In this bulletin:
· Berlin Conference Statement - Berlin meeting agrees to step-up efforts to build Afghan ownership of security, governance, and socio-economic recovery 1.31.07
· Afghanistan calls for bigger say in aid spending
· NATO and Pakistan agree "all must do more" to end Afghan insurgency
· Musharraf ally urges withdrawing bill that links Pakistan military aid to anti-terror work
· U.S official says Karzai remarks about talks with Taliban ‘misconstrued'
· "Afghan forces capable of deterring terrorists"
· New intel center opens on Afghan border
· Iranian Involvement in Afghanistan
· Canada pledges more than $3M for Afghan projects
· Afghanistan's plan for rebuilding "faltering"
· MPs hear bleak report on status of Afghan women
· Afghan women losing ground because of a lack of security, MPs told
· Foreign Affairs Home to New Afghan Advisor – Embassy Mag (Ottawa)
· Dior Homme’s Afghan Moment
· Life of the Parties
Afghan calls for a bigger role in spending billions of dollars of aid flowing into the war-scarred country look likely to fall on deaf ears as a reconstruction conference ends.(AFP)
Berlin Conference Statement - Berlin meeting agrees to step-up efforts to build Afghan ownership of security, governance, and socio-economic recovery 1.31.07
BERLIN – Delegates to a high-level meeting of Afghanistan and its international partners committed this week to more aggressive and determined rebuilding, at a day-and-a-half meeting in Berlin of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) attended by twenty-three countries and international institutions.
The meeting saw new initiatives aimed at addressing evolving challenges relating to insecurity, poverty, human rights, and Afghanistan’s political environment. Prominent among these were Afghan proposals for accelerated Afghanization of the national army and police, as well as in the area of economic development. Other initiatives included improved capacity development for service delivery in Afghanistan’s provinces, redoubled employment generation and alternative livelihood efforts, new momentum in reforms at the Ministry of Interior, enhanced aid effectiveness in line with Afghan priorities, strengthening electoral preparations in a time-bound manner, and intensified efforts to address the wider regional dimensions of Afghanistan’s conflict.
“Afghanistan is grateful for the intensified military efforts of our international partners. And we recognize that an equally aggressive effort needs to be put into creating the conditions for long-term economic stability and social progress,” said Professor Ishaq Nadiri, senior economic adviser to President Karzai and Afghan co-chair of the JCMB in his introductory remarks. “Afghanistan is a post-devastation country, and the Afghan people stand determined to chart a new path with the support of our international partners. To succeed, our efforts must be comprehensive and long-term.”
The Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board is a high-level body that meets four times a year to oversee implementation of the Afghanistan Compact, successor to the Bonn Agreement. The Berlin meeting was its first session outside Afghanistan, in line with intentions to hold at least one meeting annually in a major international setting.
In the 12-months since the Afghanistan Compact and interim Afghan National Development Strategy were presented at the London Conference on Afghanistan, Afghanistan has had to contend with an intensified insurgency and other serious challenges. Despite resurgent violence and record opium production levels, the JCMB has been able to oversee quiet but steady progress towards many vital goals. This includes the creation of a national appointments mechanism; technical and administrative support to the new National Assembly; the initiation of a review and reform of oversight procedures for strengthened government transparency; work on creating sustainable water resource strategies and plans for irrigation and drinking water; progress on new business organization laws; momentum towards liquidating state-owned banks that have not been re-licensed, and the adoption of an Action Plan on Peace, Justice and Reconciliation.
“In the past year Afghanistan has taken great strides in the most challenging of circumstances,” said Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General and international co-Chair of the JCMB. “As 2007 starts we have a window of opportunity to regain momentum. We have to turn the tide and to seize every opportunity in the coming months for more growth, for more effective governance.”
Afghanistan calls for bigger say in aid spending
Berlin (AFP) – Afghanistan should have a greater say in spending billions of dollars of aid money, its foreign minister said at the start of a conference on reconstruction of the war-ravaged country.
Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said in a speech to open the two-day meeting of donors that the Afghan government was being "bypassed" in the planning of projects to rebuild the country after 25 years of conflict.
"Unfortunately, the Afghan government continues to be bypassed by donor countries," he said. "Trusting Afghan institutions will be an important step towards breaking this cycle. "Terrorists will exploit this situation if the government is unable to provide services to its people."
The meeting, hosted by Germany as the current G8 president, is designed to build on a conference in London last year when the international community launched a five-year plan, or "compact", to coordinate financial and military support to Afghanistan.
Twelve months on, many regions are still ravaged by violence and Afghan President Hamid Karzai is unable to extend his authority into much of the country.
The international monitoring group Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday that little progress had been made in the past year in providing Afghans with basic needs like security, food and health care.
It said benchmarks for development set at the London conference had been missed and more than 1,000 civilians were killed last year, mostly in attacks by extremist Taliban fighters.
More than five years after a US-led coalition invaded the country and toppled the Taliban government, Afghanistan continues to receive significant international aid.
The United States said last week it planned to spend an additional 10.6 billion dollars over two years and keep more than 3,000 troops there for an additional four months. It has already spent around 14 billion dollars.
The EU has also confirmed it will contribute 600 million euros (777 million dollars) over four years, with special efforts being made to bolster the judiciary in order to fight corruption.
The Afghan foreign minister said however he was "concerned" that international donors had spent 1.6 billion dollars on consultants' fees.
The pledges come after warnings that the Taliban is expected to mount a fresh wave of attacks when the weather warms up. But US officials said ahead of the conference they were optimistic that 2007 would be a "turning point" for Afghanistan.
Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs, told journalists: "I think we look at this year and say that we are better set than last year."
The Afghan army and police was in better shape than last year, he said, but formidable problems remained in coordinating the military and civilian efforts.
Boucher said the importance of opium to the Afghan economy was declining, even though United Nations figures show the country's production of the drug jumped by nearly 50 percent last year to a record 6,100 tonnes.
