In this bulletin:
- Security Council members condemn spate of suicide bombings in Afghanistan
Nato rejects appeal to boost Afghan troops
- Afghanistan: Taliban Could Spark Pashtun 'National War'
Condoleezza Rice says Canada's sacrifice makes a difference in Afghanistan
- Don't abandon Afghanistan, says US, as NATO digs around for back-up
- NATO forces in Afghanistan should do more to curb drug trade, UN official
says
- PM spells out Afghan duty to Nato
- Harper links 9/11 attacks with need for Afghan mission
- Bloc firm on support for Afghan mission
- Afghan aid worker shot dead by militants
- Taliban adopting Iraq-style jihad
- Afghan envoy seeks military, financial aid
- Afghanistan Gets Back To Business
Security Council members condemn spate of suicide bombings in Afghanistan - U.N. News Service; 12 September 2006
12 September 2006 - Members of the Security Council have added their
collective voices to a growing chorus of United Nations officials
condemning rising terrorist violence in Afghanistan.
“The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms
recent suicide bombings in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan, including
the one on 10 September that killed Abdul Hakim Tanaiwal, the Governor of
Paktia province,” Security Council President Adamantios Vassilakis of
Greece said in a press statement issued on Monday.
Council members reiterated their concern at the increasing threat to the
local population, national security forces, international military and
international assistance efforts.
“The members of the Security Council stressed that no terrorist act can
reverse the path toward peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan, which is
supported by the people and Government of Afghanistan and the international
community,” the Council President said.
On Sunday, the senior United Nations envoy to Afghanistan condemned the
recent attacks, particularly the assassination of the Governor of Paktia
province. “The murder of Mr. Tanaiwal is entirely beyond my understanding,”
said Tom Koenigs. “I condemn it.”
Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday evening reacted to the increasing
number of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan over recent months. “The
Secretary-General condemns in the strongest possible terms these acts,
which reflect an inexcusable disregard for the value of human life and only
serve to undermine the country's transition,” his spokesman said in a
statement.
Nato rejects appeal to boost Afghan troops
By Michael Evans, Richard Beeston and Tim Albone in Kandahar
Germany, Italy, Spain and Turkey ignore request for reinforcements
SOME OF America’s closest Nato allies have abandoned Washington on the key battleground of the War on Terror, the bloody struggle against Islamic militants for control of southern Afghanistan.
Five years after the world stood “shoulder to shoulder” with America in the aftermath of 9/11, The Times has learnt that many of the countries that pledged support then have now ignored an urgent request for more help in fighting a resurgent Taleban and its al-Qaeda allies.
Turkey, Germany, Spain and Italy have all effectively ruled out sending more troops. France has not committed itself either way, but the military sources in Kabul said that there were no expectations that the French would contribute to a new battlegroup, especially now that they were providing a substantial force in Lebanon.
They have rejected an appeal from General James Jones, the American Supreme Allied Commander Europe, for 2,500 more troops to fight alongside American, British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers. The 26-nation alliance has not volunteered a single extra combat soldier.
Britain, which has 5,500 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in the south, has told its Nato partners that they must do more if the line is to be held against the resurgent Taleban. The conflict has cost the lives of 33 British troops since June.
Pitched battles were raging in Afghanistan yesterday, where Nato estimates that 600 Taleban fighters have been killed in its new offensive. Twenty Nato soldiers, including 14 British servicemen who died when their Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft crashed on the first day, have been killed.
Only the newcomers to Nato have indicated that they would be prepared to send more soldiers. Latvia, with an army of 1,817 soldiers, plans to increase its presence in Afghanistan from 36 to 56 people. Neither Norway nor Denmark is planning to send reinforcements. The Netherlands is already playing a significant role in the south.
“Terrorism remains a threat to all of us. This is why we are in Afghanistan, the cradle of 9/11,” Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato Secretary-General, said. The muted response from Nato members cast a shadow over solemn tributes in America and Britain yesterday for the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11.
President Bush travelled from New York to Pennsylvania and finally to the Pentagon for memorial services at the sites where the four hijacked airliners came down. “My job is to protect this country,” he said. “And I am going to, within the law. And it gets second-guessed all the time by people who don’t live in the United States.”
In a clear dig at his critics abroad, he added: “Let me remind you: September 11th for them was a bad day; for us it was a change of attitude.”
The tone could not have been more different from the atmosphere five years ago when allies, and even some traditional American foes, lined up to offer Washington military assistance, intelligence and diplomatic support, in particular for its aim to destroy al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taleban regime in Kabul.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda, said yesterday in an internet broadcast that America and Britain had already lost their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the terror group was now preparing a new campaign against the Gulf states and Israel.
In Afghanistan Nato forces admitted that they were dangerously overstretched, but there was no suggestion that the Taleban and its al-Qaeda allies were winning the battle for control of the country.
The Taleban are more ferocious and more determined than any time since they were overthrown by US-led forces in late 2001. As well as carrying out suicide bombing they are also fighting hand-to-hand, occupying and controlling towns and districts for days at a time under the noses of Nato troops.
Yesterday battles raged in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, two Taleban strongholds. Five mourners were killed by a suicide bomber in Khost at a funeral for a former governor, assassinated by a suicide bomber on Sunday. In Kandahar, Canadian and other Nato troops entered the tenth day of Operation Medusa to root out hundreds of suspected Taleban fighters just 15 miles from the provincial capital.
British troops supported the Afghan Army in recapturing the district of Garmser, only 30 miles from a British base. It fell into Taleban hands last week for the second time in two months.
Nato sources told The Times yesterday that “no one has come forward” with any reinforcements for the war. One military source in Kabul said: “We’re not just looking for extra troops. We want a proper battle group of fighting soldiers who are prepared to confront the Taleban in southern Afghanistan. No one seems to want to commit combat troops.”
However, the military sources in Kabul said: “We need an alliance member with experience and the troops to match to lead a battle group that can be deployed in southern Afghanistan. We just don’t know who is going to do it.”
An official at Nato headquarters in Brussels said: “There has been no rush of offers so far.”
The silence from Britain’s Nato partners coincides with a week in which 19 bodies of British servicemen who died in Afghanistan are being repatriated. Five were flown back to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire yesterday. The fourteen who died in the Nimrod crash will be returned today.
Afghanistan: Taliban Could Spark Pashtun 'National War'
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty; 12 September 2006 - By Ahto Lobjakas
Pakistan's leader raises the specter of another violent Pashtun
mobilization against foreign intruders, this time spearheaded by the
Taliban.
BRUSSELS, Sept 12, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf
today warned that, if not checked effectively, the recent resurgence of the
Taliban could spill over into a Pashtun "national war" against outside
forces.
