the COIN and 'surge' strategies - would retain the same policy. Chastened by his predecessor's fate, General Petraeus is going slow on exhibiting his individuality.
What attracted less attention, except from the most assiduous of Afghanistan watchers were the swift changes executed by President Hamid Karzai in the security sector, through a series of appointments that consolidate his hold in key positions. They include the shifting of the powerful General Bismillah Khan to the Ministry of Interior, a new deputy minister in the Ministry of Defence, a new chief of staff of the army, and a new head of the National Security Directorate, the country's intelligence agency.
The local media interpreted them as signs of a greater role for Pashtuns in the security apparatus as well as paving the way for reconciliation with insurgent groups including the Taliban and the Haqqani faction. However the appointments also reflect something wider - a shift in the centre of gravity over the past few months, away from the international compact on rebuilding of the Afghan state and government towards more localised interests , both within Afghanistan and the region.
While the US still dominates in Afghanistan with the sheer size of the military and economic resources that it brings, its leverage has become more fragmented with no clarity of direction. Over the past year US engagement in Afghanistan has been fraught with tensions, as much between Karzai and the Obama administrations as within the Obama administration itself, most clearly visible here in Kabul in the wide divergence between the top military and civilian representatives in Kabul - General McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. The reason perhaps, is not, as is often suggested, that Obama can't get it right, but just that his administration's attention is engaged elsewhere.
If Iraq was the distraction during the Bush era, it is domestic issues that absorb a great deal of the new president's energy and focus. In so far as Afghanistan factors into this, it is largely through a preoccupation with how quickly and how neatly the US will be able to exit Afghanistan.
While differences in the American agenda display themselves as dissonances in policy, the Afghan establishment is also working at multiple levels, but in an effort to position itself for multiple realities. These include keeping a working relationship with the international community to maintain a stream of economic and military support, overtures to the Taliban, enhanced political engagement with Pakistan, pacification of India, Iran and the Russia and most important of all, a way of consolidating its own hold on power. How the insurgency grows in the future, how much leverage Pakistan can assert and how quickly the international community wants to exit will be amongst the main factors determining which of these overtures by the Karzai government strengthens or weakens in the future.
The recent peace jirga is an illustrative example of how a single event can work at various levels. On the one hand it fed into the international community's concerns of increasing chaos by projecting reconciliation as a magic panacea, a way out of the morass; to those of the insurgents willing to bite, it held out the prospect of joining the establishment; those fearful of the return of the Taliban were assured by the various and ambiguous caveats limiting insurgent participation that are open to widely varied interpretation. The jirga assured Pakistan of its significance in an eventual political solution and reassured India that a government led by Karzai would not go too far. In concrete terms it also provided the initiation of a 'project' that could attract more donor funding - a new cash cow just when the international community was beginning to ask questions about other sectors it has been funding.
The forthcoming Kabul Conference promises to be yet another such beast. The Afghan government's priorities, which were set in 2006, refined in 2008 and reviewed in London in 2010, are now expected to be reworked in July 2010. Like the proverbial elephant in a room full of blind men, the conference may well end with each taking from it a suitable conclusion. In fact, in the current international mindset which equates a 'full calendar of events' with actual progress, not much needs to happen anyway, apart from the mere holding of the conference.
The acute concentration of attention on new, bright and shining events belies what lies beneath its shadows: increasing despair, impoverishment and estrangement of ordinary Afghans from the process of governance. The poorest segment - one third of all Afghans - do not meet their dietary requirements are getting squeezed further , being forced to sell income-generating assets as the humanitarian crisis deepens. Significant numbers of those entrusted with leadership in the task of rebuilding the Afghan state are those who have private economic interests that benefit directly from continuation of the conflict.
The growth of intolerant ideologies is pushing women back into their homes, obstructing their movement and encouraging violence against them through impunity. Ethnic minorities have started expressing their concerns about marginalisation. Political movements and the process of democratisation are being deliberately weakened. Rule of law and justice are being seen as an expendable luxury in the quest for 'stability'. Meanwhile the support for the Taliban continues to grow, albeit less rapidly than the Taliban itself.
The Taliban now operate in all 34 provinces and have shadow governments in 33 provinces of Afghanistan. Their growing capabilities and the increasing violence in Afghanistan are well-documented. Until now an overwhelming majority of the Afghan people continue to put their faith in the government and the institutions of state. But this trend is changing. People are increasingly turning away to non-state actors in search for help. Less noticeable than the shift of gravity within the political class, the centre of gravity within the Afghan population is also moving.
The arrival of General David Petraeus in Kabul and the commotion of General Stanley Mc-Chrystal losing his job caused quite a clatter internationally with speculation on whether the new General, who was actually the old General - both in seniority and in terms of the genesis of the COIN and 'surge' strategies - would retain the same policy. Chastened by his predecessor's fate, General Petraeus is going slow on exhibiting his individuality.
What attracted less attention, except from the most assiduous of Afghanistan watchers were the swift changes executed by President Hamid Karzai in the security sector, through a series of appointments that consolidate his hold in key positions. They include the shifting of the powerful General Bismillah Khan to the Ministry of Interior, a new deputy minister in the Ministry of Defence, a new chief of staff of the army, and a new head of the National Security Directorate, the country's intelligence agency.
The local media interpreted them as signs of a greater role for Pashtuns in the security apparatus as well as paving the way for reconciliation with insurgent groups including the Taliban and the Haqqani faction. However the appointments also reflect something wider - a shift in the centre of gravity over the past few months, away from the international compact on rebuilding of the Afghan state and government towards more localised interests , both within Afghanistan and the region.
While the US still dominates in Afghanistan with the sheer size of the military and economic resources that it brings, its leverage has become more fragmented with no clarity of direction. Over the past year US engagement in Afghanistan has been fraught with tensions, as much between Karzai and the Obama administrations as within the Obama administration itself, most clearly visible here in Kabul in the wide divergence between the top military and civilian representatives in Kabul - General McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. The reason perhaps, is not, as is often suggested, that Obama can't get it right, but just that his administration's attention is engaged elsewhere.
If Iraq was the distraction during the Bush era, it is domestic issues that absorb a great deal of the new president's energy and focus. In so far as Afghanistan factors into this, it is largely through a preoccupation with how quickly and how neatly the US will be able to exit Afghanistan.
While differences in the American agenda display themselves as dissonances in policy, the Afghan establishment is also working at multiple levels, but in an effort to position itself for multiple realities. These include keeping a working relationship with the international community to maintain a stream of economic and military support, overtures to the Taliban, enhanced political engagement with Pakistan, pacification of India, Iran and the Russia and most important of all, a way of consolidating its own hold on power. How the insurgency grows in the future, how much leverage Pakistan can assert and how quickly the international community wants to exit will be amongst the main factors determining which of these overtures by the Karzai government strengthens or weakens in the future.
The recent peace jirga is an illustrative example of how a single event can work at various levels. On the one hand it fed into the international community's concerns of increasing chaos by projecting reconciliation as a magic panacea, a way out of the morass; to those of the insurgents willing to bite, it held out the prospect of joining the establishment; those fearful of the return of the Taliban were assured by the various and ambiguous caveats limiting insurgent participation that are open to widely varied interpretation. The jirga assured Pakistan of its significance in an eventual political solution and reassured India that a government led by Karzai would not go too far. In concrete terms it also provided the initiation of a 'project' that could attract more donor funding - a new cash cow just when the international community was beginning to ask questions about other sectors it has been funding.
The forthcoming Kabul Conference promises to be yet another such beast. The Afghan government's priorities, which were set in 2006, refined in 2008 and reviewed in London in 2010, are now expected to be reworked in July 2010. Like the proverbial elephant in a room full of blind men, the conference may well end with each taking from it a suitable conclusion. In fact, in the current international mindset which equates a 'full calendar of events' with actual progress, not much needs to happen anyway, apart from the mere holding of the conference.
The acute concentration of attention on new, bright and shining events belies what lies beneath its shadows: increasing despair, impoverishment and estrangement of ordinary Afghans from the process of governance. The poorest segment - one third of all Afghans - do not meet their dietary requirements are getting squeezed further , being forced to sell income-generating assets as the humanitarian crisis deepens. Significant numbers of those entrusted with leadership in the task of rebuilding the Afghan state are those who have private economic interests that benefit directly from continuation of the conflict.
The growth of intolerant ideologies is pushing women back into their homes, obstructing their movement and encouraging violence against them through impunity. Ethnic minorities have started expressing their concerns about marginalisation. Political movements and the process of democratisation are being deliberately weakened. Rule of law and justice are being seen as an expendable luxury in the quest for 'stability'. Meanwhile the support for the Taliban continues to grow, albeit less rapidly than the Taliban itself.
The Taliban now operate in all 34 provinces and have shadow governments in 33 provinces of Afghanistan. Their growing capabilities and the increasing violence in Afghanistan are well-documented. Until now an overwhelming majority of the Afghan people continue to put their faith in the government and the institutions of state. But this trend is changing. People are increasingly turning away to non-state actors in search for help. Less noticeable than the shift of gravity within the political class, the centre of gravity within the Afghan population is also moving.
Taliban attack compound of US contractor in Afghanistan
The Guardian, July 2
Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the compound of a USAid contractor in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz today, killing four people including a British national.
The attack on the compound of Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) also wounded 10 people, including a Briton whose condition was described by the British embassy as critical but stable. Initial reports suggested that the dead may have been members of a private security firm guarding the compound.
The gunbattle, which started at 3am local time and lasted for more than six hours, destroyed the compound, according to local officials.
Although the province is the hub of insurgency in the northern areas, the scale and complexity of the attack was unprecedented in the region, marking a new level of capability for the insurgency on the day General David Petraeus, the new commander of the Nato and US forces, arrived in Kabul.
"Maybe they attempted to send a signal," Nato's General Joseph Blotz said, adding "but this is senseless."
Blotz said the attack resembled an assault on a UN guesthouse in Kabul in October last year that killed eight people.
Thomas Ruttig of the thinktank the Afghan Analysts Network said: "It is a first time for Kunduz that such a complex attack has happened there, and one against a non-military target. This is another sign they are getting stronger and have a greater foothold [in this area] and can pull off attacks like this one."
A Taliban spokesman was quoted by the local Pajhwok news agency claiming responsibilty and claiming the compound was that of the US special forces, something denied by US officials.
While development agencies have found it easier to work in northern areas, many of them have reported increasing threats from insurgents moving into new areas.
DAI is termed a for-profit contractor, a distinction that traditional NGOs are keen to emphasise. Many for-profit contractors live in armed compounds, something that traditional NGOs eschew in order to emphasise their neutrality.
Ruttig said: "I have concerns about the privatisation and militarisation of development co-operation which makes people who work in these organisations very vulnerable."
USAid termed the attack "another tragic reminder of the life threatening circumstances that our Afghan and international partners face as they work to improve conditions".
