The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN)

In the international discussion on Pakistan´s many problems, the low-level conflict in its Balochistan province does not get much attention. The issue of nuclear arms, for instance, is considered more immediately frightening; Balochistan is just the area where these arms are tested. But the province is also the arena for a long-standing, complex and multi-faceted conflict, which, with every new upturn, is becoming more intractable. Even in Pakistan itself, the situation in Balochistan tends to be ‘crowded out’ by other dramatic events. The lack of media access to areas under military control is another cause for whatever goes on in Balochistan to remain in the background. Yet, the province is crucial to several infrastructural mega-projects, among them the huge investment programme signed with the Chinese government in April 2015. These projects are regional in nature – and so is the conflict in Balochistan. Ann Wilkens, member of AAN’s Advisory Board, provides an overview of this complex issue and concludes that political dialogue is urgently needed, if economic investment is to bring the intended, regional uplift and, most importantly, bring peace to a long-suffering population.

The province, the people

With around 46 per cent of the total area, Balochistan is Pakistan´s largest province, but it has the smallest population, representing around five per cent of the country’s total. (1) This is not the only dichotomy. While, as the name indicates, Balochistan is the home of the Baloch, there is also a large Pashtun contingent, making up around 40 per cent of its population, and the Pashtuns form the majority in the province´s capital, Quetta. Another spill-over from Afghanistan, dating back to the rule of Abdul Rahman Khan in the 1890s, is the Hazara community, who form the third largest ethnic group, also with a strong presence in Quetta. Another ethnic group, normally included in the Baloch but originating from Southern India, are the Brahui, whose Dravidian language is spoken by a dwindling population mainly in central Balochistan, notably in and around the former princely state of Kalat, the historic centre of the Baloch quest for self-rule.

Balochistan is the least developed province of Pakistan. Marginal living conditions have prompted a large part of the population to leave in search for a better existence, mainly in Karachi or abroad. But the province has huge reserves of natural gas, as well as other natural resources yet to be fully explored, which have the potential to provide a basis for economic development. Geographically, it is on the path of several regional infrastructure projects, which have been stalled for various reasons, one of them being the lack of stability in the region, including in Balochistan. Thus, lack of stability results in lack of development, while lack of development is also a major source of instability.

Economic migration aside, the Baloch are spread over three countries. The largest group is in Pakistan, around six million, but there is also a sizable Baloch population in Iran, around two million, and a smaller group in Afghanistan, estimated at around 600,000, most of them in the southwestern province of Nimroz. (2) Balochi is an Iranian language (like Farsi, Pashto and Kurdish). The majority of the Baloch are Sunni Muslims. For the Iranian Baloch in the equally deprived Iranian province of Sistan Balochistan, the marginalisation of the Sunni sect is an important reason for conflict with the Shia-led theocracy in Teheran, regularly resulting in attacks directed at the Iranian state, which in turn accuses Pakistan of hosting these opponents (see for instance here).

Regional interface

During the course of the Pakistani Baloch insurgency, the militants among them have become increasingly secessionist and are now commonly referring to Pakistan as an occupying state, rather than a problematic homeland. In Pakistan, after the breakup of the original nation and the forming of Bangladesh in 1971, secessionist talk has been a trigger of existential anguish, and that may be one reason why intransigence rather than dialogue has been characteristic of the Pakistani state’s response to Baloch insurgencies. Moreover, although rooted in a more or less secular orientation, many militants are becoming increasingly radicalised in religious terms, in tune with a growing global movement of religious extremists transcending national borders.

With the concept of ‘Greater Balochistan’ overshadowing the borders of three countries, the Baloch national issue provides a reflection of the Kurdish conflict in the Middle East, as well as other areas around the world where ethnic, linguistic and cultural identity do not square with geographical boundaries. From the point of view of the Baloch tribespeople, many of them still nomads, their territory stretches across the boundaries between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, a vast area where they believe they have ancestral rights to move around.

From the point of view of the three governments involved, however, such movements add to the already complicated relations between them. Support for each other’s rebel groups is a component in this picture, which may be used in a tit-for-tat manner. For instance: India, claiming that Pakistan is infiltrating insurgents across the Line of Control into India-controlled Kashmir, may respond by cooperating with Afghanistan to support Baloch rebels. Pakistan may be irritated when Baloch leaders fleeing from Pakistani security forces are allowed to settle in Afghanistan, but Afghanistan may then point to the presence of the leadership council of the Afghan Taleban, known as the Quetta shura, on Pakistani territory.

At the same time, there are grave, humanitarian aspects of the cross-border movements. While large waves of Afghan refugees have been received in Pakistani Balochistan, particularly during the last decades of war, there are also Pakistani Baloch refugees in Afghanistan (for more on the latter, see here).

Quite another facet of the regional interface is the drugs trade, which continues to flourish in what looks like a rare bird of functional, regional cooperation. This is a sign that, when profits are high enough, barriers can be transcended: where there is a will, there is a way.

A history of insurgency

Historically, Balochistan has never been a comfortable part of the Pakistani nation state which was initiated with the division of the subcontinent in 1947 and promoted by a movement of Urdu-speaking, urban Muslims in what is now northern India, who never had much in common with Baloch tribesmen. British Balochistan, which did not include the princely states, was integrated into Pakistan with a special status as a Chief Commissioner´s Province, and was raised to the status of Governor´s Province only in 1953. As for the 570-odd Indian princely states, four of which were in the territory of today´s Balochistan, the provision was that they could opt for independence but, in the end, most of them were integrated into either India or Pakistan. However, for the Baloch princely states, a history of extended autonomy made the situation more fluid, especially for the most well-known one, the Khanate of Kalat, which wanted to retain its independence and tried to establish itself as a tribal monarchy. This did not succeed for long and its accession, under pressure, to Pakistan in March 1948 triggered the first wave of armed revolt against the state.

The imposition of military rule in Pakistan on 6 October 1958, when General Ayub Khan took over the country as ‘Chief Martial Law Administrator’, again exacerbated the situation in Balochistan, where tribesmen refused to turn in their weapons at the local police stations. The following scheme of assembling all of West Pakistan into ‘one unit’ (as opposed to East Pakistan, later Bangladesh) was bitterly opposed until 1960, when the rebels thought they had negotiated an exception to this policy, as well as safe conduct and amnesty for themselves. Instead, they were arrested and seven of them executed. This did not end the opposition to Ayub Khan´s centralisation efforts and a third round of conflict characterised the latter part of the 1960s.

The fourth, and more extensive, uprising in Balochistan came in 1973, again as a reaction to the thwarting of provincial autonomy. After the loss of Bangladesh, Pakistan´s president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wanted to strengthen centralised rule in what was left of the country. He was also under pressure from the Iranian government, which feared that its Baloch province might be drawn into a movement towards strengthened indigenous rule in Pakistan´s Balochistan. On a flimsy pretext, Bhutto dismissed the elected provincial government and used the ensuing calls for secession as an excuse to send in the army. The armed clashes peaked in the winter of 1974-75, but did not cease until three years later, when Bhutto was overthrown by General Zia ul-Haq, who again imposed military rule but at the same time tried to restore peace in Balochistan through political and economic means. Accordingly, there has been no consistent and direct link between military rule in Pakistan and active conflict in Balochistan. Rather, disregard for Baloch sensitivities has run through Pakistan´s short history, under various rulers.

The fifth, and still ongoing, Baloch uprising started in 2004, during the military rule of General Pervez Musharraf. While the Marri and Mengal tribes had been at the centre of previous rebellions, this time it was the Bugti tribe that led the uprising and was subsequently targeted. On 26 August 2006, Nawab Akbar Bugti, who besides leading the Bugti tribe had also served as both governor (1973-74) and chief minister (1989-90) of Balochistan, was killed in a clash with the army at his hideout in the hills in north-eastern Balochistan. This provided the nationalist rebels with a martyr of renown beyond the province.

Economic issues were at the centre of this round of conflict, among them the construction of the Gwadar port without much Baloch participation in either the decision-making process or the actual construction work. Another bone of contention was the distribution of the proceeds from the Sui gas fields, situated in the Dera Bugti area, as well as the distribution of the gas itself (which was said to be used to heat Punjabi homes and run Punjabi industries, while the Baloch were literally left out in the cold). Enhanced military presence in the Sui area followed from the conflict, and then subsequently added to it.

Human rights abuses and violence

As usual in situations of conflict, human rights suffer. Among the Pakistanis who have ‘disappeared’ during recent years, presumably after having been abducted by the security forces, young Baloch nationalists form a distinct and particularly recurrent group. Many of them have later turned up as corpses by the roadside bearing marks of torture. Despite attempts by various organisations, including Pakistan’s Supreme Court, to map the disappearances (see for instance here) and end the impunity surrounding them, no clarity has been achieved and bereaved families are still looking for closure. Accordingly, the number of victims cited in this context differs widely, from the tens to the ten thousands – it should be safe to say that at least hundreds of Baloch have disappeared in this way.

The conflict between Baloch nationalists and the Pakistani state aside, the continuing turmoil and lack of strong governance in a multi-ethnic setting has brought a wider range of serious crimes against human rights, as well as a high level of criminal activity, both of which add to the difficulties faced by civilians trying to build a decent life. Various actors are contributing to this sad state of affairs, sometimes reflecting conflicts of interest between different population groups, and sometimes lending themselves to exploitation by, for instance, anti-state militants and/or perpetrators of sectarian violence. Punjabi settlers in the province, in many cases going back several generations, have been targeted by Baloch nationalists, leading to the exodus of a relatively well educated segment of the population. The Hazara Shia population in Quetta has also been particularly targeted, through a series of sectarian bomb attacks leading to hundreds of casualties.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

It is in this environment of multi-faceted conflict that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme (CPEC) is anchored. The programme amounts to over 45 billion US dollars and was agreed between the two countries in April 2015. The corridor has its starting point in the Chinese-built port of Gwadar, on Pakistani Balochistan’s southern coast at the Arabian Sea, and is linked to Chinese-funded, infrastructural mega-projects that are regional in nature, (for more, see here).

The programme has been flaunted as a turning point for the fragile Pakistani economy and an upcoming backbone of regional connectivity, which is supposed to create jobs and prosperity for everyone, the Baloch included. The government’s reasoning seems to be that, once the recalcitrant Baloch nationalists discover the benefits of improved infrastructure, they will return to the fold of the Pakistani motherland. However, until this spirit of cooperation takes root, the Chinese workers involved in the project will be protected by an additional security division comprising army battalions, as well as civil armed forces.

This smacks of wishful thinking. At the core of the recurrent insurgencies lies the resentment that the Baloch have been marginalised in their own country, and that Punjabis in particular, and the Pakistani state in general, are colonising and exploiting them. For the insurgents the socio-economic backwardness of the province serves as proof that this is so, whereas, on the government side, the argument may go the other way around: Balochistan is perceived to be poor and backward as a consequence of a tribal structure which benefits only self-serving feudal lords and stands in the way of the government’s efforts towards progress and development. So far, neither side has shown much willingness to negotiate and compromise, with both sides preferring to play a zero-sum game. The looming presence of a growing number of Chinese labourers and engineers, working under armed protection, seems more likely to increase the tensions than soften the positions. Even if the programme delivers all the goods promised, it is difficult to see how the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme can become the silver bullet leading to stability in Balochistan. Again, the province seems to be stuck in a vicious circle: investments could bring stability, yes, but investments need stability to be carried out and take effect.

Opening for political settlement?

While throughout the history of Pakistan coercion has been the main instrument in dealing with Baloch insurgency, there have also been recurrent attempts to settle the conflict through dialogue and compromise. The present time seems to be such a period, or to at least have the potential to become one. In an interview with the BBC Urdu service in August 2015, Brahumdagh Bugti, the grandson of Nawab Akbar Bugti and the most well-known of the Baloch separatist leaders, did not exclude talks with the government, provided that military action was ended and security forces withdrawn from Balochistan. Even the core question of separation could be discussed, according to Bugti, “if our friends, allies, comrades and the Baloch people want this.” From the government side, the chief minister of Balochistan welcomed this conciliatory overture and expressed the hope that talks might start after the recent Eid holiday. According to a recent report, talks have, indeed, been going on between the two sides and Brahumdagh Bugti might soon return to Balochistan, after having been in exile since the death of his grandfather in 2006.

However, facts on the ground still send mixed signals. Enforced disappearances are still reported and security operations have escalated as a result of the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism, which was adopted after the army school massacre by the Pakistani Taleban (the TTP), in Peshawar in December 2014. According to the provincial interior minister well over 8,000 people had been detained by the end of September 2015, while over 200 persons had been killed in these operations. Among them, presumably, is Allah Nazar Baloch, the leader of the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF), who was reported killed by security forces in an intelligence-led operation in July 2015. Allah Nazar was the most prominent of the Baloch separatist leaders still in Pakistan. His organisation has been behind a number of deadly attacks, including the one that killed three Chinese engineers in Gwadar in May 2004.

Still, the recent overtures indicate an increased willingness for dialogue on both sides and, thus, provide hope that the vicious circle characterising the development in Balochistan, where rounds of violence have continuously fed into each other, could finally begin to be reversed. Concrete and constructive commitment is now needed. The urgency of the situation is underlined by global trends. The winds of radicalisation continue to sweep through the Muslim world, carrying with them, first and foremost, frustrated young people with poor prospects, such as potential Baloch militants.

In Pakistan´s turbulent history, Balochistan seems to have always come in as the last priority. In the long run – and it is already a long-running conflict – this high-handedness may backfire, and, with it, the infrastructural investments now set in motion. On the other hand, in the alternative scenario of serious dialogue aimed at solving political and economic grievances, these investments could enhance the peace dividend in a long-suffering but potentially prosperous part of the world.

 

(1) Figures differ between different sources. The figures cited here are taken from “Jago Pakistan – Wake Up, Pakistan”, Report of The Century Foundation International Working Group on Pakistan, May 2015, 53.

(2) These figures, by no means exact, are weighted from several, different sources.

 

Sources:

Axmann, Martin: Back to the Future, The Khanate of Kalat and the Genesis of Baloch Nationalism 1915-1955, Oxford University Press 2009

Lieven, Anatol, Pakistan, A Hard Country, Allen Lane 2011

Jalal, Ayesha, The Struggle for Pakistan, A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2014

The on-going “exodus” of Afghans – now the second largest group entering the EU – has contributed to the increasing refugee numbers across Europe. This, in turn, has led to heated debates and an increased political polarisation between pro- and anti-refugee movements and parties. As governments and citizens struggle to handle the influx of refugees, their numbers – real and perceived – have become an instrument in domestic politicking. Several countries have tightened their laws and tried to close their borders, while others are considering doing so. Germany, whilst it initially generally welcomed refugees, has begun to take a much tougher line, for example, declaring it will deport Afghan asylum seekers whose applications are rejected. AAN co-director, Thomas Ruttig, pulls together figures, looks at trends and disentangles categories of refugees that are often mixed in the political debate. He also refers to an extensive interview with Richard Danziger, head of the office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Afghanistan, which can be listened to exclusively here (link at the end of the text).

Europe has been facing an enormous influx of refugees (1) this year. Most have been coming from Syria, whilst Afghans make up the second largest group. Social services in the receiving countries are increasingly strained, particularly at the local level. Citizens, politicians and governments are more and more split about whether to welcome the refugees or to increase the legal and practical hurdles for their entry. Xenophobic political groups are becoming more vocal as they try to push governments to take a more restrictive stance, but their impact on recent election results has been mixed so far: a win in the Swiss general election and gains lesser than predicted in the Danish one and in the Vienna mayoral elections. (The Austrian capital is on a major transit route for refugees travelling to Germany and northern Europe.)

Several countries, including Germany and Austria, have amended laws to try to deter more refugees from entering. Sweden became the latest country to re-introduce temporary border controls on 11 November. In late October, Germany as the first country announced specifically that it considers deporting Afghan refugees who have had their asylum applications rejected; the statement came from interior minister Thomas de Maizière whose portfolio includes refugee affairs. A final decision, though, has not been taken yet, and foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has reportedly called such deportations “barely possible” given a “dramatic” deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan. (2) There is also the suggestion by the interior ministry to deny Afghan refugees access to German language courses, which are key to integration arguing that refugees from countries with an acceptance quota below 50 per cent had “no prospects to stay” in Germany. (46 per cent of Afghan asylum seekers, on average, were given a refugee status or some other form of protection in 2014; the latest available data, for October 2015, indicated a 44.9 per cent acceptance rate.)

The EU has failed so far to come up with a system of burden-sharing that is acceptable to all member states. At the same time, large numbers of volunteers continue to work to accommodate the refugees and help fill the gaps when authorities are either unable or, sometimes, even unwilling, to find ways to cope.

With the increasing political polarisation, refugee figures have become a tool in mainstream domestic politics. Figures are sometimes exaggerated and often mixed up, and categories confused (see footnote 1 again). For example, the number of people entering Europe differs from the number of asylum requests. At the same time, the numbers of asylum requests are also higher than that of the actual asylum seekers, as many refugees request asylum in several countries during their odyssey through Europe. Similarly, in August 2015, of the 11,522 Afghans who entered Germany, only 2,270 requested asylum.

The deportation debate: Germany

Germany, once considered one of the EU countries with the softest line on refugees, was the first country where the government has confirmed that it has plans to deport large numbers of Afghan refugees whose asylum application had been rejected after years of allowing them to stay. According to Pro Asyl, the largest non-governmental organisation in Germany working in this sector, 7,000 Afghans might be affected by this threat of deportation.

Other European countries have already deported rejected Afghan asylum seekers, including Norway and Sweden. In Great Britain, the deportation of 60 Afghans as part of a larger group, was stopped in August 2015 at the last minute, after the Lord Chief Justice ruled it was only safe to return Afghan asylum seekers if sent to the three provinces of Kabul, Bamiyan and Panjshir (read here and here).

As is the case in many countries, the deportation debate in Germany focuses on whether the security situation in Afghanistan allows for deportations and whether there are, at least, ‘safe areas’ within the country to which people could ‘return’. The government says yes, while commentators, even on mainstream government-funded media, have, in an unprecedented way, sharply attacked the government’s arguments. One commentator , on Germany’s TV channel for the world, Deutsche Welle, called the generally overly positive portrayal of the security situation in Afghanistan by the government “untenable,” particularly after Kunduz, the former main base of the German ISAF troops, fell into the hands of the Taleban for two weeks in September/October this year. Up until 2009, the German government did not even accept that a “war” was going on in Afghanistan. After the Taleban takeover of Kunduz, interior (and former defence) minister de Maizière only commented that “of course, in Afghanistan security is not as good as elsewhere.“ (3)

Meanwhile, a report by the German Embassy in Kabul quoted in the media has come to more grave conclusions. The report speaks about an “extension” of Taleban influence, a “highly” or “extremely” dangerous situation in half of the country’s districts and a “rapid” deterioration of the security situation even in areas so far considered safe and (cited here, in German). According to conflict and peace research institutes (see, for example, here), the conflict in Afghanistan is still a “high-intensity internal armed conflict”. This is also proven by the rising rate of civilian casualties (AAN analysis here).

Another remark by the minister – that “as large amounts of development funds are sent to Afghanistan, one can expect that Afghans remain in their country” – was called “particularly cynical” by another commentator on the leading TV network, the ARD.

One point of debate is how the large numbers of Afghans leaving their country would further increase the burden on Germany. According to a report by the German Joint Analysis and Strategy Centre for Illegal Migration (in German: Gasim) up to 100,000 Afghans currently leave their country every month. (4) Gasim reports are not usually publicly available, and its figures were first published in the right-wing daily newspaper Die Welt on 28 September 2015. It seems that, in this case, the report had been intentionally leaked, possibly to influence the heated political debate taking place, even within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition.

According to Richard Danziger, head of the Afghanistan office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), his organisation does not have figures on the number of Afghans leaving the country:

Yes, I think we can talk about an exodus, [but] to be frank, we cannot talk about numbers. We know the numbers on arrival in Europe. Now we have been looking at all possible sources of information: passport applications, we talked with the [authorities at the] airport; we have offices at the border with Iran, so we looked to see whether there had been more deportations, which could mean more people on the way to Europe. We haven’t been able to piece anything together that could really give us the [full] information.

We do know the people are selling more bus tickets to Nimroz [province bordering Iran] for example. We know from the people at the airport – there are not many flights to Iran but – that flights to Iran are full of young men but return flights are definitely not full at all, so that’s an indicator. So, yes, I think we can talk about an exodus but we cannot put a number on it.

With regard to the often-cited increase in passport applications at the Afghan interior ministry’s passport office, Danziger urges caution, even though the indications are that numbers are increasing. The number of passport applications had indeed increased from about 3,000 per month earlier in the year to almost 8,000 by late September 2015, as reported by German broadcaster ARD quoting the office’s head General Sayed Omar Sabur from Kabul.

According to Danziger, the rush to obtain a (new) passport has also been attributed partially to the government implementing an international aviation regulation in May 2015 that no longer allows Afghans to use their old handwritten passport for travel abroad. This decision is almost certainly, or at least in part, the result of pressure on the Afghan government by western countries, where such passports have not been used for a long time and are looked upon with suspicion. Given the already difficult situation and lengthy procedures in Kabul to obtain a visa for nearly any country, this has put many Afghans into a state of near panic, as they fear they may no longer be able to travel in the future. This includes, in particular, students and post-graduates who have received overseas fellowships, and families who need to take relatives abroad for medical treatment (for Afghans, the most popular destination is India). Other applicants hope to obtain a passport in order to look for work in Iran, Turkey or the Gulf states.

Furthermore, not everyone who leaves Afghanistan necessarily arrives in Europe (let alone Germany). There are many stories of Afghans, who were discovered and detained by Iranian authorities, either at the Afghan, or the Turkish border, and then sent back to Afghanistan. Those who do eventually make it to Europe often do so only after a long and arduous journey, as Danziger also points out:

You have to consider that those people arriving in Europe now may not have left this year, because a lot of people move in stages. They may go to Iran, work to get enough money, go to Turkey, work [again]. They might have left in the past year, or two years ago.

The Afghan Ministry for Refugees and Returnees estimated, in a statement published on 2 November 2015 that, altogether, 120,000 Afghans have left the country this year, both “legally and illegally.”

General refugee figures

According to the latest UN estimates nearly 800,000 refugees crossed the Mediterranean into Europe this year. More than 218,000 did so in October 2015 alone — which is a record monthly tally and higher than the overall figure for the entire year of 2014, which was 216,000. By far most of them crossed the sea from Turkey to Greece, which is the preferred route for Afghan refugees, who usually travel via Iran and Turkey. Others crossed the Turkish-Greek or Turkish-Bulgarian land borders.

An incident at the border between Bulgaria and Turkey on 15 October 2015 was the latest “milestone” (as stated by Bulgarian President Rossen Plevnelyev) in the drama that refugees go through: a young Afghan – his name continues to remain unreported – became the first refugee shot dead at an EU border. The authorities of Bulgaria, where the incident happened, claim he was hit by a stray warning shot fired at a group of about 50 young Afghans trying to cross the border illegally. Many more refugees, among them many Afghans, have lost their lives when their boats have sunk in the Mediterranean. (5)

According to the latest available official EU figures, there were 399,000 “first-time asylum seekers” in the first half of 2015 in all EU countries combined. These figures, and all the following ones, are based on the first and second quarter reports by Eurostats, an EU agency  (see here and here), unless otherwise sourced.

Germany had the highest number of asylum applications in the first half of 2015 (154,000 = 39 per cent of all submitted in Europe), followed by Hungary (65,400), Italy (30,100) and France (29,800). Taken by per capita of their population, Hungary, Austria, Sweden and Germany were at the top during that period. By October 2015, the total number of asylum seekers in Germany for that year had already increased to 331,226, according to official national figures. Sweden had 120,000 asylum applicants at the same point, compared to 75,000 in 2014.

The Afghans among the refugees

Over the first and second quarters of 2015, Afghans became the second largest group among the asylum seekers after the Syrians. According to the UN estimates, 19 per cent of the nearly 800,000 refugees that crossed the Mediterranean were Afghans, some 150,000 people.

In the first three quarters of 2015, 88,205 Afghans requested asylum in all EU countries. In the first quarter, they represented seven and in the second quarter 13 per cent of all EU asylum seekers (third quarter figure not yet available). At the end of the second quarter, the number of Afghans was 39,900 altogether, showing that the third quarter number was more than double that of the first two quarters together. By comparison, 37,810 Afghans had requested asylum across the EU in 2014 and 22,580 in 2013.

Most Afghans requested asylum in Hungary and in Germany in the first half of 2015. Hungary registered 17,660 Afghan asylum seekers – almost half the overall EU figure. Germany received 20,434 asylum requests (6.2 per cent of all asylum seekers in the country in this period) from January to October 2015, while 82,817 Afghans arrived there in the same period, 31,051 in October alone (up from 11,522 in August). According to these figures, Afghans were still only the fourth largest group of asylum seekers in Germany. In the first and second quarters, Afghanistan was not even among the top ten countries of origin.

The relatively low number of asylum seekers, compared to the number of arrivals, in Germany reflects the fact that only a relatively small portion of the incoming Afghans actually remain in the country. Only one in four Afghans coming to Germany asks for asylum there. Many travel to other countries, or are sent back to other EU countries (based on the Dublin Regulation that stipulates that a refugee must apply for asylum in the first EU country of entry). Alternatively, the choice is to go underground without applying. (6)

The situation in Sweden, for example, is different. According to Swedish officials, almost all refugees arriving in the country also apply for asylum there; only a few travel on to Norway. By 1 November 2015, Sweden had 21,551 asylum applications by Afghans. Between 2 and 8 November only, Sweden had over 10,000 incoming refugees, 42 per cent of them (4,333 individuals) Afghans. Of those, 2,299 were unaccompanied minors. In January this year, only 350 Afghans arrived in Sweden.

In 70 per cent of all Afghan asylum cases registered in the EU in the second quarter of 2015, a refugee or other protection status was granted. Germany’s overall acceptance rate for Afghans was 44.9 per cent from January to October 2015, based on 4,929 cases decided in this period. In 1,361 of these cases (27.6%), the applicants were recognised as refugees; only 37 of them (0.75%) were granted full political asylum, which would allow for full integration. 853 (17.3%) received a ‘non-refugee’ status of protection. 574 (11.6%) applicants were rejected; the other applications were solved in other ways, mainly by handing over the cases to other countries based on the Dublin agreement. By comparison, the number of cases decided in 2014 was almost three times higher, with 12,999, at a 46.9 per cent recognition rate. Also, the percentage of Afghans granted full political asylum in general is very low but was higher in 2014, with 1.2 per cent (87 cases).

In practice, most Afghans have been staying on, regardless of their status, as the German government (and many others in the EU) had exempted them from deportation for humanitarian reasons due to the on-going war in their country. These Afghans have now become increasingly vulnerable to deportation, particularly in Germany.

Historically, Europe has absorbed at least three earlier large waves of Afghan refugees: first, after the Soviet invasion in 1979, second, after the mujahedin victory in 1992, and, third, after the Taleban takeover in 1996 (read here and here). The Afghan community in Germany, the largest in Europe, grew from 51,370 in 1994 to 126,334 in 2009 (49,081 of them holding German citizenship). Afghan refugee communities – some of them significantly larger than in Germany – exist in Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Gulf countries, the US and Canada.

Reasons for the Afghan exodus

German ambassador Markus Potzel, in an interview with IRIN news agency published on 10 November 2015, remarked that Germany understood the reasons people were leaving Afghanistan to be “bad security, bad economy, bad prospects, no trust in the National Unity Government” but also added that his country’s authorities were “overwhelmed” with processing the growing number of asylum requests and that “the mood among the [German] population has changed. Instead of welcoming them, people are more and more afraid.”

A central element in the current debate is whether the refugees arriving now represent asylum seekers, civil war refugees or economic migrants. In the case of Afghans, at least, this distinction is often difficult to make. Danziger, in his interview, spoke of reasons related to: “a mixture of insecurity and the poor economy. One feeds into the other. […] There isn’t anyone saying I am just leaving because of the insecurity or I am just going for an opportunity to make a living or a better living.” He also mentioned the “family pressure on young people,” who are sent abroad as an “anchor” in case the situation deteriorates further. This is not surprising: the older generation of Afghans have witnessed no less than nine mostly violent regime changes since 1973.

Danziger in his interview also discusses the “brain drain” that is harming Afghanistan, given the many young Afghans among the refugees who could be a key resource for any reconstruction of the country. He mentions also that many of them may not be fully aware of the obstacles they are likely to face on their journey to Europe:

Every Afghan knows what is going on in the Mediterranean, the deaths and so forth. I think what they are unaware of is what is awaiting them in Europe – that you do not automatically get asylum, that in each country the laws are different, that while your asylum application is up you cannot work, that you are not put up in a great flat. So, it is really about telling them what they need to expect. Then they have to make their own decision.

In terms of stemming the tide of the “exodus,” he outlines several possible paths for action: donor countries must “put Afghanistan back on the radar,” “live up to the commitments they made on financial support for the government,” and, also, “really face up to the fact that they have to completely review their migration or immigration policies.” He pointed out finally that “Afghans actually have a very good reputation as immigrants, in terms of not being happy to [rely on] hand-outs, getting on finding jobs, opening businesses etc.”

The interview with Richard Danziger, recorded by ARD South Asia correspondent Sandra Petersmann, has been partly published by the ARD. AAN has acquired the full version, which can be listened to here, with the kind permissions of both interviewer and interviewee.

 

(1) Article 1 of the Geneva Refugee Convention, as amended by the 1967 Protocol, defines a refugee as:

A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

In this text, the author uses the term “refugee” in this meaning.

At the same time, “refugee” is also a legal term under national law. In Germany, this term is used for people whose application for political asylum has been accepted. This group is divided into two sub-categories: (a) those who have received political asylum (they can stay for an unlimited time); and (b) those who have been recognised as a “refugee”, which grants them temporary protection and their cases are reviewed after a certain period. Persons who do not qualify as a “refugee”, but are threatened by the death penalty, torture or other grave violations upon return to the country of origin, can be granted “subsidiary protection” according to EU law. There is also the option of “protection from deportation” to particular countries, including provisions for rejected asylum seekers. Status (c) and (d) can be terminated at any time. After a recent change of law, a deportation does not need to be pre-announced. This means that the refugee cannot employ legal means to contest the deportation.

For those granted the status of refugee or any other status of protection, the term “refugee” will be qualified in this text.

(2) This statement, given through his political director to the CDU/CSU (the largest governing party) group in the Bundestag, was reportedly based on an internal assessment of the security situation of the German embassy in Kabul.

(3) Members of the German government spoke about a “stabilisation mission” (Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, 2009) and “war-like conditions” (his successor Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, also in 2009). In 2010, Guttenberg switched the terminology to a “civil war with international participation,” saying it was “colloquially a war,” but not in legal terms. The UN, when mandating the ISAF troops with Resolution 1386 (2001) of the Security Council, avoided such a definition and made ISAF a peace-enforcing mission under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. According to the Rule of Law in Armed Conflict (RULAC) project of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the conflict in Afghanistan is a “high-intensity internal armed conflict” between the Afghan government “assisted” by international forces and “non-state armed groups.”

(4) The following institutions contribute to Gasim reports: the Federal Police (formerly Federal Border Police), the Federal Criminal Police Office (the ‘German FBI’), the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the foreign and domestic intelligence services (BND and Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) and the foreign office.

(5) There are at least three projects that try to document, by name, the refugees killed on their way to Europe: the “List of Deaths” of the Amsterdam-based NGO United against Racism, the blog Fortress Europe by Italian journalist Gabriele del Grande and The Migrant Files, a journalist consortium that tries to merge the former two. Neither has the name of this Afghan.

(6) Moreover, decision-making on asylum cases is lagging behind. In the second quarter of 2015, 117,800 applications were decided upon in all EU countries. 46 per cent of them received a positive answer, granting the applicant either refugee or another protection status. Among the cases on which decisions were taken were only 2,500 who were Afghans. In Germany, by the end of 2014, Afghans, on average, had to wait more than 13 months for their cases to be decided. Austria – which is among the top four countries taking in arriving Afghan refugees (10,500 in the first eight months of 2015) – just changed its law so that Afghans have to wait for a decision, possibly up to three years. Finland recently stopped processing asylum claims from Afghans for ‘security concerns’. (The country had 9,276 asylum-seekers this year so far. )

Kunduz and Sar-e Pul have both been staging grounds for the Taleban’s first major onslaughts of the ‘spring offensive’ that started in late April – the first under massive public scrutiny, the second a lesser-known example of the same dynamics. In both provinces, the insurgents managed to get close to the provincial centres, at times threatening to take them over. For this dispatch, AAN’s Obaid Ali has looked closer at two specific areas within the provinces – Gortepa in Kunduz and Sheramha in Sar-e Pul, both in close proximity to the respective provincial centres. He describes how the Taleban approached their military operations against the Afghan National Security forces (ANSF), detailing not-yet discussed factors that contributed to their success – such as the insurgents’ skilful use of psychological warfare, the Afghan military’s misjudgements or local powerbrokers’ unwilling opening of avenues for the Taleban’s usurpation of districts.

The Taleban started fighting in the north some time before the announcement of their annual ‘spring offensive’ on 24 April. In Kunduz, our first case study, clashes between government forces and insurgents have been reported from the districts of Imam Saheb, Chahrdara, Dasht-e Archi and Qala-ye Zal, since 22 April. The start of the ‘spring offensive’ only intensified the fighting. AAN has already described the recent clashes in the province in its last Kunduz dispatch (see here and for all Kunduz dispatches our thematic dossier here). The Gortepa offensive, however, is worth a second look as it shows how the Taleban approached and planned a rather brazen offensive, successfully played out in proximity to the province’s centre.

Gortepa is part of Kunduz’ capital city, an area only 15 kilometres northwest of the city’s centre. Locals call it the “gateway to Kunduz.” It borders the districts of Imam Saheb to the west, Qala-ye Zal to the north and Chahrdara to the south. Ethnically, Gortepa is mixed, with Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Tajiks and a smaller minority of Arabs  (1), the latter living in 40 to 50 villages. Having a strong base here thus helps facilitate insurgents’ movements  within the wider province. At the same time, the proximity to the provincial centre enhances their ability to quickly and effectively target crucial central administration and security facilities.

This is just what they did during their first major operation of 2015, starting only two days after the spring offensive declaration. Before stabbing at Kunduz city, the Taleban first took on the security forces in Gortepa. At the initial stage, they chose the village of Mahsud Zubair as their target. According to Nurullah, an ALP commander stationed in that village, the Taleban, led by commander Mawlawi Shamsuddin from Chahrdara, supported by local sub-commanders, attacked at eight in the morning. Shortly after, according to Nurullah, “most of the state security bases were surrounded.” By seven in the evening, all security forces – Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan Local Police (ALP) and Nazm-e ‘ama (the Afghan National Civil Order Police) – had fled, and the Taleban issued a statement that they were in control. They had also taken over the Gortepa villages of Khan Shirin, Waziri, Gultepa-ye Awal and Goltepa-ye Dowom, Tapa-ye Burida and Chahrdarachi.

His own ALP men, said commander Nurullah, held their position until nightfall; then they, too, gave up. It was a windy night, he said, and this helped the men to crawl to a nearby forest and flee to Asqalan village, and then cross the river towards Pul-e Archin close to the provincial centre.

Speaking to AAN, three other ALP commanders in Gortepa presented a similar picture. Asked for the reasons for their defeat, they cited “shortage of weapons and ammunition and a lack of support by the local government.” Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, spokesman of the provincial police, confirmed that the ALP had not been equipped well enough to defeat the Taleban. “The light weapons of the ALP are not eligible for fierce fighting,” he said. He also said, though, that before the operation in Gortepa, on 10 April, a larger number of the ANSF from Kunduz had been deployed to Badakhshan to beat back the Taleban in Jurm district. This, however, can only be called a massive misjudgement on part of the security forces, as an imminent surge of the Taleban in this crucial area of Kunduz province was not only to be suspected, but information about it was already readily available, as elders told AAN.

Insurgents, rather skilfully using psychological warfare, had started spreading messages about their strength some time before the attack on Gortepa. They also spread news about a major attack to be launched soon. As a result, as elders from Gortepa confirmed to AAN, some ALP commanders left their bases already in the night before the Taleban offensive.