Speaking in Brussels, Musharraf said the Taliban now present a greater
threat to the world than Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and suggested that
the West may have missed a shift in the "center of gravity" of terrorism,
from Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to the Taliban.
"The real danger...lies in the emergence and further strengthening of the
Taliban."
The Taliban, who are ethnically Pashtun, form the backbone of the
insurgency that is currently engaging NATO's forces in pitched battles in
the south of Afghanistan. Musharraf said today that although bin Laden remains "important," the Taliban is now the "real danger."
Addressing the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in
Brussels, Musharraf said that "the real danger...lies in the emergence and
further strengthening of the Taliban, because they have the seeds of
converting and drawing the population to them and converting this into a
national war by the Pashtuns against maybe all foreign forces."
The Pashtuns straddle the largely porous border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is thought to have found refuge on the
Pakistani side of the border, where Pashtun tribes have proven largely
impervious to central government's attempts to assert control.
Musharraf argued that although the "vast majority" of Pashtuns are moderate
Muslims, the Taliban resurgence carries with it a real threat that they may
become radicalized. The Taliban, he said, must be "fought with force,"
echoing NATO's own calls to member nations to contribute more troops to
Afghanistan.
The Taliban's 'Center Of Gravity' Is In Afghanistan - Musharraf rejected charges that Pakistan might be fomenting the mobilization of the Taliban on its side of the border.
"We don't want Talibanization in Pakistan," he said, and said nobody should
cast "aspersions that maybe the government or our intelligence
organizations are abetting in such activity."
"The battle, if it is to be won, has to address the center of gravity of
the force -- and the center of gravity lies in Mullah Omar and his command
echelon, which happens to be in southern Afghanistan."
Stressing the need "to check 'Talibanization,' this obscurantist concept,
from spreading," he said that "the battle, if it is to be won, has to
address the center of gravity of the force -- and the center of gravity
lies in Mullah Omar and his command echelon, which happens to be in
southern Afghanistan."
According to Musharraf, Mullah Omar has not visited Pakistan since 1995.
For Pakistan's part, Musharraf said the Taliban goes against the country's
largely moderate "national ethos." He said the overwhelming majority of
Pakistanis -- as well as his government -- reject its fundamentalist
ideology.
Musharraf said his recent visit to Afghanistan had dispelled many doubts on
the part of his hosts. But he admitted that although Pakistan's intentions
could not be doubted, its ability to eliminate the threat may be a
different matter.
The Pakistani president said a recent peace deal with Pashtun elders in
Waziristan represents one step in a strategy designed to win over the local
community by giving them autonomy on civilian matters.
He said the agreement rests on the assumption that the Pashtuns in Pakistan
will not permit the Taliban or Al-Qaeda to be active on their territory or
to cross into Afghanistan.
Condoleezza Rice says Canada's sacrifice makes a difference in Afghanistan
STELLARTON, N.S. (CP) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says the military campaign that Canada and other NATO countries are waging in Afghanistan is part of a global struggle against terrorism, but she stopped short Tuesday of asking Canada for more troops.
Rice, completing a two-day visit to Nova Scotia to thank Canadians for their support during the 9-11 crisis five years ago, stressed that progress has been made in bringing peace to Afghanistan against Taliban resistance.
"Together, Canada, the United States, the countries of NATO will be those determined friends (of Afghanistan) and the people of Afghanistan will succeed," she said in an address at Stellarton's Museum of Industry, which is in the riding of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.
"And when they succeed, we will all be safer because no longer will Afghanistan ever again be a safe harbour for terror." MacKay emphasized the level of co-operation on trade, security and defence between Canada and the United States as he promised to stay the course in Afghanistan.
"The fight against terrorism will be a long-term campaign to provide greater security for our citizens and for our way of life," he said. "We cannot retreat. There's an old Maritime expression: 'Boats are safe in the harbour, but that's not what they're made for.' "
During a subsequent news conference, Rice and MacKay said they never discussed sending more Canadian troops to Afghanistan after NATO's top general last week called for more soldiers. "There is no ask," MacKay said. "That's not part of this visit whatsoever."
Earlier, Rice said the freedom that Canadians and Americans enjoy increasingly depends on "freedom in other lands." She said the U.S. is now engaged in a "great global struggle to determine what ideas will organize the 21st century."
As a result, Canada's alliance with the United States must also become global in scope, she said, citing the work of Canadian and American troops and officials in Haiti and Iraq.
Rice then zeroed in on Afghanistan, saying it was the repressive Taliban regime that helped al-Qaida flourish in advance of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and near Pittsburgh on Sept. 11, 2001.
As a result of NATO's 35-nation military campaign in Afghanistan, Rice noted Afghans have held elections for a president and a parliament, girls go to school and the Taliban no longer uses soccer stadiums as torture chambers.
Still, she said she understood Canada's 2,200 soldiers were facing stiff challenges in Afghanistan, where casualties are mounting rapidly.
"I want today, before all of you, to thank Canada, the soldiers of Canada, the people of Canada, the families of the soldiers of Canada for the hard work that is being done on behalf of the people of Afghanistan," she said.
"I know you are sacrificing and fighting vigilantly. I know the Taliban is a determined enemy. . . . We owe it to the people of Afghanistan to help them finish the job." Rice also dismissed the idea that Canada was making itself a target for terrorists by taking on the Taliban.
"We've learned something about these people: There isn't any safe harbour from them. There isn't any way to accommodate them. . . . Their interest is in the wanton destruction of innocent life. . . . This is a global fight and everyone is at risk."
Still, the secretary of state admitted that the United States failed to recognize the problem it was creating when it decided to pull resources out of Afghanistan after the mujahedeen pushed back the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. Afghanistan then became a so-called failed state that soon transformed into safe haven for al-Qaida, she said. "We all came to pay for that," Rice said. "We left Afghanistan to its own devices."
Since taking office earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government has worked hard to improve co-operation with the administration of President George W. Bush, a move that stands in stark contrast to the persistently strained relationship under previous Liberal governments.
At MacKay's invitation, Rice visited Halifax and Stellarton, where she said the Canadian-American "alliance" has never been stronger. "Though our alliance can be tested, it can never be bent, it can never be broken," she said. "Because, make no mistake, this is an alliance based on the most solid of foundations."
MacKay said the two governments may sometimes disagree, but Canada and the U.S. are allies because of a "deep sense of kinship" the two countries share. "We will remain the best of friends, but we may not always agree, we will certainly find a way to find solutions that work for the benefit of both nations."
Don't abandon Afghanistan, says US, as NATO digs around for back-up
Agence France-Presse; 12 September 2006
On the eve of a NATO meeting to round up more troops for Afghanistan, US
officials urged its partners there to stay the course, amid fresh fighting
and kidnappings in the turbulent country.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a rallying call not to
abandon Afghanistan as it struggles to build a stable democracy.
