The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women.

Clinton: job creation is key to Afghan stability

AP via Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is telling Congress that local job creation is a key purpose of the $980 million in extra funds the State Department is requesting for its work in Afghanistan. Clinton is testifying before a House appropriations subcommittee that is reviewing the administration’s request for $7.1 billion in additional funds for the State Department this budget year. She told the panel that a main goal is to improve security at the local level in Afghanistan by putting more people to work. And she said the Obama administration believes that many in the Taliban insurgency who are fighting against American and Afghan forces are motivated more by money than by ideology.

Obama to Seek New Afghanistan-Pakistan Trade Pact at May Summit

Bloomberg

04/22/2009

By Bill Varner and Julianna Goldman

President Barack Obama will seek to mediate a new trade agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan when he meets their leaders in Washington next month, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan said. Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will be asked to update their “very antiquated,” 44-year-old trade treaty, Ambassador Anne Patterson said. Agreement on enhanced cooperation on border security will be a related goal, she said. A new treaty “would help enormously by having cheaper goods shipped into Afghanistan and help Pakistan by giving it access to Central Asia,” Patterson said in an interview with Bloomberg News in New York. Obama in March announced a strategy that would boost U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and increase aid to Pakistan to battle al-Qaeda terrorists and other Islamic militants using the border region between the two countries as a base. The three-way summit also will focus on Pakistan’s efforts to combat terrorism, Patterson said as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Zardari’s government is “abdicating” to the Taliban and other extremists. She was referring to Zardari’s peace agreement with militants that saw Islamic law introduced in seven districts of North West Frontier Province after almost two years of fighting.

Crucial Pieces

Thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda members crossed into Pakistan’s tribal region after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. Obama’s approach links the two nations as crucial pieces in the battle against terrorism. Patterson said the Obama administration has shifted the U.S. approach to Pakistan by emphasizing a “long-term commitment” to that country’s economic development. “One of the problems with U.S. policy has been the fear that we will rush to the door when things get difficult,” Patterson said. “The cornerstone of the strategic review the administration just put forward is a sharp increase in economic and social development assistance.” The Obama administration is trying to determine the balance for conditions that would be tied to a proposed U.S. assistance package of $7.5 billion over five years, according to Clinton. The terms must be strong enough to yield results while not being so tough as to prompt a backlash that would stop cooperation, she said.

Performance Measures

Officials are developing “measures of performance” that would be submitted to Congress for review. Lawmakers have pressed for stricter conditions on U.S. funding. “We’re not interested in putting money into what hasn’t worked and seeing the situation deteriorate,” Clinton told the committee. The militants are making inroads because citizens don’t see a good alternative, Clinton said. “They don’t think the state has a judiciary that works,” she said. “It’s corrupt, it doesn’t extend its power into the countryside.” The government “must begin to deliver government services; otherwise, they are going to lose out to those who show up.” Patterson said the U.S. believes job creation for “young men who are risk of extremism” is one of the best ways for Pakistan to combat terrorism. It will be the first face-to-face meeting between Obama and the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan since his January inauguration.

US lacks civilians for Afghan ‘civilian surge’

By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is having trouble finding the hundreds of civilians it wants to bolster its troop buildup in Afghanistan, so military reservists might be asked to do many of the jobs. In announcing the new strategy for the war last month, the administration said it would send several hundred civilians - such as agronomists, economists and legal experts - to work on reconstruction and development issues as part of the military’s counterinsurgency campaign. Defense Department press secretary Geoff Morrell said Thursday that the military is trying to find ways to fill the gap. That would likely be with reservists, who often have the necessary skills because of the experience they have in their civilian lives, officials said. “It’s just a realization that they are not going to be able to provide the ‘civilian surge’ in the near future and the need is now,” Morrell said. “We’re looking at ways to step into the breach and figure out how we can get additional personnel there to help out on the civilian side.” The Pentagon has been asked to see if it can find 200 to 300 reservists, and officials are canvassing the force to find the needed experts - educators, engineers, lawyers and others, said Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman. The phenomenon of looking to the military is far from new and was a sore point in Iraq after the Pentagon was asked to do tasks the State Department lacked staff to do. The military, among government departments, has long had more money to train and hire people and a greater ability to order its employees to war zones and other hardship posts. In an attempt to address this, the State Department in 2006 created a Civilian Response Corps with the aim of building a cadre of hundreds of civilian government workers with expertise in different areas of post-conflict reconstruction. But funding for the project, led by veteran diplomat John Herbst, was slow to come from Congress. It currently has only 35 of its planned 250 active members from various government departments. With $75 million more just allocated to the corps, officials said Thursday they are now ramping up staffing and hope to have hired, trained and equipped at least 100 personnel by the end of the year.

In addition to the active component, the corps has a 300-strong standby unit for short-term emergency deployments that officials want to boost to 500 by the end of the year with an eventual goal of 2,000. The administration over the coming months is sending about 17,000 additional combat troops and 4,000 more trainers to mentor Afghan security forces - a buildup long delayed by the war in Iraq as the Afghan campaign became more and more violent in recent years. Officials haven’t released the number of civilians they want to bolster the new effort and have said there is no firm number yet. But two officials said privately that the number of 500 to 600 was being considered at one point as the new war strategy was being developed in recent months. In addition to the nation’s 1.4 million-strong active duty armed forces, there are some 850,000 “citizen soldier” reservists across the services. It was unclear whether reservists with needed skills would be activated to fill the Afghanistan positions. It is also possible that they could instead be hired as private contractors rather than going in uniform, one official said Thursday on condition of anonymity because plans are still sketchy. “We are going to be looking beyond the government resources, we’re going to be looking to our reserve components, where we can tap individuals based on their civilian skill set,” Michele Flournoy, under secretary for defense policy, said in a speech Tuesday. Flournoy said the U.S. didn’t build a cadre of civilian experts for such missions when the need first came to light years ago in places like Somalia, Haiti and the Balkans. In another development, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress Thursday that local job creation is a key purpose of the $980 million in extra funds the State Department is requesting for its work in Afghanistan.