Locals against ALP

ALP commanders described the reality on the ground differently. Some told AAN they believed the local population sheltered and supported the Taleban. These concerns have been mostly raised by those ALP commanders who came into Gortepa from other districts and hail from different ethnic groups (the deployment of ‘outsiders’ has created ethnic tensions not only in Gortepa (more here). Gul Ahmad, for example, an ALP commander in Shinwari village in the Gortepa area, a former Jamiat commander and an ethnic Tajik who hails from Chahrdara district, accused the – predominantly Pashtun – locals of not supporting the ALP. According to him, 50 per cent of the locals offered shelter to the Taleban. Those who had attacked the ALP bases in Shinwari, he said, “were local Taleban from the same village.” They even imprisoned 23 ALP soldiers for two weeks in their own town. Local elders had to intervene and get the assurance of the prisoners that they would leave the ALP; only then they were released.

Gul Ahmad himself does not want to return to Shinwari village. “It is impossible for an outsider to ensure security there,” he told AAN.

Until today, most of Gortepa is under Taleban control. The local government, on 2 May, asked the residents to evacuate ahead of a clearance operation it allegedly planned on carrying out. Hundreds of families have been displaced to the capital, Kunduz. However, Muhammad Shafiq, a local farmer in Gortepa, told AAN in mid-May that it has “now already been almost two weeks” since he, along with other villagers, left their homes; yet there was no sign of any government action in Gortepa. (More about the displaced here). Addressing local authorities did not help to clarify things. The spokesman of the provincial police told AAN end of May that the government “will launch a clearance operation once it has drawn up a comprehensive plan and deployed soldiers to permanent military bases in Gortepa.” The evacuation thus came too early and has put additional hardship on the local population.

Sar-e Pul – a lesser known example of the same dynamics

As in Kunduz, but much less noticed by the media and other observers, the Taleban have been inching closer to the centre of Sar-e Pul province further west, too. (2) The security in this remote province has been deteriorating over the past two years. From here, the Taleban can monitor and support the insurgents in Balkh and Jawzjan provinces.

Sar-e Pul is located in the northwest of Afghanistan and consists of seven districts (Balkhab, Gosfandi, Sayad, Kohistanat, Sancharak, Suzma Qalah and Sar-e Pul centre). In the past years, the Taleban already established footholds in far-flung areas of Sayad and Kohistanat districts. According to an AAN report, already in 2010

most of the insurgents operating in the area are locals, they are supported by infiltrators from Badghis and Faryab. Taxation on behalf of the Taleban occurs also in the area close to provincial capital. The Taleban attacks against the ANP and ANA posts increased in 2010.

By today, according to locals, the Taleban have established a base only ten kilometres from the provincial governor’s office, just beyond the city borders, in the Sheramha area. From there the insurgents orchestrate operations against the ANSF’s bases in Sar-e Pul city. Offensives by local Taleban against ANSF and harassment of the local population have increased in frequency. According to figures from an independent international organisation monitoring the security in Sar-e Pul, Taleban attacks against ANSF almost doubled from 2013 to 2014,  from 96 to 157. Meanwhile, ANSF operations against insurgents have decreased from 10 in 2013 to only 6 in 2014, with 3 operations in 2015, by mid-May. The Ministry of Defence would not comment.

The case of Sheramha

The situation looks particularly bleak in Sheramha, close to the provincial centre. It is a mountainous area with up to 200 villages, dominated by ethnic Arabs, bordering Balkh province to the northwest and Jawzjan to the east. The Taleban have built a strong presence in this area in the past three years. Currently, according to Salahuddin Cherik, a representative of Sheramha in the provincial council, “most villages are ruled by them. But the government has not taken any considerable steps in this regard, for unknown reasons.”

The Taleban in Sheramha have a strong team that has been able to establish the beginnings of local ‘governance.’ The newly appointed shadow provincial governor, Mawlawi Attaullah, along with Mulla Nader, the head of the shadow military committee, has tasked two other influential insurgent figures from the area, Sebghatullah Rohani and Hakim Qaryadar, to set up a military-administrative unit (to recruit fighters and appoint sub-commanders) and judicial units. The latter’s verdicts on local peoples’ cases are usually obeyed by the villagers. (More about the Taleban’s administrative structure in Sar-e Pul here.) Nasema Arzo, the head of the provincial women’s affairs department, told AAN the insurgents now exerted their influence right up to the provincial centre’s border, patrolling these areas during the night. She also said she was worried about the women in the province. Women were not interested anymore in working in government offices due to threats by insurgents. She herself, she said, could not raise her voice in public, either.

“Taleban too strong to be interested in reconciliation”

The security forces seem helpless. According to Haji Payenda, the deputy head of the ALP in Sheramha, last year all 81 ALP members fled to Sar-e Pul city, taking their families with them. Two ALP commanders joined the insurgents with 18 of their men.

Reconciliation attempts with the local insurgents remained futile. Speaking to AAN, Mawlawi Naqib, the provincial director of the High Peace Council, stated that in the past few years 750 Taleban, including their field commanders, had indeed joined the peace process, but many then rejoined the insurgents. Six months ago, for example, a Taleban commander, named as Khan Muhammad, along with his 51 followers, laid down his weapons. However, local strongmen pushed the provincial judicial department to issue an order for his arrest and to accuse him of criminal activities. The Taleban commander swiftly rejoined the insurgents. “Also, this year’s spring offensive has made the insurgents believe that they are getting stronger in the north,” said the director. “They are currently not interested in laying down their weapons anymore.”

Provincial security officials struggle with admitting the scope of the Taleban’s influence in the area. This leads to slightly desperate and contradictory statements by provincial police chief Nur Habib Golbahari such as that “Sheramha is a safe place for the Taleban, but they are not strong enough to disrupt the security.” According to Golbahari, the Taleban “conducted several operations in various areas after the announcement of the spring offensive, but the ANSF defeat them.” With the continuing strong presence of the Taleban in Sheramha their ‘defeat’ rather means, though, that they have been driven back momentarily.

From MP to Taleb

The insecurity may be caused by other factors, too, that open avenues for the Taleban to pursue their usurpation of districts. Sar-e Pul is mostly dominated by three political parties: Jombesh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan, Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan and Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan. (3)  According to Masuma Ramazan, a provincial council member, the competition for government posts between Jamiat and Jombesh is a major factor affecting the security situation negatively (this has a long history; for more, look at footnote 4). “The governmental posts are exploited for personal interests by local strongmen, and this always intensifies the feud among local players,” she stated. Commanders switch sides frequently – and sometimes over to the Taleban. In September 2013, for example, a representative of Sar-e Pul province in the upper house of parliament and former district governor of Kohistanat, Qazi Abdulhai, went over to the Taleban after he was removed before the end of his term. In a video posted on the Taleban website, Abdulhai justified the move saying that in his four years in Kabul, he saw “the corrupt face of the government.”

For Sebghatullah Ishaqzai, the provincial head of the Right and Justice Party (Hezb-e Haq wa Adalat), (5) the major reason behind the insecurity is the absence of a local government that meet the locals’ demands. “The appointments of the security officials are not on a meritocratic basis, instead they are based on political affiliation and nepotism,” he said. Therefore, “the local officials are simply not capable of drawing up a comprehensive plan to ensure security” for the province.

To give just a few examples of incidents: In April 2014, the Taleban kidnapped nine civilians, including a provincial council candidate, in the capital Sar-e Pul; their bodies were discovered two days later. In October 2014, the Taleban ambushed Afghan security forces and, according to provincial governor Abduljabar Haqbin, killed 14 and wounded 17. Six others were captured. In February 2015, the Taleban attacked a police check post in the provincial centre and set it on fire. In May 2015, hundreds of people in Sar-e Pul said they were tired of waiting for the government to ensure security and took up weapons to protect their villages themselves. However, often such movements are organised by local strongmen to secure their sphere of influence, arming only one specific group. In Sar-e Pul, it remains unclear whether the May self-protection action was a wider public initiative to beat the insurgents or a powerbrokers’ project.

Apparently, as AAN learned from local elders, many Taleban sub-commanders in Sheramha are simply locals angered by the ineffectiveness of local government and local power brokers’ unscrupulous abuse of authority. Insecurity is hampering development projects as well as service delivery, for example in healthcare. There is no asphalted road to the provincial centre, and the education sector is mainly run by local mullahs who have taken over as teachers. This example of local political dynamics applies also to Gortepa in Kunduz. The harassment of villagers by local commanders’ militias and the failure to establish the rule of law have created chaos on all fronts, rendering it easy for the insurgency to make inroads in the province. Clearly, improving Afghanistan’s security is not only about making security forces stronger and beating back the Taleban. It must be a comprehensive approach that starts with people’s satisfaction with their government.

 

(1) A first wave of Arabs arrived in what today is western and northern Afghanistan as part of their conquest of what then was known as Khorasan and Baktria in the seventh century. (Herat was conquered in 652 = 31 hijrishamsi, Kabul only in 871.) Some of them settled in the area. A second wave, of some 10,000s, came from Russian (later Soviet Central Asia), mainly from the region of Bukhara, after the Russian conquest of the area and again after the 1917 October Revolution. According to the US Library of Congress Country Study for Afghanistan, “by the 1880s they were, with the Uzbek with whom they established close ties, the second most populous ethnic group in present day Kunduz, Takhar and Baghlan provinces. Smaller groups settled in scattered communities as far west as Maimana, Faryab Province.” Today, the Afghan Arabs are mainly pastoralists who raise sheep and grow cotton and wheat. They are fully integrated Afghans, speaking Pashto, Dari or Uzbaki – but not Arabic in many cases. (For Arabic-speaking communities in northern Afghanistan, see Charles Kieffer, here.)

(2) Similar developments have been reported from Baghlan (here) and Faryab provinces (here).

(3) Jombeshis are led by Abdul Rashid Dostum, the first vice president; Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Mardom by Muhammad Muhaqeq, the second deputy for Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah; and Jamiat by Salahuddin Rabbani, the minister for Foreign Affairs. All three belong to the tanzims, the mujahedin ‘parties’ that were involved in the 1990s factional wars. Earlier, in the 1980s, Jamiat and Wahdat fought the Soviet occupants and the regime supported by them while Jombesh (then a militia known as “Jawzjanis” – or even as “kelim jam,” ie “carpet thieves,” allied with the Soviets. (For more background, see an AAN paper about Jombesh here, dispatches about Jamiat for example here, and an external paper about political parties in general that also contains information about the different wings of Hezb-e Wahdat here.)

(4) According to AAN’s report in 2012,

immediately after the Taleban defeat in 2001, the province was divided into zones of predominance between Jombesh (in Sar-e pul’s north) and Jamiat and Wahdat (in the south), with Jombesh and Jamiat controlling the provincial centre and a Jombesh governor (up to 2004). After severe fighting in 2002, Jombesh managed to wrestle control over the provincial centre from Jamiat. In the districts, sporadic fighting continued until 2004. After Rahmati was appointed governor in 2010, the balance of power shifted again. This strengthened the position of Wahdat faction. After the serial protest mainly organised by Jombesh, Rahmati was replaced.

(5) Background about this party is in this AAN dispatch.

 

There has been a spate of stories about the end of the travel ban on the five Taleban detainees released from Guantanamo Bay a year ago and exchanged for the United States soldier Bowe Bergdahl. US politicians and media have been speculating on what impact the five might have on the insurgency if they came to Afghanistan; last-minute negotiations between Qatar and the US to extend a travel ban appear to have succeeded. However, as AAN’s Kate Clark reports, the four senior Taleban among the five were already under United Nations sanctions and banned from travel.

Four Taleban leaders were released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility a year ago: former governors of Herat and Balkh, Khairullah Khairi and Nurullah Nuri, former deputy intelligence chief Abdul Haq Wasiq, and former Chief of the Army staff Fazl Mazlum. They were joined by a minor Taleb, Muhammad Nabi Omari, whose release had been demanded, it seems, because of his ties to the Haqqani family who were holding the captured US soldier Bowe Berghdal. After the exchange, the five were taken to Qatar which agreed to ban them from travel for a year.

Some people in America have been getting frightened as the year’s deadline approached, as CNN among others has reported:

A pair of top Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee – Mac Thornberry of Texas and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri – said in a statement Friday that the swap for Bergdahl endangered U.S. troops. “On Sunday, the (Obama) Administration’s flimsy restrictions on these terrorists will expire. This will endanger our troops abroad and our families at home. Understanding why and how this came about is the responsibility of the Congress, one we intend to carry out,” they said.

According to Voice of America, Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denounced what he said were “flimsy” security assurances in the memorandum of understanding that formalised the prisoner swap. After Sunday, the Republican congressman said, “These assurances disappear and the Taliban leaders will be free to return to the battlefield, putting U.S. security interests and Americans at risk.” AP reported him saying “It’s impossible for me to see how they don’t re-join the fight in short order.”

Nothing is said about exactly what the five might do or how exactly they might augment the insurgency or, indeed, threaten American lives whether (the few) in Afghanistan or the United States.

The concerns about the Taleban Five now being able to travel are rather undermined by the fact that the four significant ones were already all under UN Security Council Sanctions which ban travel and freeze assets (see latest resolution here and listing here). Several newspapers have cited the Sanction’s Committee’s report from last year which said “some listed individuals have become increasingly adept at circumventing the sanctions measures, the travel ban in particular.” Neither the reporters or the UN give examples or mention who this phase might apply to. The original report also talks about measures the UN is taking to prevent such travel; responsibility for enforcing the sanctions lies with member states, in this case Qatar. AAN understands the five have been able to receive guests, at first only civilians or those in the Taleban with ‘civilian’ responsibilities, but more recently also commanders. However, there was never a ‘contact ban’. Today (1 June), it was reported that Qatar had extended its travel ban and monitoring of the five.

Poor reporting muddies the waters

When talk of the swap was first mooted, AAN published biographies of all five because of weird reporting coming from US media. Many newspapers and news agencies repeated assertions made in US government files on the detainees without checking information. The problem is that, in gathering information about the detainees, the US military and intelligence used hearsay, rumour and the accusations of other detainees, some of it detained under torture or duress. The files are littered with misunderstandings, mistranslations and basic historical inaccuracies. Not everything in the files is wrong, but facts are so mixed in with errors, one has to double check any allegation or assertion. The other problem, of course, is that the accusations have never been put to the test of being made in a court of law (for detailed analysis of the files, see here).

Once again, now, we see press stories repeating the same strange allegations, for example, that the UN (!) – no other details given – had accused former Balkh Governor Nurullah Nuri of “ordering the massacre of thousands of Shiites.” This matches neither the historical record nor UN statements. Or see this New York Times piece:

The five include a one-time Taliban spokesman, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa [his name is Khairullah Khairkhwa, not sure where ‘Said Wali’ came from], who was also a minister of internal affairs in the Taliban government, and was implicated in the massacre of Shiite civilians [not true]. Mullah Mohammad Fazl, a former deputy army chief of staff for the Taliban, was accused of carrying out massacres of Hazara civilians [why differentiate between Shias and Hazaras here? Fazl did have command and control responsibility for a number of massacres of Hazaras and Sayyeds; a stronger allegation, however, was that he was directly implicated as one of the field commanders in the killings of civilians and surrendered Northern Alliance fighters (largely Tajik), the forcible displacement of civilians and the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure – burning houses, vineyards, orchards and destroying irrigation systems, in Shomali in 1999], and was also described as one of the founders of the Taliban, along with Mullah Omar [not true, he joined later].

An American military interrogator said Mullah Fazl justified the killings as a wartime necessity, and also dismissed the killings of Iranian diplomats in Herat [the diplomats were killed in Mazar, and Fazl was not implicated] on the grounds that they were foreigners and supported the enemy. Mullah Norullah [sic] Noori was a former provincial governor accused of responsibility in the killing of thousands of Shiites during the Taliban rule (again, killing Shias – again not true). Abdul Haq Wasiq was the former deputy intelligence director under Mullah Omar (yes true, although as every Taleban official was ‘under Mullah Omar’, this is a strange detail to include). 

This repeated claim of Taleban “killing Shias” is particularly strange. The Taleban used collective punishment against civilians where armed groups of the same ethnicity as the civilians had re-taken territory: they carried out a number of massacres of civilians and ‘scorched’ earth to make areas uninhabitable. The main victims of this tactic were Hazaras and Seyyeds – who are Shia – but other ethnic groups who are Sunni were also targeted, including Uzbeks (in Khwaja Gah, in Takhar) and Tajiks (in Shomali). Only the Taleban’s 1998 massacre in Mazar-e Sharif was explicitly sectarian (for detailed reporting, see the UN ‘mapping report’). (It was also noticeable that rebellion by Pashtuns was always treated differently. In the case of tribes in Khost, for example, who were unhappy in 1999 at taxes and what they thought was a broken promise to bring King Zaher Shah back, the leadership sent a senior Taleb, the Information and Culture Minister Amir Khan Mutaqqi, to talk to tribal elders and distribute money).

To cast the Taleban’s massacres of civilians as sectarian, rather than ethnic, is simply not accurate. Moreover, from an Afghanistan perspective, it sounds like reporters and politicians have spent too much time in Iraq where Sunni-Shia violence is fundamental to the conflict. As to those implicated in these massacres, among these five, only Mullah Fazl had direct and command responsibility. Indeed, he is the only one of the five to face specific accusations of war crimes.

One of the problems early on with America’s detention policy was that the US was never interested in accountability for war crimes against Afghans (but only against Americans). Fazl could have been put on trial – there is plenty of court-worthy evidence gathered on him and, indeed, there were calls as early as November 2011 for such detainees to face justice. However, a problem would have arisen for the US; if it had put Taleban on trial, what questions would have been raised about some of its post-2001 allies (many of whom had earlier been Cold War-era allies) who have similar cases to answer and, indeed, the US itself, given that it had ‘thrown away’ the Geneva Conventions? (1)

It was frustrating then that men such as Fazl who were in detention were not required to face justice. It is equally disturbing that accusations (and false accusations) against the five former Taleban detainees are dragged up now and exploited for what look, again, to be domestic US political reasons – because, it seems, various politicians are still angry about President Obama swapping the five for Bergdahl a year ago.

 

(1) George Bush decided that the Geneva Conventions did not legally apply to ‘War on Terror’ detainees held in Guantanamo and elsewhere, although the conventions would be respected as a matter of policy. This included even Common Article 3 which prohibits the most basic abuses in wartime, including summary executions, torture and hostage taking, and applies to all conflicts, including civil wars. Bush was forced to reverse this policy in 2006 after the Supreme Court held that special military commissions he had set up for the detainees at Guantanamo violated US law and the Geneva Conventions.

Preparations are on-going for what are labelled “non-official” talks between Afghans of “different parties.” Organised by the non-governmental academic network, the Pugwash Conference, this will be a follow up to a first round of such talks held in Qatar on 2 and 3 May 2015 which brought members of the two biggest insurgent organisations – the Taleban and Hezb-e Islami – as well as political and civil society figures from inside Afghanistan and some internationals, mainly from the United Nations, to one table. All had been invited in their individual capacities. It was not the first time an Afghanistan-related gathering was organised by the Pugwash Conference. However, it was the first time that a final statement was released. This document contains some surprising elements of consensus, writes AAN’s senior analyst Thomas Ruttig. He also asks whether this consensus can kick start, and then sustain, negotiations for a political settlement in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a recent meeting between Afghan government and Taleban representatives in China signals a possible edging (in deeds, not in words) of the Taleban towards direct talks with the government and has given new momentum to these developments.

A new attempt to get different parties to the Afghan conflict talking is under way. Since Saturday, 30 May, Professor Paulo Cotta-Ramusino, the Secretary-General of the Pugwash Conference has been in Kabul to prepare for a follow-up meeting to one it had organised in Qatar in early May. One of the participants of that meeting, MP Seyyed Ishaq Gailani, told AAN that Cotta-Ramusino will talk to bozorgha-ye mamlakat (“elders of the country”), including President Ashraf Ghani and the government’s Chief Executive Officer, Dr Abdullah as well as delegates from the last meeting. On 6 June, there will also be a preparatory meeting in Dubai between Taleban ‘representatives’ and six participants from Kabul – including Gailani, Shahzada Shahid from the High Peace Council (HPC) and Qutbuuddin Helal, a member of Hezb-e Islami who ran for president last year after returning from exile. The next Qatar meeting, possibly with broader participation than the previous one, will be held after the month of Ramadan which ends around 17 July.

The Qatar meeting in early May came a bit out of the blue, although it was not the first Afghanistan-related gathering organised by the Pugwash Conference, a renowned international non-governmental network of scientists that sometimes helps to mediate in armed conflicts and that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. The Pugwash-organised meetings come after a number of earlier attempts to get Afghans, including representatives of the insurgents, together which, however, had no follow-up (see AAN analysis of those here). These attempts included an “academic conference” (a term also used for the Pugwash gathering by the Taleban) in the Japanese city of Kyoto in June 2012 during which, for the first time, a high-ranking Taleban member (former planning minister Qari Din Muhammad Hanafi) participated; a meeting in Chantilly in France in December 2012 and a number of even earlier meetings in the Maldives in 2010. A UN initiative to start an ‘intra-Afghan dialogue,’ (1) planned for February 2013 in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabad, was blocked by an angry then-president Karzai. The May Qatar meeting was also preceded by a training course in Norway on the role of ceasefires in peace processes where Taleban sat in the same room with officials of the Afghan government – along with people from other countries.

The Qatar set-up

The Pugwash-organised meeting took place in al-Khor, a Qatari spa town north of the capital Doha (where the Taleban’s famous ‘Doha office’ is situated) after a year-long lull in contacts. The last direct contact between any party and the Taleban, apart from possible individual, explorative contacts, (2) were those of the US government, also in Qatar a year ago that led to the release of Bowe Bergdahl, the only US soldier held by the Taleban; he was exchanged for five Taleban internees from Guantanamo. After the exchange, this line of contact went cold, mainly over the Taleban’s refusal to hold direct talks with the government in Kabul (led by then-president Hamed Karzai), which the insurgents consider a ‘puppet’ administration. (According to one participant in the recent talks in al-Khor, the Taleban avoided using the word hukumat (government) but spoke of edara-ye Kabul (Kabul administration) instead; at the same time, the non-Taleban delegates referred to them as “Taleban” not “the Emirate.”)

Both the main insurgent groups – the Taleban and Hezb-e Islami – sent high-ranking people. For the latter, Mullah Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai from the leadership council, deputy head of the Taleban political commission, attended; most others were from the team of the officially defunct Qatar office (biographies here). Hezb-e Islami sent its deputy party leader, Ghairat Bahir, who, under Karzai, had often travelled to Kabul (see AAN analysis here and here).

From Afghanistan, major political forces or their leaders – from different mujahedin factions to the ‘Karzai camp’ to ‘civil society’ – were asked to nominate participants. Most decided to send lesser-known people. The most prominent were two former ministers, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi and Wahidullah Shahrani (who started his career in high-ranking positions under Karzai); MP Ishaq Gailani (who as a member of a prominent family of spiritual leaders also commands respect among insurgents), former MP Malalai Shinwari (one of only three women); Fahim Hakim, a civil society activist and former member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission; and two high-ranking HPC members, deputy chairman Ataullah Ludin and spokesman Shahzada Shahed. Apart from them, Qayyum Kuchai, the chairman of the Ahmadzai tribal council and uncle of the president, attended, as well as some lesser known politicians linked to former mujahedin factions, some known to be close to former president Hamed Karzai and a few other civil society activists. Another politician reportedly invited, former deputy foreign minister Ershad Ahmadi, decided not to attend. (He recently accompanied former president Karzai on his China visit, though; see a media report here).

Many of the participants, on all sides, were Pashtuns, but it was noticeable that almost no ‘Kandaharis,’ ie Pashtuns from southern Afghanistan, were there; almost all came from the east or southeast. (An official list of participants has not been released, so find a tentative list – combined from media and other reports – at the end of this dispatch.)

As it is usual in track II meetings like this one, participants were invited in their personal capacity. This allows them to speak freely, rather than be forced to fully represent their organisations’ views – although, at the same time (as was the case in Qatar), such views are aired, opening the chance to channel back to organisations ideas raised. Not all participants found it easy to stick to this principle. The Taleban made their anger known after Ludin identified himself as the HPC vice chair. Despite this, reporters on the ground and some participants described the atmosphere of the talks as generally amicable.

One participant told AAN that some participants did not leave al-Khor immediately after the 2–3 May talks, indicating more private contacts may have occurred after the official two rounds of exchange.

Insofar as the Pugwash Conference filled a vacuum, it created a new chance to kick-start talks again, with the aim of moving to a regular peace process – a term explicitly used in the final communiqué. (It even says that the peace process “should be speeded up.”) It would be a large step forward if the participating (non-)sides would see the al-Khor meeting as part of, or precursor to, such a process.

Going public

Another first at al-Khor was the release of a communiqué (full text here) outlining the type of meeting and the “important common points” that “emerged.” This fact alone highlights the fact that the inviting organisation, at least, saw the time was ripe to make the discussion public; the document contains issues that need to be tackled if and when future talks – the planned follow-up and, possibly later, more formal negotiations – commence. It was also a nod to those in Afghanistan who have often demanded that ‘peace talks’ should not be held in secrecy, because they fear secret talks might result in backroom deals that determine the destiny of a whole nation without sufficient inclusion and information. It must be noted, though, that the organisers seemed to have authored the communiqué. That does not seem to have been a problem: no participant made a public protest, either about the publication as such or about the content. (There still might be issues about nuances: according to some reports there was no agreement that foreign troops leave “soon” but rather “eventually.”) The communiqué, at least, made it possible to ‘map’ common ground and to identify where gaps are that need to be bridged.

The Taleban later published a statement on their official website that their participants had read out and distributed in al-Khor (full texts here, in English and in Pashto). There, they had insisted – in accordance with the spirit of the “non-official” meeting (as Pugwash labelled it) – that this paper was not their organisation’s official stance. But such ambiguity, on all sides, is part of this kind of pre-negotiation meeting.

The al-Khor communiqué and the Taleban statement also reiterate what participants said were the Taleban’s ‘preconditions’ but what the Taleban, maybe more accurately, called the “main hurdles in the way for peace,” ie their key demands: the “occupation, black list and reward list, non-availability of an official address for the Islamic Emirate, continuing to keep political prisoners behind bars [sic].” Participants say that the Taleban also demanded that the government be represented by people who “really believe in peace” (another sign that they might indeed consider direct talks, but also that they do not consider the current personnel genuine on the issue) and that “negative propaganda should be abandoned,” ie the other side should stop calling them “terrorists.” One participant said it was notable how little other participants pushed back on the Taleban claim that the war was against ‘invaders and puppets.’

Agreements . . .

The communiqué contains some – at first glance – surprising points of consensus:

The idea of bringing about peace in Afghanistan and ending the conflict was wholeheartedly supported by all the participants.

The civilian casualties of the Afghan conflict have been lamented by everybody. . . . Protection of civilians is, as it should be, a priority for everybody.

Any political discrimination against any Afghan political party or group would be an obstacle to the peace process. . .

Corruption and the production/selling of drugs are among the most serious problems of Afghanistan. . .

The value of education for both men and women was underlined by everybody. Economic development in Afghanistan will heavily depend on peace . . .

In any case, the government of Afghanistan will be an Islamic one. This does not mean that minorities of any sort should be discriminated against. . .

The model of the so-called Islamic State (Daesh) is alien to the tradition and the desires of the Afghan people. . .

The relation with neighbouring countries should be kept amicable, and cooperation with such countries should be strengthened. This does not mean that neighbouring countries are welcome to interfere with Afghan internal affairs.

The Taleban’s al-Khor statement, not reflected in the final communiqué, also contains what appears to be revolutionary wording about women’s rights:

The Islamic Emirate is committed to all rights of women in all walks of life which are bestowed upon them in the sacred religion of Islam. Women have the right to choose her life-partner [sic]. She has the right of ownership and inheritance. She has the right of acquiring knowledge and work. . . . in a balanced way in which they are neither deprived of their just and legitimate rights nor are their human dignity and Islamic values are jeopardized…

The participants also agreed that the Qatar government, “non-governmental international organizations such as Pugwash” and the UN “continue to support the Afghan peace process.” This is positive, as the Taleban often have been critical of the UN and perceived it as a body mainly reflecting Western interests, or as under US dominance. Also, the Afghan government under Karzai did not want to see any UN role in the peace process.

Almost all Afghans would subscribe to most points in the communiqué – from the need for peace to getting the economy going, to concerns of Daesh spreading to the region, including to Central and South Asia. But this might also be a problem. The general consensus covers deep differences on detail.

. . .  covered gaps . . . 

For example, the general agreement that “in any case, the government of Afghanistan will be an Islamic one” does not reconcile the whole range of opinions about what an “Islamic government” means in practice. The government and many Afghans argue that their country is already called an Islamic Republic, with Islam as the “religion of the state” and a constitution that stipulates that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” At the same time, the constitution contains a whole range of democratic, pluralistic institutions and mechanisms that were not part of political practice during the Taleban’s Islamic Emirate – it existed without any elected bodies. (It needs to be noted that other political forces in Afghanistan reject ‘Western-style’ democracy; see here.) On the other hand, the Taleban at al-Khor did not openly object to the communiqué’s provision that “no party should have a monopoly on power.”

Other consensus points, like education for boys and girls, are clearly under ‘sharia caveat.’ In a statement released a few days after the al-Khor meeting, the Taleban reiterated that they were seeking “a way out for intra-afghan disputes in the light of Quran and Sunnah.” On civilian casualties, the consensus is accompanied, on the part of the Taleban, by accusations that Western and Afghan government forces continue killing civilians. (This is reflected in the communiqué by the phrase that “differences may exist on who bears the main responsibility of these casualties.”) UN reports clearly pinpoint that most – around three quarters – of all civilian casualties are caused by the insurgents. The Taleban contest this and say they find the reports biased, even though UNAMA takes pains to investigate any reports of civilian casualties they receive from the Taleban and adds any substantiated casualties to their figures; in al-Khor the Taleban claimed that currently two of their commanders are under investigation for infringements on killing civilians, but these also need to be transparent. A question reportedly asked from the Taleban present about recent mass abductions of civilians (see AAN analysis here) remained unanswered.

The issue of civilian casualties has been taken up elsewhere recently. It became known that Afghanistan’s then still-acting main peace envoy, Masum Stanakzai (now nominated for the post of defence minister, see AAN reporting here), met former high-ranking Taleban officials in the north-western Chinese city of Urumqi. After that meeting, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua came up with an article blaming the Taleban for “launching indiscriminate attacks.” This can hardly by incidental, given the government’s control over all media in the country.

At least as importantly, the Urumqi meeting shows that the official Taleban refusal to directly talk to Kabul officials is not cast in stone – a glimmer of hope for progress on peace talks. That the meeting took place was confirmed by the former head of the Taleban ‘religious police’ (amr bil-maruf), Mawlawi Qalamuddin, and unnamed diplomats while a Taleban spokesman delivered a denial and a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, less clear-cut, professed she “wasn’t familiar” with the talks. On the Taleban side, former Taleban deputy foreign minister Mullah Abdul Jalil, former Kandahar governor Mullah Muhammad Hassan Rahmani (who had been on the Taleban leadership council) and former interior minister Mullah Abdul Razzaq reportedly attended. All three are based in Pakistan and are said to have good links with the Pakistani intelligence service (who reportedly helped organise the talks) while their exact status in the Taleban movement is unclear. (This also provides the Taleban deniability about contacts with the Afghan government which they officially continue to reject.)

One interesting point in the al-Khor communiqué is found in a statement about neighbouring countries’ ‘interference’ in Afghan domestic affairs. Participants say they understood this as a criticism of the Ghani/Abdullah government’s attempts to push Pakistan, by mobilising its – as called in Pakistan – “all-weather ally” China to push the Taleban to the negotiations table. This was confirmed by Kuchai who was reported as saying: “The Taliban were upset that the Afghan government approached the Pakistanis rather than reaching out to them directly.”

On the same day as the Xinhua statement mentioned above, the Taleban published an article (3) on their website supporting a Chinese mediating role, praising the “expanding power” for its understanding “that the Taliban are a force on the ground, a reality which cannot be ignored” and even waving a carrot at Beijing: that China could “capitalize on the current situation in order to rebuild the Silk Road.” But this praise is not unconditional: The article adds that “China must therefore establish direct contacts with the Taliban and not task other powers” with talking to them – another hint that it does not want to be addressed through Pakistan. It even challenges the leadership in Beijing: “If China truly wants to achieve reconciliation between Kabul and Taliban by playing the role of a mediator, can it for example assure that America and the foreign powers will abide by the decisions [of negotiations] especially if the main demands of the Taliban are enforcement of Shariah and expulsion of foreign troops?”

. . . and disagreements

Apart from the civilian casualties issue, one more fundamental disagreement is clearly spelled out in the communiqué: that there are “different opinions” about the “structure of the political system (and the constitution of Afghanistan)” that “should be discussed in detail.” The Afghan government insists that the Taleban recognise the current constitution while the Taleban insist (as reiterated in al-Khor and in their later published statement but not spelled out in the communiqué) that an all-Afghan “expert” body writes a new one, as the current one was – in the Taleban’s reading – drafted “in the shadow of the B-52 bombers.”

Naturally, as the al-Khor communiqué points out, “the role of foreign forces that are or have been present in Afghanistan were evaluated in different ways (also in relation to the civilian casualties mentioned above).” On the matter of their withdrawal, some participants were calling – and this also went into the communiqué – for “an agreement among Afghan political forces before the departure of the foreign forces.” This indirectly reflects doubts about the defence capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces in case of an on-going insurgency after the last western troops have left, with military aid beyond 2017 unclear.

In their subsequently published al-Khor statement, the Taleban participants made it clear that “reconciliation and withdrawal of foreign forces are linked to each other,” ie the latter has to precede the former (see also here). The same goes for a ceasefire that had been proposed by Qayyum Kuchai but rejected by the Taleban (confirmed to AAN by participants). The Taleban further hold against the Ghani/Abdullah government the fact that it signed the US-Afghan bilateral strategic defence agreement (BSA) and similar one with NATO which extended the deployment of Western troops on Afghan soil: “It must be regretfully said that whenever the Islamic Emirate has moved forward towards peace, it has been practically halted by signings of the so called strategic agreement and security agreement.”

So far, it remains unclear whether, and how much, the positions presented in Qatar and/or agreed in the communiqué reflect a real change of policy on the part of the Taleban or whether they are simply paying lip service to the idea of talking. (The Taleban also must be careful, as they have to keep their own ‘hawks’ on board.) The drastic gap between their stated policy and practical attitude toward the civilian population and its protection is a point in case. While the Taleban, time and again, in their ‘leader’s’ Eid statements and in al-Khor again, claim that they do everything to protect civilians in war, the recent three bomb attacks in Kabul claimed by them alone show this is not the case: in each of these attacks, more uninvolved civilian passers-by were killed than people the Taleban perceive to be (often against international law) ‘legitimate targets’ (more AAN analysis here).

The same goes for their recent attacks on foreign civilians. While they have signalled in earlier statements that they are interested in mutually respectful relations with all countries and being part of the ‘international community,’ and surely must be aware of the socio-economic situation in Afghanistan that necessitates continued international humanitarian and development aid for the Afghan population, they jeopardise these positions by lumping international civilians, even aid workers, in with what they call “the invaders.” If there are no security guarantees, government-funded development programmes might be forced to close down.

Open questions: What about the government . . .

Reports are contradictory on a number of issues discussed in al-Khor and which were not reflected in the final communiqué (or not in detail). One issue is whether the Afghan government was ‘represented’ at the meeting at all (on an individual basis, of course), and if not, why. The names of participants published so far do not indicate participation beyond the two HPC members. And although HPC members are appointed by the president, HPC is not fully a governmental body. It was not clear (or intentionally left ambiguous) whether Kuchai, the president’s uncle who is also rumoured to be a candidate for the chairmanship of the HPC (4) went to the meeting on behalf of, or at least with the tacit approval of, the president or – as some told AAN – against his will. It is clear, however, that the Afghan government remains in contact with the hosts of the al-Khor meeting, the government of Qatar – although a next meeting, a trip of president Ghani scheduled for Saturday 30 May had to be postponed because of domestic issues.