"If you allow a failed state in that strategic location, you will pay for
it," she warned, speaking on a trip to Canada where she expressed her
gratitude for Canada's 2,300-strong troop deployment to Afghanistan.
Her comments coincided with stark warnings of the threat posed by the
fighters of the Islamist Taliban militia who are waging a bitter insurgency
against foreign forces posted there after the Taliban was ousted from power
in 2001.
Addressing European parliamentarians in Brussels, Pakistan's President
Pervez Musharraf said the Taliban had overtaken Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda
network as his region's biggest threat to security.
With NATO countries set on Wednesday to discuss finding extra troops to
shore up their deployments in Afghanistan, a senior US official said it was
too soon to know details of likely reinforcements.
Richard Boucher, the assistant US secretary of state for south and central
Asian affairs, told journalists in Brussels that it was "probably a little
too early" to "draw any conclusions about the efforts to get more troops".
He highlighted the dangerous situation in Afghanistan, where NATO and
Afghan forces are making forays into areas held by Taliban fighters.
"As we challenged them in these areas they've challenged us back and
there's been a high level of violence," Boucher said, speaking at the US
embassy here.
His comments came ahead of Wednesday's meeting at NATO's military
headquarters in Belgium aimed at drumming up more troops for Afghanistan.
The alliance's military chief, US General James Jones, has called for
reinforcements of up to 2,500 troops to deal with increasing Taliban
attacks.
The situation on the ground in the war-ravaged central Asian country turned
grimmer meanwhile, as NATO pressed on with a major offensive.
Security forces killed 26 Taliban rebels and captured 28 others in separate
operations across Afghanistan. Rights groups said at least 25 Afghan
civilians were believed killed and 7,000 families displaced in the southern
province of Kandahar since the start of the NATO operation this month.
Elsewhere, police said unknown assailants had kidnapped a Colombian aid
worker and two Afghan colleagues employed by a French organisation in
Wardak province, central Afghanistan.
In Britain, Lieutenant General David Richards, commander of NATO's
International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, insisted the war
against the Taliban was being won, even as the bodies of 14 British airmen
who died in a plane crash in Afghanistan were brought home.
The Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces weeks after the September
11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The US accused it of providing a
safe haven for the Al-Qaeda network and its leader, Osama bin Laden, blamed
for the attacks.
NATO now leads more than 8,000 troops in the restive south, and some 20,000
more soldiers from 37 countries deployed throughout Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, the Taliban have dramatically stepped up their insurgency
this year.
In Cuba, a summit of countries of the Non-Aligned Movement issued a draft
closing statement expressing support for Kabul and their "profound" concern
over "terrorist groups including former Taliban" in the south and east of
Afghanistan.
NATO forces in Afghanistan should do more to curb drug trade, UN official
says - U.N. News Service; 12 September 2006
12 September 2006 - The head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC) today called for a robust military action by the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to destroy the opium industry in
southern Afghanistan.
Presenting details of the 2006 UNODC Annual Opium Survey at a news
conference in Brussels, Antonio Maria Costa noted that the dramatic surge
in opium cultivation and production had occurred mainly in the increasingly
lawless southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
“In the turbulent southern region, counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics
efforts must reinforce each other so as to stop the vicious circle of drugs
funding terrorists and terrorists protecting drug traffickers,” the UNODC
Executive Director said.
“I call on NATO forces to destroy the heroin labs, disband the open opium
bazaars, attack the opium convoys and bring to justice the big traders,” he
said, adding that coalition countries should give NATO the mandate and
resources required to accomplish this.
Opium cultivation throughout Afghanistan surged 59 per cent to 165,000
hectares in 2006. The opium harvest was an unprecedented 6,100 tonnes, an
increase of 49 per cent from 2005, making Afghanistan virtually sole
supplier to the world.
Only six of the country’s 34 provinces are opium-free. Cultivation fell in
eight provinces, mainly in the more stable north. Around the country, the
number of people involved in opium cultivation increased by almost a third
to 2.9 million, representing 12.6 per cent of the total population.
“Revenue from the harvest will be over $3 billion this year, making a
handful of criminals and corrupt officials extremely rich,” Mr. Costa said.
“This money is also dragging the rest of Afghanistan into a bottomless pit
of destruction and despair.”
The UNODC Executive Director warned drug-consuming nations that the Afghan
opium boom was likely to fuel a surge in the number of lethal drug
overdoses when the new heroin starts reaching users in 2007.“I fear that in
2007, once the new crop has reached the retail markets, Afghan opium will
kill more than the 100,000 people it has killed in the recent past.”
Among the measures he called for to redress the situation was increased aid
to Afghanistan. The more vigorously district and provincial leaders commit
themselves to eliminate opium and curb corruption, the more aid they should
receive, he said. “If we lose their support, insurgents will have an
unlimited supply of foot-soldiers and no resources will be available to
fight them,” he warned.
“There is no magic formula to save Afghanistan. Instead, we need to insist
on full implementation of the Afghan national drug control strategy, which
is based on development, security, law enforcement and good governance.”
PM spells out Afghan duty to Nato
Press Association - Wednesday September 13, 2006
Tony Blair has stressed the "fundamental importance" of the war in Afghanistan for Britain's security - as he called on other Nato countries to take their share of the burden there.
The Prime Minister paid tribute to the "bravery and commitment" of the 5,000 UK troops in the country but stressed: "It is important that the whole of Nato regards this as their responsibility."
Nato's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has called for more forces to be sent to help the fight against the Taliban and al Qaida but has had few offers of extra troops from alliance members.
Mr Blair, speaking to reporters in 10 Downing Street after talks with Chinese premier Wen Jiabo, said: "Nato is looking at what further requirements there are and Nato and Nato countries have got a duty to respond to that.
"The British forces are making their contribution and I would like to pay tribute to the bravery and commitment of our forces in Afghanistan at the moment.
"This British commitment in Afghanistan is important. They are inflicting real damage on the Taliban and al Qaida. "But it is important that the whole of Nato regards this as their responsibility.
"We should never forget that the reason why our troops are in Afghanistan, along with other Nato countries, is because out of Afghanistan came the terrorism of 9/11.
"The Taliban and al Qaida training camps for terrorism were the reason we went there and it is of fundamental importance to the security of this country, never mind the world, that we make sure the job in Afghanistan is done properly." He said forces there were "fighting in difficult circumstances and fighting brilliantly".