IMF approves $16.7 mln loan tranche for Afghanistan

[Reuters] WASHINGTON, April 22 - The International Monetary Fund has approved a disbursement of about $16.7 million to Afghanistan under a lending program for low-income countries, the fund said on Wednesday. The announcement came after the IMF completed the fifth review of Afghanistan’s economic performance under a Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility arrangement. The review allows for the immediate disbursement of about $16.7 million and bring to about $103.2 million in total funds for Afghanistan under the program. The IMF approved a loan of around $120 million to Afghanistan in June 2006 under the arrangement. IMF Deputy Managing Director Murilo Portugal said in a statement that Afghanistan’s economic and security challenges. “A drought and worsening security cut economic growth to 3 percent in fiscal year 2008/09, while higher food prices drove average inflation up to more than 20 percent,” Portugal said. “Despite these adverse conditions, the authorities have pursued prudent monetary and financial sector policies which helped to lower inflation to single digit levels in recent months,” Portugal said.

U.S. urged to focus on governance in Afghanistan

The Washington Post

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

Reuters

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration needs to link its counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan with efforts to improve governance there to be successful in defeating the Taliban, a former Afghan finance minister said on Wednesday. Ashraf Ghani, a contender in August presidential elections, credited President Barack Obama with taking steps to create a “second chance” to build a stable Afghanistan after lost years since the U.S. invasion in 2001. “To commit more forces in this time is an act of both courage and statesmanship,” the former World Bank and U.N. official said in remarks at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. In a new strategy for Afghanistan unveiled last month, Obama said he would send in 17,000 more troops and make stabilization of Afghanistan and the war on Islamist militants there a top foreign policy priority. Ghani, author of a new Atlantic Council report on Afghanistan, said, however, that “forces in themselves are not the answer. It is the strategy that is going to use them that is the issue.” He said the troop increase needed to be wed to a counterinsurgency strategy that supported renewed efforts in four key areas to build up the governing capacity of the Afghan state. “The game changer is to produce a legitimate election that the next government of Afghanistan can have a mandate,” said Ghani, who is seen as an outside contender in the August 20 presidential vote. Second, the international community needs to develop a coherent strategy to reverse a situation in which development aid efforts are often wasteful, unaccountable and prone to funneling most of the donors’ money to foreign experts and contractors, he said. Ghani said the third element was new national programs modeled on relatively unheralded successes in Afghanistan such as the National Solidarity Program for rural development and the national telecommunications network. Finally, eight of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces should be set up as model provinces — laboratories for reforms. “If we can demonstrate success in eight provinces, we will regain the initiative vis-a-vis the insurgency,” he said. Ghani’s report for the Atlantic Council titled, “A Ten-Year Framework for Afghanistan: Executing the Obama Plan and Beyond,” is posted at http://www.acus.org/publication/afghanistan-report (Editing by Eric Beech)

G.I.’s to Fill Civilian Gap to Rebuild Afghanistan

By THOM SHANKER April 22, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is finding that it must turn to military personnel to fill hundreds of posts in Afghanistan that had been intended for civilian experts, senior officials said Wednesday. In announcing a new strategy last month, President Obama promised “a dramatic increase in our civilian effort” in Afghanistan, including “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to augment the additional troops he is sending. But senior Pentagon and administration officials now acknowledge that many of those new positions will be filled by military personnel - in particular by reservists, whose civilian jobs give them the required expertise - and by contractors. The shortfall offers more evidence that the government’s civilian departments have not received enough money to hire and train people ready to take up assignments in combat zones. Unlike the armed services, nonmilitary agencies do not have clear rules to compel rank-and-file employees to accept hardship posts. Senior officials said Wednesday that the president’s national security team had not determined exactly how many people would be required to carry out the reconstruction portion of the strategy, nor which departments and agencies would be required to supply the people. But not enough of those civilians are readily available inside the government, officials said, forcing the administration to turn to the military, Pentagon civilians and private contractors, at least for the initial deployments. The Pentagon has already been asked to identify up to 300 people in the military, likely reservists, who have skills critical to civilian reconstruction and who could be ordered quickly to Afghanistan, according to a senior Pentagon official. Depending on the final decision for numbers required to fulfill the reconstruction mission, that military component could be half or even more of the expanded civilian development effort in Afghanistan.