The attack comes at a time when the Obama administration is trying to pump more money into the civilian surge as part of its transition strategy in the face of growing domestic resistance.
Suicide bombers and gunmen attacked the compound of a USAid contractor in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz today, killing four people including a British national.
The attack on the compound of Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) also wounded 10 people, including a Briton whose condition was described by the British embassy as critical but stable. Initial reports suggested that the dead may have been members of a private security firm guarding the compound.
The gunbattle, which started at 3am local time and lasted for more than six hours, destroyed the compound, according to local officials.
Although the province is the hub of insurgency in the northern areas, the scale and complexity of the attack was unprecedented in the region, marking a new level of capability for the insurgency on the day General David Petraeus, the new commander of the Nato and US forces, arrived in Kabul.
"Maybe they attempted to send a signal," Nato's General Joseph Blotz said, adding "but this is senseless."
Blotz said the attack resembled an assault on a UN guesthouse in Kabul in October last year that killed eight people.
Thomas Ruttig of the thinktank the Afghan Analysts Network said: "It is a first time for Kunduz that such a complex attack has happened there, and one against a non-military target. This is another sign they are getting stronger and have a greater foothold [in this area] and can pull off attacks like this one."
A Taliban spokesman was quoted by the local Pajhwok news agency claiming responsibilty and claiming the compound was that of the US special forces, something denied by US officials.
While development agencies have found it easier to work in northern areas, many of them have reported increasing threats from insurgents moving into new areas.
DAI is termed a for-profit contractor, a distinction that traditional NGOs are keen to emphasise. Many for-profit contractors live in armed compounds, something that traditional NGOs eschew in order to emphasise their neutrality.
Ruttig said: "I have concerns about the privatisation and militarisation of development co-operation which makes people who work in these organisations very vulnerable."
USAid termed the attack "another tragic reminder of the life threatening circumstances that our Afghan and international partners face as they work to improve conditions".
The attack comes at a time when the Obama administration is trying to pump more money into the civilian surge as part of its transition strategy in the face of growing domestic resistance.
In Afghanistan, drug rehab for children
Christian Science Monitor/ July 14, 2010
Najiba scrabbles through cupboards frantic for something sweet. She claws at her mother, urging her to help. Najiba, though only 13 years old, lives in the Sanga Amaj drug addiction rehab clinic in Kabul with her mother, Zainab – who is also an opium addict, a habit acquired from her husband and passed on to her daughter.
Skip to next paragraph
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How US is tackling opium trade in Afghanistan poppy heartland
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.“When she was born, she kept crying, so after two months or so I started giving her opium to keep her quiet,” says Zainab. (Her and Najiba’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.)
The result is a drug dependency that Najiba is now desperately fighting.
Yet she is neither alone among Afghan children addicted to opium, nor among the worst affected. For starters, she’s one of a small minority getting professional help.
Opium as a pacifier
Opium is used in parts of Afghanistan to quiet babies and, in poorer households without access to medical help, to relieve pain – trends exacerbated by decades of conflict. Economic pressures and fragmented families have meant that women have less help at home and are more likely to give opium to cranky children, to free themselves up to do housework.
“Opium is sometimes used as a child-rearing method,” says Preeti Shah, a Narcotics Affairs Officer of the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) in Kabul.
The conflict has also left people with deep physical psychological wounds, which they try to numb with narcotics.
A two-year pilot study by the INL on drug addiction and household toxicity in Afghanistan found that babies as young as nine months were testing positive for narcotics, says Thom Browne, deputy director of the INL’s anticrime programs. It also found that in many cases, the level of toxicity in young children was several times higher than that in adult heroin users. The study, which looked at 30 households in three provinces, will be expanded to cover 2,000 households in 22 provinces next year.
While other countries also face cases of babies born with addiction, in Afghanistan the problem deepens as parents continue to administer drugs to their children. According to a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), up to half of drug users surveyed gave their children opium. The INL found in their study of Afghan drug users’ homes significant samples of opium in the air, bedding, eating utensils, toys, and other items that children come into contact with.
Treatment as taboo
Treating drug addiction is not easy anywhere, but is especially difficult in Afghanistan because of social and cultural stigmas against females going outside the home. Many families are reluctant to let women come and stay at Sanga Amaj for the 45-day treatment period, let alone the preferred 90-day period, says Latifa Hamidi, the doctor who oversees the clinic. Even surveying women proved near impossible – they constituted only 3 percent of the UNODC’s sample size.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
Afghanistan’s soaring drug trade hits home
How US is tackling opium trade in Afghanistan poppy heartland
Afghanistan news coverage
.Even more helpful would be treat the entire family, says Gilberto Gerra, the UNODC’s chief of drug prevention. Otherwise, “if a woman goes back to a home where her husband is using drugs, the risk of relapse is very high.”
Although cultural taboos prohibit men and women being treated together, the INL hopes to build treatment centers for men and women near one another, to allow family members to visit one another. Sanga Amaj, which opened in 2007, represents a step in that direction, by treating women and their children together.
The clinic’s 33 patients include 15 children, the youngest of whom is 3 years old. Zainab and Najiba have been here for two weeks. In addition to attending group therapy sessions and receiving medical treatment, during they day they exercise, sit in religion classes, and learn skills like sewing and embroidery. At the end of their time, they will go home to Zainab’s husband, who has already undergone treatment. If Zainab and Najiba stay clean, they will be entitled to free medicine from the clinic.
Facilities like Sanga Amaj are few. Kabul only has four, which can handle about 100 patients. Of Afghanistan’s 1 million drug users, at least 90 percent have no access to treatment, according to the UNODC.
Expanding treatment facilities would require considerable foreign aid and expertise, but does not rank high on donors’ list of priorities. These include instead ending the poppy farming and drug trade that make Afghanistan the supplier of 90 percent of the world’s opium.
“Afghanistan is known for being a supply country,” says Ms. Shah. “It is time to recognize it is a demand country as well.”
Najiba scrabbles through cupboards frantic for something sweet. She claws at her mother, urging her to help. Najiba, though only 13 years old, lives in the Sanga Amaj drug addiction rehab clinic in Kabul with her mother, Zainab – who is also an opium addict, a habit acquired from her husband and passed on to her daughter.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
Afghanistan’s soaring drug trade hits home
How US is tackling opium trade in Afghanistan poppy heartland
Afghanistan news coverage
.“When she was born, she kept crying, so after two months or so I started giving her opium to keep her quiet,” says Zainab. (Her and Najiba’s names have been changed to protect their privacy.)
The result is a drug dependency that Najiba is now desperately fighting.
Yet she is neither alone among Afghan children addicted to opium, nor among the worst affected. For starters, she’s one of a small minority getting professional help.
Opium as a pacifier
Opium is used in parts of Afghanistan to quiet babies and, in poorer households without access to medical help, to relieve pain – trends exacerbated by decades of conflict. Economic pressures and fragmented families have meant that women have less help at home and are more likely to give opium to cranky children, to free themselves up to do housework.
“Opium is sometimes used as a child-rearing method,” says Preeti Shah, a Narcotics Affairs Officer of the US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) in Kabul.
The conflict has also left people with deep physical psychological wounds, which they try to numb with narcotics.
A two-year pilot study by the INL on drug addiction and household toxicity in Afghanistan found that babies as young as nine months were testing positive for narcotics, says Thom Browne, deputy director of the INL’s anticrime programs. It also found that in many cases, the level of toxicity in young children was several times higher than that in adult heroin users. The study, which looked at 30 households in three provinces, will be expanded to cover 2,000 households in 22 provinces next year.
While other countries also face cases of babies born with addiction, in Afghanistan the problem deepens as parents continue to administer drugs to their children. According to a recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), up to half of drug users surveyed gave their children opium. The INL found in their study of Afghan drug users’ homes significant samples of opium in the air, bedding, eating utensils, toys, and other items that children come into contact with.
Treatment as taboo
Treating drug addiction is not easy anywhere, but is especially difficult in Afghanistan because of social and cultural stigmas against females going outside the home. Many families are reluctant to let women come and stay at Sanga Amaj for the 45-day treatment period, let alone the preferred 90-day period, says Latifa Hamidi, the doctor who oversees the clinic. Even surveying women proved near impossible – they constituted only 3 percent of the UNODC’s sample size.
Skip to next paragraph
Related Stories
Afghanistan’s soaring drug trade hits home
How US is tackling opium trade in Afghanistan poppy heartland
Afghanistan news coverage
.Even more helpful would be treat the entire family, says Gilberto Gerra, the UNODC’s chief of drug prevention. Otherwise, “if a woman goes back to a home where her husband is using drugs, the risk of relapse is very high.”
Although cultural taboos prohibit men and women being treated together, the INL hopes to build treatment centers for men and women near one another, to allow family members to visit one another. Sanga Amaj, which opened in 2007, represents a step in that direction, by treating women and their children together.
The clinic’s 33 patients include 15 children, the youngest of whom is 3 years old. Zainab and Najiba have been here for two weeks. In addition to attending group therapy sessions and receiving medical treatment, during they day they exercise, sit in religion classes, and learn skills like sewing and embroidery. At the end of their time, they will go home to Zainab’s husband, who has already undergone treatment. If Zainab and Najiba stay clean, they will be entitled to free medicine from the clinic.
Facilities like Sanga Amaj are few. Kabul only has four, which can handle about 100 patients. Of Afghanistan’s 1 million drug users, at least 90 percent have no access to treatment, according to the UNODC.
Expanding treatment facilities would require considerable foreign aid and expertise, but does not rank high on donors’ list of priorities. These include instead ending the poppy farming and drug trade that make Afghanistan the supplier of 90 percent of the world’s opium.
“Afghanistan is known for being a supply country,” says Ms. Shah. “It is time to recognize it is a demand country as well.”
Afghan citizens paid $1bn in bribes for public services last year, study finds
The Guardian, July 8
Afghans paid nearly $1bn (£658m) in bribes last year, according to a new survey that reveals that corruption in the country has doubled since 2007.
The study by the monitoring group Integrity Watch Afghanistan showed that the average value of bribes paid in 2009 was $156. The average per capita income is $502 per year.
Almost a third of civil servants said they have been forced to pay a bribe to obtain a public service, while 13% of households said that they had paid bribes to secure their own sources of income
The survey also showed that more than half the country's population feels that corruption is helping the Taliban's expansion.
Equally worrying for Nato forces combating the insurgency is the finding that the judiciary and the police were identified as the two most corrupt institutions in Afghanistan.
While most respondents said they hoped that state institutions would tackle the problem of corruption, there was an increasing tendency to turn to non-state actors to solve their problems, a trend that could further bolster support for the insurgency.
"Corruption is weakening the legitimacy of the state," said Lorenzo Delesgues, a founder and co-director of IWA.
The survey sampled 6,498 people in 32 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces over November and December 2009.