Harper links 9/11 attacks with need for Afghan mission
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday that Canada's military participation in Afghanistan is necessary to make the world safer and help eliminate the terror behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper marks the fifth anniversary of 9/11 paying tribute on Parliament Hill, Monday September 11, 2006, in Ottawa, to the victims who lost their lives that day. Harper was joined by Canadians who lost family in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and by family members with loved ones serving with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)
Harper made his televised address on the fifth anniversary of the attacks from the Hall of Honour in Parliament. He was flanked by relatives of some of the 24 Canadians killed in the U.S. five years ago, as well as relatives of Canadian soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan.
"I asked them to join me, because words alone are not enough to express what needs to be said today," Harper said.
Characterizing the Taliban as a source of the Sept. 11 terror and a "brutal regime," the prime minister twice referred to United Nations support for the operation there, as well as connecting it to Canada's historical role during times of international conflict.
"We are a country that has always accepted its responsibility in the world," Harper said, referring to Canada's participation in the two world wars and conflicts in Korea and the Balkans.
"As the events of September 11 so clearly illustrate, the horrors of the world will not go away if we turn a blind eye to them, no matter how far off they may be," he added.
Harper said that despite its horrors, the fateful day led to acts of greatness and generosity, citing the hosting of air passengers who had flights diverted across Canada in the wake of the attacks.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was at one of those locations on Monday, thanking Nova Scotians and Canadians for their effort five years ago.
Harper asserted that because of Canada's contribution to the coalition effort in Afghanistan the Taliban were in retreat, the status of women in the country has improved, and crucial infrastructure was being built or rebuilt.
"There are Canadian heroes being made every day in the mountains and deserts of southern Afghanistan," he said.
There are currently over 2,000 Canadian troops in Afghanistan, a mission in which thousands of soldiers have participated since it began in 2002.
The government has faced criticism from opposition members over the lack of debate prior to the extension of the commitment in Afghanistan to 2009, and the toll resulting from a summer of heavy fighting.
In all, 32 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died since the mission to Afghanistan began in 2002, with nearly half of the casualties occurring in the last two months.
Bloc firm on support for Afghan mission
DANIEL LEBLANC
OTTAWA -- The Bloc Québécois will continue supporting the Canadian Forces' mission in Afghanistan into 2007, when a group of soldiers based in Valcartier, Que., will form the main Canadian contingent.
Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe will address reporters this morning at a meeting of his 50-member caucus, and will expand on his vision for Canada's foreign policy. He is expected to say that he wants more information from the government on the Afghan mission, but that he will not follow the lead of New Democratic Leader Jack Layton in calling for a full withdrawal.
"The NDP is not being serious," Bloc House Leader Michel Gauthier said in an interview. "Even though the mission is hard right now . . . withdrawing immediately, without conditions, would be irresponsible for our soldiers, for Afghanistan and for the other nations, to which we said we will do the job."
The Bloc is calling for an urgent debate in the House of Commons on Canada's foreign policy next week, before Prime Minister Stephen Harper addresses the United Nations on Sept. 21.
The Afghan mission is less popular in Quebec than in other provinces, but the Bloc is expected to continue supporting the controversial deployment if it gets satisfactory answers from the government in coming days.
"We want to ask questions," a Bloc official said yesterday. "Are the troops properly equipped? Should we focus more on humanitarian issues? Are there enough troops?"
Members of the Quebec-based Vandoos regiment will make up the bulk of the Canadian presence in Kandahar in the second half of next year. Mr. Gauthier insisted, however, that the Bloc position will not be based on whether the troops come from Quebec or elsewhere in the country.
"A Canadian soldier who does his job is a Canadian soldier who does his job. The death of a human being is always sad, and it is something that we want to avoid, regardless of where they come from," he said.
With its continuing support for the Afghan mission, the Bloc will be aligning itself on one key issue with the Conservative government.
The Bloc, however, will continue to criticize other aspects of Mr. Harper's foreign policy, arguing that the Prime Minister's tone was too aggressive during the recent Middle East crisis and that the government is cozying up to the Bush administration in the United States.
Mr. Duceppe is temporarily becoming the party's main spokesman on foreign issues, having been forced yesterday to shuffle his shadow cabinet to deal with recent departures and prolonged absences from his parliamentary team.
The Bloc is still coping with the sudden death of Benoît Sauvageau, an MP from an area east of Montreal who died in a car crash late last month.
Bloc MP Francine Lalonde is away for a number of weeks, as she is scheduled for surgery this week to remove a cancerous tumour in her back. Mr. Gauthier himself is still recovering from an operation on his back.
Afghan aid worker shot dead by militants
Associated Press; 13 September 2006
An Afghan aid worker was fatally shot by gunmen in western Afghanistan,
police said Wednesday.
The employee of U.N. Habitat, the United Nations housing development
agency, was killed when militants fired on his car Tuesday as he drove from
a remote village into the capital of Farah province, said Maj. Gen. Sayed
Agha Saqib, the provincial police chief.
The victim's identity was not immediately available and police did not
speculate on his killers' motivation.
Taliban militants have become increasingly active in western Afghanistan,
and Farah province has witnessed increased violence in recent months as
fighters fleeing NATO-led operations in southern provinces have moved into
areas with fewer security forces.
Aid workers in remote parts of the country have been routinely targeted by
militants trying to derail the U.S.-backed reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Gunmen kidnapped a Colombian and two Afghans working with a French-funded
non-governmental organization west of Kabul on Sunday.
Taliban adopting Iraq-style jihad
The Christian Science Monitor; 13 September 2006
A Taliban militant warns that his movement is more sophisticated - and more
brutal - than before. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Even in near-total darkness, the wounded Taliban fighter insists on masking his identity, his head and face covered by a tightly wound white cloth. Only two bright eyes and a confident voice tell how Afghanistan's Islamist militants are ramping up their fight against US and NATO forces.
He speaks a warning, of how the "new" Taliban has become more radical, more
sophisticated, and more brutal than the Taliban ousted by US-led forces in
2001 - and of how its jihadist agenda now mirrors that of Al Qaeda,
stretching far beyond Afghanistan.
Among the keys to the Taliban resurgence - which is sparking lethal
violence on a scale unknown here for almost five years - are crucial
lessons drawn from Iraq.
"That's part of our strategy - we are trying to bring [the Iraqi model] to
Afghanistan," says the fighter. "Things will get worse here."
Those "things" include suicide attacks, assassinations of government
officials, moderate clerics, and civilians, along with guerrilla tactics
now in use against Western forces in the southern provinces of Helmand and
Kandahar, where NATO claims to have killed more than 500 insurgents in 10
days of intense fighting.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, speaking in Brussels Tuesday, said the
Taliban now pose a greater danger than Al Qaeda. "The center of gravity of
terrorism has shifted from al Qaeda to the Taliban," he told European
lawmakers."