The officials predicted that the requirement for the “civilian surge” would eventually include hundreds of people with experience in areas that include small-business management, legal affairs, veterinary medicine, public sanitation, counternarcotics efforts and air traffic control. In addition, officials said, the number of diplomatic positions at the American Embassy in Kabul and at provincial reconstruction outposts could increase by several hundred more. Some officials supplied details of the plan on the condition of anonymity because the decisions were not final. The need to identify military people as one of several interim options to carry out the civilian mission in Afghanistan was foreshadowed this week by Michele A. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, who served as a director of the Obama administration’s review of strategy in Afghanistan. “We’re going to be looking to our reserve components, where we can tap individuals based on their civilian skill set,” Ms. Flournoy said during a speech on Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan policy institute here. She said the government was still “playing a game of catch-up” after years of not setting aside money to create this civilian expertise, and she described the reliance on reservists as part of “a whole host of stopgap measures” necessary until teams of civilian experts could be created. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, has been a champion of finding money for the government to hire and train experts to work on civilian reconstruction in combat zones. This month, he called on leaders of the Senate budget committee to lobby for increases in State Department financing, and he has urged university experts to volunteer for service in Afghanistan. “Our ultimate success in Afghanistan is predicated on how much civilian support we can bring to bear,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. “While we will do whatever we can to supplement that civilian capacity in the interim, ultimately it requires other departments of the government to fill this need.” The issue was a source of friction between the Pentagon and the State Department in early 2007, shortly after President George W. Bush announced his order to send five additional combat brigades to Iraq in a new strategy that included an expanded civilian mission. At the time, Mr. Gates shared his irritation with Congress over a State Department request for military personnel to fill more than one-third of the 350 new diplomatic positions that Mr. Bush had ordered to be created in Iraq.

Afghanistan backs Clinton warning on Pakistan

WARSAW (AFP) - Afghanistan on Thursday said it welcomed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assertion that the Pakistan government was ceding more and more territory to Islamic extremists. “Afghanistan highly welcomes this position of Secretary Clinton to recognize the source of the threat in our region,” Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said Thursday in Warsaw after talks with his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski. “We Afghans are the main victims of international terrorism, we try to convey the reality of our region to the world,” Spanta told reporters. “On many occasion we try to encourage our allies to recognize the main training centre and protector of terrorists is grouped beyond Afghanistan’s borders,” he said. “Without frank and honourable cooperation from the Pakistan side to succeed against terrorism, this is an illusion,” Afghanistan’s diplomatic chief said. Clinton said Wednesday that Taliban advances pose “an existential threat” to Pakistan and urged Pakistanis worldwide to oppose a government policy yielding to them. Pakistani officials said Wednesday that Taliban militants in Pakistan’s Swat valley have moved closer to Islamabad in a bid to broaden their control despite a deal designed to allow sharia law to end extremist violence. Sikorski meanwhile urged NATO allies participating in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan to beef up their contingents in order to speed Afghanistan’s stabilization. “If other NATO and coalition countries do what we have done which is to increase forced by a quarter…without caveat, then the Afghan authorities and the NATO commanders will have the tools to do the job,” Sikorski said. This month Polish President Lech Kaczynski approved the deployment of an extra 400 troops to Afghanistan, boosting the number of Poles with the NATO-led force there to 2,000. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan until 2001 when the US led an invasion in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network. The Taliban had been playing host to bin Laden.

Afghan “terps” risk lives to work with U.S. forces

By Golnar Motevalli Thu Apr 23, 6:24 am ET

FARAH CITY, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Ahmad Shakib says he knows he is risking his life to work for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but with a casual shrug and an idiomatic American twang, he laughs off the danger. “Afraid of the Taliban? No, I’m the man,” said Shakib, 22, one of thousands of Afghans recruited to work with U.S. and NATO forces as interpreters, or “terps.” Terps have been killed alongside U.S. and NATO colleagues on operations, and others have been targeted by militants who accuse them of collaborating with foreign forces. The U.S. government offers military interpreters the prospect of an immigrant’s visa to the United States after two years. Shakib says that’s what tempts some. But he’d do it anyway. “I like this job. I like helping the people, helping the Americans. The way they do their job, I just love it,” he said. “My family worry about me. The say you’re in danger. But it’s the way I like it.” His job means he can no longer go back to Kandahar, the southern city that was the birthplace of the Taliban in the 1990s, where he went to school and his brother still lives. “(A relative) could say ‘oh by the way, my cousin is an interpreter, he’s working with the Americans’. So they (the Taliban) will be like let’s go and pop him,” Shakib said, using U.S. slang for an assassination. “Bad guys are everywhere. If they get information of course they are going to harm me. But I don’t care.”

MORE THAN JUST LANGUAGE

Captain Christopher Garvin, who trains the Afghan army in Farah, a desert province on the Iranian border, says he relies on his terps for more than just the language. “Coming here the first challenge was to fully understand the culture and how they like to operate,” said Garvin. “Having a good interpreter is the key.” Garvin’s interpreter, Yama Ellyassi, said he joined the Americans in part because of the pay and the prospect of a visa, but mainly because it offered a chance to help defeat the Taliban who imprisoned and beat his father while in power before 2001. On an Afghan army base last week, Ellyassi stood between Garvin and Afghan Lieutenant-Colonel Khalil Nehmatullah as they discussed final plans for an opium poppy eradication mission. He has had to learn military lingo on the job, and says he practices making sure he has the technical terms correct. “A minor mistake can cause a big problem,” he said. He relates the story of an interpreter who mistakenly told a unit of Afghan police to “fire” when he should have said “ceasefire.” The mistranslation resulted in several casualties and a mission which ended in disaster. Shakib said sometimes he is required to translate a tone of voice and body language, as well as just words. “A lot of times when you are translating English you have to use something from yourself also. If a guy is angry you have to get that across.” Soldiers need to be careful to make sure their interpreters understand their slang, said Sergeant Brian Wood, who works on Garvin’s team and manages the terps. “They can translate it word for word but to them it doesn’t make sense like it does for us. Like ‘to beat feet’ would be to run away. To them it’s like, ‘What’s that? You want to beat my feet?’,” he said. “I mean lost in translation is a given, it’ll happen here and there,” Wood said. “Here in combat, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, with interpreters, their word could literally mean the difference between life or death.” (Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