According to some sources privy to the preparation of and proceedings at the al-Khor meeting, Masum Stanakzai, the head of the joint secretariat of the HPC and of the government’s ‘peace and reconciliation programme’ (and now nominated as defence minister) had initially been on the list of invitees. Whether he decided not to go because government participation might lend too much perceived ‘weight’ to the talks, or was vetoed by the Taleban, or both is not clear. Pugwash had submitted the list to all participants and apparently allowed room for objections. Participants in the talks said the Taleban repeated their rejection of any direct talks with Kabul. According to one version of events, they feel betrayed; they referred to their support of Ghani during the presidential campaign (AAN, here, and others, here, reported) and claimed there had been an understanding – later broken – that the new president would not sign the BSA.

Furthermore, according to participants, the Taleban and the Hezb participants from the insurgent wing demanded that an interim government be formed, because (as put in the Taleban statement) “in the presence of foreign forces, an independent government cannot be formed in Afghanistan.” (The intended timing was unclear, whether immediately before or after the withdrawal of all foreign forces.) This, of course, would signal that both of the main insurgent groups do not consider the current political set-up legitimate or do not want to be seen to be recognising it as legitimate; therefore, they want to discuss the future political system and constitution, as stated in the communiqué.

All in all, the different Taleban statements at al-Khor and published on their website alone are highly inconsistent on one key issue: their willingness to talk directly with the Afghan government. The Afghan government, on its part, signalled goodwill before the meeting by not blocking the meeting. This is a positive difference from the Karzai government’s stance of trying to monopolise all Taleban contacts and actively shut down any channel of contact that it was not part of or did not control.

. . . and what about elections?

Media reports (here and here) said the Taleban, for the first time, had shown “openness for the idea of elections” (or even had “explicitly agreed” to them). Participants AAN spoke to remember this discussion differently; some say the term ‘elections’ was not explicitly used but – in the context of the insurgents’ demand for a new constitution – a “popular consultation” and decision “by the people’s vote” were mentioned. Also if an interim government was set up at some point, a process would still be needed to convert from such a temporary body to a permanent, fully legitimate one. In the tradition of Afghan Islamic political groups, the ‘people’s opinion’ also can be obtained through indirect means, for example by a shura of representatives of different factions – similar to the Shura-ye Hal o Aqd organised during the mujahedin rule in the 1990s.

Direct, multi-party elections do not figure in the Taleban’s worldview. They rarely use this term in their documents, do not consider themselves a political party and have never set up a structure like Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland that acted as the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). (The Taleban’s political commission is a sub-structure of the Shura-ye Rahbari, the movement’s leadership council, also referred to as the Quetta shura, which is military and political at the same time.) In their (already quoted) statement, they speak about an “Afghan-inclusive Islamic system of life … where all the people and tribes [but note, not parties] are represented.” In contrast, Hezb-e Islami, in its 2010 peace plan (AAN analysis here), in general, suggested elections, although open only to “Islamic parties.” (Whether the party – which is known for its ever-shifting positions – considers that plan still valid is unclear.)

The role of Hezb at the al-Khor talks itself was as ambiguous as ever. Among the participants were found both individuals from the wing that is officially registered and politically active in Afghanistan, filling high-ranking positions in the previous and current governments, and individuals from the one that continues to fight this very government. The Kabul-based wing (represented in al-Khor by HPC vice chairman Ataullah Ludin, governor of Nangrahar province until recently) has officially distanced itself from the insurgent wing (led by the party’s founder and still active leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and represented in al-Khor by deputy party leader Ghairat Bahir and a party spokesman, Qarib-ur-Rahman Said). (5) Yet Ludin, and Qutbuddin Helal – a former Hekmyatyar deputy who ran in the 2014 presidential elections – sat together with Bahir and Said on one side of the table, next to the Taleban, choosing not to represent government ideas. To several other participants, they looked like a single delegation, and made the party ‘split’ look more like Clausewitz tactics: “March separately, strike jointly.”

Imbalances

The configuration of the al-Khor meeting had some other shortcomings. That the organisers coordinated the list of invitees with them beforehand is usual practice. But in effect, it gave the Taleban a veto over who would be with them at the table. This, however, was only possible because the ‘other side’ – politicians of different parties and backgrounds and a small number of civil society activists – were insufficiently prepared for the meeting and had not coordinated among themselves. As one participant told AAN, the Taleban were much better prepared, presenting their positions on apparently assigned topics one by one, which took the other participants by surprise.

The civil society people (and the three women involved) apparently had not coordinated within their existing structures – at previous international Afghanistan conferences, for example, civil society delegates were elected, and involved non-Kabulis. If that had been done, the civil society people would have had more legitimacy and political weight and could have equipped themselves with ideas, concepts and positions towards peace talks that have already been discussed. These include how to combine top-down peace negotiations with local, bottom-up initiatives and a sufficient inclusion of women. Only one women with some political clout was at al-Khor, a former journalist and MP, Malalai Shinwari, who later worked as a government official. The other two were reported to be very young, said nothing at the gathering and have not been publicly named.

There are also no institutionalised mechanisms to guarantee that ideas of inclusion promoted by women and other civil society organisations, if and when the Afghan government should join such talks, will be integrated into its negotiating strategy. Another problem was that many of the political factions who were asked to send representatives are not functioning in a democratic way, so that their leaders are the ones who are approached with invitations and who decide who is to attend on their behalf. This lack of legitimacy of the civil society activists may have contributed to he fact that the participants from Kabul apparently did not challenge the Taleban much on issues where there was a gap between Taleban words and deeds.

And another point: significant sectors in civil society and some factions would prefer not to talk – or ultimately share power – with the Taleban at all. They hope that the Afghan armed forces will still be able to achieve what up to 140,000 Western forces, plus Afghans were unable to do: defeat the insurgents with military means. This is understandable, given their personal experiences with the Taleban regime and the movement’s current approach to the civilian population – and expectations that negotiations might result not only in compromises but also in reversals of hard-won gains achieved over the past 14 years, particularly in the rights sector.

Follow-up moves

But there are some signs of hope, too. The al-Khor participants from Kabul now seem to have started to come together to prepare for the next round. One participant who has initiated meetings for better coordination among the non-insurgent participants says he is hopeful that the group might be able to soften the Taleban’s rejection of talking to the government directly. At the moment, however, Afghanistan’s non-governmental groups are not sufficiently prepared to face the Taleban even at talks, during a competition of ideas.

This is where the international community can – and should – come in. Not with plans and suggestions of its own, but with encouragement and – if necessary – specific funding to make sure particularly the civil society side consolidates and enters the coming meeting better prepared. In the end, if and when negotiations find a positive outcome, the international community will have to act as a guarantor anyway. The presence of UNAMA representatives keeps the door open for indirect Kabul-Taleban talks that could move a peace process forward.

Immediately after the talks, media reports said that the HPC has taken steps to delete more Taleban from the UN sanctions list. Any official request to the UN Security Council needs to come from the Afghan government – and would be another indication how much buy-in to the Qatar talks there is in the administration, despite the Taleban’s (so far) inflexible position towards it.

 

(1) This ‘intra-Afghan track II dialogue’ was defined by the UN as “trying to engage and provide platform for Afghan people, representatives of different groups, civil society, political parties and also those that are fighting the Government, a platform on which they can discuss their future.”

(2) For example, one report said – after the al-Khor meeting – that the president’s uncle, who participated in al-Khor, held meetings with Taleban representatives before the al-Khor meeting.

(3) The Taleban websites has the follwing categories of content (among others): {official) “statements,” and apparently less official “weekly analysis” and “articles.”

(4) The HPC is supposed to be ‘reformed’ and made leaner, ie downsized from its current membership of 70. This has been confirmed to AAN by HPC members.

(5) Some reports had a third Hezb-e Islami (Hekmatyar) participant, Qazi Hakim (see for example here).

 

Annex:

(Likely incomplete) List of participants

(sources: ToloNews, here and here; The News; Express Tribune; Taleban website)

 

Participants from Kabul:

▪ Abdullah Walwalji (Uzbek; writer and civil society activist; links to Jombesh but independent-minded)

▪ Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi (eastern Pashtun; former finance minister and former head Chef of Afghan Mellat party)

▪ Assadullah Saadati (Hazara, MP from Daykundi, close to former Vice President Abdul Karim Khalili’s Hezb-e Wahdat faction)

▪ Ataullah Ludin, (Pashtun from Nangrahar; deputy chairman High Peace Council; Hezb-e Islami);

▪ Atta ul-Rahman Salim (Tajik; former deputy minister for hajj and awqaf; nominee of former interior minister Yunos Qanuni);

▪ Fahim Hakim (civil society activist; former member of the Independent Human Rights Commission)

▪ Ghulam Faruq Azam (Kandahari Pashtun; former deputy leader of the mujahedin party led by Pir Gailani, minister in the former 1990s mujahedin government and leader of his own peace initiative)

▪ Haji Ruhollah (Pashtun from Kunar or Nuristan, former leader of a small Wahhabi group and Guantanamo detainee, released in 2008)

▪ Malalai Shinwari (Pashtun from Nangrahar; reportedly close to ex-president Karzai)

▪ Qayyum Kuchai (Pashtun from Logar; uncle of the President)

▪ Seyyed Ishaq Gailani (Pashtun/Seyyed from the southeast; former MP, leader of a small political party)

▪ Shahzada Shahed (eastern Pashtun; HPC spokesman);

▪ Wahidullah Shahrani (Uzbek; former mining minister under Karzai)

▪ Two more women who did not speak

▪ A few Afghan businessmen, brought by different participants

 

Taleban:

▪ Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai (Pashtun from Logar; deputy head of the Political Commission; former health minister)

▪ Shahabuddin Delawar (Pashtun; former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, later in Pakistan)

▪ Suhail Shahin (Pashtun; spokesman of the Qatar office, former editor-in-chief of the Kabul Times)

▪ Qari Din Muhammad Hanif (Tajik from Badakhshan; former planning minister)

▪ Abdul Salam Hanafi (Uzbek; former deputy education minister)

▪ Jan Muhammad Madani (Pashtun; former ambassador to the UAE)

▪ Seyyed Rassul Halim Nangrahari (Pashtun; religious scholar who had no government position during the Taleban regime)

▪ Hafez Aziz-ul-Rahman (former diplomat to the UAE)

More biographic details about the Taleban participants in this AAN dispatch.

 

Hezb-e Islami:

▪ Ghairat Bahir (from Hekmatyar’s wing; Hekmatyar’s son-in-law and deputy party chairman)

▪ Qarib-ur-Rahman Said (from Hekmatyar’s wing; party spokesman, now Oslo-based spokesman for Northern Europe)

▪ Qutbuddin Helal (another former deputy party leader under Hekmatyar; returned to Afghanistan in 2014)

(see also Ludin, above)

 

Internationals:

Senior and second political officer, UNAMA

Acting head of human rights department, UNAMA

A former senior political officer of UNAMA

Ambassador of Sweden

Professor Paolo Cotta Ramusino (the Secretary-General of the Pugwash Conference)

The national unity government is making its fourth attempt to appoint a minister of defence. On 24 May 2015, the presidential palace announced the nomination of Masum Stanakzai who has been the head of the Joint Secretariat of the High Peace Council and Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Programme since 2009. Members of Parliament will still need to give him a vote of confidence. The fact that, eight months after the national unity government was sworn in, it has still not filled one of the most important offices during war time is extraordinary, says AAN’s Kate Clark. She looks at why this might be the case and presents a biography of the new candidate.

It took the government three months to make its first attempt to appoint any minister: on 20 January 2015, it announced a full cabinet list, but two thirds of the nominees either fell away (they were ineligible because they held two passports, had no higher education or were wanted by Interpol) or were rejected by the MPs. Those rejected included the government’s first choice as defence minister, General Sher Muhammad Karimi. Karimi is the current Chief of Army Staff; Sandhurst-educated in the 1960s, in the presidential guard of Sardar Muhammad Daud during the 1978 coup d’ètat and, after imprisonment, made his way back to the ministry in the later PDPA administrations (Babrak Karmal and Dr Najibullah) and those of the mujahedin, Taleban, Karzai and Ghani.

In the government’s second attempt to fill the cabinet, it put forward names for all the vacant ministries except defence. Although this was not officially acknowledged, it appeared Abdullah and Ghani had not been able to agree on a candidate. When the parliament voted on this second list, on 18 April 2015, it confirmed all the nominees. Since then, two other names for minister of defence were floated, although neither made it to the ‘being introduced to parliament’ stage.

On 6 April 2015, the president’s office announced it had nominated General Afzal Ludin as the new minister, describing him as “a military professional [who] in the past has worked in different capacities at the ministry of Defense and more recently as Military Advisor to the Office of the National Security Council.” Two days later, the president’s office announced his withdrawal. Dr Abdullah had reportedly been furious, saying he had not been consulted on the appointment, while Ludin said he had withdrawn so as not to risk internal turmoil, given that “some might cause problems to my country over my candidacy.” Ludin was a former commander of the presidential guard, under Najibullah, and worked closely with the current interior minister, Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi.

The third attempted minister was General Abdullah Khan Habibi, in mid-April, although he only made it as far as the second deputy speaker of the Wolesi Jirga, Nazer Ahmadzai, saying the general was to be formally introduced to the house (as reported by Mandegar newspaper). That never happened. Now it is the turn of Masum Stanakzai, who emerges not out of the Ministry of Defence but out of the High Peace Council.

A leaderless army

It is clear that the appointment has been held up not by a shortage of suitable candidates, but by the political ‘tug of war’ over appointments at the heart of the national unity government. Talk to the people involved on either side (in the Ghani and Abdullah camps) and they each accuse the other side of intransigence, working unilaterally or bias. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter internally, the impression given by that one empty ministerial chair is terrible – making it look like the national unity government is squabbling over positions while the country burns, with no sense of urgency over the need to get a leader for an army which is having to fight hard and sacrifice much.

It is indeed extraordinary that a country facing as dangerous an opponent as the Taleban and as bloody a year as this one should not have a defence minister. The insurgency has been fierce ever since the new government was formed, with no ‘winter lull’ (except in Kabul) and offensives by the Taleban in many places, including Kunduz, Badakhshan, Faryab, Uruzgan, Sar-e Paul and Helmand – where there was also a counter-offensive by the ANSF. Casualties have been high; in the first four months of 2015, according to a Western military official who spoke anonymously to The New York Times on Afghan government figures not officially released, more than 1,800 soldiers and police officers have been killed in action and another 3,400 wounded – more than 65 per cent higher during the same period last year. Civilians have also been harmed in greater numbers this year: 2974 killed and 1,963 injured in the first four months of the year, reported UNAMA, up by 16 per cent since the same period in 2014. The situation is so precarious the government is reported in the north, to be turning to militias, including those accused of carrying out human rights abuses.

The army is sorely in need of a leader. The question now is whether Stanakzai will get through parliament and then whether he will make a good defence minister.

Muhammad Masum Stanakzai’s biography

Stanakzai was born in 1958, a Pashtun from Moghulkhel village, Muhammad Agha district of Logar province. He graduated from the communications (mukhabara) section of Kabul Military University. Later, he also got a Masters in Philosophy of Engineering for Sustainable Development from Cambridge University. (1)

As a young man, Stanakzai served in the Afghan army for a decade, rising through the ranks to end as a colonel, still, it seems, in communications. No official dates are given, but this would have been during the PDPA era. At some point, he moved into NGO work in Peshawar, moving up through the ranks there and serving eventually as director of one of the largest Afghan NGOs, the Agency for Rehabilitation and Energy Conservation (AREA) (2001-2002). I remember it being one of the first agencies to start mapping civilian casualties from at least early 2002. Stanakzai also served on the steering committee of ACBAR, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief.

He moved into government in 2002, first as Minister of Telecommunications (2002-2004), then as an advisor on security to President Karzai. In 2009, he was appointed Head of the Joint Secretariat of the newly created High Peace Council (HPC) and its Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Programme (APRP), serving there until the present – one of the few senior officials to stay in office during the transition from Karzai to Ghani. Stanakzai was centrally involved in Karzai’s peace-making efforts, as his loyal man in any contacts with the Taleban. Little, if anything, was achieved and some would say chances for negotiations were lost. However, any appraisal of the success or failure of the efforts would have to be laid primarily at Karzai’s door.

His final action in this capacity – under Ghani – appears to have been organising and “holding talks,” as it was reported in The Wall Street Journal, with three senior Taleban officials on 19 and 20 May 2015 in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region. The Taleban officials were named as Mullah Abdul Jalil (former deputy foreign minister during the Taleban’s ‘Emirate’ government), Mullah Muhammad Hassan Rahmani (former governor of Kandahar) and Mullah Abdul Razaq (former interior minister). The meeting was denied by the Taleban. (2)

Reconciling Taleban

Stanakzai was also in charge of implementing the High Peace Council’s Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Programme (APRP), although it was – and is – still officially ‘led’ by the 70-member High Peace Council. The APRP, which aims to persuade combatants to come over to the government side, has been a highly expensive and futile endeavour. Here is one just-published conclusion by Deedee Derksen, in a paper for the United States Institute for Peace (USIP):

“Peace is business” was a recurring comment of well-informed Afghan officials and tribal elders, who assert that the [local High Peace] councils’ main goal is to receive funds from Kabul. Patronage drives resource allocation in the APRP on all levels. Although progress has been made on the demobilization phase, intelligence gathering and assessment for vetting takes place in a “‘black box’, hidden from scrutiny.” This lack of transparency allows political players to subvert the process.

Accordingly, many participants seem to have not belonged to the insurgency, or at best have operated only in its periphery. This situation is explained by a number of factors: the Taliban are not interested, program officials and international stakeholders need to show numbers of participants, no consensus has been reached over who was eligible for the program, the vetting process is not transparent, and some APRP officials seem to have included people connected to them who are not in the insurgency rather than Taliban.

The failure of APRP could be blamed on its unworkable assumption: that fighters could be brought over for money and other inducements at a time when there was no over-arching peace process to make ‘coming over’ not look like surrender or treachery (see AAN’s initial critique here). It has to be said, as well, that its failure on the domestic reintegration front is little different from many other foreign-funded, Afghan state projects, and its record matches all previous demobilisation programmes, with a lot of money spent, little to show for and questions of where the money ended up. Nevertheless, the failure of the APRP – and it has been massive – has been under Stanakzai’s leadership, with responsibility shared with the two High Peace Council chairmen, Burhanuddin and Salahuddin Rabbani.

In September 2011, Stanakzai was seriously injured in the suicide bombing that killed Burhanuddin Rabbani. He eventually recovered from his injuries, although still walks with a stick. He returned to his job – many admired him for his persistence – and was himself also targeted in another suicide attack almost a year ago (21 June 2014). Stanakzai managed to work for and with a difficult and varied range of characters at the High Peace Council, including its seventy, disparate, frequently demanding members, the patrician Burhanuddin Rabbani and then his son, Salahuddin, with whom Stanakzai reportedly had a much more antagonistic relationship as both vied to be the senior player in the High Peace Council; then there were the various international players – also often demanding and rarely acting coherently as a group.

In the communist army – and Pashtun as well

So what will Stanakzai bring to the ministry of defence, should he get parliament’s votes? He has proven himself a loyal, hard-working government servant. He has run one ministry and a reasonably big government agency and has been at the heart of government for many years. He is going from trying to reconcile and seek peace to leading the war effort – which is interesting. He also has some military experience. However, that was a very long time ago, and it seems he does not have field command experience.

His ‘communist’ background may make him suspect to some, especially as he becomes the third head of the power ministries – defence, interior and NDS – with a non-mujahedin background; one could also add here the powerful National Security Advisor, Hanif Atmar, who also served in the PDPA regime (in his case, as a young Khad intelligence officer), then in NGOs before becoming a post-2001 minister. Given the threats – actual or perceived – of a coup over the elections, the president may have wanted to ensure loyalists in these ministries. Even so, the fact that Stanakzai served and rose through the ranks of the PDPA army may make him suspect for those who sacrificed much in the war against the Soviet invasion. Moreover, like Interior Minister Ulumi, NDS boss Rahmatullah Nabil and Hanif Atmar, he is Pashtun. This probably should not be relevant, but after an election which split the country on ethnic grounds, it needs mentioning. As political affiliation also counts, it should be added that – among the four – only Ulumi belongs to the political camp of CEO Abdullah.

New Chief of Army Staff as well

There was an attempt by the administration at some ethnic and factional balance with the simultaneous announcement of a new Chief of Army Staff who is a Jamiati. He is the current commander of the ANA’s 111 division (ferqa) based at Qargha, west of Kabul, General Qadam Shah Shahim.

According to a Badakhshi journalist AAN spoke to, Qadam Shah is from Tashkan district of Badakhshan and finished Keshm High School in 1360 (1981/2).(3) From the early 1980s, he was fighting with Jamiat-e Islami against the Soviets and then, judging by his promotion record, against other mujahedin factions during the civil war and then against the Taleban; in 1372 (1993/4), he was appointed commander of 82 regiment (ghund) in Qargha and in 1375 (1996/7) made brigadier (appointments by the mujahidin Islamic State administration of Burhanuddin Rabbani).

In 1380 (2001/2), Qadam Shah was the commander of 37 brigade (lewa) of commandos and, reportedly, had a lot of dealings with foreign forces. In 1389 (2011), he was appointed as the commander of 111 division of Kabul, which is relatively small, half the normal size of a division. Becoming Chief of Army Staff is therefore a big step up for Qadam Shah. However, he does at least have more high-ranking, more on the ground and, of course, much more recent experience than his (nominated) boss.

Stanakzai still has to be introduced to parliament. They were picky about the government’s first list – rejecting half – but then appeared to fear the country would not forgive them if they left posts empty and proceeded to endorse every single nominee on the second list. So far, only one MP, the Uzbek Enayatullah Farahmand from Jawzjan, has voiced criticism of the choice, alleging there had (again) been ethnic bias. Acting governor of Balkh and chairman of Jamiat-e Islami’s Executive Council, Atta Muhammad Nur, a more powerful voice, has called the appointment “a historical mistake.” Atta alleged that Stanakzai was behind the murder of the then head of Jamiat, the former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The next step for the defence minister nominee is to go and present himself to the MPs. Then, if all goes well, they will vote to accept or reject him.

 

(1) The Masters from Cambridge was gained between Stanakzai’s stints at the Ministry of Telecommunications and the High Peace Council. During that time, he was also a visiting fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (2008) and a Jennings Randolph Afghanistan Fellow (2008-2009).

(2) These men are heavy-weights of the movement, probably already in regular contact with the Afghan government and also thought to be close to Pakistan. They are generally the more ‘talk-friendly’ people in the movement, but none has been expelled by the leadership, who know of their contacts. In going to China, they either had the tactical space and flexibility to talk and travel unofficially, and still be deniable by the leadership, or they have ‘gone rogue’ but expelling them would cause more trouble than not.

(3) The Afghan calendar starts from the Spring Equinox (usually 21 March), so unless you know the month of an event, it could have taken place in one of two Western years.

Power relations and cooperation patterns are changing around Afghanistan. Its two most intrusive neighbours, Pakistan and Iran, are both at a stage where long-set behaviour seems to be tilting in different directions, with linkages to China (in the case of Pakistan) and the USA (in the case of Iran). At the same time, Pakistan and Afghanistan form a region, which has the potential of bringing China and the USA together, in the converging interest of peace and security (1). AAN’s Ann Wilkens and Sudhanshu Verma look into a case in point that provides a prism through which this change can partly be observed – Pakistan’s handling of Saudi Arabia’s recent request for a military contribution to its Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen. The request created a political dilemma in Pakistan: to comply with the Saudi demand for a Pakistani combat role would involve a deterioration of its relationship with neighbouring Iran. To deny the request would risk its relationship with the Arab Gulf countries, which support Pakistan financially and also have deep-rooted religious influence on Pakistani society.

For many, including the Saudis, the choice was a given: Pakistan, which has a history of supporting Saudi Arabia’s wars and has been providing military help on numerous occasions on the kingdom’s request (2) would naturally join the Saudi-led Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen with troops, fighter jets, and/or warships. The Saudis even displayed the Pakistani flag at its press centre for the operation. However, after considerable agony, Pakistan decided to deny the Saudi request for a military contribution. To a certain extent, it ended up in a position closer to Iran than to its ally Saudi Arabia. The decision was widely criticised in the Arab world. In the United Arab Emirates, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs went as far as warning the Pakistani government on Twitter for its ambiguous stand: “Pakistan needs to take a clear position for the sake of its strategic relationship with Arab Gulf states. Contradictory positions on this issue will carry a high cost.”

Pakistan’s surprising decision raised a number of questions: what was different this time? Why, in spite of the close relationship between the Pakistani and the Saudi political leadership on both state and personal levels, did Pakistan deny the Saudi request? The public discussion to answer these questions has been dominated by three factors: the Pakistani army being overstretched with its existing engagements (3), possible implications for Iran-Pakistan relations and the risk for sectarian backlash on the Sunni-dominated Pakistani society, which contains the world’s second largest Shia population (after Iran). The extent of this public discussion and the role of Pakistan’s parliament in the final decision were noteworthy per se, reflecting the lack of popular support for a military adventure in Yemen.

China

A factor, which was less prominent in the public debate but could have been weighing heavily in government considerations, has to do with the economic implications of a military intervention, actual as well as potential costs. To mend the failing economy (4) has been the first and foremost priority of the Nawaz Sharif government. For this, cooperation with Pakistan’s ‘all-weather friend’ (5) China is crucial, even more important than loans from Saudi Arabia, which last year alone provided 1.5 billion dollars to stabilise the Pakistani currency. It also has the advantage of being religiously neutral in the existing Pakistani context of (literally) explosive sectarianism. (6) In November 2014, the Chinese government announced that it would fund 45.6 billion US dollars worth of energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme (CPEC). In this context, China has promised to invest around 33.8 billion dollars in various energy projects and 11.8 billion dollars in infrastructure projects. The programme will also add 10,400 MegaWatt of power to the national grid of Pakistan, a major relief to its chronic power shortage.

On paper, the programme shows great economic and strategic potential. It is based on the ongoing work to upgrade the Gwadar port in Pakistan’s province of Balochistan, close to the Strait of Hormuz, with highways, railroad and pipeline to pass goods and energy supplies from the Arabian Sea into China. For China, this corridor will dramatically reduce freight time and costs from Africa, Europe and the Middle East. For Pakistan, it promises to provide much-needed infrastructure, industry and investment. However, what looks promising on paper may prove difficult in reality.

One of the major hurdles is Chinese concern over the lack of security surrounding the project due to the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan, as well as militant activities in other parts of the country, where Chinese workers and operations have been targeted ( here and here). Illustrating the gap between commitment and delivery due to complications on the ground, a study shows that China only delivered six per cent of the total committed aid of 66 billion dollars to Pakistan between 2001 and 2011. The proposed corridor is to cross Pakistan’s two most unstable provinces: Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). In order for the Chinese to deliver on the promised investments, security in these two provinces will have to be ensured. In response to Chinese concerns, the Pakistani government has announced a special security division comprising nine army battalions and six wings of civil armed forces dedicated to the protection of Chinese workers in Pakistan ( here and here).

The CPEC programme was sealed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pakistan on 20 and 21 April this year. Xi’s trip was planned since last year but had been postponed on various occasions. In September 2014, it was cancelled due to large street protests staged by Canada-based cleric Tahir ul-Qadri and Imran Khan, the leader of the Pakistan Tehrik-e Insaf party (PTI), against the Nawaz Sharif government. Xi was then scheduled to visit Pakistan at the end of March this year but plans were again delayed, citing domestic engagements. Yet another travel plan for the first week of April was deferred without explanation after Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen. When the visit was finally confirmed, the decision came only after Pakistan had clarified its position on Yemen. It is reasonable to conclude that, had Islamabad chosen to participate in Saudi Arabia’s campaign, Xi’s visit would have been delayed even further, as China might not have wanted to be seen as taking side in a regional rivalry (7).

Iran

In order to understand the link between the CPEC programme and the non-intervention in Yemen, one also has to consider the importance of Iran in securing stability for the success of the proposed project. Saudi Arabia claims that the Yemeni Houthi rebels are supported by Iran, a claim that Iran denies; however, analysts believe that, while Iran does not control the Houthis, it does back them in various ways. Pakistan’s involvement in Yemen would have been in direct confrontation with Iranian interest. A souring of relations with Iran would have had the potential of stretching the Pakistani army on another of its borders. On the other hand, cooperation with Iran could play a crucial role not just in the two Pakistani provinces that require stability for the CPEC to succeed, but also in Afghanistan, where the Chinese reportedly plan to link the CPEC to its wider ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’. This context may also be part of the background to China’s new activism in offering to facilitate peace talks between the Afghan Taleban and the Afghan government.

The timing of the Saudi intervention in Yemen was significant not only for Pakistan-China relations, but also in the Iranian context. It started when the West was in the middle of negotiating a nuclear deal with Tehran, resulting in a possible agreement to end sanctions. If this agreement materialises, Iran’s geopolitical stocks are likely to rise in the region. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, a sanctions-free Iran could play an even stronger role post-ISAF, with the risk of spoiling perceived Pakistani interests. In addition to that, Iran would retain the power to deepen instability in Pakistan by fuelling the polarisation of the Pakistani society along sectarian lines, at a time when such polarisation has already become a tangible threat to internal stability all over the country. While Pakistan needs China for its economy, it needs Iran for its stabilisation. At the very least, it needs to avoid antagonising Iran – as would have been the case if confronting its geopolitical interests in Yemen.

With these and other common interests in mind, Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif paid a visit to Islamabad just as the Pakistanis were weighing their response to the Saudi call for military action in Yemen. Zarif criticised the Saudi military intervention and asked Pakistan to work towards a political solution in Yemen, based on a four-part plan to impose a ceasefire, deliver humanitarian assistance, establish a dialogue platform and, as an outcome of the dialogue, form a broad-based government ( here and here). This was also, more or less, the stance that the Pakistani government adopted – at least until the Saudi Minister for Religious Affairs also paid a visit to Islamabad in order to counteract the Iranian pressure. In an ambiguous statement following his visit, Nawaz Sharif criticised the Houthi rebels for overthrowing a ‘legitimate’ government and reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to defend Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity. In reality, however, the Pakistani position on the Yemen issue did not change much. The Pakistanis refused to take on a military role, nor did they lend political support to the Saudi intervention. They still promoted a resolution through dialogue, in line with the Iranian position to allow the Houthis a say in the next Yemeni government and not let the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (8) decide who will rule Yemen next.

The Balochistan issue

Pakistan shares 900 kilometers of border with Iran along its Balochistan province, where the Gwadar port – the southern end of the CPEC project – is situated. The Baloch population is concentrated in Pakistan but is spread also into Iran and Afghanistan, and they are Sunni Muslims (see AAN analysis on Baloch seeking refuge in Afghanistan). Balochistan is the poorest and most underdeveloped of Pakistan’s provinces and has been suffering from a chronic insurgency problem. Pakistan has repeatedly claimed that the insurgents are operating from Afghan soil, with covert support from India. After the recent attack on labourers constructing a road in Balochistan, the Pakistani army chief, General Raheel Sharif, “warned foreign states and international agencies to refrain from creating anarchy in Balochistan by supporting terrorist elements in the province.” On the other side of the border, Iran is also suffering from an insurgency problem in its Sistan and Balochistan province, originating from Sunni Islamist militant groups (some but not all of them Baloch) that, as Iran  claims, are operating from Pakistan. Right after the Saudis intervened in Yemen, a group of insurgents, reportedly operating from the Pakistani side, killed eight Iranians border guards.  From time to time, in spite of the exchange of mutual accusations, the countries do manage to cooperate and also exchange insurgents caught on their side of the border.

The insurgents in Pakistani Balochistan are not just targeting the state, attacking pipelines, rails and other infrastructure, but also Chinese engineers, workers and operations (read here and here), as well as non-Baloch Pakistanis. A week before Xi’s visit, 20 workers from the Punjab and Sindh provinces were brutally killed by the banned Baloch Liberation Front (BLF). BLF spokesman Gohram Baloch justified the killings by claiming that they were working on a road, which is part of the CPEC programme, a project he claimed would not benefit the people of Balochistan. Ending the insurgency in Balochistan would require not only increased political flexibility on the part of the Pakistani political and military leadership, but would also have to build on cooperation between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan to control the border areas.

Afghanistan and FATA

North of Balochistan lies another loosely controlled and instable area. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) constitute a semi-autonomous buffer zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province; split from Afghanistan during the British colonial period by the provisional Durand Line (no Kabul government, including that of the Taleban, has given up its claims on these areas). This is where, since last summer, the Pakistani army is carrying out its Operation Zarb-e Azb, a major military offensive to eliminate the Pakistani Taleban organisation, Tehrik-e Taleban-e Pakistan (TTP), in North Waziristan. After the TTP attack in late last December on a school run by the army in Peshawar, Pakistan also seems to have been conducting a joint military operation with the Afghan army to eliminate TTP factions based on the Afghan side of the borderline. Pakistan has been claiming that TTP leaders have been using Afghan border areas – mainly in Kunar and Nuristan provinces – as a basis for operations in Pakistan, in the wake of the withdrawal of US troops from these areas.

Thus, support from the Afghan side is essential if the FATA operation is to succeed, and it is noteworthy that cooperation with the Afghan government on this and other issues has picked up since Ashraf Ghani took over the presidency in Kabul. A tangible sign is the recently signed agreement between the ISI, the Pakistani security branch, and the NDS, its Afghan counterpart, to cooperate in the fight against insurgency on both sides of the borderline.

China – Iran – Afghanistan

Yet another aspect in the regional puzzle is that China and Iran enjoy friendly relations. Not too long ago, China used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council in order to prevent action against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose regime is backed by Tehran. The Iran-Pakistan pipeline, which is expected to provide much-needed gas to Pakistan, will also be funded by cooperation between Iran and China. Furthermore, in September 2014, the Chinese navy participated, for the first time, in a four-day joint naval exercise with the Iranian navy (read here, here and here). Earlier, Iranian navy vessels visited the Chinese port of Zhangjiagang in May 2013, and Iran’s navy commander Admiral Habibollah Sayyari visited China in October 2014.

It cannot be excluded that, apart from direct talks, Iran might have also used its Chinese connections to influence Pakistan to keep its military out of Yemen. As reported by the Express Tribune, a Pakistani daily, during his visit to Pakistan, Xi told Nawaz Sharif that China “would stand behind Islamabad in the event of unravelling of its ties with the Arab world.” The report adds:

The Chinese leader even suggested if Pakistan realized its true potential and pointed out that if Islamabad maintained unity in their ranks and implemented the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, then it would not have to look up to outside help either from the West or Arab countries.

An op-ed signed by Nawaz Sharif and published after Xi’s visit to Pakistan in the Beijing Review underlined the importance for Pakistan of the emerging cooperation between China and Afghanistan. Nawaz Sharif wrote:

I am glad that this initiative [CPEC] has helped in improving relations with Afghanistan and an ambience of cooperative relations based on mutual trust has been evolved, especially in regard to combating terrorism. Pakistan supports Afghan-led and Afghan-owned processes of reconciliation in Afghanistan and believes that peace in Afghanistan is a key to surmounting security challenges of the region as well as unleashing the economic potential for shared economic prosperity. We are of the firm view that the Chinese interest and participation in rebuilding infrastructure in Afghanistan and support for the reconciliation process in that country would greatly enhance the chances of success in our common goals of peace and development.

While Pakistan’s final position on the Yemen issue seems to herald a new trend, it does not necessarily mean that Pakistan is willing to entirely sacrifice its strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia. Knowing that there would be negative repercussions after denying the Saudi request, Islamabad went into damage control mode after Xi’s visit. For instance, Pakistan agreed to provide its navy to enforce the arms embargo against the Houthi rebels under the UN Security Council Resolution 2216 (2015).

However, while continuously involved in a delicate balancing act between, on the one hand, backing Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally and, on the other, developing economic cooperation with China, it is evident that Pakistan has tilted towards prioritising its economic uplift. Such uplift cannot be carried out unless Pakistan’s security problems are managed – and for this, it has to seek cooperation also with the two countries on the other side of its volatile western border, Iran and Afghanistan.