"Opium accounted for one-third of the Afghan economy in 2005 and our indications are that its importance is diminishing," Boucher told AFP.
"That is important to Afghanistan but what matters to the rest of the world is how much opium is coming out of Afghanistan and at the moment that is still huge. So we have a long way to go."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the conference more must be done to combat drug cultivation in Afghanistan.
"We are concerned that opium production increased drastically over the last 12 months and we cannot allow that to continue," he said. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium, the precursor of heroin.
NATO and Pakistan agree "all must do more" to end Afghan insurgency
Jan 30, 2007 - Brussels - NATO and Pakistan vowed greater efforts to stop the cross-border infiltration of insurgents into Afghanistan, but agreed that military solutions alone could not bring peace to the violence-plagued country.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz also warned of a security risk posed by Afghan refugee camps in northern Pakistan as breeding grounds for extremists.
'We should all be proactive ... and prevent those elements which want to create havoc in Afghanistan,' said Scheffer after talks with Aziz.
'We all should step up our efforts without any exception to see we get things right,' Scheffer stressed, adding that efforts were needed on both sides to protect the 'porous and complicated' Afghanistan- Pakistan border.
The Pakistani prime minister, who held talks with NATO's decision- making North Atlantic Council for over two hours, told reporters it was significant that instead of focusing on Pakistan alone, the alliance now agreed that 'all sides have to do more' to build a strong and stable Afghanistan.
Aziz also called for help in repatriating up to 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and said both Kabul and Islamabad needed better access to world markets and more development aid.
Fighting Afghan drug production was crucial given the link between narcotics and terrorism, he said. The international community needed to forge 'a holistic approach' towards Afghanistan to boost security and economic development in the country, he said.
Toning down earlier NATO criticism of Pakistan, Scheffer insisted that the alliance - which has 32,000 troops in Afghanistan - did not intend to play a 'blame game in public' over Islamabad's responsibility in curbing Taliban activity.
In addition to stepping up military operations in Afghanistan, more development and reconstruction aid was also needed for the country, he said. Earlier, Aziz appealed to the European Union to help repatriate Afghan refugees, saying this could help clear Pakistan of some militants blamed for attacks in border regions.
Kabul has accused Islamabad of failing to clamp down on Taliban insurgents based in Pakistan who launch attacks across the border. NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels last week also urged Pakistan to stop sheltering the Taliban and to take tougher measures to stop the cross-border infiltration of extremists into Afghanistan.
NATO forces in Afghanistan have come under increasing attack from the Taliban in recent months. Many alliance planners warn that the insurgents are planning an even fiercer spring offensive against NATO forces.
Musharraf ally urges withdrawing bill that links Pakistan military aid to anti-terror work
The Associated Press - 01/30/2007 - WASHINGTON - A close ally of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says U.S. legislation that would link military aid to Pakistan's efforts fighting militants on the border with Afghanistan amounts to "punishing an ally and a friend" and should be withdrawn.
Sen. Mushahid Hussain, chairman of Pakistan's foreign relations committee and a leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, also criticized on Monday what he said was a U.S. policy that insisted on pursuing the war in Iraq before finishing the job in Afghanistan.
Responding to U.S. criticism of Pakistan's efforts against Taliban militants who are said to be using Pakistan as a base for attacks on Afghanistan, Hussain asked: "Why are we being penalized for a failure that is due to wrong policies? Let me tell you that the original sin was committed by Washington."
Hussain said in an interview with The Associated Press that a bill passed this month by the U.S. House of Representatives should be "withdrawn in the interests of Pakistan-American relations, and in the broader interests of the anti-terrorism campaign.
"Pakistan is a pivotal player in that, and you can't cast aspersions or doubts on Pakistan's commitment when we have shown that commitment at great peril" to the lives of many, he said.
The bill would link military aid to a certification from U.S. President George W. Bush that Islamabad is doing its best to counter Taliban operations in Pakistan and secure its long Afghan frontier.
It was part of legislation to implement recommendations for change by a committee that investigated government actions before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The package was sponsored by the House's Democratic leaders.
Afghanistan, Hussain said, "is winnable, provided we all work together, and provided we distinguish between our friends and foes and don't swap roles on that."
The United States and Pakistan became allies in the war against al-Qaida and other terror groups after Pakistan severed support for Afghanistan's then-ruling Taliban militia after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. The Taliban were providing sanctuary for al-Qaida kingpin Osama bin Laden and many of his followers.
The proposed U.S. legislation notes a "number of critical issues that threaten to disrupt the relationship between the United States and Pakistan, undermine international security and destabilize Pakistan." Those include Pakistan's porous borders, nuclear proliferation, Islamic extremism and slow efforts to move toward democracy.
The bill has yet to be considered by the Senate, but it is already causing "considerable heartburn" among Pakistani officials, according to Robert Hathaway, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Asia Program. "Many people see this as yet one more example of the United States as an unreliable ally," he said.
Hussain also spoke of recent comments critical of Pakistan by John Negroponte, the outgoing National Intelligence Director, and Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Maples said Pakistan's border with Afghanistan "remains a haven for al-Qaida's leadership and other extremists."
U.S. officials, Hussain said, are basing their comments "on the same intelligence that failed to foresee the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998, that has failed to track down Osama bin Laden and that has failed to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is a big gap in the credibility of that intelligence."
U.S official says Karzai remarks about talks with Taliban ‘misconstrued'
The Associated Press - 01/30/2007 - BERLIN - Recent remarks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai about negotiations with the Taliban and other groups battling his government were "misconstrued" in media reports, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan said Tuesday.
"He made a very brief comment which has been interpreted differently in different headlines, and I think it's being misconstrued," said Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann, who was in Berlin for an Afghan reconstruction conference.
Karzai, addressing worshippers gathered at a mosque to mark a Shiite Muslim holiday, said Monday that "while we are fighting for our honor and dignity against an enemy who wants our destruction and wants us to bleed, once again we want to open a way for negotiations."
