Himal
AUNOHITA MOJUMDAR
Last year, 1500 civilians were killed as a result of fighting between pro-government and anti-government elements in Afghanistan, the highest number since 2001. But there is another reason why Afghanistan is an unsafe country, a problem that takes some 24,000 civilian lives a year. Their deaths are less newsy; they make no banner headlines, lead to no talk shows, and generate little shock. These 24,000 were young Afghan mothers, all of whom died as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.
The maternal-mortality ratio in Afghanistan is around 1600 per 100,000 live births. In the remoter parts of the country it is several times this figure, reaching 6500 in the largely inaccessible northeastern province of Badakshan. Despite concerted attempts, and granted same success in certain areas, the underlying causes of the high maternal-mortality ratio (MMR) have not shown much change over the last seven years, since the fall of the Taliban and the influx of international aid. Afghanistan has the second-highest MMR in the world and the highest in the Asia-Pacific region. Further, the figure of 1600 is actually the lower estimate in a range of 1600-2200 – the upper estimate of which surpasses that of Sierra Leone, with an MMR of 2000 per 100,000 live births, officially the highest in the world.
In Afghanistan today, a woman giving birth is estimated to die every 29 minutes. According to the Kabul government, this extremely high MMR is due to a “tragic combination of poverty, conflict and cultural tradition”. Each factor exacerbates the impact of the other, and the overall ratio is slow to change. Explaining the individual causes, Dr Malalai Ahmadzai, a specialist in maternal health with UNICEF in the country, says the barriers are extremely straightforward: the non-recognition of a medical problem due to lack of awareness, the insufficient training of birth attendants, or the complete absence of health facilities. “People here see birth as a natural phenomenon, a private matter,” she says. “And so it complicates the decision of when to call for medical help.”
Gender dynamics play a tragic role. Even where a problem may be recognised by the pregnant woman or other female members of the family, the decision to seek medical help rests with the male head of the household. That individual, meanwhile, may or may not recognise or accept the gravity of the situation. Furthermore, even when the condition is recognised and medical help is sought, there may simply be no medical help to access, either due to the remoteness, the difficulty of travel or the expense involved. “There are great disparities in health care because of the geography of our country,” says Dr Ahmadzai. The absence of roads in much of rural Afghanistan can mean a journey lasting hours if not days, with some areas completely cut off during the winter. “Even after reaching the facility, the required medical care may not be available, even when the family can afford to pay.”
Barren Wakhan
The health of the mother and infant can remain unaddressed even if a family reaches a functioning health post. If the only available help is a male doctor or nurse, a woman patient will most likely not be able to approach him. Indeed, cultural and social factors significantly add to the vulnerability of women in Afghanistan. Another factor is that most girls are married very young, and have children soon after marriage. An estimated 50 percent of girls below the age of 15 are already married, and some of them are as young as eight years old, according to the UN Fund for Population Activities. Social custom sets an excessively high value on childbearing, with the average number of children borne by an Afghan woman being 7.2 compared with 1.2 in Iran and 3.4 in Pakistan.
The young age of childbearing, coupled with quick successive pregnancies, inevitably make women in Afghanistan more vulnerable to maternal mortality. This risk is only heightened by poor levels of nutrition, especially in the more isolated rural areas with subsistence agriculture. This is starkly evident in the fields of Wakhan, in the northeastern corner of Afghanistan. Much of the food here, including vegetables and fruit, is transported by road and therefore difficult to access because of scarcity and high costs. The barren rocky landscape, located at the junction of the Pamir, Karakoram and Hindukush ranges, is inaccessible by road for five months of the year.
With the land remaining icy and snowbound for many months of the year, nutrition levels in Wakhan are very poor. Dr Abdul Momin Jalaly, Director of Public Health for the province of Badakshan, within which Wakhan lies, says the entire province suffers from malnutrition. “In the Wakhan-Pamir area, there is no fruit and it is impossible to grow vegetables. The difficulty of reaching the area means that produce from other markets also cannot reach there. Most women here suffer from anaemia and vitamin deficiency due to bad nutrition.” The inaccessibility also means that trained health professionals are unwilling to be based there. “There are no roads in 12 districts of the province,” says Jalaly. “People use donkeys and horses to travel, and there is no communication with this area from the end of autumn to the beginning of spring. Tangshao village in Darwaz, for example, can be reached only after 72 hours of walking.” Little wonder that trained medical practitioners tend to forego the opportunity to work here.
Afghanistan has a severe shortage of trained, educated and skilled women in the health sector. Low literacy rates among girls have meant an absence of skilled female doctors and nurses; those with the means of obtaining an education are likely to be from urban centres, and unwilling to work in the remote areas. Meanwhile, qualified senior professionals have long since emigrated. In a 2005 report, Afghanistan was estimated to have just a single doctor per 10,000 people, compared to the average of 10.1 for all developing countries. New skilled professionals are difficult to find, since conservative mores have traditionally excluded girls from schooling, especially beyond the primary level. This practice has now been strengthened by the years of conflict and lack of security. In addition, the absence of educated women works as a vicious cycle. With not enough women teachers, there are fewer schools for girls, and even fewer at the secondary level. Parents prefer to have their girls stay at home as they reach puberty, and the long distances to school is a problem. The easier option is to keep the girls ‘safe’ by marrying them off.
Trivial ‘ifs’
Since 2006, the Badakshan provincial government has been running a community midwifery school, run by the Aga Khan Health Services (AKHS), aimed specifically at training girls. But even for this community school, it has been difficult to find girls from the more remote districts. While most girls do not even complete primary school, applicants must have passed Class 9 in order to join the training.
In the village of Kipkut, halfway up the Wakhan Corridor, Christel Bosman, a doctor from Holland, has been working to train community health workers in basic gynaecology. In her small room in the village, she explains why she lives in this remote outpost. She had studied tropical medicine to become broad-based in her knowledge, and had worked with Afghan refugees in the Netherlands. That was her link to Afghanistan and Wakhan. Here, her primary focus is on bringing down the MMR, which she ascribes to some very basic factors. “High blood pressure, complications during childbirth and obstructed labour resulting in haemorrhage and blood loss are the main causes,” she says. “In the Netherlands, it would mean a simple blood transfusion. Here, where can I get the blood?”
This particular day is a difficult one. Bosman has just learned of the death of one of her patients, Sahib Daulat, who died soon after childbirth. In this case, as in so many others, the family had delayed calling the doctor. By the time Bosman got to see her, Sahib Daulat had lost too much blood. “If they had only called me earlier, or if I only had access to a blood bank, I could have saved her,” she says.
The difference between life and death is often a series of seemingly trivial ‘ifs’ for the young mothers of Afghanistan. As with Sahib Daulat, haemorrhage is the most common cause of death, at 38 percent, followed by obstructed labour at 26 percent. Afghan women have a 1-in-8 risk of maternal death, compared to the average risk of 1-in-59 for Southasian women. Following the only qualitative study of MMR (by UNICEF and the US Centers for Disease Control, in 2002), the lifetime risk of death from pregnancy and childbirth-related causes for Afghan mothers was estimated to be in the range of 1 in 6 to 1 in 9. The study also found that women of reproductive age were more likely to die from maternal causes than due to any other medical reason. Perhaps most importantly, 78 percent of the cases studied were estimated to have been preventable. According to the study, deaths could be averted if complications are prevented through improving the general health status, and if complications that occur are treated to reduce their severity. These efforts require a multisectoral approach to increase availability and accessibility of health care, states the study.
This emphasis on ‘multisectoral responses’ is important. “Health in Badakshan province is not just a small job for health providers,” says Dr Jalaly. “If we do not have the support of other sectors, we cannot provide coverage. Road links, investment in agricultural and poverty reduction policies are all needed.” Although the Kabul government claims to have provided health services that cover some 85 percent of the population, “the physical access to functional facilities is far more limited,” the UNFPA’s country director, Dr Ramesh Penumaka, said in a press conference earlier this year. According to the agency, only 18 percent of deliveries last year were attended by skilled birth attendants. Even this constitutes an important increase, however. Likewise, a modest increase has also been seen in the attention given to pregnant women during pregnancy by health professionals, which increased from an estimated four percent in 2001 to 30 percent in 2007.
Bamiyan kabilas
One of the projects that have significantly assisted in this increase is located in Bamiyan, in the centre of the country, the small town put on the international map by the destruction of its giant Buddhas by the Taliban in 2001. Here, Fatima Alizada, just out of her teens, has been attending midwifery classes for the past six months, after having completed her schooling. She is a student at one of the 19 midwifery schools set up by the Aga Khan Foundation. For Alizada, her education is not a textbook course, learned in the sanitised surroundings of a classroom. A year and a half ago, she was witness to the death of her neighbour, Hawagul, a young mother who had been unable to receive medical help during labour. She was 35 when she died. Though a traditional birth attendant was called in when Hawagul was in acute labour, the attendant did not have the skills necessary to treat the problem.
Supportive traditional practices, skills and knowledge may have been lost over decades of war, as populations were repeatedly displaced, disrupting the social networks as well as access to traditional materials and techniques. As yet, says Dr Ahmadzai, there has been no study of the traditional healing practices during pregnancy and childbirth that are practiced in different parts of Afghanistan. In some areas, however, traditional practices can be deathly. In the Wakhan area, for example, local superstition prevents a mother from breastfeeding her child for the first few days after birth, on the grounds that the milk is considered impure. Dr Alex Duncan, a British doctor who has worked in Wakhan for several years, says this belief persists despite attempts to explain that the first few days of life are the most important for an infant, in order that it can acquire a natural immunisation through breast milk. On the whole, says Dr Ahmadzai, “We have seen that the traditional birth attendants have not been able to reduce the maternal mortality, and this is where skilled midwives become necessary.”
Alizada has a long, hard slog ahead of her before she can become a kabila, a midwife. Having completed six months of her training, she has another year to go before she graduates. But she has no doubts as to why she is here: “I would like to help people of this area,” she says with conviction, “to help the mother and child.” By rights, Alizada should not be here at the Bamiyan midwifery school; the school only takes students from Bamiyan, while she is from Dai Kundi province, to the southwest. However, Dai Kundi’s acute poverty and inaccessibility, even more severe than that of Bamiyan, led the school administrators to make an exception for applicants from the province. According to the charitable organisation Oxfam, the people of Dai Kundi may be facing their worst overall conditions in two decades, as well as a potential humanitarian crisis due to food insecurity. The midwifery school also relaxed its stipulation that students needed to have completed Class 9, since in many of the remoter districts they could not find girls who had studied that far. “They do have to be literate, however, since they will need to study from books,” says Farzana Dost, trainer and the deputy manager of the school.
To overcome social and cultural barriers, the selection of students involves the families as well as local community leaders and shuras (informal decision-making groups of elders), as well as the mayor from the local area. Dost says that it is only with the consent of each of these that the girls are allowed to take part in the training. This automatically overcomes one of the major barriers faced by most women Рbedune mehram, or the lack of permission to leave their homes without the escort of a male member of the immediate family. Such an arrangement also ensures that the girls will be accepted back, and allowed to work as community midwives when they return to their villages. It is not just young girls who attend the school, however. The age of students range between 18 to 35, and ten of the current students are mothers themselves, for whom a cr̬che has been provided to assist them.
To make sure their students do return to help their communities, rather than leaving for more lucrative jobs in more attractive parts of the country, the certification is dependent upon the student’s return to her own village or district. During the first two years of schooling, there was also a small stipend given to encourage girls to enrol. Happily, in the current third batch, this was not needed due to the large number of applicants – about 100 girls, of whom 25 were selected. Alizada herself was inspired to join by the examples of four girls of her area, who had attended the previous batch. Like the other students, Alizada lives in a hostel on the school grounds. When she finishes, Alizada will return to Dai Kundi’s local basic health clinic as a trained midwife.
A man’s issue
The impact of the Bamiyan school is already being felt. Most of the cases of complicated pregnancy that come to the province’s only secondary-care hospital are now referred by the trained midwives who have graduated from the school, says the hospital’s head doctor, Ghulam Mohammad Nadir. He also hopes that, over time, the presence of midwives will lessen the need for secondary health care entirely. Simple matters such as hygiene, the need for sterilisation during delivery and even nutrition can be communicated and observed in the home, without extra effort or expense. At the moment, Dr Nadir says, most families simply do not know what is required in a healthy diet. Many families own cattle and poultry for instance, but utilising the protein from milk and eggs, is not part of Afghan tradition. It is not just access to health care that decreases with remoteness, but also availability of knowledge.
Knowledge about birth spacing is another aspect that would reduce the number of pregnancies and improve the chances of survival for women of reproductive age. Again, however, cultural mores as well as religious conservatism make this one of the most challenging aspects. Two months ago, a woman health worker in Kandahar, in the southwest, was shot dead after the Taliban labelled her work in family planning and birth control as ‘un-Islamic’. And, with increasing insecurity in many parts of the country, those involved in education and health services have come under renewed threat. In November, Minister of Health Mohammed Amin Fatemi drew attention to the decreasing availability of health-care professionals, warning that this trend could lead to worsening public health, and a spurt in disease spread. According to the Ministry of Public Health, at least 51 health centres were torched or damaged in armed attacks during the 18 months leading up to June 2008.
The increasing violence has also forced schools to shut down in many districts. According to the Ministry of Education, over 600 schools in 45 districts are now closed, affecting at least 300,000 children. These schools account for 80 percent of the academic institutions in the four provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan, all in southern Afghanistan. The first casualty in the education system is inevitably girls’ schools; in Helmand, where there are currently 54 schools in operation (compared with 223 in 2002), almost all are boys’ schools. The long-term impact of this will, naturally, mean fewer educated girls and, incidentally, fewer women health professionals.
In the meantime, there has been no study since 2002 on maternal mortality, though one is currently slated for 2009-10. Either way, however, many suggest that the conception of maternal health as a problem in Afghanistan is still too limited. The issue of maternal health is not a ‘women’s issue’, says UNFPA’s Dr Penumaka. “The key to better maternal health lies with men. They have to be sensitive and aware of the health requirement and the needs of women. Maternal health is not really a woman’s issue – it’s really a man’s issue.” As such, meeting the challenge of reducing maternal mortality will require education, communication and changes in cultural practices. Due to cultural factors, there is very little communication about reproductive health and sexual behaviour within the family. In Afghanistan, the UN-developed Millennium Development Goal on MMR is to reduce the ratio by 50 percent between 2002 and 2015, well below the global target of reducing MMR by 75 percent in the same period. Yet the possibility of meeting even this target is judged to be merely a ‘potential’ rather than a probability.
The increasing number of skilled attendants at birth, the increasing recourse to health facilities, better vaccination and growing awareness collectively point to the hope that the ratio will eventually show a decline, says Dr Ahmadzai. But UNFPA cautions that several more decades will be needed before any major impact will be seen on maternal mortality in Afghanistan. In the meantime, with continuing conflict and decreasing services in the vulnerable areas, there are fears that even the small gains of the past seven years may soon be eroded. Yet this aspect of the ‘collateral damage’ of an ongoing conflict goes un-remarked upon, save for in the footnotes of public attention, tucked away in academic journals or sporadic reporting by the media.
September 06, 2009
AFGHANISTAN: INTERNATIONAL AID AGENCIES WARY OF US-BACKED SECURITY SURGE
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 4/06/09
Despite increasing calls from aid agencies to let them handle Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs, NATO is proceeding with plans to enhance civil-military cooperation in the country, especially through the operations of provincial reconstruction teams.
While the rhetoric drew self-congratulatory pats from most member countries during the April 4 NATO summit in Strasbourg, France, humanitarian aid workers based in Afghanistan say they are worried about how the Atlantic Alliance’s new security and aid policies will affect their work, and their safety.
Their concerns appear to have gone largely unheeded by NATO leaders. The summit’s declaration on Afghanistan noted that NATO members "are boosting . . . efforts to coordinate the contribution of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to build stability and further align their work with Afghan Government priorities."
Just before the summit, in an unprecedented move, a group of influential aid agencies joined hands to urge for an immediate halt to some of the specific civilian-military policies. In all, 11 organizations called for a de-linking of aid delivery from military goals, changes in the operational strategies of the international military forces, phasing out the strategy of distributing aid through the PRTs and halting two specific new security policies that they say will put Afghan communities at greater risk.
While humanitarian and development agencies have expressed concern about the civilian population from time to time, this concern previously tended to be expressed in general terms. Never before have NGOs gotten so specific. The NGOs who have come together to formulate a common position are all widely respected and with long-term track records in Afghanistan, including Oxfam, Care, Action Aid and Save the Children.
Among the military measures that these organizations are wary of are the Afghan Social Outreach Program (ASOP) and the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF), both sometimes referred to as "empowerment programs." The ASOP seeks to build local support and communication networks by gathering information about militant activities through shuras (local bodies of influential people). The deputy head of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR, an umbrella body of over 100 NGOs), M.H. Mayar, questioned the program, saying it would compromise the independence and impartiality of NGOs that work with shuras.
The opposition to the APPF, a program that is currently in the testing phase, has been much stronger. The APPF seeks to arm local community forces, essentially creating militias to meet the shortfall in security forces, much like programs the United States has used in Iraq. The forces, which will be answerable to local networks, will have less oversight than regular police or army units, less accountability and less training. Mayar challenged the efficacy of the scheme saying such attempts had failed in the past. Mayar added that the APPF’s intent ran counter to another program, which was designed to promote disarmament among armed groups. He stressed that armed groups could change sides, or use their weapons and new status to settle local feuds, thus further endangering local communities and the NGOs delivering aid.
Concern about the safety of civilians and the aid agencies also lies at the heart of the opposition to the proposed expansion of PRTs, which were initially set up as a temporary strategy to plug the gaps in the small pockets of insecurity where civilian agencies where unable to function. As insecurity grew, they were later expanded throughout the country. With intensifying conflict, the PRTs’ role changed, focusing more on heart-and-minds campaigns. Donor agencies, under pressure from their governments, followed suit, redirecting a substantial portion of their aid to the areas where their troops were based. Increasing insecurity has meant that this aid delivery is now routinely directed from the confines of regional military bases. NGOs argue that this has resulted in increasing dangers to them, as well as to the recipients of aid, both of which are seen to be having links to the international military forces.