 

(1) Of late, the U.S. and China seem to be pursuing a common interest of peaceful and self-sustaining Afghanistan. On the diplomatic front, both U.S. and China have already been engaged in trilateral cooperation with other regional actors, including Pakistan. Moreover, on February 9, 2015, the first round of China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Strategic Dialogue was hosted in Kabul. The three sides agreed to carry out practical cooperation projects within the framework of the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue. A similar trilateral between the US, China and Pakistan seems to be in the offing (but has not yet materialised).

(2) According to a 2008 report by the US think-tank Brookings, Pakistan has provided military aid and expertise to the kingdom for decades. It began with help to the Royal Saudi Air Force to build and pilot its first jet fighters in the 1960s. Pakistani Air Force pilots flew RSAF Lightnings that repulsed a South Yemeni incursion into the kingdom’s southern border in 1969. In the 1970s and 1980s, up to 15,000 Pakistani troops were stationed in the kingdom, some in a brigade combat force near the Israeli-Jordanian-Saudi border (quoted here). Pakistan also provided military personnel to another Arab Gulf state, the Sultanate Oman, suppressing a left-wing insurgency in its western province of Dhofar in the 1960s and 1970s.

(3) The Pakistani Army is currently engaged in its FATA region under Operation Zarb-e Azb and in Balochistan against the separatist movement. There is a Rangers-led operation going on in Karachi against criminal groups, while a major part of army resources are still used up in defending its eastern border with India.

(4) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif inherited an ailing economy. Right after he took charge in 2013, the International Monetary Fund gave Pakistan a serious assessment, saying its economy was at a high risk of deteriorating into crisis and that growth was too slow to significantly improve people’s living standards.

IMF approved a 6.7 billion dollars loan package in late 2013 to help Pakistan revive its economy, rebuild reserves and prevent a balance of payments crisis. Pakistan is also in the grip of its worst ever energy crisis, which causes power outages up to 20 hours in parts of the country and puts limits on industrial output.

During the previous government, GDP growth averaged only three percent, central bank reserves had fallen to 6 billion dollars (down from 14.78 billion dollars in fiscal year 2010-11) and the Pakistani currency was struggling – it had depreciated more than 40 per cent since 2007.

(5) The bond between Beijing and Islamabad is old and strong, stretching back to the 1960s, and it got even stronger in 1970s after the Nixon administration’s opening with China. “This will be my first trip to Pakistan, but I feel as if I am going to visit the home of my own brother,” Xi wrote in an article published in Pakistani papers ahead of his arrival. During Xi’s visit, Pakistan-China friendship was described on signboards all over Islamabad as “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, sweeter than honey and stronger than steel.” Both countries project themselves as ‘all-weather ally’ to each other.

(6) Sectarian violence targeting the Shia minority is not new to Pakistan. However, it has been rising over the last decade. On May 13, at least 43 people were killed and more than a dozen injured when armed men fired at a bus carrying members of the Ismaili community, a minority Shia Muslim sect, in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. In recent years, anti-Shia attacks have been on the rise also in Quetta, where in 2013, around 80 people were killed in a bomb attack at a crowded market place in an ethnic Hazara area. Sectarian violence has claimed the lives of approximately 2,300 people in the country’s four main provinces and some 1,500 people in the tribal area of the Kurram Agency since 2007, according to a recent report by the Middle East Institute (MEI).

(7) It is also relevant to note that Xi was originally scheduled to visit the Middle East, reportedly including stops in Cairo and Riyadh, after his visit to Pakistan. However, he cancelled Riyadh after Saudi Arabia’s decision to launch Operation Decisive Storm. He also cancelled Cairo after the Egyptians joined the Operation Decisive Storm.

(8) Apart from Saudi-Arabia and the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman – the latter being the only GCC country that refused to join the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition.

An Afghan court has found 11 policemen guilty of dereliction of duty for failing to prevent the murder of religious student Farkhunda by a mob in the centre of Kabul on 19 March 2015. They were all sentenced to one year, the absolute minimum, which means also they may not have to go to jail at all and indeed could stay working in the area of the murder. This follows earlier verdicts which sentenced four men to death and eight others to 16 year prison terms for her murder. The remaining 31 people on trial, including eight policemen, have been acquitted for lack of evidence. AAN’s Kate Clark, Ehsan Qaane (himself a lawyer) and Naheed Esar consider the trial as a whole, questioning its fairness and its failure to find out how and why the police let Farkhunda’s savage murder happen.

This was a murder filmed and photographed, and the mobile phone evidence of it was used in the trial of 49 people for murder and 11 policemen for dereliction of duty (ghaflat-e wazifayi), with eight of the police also accused of failing to use their legal authority to stop a crime.

After trial proceedings lasting just three days, the judge, Safiullah Mojaddedi, delivered his first batch of verdicts on 6 May 2015 against the 30 people accused of Farkhunda’s murder:

4 sentenced to death for murder and the burning of a corpse

8 sentenced to 16 years imprisonment

18 acquitted

The judge then said he needed time to review the evidence in the outstanding cases, against the 19 policemen. 13 days later, on 19 May, he delivered his second batch of verdicts on the police:

11 sentenced to one year for dereliction of duty

8 acquitted for lack of evidence on charge of dereliction of duty

Acquittal of all those also accused of failing to use their legal authority to prevent a crime. (1)

Kind to the police?

Given the gravity of the consequences of the 11 policemen’s dereliction of duty, those one year sentences were astonishingly short. In fact, they are short enough to mean the 11 may not have to go to jail at all. Under the Military Criminal Code (which covers police, army and NDS), if an individual is sentenced to a prison term of one year or less s/he “can pass the period of their punishment in their work place.” (Article 7, Paragraph 2). The convicts receive half their salary and lose opportunities such as promotion or study, but otherwise continue to serve in their normal office (Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Regulation of Habs-e Tatili - suspended imprisonment).

The judge could have given far heavier sentences. For the crime of dereliction of duty, Article 40 of the Military Criminal Code sets out different categories of punishment: if there is no “significant damage and serious consequences” (zarar-e sangin wa awaqeb-e zianbakhsh), the punishment should be a prison term of one month to one year (Para 1); if the damage is significant and serious, the punishment is 1 to 5 years (Para 2) (2). “Significant damage” is defined (Art 3) as costing financial losses of more than 100,000, but less than one million Afghanis, physical injury or damage to [military] vehicles. “Serious consequences” is defined as causing more than one million Afghanis worth of damage, death or more serious damage to property.

The judge did not mention exactly which part of the law he was using to sentence those convicted of dereliction of duty. It would appear, however, that he gave them the absolute legal minimum.

Moreover, acquitting all of those accused of not using their legal authority to prevent a crime meant, in effect, they were also protected from jail. The minimum punishment for this crime, if there is ‘significant damage and serious consequences’, is two years in jail. The judge gave the court no reason for these acquittals.

Already, the judge has been criticised for giving more time to the police, particularly senior policemen, to defend themselves, compared with the ‘ordinary people’ accused of murder (who got a few minutes at most) and spending considerably more time considering the police verdicts than those of the 30 murder suspects.

On the night of the first verdicts, he spoke to One TV, saying the delay in the police verdicts was necessary so that he could read through the evidence against them – 4000 to 5000 pages. In this interview, which he gave before he had read through the evidence or delivered his verdicts on the police, he already sounded as if he was defending them – explaining to the television audience why their radios had not worked and how difficult it had been, given the traffic congestion, for reinforcements to reach the scene, in particular the head of Police District 2 (PD2), Hasibullah. The ‘heavy traffic’ explanation was not very convincing, though, as we shall see.

Not surprisingly, suspicions have been raised that he let the police ‘off the hook’, for reasons unknown. Equally significantly, however, he failed to ensure the trial got to the bottom of why the police failed to protect Farkhunda and, in particular, how they had first got control over the mob and then lost it.

Murder on video

Farkhunda’s murder took place on camera in Kabul’s historic heartland (see this AAN piece about the social geography of the area, the shrine devotees, beggars, travellers, criminals and police). Speaking to two eye-witnesses, both previously known to AAN (a widow who frequented the shrine as a beggar and a woman who lives in the area and was on her way home from work when the murder happened) and examining the footage (links below), we have put together the following time-line:

Approximately 15.30 (timing from first eyewitness, the widow): Mullah Zainuddin accuses Farkhunda of burning the Quran after she had argued with him that selling amulets (tawiz) was contrary to Islam; he called on people to ‘defend Islam’. Farkhunda can be seen on video defending herself to men on the threshold of the shrine building inside the courtyard, heavily veiled with just her eyes showing.

Approximately 16.00 (timing again from the widow): still within the courtyard of the shrine, the beating starts. On video, one can see where the crowd parts as Farkhunda is propelled through it to shouts of the Islamic rallying cry “Takbir!” and “Kill her!” The police, some of whom have already been seen mingling in the crowd, shoot in the air. They manage to take control of the scene, demanding the crowd retreats – and they do, although the men are still angry and shouting Islamic slogans. Police and men in civilian clothes stand around Farkhunda between her and those who would attack her. She can be seen, wounded but walking, being helped away from the scene, but still inside the shrine courtyard, by what look to be a woman and a man.

16.30-17.00 (timing from second eye-witness, the woman on her way home from work): Farkhunda is taken out of the shrine, still alive but wounded and then being savagely beaten and run over by a car. The eye-witness described trying to get a policeman to intervene, but he told her, “Let them kill the atheist.”

Video shows Farkhunda outside the shrine being set upon by the mob. She has lost her headscarf and is being hauled up onto an iron roof. A policeman  reaches underneath her skirt to touch her as she is pulled up. She kicks at him. Then she is dropped from the roof and is kicked and beaten with a plank of wood. At this point, she is still trying to get up and protect her head from the beating. Later, she is motionless as the beating and abuse continues.

17.00: Second witness leaves the scene after seeing Farkhunda’s body taken to the nearby dried-up bed of the Kabul River and set on fire.

Video shows men jumping on Farkhunda, leveraging themselves up onto the arms of others to get more force and throwing huge rocks and lumps of concrete at her to chants of “Islam Zendabad!” (Long Live Islam!). They burn her corpse.

What were the police doing?

During the trial, questions to the police were side-tracked by discussion of a mysterious Arab – named Abdul Wahab – whom the police said they had caught with a suspicious electronic bag; they blamed him for having been unable to radio for reinforcements and blamed the lack of reinforcements on their failure to intervene. They also said they had captured the Arab, but after 48 hours, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi had ordered him set free.

The Arab, Rahimi and General Zahir Zahir (former head of Kabul police, now director of the Criminal Investigations Department) were all summoned the following day – day 2 of the trial. The two senior police officers confirmed that radios had not been working (for other, non-Arab related reasons). Zahir asked the court to be kind to the 19 police suspects because (apparently with no trace of irony) the police worked hard to secure Afghans lives. The judge thanked the police chiefs for their kindness in attending the court and (bizarrely, as they were not on trial) pronounced them innocent.

The court failed to ask many questions of the police.

For example, the duration of the murder – from first beating to setting fire to the corpse – was, according to eye-witnesses, about an hour. That was a long time for reinforcements not to have arrived. Even if radios were not working, mobile phones surely were. The head of PD 2, Hasibullah, for example, said he had only arrived at the shrine when Farkhunda’s body was in the river and burning. The judge repeated his claim on One TV (quoted earlier), saying he had been in the Serena Hotel “checking security” and heavy traffic had delayed his arrival. However, two policemen testified that he had arrived earlier when Farkhunda was still inside the shrine. Also, if traffic meant his car could not move, the Serena is ten, at most 15 minutes, walk away from the crime scene, less if he had run.

Moreover, the police on the scene at the start of the attack did actually already have the means at their disposal to control the crowd, as they showed by firing into the air. If necessary to stop a crime, they also had the legal authority to fire at the perpetrators (whether that would have been a good thing or not is debatable). The trial did not question how or why they let Farkhunda be taken out of the shrine compound, a small, easily defendable place; even with their small number, they were armed and the crowd was not.

In addition, there was also a policeman among those abusing Farkhunda – filmed groping her as she was dragged onto the roof. One of our eyewitnesses also spoke of having tried and failed to get one of the policemen to intervene; he stood by, it seems, because he approved of the murder. None of these issues were addressed in court.

We already know that the policemen in PD2 have a questionable reputation:

The majority of the policemen there have been assigned to the area for a decade now and have resisted all attempts to transfer them. According to a Ministry of Interior officer interviewed by AAN, policemen have developed a strong attachment to their posts of duty in PD 2, an area that is eminently commercial and offers additional income by levying protection money from shopkeepers and other businessmen in exchange for turning a blind eye on irregularities.

As matters stand, even the police who have been convicted will likely not be removed from PD2 because, as explained earlier, the jail term of one year they have been sentenced to can be served in their duty stations.

This trial provided no explanation as to why individual police had neglected their duty. Nor did the judge explain why he found no-one guilty of failing to use their legal authority to stop a crime. This and the extremely light sentences handed out give credence to those who believe the police were treated with kid gloves and the judge, in effect, failed to uphold the law or hold the police to account.

The 30 other verdicts

AAN has waited until the primary court finished its work before looking at the trial as a whole. As well as the police who were on trial, 30 others were charged with murder. The judge gave their verdicts two weeks ago. He did not explain the reasons for his verdicts on the charge of murder, but did cite various laws, so we have tried to extrapolate what he might have been thinking.

Four sentenced to death for murder and burning a corpse:

1 Zain ul-Abedin – known as Zainuddin, son of Gulbuddin

2 Muhammad Yaqub, son of Haji Malang

3 Muhammad Sharif – known as Sharaf Baghlani, son of Sharafuddin

4 Abdul Bashir, son of Abdul Shakur

The judge cited Article 395 of the Penal Code, which mandates the death penalty for very savage (wahshiana) murders, as well as those committed by more than one person; (3) he also used Article 22 of the EVWA Law on beating which leads to death (4) which, in turn refers back to Article 395 of the Penal Code. He made no explanation as to why he had found each of them, as individuals, culpable.

The judge gave no individual explanations for any of his verdicts. Information, however, can be gleaned from eye-witness, video, statements in court and the ‘accusation statement’; this is the document which was drawn up by the prosecutors and outlines the defendants, charges, evidence and requested punishments and is given to the court before the trial (not publically available, but seen by AAN). From all of this we know that:

Zainuddin was the mullah who initially made the false accusation that Farkhunda had burned the Quran and called on people to defend Islam.

Yaqub can be seen in footage throwing two big rocks on the half dead body of Farkhunda. He admitted to the rock throwing and to kicking Farkhunda twice.  He said he was only 16 years old at the time of the murder and therefore should have been tried in a juvenile court. His identity card showing his age was rejected by the court. He was one of only three defendants to have a lawyer, Massud Khorami. He told AAN the prosecutor had sent Yaqub to Forensic Medicine (teb-e adli) who had judged him on the hairiness of his body and face to be 19 to 20 years old. Khorami said when he tried to speak to the judge in court about this, he was cut off, with the judge saying Yaqub looked 20 to 21 years old.

Sharaf Baghlani had boasted about his part in the murder on Facebook: “Salaam: today at 4.00 pm, an atheist woman burned the Quran at the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. Afterwards, the religious people of Kabul, including myself, killed her. Hell shall be her place.” According to the accusation statement, Baghlani was involved from the beginning in the beating and was the one who burned Farkhunda’s scarf and clothing.

Abdul Bashir was a taxi driver who, according to the accusation statement had mostly been working between Taimani and Shah-e Du Shamshira for the last six years. He was accused of having been involved in the attack from the beginning and of having stabbed Farkhunda with a knife.

Eight other defendants were sentenced to 16 years imprisonment:

1 Ghiasuddin, son of Muhammad Ghani

2 Saif ul-Rahman, son of Abdul Rahman

3 Hasibullah, son of Nur Muhammad

4 Ikramuddin, son of Jalaluddin

5 Ghulam Muhammad, son of Lal Muhammad

6 Abdul Fatah, son of Ramazan

7 Muhammad Omran, son of Bahruddin

8 Mohmand, son of Dawlat Shah

The judge cited Article 22 of the EVWA Law without explaining why. It is not obvious why he cited it, but see footnote (5) for more detail on this. He made no explanation as to why he had given these men lesser sentences for murder; nor did he explain what individually he believed they had done.

18 acquitted (6). No explanation given to the court.

Flaws in court procedures

Much has been written on the flaws in Afghanistan’s judicial system. In this high-profile case, carried live on television, many of those problems were there for all to see. They included:

Only three of the 49 accused had defence lawyers, despite this being their legal right (7) and absolutely fundamental to any hope of getting a fair trial.

Defendants did have the opportunity to make statements (not the case in all trials), but some were cut short by the judge. He gave far more time to more senior people (high-ranking police) to speak. Mostly, defendants and the few defence lawyers were given only a minute or so to speak.

Defendants or their lawyers were not able to see the evidence against them before the trial. The one defence lawyer AAN has spoken to has still not seen the full case  (dosia) against his client, only the accusation statement from the prosecutors. This defence lawyer only got the legal paperwork the day before the trial.

Altogether, there were only two and a half days of trial for 49 defendants. The second day was largely taken up with the red herring of the Arab blamed for the police radio failure. The fourth and fifth days were used to deliver the verdicts. The judge told One TV, he had been able to act so swiftly because prosecutors had put together such a tight case. Even if this was the case, there was almost no opportunity for defences to be made or evidence questioned.

The defendants appeared to be accused en masse. There was no sense that the judge was trying to pin down individual acts on individuals.

Some defendants speaking in court accused the police of torturing them.

There was no attempt by the judge to explain his verdicts.

It was difficult to follow the judge’s application of the law; he cited articles sometimes, but in some cases it was not clear why (see footnote 6) and made some mistakes in his citations (see footnote 8).

In the case of the policemen on trial, the judge heard their statements and questioned them before (he said) he had read the case evidence. He also commented in public on these cases before delivering the verdicts.

When the judge spoke to the press after the first batch of verdicts – still on live television – he warned anyone opposing the court’s decision, saying they could be subject to criminal prosecution.

More trials? Appeals?

The legal process is not over. Either side can ask for an appeal, and those sentenced to death have to see their case re-examined by the secondary and supreme courts and for it to be authorised by the president before it could be carried out. There are also likely to be more trials of suspects who were arrested too late to be tried this time. The judge told One TV that one man from Kapisa and another from Mazar had been arrested and their cases were under investigation. It is also believed that three suspects, men named as Pahlawan, Pacha and Muhammad Hassan, are still on the run.

Farkhunda’s murder was deeply shocking to most Afghans (see our dispatch on soul-searching and attempts to explain the savagery and, by some, to justify it). In this, it was reminiscent of the rapes of women members of a picnicking family travelling back from the resort town of Paghman to Kabul city on 23 August 2014 (see also AAN analysis here). Those accused of the ‘Paghman rapes’ were tried two weeks after the attack (7 September) and executed a month later (8 October). In Farkhunda’s case too, Afghanistan’s justice system, which usually moves at a more glacial pace, has acted swiftly. Partly because of that, in both trials, there were serious and similar flaws, so basic that it is difficult to be confident about the verdicts.

In Farkhunda’s case, in particular, there is a painful irony that those suspected of lynching someone, of carrying out a summary execution based on their belief in her guilt, should also have been subject to a sub-standard trial. As to those police who stood by and watched the murder, the Afghan legal system has again shown itself unable or unwilling to properly hold public servants to account.

 

(1) The judge split his sentencing of the policemen into four categories, according to crime and sentence:

Category 1

1 Hasibullah, Chief of Police, PD2

2 Saleh Muhammad, commander of Tolai (group of about 15-20 policemen), PD2

3 Sayed Taimor Shah, manager of operations and planning, PD2

4 Ghulam Nabi, member of ‘area control’, PD2

5 Shah Muhammad, Manager of Criminal Department, PD2

Found guilty of dereliction of duty, sentenced to one year imprisonment. Acquitted of not using their legal authority to stop the commission of a crime.

Judge cited Article 25 of the constitution, Article 4 of the Penal Code, 135 of the Criminal Procedure Code and Article 8 of the Mujalat ul-Ahkam (a book of Hanafi jurisprudence, a source in the Afghan legal code).

Category 2

1 Naz Muhammad, commander of Joi-ye Shir police check point.

2 Abdul Sami, commander of ‘block’ 3 of PD2 where shrine is located

3 Muhammad Moqim, member of ‘area control’, PD2

4 Abdul Sabur, commander block 2, PD2

5 Jawad, commander 020 police checkpoint

6 Zabihullah, commander of Afghan-Turk checkpoint

Found guilty of dereliction of duty according to Art 40 military crimes code, sentenced to one year imprisonment.

Judge said they could ask for appeal

Category 3

1 Sayed Ismail, administrative deputy of PD2.

2 Habib al-Rahman, commander of general directorate of human resources

3 Nur Agha, member of investigation (kashf) department, PD2.

Accused of dereliction of duty and not using their legal authority to stop a crime. Acquitted due to lack of evidence

Judge cited Art 25 constitution, Art 4 penal code, Art 135 criminal procedure code, Art 8 Mujalat ul-Ahkam

Category 4

1 Ahmad Zahir, policeman PD2.

2 Muhammad Halim, deputy commander of Tolai, PD2.

3 Abdul Wakil, policeman, PD2.

4 Iqbal, policeman at Afghan-Turk police checkpoint

5 Khwaja Kazem, policeman at Afghan-Turk police checkpoint

Accused of dereliction of duty and due to lack of evidence, acquitted as per articles above.

(2) The third type of consequence – and the most serious is when the military, police or NDS is ‘travelling’ (safar), possibly away from their usual duty station?

(3) Article 395 of the Penal Code stipulates:

The murderer should be sentenced to death if: the murder was pre-meditated; was committed using poison or materials making someone unconscious or explosive materials; was for payment; was very savage (wahshiana); if the murderer was a close relative; if the victim was an official on duty; if there was more than one murderer; if it was committed with another crime for which the sentence is more than five years in prison; if it was perpetrated in order to commit another crime; if the perpetrator has already been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison; if s/he  murdered more than one person.

(4) Article 22 of the Elimination of Violence against Women Law says (AAN translation):

1- If a person beats a woman considering the mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the offender in view of the circumstances shall be sentenced in accordance to Article 407 and 410 of the Penal Code; and

2- If the acts included in Paragraph 1 of this Article cause the death of the victim, the offender, in view of circumstances, shall be sentenced in accordance with Article 395 and 399 of the Penal Code.

The only relevant article here from the Penal Code is 395 on the death penalty (see footnote 4). Other articles refer to unintentional killing (manslaughter), premeditation and permanent damage, but not death of the victim.

(5) It is not clear why the judge cited Article 22 of the EVAW law for this sentencing. The article does looks at the beating of a woman (citing Articles 407 and 410 of the Penal Code) and beating of a woman to death (citing Articles 395 and 399 of the Penal Code). All these articles are either irrelevant to Farkhunda’s death (they discuss premeditation, the murder of a close relative and so on) or proscribe the death penalty or a sentence of less than the 16 years.

Moreover, the law is also unclear or contradictory: in Article 395, it says the murderer shall be sentenced to death if a long list of conditions apply (see footnote 4), including there being more than one murderer and if it was savage (as was the case in Farkhunda’s case); then in Article 396, it says, according to circumstances – if the murderer wanted to kill one person and only killed one person and there was not more than one murderer; if he did not mutilate the body and if (citing Article 395) the murder was not pre-meditated and was not committed using poison or materials making someone unconscious or explosive materials – the judge can give a lesser sentence of 16-20 years. In Farkhunda’s case, however, there was more than one murderer.

If you would like to plough through the relevant articles for yourself, please do (either AAN translation or summary):

Article 399 of the Penal Code:

1- If a person without having the purpose of killing, beats, injures, gives dangerous materials or does any other action against a second person and this action causes the murder of the victim, the perpetrator will be sentenced to Habs Tawil [no less than 5 years and no more than 15 years].

2- If the crimes mentioned in Paragraph 1 of this article were preplanned or against any officials while they were on duty, or the victim is a close relative, the perpetrator shall be sentenced to habs-e dawam [no less than 16 years and no more than 20 years].

Article 407 of the Penal Code:

1- If a person intentionally injures or beats another person, so causing wounding, breaking of bones or the disablement of part of the victim’s body, permanent disability or loss of a sense, as well as compensation, the perpetrator shall be sentence to habs-e mutawaset [no less than one not more than five years] that be no less than 3 years.

2- If the mentioned action [in Paragraph 1 of this article] is pre-mediated and causes mental disability, the perpetrator shall be sentenced to habs-e tawil [no less than five years and no more than 15 years] and it should not be more than ten years.

Article 410 of the Penal Code

If the victim is beaten or injured by more than one person, the highest punishment [ten years imprisonment] mentioned in the above articles, shall be given to each perpetrator.

Article 396 of the Penal Code:

The criminal shall be punished with habs-e dawam [no less than 16 and no more than 20 years] or death, according to the circumstances: if the murderer wanted to kill one person and only killed one person and there was not more than one murderer; if he did not mutilate the body and if the following circumstances do not hold [it cites Article 395 and the paragraphs on pre-meditation and murder by poison or materials making someone unconscious or explosive materials] he can be given a sentence of 16-20 years.

(6) Those acquitted of murder were:

1 Muhammad Hakim, son of Amanullah

2 Mahmud, son of Muhammad Faiz

3 Muhammad Zahir, son of Muhammad Sulaiman

4 Sherzai, son of Muhammad Anwar

5 Karamuddin, son of Muhammad Ikram

6 Hezbullah, son of Muhammad Kabir

7 Shafiq Ahmad, son of Rasul Ahmad

8 Eshaq, son of Gul Samad

9 Rabiullah, son of Mumtaz

10 Abdul Baqi, son of Malang

11 Jan Aqa, son of Abul Nazar

12 Hamid, son of Hameed Khan

13 Jan Aziz, son of Sher Aziz

14 Jawad, son of Ali Ahmad

15 Zahid Ahmad, son of Ghulam Hussain

16 Rais Khodaidad, son of Juma Khan

17 Ajmal, son of Muhammad Hashim

18 Ziarat Gul, son of Janat Gul

The judge cited Article 25 of constitutional law and Article 4 of criminal law in these acquittals.

(7) The judge quoted the wrong articles when he gave his verdicts on the police, citing 43 of the Military Criminal Code (about escaping from prison) instead of Article 40 (dereliction of duty) and Article 8 (handing in weapons if sentenced to jail) instead of Article 7 (habs-e tatili). The paperwork from the court that we have seen has similar errors.

(8) Based on Article 9, Paragraph 4 of the Criminal Procedure Code, any perpetrator who is accused of a crime for which the punishment is more than 5 years imprisonment must have a defence lawyer.

According to Article 279, Paragraph 2 of the same law the right to a defence lawyer is a fundamental part of any judicial process. Moreover, Paragraph 3 of the same article says if any fundamental part of a judiciary process is violated, the judge should cancel his or her verdict even this is not asked by none of the parties. Then all the process should start again based on the law.

The legal right to a defence lawyer is commonly violated in Afghanistan.

The Taleban attack on a Kabul guesthouse which killed 15 people (not 14, as earlier reports said) on 13 May 2015 was aimed, the Taleban claimed, at “invaders”, specifically an “important meeting” of “important people from many invading countries, especially Americans.” In this update of our earlier dispatch, AAN’s Kate Clark identifies all the dead: all were civilian and eight were aid workers, five, Afghans from the regions who had been visiting Kabul for training. Even by the Taleban’s own crude metrics of nationality apparently denoting ‘targetability’, she says just two of the dead came from NATO member states. Moreover, once again, she says, the Taleban have breached the distinction between military and civilian, seemingly branding all foreigners as ‘invaders’. Along with biographical details of all those killed, she pays tribute to one of them in particular, a friend of AAN’s, the former director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), Paula Kantor, who was a serious-minded, generous researcher and mentor who carried out important work on reducing poverty in Afghanistan.

 (Originally published 14 May; updated 18 May 2015.)

15 people, all civilians, were killed when the Taleban attacked the Park Palace Hotel in central Kabul on the night of 13 May 2015. It is a mid-range hotel, where many foreigners, largely Indians and Pakistanis, but also Westerners stay or live. Most tend to be aid workers, researchers and journalists; those with more money or who feel particularly under threat usually stay at the far more expensive Serena. On Wednesday night, the Park Palace was hosting Afghan classical musician Ustad Eltaf Hussein (1) and the concert had drawn many Afghan and foreign music lovers. The police believe the attack was pre-planned since the gunman/men (the number is disputed; the Taleban say one, Afghan security forces say three) did not need to force their entrance with explosives or by killing guards, but appear to have been inside the hotel beforehand.

By nationality, those killed were: Afghan (six, including a joint British-Afghan national), Indian (four), Pakistani (two) American (one), Italian (one) and Kazakh (one).

The number of foreigners killed and wounded made this an unusual attack, as the vast majority of those killed in the conflict continue to be Afghans (both civilian and military). Last year, on average across the country, 29 civilians were killed or injured as a result of the war every day (UNAMA figures; see also AAN analysis). However, that average is likely to increase this year, given that the violence has already intensified. UNAMA reported the number of civilian casualties during the first four months of 2015 as 16 per cent higher than in the same period in 2014. There was virtually no ‘winter lull’ this year, except in the Afghan capital which had been enjoying an unusually quiet few months after a particularly violent autumn and early winter. A number of explanations have been supplied for this – that it was partially linked to President Ashraf Ghani’s decision to ‘take the gloves off’ with regard to night raids by NDS and Afghan Special Forces (Karzai had largely banned these), and partially to the president’s demands that Pakistan put greater pressure on the Taleban to, among other things, cease all suicide and complex attacks in the capital.

Then came two suicide attacks on shuttle buses ferrying workers to and from the Attorney General’s Office, first on 4 May and then on 10 May 2015, which, together, killed seven civilians and injured dozens more. And now the attack on a cultural event at a hotel. (2) The lull is certainly over. The end of the calm raises questions about Pakistan’s intent and influence over those sending attackers and suicide bombers into the Afghan capital. It condemned the attack, which came a day after a visit of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; he had assured Afghanistan of Islamabad’s full support in its battle against the Taleban, saying, “the enemies of Afghanistan cannot be the friends of Pakistan.”

The attack also raises questions about Taleban intentions this year.

The Taleban’s ‘spring offensive’ statement, issued on 11 April 2015, reads as if, after years of being lambasted for attacking civilians, the movement was finally trying harder to protect them.

… top priority will be given to safeguard and protect the lives and properties of the civilian people; and those Mujahidin who are negligent and careless in preserving the lives and properties of the civilian people and their operations result in the civilian losses or casualties, will be panelized according to Jihadi and Sharia rules and regulations. Similarly, consisting with its policies, the Islamic Emirate has never and will never target religious and other educational institutions like mosques, madrassas, schools, universities, health centers like clinics and hospitals, public buildings and other projects of public welfare. [English as original]

However, both the Taleban attacks on prosecutors and judges, and the assault on the Park Palace Hotel, represented major breaches of international law which prohibits attacks on civilians. Despite their talk, the Taleban continue to fail to abide by the Geneva Conventions, which demand the protection of non-combatants. Instead, the Taleban divide people into those they deem to be with the government, whether military or civilian, and those who are not. It is only the latter which they call ‘civilians.’ In their eyes that makes, for example, prosecutors ‘fair game.’ (UNAMA, quoted earlier, noted on 10 May, that there had, by that point in 2015, been 11 separate attacks against legal professionals and court houses, causing in total 114 civilian casualties (28 killed and 86 injured) this year so far – “an increase of more than 600 per cent from the same period last year.”)

Taleban justifications of the Park Palace attack

The Taleban’s repeated use of the word ‘invaders’ as an apparent synonym for ‘foreigner’ in their claim of responsibility for the Park Palace attack (read a translation at the end of this dispatch) also reads like a deliberate attempt to blur the distinction between military and civilian.

… the mujahed managed to… attack a meeting attended by over 100 invaders.

… an important meeting attended by important people from many invading countries, especially Americans…

The enemies…were holding night-time parties consisting promiscuity and indulgence as well as other important meetings.

Among the dead, there are a number of important/senior people from the invading countries…

The invading countries should understand that they will not stay safe from our attacks at any place and under any cover as long as they fail to withdraw their troops from our country and recognize our sovereignty. … (3) 

Following this statement, some people pressed the Taleban on whether they now considered foreign humanitarian workers as legitimate targets. Here was one exchange with Abdul Qahar Balkhi who tweets for the Taleban (all English as per the original)  in which it looked like they were backing off from their initial hard-line messaging:

Abdulqahar Balkhi: Every foreigner from invading country especially @NATO is considered an invader, we don’t classify any as civilian

@SwoopOuttaOrbit: So even if i was on a humanitarian mission For instance as a doctor in a hospital then i would be your enemy?

@Abdulqahar Balkhi: Any Muslim/non-Muslim not part of @NATO alliance working for humanitarian cause is not considered invader

@Abdulqahar Balkhi: there are proper procedures in place for humanitarian orgs to contribute positively in Afghanistan

Balkhi made another response, to Amnesty International which had condemned what it called an “atrocious attack,” the Taleban’s “contempt for human life” and a “surge” in their targeting of civilians:

@Abdulqahar Balkhi: Reaction: #amnestyinternational accusations about civ/cas baseless, foreign nationals working for invaders not civ.

@Abdulqahar Balkhi: US & their hirelings deliberately target Ulama, madaris, homes & civilians daily; these same organizations have elected absolute silence

In other words, there was both a denial that the dead were civilians and a counter-accusation, that the US and Afghan government forces regularly kill Afghan civilians.

The main claim came 12 hours after the attack started – a long delay by Taleban standard. Apart from the Twitter comments, there has been only one other statement, an article published on the Taleban’s al-Emara (‘the Emirate’) Pashto website. Reporting only the confirmation of the Indian and American casualties, it still insisted the attack had been against “invaders,” but now emphasized the ‘moral decay’ of the concert, saying it had been organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had involved ‘scandal’ and ‘obscenity.’

Conflating civilian and military

Whatever justifications the Taleban try to make, from the list of those killed below, it is clear just how far away they were from being the “important invaders” claimed by the movement. Of the 15 dead – 11 men and three women – eight were aid workers, (4) five of them Afghan nationals who had travelled in from the regions for training. Three others worked in finance, three others as consultants in energy, infrastructure  or in an unspecified sector. The last was a visiting spouse.

The place which was targeted was also at odds with the Taleban’s portrayal of it. A mid-range hotel, its guests were mostly Indians and Pakistanis, along with Westerners and Afghans from the provinces; these were professional people with access to limited budgets and little reason, they thought, to fear a Taleban attack. If they had had more money or felt themselves to be more obvious targets, they would have been staying elsewhere.

Did the Taleban just make a mistake in their estimation of the worthiness of Park Palace as an important target? (UNODC used to be based there; when they did, there were indeed more stringent security measures. However, it has also not previously been linked to the ‘invasion’.)

Or was the Park Palace just a place which the Taleban could attack easily and hope to net victims who could be held up afterwards as “the targets”?

Or was this actually intended as an attack on foreigners linked to NATO countries? We wrote earlier that in the killing of someone like Paula Kantor the inherent racism of viewing all foreigners or Westerners as ‘invaders’ became clear, in that her suitability as a target in Taleban eyes apparently had nothing to do with who she was or what she did, but only that she was a westerner. However, even here the gunman/men apparently failed to distinguish among potential victims according to the crude metrics of a foreigner/Westerner being an enemy, given that Afghans and those from the region were not spared (Pakistani, Indian and Kazakh). One of the victims, for example, according to two eye-witnesses who spoke to AAN, was an older ‘local-looking’ man with a long grey and white beard wearing shalwar kamiz. Did the gunman/men expect more Westerners and then just kill whomever they found?

As AAN wrote after the attack on the Lebanese restaurant in Kabul in January 2014, we have seen the Taleban crossing the red line of targeting foreign civilians before. And we have seen them trying to justify this before (see, for instance, their response to AAN’s piece on the Taverna attack). We have also seen them pulling back. This time the Taleban’s language is again worrying and many will be watching to see whether their targeting ‘guidelines’ have indeed changed. The fear is that the paucity of foreign military targets (the vast majority of the international military are in non-combat roles advising at senior levels; they are not in the field, except for some United States special forces) may make the softer foreign civilian targets more attractive. Many people, anyway, will already be sceptical of the Taleban’s assertions on Twitter that humanitarians are not targets, given the sheer number of aid workers among those killed.