Karzai, who took power after the Taliban fell and won a five-year term in 2004 elections, has made similar offers of talks before that have been rebuffed by militant leaders.
No one from Karzai's office could be reached Tuesday to elaborate on Neumann's insistence the comment was misconstrued. The government also has a reconciliation program that encourages militants to lay down arms and join the government.
Neumann said it would be wrong to think there is any room for negotiations on Afghanistan's democratic course, as agreed to at a conference in Bonn, Germany, after the hardline Taliban was removed from power.
"I think it is misconstrued that there is any openness on his part or on our part to renegotiating the democratic principles agreed to at Bonn. It is not about giving up power or changing power arrangements to a group that is fundamentally hostile to the whole process of democracy and liberalization.
"It is a question of making clear they have an alternative should they choose to use it of coming into the political process."
Karzai's remarks came at a time when U.S., NATO and other Western officials are warning of the likelihood of a Taliban spring offensive, following the bloodiest year since the regime was removed from power in 2001 in a U.S.-led war.
The Taliban last year launched a record number of attacks, and some 4,000 people, most of them militants, died in insurgency-related violence, according to a tally by The Associated Press based on reports from Afghan, NATO and coalition officials.
"Afghan forces capable of deterring terrorists"
BERLIN: The outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday praised the progress of Afghan military and police and said 2007 could bring ``a turning point'' in efforts to overcome last year's upsurge in violence.
Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, in Berlin for a reconstruction conference, said Taliban fighters showed they could not take control of areas where there was a strong Afghan Government presence, and that the challenge was to build up local government and security.
``There are no areas of Afghanistan where this extremist enemy has been able to take an existing presence of the Government of Afghanistan, with good security and good social service, and been able to push that out,'' said Lt. Gen. Eikenberry, whose command officially ends February 7. ``In 2007, as we look at a lot of the trend lines, as we look at the capabilities, that the Afghan Government has in its hands increased commitment from the international community, I remain optimistic that 2007 could well be a turning point.''
He warned that the spring could see an upsurge in Taliban attacks, after a year in which some 4,000 people died in insurgent-related violence. He said that work with Afghan police was moving more slowly than with the Afghan military.
NATO has some 31,000 troops in the country, with 11,000 U.S. troops under NATO command and an additional 12,000-13,000 Americans under U.S. command pursuing terrorist leaders and training Afghan personnel. — AP
New intel center opens on Afghan border
Staff report - Posted : Tuesday Jan 30, 2007
Afghan, Pakistani and international security personnel have a new center for sharing intelligence in the ongoing fight to stop terrorism.
The International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul, Afghanistan, opened the Joint Intelligence Operations Center on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border Thursday, according to press releases from the Air Force and ISAF.
The JIOC is manned by six Pakistani and six Afghan liaison officers, as well as 12 ISAF staff officers. As members cooperate and collaborate on matters related to border security, the team will produce intelligence reports and distribute them to the intelligence community and as necessary, to other organizations also concerned with border security.
The 24-hour operations of the JIOC represent a significant increase in shared intelligence activity, compared with the bimonthly meetings at which intelligence information was regularly shared between Pakistani, Afghan and ISAF officials.
"The JIOC will facilitate critical and timely information needed by the Afghan National Army and Pakistan army units operating along the border to prevent and disrupt insurgent activity common in the eastern and southern areas of Afghanistan," said Maj. Andrew Zeigler, ISAF's Government of Afghanistan intelligence representative and facilitator for intelligence sharing between the JIOC, ISAF and the Afghanistan-Pakistan entities.
ISAF is currently composed of more than 35,000 troops from 37 NATO countries and non-NATO nations. Its primary role is to support and assist the government of Afghanistan in providing and maintaining a secure environment in order to help in the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
The total cost of the center was about $388,440, according to the ISAF.
Iranian Involvement in Afghanistan
The Jamestown Foundation - 01/30/2007 By Muhammad Tahir - The Afghan media has published an increasing number of critical reports about Iran's secret contacts with insurgent groups in Afghanistan, specifically those groups fighting against the U.S. presence in the country. On September 5, for instance, the Pashto-language newspaper Weesa referred to unidentified local officials in Nimruz province who claimed that Tehran was financing and providing weaponry to Afghanistan's militant groups. In March 2006, the Afghan official news agency Bakhtar reported on the secret activities of Iranians, including officers belonging to the armed forces, in border towns inside Afghanistan. Bakhtar quoted a high-ranking Afghan border policeman in Herat province, General Mohammad Ayub Safi, saying that "in only the first quarter of this year [2006], more than 10 Iranian officials have been arrested in Herat who were allegedly involved in illegal activities." These developments show that Iran has been increasing its operations in Afghanistan in an effort to gain influence with the contending insurgent factions and to hasten the departure of U.S. troops from the country.
Tehran has a long history of close contact with militant groups in the region, especially with Shiite groups in central Afghanistan. According to Kabul-based analyst Ustad Faizullah Amini, who spoke to The Jamestown Foundation in December, Iran has been against the Talibanization of Afghanistan, but the presence of U.S. troops at its doorsteps has changed the direction of its foreign policy. Now, Tehran is willing to cooperate with different groups to reach the shared goal of defeating the United States in Afghanistan. After the September 11 attacks, an unidentified official source in Tehran said that Iran's new policy in Afghanistan would be to play all available cards in its hand to defeat U.S. efforts there (Asia Times, February 14, 2002). According to Amini, this fear has led Iran to act fast, and cooperate with all anti-American forces in the region regardless of their religion and language. In addition to Amini, many other regional experts argue that the current escalation of violence in some parts of Afghanistan is a direct result of Tehran's new strategy.