"This is a new element, a more dangerous element, because it [the Taliban]
has its roots in the people. Al Qaeda didn't have roots in the people," he
said.
On Tuesday, Afghan police said that they had arrested more than 30 people
suspected of planning attacks; the US military reported detaining eight
others.
"The Taliban have tried their best to avoid murdering civilians, but they
finally found if they don't get active, they will lose this opportunity" to
attack "infidel" Western troops, says the fighter. "Now you are seeing
explosions everywhere."
Among the most recent suicide attacks was one near the US Embassy last
Friday, killing two US soldiers and 14 Afghans.
"I'm very happy about the murder of the Americans, though I am a little bit
sad about the death of the Afghans - but this is wartime," says the fighter
matter-of-factly. Such deaths, he says, are "inevitable," even if they
cause a popular backlash.
"The shift has taken place," warns Hekmat Karzai, head of the Center for
Conflict and Peace Studies (CAPS) in Kabul, which analyzes terrorism
trends. The Taliban still have local concerns, he says, but embrace global
jihad as never before and believe in encouraging a "clash of
civilizations."
"Taliban commanders talk of jihad in Fallujah in the same terms they speak
of jihad in [the eastern Afghan province of] Kunar," says Mr. Karzai. "They
think: 'Just as they are battling there, we are battling here.' "
Figures tabulated by CAPS indicate a recent 60 percent increase in attacks
across Afghanistan, from 85 in July to 136 in August. Police have borne the
brunt, with deaths jumping more than fourfold in that period. Civilian
deaths have tripled, with 92 losing their lives in August.
"The world is small now, and just as McDonald's is being globalized ... so
can violence be transmitted from one place to another," says Waheed
Mozhdah, a Taliban-era Foreign Affairs Ministry official, and author on the
Taliban.
"The tactics have been imported from Iraq: suicide bombers,
remote-controlled roadside bombs," says Mr. Mozhdah. "These things we
didn't have in the [past] jihad, and they have been very effective...."
Other tactics have also changed. Prior to 2001, the Taliban would take on
the Northern Alliance by charging through their front lines - despite high
casualties from mines. Today, they use more guerrilla-style strikes.
Another factor chills many Afghans. "[The Taliban] have become more
violent. They slaughter people, beheading them, and this didn't exist
before," says Mozhdah. "They used to regard video cameras as *haram*
[forbidden by religion], but now they use these videos as a tool. It shows
how Al Qaeda has affected the Taliban."
Indeed, coming from a group that in the late 1990s draped checkpoints with
wads of magnetic tape - pulled from video and music cassettes banned by the
Taliban - that is quite a change. Recent videos show commanders, including,
apparently, the rarely seen fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Omar - directing
operations from the front line. In one, Mr. Omar is shown with binoculars,
inspecting a small rocket launcher in a bid to counter charges of cowardice
from President Hamid Karzai.
Other footage shows one Afghan suicide bomber after another - as well as at
least one Pakistani - making strident statements and collecting chits for
their explosives. The clips also list the number of "crusader troops"
killed in each attack.
But even by the gruesome standards of global jihad, which include taped
beheadings by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and similar deaths of Russians
by Chechen militants, the Taliban footage is brutal.
"The greatest achievement of video like that is to instill fear in the
hearts of the population, making them believe that the government and
international forces can't protect them," says Karzai of CAPS, who
estimates that Taliban material is on 30 percent of an estimated 4,000
jihadi websites. "It is a psychological component that shocks people, who
ask: 'They are Afghans. They are Muslims. How can they do that?' "
Karzai says the message is clear: "It is ... telling people: 'This can
happen to you.' The consequence is that many people stop working for
government institutions. They ask if it is more important to get $200 a
month - more like $60 - or to stay alive."
"They are very dangerous, because they think that anyone who is not
pro-American should come to them or leave the country," says Idriss Yusefi,
an Afghan medical resident whose uncle was a key player in the Taliban's
despised "vice and virtue" squads. "They think the people of Kabul are all
pro-American, and so [they] can kill them."
The "biggest fear" of youths, says Mr. Yusefi and his friends, is that the
Taliban will retake power. Most analysts say the Taliban is still no
strategic threat to the fragile government, a view challenged by militants
like the wounded fighter.
Schooled in the extreme Deobandi strain of Islam followed by most Talibs,
he joined 18 months ago, prompted, he says, when US troops arrested his
cleric father from their home in Kandahar after a roadside bomb went off
nearby. The father's body was dropped off at the hospital by US forces 10
days later, the militant claims.
"I want two things: revenge and martyrdom. Martyrdom is the hope of every
true Muslim," declares the 26-year-old. His mother stopped his two older
brothers, the fathers of seven, from joining the Taliban. But she could not
stop this son.
"Every jihad fighter has the best morale - you can't compare it to any
other type of fighter," he says, tightening his head wrap in the dark. "In
this country, there are many religious people and they want a reason to
fight for God, for martyrdom. They welcome this opportunity to ... go to
Paradise."
While he recovers in Kabul, the militant keeps in contact with Taliban
networks, and claims that the NATO figure of more than 500 insurgents
killed during "Operation Medusa" in the south is a "total lie." NATO
commanders say the sustained fighting has at times been fiercer than in
Iraq. The militant says the Taliban grow stronger daily, with support from
locals fed-up with insecurity and corruption.
"The Taliban have increased their attacks, because people came and asked
for help to bring back justice," he says. "Security was ensured under the
Taliban. We will reintroduce *sharia* law."
Still, he was wounded when local "spies" gave away the location of a safe
house during fighting in Panjwayi in Kandahar. Two Americans and two Talibs
were killed in the raid.
But the fighter is certain of victory. "It's the will of God," he says,
adding there must be a reason he is not yet a martyr. "Maybe God wants me
to fight more."
Afghan envoy seeks military, financial aid
WASHINGTON: Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington called for more military and economic help from the West, citing a spike in terrorist activity in the past six months and fears that it could spread.
Almost five years after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the repressive Taliban regime, only half of the money pledged by the international community to rebuild Afghanistan has been delivered and spent, Said T. Jawad said in an interview with The Washington Times published on Monday.
"We will not be able to stabilize the country if we don?t build up the domestic security forces and have development in the countryside," Mr. Jawad said. "Had we invested more in development, we would have had less security problems today."
Military spending is now about 10 times greater than spending on economic development, he added. U.S. troops joined an indigenous rebel force to dislodge the ruling Taliban -- the al Qaeda terror network?s patrons in Afghanistan -- beginning less than a month after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Afghanistan Gets Back To Business –
EUROMONEY
The country’s newly revitalized banking system throws up colourful characters and eccentric approaches to marketing. But overseeing it all is a rigorous central banker with solid US commercial banking experience, as Eric Ellis reports.