More than a quarter of Afghans (26%) felt deprived of access to justice and security because of corruption. Half (50%) of those surveyed said that corruption within the state was helping expansion of the Taliban either absolutely (36%) or a little (14%).
Weak law enforcement was identified as a major cause for corruption with as many as 28% of civil servants saying they had to pay bribes to secure or retain their jobs. However donor money was also identified as a major cause of corruption
President Hamid Karzai – criticised regularly by the international community for his apparent unwillingness to tackle graft – was seen as the best bet for countering corruption (80% identified the presidency as the best institution to deal with the problem), though more than half the people said he had not performed on this issue.
Afghans paid nearly $1bn (£658m) in bribes last year, according to a new survey that reveals that corruption in the country has doubled since 2007.
The study by the monitoring group Integrity Watch Afghanistan showed that the average value of bribes paid in 2009 was $156. The average per capita income is $502 per year.
Almost a third of civil servants said they have been forced to pay a bribe to obtain a public service, while 13% of households said that they had paid bribes to secure their own sources of income
The survey also showed that more than half the country's population feels that corruption is helping the Taliban's expansion.
Equally worrying for Nato forces combating the insurgency is the finding that the judiciary and the police were identified as the two most corrupt institutions in Afghanistan.
While most respondents said they hoped that state institutions would tackle the problem of corruption, there was an increasing tendency to turn to non-state actors to solve their problems, a trend that could further bolster support for the insurgency.
"Corruption is weakening the legitimacy of the state," said Lorenzo Delesgues, a founder and co-director of IWA.
The survey sampled 6,498 people in 32 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces over November and December 2009.
More than a quarter of Afghans (26%) felt deprived of access to justice and security because of corruption. Half (50%) of those surveyed said that corruption within the state was helping expansion of the Taliban either absolutely (36%) or a little (14%).
Weak law enforcement was identified as a major cause for corruption with as many as 28% of civil servants saying they had to pay bribes to secure or retain their jobs. However donor money was also identified as a major cause of corruption
President Hamid Karzai – criticised regularly by the international community for his apparent unwillingness to tackle graft – was seen as the best bet for countering corruption (80% identified the presidency as the best institution to deal with the problem), though more than half the people said he had not performed on this issue.
Sangin pullout: British troops 'have not brought peace'
Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul, Ali Safi, and Declan Walsh in Islamabad
The Guardian, July 7, 2010
Sangin's residents have criticised the planned withdrawal later this year of British troops from their town, complaining that four years of fighting have failed to bring peace or development.
"The British have failed," said Haji Fazlul Haq, a former town governor, speaking by telephone. "They could not bring security to the town and that is why they are handing it to the Americans."
The blunt assessment was shared by other residents who expressed greater confidence in US forces due to take control in November. "The Americans fight harder. I think the Taliban will be afraid of this change of command," said Haji Abdul Wahab, acting director of the peace commission of Helmand, a government body that promotes reconciliation.
Their reaction offered little consolation to British forces, who have paid a high price in Sangin. More than 100 British soldiers have died around the town since Tony Blair deployed the first troops in June 2006, making it the deadliest battlezone for western soldiers in Afghanistan.
British commanders say the withdrawal is not an admission of failure but rather a routine battlefield reorganisation that reflects the increased American presence in the province. There are currently 20,000 US soldiers in Helmand, twice as many as the British, and more are coming.
But there is little doubt that the British exit is an admission of the difficulty of purging the Taliban from a town in the grip of the heroin trade and surrounded by determined insurgents. While British soldiers have battlefield superiority over their enemy, many of whom are armed with basic rifles, the nature of the counter-insurgency requires them to conduct "presence patrols" in villages.
This makes them an easy target for insurgents who plant roadside bombs by night then melt into the population during the day. The Taliban are also becoming more canny: this year troops reported more landmines with no metal content, rendering metal detectors useless.
Some residents did recognise the British sacrifices. "I don't want to put all the blame on British because they have lost many lives here" said Shamsullah Khan, a candidate for September's parliamentary elections.
In Pakistan, the British move was seen as confirmation of the view that the Nato war in Afghanistan was unwinnable in its present form. "It's like chasing a nameless, invisible enemy," said Rustum Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan. "This is not about [Hamid] Karzai, or corruption, or the marginalisation of the Pashtuns. It's about the presence of the foreign forces. Until they leave, peace will never come to Afghanistan," he said.
It is not the only high-profile pullout in Afghanistan of recent months. In April, US forces withdrew from the Korengal valley in the east of the country, dubbed the "valley of death" by soldiers, ending years of intense but fruitless fighting. Forty-two Americans died and hundreds were wounded in fighting between 2006 and 2009 in the valley.
Nato has postponed a planned surge into Kandahar until the autumn amid fears of heavy Taliban resistance.
The operations are taking place against a backdrop of regional political intrigues. In recent months Karzai has held a series of meetings with Pakistan's army and intelligence chiefs, ostensibly with a view to negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban.
Riffat Hussain, a professor of defence studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said the Sangin withdrawal was not likely to have a major impact on the Pakistan military's calculations.
"They're more concerned with what General [David] Petraeus is going to do. That's the major strategic concern right now," he said, referring to the US commander who took over from General Stanley McChrystal after comments about the Obama administration to Rolling Stone magazine cost McChrystal his job.
Petraeus has promised to review the rules of engagement governing Nato troops, which many soldiers had complained were too restrictive. But human rights activists and many Afghans worry that a change in the rules will lead to higher civilian casualties.
In Sangin, war-weary residents are bracing for an increase in violence as American troops try to succeed where the British failed. "One thing we know: the violence will increase," said Surat Khan, a brick-factory worker in Bastonzai, near Sangin. "The Americans will not be as defensive as the British. They are serious about conducting operations."
Solaiman Shah, a vegetable seller, was more sympathetic about the British losses. "The Brits have not helped us but they sacrificed a lot.
"It will take a long time for the Americans to build the same relationship with the people."
The Guardian, July 7, 2010
Sangin's residents have criticised the planned withdrawal later this year of British troops from their town, complaining that four years of fighting have failed to bring peace or development.
"The British have failed," said Haji Fazlul Haq, a former town governor, speaking by telephone. "They could not bring security to the town and that is why they are handing it to the Americans."
The blunt assessment was shared by other residents who expressed greater confidence in US forces due to take control in November. "The Americans fight harder. I think the Taliban will be afraid of this change of command," said Haji Abdul Wahab, acting director of the peace commission of Helmand, a government body that promotes reconciliation.
Their reaction offered little consolation to British forces, who have paid a high price in Sangin. More than 100 British soldiers have died around the town since Tony Blair deployed the first troops in June 2006, making it the deadliest battlezone for western soldiers in Afghanistan.
British commanders say the withdrawal is not an admission of failure but rather a routine battlefield reorganisation that reflects the increased American presence in the province. There are currently 20,000 US soldiers in Helmand, twice as many as the British, and more are coming.
But there is little doubt that the British exit is an admission of the difficulty of purging the Taliban from a town in the grip of the heroin trade and surrounded by determined insurgents. While British soldiers have battlefield superiority over their enemy, many of whom are armed with basic rifles, the nature of the counter-insurgency requires them to conduct "presence patrols" in villages.
This makes them an easy target for insurgents who plant roadside bombs by night then melt into the population during the day. The Taliban are also becoming more canny: this year troops reported more landmines with no metal content, rendering metal detectors useless.
Some residents did recognise the British sacrifices. "I don't want to put all the blame on British because they have lost many lives here" said Shamsullah Khan, a candidate for September's parliamentary elections.
In Pakistan, the British move was seen as confirmation of the view that the Nato war in Afghanistan was unwinnable in its present form. "It's like chasing a nameless, invisible enemy," said Rustum Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan. "This is not about [Hamid] Karzai, or corruption, or the marginalisation of the Pashtuns. It's about the presence of the foreign forces. Until they leave, peace will never come to Afghanistan," he said.
It is not the only high-profile pullout in Afghanistan of recent months. In April, US forces withdrew from the Korengal valley in the east of the country, dubbed the "valley of death" by soldiers, ending years of intense but fruitless fighting. Forty-two Americans died and hundreds were wounded in fighting between 2006 and 2009 in the valley.
Nato has postponed a planned surge into Kandahar until the autumn amid fears of heavy Taliban resistance.
The operations are taking place against a backdrop of regional political intrigues. In recent months Karzai has held a series of meetings with Pakistan's army and intelligence chiefs, ostensibly with a view to negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban.
Riffat Hussain, a professor of defence studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said the Sangin withdrawal was not likely to have a major impact on the Pakistan military's calculations.
"They're more concerned with what General [David] Petraeus is going to do. That's the major strategic concern right now," he said, referring to the US commander who took over from General Stanley McChrystal after comments about the Obama administration to Rolling Stone magazine cost McChrystal his job.
Petraeus has promised to review the rules of engagement governing Nato troops, which many soldiers had complained were too restrictive. But human rights activists and many Afghans worry that a change in the rules will lead to higher civilian casualties.
In Sangin, war-weary residents are bracing for an increase in violence as American troops try to succeed where the British failed. "One thing we know: the violence will increase," said Surat Khan, a brick-factory worker in Bastonzai, near Sangin. "The Americans will not be as defensive as the British. They are serious about conducting operations."
Solaiman Shah, a vegetable seller, was more sympathetic about the British losses. "The Brits have not helped us but they sacrificed a lot.
"It will take a long time for the Americans to build the same relationship with the people."
No escape yet for Bill Shaw, the Briton cleared of bribery in Kabul
The Guardian, July 4
A former British army officer Bill Shaw was acquitted today of bribery charges by an Afghan court which overturned an earlier conviction and two-year jail sentence.
Though acquitted, Shaw, a senior manager at G4S, the private security company that guards the British embassy in Kabul, still has to wait for his release. At the end of a hearing lasting more than seven hours and spread over two days, he was led back to prison today to await the completion of legal formalities.
Shaw said he was "very, very excited" about the verdict, describing his time in Pul-e-Charkhi, a prison infamous for its overcrowding and squalor, as "a living hell". In a statement from their home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, his overjoyed wife Liz, said: "I just want him home and won't believe this nightmare is over until he's back with us, his family."
In an interview broadcast on BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend, Shaw described his ordeal as the "lowest part of my life". He said: "They moved me to a place called the counter-narcotics justice centre. That to me was a picture of Guantánamo Bay.
"Everything was taken off me … all your identity is stripped from you completely.
"You put a uniform on, they issue you with one bar of soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste - that is it, no possessions. That is the lowest part of my life, nine weeks spent in there being totally controlled and administered 24 hours a day."
His daughter Lisa Luckyn-Malone added: "We have been deeply concerned about Dad's health and safety, and hope he is released very soon."
Shaw's family has led a high-profile campaign, drawing attention to the former Royal Military police officer's deteriorating health and highlighting concerns about his safety in Pul-e-Charkhi.