At a press conference to release the report, Dave Hampson, Country Director of Save the Children UK, said "the main problem is the blurring of lines" between the civilian and military. Matt Waldman of Oxfam added that the "increasing militarization of aid" means aid is more often addressing "military objectives and not the needs of Afghans." He said the NGOs and humanitarian agencies hoped that "more aid will be channeled through civilian agencies and that the PRTs will transition to focus on security."
"When security and other conditions exist, which allow specialized civilian development actors to operate, the military should not be engaged in activities in the development or humanitarian sector," says the report on civilians in conflict released by the same group of NGOs. "The PRTs’ hearts-and-minds approach to assistance, drawn from counter-insurgency doctrine, is not only unsustainable, it is highly unlikely to achieve its intended security objectives," the document states.
NATO, however, appears ready to move ahead seemingly undeterred. A statement on the NATO website after Strasbourg said that Atlantic alliance leaders "recognized that to do this work will require a greater civilian component to the forces being sent to Afghanistan." A January report to the US Congress from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted that the US Embassy in Kabul had proposed the establishment of four new PRTs and the creation of 215 new related civilian positions. This, Waldman of Oxfam argued, would lead to increasing distortion of the use of aid to achieve military objectives.
Aunohita Mojumdar 4/06/09
Despite increasing calls from aid agencies to let them handle Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs, NATO is proceeding with plans to enhance civil-military cooperation in the country, especially through the operations of provincial reconstruction teams.
While the rhetoric drew self-congratulatory pats from most member countries during the April 4 NATO summit in Strasbourg, France, humanitarian aid workers based in Afghanistan say they are worried about how the Atlantic Alliance’s new security and aid policies will affect their work, and their safety.
Their concerns appear to have gone largely unheeded by NATO leaders. The summit’s declaration on Afghanistan noted that NATO members "are boosting . . . efforts to coordinate the contribution of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to build stability and further align their work with Afghan Government priorities."
Just before the summit, in an unprecedented move, a group of influential aid agencies joined hands to urge for an immediate halt to some of the specific civilian-military policies. In all, 11 organizations called for a de-linking of aid delivery from military goals, changes in the operational strategies of the international military forces, phasing out the strategy of distributing aid through the PRTs and halting two specific new security policies that they say will put Afghan communities at greater risk.
While humanitarian and development agencies have expressed concern about the civilian population from time to time, this concern previously tended to be expressed in general terms. Never before have NGOs gotten so specific. The NGOs who have come together to formulate a common position are all widely respected and with long-term track records in Afghanistan, including Oxfam, Care, Action Aid and Save the Children.
Among the military measures that these organizations are wary of are the Afghan Social Outreach Program (ASOP) and the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF), both sometimes referred to as "empowerment programs." The ASOP seeks to build local support and communication networks by gathering information about militant activities through shuras (local bodies of influential people). The deputy head of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR, an umbrella body of over 100 NGOs), M.H. Mayar, questioned the program, saying it would compromise the independence and impartiality of NGOs that work with shuras.
The opposition to the APPF, a program that is currently in the testing phase, has been much stronger. The APPF seeks to arm local community forces, essentially creating militias to meet the shortfall in security forces, much like programs the United States has used in Iraq. The forces, which will be answerable to local networks, will have less oversight than regular police or army units, less accountability and less training. Mayar challenged the efficacy of the scheme saying such attempts had failed in the past. Mayar added that the APPF’s intent ran counter to another program, which was designed to promote disarmament among armed groups. He stressed that armed groups could change sides, or use their weapons and new status to settle local feuds, thus further endangering local communities and the NGOs delivering aid.
Concern about the safety of civilians and the aid agencies also lies at the heart of the opposition to the proposed expansion of PRTs, which were initially set up as a temporary strategy to plug the gaps in the small pockets of insecurity where civilian agencies where unable to function. As insecurity grew, they were later expanded throughout the country. With intensifying conflict, the PRTs’ role changed, focusing more on heart-and-minds campaigns. Donor agencies, under pressure from their governments, followed suit, redirecting a substantial portion of their aid to the areas where their troops were based. Increasing insecurity has meant that this aid delivery is now routinely directed from the confines of regional military bases. NGOs argue that this has resulted in increasing dangers to them, as well as to the recipients of aid, both of which are seen to be having links to the international military forces.
At a press conference to release the report, Dave Hampson, Country Director of Save the Children UK, said "the main problem is the blurring of lines" between the civilian and military. Matt Waldman of Oxfam added that the "increasing militarization of aid" means aid is more often addressing "military objectives and not the needs of Afghans." He said the NGOs and humanitarian agencies hoped that "more aid will be channeled through civilian agencies and that the PRTs will transition to focus on security."
"When security and other conditions exist, which allow specialized civilian development actors to operate, the military should not be engaged in activities in the development or humanitarian sector," says the report on civilians in conflict released by the same group of NGOs. "The PRTs’ hearts-and-minds approach to assistance, drawn from counter-insurgency doctrine, is not only unsustainable, it is highly unlikely to achieve its intended security objectives," the document states.
NATO, however, appears ready to move ahead seemingly undeterred. A statement on the NATO website after Strasbourg said that Atlantic alliance leaders "recognized that to do this work will require a greater civilian component to the forces being sent to Afghanistan." A January report to the US Congress from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction noted that the US Embassy in Kabul had proposed the establishment of four new PRTs and the creation of 215 new related civilian positions. This, Waldman of Oxfam argued, would lead to increasing distortion of the use of aid to achieve military objectives.
AFGHANISTAN: OBAMA AF-PAK STRATEGY AND AFGHANISTAN’S RESPONSE
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 4/02/09
Cautious optimism in Kabul is greeting US President Barack Obama’s new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When Obama originally unveiled his Afghan policy blueprint on March 27, government officials and non-governmental actors alike greeted it with a sigh of relief, as it endorsed a strong American commitment to Afghanistan. However, an initial burst of enthusiasm for the new strategy has given way to a more nuanced approach, with Afghans and Afghanistan-based internationals cautioning that the real test will lie in the details, implementation, and prioritization of multiple goals.
Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a European diplomat said that the general opinion among his European colleagues was that "it was one of the better strategies" and a "good document." But the diplomat stressed that "many questions remain."
While the regional approach outlined in the Obama administration blueprint is generally welcomed, some officials and observers worry that Washington may be conflating the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan to an undesirable degree. "The problem is linked, but not the same in the two countries," the diplomatic source said. The diplomat added that overemphasis on Pakistan could distract attention from the very real problems within Afghanistan.
Similarly, while the Obama’s administration’s ability to recognize that a number of different factors -- including unemployment and local grievances -- is driving the insurgency, the diplomat voiced concern that problems were being oversimplified.
Both the Afghan government and the UN’s Mission in Afghanistan cheered the Obama plan for its focus on development. The UN’s top official in the country, Kai Eide, termed it a "greater balance between the military and civilian sides." Other analysts, however, see the approach as still being a predominantly military one. They point out that the "core goal of the United States" in the blueprint’s own words, "must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan."
"The stress is on defense and less on development and diplomacy," says Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, an aid worker. "The decision to send more human and development professionals is welcome, but if the development advisers are located within the PRTs (the provincial reconstruction teams of the international military forces) they will not be able to make a difference, unless they can de-link development work from the security goals."
The international NGO Oxfam said the delivery of aid by USAID, the US government’s development arm, had had limited success in part because "the US uses foreign aid to achieve short-term or security objectives."
For political analyst Ahmed Dawi, the primary problem with the Obama strategy is an absence of a matching commitment from the Afghan side. "As an Afghan, I am concerned about a lack of strategy from our side," Dawi said. "The implementation of the American strategy will depend on the conductive environment in Afghanistan. It cannot be a one-way street. The words are promising. We have to see how they will be implemented."
Dawi’s compatriot, Aziz Hakimi, an independent political analyst, is less optimistic. While the "intention is good," Hakimi said, the impulse of the US plan is worrisome. The emphasis, in Hakimi’s view, is on "al Qaeda and (US) homeland security. It is not about Afghanistan. Where is the Afghan voice in all this? It is not about us."
As the United States undertakes a military buildup in Afghanistan, some civil society activists are concerned that civilians will continue to suffer. Civilian casualties from military operations has emerged in recent years as a major source of friction between the local population and coalition forces.
"What we have to see is that the intervention does not cause harm but contributes to relief and rehabilitation that the country needs," said Siddiqui, the aid worker. "The process remains very important. Security should be a priority not just in terms of killing Taliban but protecting Afghans."
Civilian security is also becoming a rallying cry for international rights organizations. "While the United States is deploying more troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda, greater attention is needed to provide basic security for Afghans in both conflict and non-conflict areas," Human Rights Watch said in a recent statement on the new US policy.
Amnesty International wants to see greater accountability for violations of international humanitarian law by coalition forces. The rights group additionally has called for clarifying and harmonizing the rules of engagement by the different international military forces present in Afghanistan. "The challenge for the United States and its allies is to ensure that the surge of international troops into the country will provide better security for Afghans and not put them at greater risk," it stated.
Aunohita Mojumdar 4/02/09
Cautious optimism in Kabul is greeting US President Barack Obama’s new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When Obama originally unveiled his Afghan policy blueprint on March 27, government officials and non-governmental actors alike greeted it with a sigh of relief, as it endorsed a strong American commitment to Afghanistan. However, an initial burst of enthusiasm for the new strategy has given way to a more nuanced approach, with Afghans and Afghanistan-based internationals cautioning that the real test will lie in the details, implementation, and prioritization of multiple goals.
Speaking on conditions of anonymity, a European diplomat said that the general opinion among his European colleagues was that "it was one of the better strategies" and a "good document." But the diplomat stressed that "many questions remain."
While the regional approach outlined in the Obama administration blueprint is generally welcomed, some officials and observers worry that Washington may be conflating the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan to an undesirable degree. "The problem is linked, but not the same in the two countries," the diplomatic source said. The diplomat added that overemphasis on Pakistan could distract attention from the very real problems within Afghanistan.
Similarly, while the Obama’s administration’s ability to recognize that a number of different factors -- including unemployment and local grievances -- is driving the insurgency, the diplomat voiced concern that problems were being oversimplified.
Both the Afghan government and the UN’s Mission in Afghanistan cheered the Obama plan for its focus on development. The UN’s top official in the country, Kai Eide, termed it a "greater balance between the military and civilian sides." Other analysts, however, see the approach as still being a predominantly military one. They point out that the "core goal of the United States" in the blueprint’s own words, "must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan."
"The stress is on defense and less on development and diplomacy," says Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, an aid worker. "The decision to send more human and development professionals is welcome, but if the development advisers are located within the PRTs (the provincial reconstruction teams of the international military forces) they will not be able to make a difference, unless they can de-link development work from the security goals."
The international NGO Oxfam said the delivery of aid by USAID, the US government’s development arm, had had limited success in part because "the US uses foreign aid to achieve short-term or security objectives."
For political analyst Ahmed Dawi, the primary problem with the Obama strategy is an absence of a matching commitment from the Afghan side. "As an Afghan, I am concerned about a lack of strategy from our side," Dawi said. "The implementation of the American strategy will depend on the conductive environment in Afghanistan. It cannot be a one-way street. The words are promising. We have to see how they will be implemented."
Dawi’s compatriot, Aziz Hakimi, an independent political analyst, is less optimistic. While the "intention is good," Hakimi said, the impulse of the US plan is worrisome. The emphasis, in Hakimi’s view, is on "al Qaeda and (US) homeland security. It is not about Afghanistan. Where is the Afghan voice in all this? It is not about us."
As the United States undertakes a military buildup in Afghanistan, some civil society activists are concerned that civilians will continue to suffer. Civilian casualties from military operations has emerged in recent years as a major source of friction between the local population and coalition forces.
"What we have to see is that the intervention does not cause harm but contributes to relief and rehabilitation that the country needs," said Siddiqui, the aid worker. "The process remains very important. Security should be a priority not just in terms of killing Taliban but protecting Afghans."
Civilian security is also becoming a rallying cry for international rights organizations. "While the United States is deploying more troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda, greater attention is needed to provide basic security for Afghans in both conflict and non-conflict areas," Human Rights Watch said in a recent statement on the new US policy.
Amnesty International wants to see greater accountability for violations of international humanitarian law by coalition forces. The rights group additionally has called for clarifying and harmonizing the rules of engagement by the different international military forces present in Afghanistan. "The challenge for the United States and its allies is to ensure that the surge of international troops into the country will provide better security for Afghans and not put them at greater risk," it stated.
AFGHANISTAN: US AND INDIA MULL WAYS TO CONTAIN THE TALIBAN
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/23/09
In the past, a visit to India by a CIA director could have set off a storm of protest and political jousting in New Delhi. But given the troubling Taliban issue in neighboring Pakistan, Indians’ perception of the United States is changing. These days, the emerging US-Indian partnership is developing into an important element of Washington’s stabilization plan for Afghanistan.
When newly minted CIA Director Leon Panetta visited India recently, he was greeted only by a mild protest from leftist parties over his meeting with Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Panetta was in India to discuss Afghanistan, the ’Af-Pak’ situation and India’s role in a new American regional policy initiative. Highlighting the importance of emerging US-Indian ties, the March 19 foray to New Delhi marked Panetta’s first overseas trip since his Senate confirmation. It also followed visits by other senior US intelligence officials, including one earlier in March by FBI Director Robert Mueller. After his visit to India, Panetta went on to Islamabad for talks with Pakistani leaders.
Further emphasizing Washington’s growing interest in New Delhi’s Afghanistan approach, on March 21 President Barack Obama’s special envy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told an audience in Brussels that India would be a "major factor in resolving" the situation in Afghanistan. Holbrooke also appeared to echo Indian concerns that Pakistan has replaced Afghanistan as the epicenter of the threat posed by international terrorists.
"We must recognize that the heart of the threat to the United States, to the European Union, to Australia, to many other countries in the world including India and, I stress, including Pakistan itself, comes from . . . western Pakistan," Holbrooke told participants at the Brussels security conference.
Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, India, which provided support and supplies to the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, has had extensive bilateral contacts with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration. Afghanistan has become the largest beneficiary of Indian aid, receiving $1.2 billion since 2001.
Through its embassy in Kabul -- as well as four consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i Sharif -- India is now able to project its influence across Afghanistan. That fact has caused consternation in Pakistan, with Islamabad calling on Kabul to curb New Delhi’s "anti-Pakistani" activities within the country, charges that range from spying to training militants operating against Pakistan.
For its part, India has consistently accused Pakistan of supporting anti-Indian and anti-Western militants. It has also drawn repeated attention to Pakistan’s unwillingness to allow Indian goods overland access to Afghanistan -- through Pakistani territory -- forcing India to route supplies for its projects through the more circuitous Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
India’s low public profile may soon change. Given the considerable agreement between the United States and India on Afghanistan policy, New Delhi appears poised to assume a larger role in Afghan stabilization efforts.
T.C.A. Raghavan, a senior Indian diplomat overseeing the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division in the External Affairs Ministry, recently welcomed the ’Af-Pak’ approach of developing a "coordinated policy" on Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We have always seen [the region] as a single issue," he said during a March 18 seminar on Afghanistan, organized by the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute for Asian Studies, a think-tank funded by his ministry.
Raghavan also welcomed the "inclination to see Iran as a stabilizing element," adding that Tehran’s role in Afghanistan "cannot be minimized." The diplomat also embraced American promises to strengthen the Afghan army and remarked that the US commitment to increase its troop level in Afghanistan was a positive step and a sign of its resolve to remain committed to stabilization efforts.
While India has officially dismissed talk of sending Indian troops into Afghanistan, there is increasing talk within Indian circles of a "regional force" that could replace the "international forces" currently operating under a NATO mandate. Ved Pratap Vaidik, a scholar and analyst with close links to the government, articulated this view forcefully. He called for "a deadline for the removal of foreign forces" from Afghanistan.
It is "time for a regional solution," he said, adding that "foreign [i.e. western] forces should be replaced by regional forces." Vaidik suggested a maximum deadline of three years for this withdrawal.
India has been wary of attempts to talk to the Taliban, insisting on strict parameters for any such dialogue. India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Jayant Prasad, told EurasiaNet last year that talking with terrorists or those who did not accept democracy and political pluralism was akin to accepting that "you can fry snowballs."
While India has had considerable links with Iran and Russia, its developing ties with the United States over the past decade have overshadowed, but not mitigated, these historical linkages. India will send representatives to the SCO meeting to be held in Moscow March 27, as well as the international meeting on Afghanistan in The Hague on March 31.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon was in Washington earlier in March for consultations that included the ’Af-Pak’ issue. Both Holbrooke and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen are expected in India on April 8 to discuss the results of the forthcoming US strategic review on Afghanistan.
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/23/09
In the past, a visit to India by a CIA director could have set off a storm of protest and political jousting in New Delhi. But given the troubling Taliban issue in neighboring Pakistan, Indians’ perception of the United States is changing. These days, the emerging US-Indian partnership is developing into an important element of Washington’s stabilization plan for Afghanistan.
When newly minted CIA Director Leon Panetta visited India recently, he was greeted only by a mild protest from leftist parties over his meeting with Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. Panetta was in India to discuss Afghanistan, the ’Af-Pak’ situation and India’s role in a new American regional policy initiative. Highlighting the importance of emerging US-Indian ties, the March 19 foray to New Delhi marked Panetta’s first overseas trip since his Senate confirmation. It also followed visits by other senior US intelligence officials, including one earlier in March by FBI Director Robert Mueller. After his visit to India, Panetta went on to Islamabad for talks with Pakistani leaders.