Democrats Have Qualms Over War in Afghanistan

New York Times

By CARL HULSE

Published: April 23, 2009

WASHINGTON

Congressional Democrats are voicing increased concern about the Obama administration’s plans to escalate military involvement in Afghanistan and to try to stabilize the rapid deterioration in Pakistan, complicating the push by the White House for $83.4 billion in war spending and other aid. I’ve got the sinking feeling we are getting sucked into something we will never get out of,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. The sentiment is increasingly echoed in both the House and the Senate. While it hardly signals that Congress is about to pull the plug on the war - leaders there are confident of a bipartisan vote to approve the administration’s request - it shows that even with a Democrat as commander in chief, his party’s longstanding qualms over the course of the war remain. Indeed, the Obama administration may have a harder time than the Bush administration in resisting Congressional calls for some kind of strings attached to the spending, whether in the form of measurements for success, or something even more restrictive, if still undefined. Even Representative David R. Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat who as chairman of the Appropriations Committee will have to shepherd the money through the House, said Thursday that he was uncertain what his ultimate position would be. “I frankly don’t know what I’m going to do on your supplemental request,” Mr. Obey told Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a hearing. “I’m very concerned that it is going to wind up with us stuck in a problem that nobody knows how to get out of.” Lawmakers cannot blame President Obama for seeking midyear supplemental money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were not fully paid for before he took office, but they are worried about what lies ahead. Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said he was worried that the administration’s “strategy regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan does not adequately address the problems we face in Pakistan and instead has the potential to escalate, rather than diminish, this threat.” Administration officials have held briefings and supplied position papers for lawmakers, but their testimony so far has not been very encouraging, and the headlines from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been alarming. The top commander in the region, Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has strong credibility on Capitol Hill, is said to have provided lawmakers with a sober assessment of the military situation in Afghanistan in a closed meeting on Wednesday and is expected to repeat some of those observations in a public hearing set for Friday. Congressional leaders say they realize some lawmakers are anxious about Mr. Obama’s proposal to commit at least 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, given the history of other military failures in the region. “We will have concerns, but we will have to work through them with people as to where we are going in Afghanistan,” said the House majority leader, Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland.

The administration has just begun working with Congress to lay out some guideposts for gauging the effectiveness of the strategy. It is calling them “metrics” instead of “benchmarks,” as they were called when the Bush administration resisted formal restrictions on its war spending. Unlike the repeated partisan clashes between the Bush administration and Democratic leaders over war financing, the party’s leadership of the House and Senate is now firmly behind the new Democratic administration. They say Mr. Obama is fulfilling his pledge to draw down combat forces from Iraq and to concentrate on Afghanistan as a harbor for terrorists. “Afghanistan is where the terrorist threat exists to the world, not just the United States,” said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who said the Bush administration’s decision to focus on Iraq left unfinished a mission in Afghanistan that originally had broad support in Congress. Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, said she believed the administration had assembled a strong program for Afghanistan, focused not just on a military presence but also on civilian construction projects, enhanced intelligence gathering and government improvements. She said any benchmarks would best be put on the use of military aid to Pakistan. Ms. Pelosi also said lawmakers wanted to make sure the Pakistan government used “those resources in a way that is not just focused on the threat they fear from India.” Given Democratic opposition to such war spending bills in the past, Democrats have regularly relied on strong support from Republicans to push the legislation through. But some Republicans have raised objections to the spending plan since the administration is also seeking money to move ahead with its plans to close down the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and move those detainees elsewhere. That position could give them some leverage on that issue if too many Democrats break with the president over the money for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration can probably rely on sufficient party support, but lawmakers say the White House needs to do more persuading. “I’m sure many members have concerns, and I am one of them,” said Representative John Yarmuth, Democrat of Kentucky, “and are a little bit unclear as to what we are trying to accomplish in Afghanistan.”

US expresses extreme concern on Pakistan

AFP

24 April 2009

WASHINGTON

The United States expressed extreme concern about advances by the Taliban in Pakistan and said the issue was taking up a significant amount of President Barack Obama’s time. “I think the news over the past several days is very disturbing, the administration is extremely concerned,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, noting “candid” comments on the issue by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday. “We are extremely concerned about the situation and it is something that takes a lot of the president’s time,” he said. “What is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the central foreign policy focus of this administration.” Pakistan earlier Thursday deployed paramilitary troops to northwestern districts infiltrated by Taliban militants, as global concern mounted over Islamabad’s ability to rein in the Islamists. On Wednesday, Clinton warned in extremely strong language that Pakistan, the key US anti-terror ally, was “basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists” with an agreement permitting Sharia law in the Swat valley. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates backed up her words on Thursday, saying that Pakistan’s leaders must act to stop the militants who have taken control of districts about 100 kilometers (60 miles) outside the capital Islamabad. Gates told reporters that in his discussions with Pakistani leaders, the government appeared to grasp the threat posed by Taliban militants, but he stressed the leadership needed to take action. “It is important they not only recognize it (the threat), but take the appropriate actions to deal with it,” said Gates, during a trip to a marine base at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. In a bid to expand their control, the Taliban have now moved into the Buner district from the Swat valley, where Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari recently signed a deal allowing the implementation of strict Islamic law. Officials and witnesses said the extremists were patrolling the streets of Buner, warning residents not to engage in “un-Islamic” activity and barring women from public places. With concern about stability in the region mounting, a senior US official confirmed on Wednesday that Obama will host talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Zardari in early May. The president will meet the two leaders separately and then the three will take part in a summit May 6 and 7, the Washington Post reported. The official declined to confirm those details. The new US leader has put nuclear-armed Pakistan, a key regional US ally, at the center of the fight against Al-Qaeda as the US dispatches 4,000 more troops, in addition to an extra 17,000 already committed, to Afghanistan. The plan, unveiled in March, includes a focus on flushing out Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and boosting civilian efforts to build up both Afghanistan and Pakistan, notably in agriculture and education.