The father-of-three and his lawyer, Kimberley Motley, said they have both received threats and that Shaw was put in solitary confinement at his own request.
Shaw, 52, who served in the RMP for 28 years and was awarded an MBE, was arrested and fined $25,000 (£16,400) in March by Afghanistan's national security directorate for paying a bribe to secure the release of the company's bombproof vehicles which had been confiscated by the Afghan security service. Shaw said he believed he was paying a legitimate fine to release the two vehicles.
Motley said today her client had been denied basic rights, including a presumption of innocence in the first trial: "We were proving his innocence rather than the prosecution proving he was guilty." Motley said no evidence and no witnesses were produced before the court.
Motley, who told the Guardian at Shaw's conviction that the court had not followed Afghan law or UN conventions to which Afghanistan is party, said the case ought to be an eyeopener to the flaws in the system. The law, she said "does provide protection, but is not being implemented. Rule of law needs to be improved by different [donor] countries."
Donor countries, including the UK, have given considerable amounts to the Afghan government to develop legal institutions and improve the rule of law.
In a brief statement today, the Foreign Office said it was "pleased for Mr Shaw and his family", adding "the UK continues to strongly support the work of the Afghan government to counter corruption and reinforce the rule of law".
Criticism of Shaw's arrest also centred on allegations that the Afghan government was making him a scapegoat in an attempt to counter criticism of corruption.
International private security firms have also earned the hostility of the Afghan population because of their abrasive behaviour and excessive use of force, which tars even those which may be more disciplined. " We will work with the authorities to ensure that Bill is returned to his family as soon as possible," a G4S spokesman told the Guardian.
Shaw's final release will depend on whether there is a counter-appeal, though his lawyer said both his co-accused as well as the office of the attorney general had said they did not plan to appeal.
Shaw's translator, Maiwand Limar, an Afghan, was also convicted in April but had his sentence reduced today from two years to eight months, six of which he has already served.
In the absence of a counter-appeal, Shaw will be out of prison once the formalities are completed. Even if he is released, however, the court will have to rule on whether he can leave the country before the completion of the 20 days which it has given for a counter-appeal to be filed.
After his acquittal, a tearful Shaw told Sky News: "My thanks to all my supporters, here and in the UK, the British embassy and G4S who have been behind me 100%. I look forward to seeing you soon."
A former British army officer Bill Shaw was acquitted today of bribery charges by an Afghan court which overturned an earlier conviction and two-year jail sentence.
Though acquitted, Shaw, a senior manager at G4S, the private security company that guards the British embassy in Kabul, still has to wait for his release. At the end of a hearing lasting more than seven hours and spread over two days, he was led back to prison today to await the completion of legal formalities.
Shaw said he was "very, very excited" about the verdict, describing his time in Pul-e-Charkhi, a prison infamous for its overcrowding and squalor, as "a living hell". In a statement from their home in Leeds, West Yorkshire, his overjoyed wife Liz, said: "I just want him home and won't believe this nightmare is over until he's back with us, his family."
In an interview broadcast on BBC Radio 4's The World this Weekend, Shaw described his ordeal as the "lowest part of my life". He said: "They moved me to a place called the counter-narcotics justice centre. That to me was a picture of Guantánamo Bay.
"Everything was taken off me … all your identity is stripped from you completely.
"You put a uniform on, they issue you with one bar of soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste - that is it, no possessions. That is the lowest part of my life, nine weeks spent in there being totally controlled and administered 24 hours a day."
His daughter Lisa Luckyn-Malone added: "We have been deeply concerned about Dad's health and safety, and hope he is released very soon."
Shaw's family has led a high-profile campaign, drawing attention to the former Royal Military police officer's deteriorating health and highlighting concerns about his safety in Pul-e-Charkhi.
The father-of-three and his lawyer, Kimberley Motley, said they have both received threats and that Shaw was put in solitary confinement at his own request.
Shaw, 52, who served in the RMP for 28 years and was awarded an MBE, was arrested and fined $25,000 (£16,400) in March by Afghanistan's national security directorate for paying a bribe to secure the release of the company's bombproof vehicles which had been confiscated by the Afghan security service. Shaw said he believed he was paying a legitimate fine to release the two vehicles.
Motley said today her client had been denied basic rights, including a presumption of innocence in the first trial: "We were proving his innocence rather than the prosecution proving he was guilty." Motley said no evidence and no witnesses were produced before the court.
Motley, who told the Guardian at Shaw's conviction that the court had not followed Afghan law or UN conventions to which Afghanistan is party, said the case ought to be an eyeopener to the flaws in the system. The law, she said "does provide protection, but is not being implemented. Rule of law needs to be improved by different [donor] countries."
Donor countries, including the UK, have given considerable amounts to the Afghan government to develop legal institutions and improve the rule of law.
In a brief statement today, the Foreign Office said it was "pleased for Mr Shaw and his family", adding "the UK continues to strongly support the work of the Afghan government to counter corruption and reinforce the rule of law".
Criticism of Shaw's arrest also centred on allegations that the Afghan government was making him a scapegoat in an attempt to counter criticism of corruption.
International private security firms have also earned the hostility of the Afghan population because of their abrasive behaviour and excessive use of force, which tars even those which may be more disciplined. " We will work with the authorities to ensure that Bill is returned to his family as soon as possible," a G4S spokesman told the Guardian.
Shaw's final release will depend on whether there is a counter-appeal, though his lawyer said both his co-accused as well as the office of the attorney general had said they did not plan to appeal.
Shaw's translator, Maiwand Limar, an Afghan, was also convicted in April but had his sentence reduced today from two years to eight months, six of which he has already served.
In the absence of a counter-appeal, Shaw will be out of prison once the formalities are completed. Even if he is released, however, the court will have to rule on whether he can leave the country before the completion of the 20 days which it has given for a counter-appeal to be filed.
After his acquittal, a tearful Shaw told Sky News: "My thanks to all my supporters, here and in the UK, the British embassy and G4S who have been behind me 100%. I look forward to seeing you soon."
Opium Use Skyrocketing in Afghanistan - UN
June 21/ Eurasianet
Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer and supplier is also a country that is confronting an alarming addiction problem, a new survey published by the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime shows. At least 1 million Afghans, or roughly 8 percent of the population, are drug addicts, the survey found.
At a June 21 news conference to mark the report’s release, Deputy Minister of Counter Narcotics Mohammed Ibrahim Azhar said the number of opium users had increased by 53 percent since the last UN survey was conducted in 2005. The number of heroin users jumped 140 percent.
One place where addiction is growing the fastest is within Afghanistan’s security forces. The US Government Accountability Office reported in March that between 12 percent and 41 percent of Afghan National Police recruits (depending on the training center where the survey was conducted) suffered from drug addiction. Pointing to those findings at the June 21 news conference, the UN’s Deputy Special Representative Robert Watkins said drug use among police is a threat to the safety and security of the entire nation.
The UNODC survey also revealed the shocking statistic that as many as 50 percent of drug users provide opium to their children. In Afghanistan, raw opium paste is traditionally used to calm children, or, given the widespread lack of access to healthcare, as a pain reliever. Myriad social and economic problems – including unemployment, poverty and the general stress of over three decades of near-constant warfare – are believed to be spurring drug use among adults.
Experts say that difficulties surveying the habits and attitudes of Afghan women mean the drug-use figures, already double the global average, are likely much higher than what the survey’s findings indicate. Women comprised only 3 percent of the survey sample of over 5,000. Traditional opium-use patterns suggest there could be wide prevalence of drug use among women, pushing the nationwide figures higher.
The UNODC survey did not examine drug use among children. But an earlier study, commissioned by the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Department (INL), found an “alarming trend” of addiction to opium among younger children. “Children of nine, 14 months, and between two and four years” are addicted, the INL’s Thom Browne said during a visit to Afghanistan earlier in June. “This is the youngest age group exposed to drugs that we have seen worldwide. It has never been reported before.”
According to the survey, only 10 percent of Afghanistan’s drug users have received some treatment, though 90 percent have expressed a wish for it. “The treatment gap is enormous,” said Sarah Waller, a drug demand reduction consultant with the UNODC. Waller pointed out that drug demand reduction needs to treat not just the medical addiction, but also mental health issues.
Remedies are limited. There are few treatment centers, creating a “huge deficit,” the UN’s Watkins said. Centers for women and children are even scarcer.
Despite considerable funding of counter-narcotics programs, most attention has focused on the reduction of opium production and export. Programs for reducing drug dependency are severely under-funded.
Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer and supplier is also a country that is confronting an alarming addiction problem, a new survey published by the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime shows. At least 1 million Afghans, or roughly 8 percent of the population, are drug addicts, the survey found.
At a June 21 news conference to mark the report’s release, Deputy Minister of Counter Narcotics Mohammed Ibrahim Azhar said the number of opium users had increased by 53 percent since the last UN survey was conducted in 2005. The number of heroin users jumped 140 percent.
One place where addiction is growing the fastest is within Afghanistan’s security forces. The US Government Accountability Office reported in March that between 12 percent and 41 percent of Afghan National Police recruits (depending on the training center where the survey was conducted) suffered from drug addiction. Pointing to those findings at the June 21 news conference, the UN’s Deputy Special Representative Robert Watkins said drug use among police is a threat to the safety and security of the entire nation.
The UNODC survey also revealed the shocking statistic that as many as 50 percent of drug users provide opium to their children. In Afghanistan, raw opium paste is traditionally used to calm children, or, given the widespread lack of access to healthcare, as a pain reliever. Myriad social and economic problems – including unemployment, poverty and the general stress of over three decades of near-constant warfare – are believed to be spurring drug use among adults.
Experts say that difficulties surveying the habits and attitudes of Afghan women mean the drug-use figures, already double the global average, are likely much higher than what the survey’s findings indicate. Women comprised only 3 percent of the survey sample of over 5,000. Traditional opium-use patterns suggest there could be wide prevalence of drug use among women, pushing the nationwide figures higher.
The UNODC survey did not examine drug use among children. But an earlier study, commissioned by the State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Department (INL), found an “alarming trend” of addiction to opium among younger children. “Children of nine, 14 months, and between two and four years” are addicted, the INL’s Thom Browne said during a visit to Afghanistan earlier in June. “This is the youngest age group exposed to drugs that we have seen worldwide. It has never been reported before.”
According to the survey, only 10 percent of Afghanistan’s drug users have received some treatment, though 90 percent have expressed a wish for it. “The treatment gap is enormous,” said Sarah Waller, a drug demand reduction consultant with the UNODC. Waller pointed out that drug demand reduction needs to treat not just the medical addiction, but also mental health issues.
Remedies are limited. There are few treatment centers, creating a “huge deficit,” the UN’s Watkins said. Centers for women and children are even scarcer.