Further emphasizing Washington’s growing interest in New Delhi’s Afghanistan approach, on March 21 President Barack Obama’s special envy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told an audience in Brussels that India would be a "major factor in resolving" the situation in Afghanistan. Holbrooke also appeared to echo Indian concerns that Pakistan has replaced Afghanistan as the epicenter of the threat posed by international terrorists.
"We must recognize that the heart of the threat to the United States, to the European Union, to Australia, to many other countries in the world including India and, I stress, including Pakistan itself, comes from . . . western Pakistan," Holbrooke told participants at the Brussels security conference.
Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, India, which provided support and supplies to the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, has had extensive bilateral contacts with the Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration. Afghanistan has become the largest beneficiary of Indian aid, receiving $1.2 billion since 2001.
Through its embassy in Kabul -- as well as four consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i Sharif -- India is now able to project its influence across Afghanistan. That fact has caused consternation in Pakistan, with Islamabad calling on Kabul to curb New Delhi’s "anti-Pakistani" activities within the country, charges that range from spying to training militants operating against Pakistan.
For its part, India has consistently accused Pakistan of supporting anti-Indian and anti-Western militants. It has also drawn repeated attention to Pakistan’s unwillingness to allow Indian goods overland access to Afghanistan -- through Pakistani territory -- forcing India to route supplies for its projects through the more circuitous Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
India’s low public profile may soon change. Given the considerable agreement between the United States and India on Afghanistan policy, New Delhi appears poised to assume a larger role in Afghan stabilization efforts.
T.C.A. Raghavan, a senior Indian diplomat overseeing the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division in the External Affairs Ministry, recently welcomed the ’Af-Pak’ approach of developing a "coordinated policy" on Afghanistan and Pakistan. "We have always seen [the region] as a single issue," he said during a March 18 seminar on Afghanistan, organized by the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute for Asian Studies, a think-tank funded by his ministry.
Raghavan also welcomed the "inclination to see Iran as a stabilizing element," adding that Tehran’s role in Afghanistan "cannot be minimized." The diplomat also embraced American promises to strengthen the Afghan army and remarked that the US commitment to increase its troop level in Afghanistan was a positive step and a sign of its resolve to remain committed to stabilization efforts.
While India has officially dismissed talk of sending Indian troops into Afghanistan, there is increasing talk within Indian circles of a "regional force" that could replace the "international forces" currently operating under a NATO mandate. Ved Pratap Vaidik, a scholar and analyst with close links to the government, articulated this view forcefully. He called for "a deadline for the removal of foreign forces" from Afghanistan.
It is "time for a regional solution," he said, adding that "foreign [i.e. western] forces should be replaced by regional forces." Vaidik suggested a maximum deadline of three years for this withdrawal.
India has been wary of attempts to talk to the Taliban, insisting on strict parameters for any such dialogue. India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Jayant Prasad, told EurasiaNet last year that talking with terrorists or those who did not accept democracy and political pluralism was akin to accepting that "you can fry snowballs."
While India has had considerable links with Iran and Russia, its developing ties with the United States over the past decade have overshadowed, but not mitigated, these historical linkages. India will send representatives to the SCO meeting to be held in Moscow March 27, as well as the international meeting on Afghanistan in The Hague on March 31.
Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon was in Washington earlier in March for consultations that included the ’Af-Pak’ issue. Both Holbrooke and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen are expected in India on April 8 to discuss the results of the forthcoming US strategic review on Afghanistan.
AFGHANISTAN: UNDAUNTED, BAMIYAN PROVINCE PONDERS TOURISM POSSIBILITIES
CIVIL SOCIETY
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/06/09
In her home village in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province, Bibi Khala welcomes the occasional visitor to her home with hot tea and homemade butter and bread. Her infrequent guests usually are interested in enjoying one of the world’s most stunning natural landscapes: the nearby lakes of Band-i Amir. As part of Afghanistan’s unwritten tradition of hospitality, Bibi does not charge guests for their visits. But if Bamiyan’s new eco-tourism project achieves its objective, she one day may find herself operating a bed-and-breakfast.
Investing in tourism at a time when most predict increasing violence in Afghanistan may seem counter-intuitive. But officials and non-governmental organization activists in Afghanistan’s central province of Bamiyan are doing exactly that. They say they are determined not to let development be held hostage to the ’gloom-and-doom’ scenario facing most of the country. The province, which recently received a grant of $1.2 million from New Zealand’s government, has launched an eco-tourism development initiative that hopes to build a sustainable visitor environment, putting the livelihood of the people at the centre of the policy. (New Zealand troops maintain a small military outpost in the province).
Implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in coordination with the provincial government, the project seeks to ensure preservation of the region’s unique natural and cultural heritage while helping locals enhance their skills to meet the demands of visiting tourists. Following the successful model of community-based tourism it has implemented in other areas of Central Asia, the AKF is focusing on capacity building, enhancing local handicraft production and constructing basic facilities for travelers. This could range from installing the most basic roadside hostels to encouraging investment in luxury accommodation.
Officials say Bamiyan will be connected to Kabul by a new road in three years. For Bamiyan residents, that is an exciting prospect and a working timeline.
"It is true that insecurity is a problem in Afghanistan now. But three years is enough for the international community and the Afghan government to think about security. We are optimistic that things will change positively in three years and that security will be better," says Amir Foladi who heads the eco-tourism program for the province. Foladi’s optimism is based not just on future hopes, but also on past realities. Though visitors to the province have dropped in the past two years, Foladi reports that up to 44,000 visitors, local and foreign, spent time in the area in 2006. Tourists are drawn to the province by its natural beauty, the local legends, religious piety, and the thrill of adventure. The main attraction is a series of interlocking lakes that sparkle in brilliant crystalline blues and greens.
The province, once a cultural crossroads, is replete with layers of history and legend, some brutal -- such as the massacres carried out by Genghis Khan’s legions -- and others auspicious, such as legends crediting Hazrat Ali with creating the lakes of Band-i Amir. Fable, history and the spectacular geography of the area fuse together.
The rise of modern commerce, trade and travel, however, caused this old branch of the Silk Road to become a backwater. The province became more isolated. The area’s neglect deepened following Sunni Islam’s rise as the predominant religious force in the region. Largely populated by Sh’ia-practicing ethnic Hazaras, Bamiyan faced horrific massacres under the Taliban. To this day, the Hazaras are some of the most welcoming to foreigners in the whole country.
With a bang, literally, the international spotlight returned to province, when the Taliban, in the last year of their rule in Kabul, blew up the area’s two giant Buddhas as a gesture of defiance. The action drew international opprobrium. Since the fall of the fundamentalist movement, the destroyed Buddhas have attracted thousands of curious visitors, just as they did during the days of the ’Hippie Trail’ of the 1960s and 70s. Combined with the relative safety of the province and the openness and warmth of the people, the area is a must-see on the itinerary of every foreigner and tourist in Afghanistan. Even several large Japanese tour groups have visited, drawn by the religious significance of the place.
While growing insecurity has caused a drop in visitors, for Hiromi Yasui, who used to help organize the Japanese tours, the hospitality business is still booming. Looking out at the caves where the fifth century Buddhas once stood some fifty meters tall, and across the verdant valley, on a recent chilly fall day, her Silk Route hotel is full. Hiromi’s spectacular cooking, combined with the luxurious trappings of her guesthouse, makes the business she runs with her Afghan husband a popular place.
But it is the development community, not tourists, who consistently fill Hiromi’s guesthouse. Bamiyan has no commercial flights and the road to Kabul is unpaved. Bumpy and pitted, it turns a distance of three hours into a backbreaking drive of eight to 12 hours, depending on the roadworthiness of the transport. The crowd at the hotel has mainly flown in on aircraft dedicated to serving the UN, NGOs, and the donor community.
At the ’Roof of Bamiyan,’ an older hotel perched on nearby cliffs, hotelier Razaq is uncertain what benefits the new eco-tourism will bring.
"What we need is security. The rest we can do ourselves. Bamiyan may be secure, but if the neighboring areas are not, people will not come," he says.
Bamiyan’s dynamic governor has an answer.
"Road, road and road," says Governor Habiba Sarobi, chanting a mantra she has repeated for several years. "Roads still remain our number one priority." Sarobi, the sole woman governor in Afghanistan, was instrumental in securing the aid for the tourism project and is generally considered to be an efficient and able administrator.
"Along with agriculture and mining, tourism can generate revenue for our people," she adds.
The natural beauty helps. Band-i Amir will likely become the first national park in Afghanistan, fulfilling a long-delayed destiny. "The area is very weak in bio-diversity," says WCS Country Director Peter Smallwood candidly, noting how the years of conflict have taken their toll on the wilderness. However he hopes that the area can be an engine to drive policy and legal issues that could then protect other large areas of bio-diversity scattered through the country.
Admitting that 2009 could be a difficult year for Afghanistan, Smallwood says WCS has nonetheless been engaged in identifying potential camping sites that seek to enhance the experience of visitors while preserving the natural habitat. "Band-i Amir is an important site," he says. "If Afghanistan can find peace, Band-i Amir will draw international tourists because there is nothing like those giant travertine dams in the world."
If that happens, tourists may enjoy the view from Bibi Khala’s doorstep.
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/06/09
In her home village in Afghanistan’s central Bamiyan province, Bibi Khala welcomes the occasional visitor to her home with hot tea and homemade butter and bread. Her infrequent guests usually are interested in enjoying one of the world’s most stunning natural landscapes: the nearby lakes of Band-i Amir. As part of Afghanistan’s unwritten tradition of hospitality, Bibi does not charge guests for their visits. But if Bamiyan’s new eco-tourism project achieves its objective, she one day may find herself operating a bed-and-breakfast.
Investing in tourism at a time when most predict increasing violence in Afghanistan may seem counter-intuitive. But officials and non-governmental organization activists in Afghanistan’s central province of Bamiyan are doing exactly that. They say they are determined not to let development be held hostage to the ’gloom-and-doom’ scenario facing most of the country. The province, which recently received a grant of $1.2 million from New Zealand’s government, has launched an eco-tourism development initiative that hopes to build a sustainable visitor environment, putting the livelihood of the people at the centre of the policy. (New Zealand troops maintain a small military outpost in the province).
Implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) in coordination with the provincial government, the project seeks to ensure preservation of the region’s unique natural and cultural heritage while helping locals enhance their skills to meet the demands of visiting tourists. Following the successful model of community-based tourism it has implemented in other areas of Central Asia, the AKF is focusing on capacity building, enhancing local handicraft production and constructing basic facilities for travelers. This could range from installing the most basic roadside hostels to encouraging investment in luxury accommodation.
Officials say Bamiyan will be connected to Kabul by a new road in three years. For Bamiyan residents, that is an exciting prospect and a working timeline.
"It is true that insecurity is a problem in Afghanistan now. But three years is enough for the international community and the Afghan government to think about security. We are optimistic that things will change positively in three years and that security will be better," says Amir Foladi who heads the eco-tourism program for the province. Foladi’s optimism is based not just on future hopes, but also on past realities. Though visitors to the province have dropped in the past two years, Foladi reports that up to 44,000 visitors, local and foreign, spent time in the area in 2006. Tourists are drawn to the province by its natural beauty, the local legends, religious piety, and the thrill of adventure. The main attraction is a series of interlocking lakes that sparkle in brilliant crystalline blues and greens.
The province, once a cultural crossroads, is replete with layers of history and legend, some brutal -- such as the massacres carried out by Genghis Khan’s legions -- and others auspicious, such as legends crediting Hazrat Ali with creating the lakes of Band-i Amir. Fable, history and the spectacular geography of the area fuse together.
The rise of modern commerce, trade and travel, however, caused this old branch of the Silk Road to become a backwater. The province became more isolated. The area’s neglect deepened following Sunni Islam’s rise as the predominant religious force in the region. Largely populated by Sh’ia-practicing ethnic Hazaras, Bamiyan faced horrific massacres under the Taliban. To this day, the Hazaras are some of the most welcoming to foreigners in the whole country.
With a bang, literally, the international spotlight returned to province, when the Taliban, in the last year of their rule in Kabul, blew up the area’s two giant Buddhas as a gesture of defiance. The action drew international opprobrium. Since the fall of the fundamentalist movement, the destroyed Buddhas have attracted thousands of curious visitors, just as they did during the days of the ’Hippie Trail’ of the 1960s and 70s. Combined with the relative safety of the province and the openness and warmth of the people, the area is a must-see on the itinerary of every foreigner and tourist in Afghanistan. Even several large Japanese tour groups have visited, drawn by the religious significance of the place.
While growing insecurity has caused a drop in visitors, for Hiromi Yasui, who used to help organize the Japanese tours, the hospitality business is still booming. Looking out at the caves where the fifth century Buddhas once stood some fifty meters tall, and across the verdant valley, on a recent chilly fall day, her Silk Route hotel is full. Hiromi’s spectacular cooking, combined with the luxurious trappings of her guesthouse, makes the business she runs with her Afghan husband a popular place.
But it is the development community, not tourists, who consistently fill Hiromi’s guesthouse. Bamiyan has no commercial flights and the road to Kabul is unpaved. Bumpy and pitted, it turns a distance of three hours into a backbreaking drive of eight to 12 hours, depending on the roadworthiness of the transport. The crowd at the hotel has mainly flown in on aircraft dedicated to serving the UN, NGOs, and the donor community.
At the ’Roof of Bamiyan,’ an older hotel perched on nearby cliffs, hotelier Razaq is uncertain what benefits the new eco-tourism will bring.
"What we need is security. The rest we can do ourselves. Bamiyan may be secure, but if the neighboring areas are not, people will not come," he says.
Bamiyan’s dynamic governor has an answer.
"Road, road and road," says Governor Habiba Sarobi, chanting a mantra she has repeated for several years. "Roads still remain our number one priority." Sarobi, the sole woman governor in Afghanistan, was instrumental in securing the aid for the tourism project and is generally considered to be an efficient and able administrator.
"Along with agriculture and mining, tourism can generate revenue for our people," she adds.
The natural beauty helps. Band-i Amir will likely become the first national park in Afghanistan, fulfilling a long-delayed destiny. "The area is very weak in bio-diversity," says WCS Country Director Peter Smallwood candidly, noting how the years of conflict have taken their toll on the wilderness. However he hopes that the area can be an engine to drive policy and legal issues that could then protect other large areas of bio-diversity scattered through the country.
Admitting that 2009 could be a difficult year for Afghanistan, Smallwood says WCS has nonetheless been engaged in identifying potential camping sites that seek to enhance the experience of visitors while preserving the natural habitat. "Band-i Amir is an important site," he says. "If Afghanistan can find peace, Band-i Amir will draw international tourists because there is nothing like those giant travertine dams in the world."
If that happens, tourists may enjoy the view from Bibi Khala’s doorstep.
AFGHANISTAN: CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS DEVELOPING IN KABUL, AS KARZAI STRIVES TO REMAIN RELEVANT
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/02/09
Afghanistan’s fledgling Constitution is facing a test, as President Hamid Karzai and his opponents are currently battling for control of the country’s political agenda. The dispute centers on the dates for the country’s next presidential election. The legitimacy of Afghanistan’s government is at stake.
The confrontation began brewing last fall when an informal political "understanding" between parliament, the president and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on holding elections in early autumn 2009 appeared to fall through. Following the IEC’s January 29 announcement that elections would be held August 20, members of the opposition balked. They insisted letting Karzai hold onto the presidency until August would violate the constitution, which states that all presidential terms must end on the first of the Afghan month of Jawza, this year coinciding with May 21 of the western calendar.
In response, Karzai announced on February 28 that elections should be held this spring in accordance with the constitution. His deft move surprised the opposition, which had apparently hoped the president would step down or at least agree to reduce his powers during the three-month interim between the official end to his term and elections in August.
Observers say the opposition is now in a dither. An April election puts Karzai in an advantageous position, as the perks of incumbency would prove especially useful in a short campaign season. Challengers, for instance, would have little time to organize campaigns. On the defensive, some members of the opposition United Front say they have changed their mind, and now favor an August election.
While anti-incumbency feeling is strong, the lack of a viable alternative will be Karzai’s biggest strength as he campaigns for a second term. Political analyst Haroun Mir, founder of Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), points out that no potential candidate has come forward with an alternative agenda. "Saying Karzai is bad is not enough," he told EurasiaNet. "Where are [the opposition’s] programs?"
An early election would also allow the US administration of President Barack Obama -- which appears increasingly frustrated with Karzai -- less time to formulate a new Afghan policy. Though the Obama Administration has publicly stated it will not back any candidate, most Afghans and observers believe that any sign of American support could tilt the results in favor of a particular candidate.
In response to Karzai’s call for early elections, acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood appeared to contradict the Afghan president’s view, saying in a statement that Washington preferred sticking with a summer vote. "Elections in August, as proposed by the Independent Elections Commission, are the best means to assure every Afghan citizen would be able to express his or her political preference in a secure environment," Wood said.
The country’s electoral law further complicates Karzai’s avowed intensions. Afghanistan’s constitution says the IEC must announce elections 140 days before polling, a date that has already passed if the elections are to be held in April or even May.
Independent MP Shukria Barakzai thinks the subject of dates "is a political problem, not a legal one." She suggested that invoking emergency powers in parts of the country might be a way to defuse the constitutional crisis. Afghanistan’s Constitution allows for elections to be delayed in case of an emergency declared by the president, and ratified by the parliament. The biggest drawback to this option, though, is that it would serve as a tacit admission that the government is not able to govern.
Reacting to some suggestions that a Loya Jirga, or grand tribal council, could be held as a stopgap measure, Barakzai said: "Elections are the only legitimate way of choosing a leadership, and a young democracy needs elections. We should not take a step back and have a Loya Jirga, or temporary arrangement."
Mir of ACRPS also favors change through elections, saying it would bring new momentum to the political process. "The conflict is also based on psychological perception. If people gain hope, the situation will automatically improve. We need new leadership, not a repeat of what we have had for the past five years," he said.