100,000 gardeners, farmers facilitated in Panjsher

Farid Tanha - Apr 22, 2009 - 18:59

FARAH (PAN): Insecticide and other necessary agricultural equipments have been distributed among almost 100,000 farmers and gardeners of the central Panjsher province. Hashmatullah Inayat, director of the Agricultural Directorate of the province, told Pajhwok Afghan News the distribution of the insecticides and other equipments were started from Athai district on Tuesday and the distribution process would take a month. He said medicine, spray machine, eyeglasses, gloves and uniforms were provided to the farmers and gardeners. Inayar claimed the insecticides being provided to the farmers and gardeners can destroy any type of harmful insects. He informed that last year many kinds of insects attacked at cultivable lands and orchards and their attack led to 30 percent decrease in production. However, he expressed the hope that this year the lands and gardens would be protected from insect attacks by using these medicines. One of the residents of Tawakh village, who received the equipments, said he had ten orchards of apples and apricots, but last year the production of his orchards was badly affected by the insects. He thanked the agriculture directorate for provision of medicines and other necessary equipments and hoped for vast production this year. A tenant, Nizamuddin of Karaman village, said that he had 80 apricot trees in his orchard. He complained last year his fields were damaged by insects. Panjsher is a central and mountainous province of Afghanistan. The people of the province mostly depend on land cultivation and household animals.

Sugar, ghee prices up in Kabul

Zainab Muhammadi - Apr 16, 2009 - 16:02

KABUL (PAN): Price of sugar and ghee increased in Kabul while those of other commodities remained unchanged during the outgoing week. Fazl Rahman, head of food association in Kabul main market told Pajhwok Afghan News the price of 50 kg sugar bag increased from 1420 to 1440 and the price of 5 kg can of ghee decreased from 230 to 250 in outgoing week. He said the price of 50 kg flour was 1000 Afghanis, the price of 50 kg bag of rice was 2300 and a kilo tea on 180 remained unchanged in markets. Sharafudin, a gas seller in Kabul said that the price of a kilo gas remained unchanged and was sold on 30 Afghanis. Hashmatullah, a fuel seller in Kabul new city project said that the price of diesel remained unchanged on 34/litre while the price of petrol was 32afghanis/litre. Abdul Basir, jeweler in Shahr-i-Naw of Kabul said that a gram Arabic gold was sold on 1300 Afghanis while the same amount of Iranian gold accounted for 1100 Afghanis in the outgoing week. Haji Muhammad Rafi Azimi, a money changer in Shazada money changing market told Pajhwok Afghan News one dollar was exchanged for 50.40 Afghanis while 1000 Pakistani rupees accounted for 624.

Three public interest schemes completed in Balkh

Zabihullah Ihsas - Apr 22, 2009 - 17:34

MAZAR-I-SHARIF (PAN): Three welfare projects provided by National Solidarity Program (NSP) were put for public use on Wednesday in Charbolak district of northern Balkh province.Information officials of NSP in the north, Ahmad Farid Saadat told Pajhwok Afghan News the ventures included a water reservoir, paving 2km road, 18 small bridges, two water heads and 1300m canal. He said the projects completed in 6 months time scale and was funded by the World Bank with a cost of 49940, 00 afghani which would benefit around 800 families of the area. After the construction of a road in our area, it has virtually solved our transportation problem, said Syda Gul, a resident. Ahmad Farid Saadat said that over 840 villages across the province had been covered by NSP as the construction work on 1300 welfare projects had been completed while work on 500 others was in progress.

200 women get vocational training in Nangarhar

Abdul Moeed Hashmi - Apr 19, 2009 - 19:18

JALALABAD (PAN): 200 women received vocational training in Jalalabad city of eastern Nangrahar province and were awarded certificates on Sunday. Haji Hayat Khan, labor and social affairs department head of Nangarhar told Pajhwok Afghan News that the women were trained on tailoring, embroidery and marketing. He said that the training was supported by JICA and the women were trained in two phases. He added that two projects of embroidery are underway in Shakh Misri camp in the province where 290 women are being trained. Hayat Khan said that over 350 men of Sherzad and Dar-i-Noor districts are being trained on carpentry and metal works for six months supported by WFP and British embassy in Afghanistan. He added that 140 women receive training currently in Gohsta, Haska Mina, Chaparhar, Lal Pur, and Khewa districts. Sharifa a graduate of the training told Pajhwok Afghan News on Sunday: “I have recently repatriated from Pakistan, I have no one to support my family, I received two months trainings of tailoring and embroidery, I am happy that I can feed my family” Jamila, a resident of Jalalabad city who received training on marketing told Pajhwok Afghan News: “before receiving training I was wondering how to sell them, but in the training workshop I received all information about NGOs and markets that purchase the handcrafts” .During last twelve months over 2230 men and women received vocational trainings in provincial capital and eight districts of the province.