Background of Iranian Involvement in Afghanistan
More than a decade ago, while mujahideen leaders were toppling the Moscow-backed Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah, it was predicted that a strong Sunni fundamentalist regime in Kabul could come into conflict with Shiite Iran. This fear led Tehran to support groups such as the Shiite Hazara parties and the influential Tajik commander Ismail Khan in Herat province. When the Taliban finally gained control of Afghanistan, Iran referred to the development as a Sunni and U.S. plot to isolate Iran. The relationship between Kabul and Tehran took a more serious hit when Taliban forces killed seven Iranian diplomats who were serving in Mazar-e-Sharif in August 1998. This Taliban action led Tehran to announce its open support for all forces that would resist the Taliban and to increase its activities to bring anti-Taliban factions together. The most notable act by Tehran was to allow the influential Pashtun leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to be stationed in Iran.
Tehran gave thousands of Hazara leaders refuge, training and financial support to fight against the Taliban. Yet the involvement of the al-Qaeda network in the September 11 attacks and the impending U.S. invasion of Afghanistan led Iran to again re-shape its strategy in the region since it considered the U.S. presence in the region a much greater threat than the unorganized Taliban.
9/11 Changes Iranian Policy toward Afghanistan
Shortly before the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Tehran made some swift policy changes in the region, which were evidenced by comments said by the top political and religious leader in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. In his televised speech on September 26, Khamenei said, "The Islamic Republic of Iran will not offer any assistance to America and its alliance in their attacks [on Afghanistan]." He also accused the United States of seeking to establish itself in Central Asia?Afghanistan, Pakistan and the subcontinent?under the pretext of "establishing security."
Many regional experts argue that Tehran does not believe that a stable Afghanistan with a large, long-term U.S. troop presence is in its interests. Tehran worries that if both its neighbors, Afghanistan and Iraq, are stabilized, Iran will be sandwiched between two pro-U.S. governments. In such a situation, "If Iran has not been attacked, it will definitely be troubled by internal pressures, such as minorities, inspired by the developments in the neighborhood," said Dr. Mehmet Seyfettin, a regional analyst with the Ankara-based think-tank Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies, who was interviewed in December.
The difference between new and past Iranian policies is that now Iran is ready to cooperate and support any group, regardless of their religion and language, who can fight the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, according to Bahmen Karimi's column published recently in the local Afghan paper Arman-e-Milli. The columnist also argues that the escalation in fighting in the bordering provinces with Iran and in the Shiite populated central Afghan provinces is the direct result of the Iranian strategy. For instance, on October 2, 2006, The Guardian published an article stating that "military and diplomatic sources said they had received numerous reports of Iranians meeting tribal elders in Taliban-influenced areas, bringing offers of military or more often financial support for the fight against foreign forces." In addition, Afghan analyst Amini proposes that the armed groups who have been sidelined by the current central regime in Afghanistan create potential forces for any outsider such as Iran to harness and influence. He specifically points out some of the commanders of the former Northern Alliance, as well as Shiite forces in central Afghanistan, who feel ignored by the new administration. One of these is Abdul Rashid Dostum who, according to Aina TV on November 25, 2006, met with Iranian Ambassador to Afghanistan Reza Bahrami on November 24, 2006. The influence of Iran on the charismatic Tajik leader Ismail Khan is already widely known.
Multi-Layered Iranian Policy on Afghanistan
According to reports published in local Afghan newspapers, including Weesa, Iranian involvement is not limited to unofficial cooperation with militant forces, but in fact includes official efforts to influence the Afghan administration. Some regional experts argue that Iran is using the political tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan in its favor, leveraging the fact that Iran is the only route by which Afghanistan can maintain foreign trade. Afghanistan is becoming increasingly dependent on Iran for its transit trade route as a result of the tense Afghan-Pakistan relationship. Through this route, Afghanistan receives key imports such as electronic equipment, cars and spare parts?much of which originates in Japan. Food, clothing and other essential products are also supplied through Iran. This reality limits Washington's options to pressure Tehran since if Iran blocks its border, the Afghan economy could collapse.
In the meantime, the Iranian government is active in the financial sector as well. According to the Iranian official news agency IRNA, the chambers of commerce of the two countries have recently signed a number of documents, which are expected to make Iran a major player in the Afghan economy. Iran has become one of the largest donors in the reconstruction process in Afghanistan. An Iranian Foreign Ministry official puts the total amount of aid to Afghanistan since 2001 at about $600 million.
The Iranian media is also publishing provocative reports against the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, blaming Washington for not delivering what it promised to the Afghan people. The well-known Iranian newspaper Jamhur-e-Islami published an article on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks questioning the legacy and intentions of the United States in Afghanistan: "The Afghan people do not see any improvement in their lives and welfare as it was promised to them. Moreover, they are forced to bow to the presence of foreigners on their land and suffer the shame of occupation. Now the Afghan people know that America's goal in attacking Afghanistan and occupying it was part of the global plan America pursues for domination of the Middle East."
Iran encourages students who have graduated in Iran to be more active in establishing religious schools in Afghanistan and to strengthen Afghan-Iran ties. The education attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul was quoted by Weesa on November 6 saying that "Shiite students who have graduated from Iranian universities are the messengers of Iran in Afghanistan and they should play a more important role." The Iranian official called on the Afghan government to permit Iran to launch cable network offices that operate Iranian educational programs in order to curb U.S. cultural influence in Afghanistan. Iran has recently inaugurated its huge cultural center in Kabul, which works to promote Iranian culture and to spread official propaganda by organizing workshops and literary exchange programs. In opposition to these Iranian efforts, Western countries have done little in Afghanistan, which is a result of the extensive cultural, religious and linguistic differences. Iran has used this void to change the situation in Afghanistan in its own favor.
Conclusion
If the increasing violence?not only on the Afghan-Pak border, but also in the areas bordering Iran and in the central Shiite populated provinces?is taken into account, the view of the aforementioned Afghan analysts seems to carry value. Experts on the region believe that the insurgency in Afghanistan has many directions, one of which is leaning toward Tehran. Insurgent fighters in Afghanistan traditionally opposed to working with Iran may have also changed their policy in light of the mutual short-term interest of removing U.S. and Western influence from the country. Due to the strategic location of Iran and its importance to the Afghan economy, however, the Kabul administration has avoided speaking publicly about Iranian influence in Afghanistan, as they believe, as a result of political tension with Pakistan, Iran is Kabul's last significant open door to the world.