The IEC has not reacted to the recent developments, stating only that it would make known its stance once it is officially notified of the presidential decree. The United Nations -- which is supporting the electoral process -- and other members of the international community have also maintained public silence. Privately, however, Western officials have expressed disquiet over recent developments, concerned that given the mammoth task of preparing logistics, an early election would be nearly impossible, or at the very least compromise the principles of fairness.
The logistics of voter registration, including security, making lists and vetting of candidates, and printing and distribution of ballots are difficult tasks given the lack of capacity in Afghanistan. The difficulty is compounded by the country’s topography, the heavy snowfall in winter, and the ongoing Taliban insurgency.
While constitutional requirements and legal technicalities form the front piece of the ongoing tussle, it is the backroom agreements that will finally determine when the elections shall be held, experts say. As an international observer in Kabul remarked wryly, "All these issues were known to us. Why didn’t we deal with them before?"
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted March 2, 2009 © Eurasianet
Aunohita Mojumdar 3/02/09
Afghanistan’s fledgling Constitution is facing a test, as President Hamid Karzai and his opponents are currently battling for control of the country’s political agenda. The dispute centers on the dates for the country’s next presidential election. The legitimacy of Afghanistan’s government is at stake.
The confrontation began brewing last fall when an informal political "understanding" between parliament, the president and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on holding elections in early autumn 2009 appeared to fall through. Following the IEC’s January 29 announcement that elections would be held August 20, members of the opposition balked. They insisted letting Karzai hold onto the presidency until August would violate the constitution, which states that all presidential terms must end on the first of the Afghan month of Jawza, this year coinciding with May 21 of the western calendar.
In response, Karzai announced on February 28 that elections should be held this spring in accordance with the constitution. His deft move surprised the opposition, which had apparently hoped the president would step down or at least agree to reduce his powers during the three-month interim between the official end to his term and elections in August.
Observers say the opposition is now in a dither. An April election puts Karzai in an advantageous position, as the perks of incumbency would prove especially useful in a short campaign season. Challengers, for instance, would have little time to organize campaigns. On the defensive, some members of the opposition United Front say they have changed their mind, and now favor an August election.
While anti-incumbency feeling is strong, the lack of a viable alternative will be Karzai’s biggest strength as he campaigns for a second term. Political analyst Haroun Mir, founder of Afghanistan’s Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), points out that no potential candidate has come forward with an alternative agenda. "Saying Karzai is bad is not enough," he told EurasiaNet. "Where are [the opposition’s] programs?"
An early election would also allow the US administration of President Barack Obama -- which appears increasingly frustrated with Karzai -- less time to formulate a new Afghan policy. Though the Obama Administration has publicly stated it will not back any candidate, most Afghans and observers believe that any sign of American support could tilt the results in favor of a particular candidate.
In response to Karzai’s call for early elections, acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood appeared to contradict the Afghan president’s view, saying in a statement that Washington preferred sticking with a summer vote. "Elections in August, as proposed by the Independent Elections Commission, are the best means to assure every Afghan citizen would be able to express his or her political preference in a secure environment," Wood said.
The country’s electoral law further complicates Karzai’s avowed intensions. Afghanistan’s constitution says the IEC must announce elections 140 days before polling, a date that has already passed if the elections are to be held in April or even May.
Independent MP Shukria Barakzai thinks the subject of dates "is a political problem, not a legal one." She suggested that invoking emergency powers in parts of the country might be a way to defuse the constitutional crisis. Afghanistan’s Constitution allows for elections to be delayed in case of an emergency declared by the president, and ratified by the parliament. The biggest drawback to this option, though, is that it would serve as a tacit admission that the government is not able to govern.
Reacting to some suggestions that a Loya Jirga, or grand tribal council, could be held as a stopgap measure, Barakzai said: "Elections are the only legitimate way of choosing a leadership, and a young democracy needs elections. We should not take a step back and have a Loya Jirga, or temporary arrangement."
Mir of ACRPS also favors change through elections, saying it would bring new momentum to the political process. "The conflict is also based on psychological perception. If people gain hope, the situation will automatically improve. We need new leadership, not a repeat of what we have had for the past five years," he said.
The IEC has not reacted to the recent developments, stating only that it would make known its stance once it is officially notified of the presidential decree. The United Nations -- which is supporting the electoral process -- and other members of the international community have also maintained public silence. Privately, however, Western officials have expressed disquiet over recent developments, concerned that given the mammoth task of preparing logistics, an early election would be nearly impossible, or at the very least compromise the principles of fairness.
The logistics of voter registration, including security, making lists and vetting of candidates, and printing and distribution of ballots are difficult tasks given the lack of capacity in Afghanistan. The difficulty is compounded by the country’s topography, the heavy snowfall in winter, and the ongoing Taliban insurgency.
While constitutional requirements and legal technicalities form the front piece of the ongoing tussle, it is the backroom agreements that will finally determine when the elections shall be held, experts say. As an international observer in Kabul remarked wryly, "All these issues were known to us. Why didn’t we deal with them before?"
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted March 2, 2009 © Eurasianet
AFGHANISTAN: SOME IN KABUL SAY WHAT’S NEEDED IS A POLITICAL & ECONOMIC SURGE, NOT NECESSARILY MORE FOREIGN TROOPS
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 2/19/09
The US plan to carry out a troop surge in Afghanistan is proving a deeply divisive issue inside the country. While most Afghans are supportive of any move that could end the Taliban insurgency, many already view the presence of foreign troops as a mixed blessing. Some experts suggest that a winning strategy must include drastic revisions in the way foreign forces operate in Afghanistan, along with an intensification of efforts to improve political and economic conditions.
Underscoring existing misgivings is the fact that at about the same time US President Barack Obama confirmed that an additional 17,000 American soldiers would be heading to Afghanistan, the United Nations announced that civilian deaths in 2008 had risen 40 percent over the previous year’s toll. Of 2,118 civilians known to have been killed amid combat operations in 2008, the UN says, 39 percent died due to the actions of Afghan government and coalition forces.
Civilian casualties have long stoked public anger. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has regularly ratcheted up public angst, repeatedly calling for an end to the civilian deaths. On February 4, for example, he said his government and the United States had a difference of opinion over the use of air strikes and described the dispute as a cause of "tensions in our ties," adding the "tension has become severe."
Surprisingly, on February 17, Karzai welcomed Obama’s proposed "surge" and described a new agreement with the American forces to improve coordination and minimize civilian causalities. "The tension the Afghan government had with the US government is now over," Karzai said February 18. "From now on, no foreign troop operations will be uncoordinated with Afghan forces."
Stemming growing public disenchantment -- now at its highest level since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001 -- will depend more on the Afghan government’s ability to contain corruption and deliver basic services than on more fighting, most observers believe.
Aziz Hakimi, a political analyst and the Country Director for Future Generations, a non-governmental organization, is unenthused by the coming surge. "More troops will mean more fighting, more bloodshed. The conflict will be prolonged," he said. Hakimi feels more troops cannot win this war. "It is . . . too late to get the upper hand militarily. What we need is a political surge, not a military surge," he said, referring to his desire for more development aid and accountability in government.
Journalist Najiba Ayubi, managing director of Radio Killid in Kabul, agrees. Noting pros and cons to the US presence, she says Afghanistan has gained a lot in terms of assistance, but adds international troops are operating in an alien culture that they have failed to grasp. At this point, she says, rather than increasing their presence, the international military must accept "a date for withdrawal."
However, another close observer of Afghan politics, Haroun Mir, founder of the Kabul-based Centre for Research and Policy Studies, is eager for more foreign troops. He laments the deteriorating security situation and says the country needs help, quickly, to prevent the Taliban’s return to Kabul.
Of late, the UN has adopted a firmer stance on civilian casualties. At a December press conference, Kai Eide, the UN Secretary General’s new Special Representative to Afghanistan, raised the bar. He called for greater troop restraint and a revision of the bilateral agreement for their deployment, asking for changes in the procedures of house searches, arbitrary detentions and use of air power. "Any expanded military presence has to be accompanied by that change in behavior," he demanded.
Rights watchdogs also see a change in rules of engagement as critical. Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling for a review of the weapons used in combat. Rachel Reid, the Country Representative of HRW in Afghanistan, told EurasiaNet that, "an increase in troops will lead to a surge in violence if the troops are not used differently." There will still be "too much emphasis on protecting the lives of international troops and not enough emphasis on protecting the lives of Afghans," she said.
"Are the costs of civilian casualties too high to justify the military gains? Can they defeat the insurgency while losing so much public support through civilian casualty incidents and unjust detention policies?" she asked.
International observers have repeatedly warned that coalition troops keep too far from their Afghan hosts. Operating in an atmosphere of growing public disenchantment, arriving foreign troops are likely to minimize rather than expand contact with the local population. Foot patrols, even in the capital, which were earlier meant to reassure the public, take place now with the local population kept at a distance as soldiers march through in heavy armor.
The lack of contact will further exacerbate the continuing failures in intelligence gathering. Heavily reliant on local strongmen or ’leaders’ to provide intelligence, the troops have at times found themselves used as a weapon in an ongoing feud between tribes or large families. The frequency of their rotation gives little chance to develop local intelligence, with the UN’s Eide bemoaning the detention of people "who happen to be amongst the UN mission’s closest contacts in the community."
So far, it is unclear what the new agreement between Kabul and Washington will mean for rules of engagement. But armed with inadequate intelligence, hemmed in by growing disenchantment and faced with the growing fighting capacity of anti-government elements, international troops may well find their numbers increased to the detriment of their mission.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted February 19, 2009 © Eurasianet
Aunohita Mojumdar 2/19/09
The US plan to carry out a troop surge in Afghanistan is proving a deeply divisive issue inside the country. While most Afghans are supportive of any move that could end the Taliban insurgency, many already view the presence of foreign troops as a mixed blessing. Some experts suggest that a winning strategy must include drastic revisions in the way foreign forces operate in Afghanistan, along with an intensification of efforts to improve political and economic conditions.
Underscoring existing misgivings is the fact that at about the same time US President Barack Obama confirmed that an additional 17,000 American soldiers would be heading to Afghanistan, the United Nations announced that civilian deaths in 2008 had risen 40 percent over the previous year’s toll. Of 2,118 civilians known to have been killed amid combat operations in 2008, the UN says, 39 percent died due to the actions of Afghan government and coalition forces.
Civilian casualties have long stoked public anger. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has regularly ratcheted up public angst, repeatedly calling for an end to the civilian deaths. On February 4, for example, he said his government and the United States had a difference of opinion over the use of air strikes and described the dispute as a cause of "tensions in our ties," adding the "tension has become severe."
Surprisingly, on February 17, Karzai welcomed Obama’s proposed "surge" and described a new agreement with the American forces to improve coordination and minimize civilian causalities. "The tension the Afghan government had with the US government is now over," Karzai said February 18. "From now on, no foreign troop operations will be uncoordinated with Afghan forces."
Stemming growing public disenchantment -- now at its highest level since the Taliban’s ouster in 2001 -- will depend more on the Afghan government’s ability to contain corruption and deliver basic services than on more fighting, most observers believe.
Aziz Hakimi, a political analyst and the Country Director for Future Generations, a non-governmental organization, is unenthused by the coming surge. "More troops will mean more fighting, more bloodshed. The conflict will be prolonged," he said. Hakimi feels more troops cannot win this war. "It is . . . too late to get the upper hand militarily. What we need is a political surge, not a military surge," he said, referring to his desire for more development aid and accountability in government.
Journalist Najiba Ayubi, managing director of Radio Killid in Kabul, agrees. Noting pros and cons to the US presence, she says Afghanistan has gained a lot in terms of assistance, but adds international troops are operating in an alien culture that they have failed to grasp. At this point, she says, rather than increasing their presence, the international military must accept "a date for withdrawal."
However, another close observer of Afghan politics, Haroun Mir, founder of the Kabul-based Centre for Research and Policy Studies, is eager for more foreign troops. He laments the deteriorating security situation and says the country needs help, quickly, to prevent the Taliban’s return to Kabul.
Of late, the UN has adopted a firmer stance on civilian casualties. At a December press conference, Kai Eide, the UN Secretary General’s new Special Representative to Afghanistan, raised the bar. He called for greater troop restraint and a revision of the bilateral agreement for their deployment, asking for changes in the procedures of house searches, arbitrary detentions and use of air power. "Any expanded military presence has to be accompanied by that change in behavior," he demanded.
Rights watchdogs also see a change in rules of engagement as critical. Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling for a review of the weapons used in combat. Rachel Reid, the Country Representative of HRW in Afghanistan, told EurasiaNet that, "an increase in troops will lead to a surge in violence if the troops are not used differently." There will still be "too much emphasis on protecting the lives of international troops and not enough emphasis on protecting the lives of Afghans," she said.
"Are the costs of civilian casualties too high to justify the military gains? Can they defeat the insurgency while losing so much public support through civilian casualty incidents and unjust detention policies?" she asked.
International observers have repeatedly warned that coalition troops keep too far from their Afghan hosts. Operating in an atmosphere of growing public disenchantment, arriving foreign troops are likely to minimize rather than expand contact with the local population. Foot patrols, even in the capital, which were earlier meant to reassure the public, take place now with the local population kept at a distance as soldiers march through in heavy armor.
The lack of contact will further exacerbate the continuing failures in intelligence gathering. Heavily reliant on local strongmen or ’leaders’ to provide intelligence, the troops have at times found themselves used as a weapon in an ongoing feud between tribes or large families. The frequency of their rotation gives little chance to develop local intelligence, with the UN’s Eide bemoaning the detention of people "who happen to be amongst the UN mission’s closest contacts in the community."
So far, it is unclear what the new agreement between Kabul and Washington will mean for rules of engagement. But armed with inadequate intelligence, hemmed in by growing disenchantment and faced with the growing fighting capacity of anti-government elements, international troops may well find their numbers increased to the detriment of their mission.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted February 19, 2009 © Eurasianet
AFGHANISTAN: FOOD INSECURITY, THE PROBLEM THAT NEVER WENT AWAY
EURASIA INSIGHT
Aunohita Mojumdar 2/10/09
Just as the United States is preparing for a massive reinforcement of its troops in Afghanistan, so too is the United Nations calling for a surge in humanitarian relief. Forty thousand people die every year in Afghanistan not from violence, but from the unnoticed collateral damage of war -- hunger and poverty. The number is 25 times higher than the toll due to violence, says the UN Security Council in its most recent report.
Despite repeated calls for greater attention to food security, the numbers of those who cannot meet their minimum dietary needs in Afghanistan is on the rise, growing from 30 percent to 35 percent between 2005 and 2008. The crisis is expected to worsen over the next few months as the impact of local drought and high global food prices push more Afghans into food insecurity.
Underscoring the crisis, the UN launched a Humanitarian Action Plan for Afghanistan on February 3, calling for a $604 million emergency relief package. The appeal, which will also aid health, education, water, and shelter, has earmarked over 50 percent to food and agriculture assistance. It even warns that, without urgent action, post-Taliban gains in education and health stand the risk of reversal.
Part of the problem is drought. Last year, the country received less than 24 percent of the rainfall level of 2007, resulting in an 85 percent drop in wheat production. Overall, there occurred a 30 percent drop in cereal harvest over the previous year countrywide. Today, on average, an Afghan family spends 77 percent of its income on food, compared to 56 percent in 2005. The increase, says the UN’s humanitarian appeal, "quickly pushed large segments of previously borderline food-insecure people into an inability to obtain enough basic food and having to resort to destructive coping measures."
Launching the humanitarian appeal in Geneva, the UN Under-Secretary General and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said: "In 2008, at a time of rising global food prices, Afghanistan harvested only two-thirds of its annual food requirements, leaving a serious gap for the government and the humanitarian agencies to fill."
Despite the urgency, and awareness among international monitors, concern has not translated into relief. A Joint Emergency Food Appeal launched in July 2008 by the Afghan government and the UN, calling for $404 million to "feed Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people who are in desperate need of food aid," was dismally under-funded. Despite repeated appeals, it has only been half-funded. The current estimate doubles the number of people in need of food assistance since last year, to almost 9 million.
According to Oxfam, the health of over a million young children and half a million women is at serious risk due to malnutrition. One out of every two Afghan children under five is stunted and 39 percent are underweight, the humanitarian agency says.
In a memo to US President Barack Obama, Oxfam has warned of the possibility of significant food shortages in 2009 that could "adversely affect public health and even spark displacement and unrest."
In the southern province of Kandahar, the new governor Tooryakai Wesa is asking for tractors and training, rather than troops, even though his province is considered one of the most violent in the country. During a recent visit to Canada, Wesa said he would like to create security through jobs, not tanks and artillery.
Though 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population is dependent on agriculture, the sector has been one of the most under-funded, receiving only $500 million out of the $15 billion spent on non-security related reconstruction in this country. The country’s leading donor, the United States, is estimated to have spent less than 5 percent of USAID’s budget for Afghanistan since 2002 on agriculture. In 2007, US spending on agriculture amounted to less than 1 percent of what it spent on security.
Speaking in Kabul on February 1, the UN’s top official in Afghanistan, the Secretary General’s Special Representative Kai Eide, described agriculture as a neglected sector: "The government and donors must make sure that agriculture becomes a priority not only in rhetoric, but in the allocation of resources."
The apparent unwillingness of donors to fund the emergency appeals for food and development aid for agriculture lie in the structural inadequacies of the funding mechanisms, say experts.
Remarking on the launch of the UN appeal, the Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Elizabeth Rasmusson urged "donor nations to commit more funds to establish and maintain independent humanitarian funding for Afghanistan." She pointed out that "most aid is for development and reconstruction," rather than aid for civilians in the midst of conflict.
Indeed, humanitarian funding has dried up as donors have moved towards funding the ’post-conflict’ state. Donors often target conflict zones in need of humanitarian assistance with money for development projects. Many of these target areas are unable to absorb development aid.