New building for girls’ school inaugurated in Kunar

Abdul Moeed Hashmi - Apr 19, 2009 - 18:07

ASADABAD (PAN): A newly constructed building for a girls’ school was inaugurated after its completion in ten months in the eastern Kunar province, an official informed. Education director of the eastern Kunar province bordering Pakistan told Pajhwok Afghan News the school building was completed with the total cost of about 200,000 by support of Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). He added, the school building completed during ten months and having 16 classrooms will accommodate 1100 schoolchildren. Distribution of the equipments for science laboratories in the neighboring Nangarhar province was also launched, an official said. Nangarhar education director Muhammad Iqbal Azizi informed this news agency the distribution of laboratories to high schools launched in Malak Hameera High School on Saturday and 18 schools of some districts will receive the equipments. He added each of the laboratories worth about 5000 US dollars. “Over 10,000 female students of Hameera High Girls’ High School will benefit from the laboratories,” said education director of Behsood district Qari Noor Muhammad. Foundation stone of a training centre in provincial capital Jalalabad was also laid down on Saturday. Director of public works and social affairs Haji Hayat Khan said the training centre will be constructed with a cost of one million US dollars provided by German government.

Needy families get aid in Parwan

Pajhwok Report - Apr 17, 2009 - 17:26

KABUL (PAN): Despite the gloomy weather on April 15, a ray of hope came upon a small village in the Bagram district, Parwan province, as the Afghan National Police assisted by members of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan passed out humanitarian goods to local villagers. More than 200 men, women and children lined up while the ANP separated and positioned the food and clothing. The children were the first to receive items, including backpacks, shoes and an assortment of clothing. The women followed to gather up bags of cooking goods, including rice, flour, sugar, salt, tea and vegetable oil. After the women and children received their things, disabled villagers were given the opportunity to pick up goods from the ANP. I like the things that I received, said Zinullahbeen, a disabled man of the village. It is nice to see good deeds performed. In addition to food and school supplies, the Afghan police handed out desperately-needed socks, shoes, jackets, dental supplies, hygiene kits, radios and soccer balls to the villagers. I feel really good knowing that my police officers were able to do this for the villagers, especially the women and children who have so little, said Mirwais, the Bagram district deputy police chief.

Reconstruction work on Surkhab dam on full swing

Pajhwok Report - Apr 16, 2009 - 14:07

KABUL (PAN): Czech PRT in Logar entered another phase of rehabilitation of Surkhab dam, the largest source of water in the province

For a long time, the old dam and reservoir lacked maintenance and regular cleaning. Up untill few months ago, the basin was full of sediments up to two thirds of its depth. Czech PRT has excavated more than 8 meters of mud in order to revitalize the dam and to restore its original function retention of water for agricultural use. , We use Surkhab water for irrigation throughout the whole year. The lack of water could cause a disaster for our community and conflicts could break out, local elder Baidjan said. The project will continue through the construction of a retention wall, which will ensure that no more sediments will get into the dam. Last phase of the project includes planting of more than 2500 trees, which will function as a wind barrier and will protect Surkhab banks from erosion. Consultations with local communities, an important component of PRT’s strategy in Logar, played key role here: Discussions with locals were lenghty, but finally, we agreed on a long stripe of trees in three lines, Iva Smejkalova, agriculture advisor from Czech PRT, said. The project worth over one million USD will improve irrigation conditions for 3500 local farmers, and also provided jobs for 80 workers from Logar. We appreciate Czech assistance a lot. Our farmers cannot grow anything without water, Abdul Wahab Ahmadzai, director of local high school said. Czech PRT, consisting of nine civilian experts and 275 soldiers, has been assisting the people of Logar since March 2008. Support of health, education, infrastructure, independent journalism and women’s rights are also among its priorities. Its annual budget is 4,5 mil USD.

Tax waiving decision tells on Kandahar municipality revenue

Bashir Ahmad Nadem - Apr 18, 2009 - 19:21

KANDAHAR CITY (PAN): Officials of Kandahar municipality in southern Kandahar province said that the revenue of the outgoing solar year was 102 million Afghanis. Ghulam Haidar Hamidi, Kandahar mayor in a press conference said that the income was from markets, houses and mines. He said the income was 117 million two year back while this year it decreased to 102 million. He said the decrease in the revenue was due to the former governor decision of waiving taxes for four months. Hamidi said that there have been many reformed after he took the charge of the position and have fired 15 incompetent staff, adding that many employees were recruited above merit and on the basis nepotism. Hamidi said those who were fired from services had joined criminal gangs and were a threat to his life. Accusing the security forces especially police of non-cooperation the mayor thousands acres of land had been confiscated by powerful men. He alleged: “Police has big role in land confiscation, and from the officer to the constable were involved in t6his crime.” He added that he started fighting against such people and hoped that with the support of new governor he will be able to bring them to justice. Hamidi said that he has many plans for this year and some NGOs and organizations will provide aid in implementing these plans. He said that grant of $18 million for development projects of Kandahar municipality from CIDA which was postponed by an Australian manager for his $18000 salary per month, will be restarted. He said from the grant, the water project worth $6 million has already begun in this regard and the work on building of department for each city district, construction of six kilo meter road, construction of two markets and others will soon begin.

Work on 5km road in Kunar launched

Abdul Moeed Hashmi - Apr 22, 2009 - 17:33

JALALABAD (PAN): Construction work on a five kilometers road in Asmar district of eastern Kunar province was launched on Wednesday that would cost a sum amounting to 2,00,000 US dollars, an official said. Head of the Rural Development Department of the province, Eng Aminuddin Baidar, told Pajhwok Afghan News the said road is six meters wide and five kilometers long and the construction work would take two months to complete. Baidar added 22 small and six big bridges and supportive wall along the road was also part of the construction work. He said the road in Gharni would be unpaved and 2, 00,000 US dollars for it would be provided from the Rural Development Ministry’s budget. Engineer Baidar further said that the ministry had executed a project (road pavement project) through which roads would be constructed in the outreached areas of the province. He informed an unpaved 50 kilometers of road in Kunar province was also a part of the project.