AFGHANISTAN’S LEADING COMMERCIAL banker doubles as a professional Las Vegas poker player.
And his two-year-old bank is a joint venture with partners drawn from currency traders in the Afghan hawala system, the widespread informal money-transfer network the US wants to shut down because it suspects it is used by Islamist extremists to move money to finance their terror campaigns. Afghan banking’s most popular consumer product is better recognized as a lottery, with monthly draws broadcast nationally on state television.
Kabul’s newest banking tycoon makes most of his money as a petroleum trader, and his right-hand man was once in the German rag trade but is best known as the financial adviser to Afghanistan’s long-deposed king; he now gets around Kabul in a gleaming black bulletproof Humvee, with two armed guards.
To use an ATM at Afghanistan’s leading foreign bank requires you to run the gauntlet of a street known as Sniper Alley, then be patted down by a bristling security detail of Gurkhas before getting access to a cash machine that might or might not be functioning.
Afghanistan has only recently replaced its four competing currencies – including two warlord-backed tenders that were accepted outside their domains at half face-value – with one. This is backed not by foreign reserves but the wavering military commitment of western powers.
Afghanistan’s biggest commercial bank is housed in a building reviled by many because it was the Pakistan Embassy in Taleban times, a centre of much political intrigue.
The central bank building is framed by massive concrete bollards designed to withstand the impact of car and suicide bombs, and the occasional riot, while inside its ancient headquarters, Afghanistan’s central bank governor, Noorullah Delawari, micro-manages staff to such an extent that he gives instructions on how to maintain the building’s toilets, because no-one else will.
A banking success story
Despite the banking system’s eccentricities, Noorullah Delawari, an affable 62-year-old who had a career as a commercial banker in southern California before returning to help rebuild the land of his birth in 2002, is confident that progress has been made. “The development of a banking system has been one of Afghanistan’s success stories since we were liberated. We have come a very long way in a short time,” he says.
At certain crucial levels, Delawari seems right. The central bank he has run for 18 months, Da Afghanistan Bank, now boasts foreign reserves of almost $2 billion, from virtually zero when its vaults were raided by the fleeing Taleban in late 2001. The successful 2003 replacement of four currencies by one was a massive – and highly successful – logistical exercise that seems, alongside the first ever presidential elections a year later, the most telling indicator that Afghanistan does have the will to emerge from a 30-year cycle of war. And although there is still deep poverty in the country, per capita GDP has doubled to $355 since 2002, and is up around $500 if the illegal and thriving narco-economy is included. Afghanistan now has 13 licensed banks and consideration is even being given to developing capital markets – there have already been a handful of modest interbank loan syndications – and a stock exchange.
Delawari is building a banking system from scratch – although the uncertain political situation could affect his ability to do so (see box). There are foreign banks from the UK, Tajikistan, Iran, Pakistan and Iran. UK bank Standard Chartered handles about 70% of the $3 billion to $4 billion in annual aid inflow, says its local manager, Joseph Silvanus, and caters mostly to the foreign community. Three local banks – ING-backed Afghanistan International Bank, Azizi Bank and Kabulbank – have taken about $350 million in deposits, and the government has plans to merge three moribund state-owned banks into a single local entity.
The myriad advertising hoardings around Kabul, a building boom and streets lined with traders are at least cosmetic indications of a sustainable economy in bloom. Afghans used to burying or hiding what little cash they hold are now flocking to the dozen or so bank branches that have sprouted around the country, and in particular to Kabulbank, the hawala joint venture that in just two years has snared more than $200 million in deposits.
Although the cautious Delawari is sceptical about Kabulbank and is keeping a weather eye on its progress, he regards its arrival as a sign of confidence that an economy is beginning to take shape in his war-weary nation. “These are exciting times,” he says, stressing that he regards his bank’s surveillance division as its most crucial department.
An Islamic bank or a lottery?
A sign of confidence is perhaps a generous way of looking at Kabulbank’s achievements. The bank’s sudden success might be more to do with the fact that Afghans like a punt as much as the next person. Indeed, an examination of Kabulbank’s operations brings to mind that old saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it most likely is a duck. Consider Kabulbank’s Bakht deposit account, launched in April. In the Dari tongue of Afghanistan, the word bakht means “fortune”, which explains the bold exclamation advertised around Kabul that Bakht is “The easiest way to earn a million.”
Since Kabulbank started touting Bakht to customers, its customer base has tripled, making it the biggest of the 11 banks that have opened since the Taleban was ousted by the Americans in 2001, to add to the two moribund state commercial banks. Every $100, or Af5,000, deposited in a Bakht account entitles the depositor to a ticket in a lucky draw, based on an average monthly minimum balance. The draw is held every month, in a lively night of frivolity in a Kabul wedding hall, and beamed across the country on each of its four TV stations. Prominent Afghans join with bank officials and academics to pull winning tickets from a tub – since it is just a few years since the ascetic Taleban were kicked out they haven’t yet descended to bikini-clad barrel girls. The winning ticketholder’s name is read out and if he’s in the room – it’s almost always a man who wins – he’s handed a mock cheque for Af1 million, or $20,000.
So if Bakht looks like a lottery, sounds like a lottery, then it’s? “It is an Islamic banking product, it coincides with religious sentiments”, claims Kabulbank’s CEO Johnson Malliakkal Rappai, an Indian Christian who, before coming to Kabul in 2004, was a line manager in the small Kerala-based Federal Bank. “There’s no interest paid on a Bahkt account. That would be against Islam,” he says. So it’s a lottery then? “No, you cannot say it is a lottery,” Johnson insists. “Here you don’t lose your money, you are getting an incentive by way of luck.”
It’s a nice semantic distinction. Gambling is banned in Islam and Kabulbank’s Bakht line differs crucially from a conventional lottery since the ticketholders, the depositors, keep their stake even if they don’t win the monthly draw for the Af1 million, a lifetime’s income for most of Afghanistan’s 30 million people. Indeed, they remain eligible for the next draw, and those after that, with more chances available every time they deposit units of Af5,000. Although such a product wouldn’t pass the test of the Federal Reserve or the Bank of England – and it has disquieted mandarins at Kabul’s central bank, which has changed its bank monitoring team three times – it’s a dubious stroke of marketing genius from the bank’s point of view.
Kabulbank now has $200 million on deposit and 70,000 customers but with monthly obligations to its Bakht customers that are far less than what a bank would ordinarily return as interest on deposits. “Before we introduced Bakht [in April], we had about 22,000 customers – now we have 68,000,” says Johnson. “Of course we are profitable.” Kabulbank’s Bakht deposits comprise about $25 million, it being very much a product for smaller depositors. “It’s a grand function, very tremendous,” says Johnson, beaming.