Canada pledges more than $3M for Afghan projects
Last Updated: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 - CBC News
Canada plans to spend $3.1 million on rural development projects in the volatile province of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
About 135 projects will be funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, an Afghan official said at a contract-signing ceremony Tuesday in Kandahar.
Much of the money will be used to rebuild water reservoirs and canals in Kandahar, hit hard by years of fighting and more recently by clashes between the Taliban and Canadian troops. Villages in the province had presented proposals for 653 projects, but only about 135 were chosen.
Mohammad Ehsan Zia, Afghan minister of rural rehabilitation and development, told tribal elders when he announced the funding that foreign countries want to see Afghans move away from poppy cultivation.
Zia said support for reconstruction projects depends upon a willingness by Afghans to find new ways of making money.
The new irrigation projects, essential to enable Afghan farmers to cultivate crops other than poppies, are expected to create work for 2,860 Afghans for 30 days, he said.
Zia said the irrigation projects will begin in the districts of Khakrez, Panjwaii and Spinboldak in Kandahar. He spoke in the basement of the Kandahar governor's meeting hall.
No Canadian government officials were present at the ceremony and initially there was confusion about the exact amount of money that Canada has pledged to give.
Zia, when he thanked Canada, said it was going to give $31.8 million, but the amount was corrected later by a CIDA official who contacted him to say Canada actually going to give $3.1 million.
"It is just a matter of language," Helene Kadi, a CIDA development officer at the provincial reconstruction base, told the Canadian Press. "It was a typo."
Kadi said Afghan officials didn't invite Canadian officials to the ceremony. The U.S., through the United States Agency for International Development, has pledged to give $500,000 Cdn to the projects, she added.
Canada has said it will spend close to $1 billion over 10 years in Afghanistan to rebuild the country, reduce poverty and enable the Afghan government to establish its authority.
Canada has set up an embassy in Kabul, as part of its mission in Afghanistan, and has more than 2,000 troops stationed in Kandahar. Forty-four Canadian soldiers have died since Canada first sent troops to the country in early 2002.
Afghanistan's plan for rebuilding "faltering"
AFP - 01/30/2007 By Bronwen Roberts - KABUL - Afghanistan and its international backers have made little progress in the past year in providing Afghan people with basic needs like security, food and health care, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
Benchmarks for the country's development set at a conference in London a year ago had largely been missed and insecurity had spiralled to its deadliest since the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, it said.
The New York-based group's statement was released to coincide with a meeting of the Afghan government and its backers in Berlin on Tuesday and Wednesday to review progress in the Afghanistan Compact they agreed in London.
Under the five-year plan, Afghanistan promised to take specific steps to improve security, governance, the rule of law, human rights and economic and social development in return for military and economic support.
"Kabul and its international backers have made little progress in providing basic needs like security, food, electricity, water and health care," said Human Rights Watch Asia research director Sam Zarifi.
The rights watchdog said the United States, the European Union and other donors should provide "greater economic, political and military assistance necessary to protect the human rights of Afghans."
The government of President Hamid Karzai should "improve the rule of law and hold militias and warlords accountable for abuses." The United States last week extended the tour of duty of 3,200 troops and pledged 10.6 billion dollars over two years, mostly to build the Afghan army.
The European Union said Monday it would contribute 600 million euros (775 million dollars) in aid over the next four years, largely to bolster the judiciary to fight corruption.
The pledges came amid warnings that the Taliban could attempt a strong push this year after taking the country to its lowest point since the hardliners were removed from government.
More than 1,000 civilians were killed in 2006, many of them as a result of attacks by the Taliban and other anti-government forces in southern Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch said.
More than 4,400 Afghans died in conflict-related violence, it said, adding the United Nations estimated that the armed conflict displaced 15,000 families -- about 80,000 people -- in southern Afghanistan.
The International Crisis Group of political analysts said the insurgency had attracted attention after a year of "terrible violence" while the "long-term efforts to build the solid governmental institutions a stable Afghanistan requires are faltering."
The insurgency, sustained by sanctuaries and support from outside the country, had undercut the "assumption of relative stability" on which the Compact was based, it said.
"And state-building was warped from the start because of a refusal to exclude undesirable elements from positions of power in the new institutions."
The rising violence had led the government to resort to "short-sighted, quick fixes that work around the new democratic institutions" needed for eventual stability, senior analyst Joanna Nathan said.
An example was the decision to recruit 11,000 "auxilliary police" in insecure areas, the group said in a report entitled "Afghanistan's Endangered Compact".
The limited training and questionable command structures of the armed and salaried force raised concerns it would form into militias, it said.
The international community must "demand serious steps of the Karzai government to end the flourishing culture of impunity which is the enemy of genuine reform."
"There must also be greater attention paid to building institutions at provincial and district level if real change is to be seen in the population's lives," the report added.
MPs hear bleak report on status of Afghan women
CanWest News Service - Tuesday, January 30, 2007
OTTAWA — Two Afghan women on Tuesday painted a grim portrait of the continuing plight of women in their war-torn country for the Commons defence committee.
Rina Amiri, who has served for United Nations agencies in the aftermath of 9/11 in Afghanistan, and Adeena Niazi, of the Afghan Women's Organization, told the MPs of forced marriages, honour killings, extreme poverty, and virtual slavery to drug lords, among other things.
The testimony stood in stark contrast to the standard Conservative government line in selling the war in Afghanistan to Canadians: That Canadian troops have played a key role in elevating the status of women in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.
Yes, women make up 27 per cent of country's newly elected Parliament, a higher rate than Canada.But the West's efforts to foster democracy in Afghanistan don't resonate with poor rural women who have seen no noticeable change in their families' standard of living, said Amiri.
Niazi said life for women and girls outside of the capital of Kabul is still desperate with hundreds of thousands of households headed by war widows who can't make ends meet.