Despite considerable funding of counter-narcotics programs, most attention has focused on the reduction of opium production and export. Programs for reducing drug dependency are severely under-funded.
June 08, 2010
Afghans talk, Taliban shoot
Asia Times June 3, 2010
By Aunohita Mojumdar
KABUL - The three-day peace jirga (council) that began on Wednesday is being projected by the international community - at least officially - as a critical moment in Afghanistan's history. The Taliban, it seems, also gave the event priority, launching a three-man suicide squad armed with rockets at the opening ceremony.
Two blasts and sporadic gunfire were heard in the air-conditioned tent as Karzai delivered his opening address, while a third took place just 200 meters from the venue. "Sit down, nothing will happen," said the Aghan president. "I have become used to this. Even my three-year-old son is used to it."
The attackers, armed with rifles and rocket launchers, had explosives strapped to their bodies under the women's burqas they had worn to slip past security staff. Two were reportedly killed and no delegates were hurt, according to local officials.
After calming delegates, Karzai said it was the Taliban's insurgency that was keeping the international occupiers they resent in the country.
"You should provide the opportunity for the foreign forces to leave," Karzai told the conference, according to the Associated Press. "Make peace with me and there will be no need for foreigners here. As long as you are not talking to us, not making peace with us, we will not let the foreigners leave."
Senior officials of Western donor countries have expressed hope that the jirga, the first concrete step in the process of "reconciliation" with armed opposition groups, including the Taliban, would provide the political impetus to bring the protracted conflict to an end. But these pronouncements smack of desperation, as the international community scrambles for the next big solution that will turn the situation around.
The three-day consultative mechanism may produce very little resolution to the insurgency. With between 1,400 to 1,600 participants expected to attend, criticism of inclusions and exclusions of participants and dissension within the government itself, an unclear agenda and threats of boycott, the peace jirga may be little more than a political endorsement mandating President Hamid Karzai to move forward toward the goal.
Najib Amin, a deputy on the meeting's organizing committee, said the jirga will aim to ''identify mechanisms based on which we can negotiate, identify categories of opposition with whom we can negotiate, mechanism on how to approach them, identify people who are not negotiable and what the government should do with them".
Any declaration would also likely to be shorn of real details in order to accommodate disparate views. Whatever process is set in motion this week, it is also likely that several major sections of the insurgency will remain outside the ambit of any reconciliation since they are ideologically opposed to the values represented by the incumbent government.
However, the real goal thrown up by the "reconciliation" plan is one that appears to have taken place already - rapprochement of the international community and the Karzai government.
Tired of the long military engagement, both have latched onto "reconciliation and reintegration" as the next big plan, and appear willing to subsume their differences to find a way out of the morass.
The panacea, however, is yet another refrain of the old song that a military solution alone cannot work. That song has been sung to different beats for several years now, though earlier versions included development, governance, rule of law and accountability as necessary measures to complement military achievements.
Now, apparently, those goals are being sidelined as the international community chooses to further curtail its ambitions regarding Afghanistan, reconciling itself with existing realities even when they subvert the goals of nation-building.
The goals, now pared down, are to ensure that Afghanistan does not pose a threat to Western nations, either as a staging post of international terrorist strikes or as a sanctuary for anti-Western groups to take hold.
While these aims have always been core to the Western intervention for a number of years, there was an understanding that in pursuit of those aims Afghanistan could and would be rebuilt with a new state structure, since this represented the best bet of making sure Afghanistan became a stable state, and not one vulnerable to being subverted by terrorist groups.
The safety of Afghans and internal cohesion within Afghanistan were therefore seen as being coterminous with the goal of security for the West. However, somewhere along the way the goals have diverged as the costs of the intervention have steadily risen in Western capitals.
These costs have not been inconsiderable. Ever growing casualties among Western forces, billions of dollars diverted to Afghanistan (which seem more questionable at a time of Western recession and job losses) and political prices, ranging from ministers losing their jobs in Germany, to the fall of a government in the Netherlands over the issue of Afghanistan. In the midst of this chaos, reconciliation has emerged as a way to match Western goals with existing realities in the Asian nation.
The reconciliation plan has halted, for the moment, the spectacular unraveling of relations between Karzai and the Western compact. Whatever misgivings Western nations had earlier regarding the viability of Karzai as a trusted partner - and a spate of stories in the Western media testify to this - these have now been shed in the mutual warm embrace of the reconciliation strategy. In a matter of weeks Karzai has gone from being a weak, indecisive, incapable leader burdened by an unscrupulous family to the man who will bring together the disparate interests of Afghans with exemplary leadership.
Along the way the international community appears to have swallowed several of its goals and professed commitments. Whatever the jirga may or may not discuss - it is already clear what will not be included in the discussions.
Jirga czar Farooq Wardak told a gathering of civil society representatives that "justice" and "human rights" were not on the agenda and would not be discussed. Despite the shock of the participants, Wardak was at least being honest. The issues had been sidelined long back.
Earlier this year it became clear that the government had passed an amnesty law that protected all those engaged in hostilities in the past and the present from prosecution. The law makes no distinction about the kind of crimes, whether war crimes, crimes against humanity or rape. It also makes no mention of a cut-off date.
The law was passed with scarcely a murmur from the international community even as it violates Afghanistan's commitments to international treaties, according to the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, and treads on the millions of Afghan citizens who have been victims of brutality and war crimes while also strengthening the culture of impunity.
The same international community had kicked up a fuss when the law was first introduced in 2007, but in the changed climate, the law was accepted since it had been projected as a necessary first step in the process of reconciliation.
Representatives of the millions of Afghanistan's victims have come together with the commission to present a united demand for the implementation of the transitional justice plan, under which the perpetrators of crimes - including those in the government and in powerful positions - would be held accountable.
In its eagerness not to antagonize the government and Karzai further at this juncture, the international community has failed to endorse the plan and also subverted its own proclaimed goals of strengthening Afghan institutions. The same international community, following the controversial 2009 presidential polls, had predicated its support to future elections on the government carrying out necessary electoral reforms.
However, not only were reforms not carried out, but the president introduced a new electoral law that further erodes the independence of the electoral mechanisms. While the international community had sought an independent appointment mechanism for the Independent Election Commission to prevent electoral malpractices, in actuality Karzai's new law also subverted the independence of yet another body, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which was the only institution that stood up against the electoral fraud in 2009.
Focusing purely on the international members of the ECC, the international community led by the United Nations, put all its weight behind securing the UN's right to nominate two members to the commission. This right, won through hard negotiations, was presented as an achievement but no mention was made of the fact that the new law also took away the right of independent Afghan institutions, namely the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court, to appoint members to this body.
Moreover, it institutionalized the right of Karzai, as president, to appoint members to this body, thus compromising an independent appointment mechanism. Despite the clear challenge to the process of institutional building to which the donor nations committed themselves, they accepted this erosion of independence and the forthcoming parliamentary election has received the requisite funding from the international community.
While building of institutions, rule of law, governance and support for human rights are processes which require time, resources and energy, the international community's accommodation of political expediency is not limited to this. Senior officials of the donor nations and international organizations are now saying publicly and repeatedly that they cannot afford to challenge the existing power structures in Afghanistan but must work with them.
Tackling the power structures would necessitate that the international community remain in Afghanistan for the next 20 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization senior civilian representative Mark Sedwill stated last month, while expressing hope that individuals with power and influence would support the endeavors of the government and the international community.
This hope, however, overlooks the fact that the international community, through its practice of delivering aid without adequate checks and balances, has enriched a small section of people by allowing them to acquire power disproportionate to their role, authority and legitimacy within Afghan institutions and within the community.
Sufficient levels of well-documented data have established clearly that commanders, leaders of armed militia and power-brokers have been empowered through contracts worth billions of dollars given by the international community in exchange for security, land, services and goods provided to the international community.
Moreover, the bulk of aid distributed for development and humanitarian purposes has also been channeled without sufficient oversight allowing some of its distribution to be mediated by power-brokers.
In doing so, the international community has created a clear conflict of interest. Many officials and politicians in roles of authority have profited directly from the ongoing conflict and have a direct stake in its continuation, an interest that conflicts with their expressed commitment to building a secure and stable Afghanistan.
This contradiction has been encouraged and even utilized by donor nations who, in their own domestic arena, take a dim view of a conflict of interests and have legal redress.
However, rather than tackling the contradictions, donor nations are now reconciling themselves to the existence of structural and institutional imbalances of power that they have either introduced, allowed or ignored. If that represents a contradiction between their professed word and deed, the reconciliation strategy is certainly a good way of subsuming all inconsistencies.
Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
By Aunohita Mojumdar
KABUL - The three-day peace jirga (council) that began on Wednesday is being projected by the international community - at least officially - as a critical moment in Afghanistan's history. The Taliban, it seems, also gave the event priority, launching a three-man suicide squad armed with rockets at the opening ceremony.
Two blasts and sporadic gunfire were heard in the air-conditioned tent as Karzai delivered his opening address, while a third took place just 200 meters from the venue. "Sit down, nothing will happen," said the Aghan president. "I have become used to this. Even my three-year-old son is used to it."
The attackers, armed with rifles and rocket launchers, had explosives strapped to their bodies under the women's burqas they had worn to slip past security staff. Two were reportedly killed and no delegates were hurt, according to local officials.
After calming delegates, Karzai said it was the Taliban's insurgency that was keeping the international occupiers they resent in the country.
"You should provide the opportunity for the foreign forces to leave," Karzai told the conference, according to the Associated Press. "Make peace with me and there will be no need for foreigners here. As long as you are not talking to us, not making peace with us, we will not let the foreigners leave."
Senior officials of Western donor countries have expressed hope that the jirga, the first concrete step in the process of "reconciliation" with armed opposition groups, including the Taliban, would provide the political impetus to bring the protracted conflict to an end. But these pronouncements smack of desperation, as the international community scrambles for the next big solution that will turn the situation around.
The three-day consultative mechanism may produce very little resolution to the insurgency. With between 1,400 to 1,600 participants expected to attend, criticism of inclusions and exclusions of participants and dissension within the government itself, an unclear agenda and threats of boycott, the peace jirga may be little more than a political endorsement mandating President Hamid Karzai to move forward toward the goal.
Najib Amin, a deputy on the meeting's organizing committee, said the jirga will aim to ''identify mechanisms based on which we can negotiate, identify categories of opposition with whom we can negotiate, mechanism on how to approach them, identify people who are not negotiable and what the government should do with them".
Any declaration would also likely to be shorn of real details in order to accommodate disparate views. Whatever process is set in motion this week, it is also likely that several major sections of the insurgency will remain outside the ambit of any reconciliation since they are ideologically opposed to the values represented by the incumbent government.
However, the real goal thrown up by the "reconciliation" plan is one that appears to have taken place already - rapprochement of the international community and the Karzai government.