That Bakht resembles gambling is perhaps not surprising, given Kabulbank’s heritage. It is owned by a consortium of Afghan money brokers, who got rich operating hawala, the trust-based informal money transfer system the US Department of Homeland Security believes helped fund the 2001 9/11 attacks. Kabulbank’s leading shareholder, with a 47% stake, is Sherkhan Farnood, a Dubai-based Afghan regarded as one of Afghanistan’s richest men. Farnood is undoubtedly a wealthy man, but it might not please those Kabulbank depositors who believe they are banking Islamically were they to know that he is also a professional poker player.
Indeed, the week Euromoney was in Kabul to interview his CEO, Farnood was in Las Vegas participating at the 2006 World Series of Poker, coming runner-up in the Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. The Poker Database website says: “Sherkhan has found his way to many final tables. He did a double in Australia last year, a double in Paris in September and a double in Walsall in November 2003. He likes to drink Blue Label,”a tipple its distiller, Johnnie Walker, says “is not a whisky for beginners”. Another website for poker aficionados, pokerforum.com, describes Farnood as “certainly Afghanistan’s most accomplished poker player. Farnood works as a banker.”
A close friend of the former US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, Farnood doesn’t hide his poker prowess, indeed he likes to describe himself as one of the world’s leading players. His reputation among hawala operators is sound. An investor says: “There has never been an incident where has not paid up – this despite his people getting killed and money going missing.”
Johnson got a job at Kabulbank after hearing about it on the Kerala expatriate grapevine, through a relative who had a friend working in Kabul. “I had read about Afghanistan but I was very much scared,” he says. Johnson was ensconced in a good career at Federal Bank but here was a chance to be CEO of a bank, and to be well paid for it. “I was then in charge of about 38 or 39 branches,” he says. “But I had a boss above me.” He was interviewed in Dubai by Farnood and his partners, four leading Afghan moneybrokers operating between Dubai and Afghanistan. “They are leading personalities, wealthy men,” Johnson says.
His CV was accepted by Da Afghanistan Bank and by June 2004, when the bank formally opened on $5 million as basic capital, he was on board as vice-president. A year later he was general manager and in March this year became CEO. “Everything was from scratch,” he says, including what is now the bank’s head office, a three-storey building on Turbazkhan Square, one of Kabul’s main streets, in the Share-e-Naw district. Today the building is awash with men in shalwar kameez, intently scanning screens flickering with interest rate spreads, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was a building notorious during the Taleban period because it was the Pakistan embassy, reviled by many Afghans as the Taleban’s sponsors.
With three buildings and a small car park, Kabulbank pays $30,000 a month in rent for the high-profile premises. It employs 726 employees, more than half in security, across 12 branches in six cities, with plans to go to 20 branches in 10 cities. Johnson claims that Kabulbank keeps 15% of its deposits liquid at the central bank, about double the legal requirement. When it comes to the bona fides of account holders, which central banker Delawari says it is important to verify in a country where an AK-47 is often law regardless of who is wielding it, and a third of the economy is illegal narcotics, Johnson insists his bank follows international banking procedure on money-laundering.
Delawari stresses that he regards his bank’s surveillance division as its most crucial department. “You can’t just open an account here,” Johnson says. “All identity should be made available – your passport, your ID, your trade licence. Yes, people can tell lies or have forged documents but we make every effort to establish bona fides, we cross-check it when the money comes. We ask you from where you got this 1 million dollars. And Delawari is a very capable man, but he is not able to supervise the whole of the central bank.”
Azizi’s big ambitions
The last time I saw Hayatullah Dayani he was standing outside a palatial Rome villa a week after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, being interviewed by the BBC. He was then a German textile magnate, and an adviser to the deposed king of Afghanistan, who had lived in the villa since being ousted in the mid-1970s. Today, Dayani gets around Kabul in a sleek black and chrome Humvee, with an AK47-wielding security detail, a director of Afghanistan’s newest bank, Azizi Bank.
The bank is named after its Dubai-based chairman, Mirwais Azizi, regarded by many Afghans as their country’s richest man. Azizi handles as much as 70% of the petroleum products sold in Afghanistan, where electricity is mainly produced by diesel generators. He joined another Afghan tycoon, a hawala operator called Haji Ali Akbar, in starting Azizi Bank, and sent a message that the bank is in Kabul for the long term by buying an $8 million villa abutting the presidential palace that was the ministry of tribal affairs under the Taleban.
The villa has been converted into a carpeted banking hall and the bank – open barely a fortnight when Euromoney spoke to Dayani – had taken deposits of almost $2 million and signed on 1,800 new accounts. “We are not involved with any drug money, with any war economy,” says Dayani, who left his business in Germany to join the bank. “This is one of the long-term investments in Afghanistan; this is not an import-export business you can open and close as you like. We have not just picked up staff from anywhere, we have top calibre working for us, from good families.”
Azizi Bank has big ambitions. It wants to become the leading bank in Afghanistan after just a year, with branches in each province and at least $200 million in deposits – about what its main competitor Kabulbank has now. Dayani says Azizi will be of an international standard and, although it has renovated a mosque in its grounds for staff use, does not plan to introduce lottery-style accounts or Islamic banking. “One should keep business away from religion and away from politics; let this country stand on its own feet – many people misuse religion,” says Dayani.
A dyed-in-the wool commercial banker
Noorullah Delawari is proud of what he has achieved in just two years at Da Afghanistan Bank, and in building a banking sector. The rebuilding of capacity at the central bank and the currency replacement are “the great achievements of the recovery so far”, he says.
Delawari left Afghanistan in 1967 when his country was a mostly peaceful monarchy, albeit one overrun with western hippies, to take up a Colombo Plan university scholarship in Britain in commerce and economics. While in London, he did some basic training at National Westminster Bank before extra studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. As his studies were ending in the mid-1970s, his country began to descend into political turmoil. In 1979, Russia invaded and Delawari decided to settle in Los Angeles, in suburban Pasadena, where he worked for many years at Lloyds Bank of California, rising to be vice-president and head of its international division and, later, joining Bank of the West and California’s Independence Bank. “I’m a dyed-in-the-wool commercial banker,” he says.
He also immersed himself heavily in Afghan exile politics. “My wife says my mistress was Afghanistan,” he says. “I would spend every vacation I had lobbying in Washington, right from the Soviet invasion. We were very much active to see an internal revolution occur.” Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he stayed in touch with prominent Afghans abroad, while monitoring affairs back home. He saw US interest in Afghanistan’s welfare wax and wane – mostly wane.