If there was a shift in the Taleban’s targeting, this would put a large part of the international humanitarian and aid effort under threat, with potentially grave consequences to vulnerable Afghans (50 per cent of whom live beneath the poverty line). The irony would be that those affected would include NGOs who, out of principle, have always distanced themselves from the western military and who have often been in the country for decades, including during the Taleban regime.

15 dead, all civilians, all individuals, among them Paula Kantor

Before giving a longer obituary of Paula Kantor the former director of the other leading Kabul-based research organisation, AREU, who was a colleague and friend of AAN’s, we present what is known of the other victims. Many of the Afghan families did not want the identities of their kin released, possibly for privacy reasons, familiar to grieving families everywhere, possibly also because of the fear of repercussion. We have respected this.

The Afghans

Two Afghans working for the NGO Action Aid, 27-year old Muhammad Muhammadi and 36-year old Dr Jawed Ahmad Sahai, were killed. They were both working in Balkh and had come to Kabul for training on watershed management and water harvesting. A colleague, Andrew Wieteacha, told Vice News he was close to both and described how he would periodically travel to the provinces with Sahai:

It would be Sahai’s stories about his family, including anecdotes of his 4-year-old daughter, that Wieteacha would miss most, he said. “He was more than a hard worker, more than a dedicated humanitarian,…he was also a father and a husband. His family was paramount to him.”

Wieteacha said Muhammadi had always been listening to other people, “It was his patience and kindness that made [him] so easy to work with.” Other colleagues, describing how he had risen within the ranks at Action Aid, told Vice News of his “innate ability to win the respect of everyone from senior colleagues, high-powered political officials and even local elders.” 

The families of three other Afghans working for another NGO, the Aga Khan Foundation, who were killed in the attack did not want their identities revealed. A colleague said the two men and one woman, who were “of a variety of ages, young and old” were normally based in Takhar working on the Foundation’s human and institutional development programme. Like the Afghan Aid staff, they had been in Kabul for training.

A British Afghan who had been working for the British Council was also killed at Park Palace. His family also did not want his details released.

The Indians

Dr Martha Farrell (1959-2015) was a director of the NGO, Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), which she and her husband had founded in 1982 to promote citizens’ participation in democratic government. In a professional career lasting more than 30 years, she had worked in India and abroad in the fields of education, research and policy advocacy, especially on gender and women’s rights. She had been in Kabul to train staff from the Aga Khan Foundation and was killed along with three of her trainees. There were strong tributes for Martha from former colleagues:

Dr Martha Farrell was a dear friend, popular colleague and a great support to others. She has always championed the causes of poor and marginalized. She lived and sacrificed her life for gender equality and women empowerment.

(from the PRIA website)

Martha was a strong woman, always very focussed and determined. She was a great trainer, she was instrumental in mainstreaming gender in PRIA, and she always raised gender issues in all discourses. Martha was passionate about her work.

(a message posted at Sahayi – Centre for Collective Learning and Action; see here)

Dr Farrell is survived by her husband and two children.

Two other Indians were auditors at the same firm. Rajesh Kumar Bhatti, who was 64 and from Chandigarh, had retired as a Senior Deputy Accountant General of Punjab in 2011 and, his son said, had been planning to finish his assignment in Kabul and return home next month: “I spoke to him yesterday, and he seemed excited about his coming trip to the US. He had booked the flight tickets and was going to stay with my younger brother there.” (5) His colleague, George Mathew from Ernakulam in Kochi, had called his family during the attack saying he was fine and hiding. Later, when they called back, there was no response.

The fourth Indian to be killed, Dr Satish Chandra, was described as a “technical consultant”

The Pakistanis

Pakistan lost two nationals in the attack: Ismail Awan, an adviser with an Afghan power supply company who was from Sargodha in Punjab, and Abdul Sattar, a finance manager in an Afghan construction company who was from Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The Italian and Kazakh

Aigerim Abdulayeva, 27 years old and from Kazakhstan (parents from Taraz but they had migrated to the capital), was killed along with her husband, Alessandro Abati, who was 48 and from Lombardy in Italy. They had met in Kazakhstan and married there before moving to Milan where Abdulayeva was studying for a degree in fashion design. It seems, from the Italian press, that they had been planning a second marriage ceremony in Italy in July. It reported that Abati had been a consultant for infrastructure projects and had worked extensively in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. According to the Italian Foreign Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, he had been working most recently “as a consultant to an agency that promotes investment in Afghanistan.” His parents, said the press, were “shut up in pain; [they] preferred not to comment.”

The American

Dr Paula Kantor, was a dedicated and meticulous researcher who spent five years working in Afghanistan, first as senior researcher and then director of AREU (2005-2010). She had been in Kabul for a few days, the first time in five years, very excited to be starting a new project looking at women and wheat-growing in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia for the Islamabad-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, the world’s leading centre for research, development and training for these two essential staple crops. Four months ago, she had been appointed as its senior scientist working on gender and development. Typically, for Paula’s work, the new project was aimed at helping the poorest and most vulnerable.

Previously, Paula had worked at the WorldFish Centre, the International Centre for Research on Women and at the Universities of East Anglia and Wisconsin-Madison. With a BA in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Gender and Development from the University of Sussex and a PhD in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina, she brought a formidable skill-set to her work in Afghanistan.

More importantly, however, she brought a commitment to positive social change through policy research. Behind her often self-deprecating front were firm and steadfast views on the importance and relevance of research and the need to uphold high standards. She was pro-active and energetic in seeking out new ideas and opportunities for research that would make a difference in improving people’s lives, especially in the areas of child labour, women, livelihoods, and migration. “She was focused on her work,” one former colleague said, “yet with staff, she was always generous with her time.” Her output at AREU was prolific (6), but she was also crucial for training up a new generation of Afghan researchers and was always a strong advocate for defining a meaningful career path for them.

She remained hopeful for Afghanistan as she made clear on the eve of the London conference in 2010 when Afghan and international leaders met to discuss ‘progress’ in Afghanistan:

“If the international community listens as much as it speaks, and if it responds genuinely to Afghan needs and priorities, then the shoots of hope, already present, can grow.” 

Billions of dollars have been spent on aid in Afghanistan and yet there is still an overwhelming need for the kind of research which Paula carried out and mentored others in doing: thoughtful, passionate, practical and committed, seeking to understand the intricacies of the Afghan social and economic systems that keep people thriving, oppressed or just alive.

 

(1) Ustad Eltaf Hussain is the son of Ustad Muhammad Hussain Sarahang. He was born in Kabul in 1955 and learned classical music from both his grandfather, Ustad Ghulam Hussain Khan, and father. He was also trained by Ustad Amanat Ali Khan and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan of Pakistan.

(2) Most recently, the Taleban’s 17 May suicide attack against a EUPOL convoy (a civilian target, although one which the Taleban consider military) next to the Kabul airport was bound to hurt civilians; indeed, two teenage girls were killed, along with a British security guard working with EUPOL.

(3) A hint that the Taleban might be about to widen their targeting had already come in their spring offensive statement: “the occupation has not ceased in political, cultural, educational, propaganda and other aspects.”

(4) Quoting Acbar, we earlier reported seven aid workers killed. However, the British Afghan had also been working on a development project.

(5) The Indian press reported that two of the Indians had been working with the UN, but UNAMA has confirmed to AAN that none of the dead had been “working with nor was contracted to any UN entity.”

(6) A list of Paula Kantor’s publications at AREU (some co-authored) are:

Create More Quality Jobs with Regular Pay to Improve Livelihoods and Political Stability, May 2007, with Stefan Schütte

Target Assistance to Families with the Least Access to Diverse, Better-Paying Jobs, May 2007, with Stefan Schütte 

Microcredit, Informal Credit and Rural Livelihoods: A Village Case Study in Kabul Province, November 2007, with Erna Anderson 

Microcredit, Informal Credit and Rural Livelihoods: A Village Case Study in Bamiyan, April 2008, with Erna Anderson

Factors Influencing Decisions to Use Child Labour: A Case Study of Poor Households in Kabul, April 2008, with Anastasiya Hozyaninva

Focusing ANDS Implementation on Pro-Poor Outcomes: Workshop Proceedings, 23 February 2009, with Sayed Mohammad Shah

Delivering on Poverty Reduction: Focusing ANDS Implementation on Pro-Poor Outcomes, February 2009, with Adam Pain

From Access to Impact: Microcredit and Rural Livelihoods in Afghanistan, June 2009

Child Labour in Afghanistan: ACBAR Presentation Notes, November 2009

Building a Viable Microfinance Sector in Afghanistan, January 2010, with Erna Anderson

Speaking from the Evidence: Governance, Justice and Development—Policy Notes for the 2010 Kabul Conference, May 2010, with Anna Larson, Deborah J Smith, Emily Winterbotham, Jay Lamey and Rebecca Roberts

Improving Efforts to Achieve Equitable Growth and Reduce Poverty, April 2010

Afghanistan Livelihood Trajectories: Evidence from Faryab, September 2010, with Zarah Batul Nezami

Poverty in Afghan Policy: Enhancing Solutions through Better Defining the Problem, November 2010, with Adam Pain

Securing Life and Livelihoods in Rural Afghanistan: The Role of Social Relationships, December 2010, with Adam Pain

Understanding and Addressing Context in Afghanistan: How Villages Differ and Why, December 2010, with Adam Pain

Running out of Options: Tracing Rural Afghan Livelihoods, January 2011, with Adam Pain

Beyond the Market: Can the AREDP transform Afghanistan’s rural nonfarm economy? February 2011, with Adam Pain

ANNEX: The Taleban’s statement on the Park Palace attack (AAN translation from the Pashto text)

Fedai Attack on Meeting Related to Occupiers Killed and Wounded Dozens of Occupiers Last Night in Kabul

Last night at 9 pm during the Azm operation, a self-sacrificing [fedai] mujahid, Muhammad Idris hailing from Logar province, using a special tactic, carried out [a series of] attacks on Park Palace guesthouse in Taimani area of Kabul city. The mujahid, who had a pistol, a Kalashnikov, a huge amount of explosives, a [suicide] vest and hand grenades, managed to breach the perimeters of the guesthouse and attack a meeting attended by over 100 invaders.

The attack which lasted until late last night was designed carefully; an important meeting attended by important people from many invading countries, especially Americans, was in progress as the attack happened.

Such attacks had previously happened in Wazir Akbar Khan and Shahr-e Naw which resulted in severe casualties for the enemy. The enemies have now [after the two previous areas turned insecure] moved to this area [Taimai] where they were holding night-time parties consisting of promiscuity and indulgence as well as other important meetings.

The mujahedin had followed the enemies carefully and knew about the timing of the meeting precisely. The fedai mujahid managed to cross all the security blockades safely and arrived in the hall [where the meeting was taking place]. According to information, more than 100 people were present in the meeting, half of whom were either killed or wounded in the attack.

Among the dead are a number of senior people from the invading countries; the media and the enemies will perhaps keep silent over that.

Rumours suggesting that the attack was carried out by three people are inaccurate; only one person carried out the attack.

The invading countries should understand that they will not stay safe from our attacks at any place and under any cover as long as they fail to withdraw their troops from our country and recognize our sovereignty. 

Instead of being resolved, the long power struggle between parliament and the Provincial Councils (PC) about how much and what kind of authority the councils would have has entered a new round in 2015 – with no end in sight. In 2014, under the previous president, a new law was designed to solve this issue. But it was caught in a three-way controversy between the new head of state, parliament and the councils during which the authorities demanded by the councils were taken away and returned and taken away again. The PCs reacted with street protests, asking for a presidential decree. They got one of a lesser status that resulted in some clarifications and even restored their desired “oversight” authority. But the decree still needs to be turned into law – and parliament has no reason to approve it this time. AAN’s Ehsan Qaane and Thomas Ruttig reveal how the controversy evolved, provide an update on the state of the affair and take a closer look at why it is still unresolved and bogged down in confusion – it is a story of poor previous legislation, conflicting interests and shifting positions.

Since they were elected for the first time in 2005, Afghanistan’s Provincial Councils (PCs) have been suffering from ill-defined and, its members think, too little authority. Those elected to the councils ten years ago found out, once in their positions, that they had few facilities and no budget and that governors were often reluctant to work with them. The key issue is ‘oversight’ – which could be of any or all – or none – of the following: government budgets spent in the province, government services, the implementation of development projects and detention centres.

A new provincial council law signed by former president Hamed Karzai in 2007 contained wording that gave the PCs “oversight” authority in their respective provinces, but it remained vague in defining this authority. Even this was too much for the Wolesi Jirga, the parliament’s lower house. Arguing with a provision in the constitution, it claimed exclusive “oversight” rights for itself, and wanted only to concede an “advisory” function to the PCs (for previous reporting, see here). Ever since, this has remained the unresolved core issue.

The PCs’ quest for a new provincial council law

After the 2007 law was passed, the provincial councils started to lobby for another amendment of the law that would define their “oversight” authority, with the purpose of generally increasing their role. Four years later, in May 2011, with still no satisfactory solution in sight, the chiefs of all 34 PCs met for the first time to organise joint action (see here). After that meeting, which took place in Herat, the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG), in charge of coordination between the various branches of government at the local level, started drafting another law.

This took another three years. During that time, the draft law was first submitted to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which has to ensure that all laws are in accordance with existing law but which also has the authority to change draft laws without going back to the author. This is exactly what it did in this case: It removed the PCs’ oversight authority. Then the revised draft was put before the Council of Ministers for decision. The Councils of Ministers, ignoring IDLG’s lobbying to retain the original text, approved the MoJ version and sent it on to the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament, in January 2014. In another attempt to lobby for their oversight right, representatives of all 34 provincial councils met the administrative board of the lower house and asked it to adopt the IDLG version of the draft (see here). The lower house, instead, approved a version of the law that gave “advisory” rather than “oversight” authority to the provincial councils (for more details see here).

The provincial councils did not take this in silence. They met with the senators a week later, in the presence of IDLG representatives (see here and here), demanding that the senators return the oversight authority into the law. (The senate, the upper house, has to approve all laws passed by the Wolesi Jirga.) The senate did indeed amend the law again on 20 April 2014 and subsequently managed to convince the lower house members in the joint commission (that now needed to hammer out the differences) to return this authority to the provincial councils. Finally, both houses approved a version of the law on 20 October 2014 that did indeed give oversight authority to the provincial councils. The law was sent to the president for his signature on 16 November 2014.

On 29 December 2014, the president sent the law back, unsigned. According to the lower house speaker, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, addressing the house on 28 January 2015, the president had refused to sign the law because he was not happy with the oversight authority for the provincial councils. (1)

When the president refuses to sign a law, the lower house – according to Article 94 of the constitution – can still pass the rejected draft by a two-thirds majority. This authority is given to uphold parliament’s role as the main legislative body and to prevent the president from overruling it.

On 28 January 2015, before the lower house discussed and voted on the rejected law again, Ibrahimi appealed to the MPs to exert their authority “to approve the law by a two thirds majority or amend the law in the normal process.” (In the latter alternative, the law would be sent back to one of its 18 commissions for more discussion, then would be voted on again in the lower house, then would move on to the upper house and to the president for his signature.) Instead, however, the MPs did both; they amended the law and then accepted it by a two-thirds majority. Noticing that the president supported their initial position, they reneged on their compromise with the senate and removed the PCs’ oversight authority again.

The majority of the MPs argued that such authority was against the constitution, as it only mentions an advisory role for local government institutions, (Article 139). Overseeing government activities, both at the national and local level, they say, is the exclusive responsibility of the lower house and a shared authority would cause conflict between it and the provincial councils. Indeed, controversies have erupted over how responsibilities should be divided. On 19 April 2014, for example, MPs from Jawzjan province accused members of the Jawzjan provincial council of interfering with their tasks, circumventing the MPs and discussing provincial affairs directly with some ministers – after PC members accused them of carelessness towards the local population;  (see here).

This argument – that giving PCs oversight of local government institutions is unconstitutional – had, however, already been rejected by the Independent Commission for Oversight over the Constitution’s Implementation (ICOCI); it had earlier ruled that neither giving nor withholding such an authority would be against the constitution.

What is really at stake?

The lobby for a new law focused on three main issues. The first and most important was to increase the role of provincial councils by boosting their oversight authority. According to the 2007 PC law, they could only oversee the effectiveness of provincial budget expenditures. (2) The new draft law, rejected by the MPs and the president, gave PCs the authority to also oversee the implementation of development projects, the quality of these projects and service delivery by the local government. (3) A second issue was increased financial independence. In the 2007 law, the provincial governor’s office was to pay PC members’ salaries and expenditures, which made them dependent on the governor’s office. In the new draft law, salaries and expenditure was provided by the central government through the IDLG. (There were also problems with the wording, which needed to be corrected.)

The main point of contention has been the oversight authority. Supporters of this authority argued that boosting the role of the elected PCs could help control corruption and abuse at the local government level. Others, however, argued that the greater power could further corrupt PC members, or enhance their chances to use their position for exacting undue influence, for example by pushing for the appointment of people close to them. This is what, according to Ahmad Khamush who is in charge of IDLG’s Local Council Affairs Unit, the president refers to when he says this authority could lead to “new cycles of corruption” at the local level (see also here).

A decree, instead of a law

In response to the Wolesi Jirga’s turn-around on the law, on 29 January 2015, 16 of the 34 provincial councils closed their offices in protest and sent representatives to Kabul to make their case. They met President Ashraf Ghani on 3 February 2015 who, according to this Palace statement, said that he now agreed with the supervisory role of provincial councils but “within a specific set of criteria with transparent accountability.”

On 4 February 2015, Ahmad Khamush from the IDLG, which initially drafted the new law and advocated for adding the oversight authority, in a press conference – reported by Afghan media – tried to explain this shift in the president’s position:

President Ghani rejected the provincial council law because some members of the provincial councils misused their authority in the past. The president thought giving such authority to the provincial councils would create a new cycle of corruption at the local level. But after the president met with representatives of 16 provincial councils, on 3 February, he agreed with the nature of oversight authority for the Provincial Councils, but he stressed this authority should be implemented based on specific mechanisms and within particular scopes [sah-e nezarat].

But although the president apparently now agreed to the oversight authority in principle, no practical action was taken. So PC members – including the heads of all 34 provinces – stepped up their campaign, came to Kabul and took to the streets in protest, blocking the road to Kabul’s international airport on 12 February 2015 (see here and here). On 16 February 2015, second vice-president Sarwar Danesh met PC representatives (see here) and promised on behalf of the president that a presidential decree would be issued in the next cabinet meeting, planned for 25 February 2015 (see here). On 26 February 2015, Ali Yazdanparast, a member of Kabul’s provincial council told AAN that the cabinet had indeed decided to return the oversight authority by a presidential decree, but that no one had seen the decree yet.

When faced with further delays, the PC representatives staged a two-day sit-in at the Office for Administrative Affairs (see here) on 3 and 4 March 2015, refusing to leave until the president issued the decree they demanded. Finally, after 38 days of protests, Ghani issued an ‘administrative’ decree – as opposed to a full-fledged ‘legislative’ one – on 5 March 2014 (see here).

Why an administrative decree and what does it say?

The president can issue two kinds of decree: administrative and legislative. An administrative decree is a directive for governmental officials and does not need the approval of the parliament. A legislative decree, usually simply called a ‘presidential decree,’ however , has the status of a law. The president can issue such decrees on pressing issues when the parliament is in recess, but they should be approved by the parliament as soon as it returns. (4)

After the parliament went into its winter recess (and after it had voted down the PCs’ oversight authority) in January 2015, the provincial councils asked for a legislative decree. The cabinet approved the request on 25 February, but the president, instead, issued an administrative decree. A reliable source within the palace told AAN that after the cabinet agreed to issue the decree, some of the president’s advisors persuaded him not to confirm the decision of the cabinet. That at least an administrative decree was issued appears to have been the result of the pressure of the provincial councils’ sustained protests.

The decree on the PCs’ oversight authority has three articles. Based on these articles, they have been given back the oversight authorities that were contained in the 2007 law. However, the provisions in the decree also do not exceed those already given in the 2007 law, and the exact mandate and mechanisms continue to remain vague. Nevertheless, the IDLG is now tasked with providing the facilities to implement the new provisions. (5)

The 2007 PC law mentions the word oversight (nezarat) twice. The first time, in Article 2, it says that the “Provincial Council . . . advises the local administration and oversees [it]” and the second time, in Article 4.2, the law gives power to the PCs to “advise on and oversee the effective use of financial resources at the provincial level.” The law, however, does not specify the mechanism: how practically a provincial council should oversee the provincial administration and what it can do with the oversight authority. The law is also silent about the responsibility of the local administration, in particular whether and how it should react to the provincial council’s recommendations and if not, what the next step would be. In fact, referring back to the 2007 law with regard to the overseeing authorities means a continuation of uncertainties – one of the things that those lobbying for the new law had hoped to address.

Following the issuance of a law with a clarifying decree, as president Ghani did, is not unprecedented. Former president Hamed Karzai did something similar after the issuance of the 2007 PC law when, on 11 May 2007, he issued a decree (6) saying that the provincial governors should prepare their development budget plans together with the PCs and that the plans should be approved by them before submitting them to the central government. Karzai’s decree also made the provincial governors responsible for providing PCs with facilities and specified that the councils’ oversight authority included “monitoring the implementation of law, balanced reconstruction, reform and good governance.” The mechanism for overseeing and the obligation to implement decisions of the provincial councils were, however, also not addressed in Karzai’s decree. This decree is no longer valid.

Whereas Karzai’s decree was mainly a clarification of the law existing at the time, one could argue that Ghani’s decree in practice overrules the law. Although the newly adopted law does not explicitly say that PCs cannot have oversight authority, this provision was clearly removed from the final version of the law. According to a source from the presidential office, the decision to issue an administrative decree rather than a legislative one was taken after some of the president’s advisers argued that returning the oversight authority would damage the relationship between the president and the Wolesi Jirga. This was particularly relevant as the government, at that point, still needed the lower house’s vote of confidence for the remaining members of its cabinet. So far none of the MPs has reacted against the decree.

The president’s conditions

When the president said he would return the oversight authority to the provincial councils, he did so under two conditions: The oversight should be based on a specific mechanism, and the PCs should issue quarterly reports of their activities to him. Or as described in this palace statement:

[The] President added that the supervisory role has to be in the frame of a clear contract bearing mutual accountability. The IDLG has been instructed to come up with a draft identifying the legitimate supervisory discretion of Provincial Councils, continued President Ghani stating that the amendment will, after Provincial Councils’ consensus, be placed before the parliament.

This is based on Article 40 of the current PC law that gives authority to IDLG to approve procedures (such as how the PCs can use their oversight authority in practice), in coordination with PC heads. According to the customs of Afghanistan’s legislative system, administrations have the right to develop and approve procedures by themselves, and there is no need for confirmation by the president or the Council of Ministers. The drafting of the procedure also would, finally, involve PC members in fixing what and how they can exercise their oversight right and how their findings will be dealt with.

Accordingly, the IDLG drafted a procedure and presented it to the PC representatives on 7 February 2015. The representatives suggested certain amendments, including making oversight a daily authority on topics that can be suggested by individual members and, specifically, adding oversight of the detention sector. A revised version of the draft procedure was presented during a conference in Kabul on 2–4 May 2015, to which all members of the 34 provincial councils were invited by the senate.

The current draft, which AAN has seen, has 13 articles and says that PCs can oversee the following fields: provision of services by the local governmental authorities, detention centres, budget expenditures, the implementation of development projects and project indicators. The procedure stresses that, because these responsibilities require technical knowledge that members of the provincial councils may not have, they will need to use the services of experts. (The procedure for hiring such experts remains open, again.)

The oversight mechanism is also clarified in the procedure and seems designed to prevent individual meddling. The PCs are instructed to exercise their oversight authority through permanent committees (in Dari: kamitaha-ye muwazaf) – somewhat similar to the parliament’s commissions – the structure of which they can decide themselves. In case of necessary investigations into wrongdoing in the province, they can become active on their own initiative, after confirmation by a two-thirds majority of all members, or based on complaints from residents on a particular issue. (In the second case, the procedure concerning how many PC members must agree to form such a committee is left open.) The committees are not allowed to send their recommendations directly to the involved local institutions; instead they should go through the provincial governor’s office. If the local institutions ignore their recommendations, the PCs can forward their recommendations to the president or the parliament through the IDLG.

The procedure would make local government authorities responsible to report regularly to the PCs. For example, provincial administrations are instructed to share their budgets within 20 days of the parliament’s approval of the national budget and to quarterly provide reports on the progress and challenges of the projects and expenditures of both the development and ordinary budget.

The procedure also lays down some limitations for PC members: they are not allowed to fire or appoint any employee; they cannot intervene illegally (ie outside the oversight process) to ask the provincial government to stop or implement any action; and they cannot sign contracts or support anyone to get a contract with the local administration. All these are currently widespread practices. Finally, the procedure gives the right to residents of a particular province to complain against PC members or the PC as a whole. This complaint is then addressed by the Code of Conduct Committee (Kumita-ye Usul-e Raftari) of the same PC or by the IDLG. If the complaint brings up legally culpable offences, the Code of Conduct Committee should send it to the Attorney General’s Office for prosecution.

There is only one problem. Despite the oversight right, in principleconfirmed by the president’s March 2015 decree, it has not yet been made law. And this needs to involve the Wolesi Jirga, which is sticking to its principled opposition to the PCs’ oversight rights.

More opposition

In addition, PCs are still opposing the compromise that the president’s decree might have made possible. The discussion of the draft during the conference in early May was meant to result in its confirmation by PC members and to wrap up the whole debate. But this did not happen. PC members avoided publicly expressing either their support or opposition to the draft procedure. But at the margins of the conference, a number of them argued, when speaking to AAN, that the procedure was meaningless, because now the oversight authority is not backed up by a proper law, and because it unduly limits their authority. (AAN did not hear a single voice of support for the procedure.) They also raised further points that should be included in the procedure (for example, the right to oversee procurements on the provincial level) or dropped (for example, the provision that a two-thirds majority is required for setting up ad hoc committees).

Since the PCs failed to accept IDLG’s procedure on the oversight authorities at the early May conference, the issue of the PC law is, in essence, back at square one. The Wolesi Jirga has not given up its principled opposition to the PCs’ oversight rights, while the PCs – in their dealings with the IDLG – are constantly upping the ante. They also reject the compromise laid out in the president’s decree and the procedures developed on its basis.

The protracted conflict over the PCs’ oversight authority is more than just a controversy over details of an administrative issue. It reflects how poor legislation inherited from the previous government (regardless of whether the shortcomings represent a lack of capacity and understanding or are the result of political intent) continues to affect the working of the current one. Another inheritance from the Karzai era is the strained relations between the executive and the legislative – the latter was often outmanoeuvred by the former and therefore is hitting back wherever opportunity arises. Provincial councils are caught in the middle.  However, they are not fully unselfish in this case; after all, Afghans know how elected and other positions are used to bargain for favours. With their resistance to the IDLG procedure, and their constant advancement of new preconditions, they try to defend ‘rights’ of influence that parliamentarians ‘traditionally’ had but which do not fit within the new constitutional framework.

Although this issue has not yet been raised by the PCs, how the PCs are subordinated to control by the executive is also problematic. Lines between the executive and the provincial-level element of the legislative, the PCs, are blurred by at least two factors: they report to the president (it would be more ‘natural’ for them to report within the legislative, to parliament) and the IDLG has budgetary control over the PCs. The IDLG both drafts the PCs’ budgets and is responsible for hiring their administrative staff.

All in all, the PC law controversy is a case study in how weak political institutions remain, and how easily vested interests can exploit holes in the law and, in this case, prevent necessary checks-and-balances from emerging on a subnational level.

What’s possible next?

Now, despite the mutual blockade between the Wolesi Jirga and the PCs, some PC members are still arguing for another attempt at overhauling the law. Some politicians support this, at least verbally. Muhammad Alam Izedyar, first deputy chairman of the senate, promised the PC members at the same conference that the lower house would start another amendment process, based on Articles 95 and 97 of the Constitution (7) that give such a right to both houses of the parliament. While a legal base for recognising the PCs’ oversight authority is an essential need, it is however unclear whether Izedyar will be able to muster the required support of ten senators for such an initiative, and then get a majority in the house. But even if this happens, the amended law also needs to go through the Wolesi Jirga again. Under the current circumstances, however, it is difficult to see why the Wolesi Jirga should give up its principled opposition to the PCs’ oversight authority this time.

 

(1) According to some there might be an issue with the date of the rejection, given that the draft of the Provincial Council Law was initially sent to the government on 16 November 2014. The Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, which is in charge of communication between the government and parliament, however sent the draft back for spelling and grammar corrections after which the parliament resent it on 16 December 2014. President Ghani then rejected the law on 29 December 2014. According to Article 94 of the constitution, if the president disagrees with an approved draft of law, he can reject and resend the draft to the lower house within 15 days of receiving the draft. If the president neither signs nor rejects the law within 15 days, it will be automatically applicable, without the signature of the president.

Tayeba Khawari, head of the Bamyan provincial council (Afghanistan’s first female provincial council chair), argued on her Facebook page, that because the president had rejected the draft of provincial council law too late, 42 days after it was sent, it would automatically become law (here). She said that none of the related laws and regulations say that the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs has the authority to resend drafts to the parliament; once the draft is issued by the parliament and sent to the government, only the president can sign or reject the draft. In practice however draft laws are regularly sent back to the parliament for corrections before being sent on to the president.

(2) Relevant article in the 2007 provincial council law on the provincial councils’ oversight authorities:

Article 4:

Para 2: [Provincial councils] give advice and do oversight on the efficiency of the expenditure of the provincial budget.

(3) Relevant article in the original 2014 provincial council draft law (which was not adopted):

Article 8:

Para 3: [Provincial councils] give advice to the provincial governor and the related governmental organisation and oversee the effective use of the financial resources and their [the provincial governor and other related governmental organizations] activities with the purpose of filling the gaps and boosting the quality of services.

Para 13: [Provincial councils] advise and oversee the development projects with the purpose of boosting the quality and quantity of governmental services.

(4) See Article 79 of the Constitution: During the recess of Parliament, the Government shall, in case of an immediate need, issue legislative decree except in matters related to budget and financial affairs. Legislative decrees, after endorsement by the President, shall acquire the force of law. Legislative decrees shall be presented to the Parliament within thirty days of convening its first session, and if rejected by the Parliament, they become void.

(5) Full text of the decree on oversight authority of the provincial councils:

Article 1: The provincial councils can use the oversight authority as stipulated in the provincial council law that was issued in official gazette 920 on 30 Hamal 1386 (20 April 2007).

Article 2: The Independent Directorate of Local Governance is in charge of providing facilities for the implementation of the first article of this decree.

Article 3: This decree is enforceable from the date issued.

(6) Presidential Decree, number 862

Date of issue: 11/5/2007

According to Article 139 of the Constitution and Article 4 of the Provincial Councils Law, the below points with purpose of making cooperation and better understating between the local governors and the members of the Provincial Councils and boosting the importance and role of the Provincial Councils in the society and strengthen of the foundation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is approved.

1-  The Provincial Governors shall prepared the provincial development plans together with the Provincial Councils and submit it after verifying of the Provincial Council.

2-  The Provincial Governors shall provide a better space for all activities of the Provincial Councils that include oversight from the implementation of law, balanced development, reform and other important sections.

The authority of overseeing on implementation of this decree is given to Office of Administration Affairs, OAA (Edareh Omor).

Hamed Karzai

The President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

(7) Article 95: The proposal for drafting laws shall be made by the Government or members of the Parliament or, in the domain of regulating judiciary, by the Supreme Court, through the Government.

Article 97: . . . If the proposal for drafting a law is made by ten members of either of the two houses, it shall be after approval of one fifth of the House where it was initiated, included in the work agenda of the House.

 

On top of a hill in Kabul’s southeast is a unique community. It is locally known as Zanabad (“Women’s Town”) and has survived all turmoil of the last decades. A group of widows started building homes there for themselves as far back as the 1990s. Initially, the people of the neighbouring communities looked down on the women, who broke taboos by living alone and building their own village, but they have come to respect them. The story of Zanabad is a story about the challenges that Afghan widows face, but more so it is a story about women’s ability to overcome these challenges. In a country where women are usually reported on as victims, AAN’s Naheed Esar – who used to worked in Zanabad as a research assistant focusing on the ethnography of everyday lives of widows and who has visited again this year – wanted to share a different story.

When I visited the widows on the hill for the first time back in 2007, one of them welcomed me to her house. 12 women were seated on her mud floor, learning how to read and write. They were using a well-illustrated grade one textbook. My host, Bibikoh, had organised the literacy course herself. She also had found the teacher, Zarghuna, who additionally taught them basic health care, based on a book called Where There Is No Doctor. The book, provided by an NGO, Care International, was in English, but Zarghuna used the pictures and translated the text for  her students.

The house was on the top of a stony and rather steep hill in Kart-e Naw, a large settlement in Kabul’s southeast. Kart-e Naw means “new quarter,” because it was built by Afghans displaced during the 1980s wars who were looking for a new place to settle. When it rained, the steep roads became very slippery, and as the area then still lacked water and electricity, the widows had to carry buckets or pots of water from the formal settlements below, at the foot of the hill. Bibikoh’s house was small, with two rooms only – one for living and one for guests, with no separate kitchen – and the toilet was still under construction. The women sat in the guest room and talked about their weekly classes and how they were building their houses, in fact their community, with their own hands. The community became known as Zanabad – “Women’s Town” or also “Built by Women.”

None of the widows or any the authorities in the area recall when exactly Zanabad came into being or the women who established it. It seems to have happened during the political chaos in the early 1990s, after the fall of President Najibullah’s government in 1992. The war of the 1980s and the following wars produced an enormous number of widows. According to Beyond 9/11, a US-based non-profit group that provides direct financial support to Afghan widows and their children, Afghanistan had around 1.5 million widows in 2008, of which 50,000 to 70,000 live in the capital, Kabul. Official data on the current number of widows in the country does not exist, but both Care (in a phone conversation with AAN) and the UN estimate that today there are more than two million. (1) This amounts to one of the highest numbers of widows (proportionate to the total population) in the world.

The average age of Afghan widows is just 35 years, says Beyond 9/11. About 94 per cent cannot read and write. About 90 per cent have children, four on average. Widowed women are also at greater risk of developing “emotional problems and impaired psychosocial functioning than either married women or men, typically because of social exclusion, forced marriages, gender-based violence and lack of economic and educational opportunities,” says the organisation. Officials of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) add that shelter, food, earning a living and social protection are among the most pressing issues for widows. To survive, many Afghan widows weave carpets, do tailoring, beg or even engage in prostitution. But nevertheless they still lack strong governmental and community support.

However, the collapse of the Najibullah regime also created opportunities. People were able to take over government land. (2) The hill, on which Zanabad would emerge, was one such piece.

Bibikoh’s story: From ‘head eater’ to community mobiliser

Many widows still remember vividly how hard it was to build their houses with their own hands. One of them, Humaira, a young, shy widow in her late 30s, recalls this time as dawa-ye talkh, bitter medicine. The construction work was often “beyond her physical ability” and caused her “physical trouble” – but she also said that building her own house in this community had “cured” her in the long run as it gave her life-long shelter.

Bibikoh adds that, at times, they had to fight to defend their houses. She recalls how she protected another widow by throwing a stone at a policeman who was trying to beat her. The police would regularly come and try to knock down the widows’ illegal houses. She also recalls how at first other families living nearby, those with men, would not mingle with them, as these determined, independent and house-building women broke taboos. These neighbours looked down on them, even calling them prostitutes. But meanwhile they have come to respect the widows because they all – neighbours and widows alike – are socio-economically in somewhat the same position.

Bibikoh – her actual name is Bibi ul-Zuqia – is in her mid-60s and the engine of the Zanabad community. She came here in the early 2000s, after she was widowed for the second time. Against a payment – actually a bribe – of 5,000 Afghanis (about 100 dollars) to police officers who guarded a military arsenal on the hill, she was allowed to take a plot of land where she started building. Today, she claims, her house is worth 500,000 Afghanis – 10,000 dollars. Because of the arsenal, police patroled regularly on that hill. Humaira told AAN that if it hadn’t been for these night patrols, she would not have felt safe moving here with her five children and without an adult man in the house. The safety of the area was a main point of attraction for several widows AAN talked to.