Tired of the long military engagement, both have latched onto "reconciliation and reintegration" as the next big plan, and appear willing to subsume their differences to find a way out of the morass.
The panacea, however, is yet another refrain of the old song that a military solution alone cannot work. That song has been sung to different beats for several years now, though earlier versions included development, governance, rule of law and accountability as necessary measures to complement military achievements.
Now, apparently, those goals are being sidelined as the international community chooses to further curtail its ambitions regarding Afghanistan, reconciling itself with existing realities even when they subvert the goals of nation-building.
The goals, now pared down, are to ensure that Afghanistan does not pose a threat to Western nations, either as a staging post of international terrorist strikes or as a sanctuary for anti-Western groups to take hold.
While these aims have always been core to the Western intervention for a number of years, there was an understanding that in pursuit of those aims Afghanistan could and would be rebuilt with a new state structure, since this represented the best bet of making sure Afghanistan became a stable state, and not one vulnerable to being subverted by terrorist groups.
The safety of Afghans and internal cohesion within Afghanistan were therefore seen as being coterminous with the goal of security for the West. However, somewhere along the way the goals have diverged as the costs of the intervention have steadily risen in Western capitals.
These costs have not been inconsiderable. Ever growing casualties among Western forces, billions of dollars diverted to Afghanistan (which seem more questionable at a time of Western recession and job losses) and political prices, ranging from ministers losing their jobs in Germany, to the fall of a government in the Netherlands over the issue of Afghanistan. In the midst of this chaos, reconciliation has emerged as a way to match Western goals with existing realities in the Asian nation.
The reconciliation plan has halted, for the moment, the spectacular unraveling of relations between Karzai and the Western compact. Whatever misgivings Western nations had earlier regarding the viability of Karzai as a trusted partner - and a spate of stories in the Western media testify to this - these have now been shed in the mutual warm embrace of the reconciliation strategy. In a matter of weeks Karzai has gone from being a weak, indecisive, incapable leader burdened by an unscrupulous family to the man who will bring together the disparate interests of Afghans with exemplary leadership.
Along the way the international community appears to have swallowed several of its goals and professed commitments. Whatever the jirga may or may not discuss - it is already clear what will not be included in the discussions.
Jirga czar Farooq Wardak told a gathering of civil society representatives that "justice" and "human rights" were not on the agenda and would not be discussed. Despite the shock of the participants, Wardak was at least being honest. The issues had been sidelined long back.
Earlier this year it became clear that the government had passed an amnesty law that protected all those engaged in hostilities in the past and the present from prosecution. The law makes no distinction about the kind of crimes, whether war crimes, crimes against humanity or rape. It also makes no mention of a cut-off date.
The law was passed with scarcely a murmur from the international community even as it violates Afghanistan's commitments to international treaties, according to the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, and treads on the millions of Afghan citizens who have been victims of brutality and war crimes while also strengthening the culture of impunity.
The same international community had kicked up a fuss when the law was first introduced in 2007, but in the changed climate, the law was accepted since it had been projected as a necessary first step in the process of reconciliation.
Representatives of the millions of Afghanistan's victims have come together with the commission to present a united demand for the implementation of the transitional justice plan, under which the perpetrators of crimes - including those in the government and in powerful positions - would be held accountable.
In its eagerness not to antagonize the government and Karzai further at this juncture, the international community has failed to endorse the plan and also subverted its own proclaimed goals of strengthening Afghan institutions. The same international community, following the controversial 2009 presidential polls, had predicated its support to future elections on the government carrying out necessary electoral reforms.
However, not only were reforms not carried out, but the president introduced a new electoral law that further erodes the independence of the electoral mechanisms. While the international community had sought an independent appointment mechanism for the Independent Election Commission to prevent electoral malpractices, in actuality Karzai's new law also subverted the independence of yet another body, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which was the only institution that stood up against the electoral fraud in 2009.
Focusing purely on the international members of the ECC, the international community led by the United Nations, put all its weight behind securing the UN's right to nominate two members to the commission. This right, won through hard negotiations, was presented as an achievement but no mention was made of the fact that the new law also took away the right of independent Afghan institutions, namely the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court, to appoint members to this body.
Moreover, it institutionalized the right of Karzai, as president, to appoint members to this body, thus compromising an independent appointment mechanism. Despite the clear challenge to the process of institutional building to which the donor nations committed themselves, they accepted this erosion of independence and the forthcoming parliamentary election has received the requisite funding from the international community.
While building of institutions, rule of law, governance and support for human rights are processes which require time, resources and energy, the international community's accommodation of political expediency is not limited to this. Senior officials of the donor nations and international organizations are now saying publicly and repeatedly that they cannot afford to challenge the existing power structures in Afghanistan but must work with them.
Tackling the power structures would necessitate that the international community remain in Afghanistan for the next 20 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization senior civilian representative Mark Sedwill stated last month, while expressing hope that individuals with power and influence would support the endeavors of the government and the international community.
This hope, however, overlooks the fact that the international community, through its practice of delivering aid without adequate checks and balances, has enriched a small section of people by allowing them to acquire power disproportionate to their role, authority and legitimacy within Afghan institutions and within the community.
Sufficient levels of well-documented data have established clearly that commanders, leaders of armed militia and power-brokers have been empowered through contracts worth billions of dollars given by the international community in exchange for security, land, services and goods provided to the international community.
Moreover, the bulk of aid distributed for development and humanitarian purposes has also been channeled without sufficient oversight allowing some of its distribution to be mediated by power-brokers.
In doing so, the international community has created a clear conflict of interest. Many officials and politicians in roles of authority have profited directly from the ongoing conflict and have a direct stake in its continuation, an interest that conflicts with their expressed commitment to building a secure and stable Afghanistan.
This contradiction has been encouraged and even utilized by donor nations who, in their own domestic arena, take a dim view of a conflict of interests and have legal redress.
However, rather than tackling the contradictions, donor nations are now reconciling themselves to the existence of structural and institutional imbalances of power that they have either introduced, allowed or ignored. If that represents a contradiction between their professed word and deed, the reconciliation strategy is certainly a good way of subsuming all inconsistencies.
Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Afghanistan peace jirga's unlikely critics: victims of war crimes
By Aunohita Mojumdar, Correspondent / June 3, 2010
Christian Science Monitor
As the Afghan government’s peace jirga meets for a second day to discuss how to reconcile with insurgents and end years of violence, an unlikely coalition is lobbying against the effort: victims of previous wars, who say their demands deserve to be heard alongside the belligerents’.
After hours of discussion Thursday, Afghan tribal elders agreed that this peace meeting had to produce an overture to the Taliban insurgents because NATO and Afghan forces weren't able to bring security to the people.
Victims say that they too want lasting peace for Afghanistan, but argue that it requires accountability, not amnesty. The lack of justice only encourages further violence, they say.
But in a country that’s seen countless factions battle brutally and shift alliances for three decades, they acknowledge that any peace deal is more likely to bury the past than try to assign blame for the suffering and deaths of millions.
Victims’ jirga
Still, surviving family members, along with a coalition of 24 NGOs called the Transitional Justice Coordination Group gathered in Kabul last month ahead of the three-day government jirga, or council, to make their point with a “victim’s jirga.” More than 100 attendees from around the country met for two days, where they recounted personal tragedies and war crimes under various regimes, and visited a suspected mass grave at Pul-e-Charki, on the outskirts of town near the country’s largest prison.
“I am like a butterfly hovering over the grave of my sons… I have a broken heart… my children, my flowers, why did you go away from me?” lamented Taj-e-Nissa, reading a poem she had composed.
The middle-aged woman, who goes by one name, lost two sons, a daughter, father, and brother to rocket attacks during the 1990s civil war as mujahideen factions, having beaten back the Soviet Army, now battled one another for power. During the Taliban era that followed, her husband, accused of opposing the regime, was imprisoned and tortured.
Amnesty law
The war victims’ lobby had hope a few years ago that the government would heed their call – in 2005 it adopted a Transitional Justice Action Plan that called for the acknowledgment of suffering, removal of war crimes perpetrators from senior positions, and documentation of human rights abuses, among other requirements. But it was never implemented and instead expired last year.
In January it came to light that the government had adopted an amnesty law in 2007 and kept it under wraps. The law protects all belligerents, past and present, from prosecution. It passed without much comment from the international community.
“Accountability, not amnesia for past and present crimes is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan,” the TJCG said in a statement criticizing the amnesty.
The law prevents virtually all investigation or prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape, and torture, they pointed out. It has no cutoff date, thus allowing armed groups to continue to act with impunity. Though it allows victims to seek prosecution for war crimes, critics point out that individuals cannot realistically take on a warlord.
Two other independent groups – the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) – have also criticized the law. They point to Afghanistan’s international treaty obligations, which calls for the prosecution of certain serious crimes.
“It is questionable whether measures that ignore the rights of victims, promote impunity and undermine accountability contribute to stability and reconciliation in the long run,” they said in a joint statement in February.
Some survivors, though, recognizing how improbable their call for justice is, say they would settle for simply an acknowledgment of their suffering. Says Arab Shahi, whose brother was tortured to death by government forces under the Soviet regime even though he worked as an official in the Ministry of Education, “We don’t want revenge. We do not want an eye for an eye…. [But] the perpetrators should at least apologize.”
‘Not our reconciliation’
Others, like Engineer Niamat, wish they could find out exactly what happened to their missing relatives.
After his brother disappeared in 1978, Mr. Niamat, a teacher at the police academy, tried desperately to find him. Years later his family learned the brother had been killed, but his body was never found.
Niamat, who lost five other brothers in conflict, gathered last month with dozens of others at the site of the suspected mass grave. For him, that visit held more hope for him than the government’s peace jirga.
Asked about the official gathering, he is dismissive.
“This is the reconciliation of the government,” he says. “This is not our reconciliation.”
ttp://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0603/Afghanistan-peace-jirga-s-unlikely-critics-victims-of-war-crimes
Christian Science Monitor
As the Afghan government’s peace jirga meets for a second day to discuss how to reconcile with insurgents and end years of violence, an unlikely coalition is lobbying against the effort: victims of previous wars, who say their demands deserve to be heard alongside the belligerents’.
After hours of discussion Thursday, Afghan tribal elders agreed that this peace meeting had to produce an overture to the Taliban insurgents because NATO and Afghan forces weren't able to bring security to the people.
Victims say that they too want lasting peace for Afghanistan, but argue that it requires accountability, not amnesty. The lack of justice only encourages further violence, they say.
But in a country that’s seen countless factions battle brutally and shift alliances for three decades, they acknowledge that any peace deal is more likely to bury the past than try to assign blame for the suffering and deaths of millions.
Victims’ jirga
Still, surviving family members, along with a coalition of 24 NGOs called the Transitional Justice Coordination Group gathered in Kabul last month ahead of the three-day government jirga, or council, to make their point with a “victim’s jirga.” More than 100 attendees from around the country met for two days, where they recounted personal tragedies and war crimes under various regimes, and visited a suspected mass grave at Pul-e-Charki, on the outskirts of town near the country’s largest prison.