Spending on agriculture development, which could prevent such humanitarian crises, is less appealing. It requires long-term painstaking dedication at the ground level. Many donors are unwilling to make such commitments, Oxfam says, as it is easier to quantify development projects such as the construction of bridges and schools. Returns on humanitarian investment are both lower and slower, making such projects unattractive to the private sector with its eye on quick profits and large returns.
"A large volume of aid money goes to private, profit-making companies," Oxfam points out in its memo to President Obama, adding that "too much aid seeks to achieve rapid material results, without sufficiently promoting local ownership, sustainable poverty reduction or longer term capacity building."
According to Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, Manager of Policy Advocacy & Research
Action Aid Afghanistan, an NGO, "the key issue here is that we are in this vicious cycle of drought and food insecurity every year. This can be attributed to lack of investment in agriculture and rural employment or livelihoods in Afghanistan."
Much will depend on the new Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan. Initial signs suggest an approach weighted to military solutions, with a reduced emphasis on development and "less ambitious" short-term goals. None of this adds up to an encouraging future for Afghanistan’s hungry millions.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted February 10, 2009 © Eurasianet
Aunohita Mojumdar 2/10/09
Just as the United States is preparing for a massive reinforcement of its troops in Afghanistan, so too is the United Nations calling for a surge in humanitarian relief. Forty thousand people die every year in Afghanistan not from violence, but from the unnoticed collateral damage of war -- hunger and poverty. The number is 25 times higher than the toll due to violence, says the UN Security Council in its most recent report.
Despite repeated calls for greater attention to food security, the numbers of those who cannot meet their minimum dietary needs in Afghanistan is on the rise, growing from 30 percent to 35 percent between 2005 and 2008. The crisis is expected to worsen over the next few months as the impact of local drought and high global food prices push more Afghans into food insecurity.
Underscoring the crisis, the UN launched a Humanitarian Action Plan for Afghanistan on February 3, calling for a $604 million emergency relief package. The appeal, which will also aid health, education, water, and shelter, has earmarked over 50 percent to food and agriculture assistance. It even warns that, without urgent action, post-Taliban gains in education and health stand the risk of reversal.
Part of the problem is drought. Last year, the country received less than 24 percent of the rainfall level of 2007, resulting in an 85 percent drop in wheat production. Overall, there occurred a 30 percent drop in cereal harvest over the previous year countrywide. Today, on average, an Afghan family spends 77 percent of its income on food, compared to 56 percent in 2005. The increase, says the UN’s humanitarian appeal, "quickly pushed large segments of previously borderline food-insecure people into an inability to obtain enough basic food and having to resort to destructive coping measures."
Launching the humanitarian appeal in Geneva, the UN Under-Secretary General and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said: "In 2008, at a time of rising global food prices, Afghanistan harvested only two-thirds of its annual food requirements, leaving a serious gap for the government and the humanitarian agencies to fill."
Despite the urgency, and awareness among international monitors, concern has not translated into relief. A Joint Emergency Food Appeal launched in July 2008 by the Afghan government and the UN, calling for $404 million to "feed Afghanistan’s most vulnerable people who are in desperate need of food aid," was dismally under-funded. Despite repeated appeals, it has only been half-funded. The current estimate doubles the number of people in need of food assistance since last year, to almost 9 million.
According to Oxfam, the health of over a million young children and half a million women is at serious risk due to malnutrition. One out of every two Afghan children under five is stunted and 39 percent are underweight, the humanitarian agency says.
In a memo to US President Barack Obama, Oxfam has warned of the possibility of significant food shortages in 2009 that could "adversely affect public health and even spark displacement and unrest."
In the southern province of Kandahar, the new governor Tooryakai Wesa is asking for tractors and training, rather than troops, even though his province is considered one of the most violent in the country. During a recent visit to Canada, Wesa said he would like to create security through jobs, not tanks and artillery.
Though 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population is dependent on agriculture, the sector has been one of the most under-funded, receiving only $500 million out of the $15 billion spent on non-security related reconstruction in this country. The country’s leading donor, the United States, is estimated to have spent less than 5 percent of USAID’s budget for Afghanistan since 2002 on agriculture. In 2007, US spending on agriculture amounted to less than 1 percent of what it spent on security.
Speaking in Kabul on February 1, the UN’s top official in Afghanistan, the Secretary General’s Special Representative Kai Eide, described agriculture as a neglected sector: "The government and donors must make sure that agriculture becomes a priority not only in rhetoric, but in the allocation of resources."
The apparent unwillingness of donors to fund the emergency appeals for food and development aid for agriculture lie in the structural inadequacies of the funding mechanisms, say experts.
Remarking on the launch of the UN appeal, the Norwegian Refugee Council Secretary General Elizabeth Rasmusson urged "donor nations to commit more funds to establish and maintain independent humanitarian funding for Afghanistan." She pointed out that "most aid is for development and reconstruction," rather than aid for civilians in the midst of conflict.
Indeed, humanitarian funding has dried up as donors have moved towards funding the ’post-conflict’ state. Donors often target conflict zones in need of humanitarian assistance with money for development projects. Many of these target areas are unable to absorb development aid.
Spending on agriculture development, which could prevent such humanitarian crises, is less appealing. It requires long-term painstaking dedication at the ground level. Many donors are unwilling to make such commitments, Oxfam says, as it is easier to quantify development projects such as the construction of bridges and schools. Returns on humanitarian investment are both lower and slower, making such projects unattractive to the private sector with its eye on quick profits and large returns.
"A large volume of aid money goes to private, profit-making companies," Oxfam points out in its memo to President Obama, adding that "too much aid seeks to achieve rapid material results, without sufficiently promoting local ownership, sustainable poverty reduction or longer term capacity building."
According to Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, Manager of Policy Advocacy & Research
Action Aid Afghanistan, an NGO, "the key issue here is that we are in this vicious cycle of drought and food insecurity every year. This can be attributed to lack of investment in agriculture and rural employment or livelihoods in Afghanistan."
Much will depend on the new Obama administration’s plans for Afghanistan. Initial signs suggest an approach weighted to military solutions, with a reduced emphasis on development and "less ambitious" short-term goals. None of this adds up to an encouraging future for Afghanistan’s hungry millions.
Editor's Note: Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 18 years.
Posted February 10, 2009 © Eurasianet
AFGHANISTAN: RESURRECTION OF MUSEUM HELPING FORGE NEW NATIONAL IDENTITY
Eurasianet
Aunohita Mojumdar: 1/30/09
A giant granite bowl standing in the entrance to the newly rebuilt National Museum in Kabul embodies the complexity and richness of Afghanistan's past. Literally layered with history, the bowl was carved during the Buddhist era and inscribed hundreds of years later, after the advent of Islam. On display, it exemplifies how the country was transformed by centuries of invasion and trade, and how an appreciation of change is essential to rebuilding Afghanistan's identity. Today the bowl also symbolizes survival in a museum that has lost more than 70 percent of its treasures to the depredations of war. It sits on a gleaming pedestal over polished floors, housed in a museum that is painstakingly restoring itself step by step: renovating the building, restoring the damaged artifacts, re-cataloging a fractured inventory, and introducing modern methods of preservation. What's more, the museum is also working to reestablish its role as protector of heritage in a society fragmented by years of conflict.
The Director of the National Museum, Omara Khan Masoudi, is well acquainted with the challenges. His association with the museum dates back 30 years, many of them painful. At times he watched as militias looted or destroyed the museum's treasures. At other points, fighting prevented him from even reaching the site. He finally left the country in 2000, returning two years later when the post-Taliban Minister of Information and Culture invited him to take charge of the museum once again.
Contrary to the popular myth that links the Taliban to the destruction of much of Afghanistan's art and culture, Masoudi reveals that most of the losses took place during the civil war of the mid-1990s, before the Taliban came to power. It was during the mujahidin's chaotic rule that many of the museum's artifacts were destroyed, he says.
"When power changed from communist to mujahidin hands [in 1992], there was a security vacuum. The museum was looted," Masoudi told EurasiaNet. When the mujahidin factions began fighting among themselves, the South Kabul neighborhood where the museum is located became a battleground. "For two years this area was cut off and we could not reach the museum. Rocket attacks set the museum building on fire, destroying a large part of it."
Masoudi actually recalls how the Taliban helped the museum in the initial years. Most members of the movement were against the destruction of cultural artifacts and paid attention to safeguarding them, he says. In the late 1990s, even the reclusive Mullah Omar issued edicts calling for the preservation of cultural treasures, including the very Bamiyan Buddhas he would later order destroyed.
"I remember one time a Taliban commander said he would destroy the Buddha statutes," Masoudi said. "The [Taliban] Minister of Information refuted the idea, saying the Taliban regime would not destroy the pieces in Bamiyan. Up until 2000, they helped keep the artifacts safe. I don't know what happened after that. I think it was some outside pressure that resulted in the edicts issued in 2001 to destroy the Buddha statues and also all the artifacts in the museum that resembled human figures."
Many observers have speculated that it was the influence of Osama bin Laden on the Taliban leadership that eventually led to the Buddhas' destruction. Conservative interpretations of Islam forbid the representation of living creatures.
Much of what is left in the museum was saved through a combination of luck, courage and ingenuity. In 1988, as Soviet forces prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan, and as mujahidin forces advanced on Kabul, the government there decided to store many artifacts in three different places around the capital. These efforts helped save precious collections such as the Bactrian Gold, long thought lost forever, that is currently touring museums in the United States.
Now, thanks to the efforts of Masoudi and others like him, Kabul's National Museum is restoring damaged pieces and reviewing its inventory. With the help of UNESCO and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the museum is also identifying stolen treasures and attempting to have known pieces returned. Masoudi describes efforts to develop a "red list" of antiquities, illegal to be owned or traded by individuals. "Last year we got back 5,000 pieces," he said. But preserving the existing treasures is still a challenge. Officials lack the resources to stop illegal archaeological excavations throughout the country.
The museum, Masoudi adds, urgently needs a security system, climate control, and illumination that will allow light sensitive objects to be stored and displayed according to conservationist requirements.
One of Masoudi's greatest laments is that the museum's collection of Afghan heritage is inaccessible to many of the country's citizens. "It is also important to have museums in the provinces. Not everyone can come to Kabul," he said. Bamiyan, for example, could have its own museum to display and store artifacts excavated locally, he suggests.
Asked what role the museum will play in shaping Afghanistan's cultural identity after years of fighting over definitions of identity, Masoudi speaks of the importance of recognizing a multi-layered past. "This country has an ancient civilization. We have to be proud of it, about the pre-Islamic history. We have artifacts which date back 60,000 years or more. When we can display the artifacts belonging to earlier periods in the museum -- for example pieces from the Bronze Age -- it will be possible for people to understand this very clearly."
"Educated people try to preserve their culture," he continued. "Now it is a big challenge." He believes that it was a lack of education that led to the past looting, and he is keen to ensure exposure to the museum now starts at a young age. "I think every museum has a role in the education of the younger generation. . . . I hope some donors can provide us with one or two buses. Then we could arrange to bring school children here and show them around for free," he said.
"We could do this everyday. We can host as many as 300 to 400 children at one time," he continued, as his eyes lit up. "We can show them our country's rich past."
Aunohita Mojumdar: 1/30/09
A giant granite bowl standing in the entrance to the newly rebuilt National Museum in Kabul embodies the complexity and richness of Afghanistan's past. Literally layered with history, the bowl was carved during the Buddhist era and inscribed hundreds of years later, after the advent of Islam. On display, it exemplifies how the country was transformed by centuries of invasion and trade, and how an appreciation of change is essential to rebuilding Afghanistan's identity. Today the bowl also symbolizes survival in a museum that has lost more than 70 percent of its treasures to the depredations of war. It sits on a gleaming pedestal over polished floors, housed in a museum that is painstakingly restoring itself step by step: renovating the building, restoring the damaged artifacts, re-cataloging a fractured inventory, and introducing modern methods of preservation. What's more, the museum is also working to reestablish its role as protector of heritage in a society fragmented by years of conflict.
The Director of the National Museum, Omara Khan Masoudi, is well acquainted with the challenges. His association with the museum dates back 30 years, many of them painful. At times he watched as militias looted or destroyed the museum's treasures. At other points, fighting prevented him from even reaching the site. He finally left the country in 2000, returning two years later when the post-Taliban Minister of Information and Culture invited him to take charge of the museum once again.
Contrary to the popular myth that links the Taliban to the destruction of much of Afghanistan's art and culture, Masoudi reveals that most of the losses took place during the civil war of the mid-1990s, before the Taliban came to power. It was during the mujahidin's chaotic rule that many of the museum's artifacts were destroyed, he says.
"When power changed from communist to mujahidin hands [in 1992], there was a security vacuum. The museum was looted," Masoudi told EurasiaNet. When the mujahidin factions began fighting among themselves, the South Kabul neighborhood where the museum is located became a battleground. "For two years this area was cut off and we could not reach the museum. Rocket attacks set the museum building on fire, destroying a large part of it."
Masoudi actually recalls how the Taliban helped the museum in the initial years. Most members of the movement were against the destruction of cultural artifacts and paid attention to safeguarding them, he says. In the late 1990s, even the reclusive Mullah Omar issued edicts calling for the preservation of cultural treasures, including the very Bamiyan Buddhas he would later order destroyed.
"I remember one time a Taliban commander said he would destroy the Buddha statutes," Masoudi said. "The [Taliban] Minister of Information refuted the idea, saying the Taliban regime would not destroy the pieces in Bamiyan. Up until 2000, they helped keep the artifacts safe. I don't know what happened after that. I think it was some outside pressure that resulted in the edicts issued in 2001 to destroy the Buddha statues and also all the artifacts in the museum that resembled human figures."
Many observers have speculated that it was the influence of Osama bin Laden on the Taliban leadership that eventually led to the Buddhas' destruction. Conservative interpretations of Islam forbid the representation of living creatures.
Much of what is left in the museum was saved through a combination of luck, courage and ingenuity. In 1988, as Soviet forces prepared to withdraw from Afghanistan, and as mujahidin forces advanced on Kabul, the government there decided to store many artifacts in three different places around the capital. These efforts helped save precious collections such as the Bactrian Gold, long thought lost forever, that is currently touring museums in the United States.
Now, thanks to the efforts of Masoudi and others like him, Kabul's National Museum is restoring damaged pieces and reviewing its inventory. With the help of UNESCO and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the museum is also identifying stolen treasures and attempting to have known pieces returned. Masoudi describes efforts to develop a "red list" of antiquities, illegal to be owned or traded by individuals. "Last year we got back 5,000 pieces," he said. But preserving the existing treasures is still a challenge. Officials lack the resources to stop illegal archaeological excavations throughout the country.
The museum, Masoudi adds, urgently needs a security system, climate control, and illumination that will allow light sensitive objects to be stored and displayed according to conservationist requirements.
One of Masoudi's greatest laments is that the museum's collection of Afghan heritage is inaccessible to many of the country's citizens. "It is also important to have museums in the provinces. Not everyone can come to Kabul," he said. Bamiyan, for example, could have its own museum to display and store artifacts excavated locally, he suggests.
Asked what role the museum will play in shaping Afghanistan's cultural identity after years of fighting over definitions of identity, Masoudi speaks of the importance of recognizing a multi-layered past. "This country has an ancient civilization. We have to be proud of it, about the pre-Islamic history. We have artifacts which date back 60,000 years or more. When we can display the artifacts belonging to earlier periods in the museum -- for example pieces from the Bronze Age -- it will be possible for people to understand this very clearly."
"Educated people try to preserve their culture," he continued. "Now it is a big challenge." He believes that it was a lack of education that led to the past looting, and he is keen to ensure exposure to the museum now starts at a young age. "I think every museum has a role in the education of the younger generation. . . . I hope some donors can provide us with one or two buses. Then we could arrange to bring school children here and show them around for free," he said.
"We could do this everyday. We can host as many as 300 to 400 children at one time," he continued, as his eyes lit up. "We can show them our country's rich past."
Afghans rue Bush's 'war on terror'
Al Jazeera/ January 11, 2009
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
In his last visit to Afghanistan as president, George Bush said progress had been made [AFP]
On the day George Bush, the US president, ends his period in office, millions of Afghans will be battling the bitter cold of winter and possible starvation.
Eight years after Bush launched his "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks, much of the human cost of it remains under-reported.
Increased fighting in the country has gradually decreased the ability of the UN, humanitarian agencies and NGOs to deliver basic services to the most vulnerable Afghans.
The UN now categorises 79 of the 364 districts of the country as areas of "extreme risk," and international staff almost never travel by road.
The lack of access is likely to increase in the short term, further debilitating the delivery of basic services like food, health and education.
Not only is the country facing a worsening security situation, but even the best case scenario, which sees hope in the influx of additional troops next year, predicts increased fighting and greater violence in the short term.
Farewell visit
During his recent visit to Afghanistan, his last one scheduled before he leaves office, Bush spoke of the challenges ahead but said the situation had improved since the Taliban were removed from power by US forces in 2001.
US troops are coming under increasing
pressure in Afghanistan [AFP]
"You know, I was thinking ... how much Afghanistan has changed since I have been the president.
"Sometimes its hard when you're in the midst of a difficult situation, it's hard to get perspective.
"In 2002 the Taliban were brutally repressing the people of this country. I remember the images of women being stoned, or people being executed in the soccer stadium because of their beliefs.
"There was a group of killers that were hiding here and training here and plotting here to kill citizens in my country."
However, for many Afghans, 2001 no longer remains a valid comparison, as worsening security, disappointed hopes and increasing economic challenges erode the goodwill of the initial years of the government of Hamid Karzai, a government that Afghans say, was selected by the US.
'No power'
Mariam is a middle-aged woman from a proud family in the northeastern province of Panjshir, the former stronghold of the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban commander.
"Isn't Karzai an American installation? Najibullah worked to help Afghans. What is Karzai doing? I don't see any hope in the future."