Bibikoh’s first husband died when a rocket hit their house, in her province of origin, Parwan, north of Kabul. Her second husband, who had been her brother in-law and a mujahedin fighter, died on the battlefield in Parwan. However, after becoming a widow for the second time, Bibikoh’s status in the community changed dramatically. All of a sudden, she was seen as a bad omen and, despite her six children, lost the respect and support she had among the in-laws. She was called kala-khor, head eater. The abuse reached its peak when she was thrown out of the neighbourhood altogether.

The fall from grace that Bibikoh experienced has to do with the ‘traditional’ socio-economic status of women in Afghan society. Before marriage, a woman is identified as the daughter of her father, after marriage as the wife of her husband. She always belongs to the male head of the family, as a kind of commodity, and also embodying the ‘honour’ of the family. Widowed women, however, in the eyes of society and their families, become “women without identity and protection”; deg-e be-sarposh – a pot without a lid – is the derogatory term. In most cases, they are either returned to their father’s home or married to a brother-in-law – as happened to Bibikoh after her first husband’s death. But either way, they are often seen as a burden, an additional economic liability. This is even stronger in wartime when many families come under additional economic strain.

Bibikoh, though, neither went back to her father nor did she marry any relative of her husband. She chose another way. A widowed friend who already was a resident told her about Zanabad and encouraged her to join. In her new community, she organised weekly gatherings for the widows. The women continued to gather weekly over the four years I was working there, to study but also to discuss daily events. They also looked outside of their group and started spreading knowledge in the wider community. Some of the 12 I met on this first day in Zanabad would hold gatherings with other widows and enthusiastically share what they had learned.

Bibikoh also conducted surveys in her area to help NGOs such as Care to provide monthly rations to needy widows, consisting of a seven-ser (49 kilogram) bag of flour, oil and beans. The widows claim that if it weren’t for Bibikoh’s work, such NGOs would never have found the truly needy ones. (Among the widows were some women who pretended to be widows in order to benefit from the NGO rations.) According to Bibikoh, over the past 11 years, about 400 widows of the area benefited from the rations. Because of her work to educate and teach them how to be financially independent, she is now widely known as a community mobiliser. She regained the respect she had lost before, and also earned her respectful nickname: Bibikoh – the “grandmother from the mountain.”

Security and sisterhood

Zarghuna, the woman who taught the widows how to read and write, noticed that beyond the educational aspect and the discussions, the gatherings of the women also became a place to share painful stories and, by telling them, to overcome the pain. With support from the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the women also used participatory theatre –where the performers interact with the audience – for this purpose. (Interestingly, this method was also used by civil society actors after the recent Kabul lynching of Farkhunda.)

The safe environment of Zanabad, Humaira said, created a sense of sisterhood among the members of the community. She gave the example of two young women, a widow and a divorcee, who came from other parts of Kabul to live on the hill. The other widows consistently accompanied the two women in their daily activities; sometimes they even spent the nights with them to make them feel safe.

Some widows in the community described their shared pain as the main cause for the sisterhood felt in the community, but the shared work and assistance to each other also contributed. In this community, said Anisa, one of the widows who had built two houses in the area, the widows have become each other’s sar-posh, each other’s cover.

Getting legal

When our research project ended in 2011, most of these 500 widows of Zanabad had finished building their houses. Some had become literate and, as a result, were able to find jobs. Some work at other people’s houses, while others have started small businesses, mainly cooking and selling Afghan food – namely bulani, mantu, ashak and shor nakhod – in the markets. Some widows teach in a girls’ school in Zanabad. Some, including Bibikoh and Anisa, now even work as government employees at the local police station. Few of them have continued working in their old occupation, which is begging in the streets.

Improvements continued. Today, the community looks more colourful, as many of the building are now painted. In Bibikoh’s house, the floors are now covered with red Afghan rugs. But the windows are still covered with plastic sheets, ‘poor people’ style. Outside, most of the junk from the wars – wrecked tanks, artillery pieces and rocket launchers – have been cleared away. Remaining land has been occupied by newcomers, both widows and families. Humaira is hoping to buy her neighbour’s land and build a new house, where she could bring her parents. Anisa has finished painting her second house and is now renting it out for 3,000 Afghanis (60 dollars).

The road up the hill is still slippery. But since early 2014, the government has been providing electricity and water, thereby acknowledging the widows’ right to live in Zanabad. The government also has taken over the girls’ school. The widows still do not possess legal documents for the land they live on, though, and Zanabad is not yet part of Kabul’s official city map. Bibikoh said they are in the process of convincing the government to give them land certificates. Once their status is fully legalised, the success of Zanabad might even become a model to other homeless widows.

Bibikoh and the other widows of Zanabad have challenged, with their unusual decision to take matters into their own hands, the pervasive idea that widows have no independent identity, cannot survive without protection and cannot be economically productive. They have not only re-gained their social status, but they gave the community they live in a very special, feminine identity.

(Editing by Thomas Ruttig)

 

(1) UN Women (formerly UNIFEM) even speaks of two million war widows. Deutsche Welle, in a 2013 article, apparently citing an Afghan women’s organisation, put the figure of widows at 2.5 million – which then would be almost 12 per cent of the entire Afghan population. This article is also interesting because it describes how women in Jalalabad and a rural area of Wardak province live.

With the on-going conflict and casualty rates continuing to rise in the Afghan security forces and the civilian population, the number of widows continues to increase.

(2) An unwritten law says that, if you can build the four walls of your house 1.5 meters high over one night on a ‘free’ piece of land, even the government cannot evict you if the land does not belong to you. This is, apparently, how strongmen have grabbed a lot of government land.

 

Our author told the story to a Washington Post journalist who wrote about Zanabad in 2011. You can read his story here.

The Taleban’s first major onslaught in their ‘spring offensive’ this year took the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) by surprise. But after a few days, they were able to react and push the insurgents back in some areas while the latter held their ground in others. Although the ANSF kept control over Kunduz city and all district centres, AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig argues that the fighting underlined some of the well-known weaknesses of the ANSF: a lack of coordination between different forces (army, police, local police), possibly exacerbated by recruitment problems that are hidden both by corruption (producing ‘ghost soldiers’ and ‘ghost policemen’) and the current reporting system. The fighting also showed the Taleban able to mount large and simultaneous operations in different areas, but also that they were still a long away from a military victory. (With contributions by Borhan Osman, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali.)

The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) seem to have ridden out the Taleban’s first massive onslaught this year, in Kunduz province, but with a black eye. The Taleban started attacking ANSF positions there on 24 April 2015, only two days after they had announced their annual spring campaign. They called it “azm” (resolve), not wasting the opportunity to mock their hitherto main adversary, the troops of NATO who have named their own post-combat mission “Resolute Support.” One week later, by 1 May, the fighting seemed to have largely subsided. The Taleban website claimed the last fighting happened on 30 April and stated that they had destroyed a military installation in Chahrdara district and driven the enemy out of “two large villages” – which is a far cry from taking a whole province. On the other hand, the ANSF victory does not seem to be as complete as Afghan media have reported.

AAN heard from Kunduz MPs in parliament on 2 May that, overnight, the Taleban had re-taken some areas. Elders and three ALP commanders from Gortepe, a rural area that is part of the district of Kunduz city, told AAN on 3 May that this whole area was now under Taleban control. Before, it still had government presence, consisting of Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan Local Police (ALP) and nazm-e ‘ama (Afghan National Civil Order Police). Gortepe, which consists of some 40 to 50 villages, is an area with “a long history of instability,” as we wrote earlier, (1) just northwest of the city.

 

The environment in which the current fighting was taking place: agricultural land just outside Kunduz city…

 

A surprise attack…

Simultaneous fighting took place in at least five of the province’s districts – Imam Saheb, Chahrdara, Qala-ye Zal, Aliabad and Kunduz city. In some places, it saw concentrations of hundreds, if not thousands of fighters – if local ANSF and other government officials’ figures can be trusted. Figures given to Afghan media ranged from several hundred to up to 2000 fighters involved in single attacks. Provincial governor Muhammad Omar Safi said there were altogether 3000 Taleban in Kunduz.

Using what seemed to have been a moment of surprise, the Taleban initially made some territorial gains. Similar to the round of larger-scale fighting in Kunduz in September last year (see AAN analysis here and here), their move again brought them close to cutting off not only two district centres (Chahrdara again, and this time also Imam Saheb) but also again penetrating areas only some kilometres away from the provincial capital’s centre. These included Gortepe and Bagh-e Sherkat, nowadays also the location of an IDP camp, hosting people displaced by earlier fighting in the region. (In September 2014, AAN reported that the Taleban “managed to secure additional territory around the provincial capital of Kunduz and have been closing in on the city itself. They also gained nearly full control over several districts of the province. … Chahrdara and Dasht-e Archi almost completely fell under Taleban control, while the situation in Imam Sahib and Aliabad districts worsened significantly.”)

Local observers told AAN that the Taleban also occupied a former United States Special Forces base in Imam Saheb district. It was not clear whether it had been handed over to Afghan forces or abandoned.

… fields and gardens in Qala-ye Zal district …

 

According to provincial officials, the fighting has displaced another 2,000 families. This can amount to around 16,000 people, taking eight as the size of an average household. This comes at a time where people were in the middle of their sowing period and, therefore, risks displacing them permanently – if they cannot get back home in time to sow and therefore lose the year’s harvest.

Some of the features of the Kunduz fighting seem to indicate that it was indeed more massive than in September 2014: 500 ALP fighters were surrounded in Imam Saheb and called for help from there in distress; the government closed schools in the embattled areas, including in Kunduz city; shops were closed and streets empty in the provincial capital. AFP reported:

The streets of Kunduz city were deserted, with shops closed and local administration officials deserting government buildings, residents said as fears of a Taliban takeover grew. “We are really worried that the city could slip into the hands of the Taliban … and all the gains over the last 13 years will be lost,” Ahmad Luqman 35, a shopkeeper in the city, said.

People in Kunduz city confirmed these reports to AAN. They say that in the first days after the fighting broke out, major businesses like jewellery markets and the money exchange were closed; only small shops were open. There were not the normal crowds in the streets, although they were not completely deserted. Offices were either open with minimal presence of staff or completely closed. Particularly high-ranking officials did not report to work. A local reporter contacted by German Deutsche Welle radio said “people who have not fled the city have locked themselves inside their homes” as “loud explosions and gunshots [were to] be heard in the city”. The same sources contacted again by AAN on 2 and 3 May say the situation had not fully gone back to normal yet, particularly in the districts and Kunduz city’s outskirts.

For some days, at least, there seems to have a feeling among the city’s population that the situation was close to tipping point. The Deutsche Welle contact commented that “memories of the civil war days have come to haunt” the Kunduz population. Also, officials and former high-ranking officers sounded clearly alarmed. Kunduz’ chairman of the elected provincial council, Muhammad Yusuf Ayubi, said the Taleban controlled 65 per cent of the province and there was a “serious risk” of the province “falling to the Taleban.” Zalmai Wisa, the former commander of Afghan National Army (ANA) forces in nine northern and north eastern provinces, warned: “It’s not only Kunduz that can fall – but everywhere else where the armed forces are not professional.” The fighting also delayed President Ashraf Ghani’s departure on his first official visit to India for several hours on Monday, 27 April. He scheduled instant consultations with the Resolute Support command, apparently asking for air support.

However, the government was able to bring in some 2,000 additional Afghan forces. These included Afghan special forces from Kabul and units from neighbouring provinces, including Balkh and Badakhshan. Some of the units from Badakhshan had earlier (10 April) been sent there from Kunduz after the Taleban had started a more local operation in Jurm district, reportedly involving 250 fighters (see here and here). NATO dispatched fighter jets that, however, “dropped no munitions.” These reinforcements were reportedly able to push back the Taleban in Kunduz rather quickly, in some areas in their first night of operation. Once more, the Afghan government has been able to prevent the fall of an important population centre, be it a district or provincial centre, to its enemy. For the Taleban, taking Kunduz city, however fleetingly, would have been a prestigious and morale-boosting victory.

… and the main street in Qala-ye Zal’s district centre, Photos: Thomas Ruttig (2007).

 

Not only Kunduz

Noticed far less by at least the international media, also other provinces experienced some heavy fighting simultaneous to that in Kunduz. Further west, in Qaisar district of Faryab province, another long-standing focus of insurgent activity, the Taleban reportedly made some gains, although both sides claimed they had inflicted casualties on their opponents. But the commander of the local ANA corps confirmed that security forces had to retreat in some areas after Afghan Local Police (ALP) fighters surrendered, or defected, to the insurgents, and spoke about a lack of coordination between the ALP and the regular Afghan National Police (ANP). Fighting also took place in the province’s Pashtunkot district. In Farah and Kunar, hundreds of Taleban attacked and stormed police posts, although without threatening larger population centres.

[Amendment on 4 May 2015: The intensity of this fighting is reflected in increased casualty figures. According to US and Afghan officials, the ANSF have suffered record casualties this year, with the figure of killed or wounded increasing by 70 per cent in the first 15 weeks of 2015, compared to the same period last year.]

Simultaneously, more government officials were attacked in assassination attempts, in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangrahar (here and here), Paktia and Laghman. On 26 April, the second (acting) police chief of Uruzgan province was killed within six weeks. The numerous attacks and assassination attempts, however, do not constitute a peak but rather normal even though often under-reported practice.

A usually well-informed and pro-government Afghan military observer reported on 27 April on Twitter that the ANSF were involved in 18 “unplanned operations” throughout the country. This adds to 14 anti-Taleban “counter-insurgency clearing operations” mentioned by the MoD’s deputy spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, currently underway, including what he called two large-scale operations, Badr, in Zabul and Ghazni, and Shahin 22 that continues in Badakhshan’s Jurm and Warduj districts. Altogether, Afghan media reported fighting in at least twelve provinces early this week, in Ghor, Khost, Zabul, Wardak, Baghlan, Takhar and Jawzjan, Helmand, Ghazni, Nimruz und Farah (already mentioned above).

… despite early warnings

To counter the depressed mood in Kunduz, government spokesmen sent out soothing messages. At a press conference on 29 April, Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqi said, “The main core of the insurgents in Imam Sahib district have been destroyed and the situation in Kunduz has completely changed.” Waziri, the Defense Ministry’s deputy spokesman added, “No district or province will collapse, and I assure you that security forces are capable enough of controlling the situation.” Interior Minister Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi visited Kunduz city on 1 May. (There is still no Afghan defence minister.)

This fighting, however, raised – or reinforced – some points of concern with regard to the readiness of the ANSF. The first is how the Taleban were able to stage such a massive attack, which necessitated pulling together large numbers of fighters prior to it, and still caught the government forces by surprise.

Interior minister Ulumi had warned weeks ago in parliament that the insurgency was “moving north.” (This assertion, however, was later denied by the MoD’s Waziri – and indeed, as the battles listed above show, the insurgency continues to be active countrywide.) However, since last summer, additional fighters had been noticed arriving in the north and northeast, adding “a substantial level of additional military punch to the local Taleban,” as AAN reported from Kunduz province (see also here). This reportedly included fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who had been pushed out of Pakistan’s tribal areas as a result of this country’s military operations in Waziristan. They seem to have moved into Afghan areas where co-ethnics are living; Kunduz, with its large Uzbek population, was therefore an obvious choice (although this was also not the only destination of such fighters.) They were already said to be involved in the Kunduz fighting in September last year – when Taleban also made some (temporary) gains in Kunduz (see AAN analysis here).

The second reason for concern is that, after the withdrawal of most NATO combat forces, it was obvious and widely expected that this year, the Taleban would test the resolve of the ANSF. Again, Kunduz, with the movement having a strong base in a number of districts, was an obvious choice. It is also not impossible that the Taleban’s 10 April operation in Jurm, in the same north-eastern region, during which some 33 ANA soldiers were killed and some even beheaded, was designed to divert the ANSF’s attention from Kunduz. Particularly the beheading looked like a deliberate attempt to provoke the ANA soldiers. If that was the plan, it worked and triggered a Ministry of Defence announcement that ‘revenge’ would be taken.

The Afghan leadership should also have been warned by Taleban attacks in other areas. There was not only Jurm, but also heavy fighting in Helmand as early as December last year and again in February this year. Then, the ANA had to push back Taleban who had returned to districts in the province’s north which had earlier been – as it turned out only temporarily – cleared by British and US forces. In Sangin district, for example, the fighting was so intense that reportedly “few civilians remain.”

The domestic dimension

The Taleban attacks have also been instrumentalised in domestic politics. Some MPs as well as former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, on his Facebook page, now a leading and often the most radically outspoken opposition politician, accused the government of having deliberately delayed their military reaction in the north in order to – as Saleh put it – ensure the defeat of “the armed networks of Jamiat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan and the commanders of the armed resistance [ie against the Soviets and the Taleban] who have volunteered again for the local police.” (Jamiat, along with other tanzims like Vice President Dostum’s Jombesh and Vice CEO Muhammad Khan’s wing of Hezb-e Islami all currently on the government’s side, indeed run many, if not most, of the ALP units in the region; it is rare to hear a major politician admitting this in public as it is illegal for a political party like Jamiat to be armed.)

Second Deputy CEO Muhammad Mohaqqeq demanded that the defence ministry should be given to a mujahed. Both he and Saleh are tapping into widespread feelings among the former mujahedin that they are being further sidelined by the current government (a claim raised already from the beginning of the Karzai government, and now raised again, also by other heavyweights like Abdul Rassul Rabb Sayyaf and Ismail Khan), and that the ‘security ministries’ – ie defence, interior and NDS – have been given to former ‘communists.’ (2)

ANSF shortcomings

For the time being, the ANSF has withstood another massive Taleban onslaught. The Taleban, on the other side, again proved unable to take over larger population centres, including district centres (although these may not even be big enough to be towns) – assuming this was their aim in Kunduz. But there was some critical delay in the ANSF response, and the situation certainly felt close to the brink, judging from the reactions of officials and the population of Kunduz city.

Judging from Afghan media reports, it was the ANP and ALP that bore the brunt of the Kunduz fighting on the government’s side up to Monday, 27 April. This hints at coordination problems and puts in question at least the Afghan government and NATO’s claims that the ANSF are able to effectively resist the insurgency. The continuing lack of a new, legitimate defence minister may well have exacerbated these problems.

Another possible reason for the shortcomings in ANSF coordination is laid out in the two latest quarterly reports of the US Government’s Special Inspector for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR; here and here). It says, based on audits of the ANA’s and the ANP’s personnel and payroll data, that neither the US nor the Afghan government knew exactly how many soldiers and policemen are at its disposal. It adds that there is a number of what are usually called ‘ghost soldiers’ (also ‘ghost policemen’ and ‘ghost ALP fighters’) defined in the report as “dead, deserted, or non-existent soldiers kept on rolls by error or intention — whether to augment a superior’s pay or to enable a dead soldier’s family to go on collecting pay in lieu of a death benefit.” How high their figure might be is left open.

The latest official figures (from February 2015) for the numbers of personnel (which will include the unknown number of ghost soldiers) are 167,024 for the ANA (not including civilian personnel) and 154,685 for the ANP. In the case of the ANA, this is fewer than the 169,203 in November last year that was already down by 8.5 per cent compared with the February 2014 figure; this amounts to about 15,000 men, “roughly equivalent,” said SIGAR, “to a full Afghan army corps.” In turn, that November figure was “the lowest assigned ANA force strength since August 2011.” SIGAR gave desertions and increased casualty rates as the main reason for the attrition.

On the Afghan National Police (ANP), the latest report says that “there is still no assurance that personnel and payroll data are accurate.” It adds that “SIGAR analysis indicates a change in how ANP numbers are calculated that raises questions about the accuracy of these numbers and the validity of the reported increase in personnel this quarter.”

These figures must translate to actual fighting capacity at the regional and even local level: it is difficult to imagine that the MoD and Ministry of Interior (MoI) leadership can be sure at every moment how many ANA and ANP (not to speak about ALP) they can count on in a given area. On the other hand, the better trained and better supported 15,000 strong Afghan special forces seem to have proven reliable once more.

The ANA also continues to be ridden with corruption, as an on-going investigation by the Afghan government into what looks to have been a widespread fuel procurement scandal shows. MPs and the Administrative Board of the parliament’s lower house alleged in mid-April that this had had immediate effects on the ANA’s ability to operate and that, during the Taleban ambush in Jurm district in April, the embattled Afghan soldiers were unable to retreat because “their vehicles’ fuel was sold out by the corrupt and the plunderers,” as the house’s deputy secretary, Erfanullah Erfan, said. A member of the Wolesi Jirga’s economic committee had earlier confirmed:

I have witnessed a scene in Farah province in which the Afghan National Army soldiers could not move because their vehicle was out of fuel.

MoD deputy spokesman Waziri, however, rejected these reports and said, “We don’t have any incident where our operations were cancelled due to a lack of fuel.”

And the Taleban?

Taking into consideration that fighting not only took place in Kunduz but, on a relatively large scale also in Badakhshan, Jawzjan and Farah, the Taleban have also shown, not only their presence, but ability to hit various areas simultaneously, in one province and in various provinces. With all caution with respect to the figures given, they seem to again be able to pull together large formations of fighters, possibly as a result of the fact that, after the end of the ISAF mission, there is less danger of them coming under NATO air assault. (See also the above mentioned statement that NATO fighter jets were sent to Kunduz, but apparently did not directly take part in the fighting.)

It further became evident that Kunduz province remains one of the Taleban’s major focuses of operations – the very province in the north where they continued their resistance longest after the US-led 2001 intervention. They still enjoy support in the significant pockets of the province populated by Pashtuns, particularly so after the Pashtun population in the north became targets of Northern Alliance fighters and officials who are dominating the political and military scene throughout the region from 2001 onwards, leading to many northern Pashtuns feeling sidelined in the ‘new Afghanistan.’ (On this, see early reports by Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group as well as AAN reports here and here.) This feeling might even have been exacerbated by the growing influence of Uzbek-dominated Jombesh after its leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum became vice president in the current government. AAN has also been reporting for years about (often ethnically-based) ALP units persecuting members of other ethnic groups (only a few examples here and here; more in our freshly composed Kunduz dossier, here).

In contrast to those ALP units, the Taleban are often seen as less abusive, as AAN has been told repeatedly (see for example here and here). For the same reasons, they also remain popular among parts of the population for their system of ‘justice,’ as opposed to the corrupt (and ethnically biased) government courts and have gained a say in the education system, influencing curricula and the choice of teachers.

According to information received from region by AAN, madrassas close to Hezb-e Islami (a predominantly Pashtun party which split into a fighting group and a group which ‘came in from the cold’ and joined the political mainstream) around the provincial capital have played a role in harbouring Taleban fighters.

Another recurring feature of the recent fighting were reports about the participation of foreign, mainly IMU fighters displaced from their (previously) safe haven in Waziristan. Kunduz’ governor said on Monday 27 April, “20 militants, the majority of them foreigners, have been killed including three Uzbek women and Turkish nationals, Chechens and Kyrgyz nationals.” Another unnamed Afghan official was quoted as saying by ToloNews that “six foreign militants who were killed in the attack come from the north-western Faryab province, four of them were from Tajikistan and two were Chechens.” Their overall number and exact role in this fighting remains unclear, but there were recurrent reports that they brought in additional financial resources for the insurgents.

Given recent tensions between the Afghan Taleban and IMU, the reports of cooperation between both must be taken with some caution. The IMU has recently started distancing itself from the Taleban of which it was a declared ally since it received shelter during the Taleban emirate in the late 1990s, after being pushed out of its country of origin and from Tajikistan where it had supported the Islamist opposition to the regime in the 1990s civil war (see our latest dispatch here). Instead, it drifted closer to the Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State, falling short, so far, from declaring full allegiance. (3) Particularly the public announcements by the IMU that it had doubts the Taleban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was still alive (posted on a pro-IMU Facebook side but inaccessible now) (4) will not have gone down well with the Taleban. Under these circumstances and despite possible local links, it is doubtful the foreign militants in the area and the Taleban fully coordinate their fighting.

Conclusion

In the first fighting after the declaration of the Taleban’s 2015 (1394) ‘spring offensive,’ the ANSF have gained the upper hand after being initially wrong-footed and forced to concede some territorial gains to the Taleban. This victory has not proven without doubt, however, that the ANSF will be able to withstand the insurgents. The Kunduz MPs’ reports indicate that the fighting in that province might not be over yet.

Moreover, the civilian population’s reaction in Kunduz flagged that the widespread public support and optimism about the ANSF shown over the past year (again there are reports about blood donations offered by Kabulis for the soldiers wounded in the fighting, here) is more defiance than a deep conviction that they are sufficiently able to withstand the Taleban.

Also other well-known, grave problems remain – coordination, recruitment, corruption. Maybe the widespread public support and continuous (although somewhat self-serving) praise by NATO (see in media reports here (on Kunduz) and here (in general)) has even bolstered the ANSF leaders’ self-confidence too much. The continues (and possibly exaggerated) pointing out of the role of foreign fighters is partly a way of diverting responsibility by blaming the usual ‘foreign hand.’

NATO’s training for the ANSF so far seems to have born insufficient fruit, particularly on the coordination between the ANA, the ANP and the ALP. With the some hundreds of trainers, many of them bogged down by heavy security restrictions, NATO’s post-ISAF mission might simply be too small to achieve this. On the other hand, to step this up would come too late now. The withdrawal seems to be somewhat delayable, but not reversible, given the waning public and political international interest and support for Afghanistan. The solution lies in the ANSF themselves and their leadership. They need to face, and rectify, their own shortcomings, as highlighted by the Kunduz fighting.

Comparing this offensive with the Kunduz fighting in September 2014 even raises doubts whether it really epitomised a new quality. In that sense, the offensive was a logical continuation of regular attacks in Kunduz that did not even really see the normal lull during the winter. The reported ‘move north’ of Taleban is also not a new phenomenon, but has been a steady development since at least 2007/08 (see AAN’s 2010 report “The Northern Front”). Kunduz province – where the Taleban are well-entrenched and have so far resisted all attempts to push them out for good – will remain one of the Taleban’s major focuses of operations, but of course they will also continue to target the whole country.

 

(1) There was some confusion about the exact location of Gortepe area, putting it as close as three kilometres from Kunduz city. In fact, Gortepe is a large area consisting of some 40 to 50 villages, some of them very close to the city indeed.

Gortepe also has seen earlier counter-insurgency operations, for example in late 2010/early 2011 (see here), apparently with no long-term success. One source says there are Uzbek-Pashtun land conflicts, after Pashtun families were displaced from there, into Bagh-e Sherkat IDP camp (which also hosted Gujar and Pashtun families from Takhar province), and Uzbeks moved on their land. (The same source incorrectly puts Gortepe into Dasht-e Archi district, though.) The name Bagh-e Sherkat is linked to one the country’s main industrial enterprises, the Sherkat-e Spinzar, or White Gold (eg, cotton) Joint Stock Company, founded in the 1930s by the Nasher family, a family of Pashtun naqelin (forced resettlers). It was linked to Abdul Majid Zabuli, the Afghan businessman often called “father of Afghan industrialisation” who founded the Afghan National Bank in 1936 and encouraged the country’s traditional traders to invest into industries by setting up joint stock companies (sherkat). The Nasher family is in exile in Germany now. Bagh-e Sherkat housed some 800 IDP families between 2002 and 2010 and continues in this function. There were no later figures available, though.

(2) The new interior minister Ulumi was one of the highest-ranking generals under the PDPA regime, and the current candidate for the MoD, General Abdullah Habibi, was also trained in the Soviet Union and served under that regime. His USSR training, however, was under President Daud (1973-78), and in the 1990s. Under President Karzai, he served under Bismillah who was for many years chief of the general staff and a former leading mujahed himself.

(3) According to media reports in late March 2015, a local IMU group in Faryab province led by a certain Sadullah Urgenchi (Urgench being a city in Uzbekistan, on the banks of river Amu), “claiming to be from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU),“ said his group was recognising Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their leader. Reports that the whole of IMU, through its leader Usman Ghazi, has done so has only been sourced to one Uzbek intelligence official who definitely is interested in playing this issue up:

On 6 October 2014, an Uzbekistan law enforcement official told Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) Usman Ghazi had declared his group’s support for Islamic State.

(4) The statement allegedly by IMU chief Usman Ghazi was published on 24 November 2014 under the title “Usman Ghazi be-dark budan-e Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahed-ra e’lan kard” (Usman Ghazi announced the unavailability of Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahed) which, however, falls short of a denunciation of IMU’s earlier pledge of allegiance to him.

From ultra-conservative Salafis to secular-minded feminists, an astonishingly diverse range of voices have found their heroine in Farkhunda, the young woman who was lynched by a mob in Kabul on 19 March 2015. She has become the rare victim of violence to be almost unanimously called a shahid, a martyr. The consensus on her status, however, masks a deep divergence of views on what it was that made people resort to mob justice, who is to be blamed for it and how this should be remedied. The two main and conflicting narratives that have emerged pit conservative religious leaders and groups against activists advocating for ‘rights and freedoms’, with both sides blaming each other for having indirectly driven people to murder. AAN’s Borhan Osman has delved into the debate around the underlying roots of such violent behaviour in the name of defending religion. He warns that Afghanistan cannot afford the increasingly explicit polarisation of society that has emerged since the killing.

This is the second dispatch on Farkhunda’s murder. The first explored the social geography of the killing, see here.

A young woman going only by the name of Farkhunda was brutally lynched by a mob in the centre of Kabul on the afternoon of 19 March 2015. She was beaten with sticks, pelted with rocks and ran over with a car, after which her body dumped was on the banks of the muddy and polluted Kabul river and set alight. She had been attacked after being accused of burning a copy of the Quran at the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. During the attack, which lasted for about half an hour, the police did attempt, at some points, to save Farkhunda, but at other instances they can be seen standing idly as the attackers continue to beat her (this was documented in amateur footage recorded by witnesses, for instance here), although, be warned, the footage is graphic and upsetting).

News of the incident reached the public at large by the end of the day of the attack, 19 March. Most outlets explicitly reported that the woman had burnt a copy of the Quran. Others reported that Farkhunda had had an enduring mental health problem, implying she might have actually burnt the Quran as a result of her mental disorder. (The report of an alleged mental problem had originated with Farkhunda’s family who, in the initial hours and under pressure from the police, had released a statement in an attempt to mitigate the risk of public reprisal.) By the end of the next day, however, it emerged that the accusation that Farkhunda had burnt a copy of the Quran had been false.

A fact-finding mission by the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs that had visited the shrine found that only papers from a Persian book had been burnt, although it was not clear who had done so. An investigation by the Ministry of Interior confirmed the findings of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs. At the same time, a video of Farkhunda, wearing a black Arab-style niqab (head-to-toe veil, with only eyes showing) and arguing with a group of young men at the gate of the shrine, surfaced on the Internet. Her veiling, a style which represented a departure from the iconic Afghan burqa, implied she had become a more devout, thoughtfully pious Muslim. When her family and teacher started directly talking to the media they revealed that she had been a student of Islamic studies and a fully observant Muslim. It transpired that she had graduated from one of the oldest female dar-ul-ulums (madrasas) in the country and was two years away from graduating from the Sharia Faculty at Kabul University. She had also recently attended a Quran-learning halqa (study circle) organised by an Islamist organisation.

The precise circumstances that led to the accusation of Farkhunda are not clear, but witnesses, speaking to the media and the presidential commission that investigated the murder, said she had been arguing with one of the attendants of the shrine over practices she deemed superstitious and un-Islamic. Those practices included selling tawiz (verses from the Quran or other prayers written on paper and usually worn in a cloth pouch in the belief they will protect the wearer from evil, or bring good fortune), tasting the soil from the saint’s grave in the shrine for its ‘healing powers,’ seeking the saint’s intercession, kissing his gravestone or other markers and performing (normal Islamic) prayers within the shrine. Farkhunda’s family said that she had, for a while, been visiting the shrine to preach against these practices.

These practices have been common in shrines in Afghanistan and elsewhere for centuries, but are increasingly proscribed by a new generation of mullahs who view them either as un-Islamic per se or as having evolved to contain un-Islamic innovations, bida’h. (1) Proscription of these acts has been more evident among Salafis, but finds resonance with many non-Salafi ulama as well, including most imams the author talked to in Kabul. However, other mullahs and guardians of shrines who benefit from these practices say they are not religiously problematic and cast their critics as ‘Wahhabis.’ In this intra-religious debate, Farkhunda belonged to the more ‘orthodox’ camp and had been openly disagreeing with these shrine practices in one of their bastions, the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine.

Farkhunda’s charred body was laid to rest on the third day after her lynching (21 March 2015). Her coffin was carried exclusively by women, in defiance of the mullahs present in the funeral. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society where women rarely even attend burials, this was an unprecedented scene, made possible by a popular feeling of empathy with this defenceless woman who had been savagely killed by a large group of men, in the middle of town and against all norms of Afghan culture. The perpetration of such public violence against a woman is a very strong taboo, which made the murder look especially savage (according to Afghan cultural norms, Afghan women should be more respected and less likely to be subject to violence in public than men, although domestic violence perpetrated in the home is a different matter).

The presidential commission released its report after two weeks of investigation. It found Farkhunda had been slandered. She had not burned the Quran and all evidence indicated that her speaking out against certain superstitious practices had prompted the amulet sellers and attendants at the shrine to falsely accuse her and incite people against her. A member of the commission described the particular shrine attendant who was seen as the prime instigator of the mob, named Zainuddin, as an “illiterate person” who could not even read one word from the Quran. This apparent distinction between literate clerics (portrayed as good) and illiterate ‘clerics’ (seen as false and masquerading, as bringing a bad name on the clergy) becomes more relevant later.

Mixed reactions

The immediate reactions to the lynching were mixed. There were initial endorsements in the Afghan media and on social media by people who said they would have done the same if they had been at the scene. Others denounced the brutal killing as inhuman and un-Islamic. Among the notables caught on social media applauding the lynching were the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, Semin Ghazal Hasanzada, Kabul Police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai and chief of the complaints commission in the Meshrano Jirga, Zalmai Zabuli. Ms Hasanzada responded to the reports of Farkhunda having a mental problem on her Facebook page: “What kind of mental problem was it? Dear friends, it is not a mental [problem], but a deliberate [act]. She was working for the infidels. If you overlook that, you are also one of them [ie an infidel] and putting your religion in danger.” Kabul Police spokesman Stanekzai also posted on his page: “She thought that by committing this type of insult [to Islam], she would get citizenship of America or Europe. But she died before achieving her goal.” Zalmai Zabuli posted the following text alongside Farkhunda’s picture: “This is the horrible and hated person who was punished by our Muslim compatriots for her action. Thus, they proved to her masters that Afghans want only … Islam and cannot tolerate imperialism, apostasy and spies. This is the apostate woman who set the Quran on fire in the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. Our Muslim compatriots beat her… and set her on fire, giving her the punishment [she deserved].” All three had to repent publicly when they found the accusation had been false.

Others were more conditional but still, in principle, supportive, like the head of the Awqaf Department of the Ministry of Hajj and religious affairs, Abdul Rahman Ahmadzai, who told a local TV station: “If this women has really acted against verses of Quran [burnt pages from Quran] and she is not a Muslim, we justify the action of the people.”

Friday sermons

The attack on Farkhunda happened on a Thursday, a time when imams across the country were preparing their Friday sermons. Speaking to worshippers at a number of mosques in Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni, it seems there were imams who condemned the brutal killing of Farkhunda or stopped short of condoning it, but many expressly approved the lynching and talked proudly of the people’s religious vigour, in the words of some clerics “uncorrupted by a decade of democracy.” Among those who denounced the brutality was the imam of Pul-e Kheshti mosque in the centre of Kabul who cautioned against accepting the reports of Quran-burning and described the mob attack as wild. On the other hand, two of Kabul’s best known ulama endorsed the attack. The prominent imam of Wazir Akbar Khan Mosque, Ayaz Niazi, made waves when a tape of his Friday prayer sermon went viral on the internet. Commenting on the police’s chasing of the murderers, Niazi had said:

My appeal to the judicial and legal institutions is to act with caution … When the people’s most important element of belief is insulted, they are not responsible to see if this [alleged insulter’s] mind is working or not working. You have to be careful. This is a huge mistake. If you start arresting people, they will probably revolt. It will be difficult to rein them in.