Girls are still seen as exchangeable assets to be bought and sold in arranged marriages by their families, or as human currency to pay debts owed to the country's powerful drug lords, she said. Two out of five women die in childbirth or from related complications.
Some 60- to 80-per-cent of marriages are arranged and nearly 60 per cent of girls are married before their 16th birthdays, said Niazi, who settled in Toronto after her family fled Afghanistan after the 1979 Soviet Union invasion.
She returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and became one of two Canadian women to be elected to its first post-Taliban Loya Jirga, or Grand Assembly.
In late 2001, Amiri left behind a comfortable life in San Francisco and also returned to the country she fled as a young child in 1973 after the overthrow of Afghanistan's current king. She is now the lead Afghan consultant of the Open Society Institute, a non-governmental organization.
Niazi said the discussion of Afghanistan's woes is often too simplistic and she called on MPs to push the government to "a more balanced approach in bringing peace and security."
She applauded Canada's $100 million a year in development spending, which puts it in the Top 5 of Afghan aid donors, but "this is only a fraction of the estimated $4 billion" that Canada will spend on its military mission by 2009.
Amiri also had tough words for anyone who would consider calling for a withdrawal of Canadian troops, as the NDP has done: she said Western countries must maintain a "resolute commitment" to keep soldiers on the ground.
"You cannot improve the situation of women without improving the security situation as a whole," she said.
Afghan women losing ground because of a lack of security, MPs told
Canadian Press - Tuesday, January 30, 2007
OTTAWA (CP) - Rina Amiri recalls her delight when she was greeted by 100 Afghan women gathered in a village school, all anxious to speak to the humanitarian worker about how they could help improve their community life.
But five years later, that school has closed because of security concerns, along with nearly 200 others across the country.
The schoolgirls who were featured by the media in their classrooms after the fall of the Taliban have now largely drifted away, with only 35 per cent now getting any sort of education.
"You cannot improve the situation of women without improving the security situation as a whole," Amiri, of the Open Society Institute, told the Commons defence committee on Tuesday.
That view was echoed by other witnesses, who supported the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, but said that rebuilding civil society and humanitarian assistance should be emphasized rather than military operations.
"Women and children must be protected as a matter of highest priority," said Ariane Brunet of Rights and Democracy.
Said Adeena Niazi of the Afghan Women's Organization: "I believe one of the reasons for insecurity is how easy it has been for the Taliban to recruit people because of economic reasons.
Niazi painted a grim picture of the status of Afghan women outside of the capital Kabul. Women and girls are routinely kidnapped, confined, forced into unwanted marriages, raped, sexually abused and even killed for reasons of family "honour."
Forty per cent of mothers die in childbirth or from post-natal complications. Brunet said the dizzying number of soldiers in Afghanistan, ranging from international forces to militias and the bands of local warlords, has exacerbated women's problems, leading to a "brutalization" and "militarization" of society.
And she notes that women's rights are often held up by hardliners as evidence of an attempt to westernize the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai responded to that pressure by reinstating the feared department of vice and virtue to monitor adherence to traditional rules. But she said the West shouldn't give up on Afghanistan.
Brunet said it will take time to strengthen public institutions and give people who have traditionally had little connection to the state a sense of citizenry and a recognition of civic rights.
"Canadians have strongly indicated their support for women in Afghanistan. They should continue their support not with more money or more military but with more time," Brunet said.
Amiri underlined that the situation for women in Afghanistan is not deteriorating on all fronts. She noted that 27 per cent of representatives in the Afghan parliament are women, and they have an equal voice in the political process.
"The improvements made in the political realm are unprecedented," Amiri said. "I do think these are significant gains and not merely symbolic."
Foreign Affairs Home to New Afghan Advisor – Embassy Mag (Ottawa)
The Department of Foreign Affairs has been given a key role in co-ordinating all government efforts in Afghanistan following Prime Minister Stephen Harper's shake up of senior public servants last week.
But insiders question why David Mulroney will be taking over his new position as an associate deputy minister at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade as opposed to the Privy Council Office, and warn other departments might not welcome DFAIT taking the lead in Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan needs high-level leadership and co-ordination, absolutely," said Gordon Smith, a former assistant deputy minister at foreign affairs and current director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. "But the real question is whether it can be done out of foreign affairs, given that you've got defence and CIDA, in particular, as major players. You certainly can do it at a senior level out of the Privy Council Office."
Ever since Canada committed itself to Afghanistan in 2001, many government departments have been involved in various efforts to fight the Taliban insurgency and rebuild the war-torn country.
The departments of National Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Canadian International Development Agency, have emerged as the largest players when it comes to Canadian involvement.
With Parliament resuming this week, Afghanistan is expected to be a prominent issue for debate and discussion, and with a possible election looming on the horizon, Canadian efforts within the central Asian country will again play a key role in Canadian politics.
Mr. Smith and others say National Defence has emerged as the lead department as it not only fights the Taliban and works to provide security in Afghanistan, but also contributes advisors to the Afghan government and spearheads some rebuilding efforts through its Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
"I think it remains to be seen whether one can do this kind of serious co-ordination...really bringing together our aid effort and our military effort," Mr. Smith said. "To make that happen, it requires the prime minister because it's giving what is effectively a line department the responsibility to co-ordinate across a couple of departments. That's normally very tough."
Mr. Smith said Mr. Mulroney's success will depend on how much clout he has within the system, and what the prime minister has told his ministers. From his own experience, Mr. Smith says he was better able to co-ordinate different departments from the Privy Council Office.
"You get that clout if you're working in the PCO," he said. "So the issue is not one of Mulroney's title. The real issue is whether the key other departments, defence and CIDA, will accept that position."
PCO spokeswoman Myriam Massabki said Mr. Mulroney's new position moves him out from PCO and wholly into DFAIT where he will report to the deputy minister of foreign affairs
"There are several issues needing interdepartmental co-ordination, and the lead department is responsible for this horizontal co-ordination," Ms. Massabki said. "[Mr. Mulroney] will be responsible for the interdepartmental co-ordination of Afghanistan, but will report to the deputy minister of foreign affairs."