“I am like a butterfly hovering over the grave of my sons… I have a broken heart… my children, my flowers, why did you go away from me?” lamented Taj-e-Nissa, reading a poem she had composed.
The middle-aged woman, who goes by one name, lost two sons, a daughter, father, and brother to rocket attacks during the 1990s civil war as mujahideen factions, having beaten back the Soviet Army, now battled one another for power. During the Taliban era that followed, her husband, accused of opposing the regime, was imprisoned and tortured.
Amnesty law
The war victims’ lobby had hope a few years ago that the government would heed their call – in 2005 it adopted a Transitional Justice Action Plan that called for the acknowledgment of suffering, removal of war crimes perpetrators from senior positions, and documentation of human rights abuses, among other requirements. But it was never implemented and instead expired last year.
In January it came to light that the government had adopted an amnesty law in 2007 and kept it under wraps. The law protects all belligerents, past and present, from prosecution. It passed without much comment from the international community.
“Accountability, not amnesia for past and present crimes is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan,” the TJCG said in a statement criticizing the amnesty.
The law prevents virtually all investigation or prosecution of war crimes, crimes against humanity, rape, and torture, they pointed out. It has no cutoff date, thus allowing armed groups to continue to act with impunity. Though it allows victims to seek prosecution for war crimes, critics point out that individuals cannot realistically take on a warlord.
Two other independent groups – the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) – have also criticized the law. They point to Afghanistan’s international treaty obligations, which calls for the prosecution of certain serious crimes.
“It is questionable whether measures that ignore the rights of victims, promote impunity and undermine accountability contribute to stability and reconciliation in the long run,” they said in a joint statement in February.
Some survivors, though, recognizing how improbable their call for justice is, say they would settle for simply an acknowledgment of their suffering. Says Arab Shahi, whose brother was tortured to death by government forces under the Soviet regime even though he worked as an official in the Ministry of Education, “We don’t want revenge. We do not want an eye for an eye…. [But] the perpetrators should at least apologize.”
‘Not our reconciliation’
Others, like Engineer Niamat, wish they could find out exactly what happened to their missing relatives.
After his brother disappeared in 1978, Mr. Niamat, a teacher at the police academy, tried desperately to find him. Years later his family learned the brother had been killed, but his body was never found.
Niamat, who lost five other brothers in conflict, gathered last month with dozens of others at the site of the suspected mass grave. For him, that visit held more hope for him than the government’s peace jirga.
Asked about the official gathering, he is dismissive.
“This is the reconciliation of the government,” he says. “This is not our reconciliation.”
ttp://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2010/0603/Afghanistan-peace-jirga-s-unlikely-critics-victims-of-war-crimes
Afghan Reconciliation Jirga Set to Convene amid Skepticism
June 1
Eurasianet
The checkpoint at the entrance to the Loya Jirga complex in Kabul highlights the challenge facing President Hamid Karzai as his administration strives to reconcile with moderate Taliban elements. Security at the Jirga is perhaps heavier than at a major Western airport, with all vehicles and equipment being swabbed and checked for evidence of bomb-making residue. The government’s fear of a car bombing appears to be just as great as its desire to win insurgents back over to its side.
The three-day loya jirga, or grand council, which will mull Karzai’s reconciliation and reintegration plan, is scheduled to open June 2. Taliban representatives have not been explicitly invited to participate in the debates, said Najib Amin, a deputy on the meeting’s organizing committee. But, Amin added, the Taliban will have sympathizers among the participants who can represent the Islamic militants’ interests. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
The approximately 1,600 delegates to the National Consultative Peace Jirga will aim to “identify mechanisms based on which we can negotiate, identify categories of opposition with whom we can negotiate, mechanism on how to approach them, identify people who are not negotiable and what the government should do with them,” Amin said.
To keep the proceedings manageable, delegates will be divided into 28 groups. Technical facilitators have undergone training in order to keep debates efficient and orderly. At the end of the three days of discussions, it is hoped that the entire jirga will be able to produce a declaration of intent. However, distilling the decisions of the 28 groups into one common position promises to be difficult. Local Afghan media outlets in recent days have highlighted policy differences among the country’s top leaders, suggesting that the jirga could be contentious and have trouble harmonizing disparate views.
Regardless of the jirga’s outcome, its decisions and declarations will be non-binding on the government. The word “consultative” was added to the jirga’s official title after members of parliament criticized what they saw as an administration attempt to circumvent legislative authority. As a result, all jirga decisions will require the endorsement of either the cabinet or the legislature.
On the eve of the jirga, there remained the possibility that a significant number of MPs would boycott the event. Legislators had demanded that Karzai fill out his cabinet before the convocation of the jirga. Already, Abdullah Abdullah, the main opposition leader and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2009, has announced he will stay away from the gathering, contending that it will not be adequately representative of the Afghan nation. “This jirga started with the government, and will end with the government,” Abdullah said during a news conference.
Since Karzai unveiled his plans during a donor conference in January, the reconciliation idea has faced skepticism from several Afghan constituencies. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Human rights activists have expressed concerns that Karzai was willing to make sacrifices on Afghanistan’s democratization in order to cut a deal with moderate Taliban elements. “Reconciliation should not be a reconciliation behind curtains, just a political reconciliation,” Nader Nadery, a commissioner on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, told a gathering of civil society groups who have been working together to demand transitional justice.
An essential factor for securing a stable future for Afghanistan is an honest accounting of past actions during the country’s past 30-plus years of strife. Those who committed atrocities must be held accountable, Nadery has asserted, adding that the implementation of Karzai’s reconciliation plan could become an obstacle toward this end. In early May, some rights advocates organized their own “victims’” jirga, during which they questioned whether reconciliation without justice could bring peace.
Also skeptical about the reconciliation initiative are women’s advocacy groups. Amid intense lobbying in recent months, approximately 20 percent of the jirga’s delegates will be women. Originally, only 30 women had been slated to participate in the debates. While women will still be vastly underrepresented at the gathering in relation to their percentage of the population, observers view the expansion of female delegates as a significant development. How influential the female delegates will be in defending women’s rights remains to be seen. Some advocates worry that the small gains made in recent years in the sphere of women’s rights will be rolled back. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive]. While reconciliation as a means of shortening, or even ending the war has been supported by most donor states publicly, many Westerners in Kabul express doubts in private. “The Karzai government’s plan does not seem like a political plan at all,” said a Western diplomat. “It resembles a project proposal.”
To many Western policymakers, the reconciliation route seems to be the best option among an array of unappetizing choices. Perhaps the top priority should be improving the Afghan government’s responsiveness to popular needs and concerns. But many international observers emphasize that bringing about such a transformation would take decades. “We can’t reconstruct Afghanistan’s power structure from scratch, so we have to co-opt the power brokers by making clear that their only future lies in becoming part of the solution,” NATO Senior Civilian Representative Mark Sedwill said recently. Sedwill added that an attempt to remake the power structure would require an international community presence in Afghanistan for perhaps the next 20 years.
Editor's note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
Eurasianet
The checkpoint at the entrance to the Loya Jirga complex in Kabul highlights the challenge facing President Hamid Karzai as his administration strives to reconcile with moderate Taliban elements. Security at the Jirga is perhaps heavier than at a major Western airport, with all vehicles and equipment being swabbed and checked for evidence of bomb-making residue. The government’s fear of a car bombing appears to be just as great as its desire to win insurgents back over to its side.
The three-day loya jirga, or grand council, which will mull Karzai’s reconciliation and reintegration plan, is scheduled to open June 2. Taliban representatives have not been explicitly invited to participate in the debates, said Najib Amin, a deputy on the meeting’s organizing committee. But, Amin added, the Taliban will have sympathizers among the participants who can represent the Islamic militants’ interests. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive].
The approximately 1,600 delegates to the National Consultative Peace Jirga will aim to “identify mechanisms based on which we can negotiate, identify categories of opposition with whom we can negotiate, mechanism on how to approach them, identify people who are not negotiable and what the government should do with them,” Amin said.
To keep the proceedings manageable, delegates will be divided into 28 groups. Technical facilitators have undergone training in order to keep debates efficient and orderly. At the end of the three days of discussions, it is hoped that the entire jirga will be able to produce a declaration of intent. However, distilling the decisions of the 28 groups into one common position promises to be difficult. Local Afghan media outlets in recent days have highlighted policy differences among the country’s top leaders, suggesting that the jirga could be contentious and have trouble harmonizing disparate views.
Regardless of the jirga’s outcome, its decisions and declarations will be non-binding on the government. The word “consultative” was added to the jirga’s official title after members of parliament criticized what they saw as an administration attempt to circumvent legislative authority. As a result, all jirga decisions will require the endorsement of either the cabinet or the legislature.
On the eve of the jirga, there remained the possibility that a significant number of MPs would boycott the event. Legislators had demanded that Karzai fill out his cabinet before the convocation of the jirga. Already, Abdullah Abdullah, the main opposition leader and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2009, has announced he will stay away from the gathering, contending that it will not be adequately representative of the Afghan nation. “This jirga started with the government, and will end with the government,” Abdullah said during a news conference.
Since Karzai unveiled his plans during a donor conference in January, the reconciliation idea has faced skepticism from several Afghan constituencies. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Human rights activists have expressed concerns that Karzai was willing to make sacrifices on Afghanistan’s democratization in order to cut a deal with moderate Taliban elements. “Reconciliation should not be a reconciliation behind curtains, just a political reconciliation,” Nader Nadery, a commissioner on the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, told a gathering of civil society groups who have been working together to demand transitional justice.
An essential factor for securing a stable future for Afghanistan is an honest accounting of past actions during the country’s past 30-plus years of strife. Those who committed atrocities must be held accountable, Nadery has asserted, adding that the implementation of Karzai’s reconciliation plan could become an obstacle toward this end. In early May, some rights advocates organized their own “victims’” jirga, during which they questioned whether reconciliation without justice could bring peace.
Also skeptical about the reconciliation initiative are women’s advocacy groups. Amid intense lobbying in recent months, approximately 20 percent of the jirga’s delegates will be women. Originally, only 30 women had been slated to participate in the debates. While women will still be vastly underrepresented at the gathering in relation to their percentage of the population, observers view the expansion of female delegates as a significant development. How influential the female delegates will be in defending women’s rights remains to be seen. Some advocates worry that the small gains made in recent years in the sphere of women’s rights will be rolled back. [For background see EurasiaNet’s archive]. While reconciliation as a means of shortening, or even ending the war has been supported by most donor states publicly, many Westerners in Kabul express doubts in private. “The Karzai government’s plan does not seem like a political plan at all,” said a Western diplomat. “It resembles a project proposal.”