Another prominent mullah, Mawlawi Habibullah Hassam of the Bagh-e Bala mosque, who is also the former chairman of the Kabul Provincial Council, approved the lynching on his Facebook page. He quickly removed the post before it was widely shared, so few people noticed it. He addressed his fellow imams on Facebook:

Arbitrary execution (mahkama-e sahrayi, literally desert trials) is a necessity that must take place: respected khatibs [preachers], Friday sermons should be dedicated to this subject. The people can no longer tolerate insults to Islam under this or that pretext. A new court has started its work. From today on, the penalty for insulting Islam, the Quran and the Prophet is arbitrary execution. The top brass of the state supports those hostile to Islam …

After Farkhunda was buried and it had become clear she was innocent and pious, many ulama and Islamists took a U-turn and started to claim her as one of them. They emphasised her custom of proselytising (dawatgari) and started to hail her as someone who had sacrificed her life for a religious cause that they all share. A well-known Salafi-leaning Islamist preacher and lecturer of Islamic studies in Kabul University, Abdul Zahir Dayi, called Farkhunda his ‘colleague’ (ham-maslak) in a talk show, presumably in an attempt to reject the claims of women and human rights activists as being the inheritors of her cause. Many young Islamic activists, Salafis and orthodox ulama started to present her as a champion of their cause, a struggler against superstitious practices, turning her, within a week, from a Zionist-Western emissary to highly acclaimed martyr of the faith.

Backlash and counter-backlash

At a conference by human rights activists in Kabul on 20 March, there was a call for a thorough investigation into the murder and public trials of the perpetrators. However, protests really kicked off the following day, on the day of her burial, by which time it was also widely accepted that Farkhunda was not just a victim, but also completely innocent of the charge against her. The protests continued for more than a week. Those in Kabul were led by human and women rights activists, some of whom participated in carrying Farkhunda’s coffin on the day of funeral. The protests called for justice for Farkhunda with slogans such as “Punish the murderers,” “Ignorance is the enemy of humanity,” “ignorance is the enemy of Islam” and “We want an Afghanistan free of superstition, extremism and violence.” A thousands-strong demonstration, organised by a group of civil society activists and organisations on 24 March, asked for “open and immediate prosecution” of those involved in the murder. The protestors said in their statement:

In particular, the shrine custodian and the amulet seller mullah, who are the perpetrators of Farkhunda murder, must be publicly and immediately tried… All those involved in the crime in a way, including those who supported the unforgivable crime, the instigators, accusers, inspirers and justifiers, all should be identified… and brought to court… The government must deal seriously with summary punishments and prevent any type of extrajudicial activities and personal fatwas.

The statement, while thanking those mullahs who “dealt with Farkhunda’s case lawfully and responsibly” also asked the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs to take serious actions against the preaching of violence and militancy in religious institutions.

Public anger towards the murderers and shrine attendant had also been building up, emboldening civic activists to speak out in the name of a shocked public. Notables who had publicly endorsed the lynching now found themselves at the centre of public abhorrence. The government reacted by dismissing police spokesperson Stanekzai and deputy culture minister Hasanzada from their jobs. The interior ministry suspended 22 police and put them under investigation for not doing enough to stop the murder. About 30 other people were arrested for participation in the mob attack, many of them after having been identified from the video recordings caught by spectators with their smartphones and uploaded onto the internet. Parliament reacted by summoning the ministers for interior, and hajj and religious affairs to answer questions about the failure of police to stop the lynching and to present the government’s plans for better supervision of the country’s mosques and shrines. As the members of the parliament discussed the issue, many burst into tears. The Minister of Interior, Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi, admitted the police’s failure to save Farkhunda and the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Faiz Muhamamd Osmani, promised to rid shrines of amulet and charm sellers. The Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine was subsequently closed. MPs also asked Osmani to curtail the preaching of extremism in mosques and tighten and expand the state’s control over religious institutions, a call that was repeated during a protest by students and civil society activists in Mazar-e Sharif.

A minority among the protestors in Kabul and a small but vocal group on social media attacked mullahs per se. Although the mainstream voice from rights defenders stayed away from saying anything that could offend the ulama, those who did choose to bash the mullahs, blamed Farkhunda’s murder not only on the individual custodian who had falsely accused her (or on the mob who actually killed her), but on mullahs in general, particularly after many of them had condoned and justified the killing. Niazi’s Friday sermon was a particular cause of excoriation. Protestors from a small, radical leftist group, Hezb-e Hambastagi, carried placards with his face crossed out at a demonstration in Kabul and, according to some participants, chanted “Death to mullahs.”

The platform for the most vocal and insulting expressions of the anti-mullah campaign, however, was Facebook where mullahs were castigated by some as reactionaries, ignorant, animals, magicians, makers of money out of religion and peddlers of amulets (this article has collected some of these labels). There were also calls on social media for a militant secularism in Afghanistan in the style of Kemal Atatürk’s in Turkey in order to crush the mullahs. The killing of Farkhunda also attracted some very extreme reactions, both by named and anonymous Afghans in undisclosed locations, including the posting of videos of people setting fire to copies of the Quran or urinating on them and a controversial website run by a diaspora Afghan calling for the Shah-e Du Shamshira to be turned into a public toilet. All of this was, of course, highly provocative and, for most, extremely offensive.

The mullahs hit back, not only on social media, but in mosques and by pouring onto the streets of Kabul. The most conspicuous act was a thousand-plus-strong gathering of mullahs on 26 March 2015 in the same place where Farkhunda was killed, in front of the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. The participants included Niazi as well as many other notable imams from Kabul and the provinces, both Sunni and Shia. The gathering was reported by some media as pro-Farkhunda, but watching the full hour and a half video, there were few expressions of regret for her killing or remorse for earlier statements or calls for justice for the victim. By this stage, it was clear Farkhunda had been innocent of the charges against her and, indeed, was also not the sort of women’s rights activist seen by ulama in the gathering as ‘the enemy.’ Indeed, she could be considered one of their own – educated, orthodox and pious – albeit female. Even so, the statement of the gathering dedicated only one and a half lines out of three full A-4 pages to a condemnation of the killing. Even then, it was not of her murder per se, but of the type of killing, one that involved torment, burning by fire and a desecration of the human body. In reality, the gathering was not really about Farkhunda at all, but, almost exclusively, a counterpunch at the mullah’s critics.

Organised by a previously unheard-of body called the Coordination Assembly of the Ulama and Khatibs of Afghanistan, there were diatribes against civil society (understood by the mullahs as solely made of activists and organisations with a liberal, women’s and human rights agenda) and the government, attacking the first for speaking out against the clergy and the latter for not stopping it. One mullah ranted: “I tell Ashraf Ghani and civil society to be heedful… the gun is still in the hand of the mullah. It takes the ulama only a fatwa [to take down, popularly,] this government.” Another mullah asked for the media to be punished for what he said was its hostility to religion and issued this threat to roaring shouts of Allah-u Akbar:

I warn those who use this opportunity [the killing of Farkhunda to insult ulama]…that women will be killed more heinously than our sister [Farkhunda], and many people will be eliminated in a far worse way [if they continue insulting the ulama]. Then, nobody will dare raise their voice. … It is also a warning to those who create such incidents to have mercy on themselves. Once the nation rises up, nobody will be able to stop it. If you value your life, shut your mouths; don’t spread lies against the Quran and Islam.

The gathering culminated in a statement which blamed the media for creating deliberate confusion in its initial reporting of the incident. It suggested ­the media had intentionally spread the account of Quran-burning in order to entrap the ulama into defending the murder and only revealed the true story later to then defame them in a conspiracy hatched together with civil society. Evading its own logic of conspiracy, the statement defended the lynching regardless of any conspiracy or the actual truth of what happened: “Those who acted in defence of the sacred which led to the painful incident [ie the killing of Farkhunda], their sentiments are justifiable since their action was based on the intention of protecting the Quran and divine rites.” The ulama in the statement also urged the government to ban what they called anti-Islamic civil society groups and uphold Article 3 of the constitution which stipulates that there shall be no law repugnant to the beliefs and ordinances of Islam. The statement also declared that it is the ulama’s duty to root out “the dirty tree” of civil society which, they claimed, is hostile to religion.

Organised religious currents shared the ulama’s antagonism to critics of the clergy. For example, the mostly youth-based Hezb ut-Tahrir condemned those whom, it says, had attacked religious values and the ulama and had exploited the lynching of Farkhunda, calling them followers of Satan. It likened the responses to the murder to reactions to the Charlie Hebdo attack in France which, it says, was an organised effort to malign Islam. Another Islamist group, Jamiat-e Eslah, also attacked those who, it said, worked behind the façade of civil society as opportunists, weaping crocodile tears while pursuing their own ideological agendas. It described critics of the ulama as extremists more fervent than Farkhunda’s killers for their all-out smearing campaign against the clergy and religious beliefs.

The concerns about what is called din-stezi in Persian (anti-religion activism or hostility to religion), a term which has never been used that widely in Afghanistan before the Farkhunda protests, became so noticeable that popular TV channels had to feature the topic in their talks shows. In one of the programs, the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs Faiz Muhammad Osmani said he knew that Farkhunda’s murder was being used by those hostile to religion and that they were doing a disservice to her case.

Backing down

There were also efforts to soften the initial polarisation, possibly in response to the mullahs’ strong counter-campaign. One of the later civil society meetings on Farkhunda on 31 March prominently acknowledged the role of the ulama and religion in bringing justice for her and combating the wider roots of injustices in society. Four of the eight articles of the statement it issued were dedicated to or contained references to Islam and the religious institutions. It voiced its appreciation of ulama and religious leaders in standing for justice for Farkhunda and called for the prosecution of those insulting Islam. The meeting, which brought together various civil society and social organisations, also featured ulama.

The mullahs’ protest seems also to have alarmed leaders of the national unity government. Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah met prominent members of the Coordination Assembly of the Ulama and Khatibs on 2 April 2015. His office only released a video of the meeting, without audio or further explanation, but according to a leading member of the ulama body their discussion had centred on the “unprecedented wave of insult to religion under the new government.” Three days after this meeting and coinciding with the release of the fact-finding commission’s report, on 5 April 2015, Ghani addressed the nation in a video message. In his address, he referred several times to the role of ulama. He thanked them for standing with the people in Farkhunda’s case and pointed out that:

In condemnation of this issue [Farkhunda’s murder], there has been no dichotomy and confrontation among our people. Rather, all stood together against this savagery. We should not forget that the ulama and spiritual leaders are an inseparable part of civil society and we appreciate all their efforts in strengthening the rule of law… The Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs has been instructed to keep consistently in touch with the ulama and spiritual leaders and create necessary coordination in spreading the true values and ordinances of Islam.

Similarly, the presidential fact-finding commission, which consisted of MPs, women rights activists, ulama and senior government officials, included in its report specific clauses which responded to the concerns of the mullahs. The report said there was no evidence of the involvement of any mullah or alim in the murder of Farkhunda and that that most of the shrine’s attendants and amulet sellers had been found to be illiterate. The commission’s emphasis on the fact that those directly implicated in the lynching were illiterate looks partly like an attempt to safeguard the reputation of the ulama and prevent a backlash. The ulama themselves have frequently pointed out in TV debates and in the 26 March rally that Zainuddin and other attendants of the shrines did not qualify as religious scholars; rather they cast them as illiterate religious workers deriving purely commercial benefit from the use of their religious status. There is a problem here, though, given the fact that being a mullah and being illiterate are not mutually exclusive, especially in rural areas. The government may be seeking to address that now. The Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Faiz Muhammad Osmani, for example, told Tolo, “Unfortunately, unlike any other profession, there are no criteria and rules for who qualifies as an imam of a mosque or as an alim. We have brought many ulama together in Kabul after the killing of Farkhunda to discuss this issue. They agreed there should be universal criteria for becoming an imam.”

Finally, the commission, in its recommendations, said: “Our demand from the ulama and civil society activists is to condemn concertedly and loudly those irresponsible statements under the name of civil society or spiritual society which are aimed at inciting people to turbulence and instability.”

The debate: why did the attack happen?

 The discussions that followed the lynching of Farkhunda have involved a lively debate and, indeed, some soul-searching (although often of others’ souls) as people struggled to answer the question: what makes people do what they did to Farkhunda? Articles in the mainstream media, websites and social media, independent commentators, ideologues, social sciences scholars and analysts have tried to identify the underlying causes for Farkhunda’s murder and for the mob’s behaviour. Generally, the opinions fell into two camps: those who blamed the type of religion practiced in Afghanistan or how it has developed and who is in charge of it, and those blaming ‘secular society.’ Within the mass of commentary some interesting ideas have emerged.

Scrutinising the religious culture for violence

In a Foreign Policy piece, one diaspora Afghan, a journalist and cultural critic, argued that the murder of Farkhunda had revealed that

… a fanatic strand of Islamic [sic] has become normalized and accepted by a mainstream audience. The imam who incited the violence, the mob who lynched Farkhunda, the bystanders who filmed it — they were not the disenfranchised. They were ordinary Afghans, members of the middle class, including shop keepers. The initial public reaction was approval, expressed by public figures representing the spheres of culture and education. What do we learn from this? A populist, fanatic strand of Islam appealing to base emotionality has become mainstream, finding an audience in all levels of society. Listening to the preacher Niazi’s sermon, it is easy to learn what kind of Islam is disseminated to the wider population through the institutions of mosques, universities, and religious media outlets. A key characteristic of this version of Islam is that is encourages lawlessness … mullahs are doing mass manipulation and brain-washing … carving foreigners as enemies and therefore unlivable … This image is carefully cultivated and sustained through collective effort.

Another commentator, a former journalist of Radio/TV Afghanistan, found political Islam and the long-preached jihadism as the key reason for the younger generation’s violent behaviour. He wrote:

From the countless beheadings in Iraq and Syria to the kidnapping of hundreds of girls in Nigeria to the immolation of an innocent woman in public in Afghanistan … all have roots in political Islam and irrational thinking rather than the superficial behaviour of the fringe strata such as amulet-peddlers, fortune-tellers and traditional mullahs. It will be a huge mistake [to think] further tragedies such as that of Farkhunda would be avoided simply by getting rid of amulet-sellers and fortune-tellers.

Another observer pointed to the mullahs’ unshakable influence over society, given their “violent reading of religion” and general ignorance as a reason that leads to violent behaviour in the name of defending Islam. She stated: “As a result of obedience to every mullah, we now have people who are ready to kill a person in broad daylight in front of thousands of people after a mere hint from an amulet-seller. Those who withhold their minds and dance to the clergy are like programmed robots who have the capability of applying any type of brutality.” This commentator sees the excessive religious zeal and bigotry as a symptom of a deeper social problem which, she believes, is a product of the absence of quality education, illiteracy and the absence of ‘real’ religious scholars who have a non-violent reading of religion.

Finding fault with ‘civil society’ activists

On the other side are those who castigated the actions of ‘secular activists’ who, they believe, offend the conservative norms of society to such an extent that it became the driving force behind the killing; the threat posed by these ‘secular activists’, they contended, had caused the people’s knee-jerk reaction to an accusation of blasphemy and apostasy (and without the need for the slander to be proven). Three recent incidents (which happened between December 2014 and March 2015) in particular, which are viewed as initiated or supported by ‘civil society activists,’ and have outraged the ulama and Islamist organisations, featured prominently in such analysis. These include an unnamed and unknown woman pictured walking bare-legged (and bare-foot) in Kabul (her motivation remains unknown) and two public protests against the harassment of women: a group of Afghan men wearing burqas and a female artist who wore a home-made suit of armour designed to protect her from and as a protest against being groped in the street by strangers.

These three incidents may appear minor and unrelated, but religious activists have taken them as totemic of a wider sense of grievance inculcated among many conservative Afghans who then sprang into action to “defend the Quran” as soon as they heard the shout that it had been burned. These themes were mentioned frequently in the ulama gathering, as well as in opinion pieces, such as this one by the head of Kandahar University’s Faculty of Sharia, who is a senior member of Jamiat-e Eslah, Muzammel Islami. He wrote this a day after the lynching when the dominant narrative still considered Farkhunda as a Quran-burner:

Although people do not have the right to punish someone publicly in that way [as Farkhunda], the government had to convince the people that it takes serious action against those who commit even a minor desecration of people’s beliefs and values. This lenience and incompetence on the part of the state has probably emboldened the people to react in this way to the burning of the Quran [in a way] which is probably not compliant with the Sharia. Logically, people should not enforce laws themselves. However, we have examples in the recent history of Afghanistan of, for example, the Holy Quran being burnt by the foreigners [troops] or someone converting from his religion; these people have not been handed any punishment… That is why I think the people probably feel the government cannot punish these people… If the government had some records of punishing certain people [who had been accused of blasphemy], this incident [the lynching of Farkhunda] might not have happened.

A short piece in Weesa daily also referred to the public inclination against anti-Islam actions following the three ‘anti-Islam’ incidents. It added: “The donning of the suit of armour by a girl against the Islamic spirit of hijab, the wearing of chadari by young men in order to ridicule hijab and the celebration of a donkey were some incidents that have incited the people’s minds against anti-religion projects.” (The celebration of donkey refers to a small event titled “Donkey, the reality and perception; Donkey an unappreciated servant” organised by some Pashtun civil society activists in early March where they discussed virtues of the donkey in its services to human beings.)

An article on the Taleban’s website on 26 March referred to “the increased anti-Islam and anti-woman efforts” in the context of giving reasons for Farkhunda’s murder. It said: “[E]vil anti-Islamic currents are trying continually to … target the honour-loving and faithful generation and to encourage a sort of mistrust and ill will within Islamic society. It can be said that a lack of full awareness by Muslims about actual realities can lead to shocking incidents, such as that of Shah-e Du Shamshira.”

The ‘anti-Islam and anti-hijab campaign’ has been a frequent topic in articles on the Taleban websites both before and after Farkhunda’s murder, most of them putting it in the context of the unity government’s ‘anti-Islam inclinations.’ The most recent such article entitled “Shocking wave of desecration of Islam” and published on 21 April referred to all the mentioned incidents as well as an interview by the first lady Laura Ghani when she backed the French ban on veiling the face. The article then blames Farkhunda’s lynching on all such ‘provocations:’

[T]hese civil society organisations and foreign organisations undertook some provocative actions which aroused in the minds of the Muslim nation the feeling of avenging the insult to holy beliefs. It so much disturbed Afghans psychologically that anyone who does something offending will naturally meet a bitter end. Farkhunda’s killing and immolation is a clear manifestation of that feeling. If there had not been such desecrations of sacred affairs, the public might not have reacted so hastily to such incident.

Identity politics or ‘Muslim degeneration’?

Among the Afghan academia and well-known intellectuals, some have tried to offer more nuanced explanations. A lecturer at Ibn-e Sina University of Islamic Studies in Kabul, Ali Amiri, sees the mob’s act as an indication of cultural degeneration that, he says, is common across the Muslim world. He concludes that the roots of Farkhunda’s lynching lay in Afghan society’s wider irrationality and the erosion of spirituality, which has caused a loss of respect for human life and dignity. He describes Farkhunda’s killers as nihilistic mischief-makers who covered up their sadism (gaining pleasure from the suffering of others) in religious language since in this way, they could explain away their brutality as religiously-sanctioned violence. In response, one reader blamed the atrocity on what he refers to as the embedding of violence in religion and the religious culture of the Afghan society; he accused Amiri of being a religious apologist for analysing ‘culture’ separately from religion.

A diaspora intellectual, Muhammad Kazem Kazemi, sees Farkhunda as a victim of others’ “absolutist thinking.” He describes this as a tendency to think and judge in absolute terms without differentiating between levels of good and bad and says it is typical of Afghan society. He argues such thinking blinded accusers and attackers of Farkhunda alike to the actual offence she was alleged to have committed and the “proper punishment” for that offence. He says Farkhunda’s murderers were, unfortunately, ‘normal’ members of a society in which such absolutist thinking and an inclination towards prejudice and mischievous violence is common, indeed, has come to be at its core.

This is that simplistic and absolutist mentality that makes us ignore differences between disrespecting the Quran, burning the Quran, denying the truth of the Quran and denying the existence of God. In our view, the severity of the crime of someone who burns amulets by fire is the same as of someone who burns the Quran. The crime of the latter is [seen as] the same as someone who disbelieves in the Quran and God… This problem also manifested itself in a different way. Many deemed those who immolated Farkhunda as outside the circle of humanity, depicting them as savages with no semblance to humanity. The truth is that they were people from this same society with various levels of morals and religious understanding. Their traits probably exist within ourselves [the rest of the society] at different levels and we might express these behaviours according to circumstances … The minimum harm of seeing them as the most evil people on earth is that it makes us think safely about the people around us since we think only few wolfish people can commit such an atrocity. That is not true. The distance between us and those people is probably not huge, as manifested by our behaviour on the internet … This absolute thinking did not stop here. Those who supported Farkhunda’s killing in the initial moments … were treated in an extreme manner. They were treated as if they had set fire to Farkhunda, themselves. Some of the worst smears were thrown at people who had expressed an unconsidered opinion

The dean of Kabul’s Ibn-e Sina University, Amin Ahmadi, in a seminar at his university (the transcript of the speech is published here) focused on religion-based identity politics as the key reason for driving members of Afghan society to such violent action when there was a perceived attack on their religious beliefs.

He looked into the cultural context of the society and pinpointed three specific characteristics to explain the attack on Farkhunda: the fact that religion in the Afghan society has become a giver of identity and any perceived insult to it brings an emotional response; the ubiquitous perception of a Western threat to Islam, which is also rooted in the identity-oriented religiosity; and the inability to think and decide rationally during dire situations. The conspiracy theory that the West is constantly plotting against Islam is so deeply embedded in the minds of the public, he argues, that when the people outside the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine heard of someone setting the Quran on fire, they not only immediately believed it, but also automatically thought it a conspiracy to defame Islam. This is illustrated in a video showing young men shouting at Farkhunda in the initial moments after the accusation, claiming that she had been sent by the Americans [to burn the Quran]. He argues that when religion as a strong definer of identity is perceived to be under threat, it feels existential and strips members of that society of the ability to decide rationally. That is why most people, he argues, could not make a definitive decision to wholeheartedly condemn or support the murder during the first 24 hours after the lynching – until it was clear that Farkhunda was fully innocent of the charge of burning the Quran.

One Kabul-based sociology student tried to distinguish religious zeal from instinctual sadism. He says there might be little doubt that the primary motive for the violence had been religious, but that it quickly turned into unreligious action driven by “the pleasure of murder” as manifested by the step-by-step application of a variety of brutal methods of violence. He writes that, despite the mob desecrating a human body and setting it on fire, both acts which are strictly proscribed in Islam, the attackers hid their thrill at the killing behind a religious defence, ‘saving’ the Quran.

Non-religious social factors

Other analysts and commentators have examined the possible (non-religious) social causes of the murder. One commentator writing on a website run by Sweden-based Afghans put it this way:

This murder in which 250 people were involved against the backdrop of thousands of other cases of murdering, immolation and harassment of women… indicates that there is something horrible happening in the society. This horrible thing has roots in the school, in the mosque, in the family, in the weakness of the state and the absence of a value system.

Another observer, writing for BBC Persian, noted that Farkhunda’s lynching was an example of a misjudgement stemming from ignorance. He pointed to superstitious religious beliefs as a particular problem, exacerbated by a broader failure of the social institutions, which has not left the new generation untouched. He writes:

Among those involved in Farkhunda’s murder are people from the younger and educated generation which has been brought up under the educational system of the current government and learnt religion from mosques and madrasa of this [post-Taleban] society. The murder of Farkhunda exhibited in the first place the failure of the educational and upbringing system as well as the failure of the human rights institutions and of the ulama.

For some women rights activists, the attack on Farkhunda illustrated the wider oppression of women in Afghan society. Fawzia Koofi, a known activist and member of parliament (who was also on the fact-finding commission), told The New York Times: “This happened to [Farkhunda] because of her gender … If there is no rule of law, not only women, but any human being in this country, is not safe.” Any further explanation of his was not quoted. However, a scholar based at an American university writing in a US Muslim newspaper did do so, pointing to what she said was “a crisis in status of Afghan men … a significantly large group of whom feel excluded from the benefits of the new Afghanistan” as the root cause of their violent behaviour towards women, and in this case, towards Farkhunda. She said: “These men tend to view women, especially successful and/or independent women in public spaces, as a symbol of men’s collective failure.”

The role of rumour-mongering and conspiracy-mongering

In addition to social or cultural factors, there is also a wider distorted thinking at work, however, which led the crowds to over-hastily respond to the shout of burning the Quran and to misjudge the circumstances around the accusation, rather than questioning the accusation and listening to Farkhunda. In Afghan society, rumours are often sufficient to drive people to action and can thus become a powerful, destructive tool in politics and culture. (2) In Farkhunda’s case, everybody nearby seemed inclined to believe the rumour. In video footage circulated on the internet, young men surrounded Farkhunda at the gate of the shrine to yell at her, demanding to know why she burnt the Quran, but with no attention to her responses, as if they had already had proof of the burning. The rumour was repeated as a fact in accounts by people from the scene, young and old, and in TV reports from the site hours after the incident. Even the inaction of the police who failed to stop the lynching, according to a member of the truth-seeking commission looking into Farkhunda’s murder, stemmed in part from their belief in the truth of the rumour and in the rightness of the death penalty for the accused. A senior police officer was quoted an hour after the lynching by the BBC recalling the reason for Farkhunda’s murder to be her burning of the Quran – as a fact rather than an accusation or rumour. The pervasiveness of believing rumours, especially when involving sensitive social or political issues, may back up Professor Ahmadi’s contention that a threat to religion is perceived as an existential issue which strips people of their power to act rationally and urges action.

The persistence of the report and the fact that the actions were still praised afterwards by people who were not facing the same urgency to act and who had enough time to examine the rumour before judging the killing – such as the clergy and some officials – seems to have been exacerbated by rampant conspiracy-mongering. The perception that Islam is constantly under an external threat, usually from the West, is so entrenched in Afghan society that it finds subscribers in all strata. Although mullahs and Islamist groups are often leading sources of this conspiracy theory, they do not have a monopoly over it. One can find similar sentiments expressed by senior government officials and members of the security forces. (3)

On 29 March, for example, several members of the parliament, called for an investigation into reports that Farkhunda had been in contact with foreign embassies prior to her alleged burning of the Quran. On social media, hours after the lynching, a detailed ‘report’ of a plot popped up in which the United States embassy was said to have invested 25,000 dollars in partnership with a local TV channel which had been the first to air the news of mental illness of Farkhunda. Pictures of a woman standing beside John Kerry amid a group of other Afghan women was circled and compared with the bloodied victim to ‘prove’ an American plot. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that a people so alert to a perennial and cunning threat to their all-important religion did not give someone accused of burning the Quran the benefit of the doubt, no matter how pious and Sharia-compliant she looked (Farkhunda’s wearing of niqab could readily suggest she was religiously observant). Under such conditions of delusional conspiracy-mongering, a person accused of harming Islam is by default guilty until unequivocally proven innocent.

Finally, there is the perception that the state is too lax, corrupt or afraid (of its international backers) to take the necessary action in cases of blasphemy. The reactions and views already cited from Mawlawi Hassam, Muzammel and the Taleban’s website illustrate this perception. Even Kabul Police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai’s reaction is based on the notion of apostates and blasphemers slipping through the net of state justice. The mistrust in the state’s ability or willingness to respond to popular sentiments when there is a case of actual or alleged blasphemy made some ulama condone mob justice – at least that is what they said. Although Kabul imam Niazi did later admit, in an interview with AAN a month after the murder of Farkhunda, that the attack was un-Islamic and would set a dangerous precedence if the defense of religion was left to the people, he also said: “When the people feel the government is not standing up to protect the core values of society, it should not shock anyone that [the people] do it in their own messy way. What they do is out of desperation, not that they are convinced they should act in the place of the law enforcement agencies.”

Niazi also accused the media of earlier distorting his words by taking them out of the intended context.

I have always been and will continue to be against arbitrary trials. Farkhunda was murdered by the common people who believed she actually burnt the Quran. In that Friday sermon, using that incident, I tried to alert the government of the building of public anger against the state for its inaction towards incidents of blasphemy and mockery of Islamic ordinances. I did not approve Farkhunda’s killing by any way. I said whether Farkhunda really burnt the Quran or not, what the people did to her was a result of the increasingly public lack of confidence in the government to apply the law in cases related to insult of the people’s holy beliefs. The media and anti-religion currents misused the widespread sympathy with Farkhunda to undermine the ulama.

The unhealthy face-off between mullahs and anti-clericalists

The killing of Farkhunda instigated by a religious worker and some mullahs’ immediate endorsement of the lynching plus the calls (by protestors and in the parliament) for curtailing preaching in religious institutions that encourage violence all seem to have put the clergy under public pressure. In general, there was little soul searching among the clergy. There was a condemnation of ‘clerics’ involved in faith-healing and charm-selling, but this looked like an attempt to distance ulama from the type of religious worker involved in the murder.

It seems, two factors brought clerics and Islamic groups (in the past, not normally natural bedfellows) together, so making a real debate within the religious domain more unlikely. The first was the fear of the state’s increased control over religious institutions as a result of public pressure. The second was a fear that mullahs might cease to be beyond criticism in the eyes of a new and educated generation (in traditional society, clerics are rarely criticised). The responses to Farkhunda’s murder, which partially entailed a confrontation between the mullahs and the ‘secular’ activists, indicated the possibility of a change to the status of mullahs as beyond criticism, at least in some urban settings.

These two challenges felt to the clergy’s independence and status seem to have diverted what might have been a rare chance for an intra-religious discourse on reform. Instead, the discourse is pitting the religious against those seen as their secular rivals. Although the ulama’s appetite for such soul-searching remains untested, of course, one would have hoped it could have been triggered by the murder and its aftermath. Religious civil society could have taken some time to assess the underlying problems in the religious sphere that contributed to the occurrence of the murder.

Specifically, three problems needed to be examined and were not. The first would have been the relationship between what is preached by the ulama plus Islamic activist groups in the name of religion and the violent behaviour as witnessed during the brutal killing of Farkhunda. Notably, religious institutions cannot ignore the need for a definitive stance on the promotion and use of violence in today’s society, where the state should have the monopoly over the use of coercive power.

The second issue is the perception of rule of law and the validity of the vigilante in dominant religious discourse. The praise of the attack by some clerics during their Friday sermons on 20 March, the speeches of the ulama in the gathering on 26 March and what some mullahs said online during the initial days suggest there is little respect for rule of law when it comes to attacks perceived to be against Islam. A serious question is what would have been the reaction of the ulama and Islamists if Farkhunda had indeed burnt the Quran? Responses supportive of the lynching in the initial days as well as the statement of the ulama gathering should provide at least half the answer.

The third problem needing to be raised for the intra-religious debate is the wild conspiracy-mongering ingrained in parts of religious civil society (and elsewhere) and its consequences for wider society. The lynching of Farkhunda could have been used as a lasting lesson for both the absurdity and danger of that sort of thinking. Serious debates about these issues did not materialise partly because the debate ended up being centred on a rather unhelpful axis. Feeling challenged from rights-centric ‘civil society,’ the clergy banded together to defend what they saw as an encroachment on their political and social status. Anti-mullahism pushed moderates in the religious camp towards the hardliners, bringing together Sunni and Shia, pro-state and anti-state ulama with more modernist religious activists. Niazi, himself a moderate mullah by Afghan standards (irrespective of his reported initial stance on Farkhunda’s killing), was probably not known that widely among the religious community before the campaign against him. An example of the campaign actually bringing out more support for Niazi and the ‘embattled clergy’ was the strong statements by Balkh’s powerful governor, Atta Muhammad Nur, who lashed out at secularist activists for what he said was their exploitation of Farkhunda’s case for ideological goals and their insulting of ulama and religious values. On his Facebook page, he warned he would stand with his full power against blasphemy and anti-religionists. (Atta’s Mitra TV aired the ulama’s gathering in full.)

What Afghanistan now needs is a critical and level-headed discourse on the sacred realm rather than divisive lines between the ‘religious’ and the ‘anti-religious.’ Such lines will only further close off the religious sphere to an open debate. Additionally, clashing with those who act as gatekeepers of religion and intentionally insulting them, threatens to only further radicalise them. Anti-mullahism as a way to reform the religious sector has also proved self-destructive in Afghanistan’s past: once it led to the fall of the reformist King Amanullah, despite him having earned Afghanistan’s independence, and again after the communist coup of 1978. A better way ahead, rather than seeking to disempower and humiliate the mullahs, seems to be to modernise the system and institutions that produce religious leaders. Afghanistan cannot afford another social polarisation along such virulent ideological lines.

 

(1) During their last two years of rule, the Taleban government tried to curtail these practices and even almost closed Shah-e Du Shamshira (they also stopped elevating the flag or janda on Nawruz in Mazar-e Sharif which they also saw as un-Islamic tradition); at the same time, there were also many Taleban foot soldiers among the visitors to shrines.

(2) There have been examples throughout Afghanistan’s history, including in the 1920s, as described in this Al Jazeera article, when British agents disguised as Pashtun tribesmen spread malicious rumours against King Amanullah in 1928 and disseminated doctored photographs of Queen Soraya in a state of ‘undress.’ This purportedly fuelled the ire of the conservative masses, already seething over the king’s modernising reforms, which eventually led to Amanullah’s overthrow.

(3) The author for instance found such sentiments quite common during his research into so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks in 2012-2013; many in the security forces, who were working with the foreign forces, said they believed Islam was in confrontation with the West.

40 days after the violent killing of Farkhunda, supporters gathered on Monday, 27 April 2015, to mourn and protest her death. Afghan public opinion has now reached a broad consensus over the unprecedented gravity of this murder. Yet, many questions remain as to what triggered the killing and how it was possible for such a terrible incident to take place in central Kabul at the hands of what looked to be otherwise law-abiding and ‘normal’ citizens. In the first of two dispatches on the murder of Farkhunda, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini and Naheed Esar have been looking at the specifics of the social environment where she met her death and exploring some of the social types who were possibly party to her murder, from the amulet sellers and beggars, whose economic interests revolve around shrines such as that of Shah-e Du Shamshira where the murder took place, to the petty criminals and police of that part of the city, Police District (PD) 2.

A second dispatch by AAN’s Borhan Osman will look at the responses of civil society and the ulama and how a polarisation emerged over how each interpreted the murder; this, he will argue, has complicated chances for a much-needed internal debate among Afghanistan’s clergy.

At the traditional 40-day ceremony, marked all over the Muslim world to mourn a death, those protesting Farkhunda’s murder re-enacted her killing. The dramatised scenes, the beating and burning were painful to those watching – many were in tears – and were later relayed on television news reports. The Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine was closed after the murder, but the messages of condolences and the images of the dead Islamic studies student left by the protesters have turned the place into a new shrine. The area is now calm, but passers-by told AAN an uneasiness remains and they now fear to pass down the road where Farkhunda was murdered.

With the many unsettling issues connected to the killing of Farkhunda, considerations about the place where it happened have generally been sidelined. But geography was and is important in this killing. The area of the incident, Shah-e Du Shamshira and the Kabul riverbanks beside it, are places everybody knows and that many people have to pass when crossing the city. If such a terrible murder had happened in some remote province, or in the outskirts of the city, it would not have been any less grave or atrocious. However, the shrine where everything started and the riverside where her mangled body was finally burned and discarded, lie at the very centre of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan and are arguably perceived as the safest, most controlled and ‘civilised’ part of Afghanistan.

A central place in downtown Kabul

The spot where the incident happened can truly be termed the heart of Kabul. Administratively in urban district number and police station number two, the Shah-e Du Shamshira complex, with mosque and shrine, stands on the left bank of the Kabul river, at the junction of the Old City and the new residential and administrative expansions beyond the river. The latter symbolised the transformation of Afghanistan into a modern state in the late 19th century. Located at the western entrance of the characteristic riverside quays, which form one of Kabul’s most recognisable icons, the Shah-e Du Shamshira is also oriented towards West Kabul through Jada-ye Asmai, the road which crosses the narrow Kabul river gorge and skirts just behind the complex.