Douglas Bland, chair of the Defence Management Studies program at Queen's University's School of Policy Studies in Kingston, Ont., said almost all government departments are somehow involved in Afghanistan, though it's unclear who has been co-ordinating those efforts up until now.
He said he was surprised to see Mr. Mulroney appointed to foreign affairs to co-ordinate the mission because Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay does not appear to the have the authority to direct deputy ministers in other departments and agencies.
"When you are trying to call on the whole of government resources to make the strategy work, then you need somebody to co-ordinate that," he said. "But more than that, you need somebody with authority to do that.
"I would have thought the place for the whole of government approach to Afghanistan is in the Privy Council Office," he added. "I just don't understand how that office is going to function. Perhaps I'll understand it better in the months ahead. But it seems to me like a central agency job, not a departmental job.
"I would be more confident if the Clerk of the Privy Council had established a whole-of-government office in the PCO with direction from the prime minister to sort things out." lee@embassymag.ca
Life of the Parties
Wall Street Journal - 01/30/2007 By Ann Marlowe
In Afghanistan, many of the problems coming home to roost now are the result of too little American intervention rather than too much. That does not mean too little American aid. In any case, private enterprise is doing very well, thank you: Afghans are a practical people with good capitalist instincts. They can pull themselves out of poverty given the right laws and the rule of law -- as well as the institutions that go to make up a functional civil society.
Of these institutions, one that is most crucial is political parties. Even one-party states have them, and with reason. They bring people together across ethnic and class lines, and often serve as a counterweight to clan ties and religious affiliation. Moreover, they lead citizens to think in national terms, rather than to vote reflexively along ethnic lines. Finally, political parties could be an essential weapon in our counterinsurgency in the border provinces.
But Afghanistan -- thanks to some dubious decisions by the Afghan government, and our acquiescence -- is the land parties forgot. This is even more of a pity because of the dearth of other institutions. Afghanistan is poor not just in per capita income -- about $350 a year, double what it was three years earlier -- but in structures that link unrelated people. All sorts of organizations Americans take for granted simply don't exist. There are no groups like PTAs, children's sport leagues, alumni associations and country clubs. Nor are there those that constitute "special interest politics," such as trade unions, manufacturers' associations, or lobbyists for economic or ethical concerns. Afghanistan is kept poor by the lack of trust among unrelated citizens and the absence of a sense of common interest. All it has are family and ethnic loyalties -- wonderful in many ways for those nurtured within strong families, but not so wonderful for economic growth and civil society.
With very little pulling Afghans together, greed and extremism are more potent forces than in more densely networked societies. The absence of norms of good civic behavior allows some of the Afghan elite to take advantage of their inherited positions to loot their homeland. The corruption of many of Hamid Karzai's associates is undermining efforts to build the Afghan state. How can anyone expect ordinary Afghans to work for the national interest when their country is being robbed blind?
The U.N. feared that strong political parties could revive the civil war, but it is more accurate to say that the absence of overt party politics has allowed the worst covert organizations to flourish. Some 34 former or current members of Hezb-e-Islami, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's violent fundamentalist party, won seats in Afghanistan 's parliamentary elections last September. Perhaps half of parliament's lower house are fundamentalists. And in an environment where legitimate businesses lack an open voice in the legislative process through trade organizations and lobbyists, guess which illegal business is rumored to be financing many MPs? (U.S. and NATO experts are discussing previously unthinkable ideas like buying and destroying the opium crop, since the feeble interdiction programs are not working and the opium money is financing, indeed in some places creating, the insurgency.)
Without competing, coherent ideologies, the Taliban can eat away at the elected government. If it's a choice between Mr. Karzai and associates -- people, not a party -- and a group that claims to fight corruption, who is the average villager going to trust?
There is another factor involved in the seeming revival of the Taliban, and it's not ideology. Afghans are not particularly ideological. The Taliban are popular only within a narrow geographic and ethnic band which mirrors their Hotak Ghilzai tribal membership. As two innovative scholars of Pashtun society, Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason, argue, the districts where the Taliban has gained support are exactly those which are Ghilzai, a powerful tribe that lost out to the Durrani tribe 300 years ago and has tried to bounce back ever since. This is about power, not ideology: The Ghilzai provided the leaders both to Afghanistan 's communist movement and the jihadis who opposed them. Now they are attacking NATO troops because we support a Durrani-dominated government. (Mr. Karzai and the royal family are Durranis, and so are most of his Pashtun associates and Afghanistan 's power elite.)
Most Afghans can at least see the benefit of civil society and the rule of law. Anyone who is not a member of the largest ethnic bloc, the Pashtuns -- 40% of the population -- has more to gain from strengthening the central government and the concept of Afghan nationhood. (Not incidentally, the relatively prosperous north and west are Tajik, Hazara, Turkmen and Uzbek, with few Pashtuns.) That's 60% of the population, plus progressive Pashtuns and Pashtuns from marginalized tribes. The Ghilzais must be co-opted, too, in order to weaken the insurgency. This must be done cautiously, of course, as they are no more interested in sharing power than are the Durranis.
There are no insuperable barriers to pushing and pulling Afghans toward a functioning democracy and civil society. The problem is that the U.S. and the U.N. have saddled Afghanistan with a voting and parliamentary system that does exactly the opposite, offering no alternative to voting by ethnicity and failing to make it worthwhile for ethnic groups to form coalitions. Elections were set up by the U.N. using a voting system ("Single Non-Transferable Vote," or SNTV) where each citizen chooses just one candidate from a long list of contenders to represent his district. (In Kabul , for instance, 387 candidates were on the ballot, but each voter chose one.)