Mariam
She is conservative enough to stay indoors when non-family male members are visiting, but also advocates family planning to her daughter-in-laws.
Mariam saw her family battle troops from the Soviet Union following their invasion in 1979.
"Then, during the Taliban, we took refuge in Panjshir. But during Najibullah's [the Soviet-backed former Afghan leader] time we had power. Now there is none. I am ill but the doctor costs so much. During the Soviet time we had free medical care.
"Isn't Karzai an American installation? Najibullah worked to help Afghans. What is Karzai doing? I don't see any hope in the future."
In decline
In a recent survey carried out by The Asia Foundation, a US-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), only 39 per cent of the population said they were more prosperous now than under the Taliban, while 36 per cent said they were less prosperous.
Many Afghans rely on foreign aid
for basic foodstuffs [AP]
Two years ago, those who felt more prosperous were nearly double those who felt less prosperous, indicating a trend of declining economic prosperity.
While Mariam is well-off by Afghan standards with several of her sons employed in urban jobs, the Afghan population at the bottom of the ladder faces severe hardship.
The percentage of the population below the minimum dietary level has increased from 30 to 35 per cent, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
While there has been considerable focus on the need for more troops, the UN joint emergency appeal remains under-funded by 50 per cent, with donor commitments trickling in too slowly to make sure food stocks arrive before winter.
"Around 1.6 million children under five years and 625,000 women of child-bearing age are at risk of dying this winter due to malnutrition," the ministry of public health said in a recent statement, adding that food shortages had been exacerbated by drought, high food prices and loss of livestock across the country.
Deliveries of emergency food stocks have also been hampered by insecurity, with WFP food convoys being attacked more than two dozen times this year.
The crisis has been in the making for several years.
Though 80 per cent of the Afghan population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, the sector has been severely under-funded, receiving only about $500m of the $15bn spent on development aid in the country since 2002.
USAID, the largest donor, has spent only five per cent of its budget on the sector in this period, according to Oxfam.
Education threatened
Initial gains in the health and education sectors were largely the result of NGOs who partnered with the donor agencies and the Afghan government.
Their decreasing access means "these gains are on the verge of being reversed", says Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, a policy advocacy and research manager for Action Aid, an international NGO.
Childbirth remains dangerous in
Afghanistan [GALLO/GETTY]
Siddiqui also points to increased threats to schools if they are used as voter registration areas or polling booths during the election year (presidential elections are expected in 2009), a step that would make them "more vulnerable to attacks since they would be perceived as legitimate targets" by Taliban-supporting fighters.
Between July 2007 and June 2008 there were 230 incidents affecting education, according to Unicef.
These included the burning down of schools, bombings, military operations in the vicinity and killings of teachers and students.
Jamshid Hashimi is from a traditional family in Logar province, adjoining Kabul.
"During the Taliban years, girls from my family attended the secret underground schools to get an education. After the departure of the Taliban, they attended the new overground schools.
"Even the young brides married into the family went to school to finish their interrupted studies. That is until last year, when they all stopped."
"My sister-in-law was shot dead by insurgents as she walked to school," says Jamshid recalling the day with a painful clarity that brought tears to his eyes.
"Now, we are too scared to send the girls to school, including my own wife. They have all stopped going."
According to the ministry of education, attacks on schools and insecurity have forced 300,000 children to abandon their schooling.
Healthcare
"We know what to expect from the Taliban, but we don't expect the same from the international forces. They are the ones upholding the rule of law and establishing democracy. They can't be the ones killing innocents."
Mohammed
Health facilities have also been forced to close as a result of attacks and threats.
Though government statistics boast that 80 per cent of Afghans receive healthcare, 36 health facilities in the southern and eastern provinces have been shut down.
As a result more than 360,000 people in the provinces of Helmund, Kandahar, Farah, Zabul and Paktika are deprived of health coverage.
Unicef says the insecurity is also hampering the polio eradication initiatives and efforts to expand the number of women health professionals in the country.
The result is one of the highest maternal mortality ratios anywhere in the world.
This year, 24,000 maternal deaths are expected in Afghanistan - several times the number of civilians who will die directly from the ongoing conflict.
Roots of anger
Most who have been affected by violence this year say the violence was not related to the insurgency.
According to the Asia Foundation survey, only eight per cent of those who had suffered violence attributed it to the Taliban.
However, civilian casualties as a result of military operations by international forces have been a lightening rod for public anger and Mohammed, a resident of Kabul, explains the roots of this anger and why deaths caused by the international forces stir more anger than those by the Taliban.
"We know what to expect from the Taliban, but we don't expect the same from the international forces. They are the ones upholding the rule of law and establishing democracy. They can't be the ones killing innocents," he said.
This willingness to hold the international community to higher standards of accountability is seen as a positive sign and evidence that Afghans still have great hope for change.
However, by constantly comparing itself to the Taliban, as Bush did during his recent visit, the international community is, many say, putting this significant distinction at risk.
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
In his last visit to Afghanistan as president, George Bush said progress had been made [AFP]
On the day George Bush, the US president, ends his period in office, millions of Afghans will be battling the bitter cold of winter and possible starvation.
Eight years after Bush launched his "war on terror" following the September 11 attacks, much of the human cost of it remains under-reported.
Increased fighting in the country has gradually decreased the ability of the UN, humanitarian agencies and NGOs to deliver basic services to the most vulnerable Afghans.
The UN now categorises 79 of the 364 districts of the country as areas of "extreme risk," and international staff almost never travel by road.
The lack of access is likely to increase in the short term, further debilitating the delivery of basic services like food, health and education.
Not only is the country facing a worsening security situation, but even the best case scenario, which sees hope in the influx of additional troops next year, predicts increased fighting and greater violence in the short term.
Farewell visit
During his recent visit to Afghanistan, his last one scheduled before he leaves office, Bush spoke of the challenges ahead but said the situation had improved since the Taliban were removed from power by US forces in 2001.
US troops are coming under increasing
pressure in Afghanistan [AFP]
"You know, I was thinking ... how much Afghanistan has changed since I have been the president.
"Sometimes its hard when you're in the midst of a difficult situation, it's hard to get perspective.
"In 2002 the Taliban were brutally repressing the people of this country. I remember the images of women being stoned, or people being executed in the soccer stadium because of their beliefs.
"There was a group of killers that were hiding here and training here and plotting here to kill citizens in my country."
However, for many Afghans, 2001 no longer remains a valid comparison, as worsening security, disappointed hopes and increasing economic challenges erode the goodwill of the initial years of the government of Hamid Karzai, a government that Afghans say, was selected by the US.
'No power'
Mariam is a middle-aged woman from a proud family in the northeastern province of Panjshir, the former stronghold of the legendary Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban commander.
"Isn't Karzai an American installation? Najibullah worked to help Afghans. What is Karzai doing? I don't see any hope in the future."
Mariam
She is conservative enough to stay indoors when non-family male members are visiting, but also advocates family planning to her daughter-in-laws.
Mariam saw her family battle troops from the Soviet Union following their invasion in 1979.
"Then, during the Taliban, we took refuge in Panjshir. But during Najibullah's [the Soviet-backed former Afghan leader] time we had power. Now there is none. I am ill but the doctor costs so much. During the Soviet time we had free medical care.
"Isn't Karzai an American installation? Najibullah worked to help Afghans. What is Karzai doing? I don't see any hope in the future."
In decline
In a recent survey carried out by The Asia Foundation, a US-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), only 39 per cent of the population said they were more prosperous now than under the Taliban, while 36 per cent said they were less prosperous.
Many Afghans rely on foreign aid
for basic foodstuffs [AP]
Two years ago, those who felt more prosperous were nearly double those who felt less prosperous, indicating a trend of declining economic prosperity.
While Mariam is well-off by Afghan standards with several of her sons employed in urban jobs, the Afghan population at the bottom of the ladder faces severe hardship.
The percentage of the population below the minimum dietary level has increased from 30 to 35 per cent, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
While there has been considerable focus on the need for more troops, the UN joint emergency appeal remains under-funded by 50 per cent, with donor commitments trickling in too slowly to make sure food stocks arrive before winter.
"Around 1.6 million children under five years and 625,000 women of child-bearing age are at risk of dying this winter due to malnutrition," the ministry of public health said in a recent statement, adding that food shortages had been exacerbated by drought, high food prices and loss of livestock across the country.
Deliveries of emergency food stocks have also been hampered by insecurity, with WFP food convoys being attacked more than two dozen times this year.
The crisis has been in the making for several years.
Though 80 per cent of the Afghan population is dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, the sector has been severely under-funded, receiving only about $500m of the $15bn spent on development aid in the country since 2002.
USAID, the largest donor, has spent only five per cent of its budget on the sector in this period, according to Oxfam.
Education threatened
Initial gains in the health and education sectors were largely the result of NGOs who partnered with the donor agencies and the Afghan government.
Their decreasing access means "these gains are on the verge of being reversed", says Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, a policy advocacy and research manager for Action Aid, an international NGO.
Childbirth remains dangerous in
Afghanistan [GALLO/GETTY]
Siddiqui also points to increased threats to schools if they are used as voter registration areas or polling booths during the election year (presidential elections are expected in 2009), a step that would make them "more vulnerable to attacks since they would be perceived as legitimate targets" by Taliban-supporting fighters.
Between July 2007 and June 2008 there were 230 incidents affecting education, according to Unicef.
These included the burning down of schools, bombings, military operations in the vicinity and killings of teachers and students.
Jamshid Hashimi is from a traditional family in Logar province, adjoining Kabul.
"During the Taliban years, girls from my family attended the secret underground schools to get an education. After the departure of the Taliban, they attended the new overground schools.
"Even the young brides married into the family went to school to finish their interrupted studies. That is until last year, when they all stopped."
"My sister-in-law was shot dead by insurgents as she walked to school," says Jamshid recalling the day with a painful clarity that brought tears to his eyes.
"Now, we are too scared to send the girls to school, including my own wife. They have all stopped going."
According to the ministry of education, attacks on schools and insecurity have forced 300,000 children to abandon their schooling.
Healthcare
"We know what to expect from the Taliban, but we don't expect the same from the international forces. They are the ones upholding the rule of law and establishing democracy. They can't be the ones killing innocents."
Mohammed
Health facilities have also been forced to close as a result of attacks and threats.
Though government statistics boast that 80 per cent of Afghans receive healthcare, 36 health facilities in the southern and eastern provinces have been shut down.
As a result more than 360,000 people in the provinces of Helmund, Kandahar, Farah, Zabul and Paktika are deprived of health coverage.
Unicef says the insecurity is also hampering the polio eradication initiatives and efforts to expand the number of women health professionals in the country.
The result is one of the highest maternal mortality ratios anywhere in the world.
This year, 24,000 maternal deaths are expected in Afghanistan - several times the number of civilians who will die directly from the ongoing conflict.
Roots of anger
Most who have been affected by violence this year say the violence was not related to the insurgency.
According to the Asia Foundation survey, only eight per cent of those who had suffered violence attributed it to the Taliban.
However, civilian casualties as a result of military operations by international forces have been a lightening rod for public anger and Mohammed, a resident of Kabul, explains the roots of this anger and why deaths caused by the international forces stir more anger than those by the Taliban.
"We know what to expect from the Taliban, but we don't expect the same from the international forces. They are the ones upholding the rule of law and establishing democracy. They can't be the ones killing innocents," he said.
This willingness to hold the international community to higher standards of accountability is seen as a positive sign and evidence that Afghans still have great hope for change.
However, by constantly comparing itself to the Taliban, as Bush did during his recent visit, the international community is, many say, putting this significant distinction at risk.
Afghans fear spiral of violence
Al Jazeera, December 28, 2009
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
Sitting in a room warmed by woodfire because there is no electricity, Jamshid Hashimi, a young employee of a local architecture firm, watches from his window as Kabul residents hurry to avoid the rain which has turned unpaved streets into mud.
"More troops will mean more fighting," he says.
Afghan analysts agree that the expected arrival of an additional 30,000 US troops in 2009 could lead to an escalation in the ongoing battle with the Taliban and other anti-government forces.
Haroun Mir, the co-founder and deputy director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), said: "There is a continuing trend of a downward spiral in security that we are witnessing in Afghanistan with the Taliban getting closer to Kabul."
He is still hopeful, however, that an increase in US and Nato troops will in the long-term stem the advance of the anti-government forces towards Kabul.
Situation worsening
Shakti Sinha, a former senior official with the UN's Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (Unama), feels that the situation will likely worsen before it improves.
He says an immediate influx of troops will result in increased fighting.
"The international troops have always been able to achieve battlefield success but this does not mean holding territory. The hope is that there will now be a theatre reserve that will be able to hold territory and that the lessons learned [from past battles] will be applied here," he said.
Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, the manager of policy advocacy and research in Action Aid, and international NGO, wonders if the increased troop deployment could be part of a political settlement with the Taliban.
"The political climate will certainly be hotter because of the [presidential] elections in 2009 and security will deteriorate in the run-up to the elections," he told Al Jazeera.
The nature of deployment, both geographic and operational, will also determine the course of the ongoing conflict.
While US officials have indicated that troops will deploy in provinces close to Kabul, senior leaders including Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, have said that the battle against the Taliban needs to be fought not in the villages of Afghanistan but in the safe havens and training centres in Pakistan.
Negotiating with the Taliban
In the meantime, calls for negotiations with the Taliban, which were first suggested by Afghan leaders as well as some western allies in late 2008, are expected to grow during the coming year.
However, some senior diplomats and analysts have cautioned that such talks should be held from a position of strength rather than weakness.
Political exigencies, including that of the presidential elections, will determine much of the course of this ongoing debate in 2009 as leaders, especially the incumbent president, weigh the conventional wisdom of convening such talks.
The presidential elections themselves continue to be shrouded in uncertainty. While voter registration has begun, there is much greater public disenchantment with the process, as many blame the government of having limited ability to deliver services.
Many Afghans say they feel disenfranchised from the political and economic reconstruction of their country and say foreign leaders in remote capitals are determining the national agenda.
Threat of winter
However, for many Afghans, the more immediate threat will be the hardship of an Afghan winter.
Severe cold and drought in many parts of the country and decreasing access of humanitarian agencies to remote areas have put larger numbers of the Afghan population at risk.
Non--governmental organisations like Oxfam have warned that five million Afghans are likely to face food shortages.
The uncertain security situation, the unstable political climate and the lack of essential infrastructure like energy, water and roads will impede private sector development.
In such conditions both the government and the international community will be responsible for driving economic recovery and creating employment opportunities.
Eid Mohammad Mangal, the manager of a Kabul restaurant, says security woes are compounded by continuing high unemployment rates.
"When people have no job, no work and they are unhappy, they can join the Taliban," he says.
Mir believes severe hardship during winter may create fertile ground for Taliban recruitment. While the severity of the winter will unfold over the first two months of the year, early snow already presages a difficult period for Afghans, thousands of whom live in villages inaccessible during the severest winter.
"Even inside Kabul many families cannot find food to have three meals a day. People here don't want creature comforts," he said.
"They just want bread to survive. If this is not possible the security will deteriorate further."
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
Sitting in a room warmed by woodfire because there is no electricity, Jamshid Hashimi, a young employee of a local architecture firm, watches from his window as Kabul residents hurry to avoid the rain which has turned unpaved streets into mud.
"More troops will mean more fighting," he says.
Afghan analysts agree that the expected arrival of an additional 30,000 US troops in 2009 could lead to an escalation in the ongoing battle with the Taliban and other anti-government forces.
Haroun Mir, the co-founder and deputy director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), said: "There is a continuing trend of a downward spiral in security that we are witnessing in Afghanistan with the Taliban getting closer to Kabul."
He is still hopeful, however, that an increase in US and Nato troops will in the long-term stem the advance of the anti-government forces towards Kabul.
Situation worsening
Shakti Sinha, a former senior official with the UN's Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (Unama), feels that the situation will likely worsen before it improves.
He says an immediate influx of troops will result in increased fighting.
"The international troops have always been able to achieve battlefield success but this does not mean holding territory. The hope is that there will now be a theatre reserve that will be able to hold territory and that the lessons learned [from past battles] will be applied here," he said.
Mudasser Hussain Siddiqui, the manager of policy advocacy and research in Action Aid, and international NGO, wonders if the increased troop deployment could be part of a political settlement with the Taliban.
"The political climate will certainly be hotter because of the [presidential] elections in 2009 and security will deteriorate in the run-up to the elections," he told Al Jazeera.
The nature of deployment, both geographic and operational, will also determine the course of the ongoing conflict.
While US officials have indicated that troops will deploy in provinces close to Kabul, senior leaders including Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, have said that the battle against the Taliban needs to be fought not in the villages of Afghanistan but in the safe havens and training centres in Pakistan.
Negotiating with the Taliban
In the meantime, calls for negotiations with the Taliban, which were first suggested by Afghan leaders as well as some western allies in late 2008, are expected to grow during the coming year.
However, some senior diplomats and analysts have cautioned that such talks should be held from a position of strength rather than weakness.
Political exigencies, including that of the presidential elections, will determine much of the course of this ongoing debate in 2009 as leaders, especially the incumbent president, weigh the conventional wisdom of convening such talks.
The presidential elections themselves continue to be shrouded in uncertainty. While voter registration has begun, there is much greater public disenchantment with the process, as many blame the government of having limited ability to deliver services.
Many Afghans say they feel disenfranchised from the political and economic reconstruction of their country and say foreign leaders in remote capitals are determining the national agenda.
Threat of winter
However, for many Afghans, the more immediate threat will be the hardship of an Afghan winter.
Severe cold and drought in many parts of the country and decreasing access of humanitarian agencies to remote areas have put larger numbers of the Afghan population at risk.
Non--governmental organisations like Oxfam have warned that five million Afghans are likely to face food shortages.
The uncertain security situation, the unstable political climate and the lack of essential infrastructure like energy, water and roads will impede private sector development.