Eleven welfare projects commence in west

Ahmad Qureshi - Apr 22, 2009 - 19:52

HERAT CITY (PAN): Eleven public welfare projects have been launched in two western provinces - Herat and Farah worth two millions USD by the Afghan National Army (ANA) in collaboration with their American counterparts. Spokesman for the 207 Zafar Military Corp, Lieutenant Colonel Abdulbasir Ghauri, told Pajhwok Afghan News these projects include construction of seven schools, two clinics, two masques which would take six months to complete. He said the projects of a masque, a clinic and three schools were carried out in Shindand district of Herat province and the remaining in Balabulak district of Farah province. Ghauri claimed that hundreds of families and thousands of students in both the districts would benefit from the clinics, schools and mosques. He said each mosque would have the capacity of accommodating 500 at a time. He also said work on 48 wells had also been completed in the said areas, claiming hundreds of families were benefiting from the clean drinking water of the said well. “40 tons of foods stuff has been distributed among 3000 draught-hit families in the Shindand and Balabulak districts,” the military official said. The people of Balabulak district were of the view that the government had not yet brought any developmental project to the area and had neglected the district. While the people of Shindand district say clashes in the area have been decreased since the National Solidarity Programs was launched there. “If the government starts development programs here, we will ourselves maintain security,” they say. First phase of the NSP was completed in Shindand district last week, accomplishing seven public welfare projects on a cost of 18 million Afghanis. Mohammad Sadeqi, director of the Rural Development Directorate in Herat said more than 1700 families have been benefiting from the projects. Lal Mohammad Omarzai, chief of Shindand district, said the NSP was started in 40 villages of the district and its first phase has been completed.

43 Potential Candidates For Afghan Presidency - Official

AFP

04/23/2009

KABUL - Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, or IEC, said Thursday it had received inquiries from 43 potential candidates for the country’s presidential election in August. “During the past week 43 presidential candidates or their representatives have visited the election commission offices for information on how they can register,” said Zakaria Barekzai, the deputy head of the IEC secretariat. The potential candidates had made use of a six-day consultation period during which the IEC had offered information on election requirements, he said. These requirements included depositing AFA50,000 (about $1,000) with the IEC and providing proof of endorsement from at least 10,000 voters, he said. Registration of candidates will start Saturday, April 25, with the commission publishing a list of approved candidates May 8, followed by a two-week public review period, Barekzai said. “Any candidate convicted of crimes and human rights violations, or deprived of civil rights by a court, will be dropped from the list,” he said. So far, few strong candidates have emerged to challenge President Hamid Karzai, who has hinted that he will stand for re-election Aug. 20 but has yet to state this formally. The National Front, a fragile coalition including former anti-Soviet jihadists as well as former communists, among others, has chosen Karzai’s ex-foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah as its presidential candidate. Other possible contenders for the presidency include former government ministers Ali Ahmad Jalali and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who have also yet to formally announce candidacy.

Poppy Palaces

The American Conservative

04/22/2009

By Kelley Vlahos

“Poppy Palaces” - sounds perversely lyrical, echoes of the Wizard of Oz, but in the land of Afghanistan, ancient and epic as it is, the witch is not dead and so far, the happy ending is nowhere in sight. Poppy Palaces, or Poppy Houses - cynically crafted in modern “narcotecture” - inhabit the space (geographically, the hilltop neighborhood of Sherpur) now reserved for a filthy rich class of Kabul suburbanites who seem to have largely slipped past the sluggish lens of the western mainstream media. As consumers of neatly packaged images, we know all about the Afghan tribal warlord, the Afghan Taliban, the poor rural Afghan, the poor urban Afghan - we hardly hear of the rising middle class Afghan. Particularly those nouveau riche with their garish indulgences a few miles away from what can only be described as the trans-generational wreckage of the Afghan soul. But it is their very existence - familiar to us or not - that threatens to drain every single penny we have put into Afghanistan or are willing to commit to make that country whole again. They are the new landed gentry - on property seized after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban - occupying a gated community fashioned with the spoils of a drug trade that courses through the very heart of the central government, security forces, the parliament and emerging merchant class. From Dexter Filkins, NYT, in January: “Nowhere is the scent of corruption so strong as in the Kabul neighborhood of Sherpur. Before 2001, it was a vacant patch of hillside that overlooked the stately neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan. Today it is the wealthiest enclave in the country, with gaudy, grandiose mansions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Afghans refer to them as “poppy houses.” Sherpur itself is often jokingly referred to as “Char-pur,” which literally means “City of Loot.” Yet what is perhaps most remarkable about Sherpur is that many of the homeowners are government officials, whose annual salaries would not otherwise enable them to live here for more than a few days.”

Discussions over the $4 billion drug trade in Afghanistan have largely revolved around its use as a cash cow for insurgents, particularly Taliban and Al Qaeda. Solving the problem has been fixed mostly on NATO-led military eradication efforts and helping poor Afghan farmers shift to (less lucrative) alternative crops like wheat and fruit. The latter is what “Special Envoy” Richard Holbrooke was all about when he demanded a total “rethink” of the drug problem in a briefing with reporters in Brussels late last month. In his words, the $800 million investment in eradication so far has been a waste. We need to “re-program that money, about 160 million of it is for alternative livelihoods, and we would like to increase that.” Forget the Taliban for a moment. It is becoming clearer by the day that such eradication efforts - whether it be arresting drug lords and the razing of crops, or the softer touch, giving out seeds and teaching farmers new ways - are in sharp conflict with Afghanistan’s powerful elite, its government and burgeoning bourgeoisie. Do we really expect our increased commitment to resourcing “alternative livelihoods” to get much farther than Kabul? And if so, have any lasting effect in this merciless social and political reality? Sure, Holbrooke and company are not blind to Kabul’s corruption. Everyone talks about it - just not specifically. It becomes a squirmy subject, particularly when President Karzai, our key ally and client there, is sitting on top of it all, alternately fanning the flames and preventing them from swallowing the state entirely. So, promising millions of dollars to farmers who are not only extorted by the Taliban, but under pressure now to maintain the new Kabul lifestyle at the expense of their own, seems tragically, like the real waste.