Under these circumstances, Afghans have voted ethnically. In the October 2004 presidential election, "no candidate received significant support outside of their particular ethno-linguistic group," as Thomas Johnson of the Naval Postgraduate School has pointed out. Worse yet, Pashtuns and Tajiks -- the two most numerous ethnic groups -- are not only overwhelmingly likely to vote for candidates from their own groups, but against candidates from a perceived rival group. The Pashtun Mr. Karzai did not receive a majority of the vote of any ethnic group save his own. He still won 55.4% of the vote, with the other major candidates gaining 16.3%, 11.7% and 10%.
When the September 2005 parliamentary elections were set up, no political party affiliations were allowed on the ballots; instead, candidates had a randomly picked symbol next to their names and photos (helpful to the many illiterate voters). The prohibition of party politics was largely at Mr. Karzai's urging. As the best-known politician in Afghanistan , it was to his advantage to avoid giving potential opponents the buoying effect of a party affiliation, and to have a rubber-stamp parliament of unknowns. However, while parliament is often ineffectual, it has neither expedited the policies of his cabinet nor been able to present alternatives. Instead, it has been a vibrant but disorganized forum in which neophyte politicians struggle to understand the way legislation is enacted and religious fundamentalists try to block anything that smacks of secularism.
"Parliament came five years too soon," an American advisor to a cabinet minister told me. "It's slowing down approval processes and creating a forum for debate that has yet to prove useful." Given low levels of education and business experience in Afghanistan , even among elites, it's not surprising many MPs have difficulty understanding a budget, much less proposing improvements to it. But having parties in place would have allowed the more capable members to instruct the less prepared.
The absence of political parties was also shortsighted for Mr. Karzai himself, making his effectiveness depend on personal popularity. He was at his zenith when the system was designed; now he is grudgingly accepted as the least of the possible evils by a resigned electorate. Mr. Karzai would be better off with a party organization behind him: In the U.S. even an unpopular president can get things done because party discipline supports him. And a successor to an unpopular president can be groomed within a party even as challengers from competing parties ready their bids. Instead, the Afghan situation is that of a barely competent president with no more competent successor.
Prof. Johnson also points out that most Afghan voters are not represented by a candidate they voted for. Due to a combination of SNTV voting and a 50% turnout, only about 18% of eligible voters in Afghanistan are represented by a candidate they voted for; 64% chose a candidate who lost. Prof. Johnson notes that "many candidates won virtually by chance," with the top finishers in some provinces gathering only a few percent of the votes cast. This might be tolerable in a mature democracy, but is not what one wants in a country with scant trust in the electoral system and little sense of national identity. The next parliamentary elections aren't until 2010, so there is time to set up a better voting system. SNTV should be replaced, requirements stiffened for obtaining a place on the ballot to avoid such farces as choosing among 387 candidates, and runoffs considered.
An Afghan-American member of parliament, Daoud Sultanzoy, has advanced another good idea: take representation down to the district level. Currently, the people of each of Afghanistan 's 34 provinces vote for members of parliament from their province, and the highest vote-getters become representatives of that province according to its population. But representatives are not linked with particular districts as they are in the U.S, though some provinces are the size of whole European countries and differ widely in population, terrain and economy. Nor are there mayoral elections for small towns in Afghanistan , so there is no one to represent the national government on a local level.
Afghanistan 's biggest problem is not the Taliban, but underdeveloped institutions and a lack of rule of law. It is emphatically not "another Iraq ." Most of Afghanistan is relatively peaceful. Just 192 American troops have been killed in action since fall 2001, and in 2006, 206 Afghan civilians were murdered in suicide bombings. Tragic, yes, but in 2003, the last year for which statistics are available, 16,000 Afghan women died in childbirth -- 44 a day.
As this comparison suggests, we need to foster civil society and robust institutions in order to assure a decent life for Afghanistan's citizens. An essential part of this is nurturing political parties.
Ms. Marlowe is the author of "The Book of Trouble" (Harcourt, 2006), a memoir.
Dior Homme’s Afghan Moment
Godfrey Deeny - Jauary 31st, 2007
There’s something about Hedi Slimane in that he gets away with stuff for which other designers are pilloried. A few seasons back when Giorgio Armani created Afghan pants, the fashion pack regarded them as a preposterous proposal. But on Tuesday night in Paris, after Slimane ended his fall 2007 men’s collection for Dior Homme with a score of party youths, all in the dropped crotch pant, a huge wad of industry heavies queued up to shower Hedi with praise.
“I always wanted to make them. You call them Afghan pants?” said an elegant and radiant Slimane, the creative director of Dior Homme, who could just have been getting in touch with his Tunisian roots.
It was a tad ironic that on a day of press reports questioning the authenticity of several works of Jackson Pollock on the grounds they contained pigments not available during the artist’s lifetime, that Hedi should kick off his show with a Teddy Boy coiffed youth in black coat bearing an abstract expressionist “print.”
That said, apart from the narrow-calf Afghan trous, the collection did mark something of a stylistic pause for Slimane, whose innovative tailoring and edgy aesthetic has made him the unquestioned leader in men’s wear these past few years. In his Dior Homme show Tuesday, the last important collection of the Italian and French seasons, most of the innovation was in the details.
Slimane has further refined his micro suit, shrinking the lapel, shortening the leg and wearing them with his take on Doc Martens. They were cool and flattering and, finished with satin lapels, sure-fire best sellers. Each season, Slimane refines a key footwear in our wardrobe – his one stripe sneakers are ubiquitous at shows – but his take on Doc Martens did not seem that new, especially in a week that began with Yohji Yamamoto announcing his partnership with that brand.
As ever, a gang of designers came to pay homage to Slimane – Azzedine Alaia, Karl Lagerfeld and Ricardo Tisci sat front row. But the sense of repetition did not end there. Slimane’s tradition of ending his show with a score of scrawny models in similar attire now feels formulaic, as does his commissioned soundtracks from the latest hot, new band. In this case it was These New Puritans and, we’ll grant you, it sounded great.
Yet, the mood, nonetheless, felt familiar rather than path breaking. Perhaps all the quibbles and contractual negotiations, with no sign of any immediate solution, have taken their creative toll on Slimane. That would only be human.
[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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