In such conditions both the government and the international community will be responsible for driving economic recovery and creating employment opportunities.
Eid Mohammad Mangal, the manager of a Kabul restaurant, says security woes are compounded by continuing high unemployment rates.
"When people have no job, no work and they are unhappy, they can join the Taliban," he says.
Mir believes severe hardship during winter may create fertile ground for Taliban recruitment. While the severity of the winter will unfold over the first two months of the year, early snow already presages a difficult period for Afghans, thousands of whom live in villages inaccessible during the severest winter.
"Even inside Kabul many families cannot find food to have three meals a day. People here don't want creature comforts," he said.
"They just want bread to survive. If this is not possible the security will deteriorate further."
Interview: Adrian Edwards
Al Jazeera/ December 9, 2008
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
The UN prepared local communities for Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections [GALLO/GETTY]
The UN has been providing assistance to Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979 but significantly increased its aid efforts after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
It was recognised at a meeting of Afghan leaders and world powers in Bonn, Germany in December 2001, that the "United Nations, as the internationally recognised, impartial institution, has a particularly important role to play".
On March 28, 2002, the Security Council established the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) "to promote national reconciliation ... strengthen government capacity and institutions; promote human rights, the rule of law, and women's rights; assist in the rehabilitation of security forces and the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of former combatants; and coordinate all UN humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and development programmes in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera recently interviewed Adrian Edwards, the Unama spokesman in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera: How has Unama's role developed since it was established? What of its mandate has been achieved?
Edwards: The UN has been here in Afghanistan for half a century. In that time we have developed a perspective that is somewhat different from others. We view Afghanistan as a country and a people not just as a conflict.
The UN has a role in many areas people don't often look at: refugees, it supports development in healthcare and agriculture - somewhat un-trendy things to look at- but we do it 365 days a year through thick and thin.
We also have the UN's political mission here, Unama, a small mission which looks at the core objective of all of us in Afghanistan which is to search for peace and for justice in this country.
The mission has had a job in trying to build peace, trying to coordinate the efforts of the international community since 2002 in terms of development, in terms of other assistance here. Fundamentally our aim is about peace in this country and the search for it and the search for solutions which will be needed if the country is to move forward.
Recently the mandate of the UN in Afghanistan was increased. Why was this felt to be necessary?
Edwards says the police are now tasked with fighting terrorism rather than public security
If you look back over the last years the original expectations were that we would move from a period of rapid reconstruction into a development phase during which people would start to see the peace dividends, the effect of considerable investment in development and so on.
What happened of course as we all know now is that in 2004, 2005 and entering into spring of 2006 we saw a return towards conflict and the situation we are in today.
That of course has changed circumstances enormously here and it does mean that people are being robbed of the development that they were led to expect would be coming here and people hoped would be coming here.
So although you have seen enormous progress in some areas - for example education, heath care, growth of a media here - people are nonetheless frustrated with the fact that they haven't seen the progress that was expected in the early years.
So our mandate has had to change accordingly. We have a mandate that gives us a role in supporting a reconciliation, in supporting human rights in this country and in coordinating all the efforts that go into helping Afghanistan.
Which things could have been done differently that may have allowed the progress to continue?
Very many of the problems stem from insecurity. For example the police - you would have seen the growth of an institution that delivered on law enforcement.
Now the effect of insecurity has meant the police has been sidelined into combatting insurgency and protection issues and that has meant that one of the most crucial institutions of any country is not able to deliver satisfactorily.
You have constant problems with corruption, you have breakdown of law and order in some areas, that allows, combined with insurgency issues, the growth of illegality, the poppy trade, criminality.
I think security is one of the core elements.
If you look at the political development in Afghanistan, you may say in 2008-2009 that were we back in 2001 we would have done things differently. We would have included the Taliban in peace talks, we would have strengthened justice and transitional justice systems.
Certainly were we able to turn back the clock and do thing differently for sure we would love to take that opportunity but at the time people really did their best efforts under the circumstances and we have to adjust as we go along.
The "Balkanisation" of the country – which has seen different countries take on different sectors and different areas – do you think it was a good idea?
The Taliban have grown stronger in recent years and now mount brazen attacks [AFP]
That model is not being followed so much nowadays and that says something. We are coming up to the seventh anniversary of the Bonn agreement. There is a tendency to look back at what we did right and what we did wrong. We have done a lot of that over the years.
What we are concerned about at this point is much more forward-looking given where we are today.
Right now we are in the process of seeing a new US administration come into being. Everyone, Afghan and internationals looking to see what the impact might be of changes outside the country.
We are seeing changes in the immediate surrounding region: the recent signs of open Saudi involvement.
We have a changing situation in Pakistan. You need a mixture of circumstances to resolve the problem inside the country. One is resolving the external conflict, the conflicts between the neighbours or the powers behind those neighbours sometimes and of course within the country you need to de-conflate local issues.
So we are some way away from arriving at an enduring solution for Afghanistan and there are certainly challenges along the way to getting there.
What is your view on talks with the Taliban? How do you see it unfolding and what will be the role of UN?
We are mandated to support reconciliation if that is what the government wants us to do. We very clearly think that there has to be a real emphasis on political direction, both in renewing the determination to build proper institutions and getting government delivering better to the people and of course in finding solutions to the conflict here.
We do not think military solutions alone will be the answer to Afghanistan’s needs but there has to be an end to this conflict. We have to get Afghanistan back to the position where it can start to move forward again ad we can start delivering on things people need.
Are Afghans increasingly alienated from the international community and their goverment?
The trajectory of this country from reconstruction through development and then conflict arose along that track. That has had a real effect in robbing people of some of the development dividends, the peace dividends they could have expected.
Yes, of course that causes frustration when people look at a police that doesn't work as they want it, when they look at courts that don't work as they want it, when they look at other things.
It's only natural that there is frustration. That doesn't mean you abandon the project. There is a lot of work to be done in this country. Even without any conflict at all development takes many years, many decades.
Look at where Afghanistan is today and where it was back in 2001 and how far its got to go. There is a long, long route to go and you need the best of circumstances and at the moment we are a long way from achieving the best of circumstances. In other words we are a long way from ending the conflict.
In Afghanistan people tend to focus on negatives but if you look at it you still have an Afghanistan with a great deal of international support. We need to work together with everyone to make sure the common visions best serve the country.
In some areas there is real progress.
The recent Asia Foundation survey shows a relatively high degree of satisfaction with education, with improved health systems. When you have that in an environment where people don't have security, don't have jobs there is frustration.
We need security. We need jobs in Afghanistan for sure.
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
The UN prepared local communities for Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections [GALLO/GETTY]
The UN has been providing assistance to Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979 but significantly increased its aid efforts after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.
It was recognised at a meeting of Afghan leaders and world powers in Bonn, Germany in December 2001, that the "United Nations, as the internationally recognised, impartial institution, has a particularly important role to play".
On March 28, 2002, the Security Council established the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) "to promote national reconciliation ... strengthen government capacity and institutions; promote human rights, the rule of law, and women's rights; assist in the rehabilitation of security forces and the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of former combatants; and coordinate all UN humanitarian relief, reconstruction, and development programmes in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera recently interviewed Adrian Edwards, the Unama spokesman in Afghanistan.
Al Jazeera: How has Unama's role developed since it was established? What of its mandate has been achieved?
Edwards: The UN has been here in Afghanistan for half a century. In that time we have developed a perspective that is somewhat different from others. We view Afghanistan as a country and a people not just as a conflict.
The UN has a role in many areas people don't often look at: refugees, it supports development in healthcare and agriculture - somewhat un-trendy things to look at- but we do it 365 days a year through thick and thin.
We also have the UN's political mission here, Unama, a small mission which looks at the core objective of all of us in Afghanistan which is to search for peace and for justice in this country.
The mission has had a job in trying to build peace, trying to coordinate the efforts of the international community since 2002 in terms of development, in terms of other assistance here. Fundamentally our aim is about peace in this country and the search for it and the search for solutions which will be needed if the country is to move forward.
Recently the mandate of the UN in Afghanistan was increased. Why was this felt to be necessary?
Edwards says the police are now tasked with fighting terrorism rather than public security
If you look back over the last years the original expectations were that we would move from a period of rapid reconstruction into a development phase during which people would start to see the peace dividends, the effect of considerable investment in development and so on.
What happened of course as we all know now is that in 2004, 2005 and entering into spring of 2006 we saw a return towards conflict and the situation we are in today.
That of course has changed circumstances enormously here and it does mean that people are being robbed of the development that they were led to expect would be coming here and people hoped would be coming here.
So although you have seen enormous progress in some areas - for example education, heath care, growth of a media here - people are nonetheless frustrated with the fact that they haven't seen the progress that was expected in the early years.
So our mandate has had to change accordingly. We have a mandate that gives us a role in supporting a reconciliation, in supporting human rights in this country and in coordinating all the efforts that go into helping Afghanistan.
Which things could have been done differently that may have allowed the progress to continue?
Very many of the problems stem from insecurity. For example the police - you would have seen the growth of an institution that delivered on law enforcement.
Now the effect of insecurity has meant the police has been sidelined into combatting insurgency and protection issues and that has meant that one of the most crucial institutions of any country is not able to deliver satisfactorily.
You have constant problems with corruption, you have breakdown of law and order in some areas, that allows, combined with insurgency issues, the growth of illegality, the poppy trade, criminality.
I think security is one of the core elements.
If you look at the political development in Afghanistan, you may say in 2008-2009 that were we back in 2001 we would have done things differently. We would have included the Taliban in peace talks, we would have strengthened justice and transitional justice systems.
Certainly were we able to turn back the clock and do thing differently for sure we would love to take that opportunity but at the time people really did their best efforts under the circumstances and we have to adjust as we go along.
The "Balkanisation" of the country – which has seen different countries take on different sectors and different areas – do you think it was a good idea?
The Taliban have grown stronger in recent years and now mount brazen attacks [AFP]
That model is not being followed so much nowadays and that says something. We are coming up to the seventh anniversary of the Bonn agreement. There is a tendency to look back at what we did right and what we did wrong. We have done a lot of that over the years.
What we are concerned about at this point is much more forward-looking given where we are today.
Right now we are in the process of seeing a new US administration come into being. Everyone, Afghan and internationals looking to see what the impact might be of changes outside the country.
We are seeing changes in the immediate surrounding region: the recent signs of open Saudi involvement.
We have a changing situation in Pakistan. You need a mixture of circumstances to resolve the problem inside the country. One is resolving the external conflict, the conflicts between the neighbours or the powers behind those neighbours sometimes and of course within the country you need to de-conflate local issues.
So we are some way away from arriving at an enduring solution for Afghanistan and there are certainly challenges along the way to getting there.
What is your view on talks with the Taliban? How do you see it unfolding and what will be the role of UN?
We are mandated to support reconciliation if that is what the government wants us to do. We very clearly think that there has to be a real emphasis on political direction, both in renewing the determination to build proper institutions and getting government delivering better to the people and of course in finding solutions to the conflict here.
We do not think military solutions alone will be the answer to Afghanistan’s needs but there has to be an end to this conflict. We have to get Afghanistan back to the position where it can start to move forward again ad we can start delivering on things people need.
Are Afghans increasingly alienated from the international community and their goverment?
The trajectory of this country from reconstruction through development and then conflict arose along that track. That has had a real effect in robbing people of some of the development dividends, the peace dividends they could have expected.
Yes, of course that causes frustration when people look at a police that doesn't work as they want it, when they look at courts that don't work as they want it, when they look at other things.
It's only natural that there is frustration. That doesn't mean you abandon the project. There is a lot of work to be done in this country. Even without any conflict at all development takes many years, many decades.
Look at where Afghanistan is today and where it was back in 2001 and how far its got to go. There is a long, long route to go and you need the best of circumstances and at the moment we are a long way from achieving the best of circumstances. In other words we are a long way from ending the conflict.
In Afghanistan people tend to focus on negatives but if you look at it you still have an Afghanistan with a great deal of international support. We need to work together with everyone to make sure the common visions best serve the country.
In some areas there is real progress.
The recent Asia Foundation survey shows a relatively high degree of satisfaction with education, with improved health systems. When you have that in an environment where people don't have security, don't have jobs there is frustration.
We need security. We need jobs in Afghanistan for sure.
Interview: Afghan war on narcotics
Al Jazeera/ December 5, 2008
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
Afghan farmers in some provinces have continued to cultivate poppy fields [EPA]
Afghanistan's fight against the drug trade is becoming more challenging as ties between the insurgency and drug-traffickers appear to strengthen.
In her tenure as the the country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, Christina Oguz, has had to fight a multi-faceted battle.
Though 2008 saw a drop in poppy cultivation for the first time, Oguz says real dangers remain.
Speaking to Al Jazeera just before concluding her term in Afghanistan, Oguz discussed her concerns about the justice sector, the lack of trained judges, what she says is an ineffective police force and the absence of the fundamental right of all citizens - the presumption of innocence.
Al Jazeera: You have had one of the most challenging assignments in Afghanistan – dealing with both drug control and the justice sector. Which are the areas which have shown progress and which have not?
Oguz: I wish I could be only positive but I think there are still so many things that are needed in this country. If I look at the justice side it is very gloomy I am afraid because the rule of law doesn't really exist in this country and that is very grave because it is fundamental to democracy.
But now there is the first independent bar association and I am very hopeful that will make a lot of difference with more defence lawyers.
But it will take time. Because in terms of the authorities, there is a presumption of guilt rather than innocence.
Has progress been made in Afghanistan's war on the drug trade?
Christina Oguz has had to fight a multi-faceted battle against drug-traffickers
Drug reduction its still a major major major major problem so there remains a lot to do, to say the least.
But I think what has happened in the last two years is quite interesting. First of all this year we saw a little bit of a reduction - 20 per cent in terms of cultivated area.
But also what is quite important is that this year, 98 per cent of the production is taking place in seven provinces in the south and southwest while the rest of the country is either free of poppy cultivation or is cultivating very little.
The reduction is in the areas where there is a government. The rest of the 98 per cent of the production is in the areas where the government has lost control; areas which are controlled by a kind of alliance of insurgents, corrupt officials and criminal networks.
In a way it is easier to understand the problem and see what you could do about it but it is also in a way more difficult.
The carrot-and-stick approach has worked in the north. But the north and also the east are characterised by small landholdings and as you know there has been a drought which has very very severely affected these parts of Afghanistan because it is rain-fed land there isn’t enough irrigation.
The implications can be very serious.
If people suffer during the winter because they do not have any more food and because they do not have any means to buy food then they may turn back to cultivating opium. I would urge the international community and the government to speed up and really make a concerted effort.
I am not talking about bureaucratic layers of analysing, reviewing and planning. I am talking about action. We have to get food aid out to these areas and we have to start to involve the people themselves in building up income opportunities.
The drug control policy and implementation has been somewhat controversial or at least debated with differences over whether there should be more emphasis on eradication or interdiction. What is the shift in policy direction you think is necessary?
I think you have to have a two-pronged policy. What I talked about in the northern part is containing the problem. In the south it is obvious that because there is this overlap between insecurity, lack of control over territory and opium cultivation that eradication will play a very marginal role because they are not even afraid of eradication.
In the south they do not care about that because the government cannot enforce the law or anyhow only around the areas where they are in control or close to the city or whatever but otherwise they cannot enforce that.
So you have to keep eradication or the threat of eradication as a tool in your toolbox but you have to sharpen the other weapons which is interdiction.
When I talk about interdiction I mean wiping out some laboratories, emptying stocks interdicting convoys of drugs going out of the country and chemicals used in manufacturing of heroin and morphine going in.
That has to be done but I do not have the illusion that it would be forever because the laboratories are small and mobile so its not that you would solve the problem by bombing the laboratories or something like that but you induce a risk to those who are running these businesses and you make it more expensive for them. T
hat is important.
Some consider reform of the justice sector in Afghanistan to be lacking. What is your assessment of where it stands today?
There is so much to do in the justice sector. It is absolutely crucial for people's lives but you have for example judges that have no legal training - very common.
You have low investigative capacity within the police and the prosecution and you have very very few defence lawyers. So it is a weak system for the ordinary Afghan.
There are many who are working with training these groups and criminal justice institutions. It will take a long time but I think it is not only professional training, it is also the mindset.
How you view crime and punishment because for example detention and incarceration should be the exception not the rule but here it is the rule, the norm.
It seems that the first thing that comes to mind is to arrest people or put them in prison and many people are there without having had a trial.
Even young people and children are incarcerated for years for crimes that are minor and for crimes that they may not even have committed.
It is important to have a reaction to these kind of criminal activities but there must be proportion between the offence and the punishment. Now the connection here seems to be the poorer you are the less power you have and the more severe the punishment.
How is the government incorporating the protection of human rights as it moves towards a democratic country?
Experts say the drug trade and the insurgency are strongly linked [AFP]
The Constitution is very clear - it does not apply only to some people. It is the task of the state to defend the dignity and liberty of everybody in the country so I really don't think that Afghanistan is different from other countries in that respect and I am convinced that the people of Afghanistan would not accept anything else.
The problem we are facing here is the low level of education and the fact that so many people are not reached by radio or television the kind of institutions that could play a crucial role in educating the public.
The rule of law is fundamental to democracy and I cannot imagine that the Afghan people would say that human rights do not matter to them. I cannot envision that.
There is growing anti-foreigner sentiment. Where will this lead?
Are we sure that this sentiment is an Afghan sentiment? I am not sure it is.
I do not think this anti-foreigner feeling is a general sentiment. I know that it is a sentiment that can be exploited by various groups obviously.
I do think, however, that we as the intentional community need to learn how to communicate with people. We need to understand better where this country is in terms of development.
For us, coming, in many cases from well-functioning countries it is difficult to understand what it means to work in a country where 60 per cent of the police officers cannot read and write for example.
With no bad intention is easily done that we start at the wrong level. We start with something we are familiar with rather than what people need.