A fleet of Lexus Land Cruisers - hulking 4×4s with tinted windows, video entertainment systems and usually no licence plate - is de rigueur, as are gangly mansions in Sherpur, a new Kabul neighborhood known for “narcotecture” - a gaudy style with sweeping balustrades, wedding-cake plasterwork and blue mirrored windows. The label may be unfair - some Sherpur residents surely earn their money honestly - but in a country in which drugs account for one third of gross domestic product, and the competing exports are carpets, fruit and nuts, many Afghans have a different idea. “The owners are the ones who killed our people and drank our blood,” construction worker Hussain told me three years ago outside a mansion he was building. “But at least it is providing us with work.” So writes Declan Walsh for The Guardian back in August. Just last month, Margaret Warner of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, traveled to Afghanistan and brought back this story. Here might be the cautionary tale for those depending on the central government to help us fight the War on Poppy:

At the heart of this corruption is Afghanistan’s leading export, drugs, the source of 93 percent of the world’s heroin. This law enforcement video was provided by General Aminullah Amarkhel, the former commander of Kabul International Airport. During his 22 months on the job, he arrested some 100 drug couriers. He says that’s why he’s the former commander. GEN. AMINULLAH AMARKHEL, former commander, Kabul International Airport (through translator): I was arresting all kinds of carriers, the small fish, the big fish of the whole mafia. They tried their best then to suspend me, to kill me, or to get rid of me. And the government did not support me. That’s why I lost my job. Unfortunately, the law is only for poor people, not for big fish or big government officials. ASHRAF GHANI: Narcotics, it’s eating like a cancer through all aspects of our lives. It used to be roughly a network of 400,000 individuals; now it’s a hierarchy, like the Colombian one, with 35 individuals sitting on top of it. Warner describes the rest of Kabul as a nest of desperation - men literally selling their bodies and souls as suicide bombers to feed their families, open sewers, a stunning lack of food and health care. As many activists report, but the mainstream usually glosses over, people are living on less than $1.00 a day, and it is quite normal to see children picking through trash in the street, while those in the swelling orphan houses dwell further in the shadows (and, to believe the best-selling novels of modern Afghanistan by author K’ahled Hosseini, suffer their own unthinkable horrors). It is impossible to do any business here - whether its getting a job, transporting goods, getting a family member out of jail - without being extorted or forced to pay a bribe. Violence is everywhere.

From Filkins: “Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it. A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country’s opium trade, now the world’s largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, “harchee” - whatever you have in your pocket. The corruption, publicly acknowledged by President Karzai, is contributing to the collapse of public confidence in his government and to the resurgence of the Taliban, whose fighters have moved to the outskirts of Kabul, the capital.” Last week, reports from the mainstream press elite - notably the Washington Post’s David Ignatius and TIME’s Joe Klein - started trickling in from a tag-a-long with Holbrooke and Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on their recent “listening tour” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As ever, the story that emerged was crafted with the bold and broad, easily digestible strokes of our seasoned Beltway scribes. Klein even throws in flourishes about Mullen’s aura of “common-sense-dispensing country doctor from downstate Illinois” and Holbrooke as “the David Petraeus of diplomats.” We are to believe then, that in this “U.S Military in the Age of Obama” as Klein pens, the Americans are in listening mode (and with an emphasis of soldier and diplomat working side-by-side), and what we are hearing is that Afghanistan is generally supportive of our presence there, and filled with people - “a breathtaking parade of farmers, Afghan tribal leaders, women legislators, rule-of-law advocates, journalists, the local diplomatic corps, religious leaders” - who have sound prescriptions for Afghan success. Now we are listening, goes the theme.

No doubt these Afghan actors have plenty to say about reform, with earnest intentions, guts and fortitude. I’ve talked to some of them on and off for the last nine years. Unfortunately, they aren’t the players the former Bush Administration chose to work with from the beginning, and therefore do not have the authority and leverage the current leadership enjoys. Many of them will not be at the bargaining table when the real deals are struck. So, while team Obama promotes the meme that its approach is refreshingly different than that of its cowboy predecessors, its own prescriptions are vague, particularly on corruption and how to help the reformers turn this monster on its head. On the upcoming election, where Karzai faces his first real challenge against a battery of opponents, American officials are withholding public support, but playing it cool. Knowing the first step in fighting this “cancer” is taking a knife to the tumor in Kabul, the Obama Administration has been diplomatically restrained and I dare guess hopeful that Karzai is ditched. Unfortunately, as the Poppy Palaces draw more power and authority from the unbridled drug trade, their inhabitants will not only have say in how the U.S tries to restrain it, but in who might ultimately replace the Karzai regime. As always, it seems our hopes are an election away, to either being pinned under a house with our boots exposed or lifted homeward on a balloon. In the meantime, it is wise that the administration withhold our future financial commitment until we truly know who will be handling our money and the fate of the Afghan people.

***The information and articles provided by AACC have been compiled from various sources; AACC does not bear any responsibility for the accuracy of the information contained therein. The views contained in the articles shared by AACC do not represent the views of the organization or the staff; AACC provides the information as a service to its members. ***

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