The same politicians, he said, who he’d successfully lobbied to fund the 1980s’ anti-Soviet mujahadeen resistance, people like the messianic Texas Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson who were crucial in rallying Washington to militarily support the Afghan cause, told him in the 1990s after the Cold War that “times have changed, America has no more stomach for Afghanistan”.
Delawari remembers being pleasantly surprised to see the LA media show up at a rally he had organized, only to learn that the journalists had got their wires crossed. “They thought we were protesting for animal rights,” he says. “They must have got their Afghans mixed up.”
Then, in 2001, came the 9/11 attacks on the US. He watched, as most did, on television, at home in California. His daughter, who works in Hollywood, was staying a few blocks from the World Trade Center. “I had a feeling who did it, the second plane hit, I immediately realized the consequences.” He had written an article in June forecasting a war involving Bin Laden. “I knew that some day the Taleban era would end.”
It did: by early 2002, Delawari had cashed out his 401K US pension plan to return home for the first time since 1967. He was quickly tasked with fixing the central bank. “It was in a shambles, it was chaotic, we had to start from square one.” He joined the University of Rhode Island economist and Pashtun politician Anwar Ul-haq Ahady, who would become Da Afghanistan’s governor, and then finance minister Ashraf Ghani in the team to right the central bank, and kickstart a banking sector.
“We started Swift, then correspondent relationships, gradually rebuilding capacity,” says Delawari. These were essential for Afghanistan to start receiving the massive aid promised by the world at the donor conferences that followed liberation. Currency reform was also essential, to be as much a fresh start in the “New Afghanistan” as to check rampant inflation and attempt to curb the power of the mujahadeen warlords who had set up de facto ministates in their realms.
“It was extraordinarily confusing,” he says. Currency replacement is a vast and complex logistical undertaking anywhere, but this was a country where large parts were not secure (and still are not), where there are no-go areas, or areas that have no facilities or even roads. “We had an enormous problem, how to collect 18,000 tonnes of the old banknotes,” Delawari remembers. “We needed 8,000 people to do the job but they did not exist. Those who had worked for the few stateowned banks and who had experience numbered only 3,000.”
Money changers
So Delawari sat down with hawala money changers. His team went to the bazaar, in traditional Afghan clothing, to co-opt the hawala operators to effect the changeover, offering them financial incentives to cooperate. They commandeered whole banks in various cities and set up the conversion process. In Kabul, three floors of state-owned Pashtany Tejaraty Bank were set aside for Afghans to file through, deposit their old notes and accept the new ones.
There were many unexpected headaches. Delawari’s team devised a system to punch the old notes but the puncher didn’t work. Some 90 shredders also didn’t work, so industrial drills were brought in to drill holes in the surrendered notes. Delawari also found a strong red dye, used for colouring carpets in Afghanistan, to douse the notes before burning. He even tested the dye in his hotel bathtub one night. The team rented incinerators from traditional brickmakers, and built one of their own in Kabul, on secured vacant ground next to the presidential palace.
Delawari laughs when remembering the call he got in the middle of the night. “The whole thing had blown up – the banknotes were flying through the palace grounds.” So they improved the incinerators, relying on traditional insulation methods of animal hair and mud to make sure they were secure and wouldn’t blow again.
They didn’t: three years on, Afghans have got used to the new afghani, but more to currency stability. Set at Af50 to the US dollar, and free floating, the afghani has fluctuated between Af49 and Af51 to the dollar. Economic growth has averaged 17% over each of the past four years from virtually a zero base. Delawari claims annual inflation has been pegged from 29% when he took over the central bank to 9%, although Kabuli street traders say it is running at about 20%.
Delawari says stability comes from the confidence and commitment of the international community, the $10 billion spent by aid and multilateral agencies since 2001 and the further $10 billion pledged by donors through 2009. A stumbling block is corporate lending, in a country where there is no real culture of accounting or accountability. State airline Ariana, for example, filed its first formal results in 21 years last year – a modest profit – and that came after a $50 million effort at president Hamid Karzai’s direction to clean up a culture of corruption and cronyism.
But sometimes it’s not corruption that’s the problem – some of the aid efforts funded by USAid and the World Bank aim to instill basic corporate procedures into the economy – such as training traders on how to present a business plan, which means basic accounting and sometimes, before that, literacy. Delawari is working with Kabul University and the American University of Afghanistan, with courses on accounting and financial literacy, to create an accounting board with national standards.
Delawari says he’s rigorous about fighting money laundering – the washing of drug money from Afghanistan’s rampant $2 billion poppy economy, and the use of the hawala system in funding extremists in a frontline state in the war on terror. A financial intelligence unit has been set up in the central bank, manned by advisers from the US Treasury, to monitor suspicious cash movements. Transactions of $10,000 and more prompt alerts but Delawari says it is a bank’s responsibility to know who its customers are. “If we think it’s suspicious, we have laws to allow us to seize money,” he says.
Bank licensing regulations require the bank to carry out careful investigations of people who are investing in any new bank, examining a criminal past and the provenance of money transfers – something that is important in a cash economy like Afghanistan. Delawari says he is doing enough, mindful of the capacity constraints in his bank, which he estimates to be about 80% of normal international standards. “We have declined people,” he says. “We discovered a bankrupt we try to make sure the management and directors are fit and proper.”
Delawari, who has kept his American citizenship, is convinced Afghanistan will maintain its stability, indeed prosper. “Whether I will be alive or not, I firmly believe this wave of violence from Afghanistan and the region will finish,” he says. “The world forgot about this region, now what I hear from the Nato secretary-general, the US secretary of state, is a different commitment, it’s a matter of life and death. Afghanistan’s problem is now their problem, it’s the world’s problem. The world has to learn its lesson, the world has seen the impact of this [in 2001], now it’s not a matter of having the stomach, it’s a matter of your survival, of our survival."
"We have to work together, we have to find a way to end this.”
The tribulations of Delawari - As Euromoney went to press at the end of August, the vagaries of Afghanistan’s fledgling political system – and the impact they might have on the country’s economic revival – were thrown in to sharp relief by parliament’s attempts to oust central bank governor Noorullah Delawari. Delawari fell just three votes short of confirmation in a parliamentary vote. Observers say it is a problem in the Afghan parliament that technocrats such as Delawari are not well known, and much voting takes place along purely party political lines. Delawari is not politically affiliated. Some will see the final outcome of the vote as a test of Afghan president Hamed Karzai’s power base – critics say he is weak when it comes to real political battles. However, Karzai immediately responded by reinstating Delawari as acting governor of the central bank, saying there were no other viable candidates, and the banking and finance committee of parliament asked the president to formally re-nominate him as governor. A number of parliamentary groups immediately declared their support for Delawari.
[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]
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