I think we need to become better in communicating with people and having a dialogue with people and talking to people to find out what they need and what is it they want but we also need to come with new ideas because being so isolated means you need ideas.
What are your hopes and fears for this country?
My fear is that the international community and the government will not be strong enough, united enough, to put in place some positive measures for the people here. That is what I fear because I don't believe a military solution is the only solution in this country.
But if we allow the insurgents to take on even distributing electricity or collecting the electricity bills which they do in some places down in Helmand; if we allow them to run the justice system because the government is not able to do it, then I think this country is in great danger.
We cannot allow that. We need to make sure we reach people to provide for their immediate needs with the winter coming up and the drought. We need to create simple solutions, not come up with grand schemes about how to transform this or how to do that.
Very simple things can be done here including increasing the number of people who can read and write, increasing the number of judges who have legal training and increasing the number of police who are honest and willing to work.
These are some of things I hope for.
By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul
Afghan farmers in some provinces have continued to cultivate poppy fields [EPA]
Afghanistan's fight against the drug trade is becoming more challenging as ties between the insurgency and drug-traffickers appear to strengthen.
In her tenure as the the country director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, Christina Oguz, has had to fight a multi-faceted battle.
Though 2008 saw a drop in poppy cultivation for the first time, Oguz says real dangers remain.
Speaking to Al Jazeera just before concluding her term in Afghanistan, Oguz discussed her concerns about the justice sector, the lack of trained judges, what she says is an ineffective police force and the absence of the fundamental right of all citizens - the presumption of innocence.
Al Jazeera: You have had one of the most challenging assignments in Afghanistan – dealing with both drug control and the justice sector. Which are the areas which have shown progress and which have not?
Oguz: I wish I could be only positive but I think there are still so many things that are needed in this country. If I look at the justice side it is very gloomy I am afraid because the rule of law doesn't really exist in this country and that is very grave because it is fundamental to democracy.
But now there is the first independent bar association and I am very hopeful that will make a lot of difference with more defence lawyers.
But it will take time. Because in terms of the authorities, there is a presumption of guilt rather than innocence.
Has progress been made in Afghanistan's war on the drug trade?
Christina Oguz has had to fight a multi-faceted battle against drug-traffickers
Drug reduction its still a major major major major problem so there remains a lot to do, to say the least.
But I think what has happened in the last two years is quite interesting. First of all this year we saw a little bit of a reduction - 20 per cent in terms of cultivated area.
But also what is quite important is that this year, 98 per cent of the production is taking place in seven provinces in the south and southwest while the rest of the country is either free of poppy cultivation or is cultivating very little.
The reduction is in the areas where there is a government. The rest of the 98 per cent of the production is in the areas where the government has lost control; areas which are controlled by a kind of alliance of insurgents, corrupt officials and criminal networks.
In a way it is easier to understand the problem and see what you could do about it but it is also in a way more difficult.
The carrot-and-stick approach has worked in the north. But the north and also the east are characterised by small landholdings and as you know there has been a drought which has very very severely affected these parts of Afghanistan because it is rain-fed land there isn’t enough irrigation.
The implications can be very serious.
If people suffer during the winter because they do not have any more food and because they do not have any means to buy food then they may turn back to cultivating opium. I would urge the international community and the government to speed up and really make a concerted effort.
I am not talking about bureaucratic layers of analysing, reviewing and planning. I am talking about action. We have to get food aid out to these areas and we have to start to involve the people themselves in building up income opportunities.
The drug control policy and implementation has been somewhat controversial or at least debated with differences over whether there should be more emphasis on eradication or interdiction. What is the shift in policy direction you think is necessary?
I think you have to have a two-pronged policy. What I talked about in the northern part is containing the problem. In the south it is obvious that because there is this overlap between insecurity, lack of control over territory and opium cultivation that eradication will play a very marginal role because they are not even afraid of eradication.
In the south they do not care about that because the government cannot enforce the law or anyhow only around the areas where they are in control or close to the city or whatever but otherwise they cannot enforce that.
So you have to keep eradication or the threat of eradication as a tool in your toolbox but you have to sharpen the other weapons which is interdiction.
When I talk about interdiction I mean wiping out some laboratories, emptying stocks interdicting convoys of drugs going out of the country and chemicals used in manufacturing of heroin and morphine going in.
That has to be done but I do not have the illusion that it would be forever because the laboratories are small and mobile so its not that you would solve the problem by bombing the laboratories or something like that but you induce a risk to those who are running these businesses and you make it more expensive for them. T
hat is important.
Some consider reform of the justice sector in Afghanistan to be lacking. What is your assessment of where it stands today?
There is so much to do in the justice sector. It is absolutely crucial for people's lives but you have for example judges that have no legal training - very common.
You have low investigative capacity within the police and the prosecution and you have very very few defence lawyers. So it is a weak system for the ordinary Afghan.
There are many who are working with training these groups and criminal justice institutions. It will take a long time but I think it is not only professional training, it is also the mindset.
How you view crime and punishment because for example detention and incarceration should be the exception not the rule but here it is the rule, the norm.
It seems that the first thing that comes to mind is to arrest people or put them in prison and many people are there without having had a trial.
Even young people and children are incarcerated for years for crimes that are minor and for crimes that they may not even have committed.
It is important to have a reaction to these kind of criminal activities but there must be proportion between the offence and the punishment. Now the connection here seems to be the poorer you are the less power you have and the more severe the punishment.
How is the government incorporating the protection of human rights as it moves towards a democratic country?
Experts say the drug trade and the insurgency are strongly linked [AFP]
The Constitution is very clear - it does not apply only to some people. It is the task of the state to defend the dignity and liberty of everybody in the country so I really don't think that Afghanistan is different from other countries in that respect and I am convinced that the people of Afghanistan would not accept anything else.
The problem we are facing here is the low level of education and the fact that so many people are not reached by radio or television the kind of institutions that could play a crucial role in educating the public.
The rule of law is fundamental to democracy and I cannot imagine that the Afghan people would say that human rights do not matter to them. I cannot envision that.
There is growing anti-foreigner sentiment. Where will this lead?
Are we sure that this sentiment is an Afghan sentiment? I am not sure it is.
I do not think this anti-foreigner feeling is a general sentiment. I know that it is a sentiment that can be exploited by various groups obviously.
I do think, however, that we as the intentional community need to learn how to communicate with people. We need to understand better where this country is in terms of development.
For us, coming, in many cases from well-functioning countries it is difficult to understand what it means to work in a country where 60 per cent of the police officers cannot read and write for example.
With no bad intention is easily done that we start at the wrong level. We start with something we are familiar with rather than what people need.
I think we need to become better in communicating with people and having a dialogue with people and talking to people to find out what they need and what is it they want but we also need to come with new ideas because being so isolated means you need ideas.
What are your hopes and fears for this country?
My fear is that the international community and the government will not be strong enough, united enough, to put in place some positive measures for the people here. That is what I fear because I don't believe a military solution is the only solution in this country.
But if we allow the insurgents to take on even distributing electricity or collecting the electricity bills which they do in some places down in Helmand; if we allow them to run the justice system because the government is not able to do it, then I think this country is in great danger.
We cannot allow that. We need to make sure we reach people to provide for their immediate needs with the winter coming up and the drought. We need to create simple solutions, not come up with grand schemes about how to transform this or how to do that.
Very simple things can be done here including increasing the number of people who can read and write, increasing the number of judges who have legal training and increasing the number of police who are honest and willing to work.
These are some of things I hope for.
AFGHANISTAN: REFUGEE RETURNS SHOULD NO LONGER BE A CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION IN KABUL
Eurasia Insight:
11/18/08
A EurasiaNet Commentary by Aunohita Mojumdar
Afghanistan lately boasts few reasons for optimism. But on the short list that international community representatives and Afghan government officials regularly point to as cause for optimism, one holds pride of place: the fact that 5 million refugees have returned to their homeland since 2001.
Indeed, returnee statistics headline the Government of Afghanistan's report card of achievements in its National Development Strategy adopted earlier this year.
Following the removal of the Taliban, Afghans who had sought refuge in camps in Iran and Pakistan started returning. Again and again, the government and aid groups held up this single fact as evidence of something right about the country, and justly so. Had intervention not toppled the Taliban, most of the 5 million refugees would still be languishing abroad. Though they had left Afghanistan during different periods over the past three decades, and for differing reasons, they returned united in the hope of building a stable and prosperous future.
Behind the glossy number of returnees, however, the reality has been changing for some time. Since 2005, returnees, due to a variety of factors, have felt more of a push to head home, rather than feel a pull to go back. Over the same span, the situation for returnees has become more strained, and a growing number of people must jostle for slender resources.
On November 19, a high-level conference in Kabul will take a look at some of the challenges of return and reintegration. The question is will it go far enough. Tackling some of the root problems demands an acknowledgement of political realities that the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, as well as the international community, may find too sensitive to broach.
The first challenge is acknowledging that the returning population has changed over the past two to three years, according to UNHCR's Acting Representative in Afghanistan, Ewen MacLeod. "Since 2006, the return and particularly the reintegration challenges have been more difficult mainly because the majority of those involved have now been absent from the country for more than 20 years and, indeed, half of them have been born outside Afghanistan."
For this population, as for the remaining 3 million refugees still abroad, the sense of identification with the country of refuge is likely to be stronger than the ties they have with Afghanistan.
Because of the way they have grown up, "they find themselves to be completely different," the former UNHCR Country Representative, Salvatore Lombardo, told a EurasiaNet reporter earlier this year. Many of them left as peasants, he says, but have been urbanized and would find it difficult to return to their former rural communities.
Their wishes "certainly do not find an answer in the Afghanistan of today. But one issue that is often neglected is what they have become after 30 years?" he said. "There is not enough recognition that a population that has been in exile for 30 years doesn't necessarily want to [go] back."
Lombardo expressed hope that the November conference would provide an "injection of reality," into the way the refugee situation is perceived. "How many people actually can come back to Afghanistan? We would like discussion in the conference to clarify that. I think the reality today tells you very clearly that if the conditions are what they are today that number would be [miniscule]."
But accepting that the remaining population may wish to be absorbed into the host countries is politically inexpedient. Even those living for two or three decades in Pakistan and Iran are rarely afforded the opportunity of citizenship. Moreover, the Afghan government's position is to seek the return of all the refugees, no matter how tenuous their links with home.
Under two separate trilateral agreements that the UNHCR has signed with the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the two host countries agreed repatriation should be voluntary. That is, neither country would coerce refugees to leave. While the UNHCR has succeeded in preventing a mass forced exodus, the definition of 'voluntary' appears to be shifting.
Some are returning to Afghanistan under the pressure of worsening security and economic conditions in the host countries. In Pakistan, authorities fear the camps shelter terrorist groups.
Iran has forced back what it terms illegal emigrants, deporting 350,000 "unregistered Afghans." Some of those might be migrant workers, but many are refugees, and Iran uses the gray area to avoid its commitments. Pakistan has closed some refugee camps, leaving residents no choice but to return. Earlier this year, authorities shut the Jalozai Camp, one of the largest and oldest in Pakistan. Though the UNHCR was able to delay the closure, Pakistani authorities made their intentions clear by shutting off water and electricity to the enclave.
The second challenge facing the conference is acknowledging the state of conditions for returnees. When refugees return hoping for easier conditions in Afghanistan, they often find themselves trapped. The scarcity of land, jobs and insecurity in their homeland drives many to try to return to Pakistan or Iran. There, they become illegal migrants without the legal rights of refugees.
According to the UNHCR the bulk of the returns have been to the central and eastern region, with Kabul province alone accounting for 1.1 million, and the province of Nangarhar for 850,000, creating crowded settlements of jobless returnees.
The future is grim for Afghanistan's unwanted abroad. The government estimates between 400,000 and a million more refugees will return over the next five years. And according to its own prognosis, the outcome depends on future uncertain conditions inside Afghanistan, as well as relations with Pakistan and Iran.
With ongoing violence inside Afghanistan, internally displaced populations are again swelling. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The UNHCR says there are currently 235,000 internally displaced persons inside the country. But even this problem is hidden to a large extent in the folds of traditional family and kinship ties. Afghanistan's population has been extremely generous in absorbing the returnees. Small rooms are packed to overflowing, sparse meals become sparser to accommodate new arrivals, and it is only the really destitute who live in camps and get counted.
The conference also is expected to look at basic aspects of successful reintegration.
According to Lombardo, the success of the refugee reintegration policy will depend on how it is woven into the overall reconstruction picture. "When you enter into the question of how do you develop a community, how do you sustain a community, how do you find an answer for the long term wishes of the population, we don't have the answers," he said.
If the conference tackles even some of these contentious issues, it will have achieved much. But this would necessitate an admission by the Afghan government, and the international community, that the returns are now a problem, rather than a source of satisfaction.
11/18/08
A EurasiaNet Commentary by Aunohita Mojumdar
Afghanistan lately boasts few reasons for optimism. But on the short list that international community representatives and Afghan government officials regularly point to as cause for optimism, one holds pride of place: the fact that 5 million refugees have returned to their homeland since 2001.
Indeed, returnee statistics headline the Government of Afghanistan's report card of achievements in its National Development Strategy adopted earlier this year.
Following the removal of the Taliban, Afghans who had sought refuge in camps in Iran and Pakistan started returning. Again and again, the government and aid groups held up this single fact as evidence of something right about the country, and justly so. Had intervention not toppled the Taliban, most of the 5 million refugees would still be languishing abroad. Though they had left Afghanistan during different periods over the past three decades, and for differing reasons, they returned united in the hope of building a stable and prosperous future.
Behind the glossy number of returnees, however, the reality has been changing for some time. Since 2005, returnees, due to a variety of factors, have felt more of a push to head home, rather than feel a pull to go back. Over the same span, the situation for returnees has become more strained, and a growing number of people must jostle for slender resources.
On November 19, a high-level conference in Kabul will take a look at some of the challenges of return and reintegration. The question is will it go far enough. Tackling some of the root problems demands an acknowledgement of political realities that the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, as well as the international community, may find too sensitive to broach.
The first challenge is acknowledging that the returning population has changed over the past two to three years, according to UNHCR's Acting Representative in Afghanistan, Ewen MacLeod. "Since 2006, the return and particularly the reintegration challenges have been more difficult mainly because the majority of those involved have now been absent from the country for more than 20 years and, indeed, half of them have been born outside Afghanistan."
For this population, as for the remaining 3 million refugees still abroad, the sense of identification with the country of refuge is likely to be stronger than the ties they have with Afghanistan.
Because of the way they have grown up, "they find themselves to be completely different," the former UNHCR Country Representative, Salvatore Lombardo, told a EurasiaNet reporter earlier this year. Many of them left as peasants, he says, but have been urbanized and would find it difficult to return to their former rural communities.
Their wishes "certainly do not find an answer in the Afghanistan of today. But one issue that is often neglected is what they have become after 30 years?" he said. "There is not enough recognition that a population that has been in exile for 30 years doesn't necessarily want to [go] back."
Lombardo expressed hope that the November conference would provide an "injection of reality," into the way the refugee situation is perceived. "How many people actually can come back to Afghanistan? We would like discussion in the conference to clarify that. I think the reality today tells you very clearly that if the conditions are what they are today that number would be [miniscule]."
But accepting that the remaining population may wish to be absorbed into the host countries is politically inexpedient. Even those living for two or three decades in Pakistan and Iran are rarely afforded the opportunity of citizenship. Moreover, the Afghan government's position is to seek the return of all the refugees, no matter how tenuous their links with home.
Under two separate trilateral agreements that the UNHCR has signed with the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, the two host countries agreed repatriation should be voluntary. That is, neither country would coerce refugees to leave. While the UNHCR has succeeded in preventing a mass forced exodus, the definition of 'voluntary' appears to be shifting.
Some are returning to Afghanistan under the pressure of worsening security and economic conditions in the host countries. In Pakistan, authorities fear the camps shelter terrorist groups.
Iran has forced back what it terms illegal emigrants, deporting 350,000 "unregistered Afghans." Some of those might be migrant workers, but many are refugees, and Iran uses the gray area to avoid its commitments. Pakistan has closed some refugee camps, leaving residents no choice but to return. Earlier this year, authorities shut the Jalozai Camp, one of the largest and oldest in Pakistan. Though the UNHCR was able to delay the closure, Pakistani authorities made their intentions clear by shutting off water and electricity to the enclave.
The second challenge facing the conference is acknowledging the state of conditions for returnees. When refugees return hoping for easier conditions in Afghanistan, they often find themselves trapped. The scarcity of land, jobs and insecurity in their homeland drives many to try to return to Pakistan or Iran. There, they become illegal migrants without the legal rights of refugees.
According to the UNHCR the bulk of the returns have been to the central and eastern region, with Kabul province alone accounting for 1.1 million, and the province of Nangarhar for 850,000, creating crowded settlements of jobless returnees.
The future is grim for Afghanistan's unwanted abroad. The government estimates between 400,000 and a million more refugees will return over the next five years. And according to its own prognosis, the outcome depends on future uncertain conditions inside Afghanistan, as well as relations with Pakistan and Iran.
With ongoing violence inside Afghanistan, internally displaced populations are again swelling. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The UNHCR says there are currently 235,000 internally displaced persons inside the country. But even this problem is hidden to a large extent in the folds of traditional family and kinship ties. Afghanistan's population has been extremely generous in absorbing the returnees. Small rooms are packed to overflowing, sparse meals become sparser to accommodate new arrivals, and it is only the really destitute who live in camps and get counted.
The conference also is expected to look at basic aspects of successful reintegration.
According to Lombardo, the success of the refugee reintegration policy will depend on how it is woven into the overall reconstruction picture. "When you enter into the question of how do you develop a community, how do you sustain a community, how do you find an answer for the long term wishes of the population, we don't have the answers," he said.
If the conference tackles even some of these contentious issues, it will have achieved much. But this would necessitate an admission by the Afghan government, and the international community, that the returns are now a problem, rather than a source of satisfaction.
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