To many Western policymakers, the reconciliation route seems to be the best option among an array of unappetizing choices. Perhaps the top priority should be improving the Afghan government’s responsiveness to popular needs and concerns. But many international observers emphasize that bringing about such a transformation would take decades. “We can’t reconstruct Afghanistan’s power structure from scratch, so we have to co-opt the power brokers by making clear that their only future lies in becoming part of the solution,” NATO Senior Civilian Representative Mark Sedwill said recently. Sedwill added that an attempt to remake the power structure would require an international community presence in Afghanistan for perhaps the next 20 years.
Editor's note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.
Jirgas and jirgas; Reconciliation without the victims?
June 3, 2010 in NRC Handelsblad
Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
No one wants to play the role of the Talib. The group of women gathered in a dusty courtyard in the poor neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in Kabul city, are all victims of the years of unrelenting violence in Afghanistan. Successive regimes saw murders, torture, looting and rapes as opposing factions fought their way into power. Most of the women had lost family members- fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands and children. Many had themselves suffered vicious violence. Now, through participatory theatre, (adapted from the pioneering work by Augusto Boal in Brazil), the women are coming to terms with their past. Enacting short skits recreating scenes from their own lives, the women intervene by adopting one of the roles in the skit and play it differently in order to transform the scene, a symbolic gesture that allows them to take control of their lives and change it.
NGOs working with the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population and local human rights groups are using community-based initiatives to address the trauma of years of violence in an effort to empower victims and help them transform their own lives. The success of this initiative stands in stark contrast to the inability of such groups to impact on the political and decision-making processes of the Afghan government and the donor community.
When the three-day consultative peace jirga to opens in Kabul on May 29 to hold inclusive discussions on reconciliation with the Taliban, missing from the table will be representatives of the victims groups who have firmly opposed some of the first steps in reconciliation taken by the Afghan government, including the amnesty law and the quiet burial of the Transitional Justice Action Plan.
Najibullah Amin, the Deputy Director of the Peace jirga is unfazed by the criticism. “We are all victims of war. The 1600 people who will participate in the jirga are all victims. The whole nation is a victim.”
At this moment the peace jirga has 13 categories of representatives including members of parliament, religious leaders, provincial council members, traders, civil society, Kuchis, governors, women and community elders amongst others. While there is no ‘ban’ on the participation of the ‘opposition’ – members of armed insurgent groups- Amin says it appears to be a hypothetical scenario. The jirga has not evolved any mechanism that would guarantee them safe passage for that participation. The jirga, he says will focus on consulting the nation on how to reach peace; the mechanism by which this can be achieved; identify those who are reconcilable and those who are not, and direct the government to take certain steps.
While Amin’s contention of every Afghan being a victim is acknowledged by civil society groups which have come together under the banner of the Transitional Justice Coordination Group(TJCG), they argue that political decisions are being taken by the powerful elite in their own interests, ignoring the larger interests of the powerless majority. An example, they say, is the Amnesty law. The law provides amnesty not just to “all political factions and hostile parties who were involved in a way or another in hostilities before the establishing of the Interim administration” (Hamid Karzai’s government of 2001), but it also provides amnesty to those “still in opposition” to the Afghan government. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission(AIHRC) has criticized the law as has the International Centre for Transitional Justice(ICTJ). In a joint paper both argued that the law was bad because: it violated the Afghan government’s obligation to pursue prosecution of war crimes as a signatory to international human rights treaties; it provided a form of self-amnesty being passed and adopted by those who would benefit from it without wider consultation of the population; it also provided amnesty in perpetuity since there was no cut-off date, thus encouraging a culture of continuing violence and impunity.
Adopted quietly in December 2008, the law only ‘appeared’ in the official gazette in December 2009, a most propitious time for its acceptance, with the donor community having identified ‘reconciliation and reintegration’ as the way out of the conflict, a decision that was officially endorsed at the London Conference in January 2010.
Predictably, any international criticism was muted and confined largely to NGOs and non-state actors. Responding to a question on the law, the new European Union Special Representative Vyguadas Usackas says the international community “did not see what we wanted to see” in terms of the Amnesty Law and Transitional Justice. He however argued that it was up to “Afghan people to use their democratic processes in influencing and developing a participatory democratic culture.” That is easier said than done. It is the Peace Jirga, reconciliation process and the Afghan government which is getting the bulk of funding and political backing of the international donor community rather than civil society initiatives relating to this process.
Those arguing for the implementation of the transitional justice plan argue that they are not opposed to reconciliation initiatives, but rather, in support of a reconciliation which is sustainable. “Reconciliation must include the victims” says Nader Nadery, a Commissioner in the AIHRC. “It should not be a reconciliation behind the curtains. It should not be just a political reconciliation.”
Amin refutes the suggestion that the current form of reconciliation is only a means of sharing power. “All Afghans have the right to political power” The peace jirga, he says, is going to address the issues that block peace.
Women’s groups for one are enthused that they have been admitted in large numbers to the jirga. Their advocacy has helped push their numbers up from 30 to over 300, a number that they hope will enable them to voice their concerns, even if they cannot influence the proceedings.
There is widespread skepticism on whether the hardcore insurgents groups can be reconciled at all. Asked why no one took on the role of the ‘Talib’ character in the participatory theatre, women gathered there said it was futile, because “a Talib is unchangeable.”
While women’s rights groups fear that their hard-won rights might be reversed in compromises with an intolerant conservative ideology, victims groups fear the jirga is a means to silence their voices. To prevent this, a ‘victims’ jirga held on May 9, brought together victims from different parts of the country to share harrowing stories of their pain and suffering. One of those who suffered brutal violence and lost most members of his family is Ali Faizi who acknowledged the common past of the victims cutting across ethnic and geographical divides. “We have a common suffering. But if we do not treat this wound now, it will afflict future generations.”
Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
No one wants to play the role of the Talib. The group of women gathered in a dusty courtyard in the poor neighbourhood of Dasht-e-Barchi in Kabul city, are all victims of the years of unrelenting violence in Afghanistan. Successive regimes saw murders, torture, looting and rapes as opposing factions fought their way into power. Most of the women had lost family members- fathers, mothers, brothers, husbands and children. Many had themselves suffered vicious violence. Now, through participatory theatre, (adapted from the pioneering work by Augusto Boal in Brazil), the women are coming to terms with their past. Enacting short skits recreating scenes from their own lives, the women intervene by adopting one of the roles in the skit and play it differently in order to transform the scene, a symbolic gesture that allows them to take control of their lives and change it.
NGOs working with the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the population and local human rights groups are using community-based initiatives to address the trauma of years of violence in an effort to empower victims and help them transform their own lives. The success of this initiative stands in stark contrast to the inability of such groups to impact on the political and decision-making processes of the Afghan government and the donor community.
When the three-day consultative peace jirga to opens in Kabul on May 29 to hold inclusive discussions on reconciliation with the Taliban, missing from the table will be representatives of the victims groups who have firmly opposed some of the first steps in reconciliation taken by the Afghan government, including the amnesty law and the quiet burial of the Transitional Justice Action Plan.
Najibullah Amin, the Deputy Director of the Peace jirga is unfazed by the criticism. “We are all victims of war. The 1600 people who will participate in the jirga are all victims. The whole nation is a victim.”
At this moment the peace jirga has 13 categories of representatives including members of parliament, religious leaders, provincial council members, traders, civil society, Kuchis, governors, women and community elders amongst others. While there is no ‘ban’ on the participation of the ‘opposition’ – members of armed insurgent groups- Amin says it appears to be a hypothetical scenario. The jirga has not evolved any mechanism that would guarantee them safe passage for that participation. The jirga, he says will focus on consulting the nation on how to reach peace; the mechanism by which this can be achieved; identify those who are reconcilable and those who are not, and direct the government to take certain steps.
While Amin’s contention of every Afghan being a victim is acknowledged by civil society groups which have come together under the banner of the Transitional Justice Coordination Group(TJCG), they argue that political decisions are being taken by the powerful elite in their own interests, ignoring the larger interests of the powerless majority. An example, they say, is the Amnesty law. The law provides amnesty not just to “all political factions and hostile parties who were involved in a way or another in hostilities before the establishing of the Interim administration” (Hamid Karzai’s government of 2001), but it also provides amnesty to those “still in opposition” to the Afghan government. The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission(AIHRC) has criticized the law as has the International Centre for Transitional Justice(ICTJ). In a joint paper both argued that the law was bad because: it violated the Afghan government’s obligation to pursue prosecution of war crimes as a signatory to international human rights treaties; it provided a form of self-amnesty being passed and adopted by those who would benefit from it without wider consultation of the population; it also provided amnesty in perpetuity since there was no cut-off date, thus encouraging a culture of continuing violence and impunity.
Adopted quietly in December 2008, the law only ‘appeared’ in the official gazette in December 2009, a most propitious time for its acceptance, with the donor community having identified ‘reconciliation and reintegration’ as the way out of the conflict, a decision that was officially endorsed at the London Conference in January 2010.
Predictably, any international criticism was muted and confined largely to NGOs and non-state actors. Responding to a question on the law, the new European Union Special Representative Vyguadas Usackas says the international community “did not see what we wanted to see” in terms of the Amnesty Law and Transitional Justice. He however argued that it was up to “Afghan people to use their democratic processes in influencing and developing a participatory democratic culture.” That is easier said than done. It is the Peace Jirga, reconciliation process and the Afghan government which is getting the bulk of funding and political backing of the international donor community rather than civil society initiatives relating to this process.
Those arguing for the implementation of the transitional justice plan argue that they are not opposed to reconciliation initiatives, but rather, in support of a reconciliation which is sustainable. “Reconciliation must include the victims” says Nader Nadery, a Commissioner in the AIHRC. “It should not be a reconciliation behind the curtains. It should not be just a political reconciliation.”
Amin refutes the suggestion that the current form of reconciliation is only a means of sharing power. “All Afghans have the right to political power” The peace jirga, he says, is going to address the issues that block peace.
Women’s groups for one are enthused that they have been admitted in large numbers to the jirga. Their advocacy has helped push their numbers up from 30 to over 300, a number that they hope will enable them to voice their concerns, even if they cannot influence the proceedings.
There is widespread skepticism on whether the hardcore insurgents groups can be reconciled at all. Asked why no one took on the role of the ‘Talib’ character in the participatory theatre, women gathered there said it was futile, because “a Talib is unchangeable.”
While women’s rights groups fear that their hard-won rights might be reversed in compromises with an intolerant conservative ideology, victims groups fear the jirga is a means to silence their voices. To prevent this, a ‘victims’ jirga held on May 9, brought together victims from different parts of the country to share harrowing stories of their pain and suffering. One of those who suffered brutal violence and lost most members of his family is Ali Faizi who acknowledged the common past of the victims cutting across ethnic and geographical divides. “We have a common suffering. But if we do not treat this wound now, it will afflict future generations.”
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