Many of the historical and social landmarks of Kabul surround the mosque or are in plain view of it: the mausoleum of Timur Shah, the sovereign who made Kabul the capital of the Afghan kingdom towards the end of the 18th century; Lycee Aisha Durrani, built in the 1920s as one of the European (in this case German) high schools wanted by King Amanullah to modernise education and still the largest girls school in the country; Pamir Cinema, one of the first cinemas to open in Afghanistan in the relatively peaceful mid-20th century, and the Central Polyclinic hospital established by the communist government in 1985.

The area hosts numerous other landmarks, from the National Gallery to the Turko-Afghan Technical Institute, but it is the National Bus Company Central Station close by that influences its human geography most. The square in front of the Shah-e Du Shamshira mosque and the riverside lane to the south of it have become a single transportation hub crowded by taxis, minivans and buses connecting the Old City with other areas of Kabul and the city with the provinces. Thousands of travellers transit through the area every day, and an adequate deployment of street hawkers, food sellers and pickpockets are ready to meet them.

The area was heavily damaged during the civil war in the 1990s, leading many residents to leave, while reconstruction in recent years has been rather selective. The Old City of Kabul proved less attractive than other areas for private investors, split as it is between key government facilities in the flat patches of ground along the riverside and the poor mud-house settlement on the hill slopes to the north and south of it. Although some new residential and commercial buildings have arisen, the area’s former social fabric has not been fully reconstituted. Rather, impoverished immigrants from outside Kabul have replaced many of the original residents.

The mosque of Shah-e Du Shamshira, a shapely square building showing mixed Ottoman ‘Belle Epoque’ and Italian baroque influences and abutting the riverbank, dates from Amanullah’s time. It was Olya Hazrat, the king’s mother, who commissioned the new building on the site of a smaller Mughal-era mosque and inaugurated it, as a votive offering (offered in fulfilment of a vow) for the quelling of the Khost Rebellion in 1925.

If the mosque itself is a favourite spot for Kabulis to go and pray, there is another part of the religious complex that attracts visitors from even farther away. Right across the street, the namesake ziarat (shrine) of Shah-e Du Shamshira stands in memory of the heroic death of an unnamed ghazi, a Muslim warrior, said to have kept wielding his two swords against the infidels, even after his head had been severed by a blow as he fought against the Hindu-Shahi dynasty which ruled Kabul at the time of the Ghaznavid conquest in the 10th century. Inside this highly revered shrine, frequented by visitors to the mosque and people in search of blessings, a number of beggars and amulet-sellers can be found. It was this practice, the selling of amulets, which brought Farkhunda into confrontation with the keepers of the shrine on the day of her murder.

Selling blessings in the shrine

Amulets (tawiz) have a long history in Afghanistan. They can be found all over Afghanistan, most commonly in the form of written pieces of paper and worn on the body of the person it is meant to benefit. They can be different in form and size; some are square, some rectangular and some roundish; they can be made from fabric or metal or be in the form of crystals or gems. Tawiz are often used in the belief that they heal or protect from illness, or solve a person’s problems in life – typically related to love affairs or the wish for offspring, particularly male offspring. However, more recently, the range of wishes has expanded to new topics, from passing the university kankur entry exam to getting a foreign visa. Women are the most frequent, though not the sole users of tawiz: they carry them in the form of a bracelet, necklace, pinned to their clothes, or hidden in houses and cars. They can cost anything from 100 Afghani (two dollars) to 15,000 Afghani (300 dollars).

The status in society of those who write amulets is presently unclear. Traditionally, also in the context of the presence of popular devotional practices centred around persons claiming descent from the family of the Prophet or from Sufi saints, some of them used to be quite prominent and respected as ulama (read a previous AAN piece here). Today, with changing social patterns and religious practices, due to some degree of modernisation at least in the urban centres, amulet-writers are being slowly pushed to the fringes of society.

According to Afghan scholar Abdul Zahir Dayi, the origin of the amulet-writing tradition in Afghanistan was Hinduism and Judaism (see here). Islamic scholars have contradicting views about the status of tawiz in Islam. Some divide amulets into two kinds, those with Quranic verses and those without. Tawiz without Quranic verses are largely considered haram (sinful), while amulets containing Quranic chapters are permissible according to some scholars. The Wahabis, on the other hand, believe that all tawiz are un-Islamic, primarily because there is no mention of them in the Quran or Hadith (see here). The latter attitude seems to have been shared by Farkhunda. A friend of hers whom AAN spoke to during the 40-day commemoration at the location of the murder on Monday said that “for about the past three years [Farkhunda] had regularly gone to the shrine of Shah-e Du Shamshira” to try to convince the amulet writers to desist from what she considered an un-Islamic practice.

Selling other things in the shadow of the shrine

The Old City of Kabul is definitely not ‘uptown.’ Despite the area being frequented by many people for shopping, it is not regarded as the safest. Crime rates are rather high, and while the security forces keep tight control of the area against possible insurgent attacks because of the many potential targets in it, they are not much concerned about repressing common criminality, according to a security analyst working for an independent organisation.

In the immediate post-2001 period, Kabul’s police districts were taken over and staffed by the military victors – different commanders belonging to Jamiat-e Islami/Shura-ye Nazar and Ittihad-e Islami factions of the Northern Alliance. Enjoying the support of heavyweights like the first post-Taleban interior minister, Yusuf Qanuni, or the first defence minister, Qasim Fahim, they managed to withstand foreign-sponsored reforms for quite a while. Eventually, the commanders had to give up their posts. However, their men have largely remained in place. The majority of the policemen there have been assigned to the area for a decade now and have resisted all attempts to transfer them. According to a Ministry of Interior officer interviewed by AAN, policemen have developed a strong attachment to their posts of duty in Police District (PD) 2, an area that is eminently commercial and offers additional income by levying protection money from shopkeepers and other businessmen in exchange for turning a blind eye on irregularities.

This part of the city is thus a hotspot of petty criminal activities. The massive presence of shoppers and travellers from outside the city draws groups of thieves from the settlement above the area, Deh Afghanan. The partially dry riverbed has also become the abode of drug addicts in recent years and their number has grown considerably, making it second only to Pul-e Sukhta area (see AAN report here). Large amounts of narcotics are thus brought to the area and pass from traffickers, often via shopkeepers for whom it is a side activity, to retail sellers who sell it to those on the riverbed. According to a social worker once engaged in a program to help widows in the area, the amulet sellers and some of the beggars in the shrine are also rumoured to be accomplices in the smuggling and safe-keeping of drugs there. Even the presence of a prostitution ring run from the shrine has been hinted at by the police, who have now temporarily closed the place down.

Together with the amulet-sellers, there are also many gadagaran, beggars, mostly female, within the ziarat enclosure. They can be roughly divided into two categories: those who regularly frequent the shrine and those who come only for religious festivals or during the days preceding them. On such occasions, wealthy merchants and businessmen visit the ziarat and are expected to give alms to the shrine and the assembled beggars. The right to ask for alms inside the shrine is sold – with the involvement of police and shrine staff, as on such occasions, high profits can be made – reportedly for as much as 30,000 Afghanis (600 dollars) in months with such religious celebrations. Some of the beggars at the shrine are said to work in close partnership with the amulet sellers as well.

A widow who often begs for alms inside the shrine told AAN that Farkhunda had had arguments with the amulet sellers in the past.  Another woman, Latifa, a visitor to the shrine and a former customer of Zainuddin, the shrine attendant who would later be accused of having initiated the false accusation that Farkhunda had burned a copy of the Quran, also said she had seen Farkhunda in the shrine on other occasions. “Farkhunda would debate the ‘sin’ of tawiz in Islam and ask the caretaker of the shrine, Zainuddin, to stop this trade.” Farkhunda had also enjoined female visitors to stop buying tawiz. The amulet sellers’ anger about her interference was shared by some of the female beggars who feared a loss in the ‘business’ tawiz clients bring to their begging grounds. The widow also told AAN the female beggars were among the first to instigate others to kill Farkhunda after shrine caretaker Zainuddin’s initial call for Muslims to “save the Quran.”

This is not to suggest that her killing was planned, although worse conspiracy theories about her death have circulated. But given the links between some of the criminal groups active in the area and those in charge of business inside the ziarat, some of those who took part in killing Farkhunda might have known more precisely what they were doing and had one or two ‘reasons’ for it.

The killers: Zainuddin, Sharaf Baghlani and others

“On Thursday at around 3.30, the voice of the cleric Zainuddin was heard from the front window of Shah-e Du Shamshira, and he called the crowd to punish an American woman who had burned pages of Quran.” This is how a female eyewitness, a frequent visitor to the shrine, recalls the start of the murderous rush which resulted in Farkhunda’s death. Reportedly, Zainuddin further provoked the crowd by saying, “If you are a real Muslim, please come and save the Quran.” Following that, some men gathered around Farkhunda aggressively asking her questions, some of which were: “Are you American? Are you America’s agent? Why did you burn the Noble Quran?

Representatives of the presidential investigative commission later also stated that that it was Zainuddin who first shouted that Farkhunda had burnt the Quran and asked the people to punish her. During the investigation, he admitted he had lied about the Quran-burning.

Another man, Sharaf Baghlani, who is in his thirties and has claimed a connection with the Afghan Forces on his Facebook account (the page has since then been removed), bragged about his role in the killing of Farkhunda. The translated version of the post said: “Salam: today at 4.00 pm, an atheist woman burned the Quran at the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. Afterwards, the religious people of Kabul, including myself, killed her. Hell shall be her place.” Baghlani was one of the first suspects to be detained. He had already posted, on 21 March 2015: “I believe in an extra-judicial court system for an un-Islamic country like Afghanistan.” He said, “suicide bombers released by the Afghan government” was one reason why he thought handing over criminals to the state authorities was pointless.

One of the other suspects, a young man in his late twenties, would later say his “religious emotion” was the reason he joined in the killing. Others would later condemn their own actions. One man in his early thirties spontaneously surrendered himself to the police saying his “sleep at night had been extremely disturbed by the anxiety and fear created by his feeling of guilt.”

Those involved in the crime were typically young men in their early 20s to late 30s, many of them ‘modern-attired’, sporting jeans and fashionable clothes. Some of them may have been associated with the drug users or crooks crowding the area, but many more seem to have issued from the mosque, while others might have been shopping in the bazaar along the riverbanks when the turmoil started.

If Zainuddin represents the conservative and self-interested use of religion to cow society into obeisance and Sharaf Baghlani the violent and ruthless face of the vigilante, the majority of people who took part in the killing cannot easily be dismissed as leftovers of Afghanistan’s past of violence and extremism, or as dangerous characters living at the margins of society. Rather, they appear to forebode a new generation having lost its bearings in terms of culture and social behaviour.

No shelter from the mad crowd

With the crowd being this diverse in its motivations, the criminality and degradation in the area we have described and the availability of goons to conduct a killing does not yet explain how a mob of some 400 persons could have gathered for such a long time to lynch one girl. The sheer numbers of the crowd prevented the police from succeeding in their, albeit half-hearted, attempts at rescuing her. It also doomed the efforts made by a few individuals to help Farkhunda and bring their fellow Kabulis to reason. It seems that some bystanders did try, in vain, to help her. AAN talked to a woman who asked a policeman only about ten metres away from Farkhunda to intervene. She said the policeman did not budge and calmly remarked, “Let her be killed. That will be a good lesson to those who insult Islam.”

Some observers have wondered why the gender of the victim did not protect her, given that women are usually at less danger from public (although not domestic) violence in patriarchal Afghanistan. While largely agreeing with this analysis, looking deeper into Afghan ‘traditions’, there is a different approach to gender to be detailed. Afghans can be said to treat women in a more ‘equal’ way than that often imagined by outsiders, meaning the treatment meted out by society to a woman seen as guilty of something is unlikely to be more lenient because of her sex. In the Afghan psyche, the duty to defend a ‘helpless’ women is not linked to some romantic idea of chivalry, but to a very concrete understanding of collective honour and respectability. Women who have not trespassed the boundaries set for their place in society are indeed more protected. However, those who are seen as having transgressed lose their status as women who need to be protected. This might have reduced Farkhunda’s chances of eliciting feelings of pity from the people who were attacking her.

What was also shocking about the killing was not just the behaviour of the mob but also of the people who witnessed it. Many filmed it on their smartphones or joined in to take part briefly in a sort of ‘I was there, too’ attitude. Judging by the images, this social type of the casual onlooker, among them many young shoppers, far outnumbered the actual killers. This is disturbing particularly given the hopes so often placed in young people to bring much needed changes in society and push it forward, away from the scars and ruins of the civil war.

But also most of the remarkable mobilisation witnessed in the days following the murder was initiated by Kabul youth, albeit a different section. These activists have been calling for “justice for Farkhunda”, that is, harsh punishments for her murderers. This attitude may feel reasonable at this stage, but it does not seem sufficiently introspective. This murder needs deeper and harder questions to be asked as to how Kabulis came to murder one of their own in the heart of their city.

Eight abductions of groups of people have been reported since late February by officials, activists or media as having targeted ethnic Hazaras. The first was also the biggest: the abduction of 31 bus passengers in Zabul on 23 February 2015. Other crimes ‘against Hazaras’ have been reported from Ghazni, Farah, Daikundi and Balkh. AAN’s Qayoom Suroush has been examining the incidents in detail to see if there is a new trend of targeting this ethnic group. He finds much of the reporting has been full of mistakes with assumptions relayed as fact. With the possible exception of the Zabul mass abduction, he finds little to back up a notion of a new trend of ethnic targeting, but does say the reporting points to how vulnerable many Hazaras feel.

On 23 February 2015, a group of gunmen stopped two buses driving from Herat province to Kabul as they passed through Shahjoy district of Zabul province and kidnapped several dozen of the passengers. One female passenger described later how the gunmen first collected all cell phones and national ID cards from the passengers, then separated males from females, then Hazaras from non-Hazaras, and finally took away 31 Hazara men, leaving the other passengers on the road. Another eyewitness, who also said that all the hostages were Hazaras, said the kidnappers had worn black masks and military uniforms and spoke Pashtu and Dari.

Two months later, the majority of abductees, possibly all, are still being held. Some reports  (see for example here) have talked about an old man having died because of the “cold weather” and one ANA soldier who was among the abductees having been found beheaded. (1) The public and the national and international media, almost in unison, have spoken of an incident deliberately aimed at Hazaras, even though the identities, motivation and goals of the kidnappers in fact remain unclear. But if the list of hostages is scrutinised, the assumption that all are Hazaras is not certain and the man who was beheaded – if this report is accurate – was not Hazara, but Tajik. Among the families of the hostages camped out in Zarnigar Park, protesting what they perceive as the government’s inadequate response, there is also a Tajik family who believes their son is among the Zabul hostages.

Allegations to be found in the many, often contradictory sources of information as to the aim of the kidnappers vary from the kidnappers wanting to target Shias to them  being Taliban and wanting to swap the hostages for prisoners. The Taleban have denied carrying out the abduction, though, and no other armed group has claimed the kidnapping. Some members of parliament from Zabul still told Tolo News that the passengers had been kidnapped with the help of Mansur Dadullah, a senior Taleban commander and brother of the notorious Mullah Dadullah who was killed in 2007. Mansur was reported to have joined the Islamic state group, operating from Zabul, but if he had, he is back with the Taleban, according to an interview he gave to Radio Tehran on 5 April 2015 in which he also denied having been involved in the kidnapping of the 31 passengers. He said that “foreign fighters who fled from Pakistan kidnapped the passengers” and wanted to exchange them for “family members” imprisoned by the government (interview in Pashto here). He did not mention the ethnic background of the passengers as being of importance.

This fits with what the chairman of the Zabul Provincial Council, Attaullah Haqparast, told Tolo News on 10 April 2015. He claimed the kidnappers had asked for a prisoner swap. He, too, said the kidnappers were “foreigners” and added, “We have sent our elders several times to the kidnappers, and their translator talked to us. They have demanded the release of twelve prisoners.” (Afghanistan’s National Security Council reportedly rejected the deal.)

Efforts to free the hostages seem to be stuck at the moment. Rescue operations by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have, so far, failed. After one mission launched at the beginning of March, Vice President Sarwar Danesh said the ANSF had killed more than 100 insurgents (including some foreigners) and arrested “the leader of the group responsible for the abduction,” whom he named as Mullah Abdullah Kakar. He gave no further information about the man’s political background or possible aims. However, none of the abductees were, in fact, released. Some Hazara elders and activists now claim that no such operation took place and that the government lied about both operation and arrest.

In the end, the evidence that Hazaras were specifically targeted comes from two passengers who were let go and who said the kidnappers had separated Hazaras from the non-Hazaras. This may have been due to ‘ethnic targeting’ – or they could have chosen the Hazaras because, for example, they have the weakest political and tribal lobby and any backlash against the kidnappers would be smaller. When, hopefully, the hostages are freed, things may become clearer.

The second incident: Qarabagh (Ghazni)

On 15 March 2015, another ‘Hazara kidnapping’ was reported, this time in Qarabagh district of Ghazni province (where about half of all citizens are Hazaras). Taleban stopped a car coming from Jaghori district (another Hazara-dominated district) and took ten passengers, all of whom were Hazaras. However, they released them only hours later, after the Taleban had interrogated the travellers and warned the women to wear “proper Islamic attire”, meaning burqas rather than the large headscarves or chadors favoured by many Hazara women. This kind of road block is common across the country, including in insecure Qarabagh district where there is little Afghan National Army (ANA) presence. With both districts having large Hazara communities, chances are that Hazaras will often face such incidents, but such road blocks also hit the local Pashtun population.

Nevertheless, soon after this incident, social media users and news agencies started speculating about Hazaras being systematically targeted, quickly jumping from assumption to ‘fact’. The Shia News Association, an Iran-based news agency, for example, tweeted about a “continuation of Hazara kidnappings.”

The third incident (Farah)

On 17 March 2015, another ‘Hazara kidnapping’ was reported, this time from Farah province. Tolo News said six Hazaras traveling from Herat were abducted by masked gunmen. However, according to Farah governor Asef Nang there had not been a kidnapping of Hazaras; rather, he said, Afghan soldiers “went missing” on the way from Farah to Herat province. He did not even want to confirm that the soldiers had been kidnapped (with the governor later speaking of only one abducted soldier). It also remains unclear how many of the potential victims were Hazara, with local media reporting, for example, four out of the six being Hazara (see here). It seems likely that if the six had indeed been abducted, insurgents took them because they were soldiers. AAN, talking to locals and security officials, could not find evidence for this incident being specifically Hazara-related.

The fourth incident: Daikundi

A few days later, on 25 March 2015, Afghan media reported another ‘Hazara kidnapping’, with the Taleban abducting “20 Hazaras” in Daikundi province as they travelled from Kandahar. On the same day, the Taleban rejected the report and said that they had only stopped the vehicle, not detaining anyone, because of the ongoing fighting between them and ANSF in the area and would allow the travellers to pass as soon as the area was safe. They did so on 28 March 2015.

At this point, the BBC also found out that the travellers who had been affected, had not been Hazaras, but rather (Shia) Baloch.

With much of the media apparently not noticing these at least contradictory details of the accounts available, reporting of the incident increased anxiety among Hazaras. One social media user wrote, “I ask all leaders to take action and stop such kidnappings. It is a tragedy that one ethnic group can be targeted like this in today’s Afghanistan.”

Incidents five to seven: Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Ghazni again

Since then, there have been five more incidents which appear to have been wrongly labelled as having deliberately targeted Hazaras, strengthening a picture of Hazaras being pursued despite a weak evidential basis. For example, on 30 March 2015, five men – who were indeed Hazaras – were reportedly kidnapped in Balkh province. However, as also portrayed by the BBC, it seems the victims were probably taken because they were known to be wealthy coal merchants. A provincial council member told AAN that the kidnapper, whom he alleged was a local illegal militia commander, had asked for a ransom. If true, there seems to have been no political or ethnically-motivated agenda behind the abduction.

The Killid Group reported 13 Hazaras as kidnapped in Sar-e Pul’s Balkhab district on 1 April 2015.  The Taleban released four of their hostages in early April and the remaining nine on 14 April 2015. The reasons for the abduction remain unclear, but AAN was told by members of the provincial council that the person who had initiated the abduction, the district’s Taleban shadow governor Hashim Quraishi, was Hazara himself. Local officials said, “Well, this kind of thing happens all the time.” (As an example of “this kind of thing” happening “all the time”, armed men, kidnapped 12 people on 11 January 2015 in Sar-e Pul  and, after killing two of them, released the rest. However, as ‘Hazara kidnaps’ were not yet on the radar, the ethnic identities of the hostages were not reported at the time.)

Another reported ‘Hazara kidnapping’ on 1 April 2015, again in Ghazni’s Qarabagh district, involved a group of gunmen stopping two cars with 20 passengers – who were indeed Hazara – and taking them hostage for a day. However, it transpired that the travellers were random victims taken with the aim of creating leverage over the police. Before the kidnapping, a local girl had delivered herself to the police and been taken to a shelter in neighbouring Jaghori district. It is not clear why the girl had sought shelter, but the hostages were released after police brought her back to her family (leading one to wonder about the current situation and the safety of the girl; read AAN’s reports on domestic violence and the role of the authorities here).

The eighth incident

Finally, the most recent ‘crime against Hazaras’ was reported on 14 April 2015 in Ajrestan district of Ghazni province, a Pashtun district surrounded by largely Hazara-populated areas, including Jaghori district, Nawur district and Daikundi province. Four Hazaras (from Malestan district) were kidnapped and, soon after, killed. AAN spoke to local Hazaras in Malestan who said they were at a loss as to why such a thing had happened, “We have not had tensions between Pashtuns and Hazaras here in 25 years,” they said. Here too, the perpetrators appear to have had goals other than ethnically-motivated ones. Ghazni’s deputy governor, Muhammad Ali Ahmadi, told Deutsche Welle that the Taleban had taken the four as leverage in an attempt to negotiate the release from jail of their commander and his men, who had been arrested the day before in Jaghori district. The Taleban released a statement condemning the killing and rejecting any involvement, though. They blamed “Kabul’s spies,” meaning the NDS, of trying to “cause ethnic and sectarian violence.”

Routine behaviour for the Taleban

So, what to make of this series of incidents? From what the Afghan media and activists have reported, one could construct a coherent picture of systematic violence against Hazaras (see for example here, here and here). The Wall Street Journal said on 20 April 2015 that “Afghanistan has largely been spared the sectarian strife that plagues other parts of the Muslim world, but many Hazaras see the kidnapping as an indication they, too, now are a target.” And the New York Times wrote, on 22 April 2015:  “A wave of kidnappings followed by numerous beheadings of members of Afghanistan’s Hazara ethnic group have spread alarm and anger among a people who historically have been this country’s most persecuted.” But this picture is both misled and misleading.

Take the NYT piece for example. The piece was headlined, “Taliban are said to target Hazaras to try to match ISIS’ brutality”. Yet, its report that the four men from Malestan (case eight) had been beheaded (its source for this was the Ghazni police) does not seem to have been true. AAN was told by family members and neighbours, who had buried the four men on Monday, that the corpses were intact. They had not been beheaded they said: “They were simply shot.” The New York Times article also claimed an additional case of brutality against Hazaras: six men from Daikundi who were ‘found dead’ in Ajirestan district.  However, none of the security officials, local journalists, residents and two MPs from Daikundi contacted by AAN had heard of any killing in the province in recent weeks.

There also appears to be some problem with the sampling. Strangely, the incidents claimed as Hazara-targeted are mostly kidnappings. If Hazaras were indeed being targeted, there would surely be other, less personnel-intensive and more varied opportunities of harm, such as drive-by shootings, assassinations or robberies. In general, it is not unusual for Taleban to stop and hold travellers – of all ethnicities – and interrogate and search them. Doing so, they usually try to identify those who are earning their living as soldiers or government officials, or others associated with the state. It also serves as a convenient way to generally intimidate the civilian population, projecting the Taleban’s power over people’s daily lives. There have been, over the years, many examples of such incidents – including on the road that featured in two of the recent incidents, the insecure Qarabagh road to Jaghori district of Ghazni, which locals call “a nightmare.” In short, the reported ‘Hazara kidnappings’ in Qarabagh on 15 March 2015, in Farah on 17 March 2015, in Daikundi on 25 March 2015 and in Sar-e Pul on 1 April 2015 look to be fairly routine behaviour for the Taleban and carried out regardless of the ethnicity of travellers.

And then, of course, there have been other, similar incidents over the past months – whether  insurgent, criminal or personal – that hit Pashtuns or Tajiks or Uzbeks. Two recent ‘non-Hazara kidnappings’ were the five – Pashtun – NGO workers killed on 10 April in Uruzgan (reason yet unknown) and the 19 staff (ethnicity not reported) of a demining NGO kidnapped by a group of armed men in Paktia because, AAN was told by one source, they had been clearing an area that the Afghan government wanted to use for a future military camp. Two days later the deminers were released.

Scrutinising the individual incidents which activists and media are citing, there seems to be, for now, no evidence that Hazara are being systematically targeted (the Zabul abduction of the 31 bus passengers is the only case where it seems Hazaras may have been targeted, but even there the initial motivation and the goal of the kidnappers remains unclear).

Yet the fear is real

However, the reaction to the reporting – and sometimes the reporting itself – clearly shows that Hazaras feel very vulnerable. Hazaras generally live in areas where traveling means navigating passes through high, otherwise impassable mountains and through areas where other groups predominate. Hazaras are easily identifiable and, although there are some Sunni and Ismaili Hazaras, the group is largely perceived as Shia. Afghanistan has experienced ethnic-based bloodshed in the past during the war, with Hazaras as both victims and perpetrators – although sectarianism of the kind seen in Pakistan, Iraq and now Syria has been rare. Nevertheless, there is a  fear that insurgents and other groups might change tactics.

The reasoning sounds like this: The Taleban, although currently presenting themselves as a national movement for all Afghans regardless of sect or ethnicity, are largely made up of Sunni Pashtun mullahs. Also, this year has seen an increase in foreign fighters moving into Afghanistan after Pakistani operations drove them out of their stronghold in North Waziristan last summer. These fighters tend to be more vicious and more reckless than the Taleban (it is not their country, after all) and potentially more sectarian-minded. The savagely sectarian Islamic State might also gain ground in the country (although, see AAN reporting here on how the Daesh threat has so far been overblown). Moreover, other countries in the region with previously harmonious intra-ethnic and intra-sect relations (such as Syria and Yemen) have recently descended into bloody, sectarian chaos.

The recent trend of reporting kidnappings as aimed at Hazaras , for the moment, appears to say less about the actual dynamics and trends within the insurgency (or among criminal elements), but a great deal about how vulnerable Hazaras feel about their safety.

 

(1) More recently, a video clip with the logo of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was released that shows two masked men beheading an Afghan Army soldier and asking the government to respond to what they say is their demand or they will kill all hostages. Some news agencies like BBC World reported the soldier was one of the Zabul hostages, although the IMU fighters do not specifically mention the 31 hostages or indeed specify their demand to the government. It is also not clear if the beheaded soldier, who was from Andarab district of Baghlan province, was among the 31 hostages. He was certainly not Hazara. After the linking of this murder to the Zabul hostages, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) swiftly said the soldier had not been among the Zabul hostages.

The suicide attack on the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad on 18 April 2015, which killed more than 30 people and injured at least 100 others, was condemned by the Taleban and claimed by the Islamic State (IS), or at least by a Facebook site purporting to represent IS, also known as Daesh. President Ashraf Ghani also appeared to endorse the Daesh claim. As Kate Clark and Borhan Osman report, despite the ‘Daesh attack’ making news headlines around the world, both claim and denial have to be carefully scrutinised.

Jalalabad endured a bloody day on Saturday, 18 April 2015. A suicide bomber blew himself up among crowds of people outside the city’s branch of the Kabul Bank, killing and injuring scores of those queuing up to get their monthly salaries from the government. Members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) (not in uniform) were hit, along with government workers and other civilians. Children were among the casualties. The scenes of carnage captured on film showed dazed and bloody survivors among the wounded and dead.

At about the same time in Jalalabad, a saint’s shrine called Dolakai Baba was blown up, wounding two civilians and, also on the same day, a magnetic bomb exploded in the nearby Behsud district killing one person and injuring two others. A fourth bomb was safely detonated by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) outside the Jalalabad branch of Afghanistan’s central bank which is not far away from the Kabul Bank.

Claim and denial

Both denial and claim of responsibility for the attacks came swiftly. Two hours after the bank attack, the Taleban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, tweeted: “2 blasts hit civilians this morning at a shrine & front of Bank in ‪#Jalalabad, we condemn/deny involvement in both.” He told Reuters, it was “an evil act.”

All four attacks were claimed on a recently activated Facebook account  purportedly belonging to Shahidullah Shahid, the former spokesman for the Pakistan Taleban and now spokesman for Islamic State’s ‘Khorasan province’ (an old Islamic name for the wider Afghanistan region, so incorporating supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan) appointed by IS central after a lot of urging from his side (for more detail on Shahid and his success, on the fifth attempt, at getting IS central to recognise the Khorasan chapter, see here). About 20 minutes after the shrine attack (at 8:38 am), this account said IS had blown up “a centre of idolatry” (shirk). ‘Shahid’ also claimed the Kabul Bank attack on “government people” soon after (8:52). A claim for the attempted attack on the Central Bank was posted at 9:50 and the attack in Behsud on the vehicle of a district chief from Kunar at 11:49. The same claims were also posted around the same timings by another account named in Arabic as ‘Khorasan Province, Nangarhar.’ Local journalists in Jalalabad said a man introducing himself as Shahidullah Shahid and claiming to speak for IS telephoned within half an hour of the attacks to say IS was responsible.

Hours later, President Ghani appeared to endorse the IS line – telling journalists, “In the horrific incident in Nangarhar, who took responsibility? The Taliban didn’t claim responsibility. Daesh claimed responsibility for it.” It is not clear if the president had special information to back up his comments or whether this was another attempt to claim that Daesh is in Afghanistan and the international powers should be worried and continue to back his government.

The president’s words helped harden the Daesh claim. Many journalists, particularly those from outside Afghanistan, who contacted AAN for background or interviews on the bombing, assumed Daesh had been behind the attack. “Why were they killing Sunnis?” the presenter of a domestic British news programme asked, as he struggled to make sense of attack and claim. “These are disgruntled Taleban who have rebranded as IS?” he asked. By the time the attacks hit the news stands, for some it had become fact: “First-ever IS suicide attack in Afghanistan kills 35″ was the headline for The News, in Pakistan, while the Mumbai Mirror reported: “33 die in first ISIS attack in Afghanistan.”

Assessing the Taleban denial

Generally, claims and denials in Afghanistan have to be taken with a dose of scepticism. The Taleban’s denial could be genuine, although they do have a record of distancing themselves from attacks which ‘go wrong,’ for example those that cause high numbers of civilian casualties, particularly in areas considered to be their heartland (and because their official line is – based on their code of conduct to avoid harming ‘the common people’ and their property). (1) In the face of a denial, it can be difficult and it takes time to verify whether an attack has been launched by the Taleban (which includes the Haqqani network, sometimes described as a separate organisation). However, in AAN’s report into the Taleban Code of Conduct, we traced several examples of false denials of attacks where commanders had subsequently been investigated.

Recent attacks where the denial looked suspicious would include the attack on Afghan Local Police who were watching a volleyball match on 23 November 2014 in Yahyakhel district, Paktika province. The bomber killed ten ALP members, including two commanders, along 53 civilians, including 21 children (a further 85 civilians, including 26 children, were injured; figures are from UNAMA’s 2014 report on the Protection of Civilians).

On the face of it, the attacks in Jalalabad, with the exception of the attack on the shrine, fit the Afghan Taleban’s pattern of operations. If it had not been for the Daesh claim, no-one would have noticed anything extraordinary about them. The Taleban spokesman called the attack on the Kabul Bank “evil,” but it resembled other Taleban attacks on ANSF personnel drawing their salaries from banks. UNAMA detailed these two in the second half of last year:

Suicide attack at Kabul Bank, Lashkargah City, Helmand – On 17 December, two men wearing [body-born IEDs]  entered the Kabul Bank in Lashkargah city, Helmand. One [body-born IED] detonated causing 16 civilian casualties (three killed and 13 injured). Three [Afghan National Policemen] ANP were also killed and four injured. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

On 1 October, a magnetic IED detonated near a bank in Kunduz city, Kunduz province, targeting the ANP, which caused 16 civilian casualties (one death and 15 injured including one woman and two children). The Taliban claimed responsibility and stated having killed five ANP.

Saturday’s attack was the second time the Kabul Bank in Jalalabad has been targeted in very similar fashion. In February 2011, the Taleban sent several armed men into the bank, dressed in police uniform, who killed 38 people and wounded 70; the movement claimed to have targeted “policemen, intelligence agents and other government employees” who were drawing their wages from the bank. An estimated half of the casualties in the bank were non-policemen.

The attack was captured on the bank’s CCTV and the footage shown on television. It horrified and sickened Afghans and led to a backlash against the Taleban. As AAN reported, the popular revulsion at this and similar attacks which targeted civilians or civilian places (2) and the political damage caused lead to some re-thinking by the movement as to its tactics or at least its media strategy. Its thinking on ‘civilian casualties’ has moved on; in early 2015, for example, its definition of civilian broadened somewhat (3), and the group has become more proactive on cataloguing its own lists of civilians by which it accuses the ANSF and international military of killing or wounding. UNAMA has been investigating these claims and adding them (where appropriate) to its figures and reports. In some periods, the Taleban appear to take greater care, for example reducing their use of pressure plate IEDs, which are inherently indiscriminate (and therefore also illegal under International Humanitarian Law) and kill large numbers of civilians, and trying to minimise collateral damage in suicide or complex attacks. However, such efforts are not consistent.

Civilian casualties may now be on the Taleban radar as potentially politically damaging and they have appeared to make some mitigation efforts. However, the group still has a high tolerance of collateral damage, for the Taleban this would mean ‘ordinary Afghans’ incidentally killed in an attack. (4) An analysis by UNAMA of the 382 attacks claimed by the Taleban in 2014 found that most of them – 236 – had military targets (international or Afghan armed forces or pro-government armed groups), but caused 1682 civilian casualties. (5) To take a recent example, on 10 April 2015, the Taleban claimed an attack on an ISAF convoy outside Jalalabad which wounded two international soldiers. killed eight civilians and injured 15 others.

All this means that, even though the Saturday attacks, with the exception of the one on the shrine, fit the Taleban’s normal modus operandi, the movement may still have wanted to deny the attacks, particularly the Kabul Bank attack because of the feared bad publicity. This was a ‘messy’ operation. The number of ordinary people killed and injured compared to the ‘military’ target may have seemed too high, the video already showing on television too appalling, to claim the attack. Or, of course, the denial may have been genuine.

The Daesh claim

‘Shahid’s’ claim could also be authentic or merely opportunistic. The most plausible aspect of the claim is the IED against the saint’s shrine, given that shrines are not normal Taleban targets, but do offend Daesh’s Salafist ideology. Moreover, an IED is easy to place, and that claim came quickly, within minutes of the explosion.

The Facebook account is new and cannot be verified as belonging to Shahid. (6) IS Khorasan’s ‘official’ Twitter and Facebook accounts have been suspended several times, so it would be no surprise if a personal account had been used. However, Shahid normally contacts the media by phone and speaks in Arabic. This is the first time we know of him posting a claim or using Pashto. Even if this new account does belong to Shahid, operating in his capacity as IS Khorasan spokesman, the claim might still not be genuine.

Further muddying the water, a report was published on 22 April of a denial from IS-Khorasan which in itself is unverifiable and, anyway, of questionable authority. (7)

The attack has not yet been claimed on any ‘official account’ from ‘IS central’ in Iraq/Syria.

The posting claiming the Kabul Bank attack included a generic photograph of ‘the bomber,’ whom the account names as ‘Abu Muhammad Khorasani.’ Sitting on a prayer mat, with his face masked by a scarf, the man has a Kalashnikov rifle by his side and Daesh’s black flag in the background. The IS flag looks to be of crude, home-made design rather than having the standard IS calligraphy used by the group’s authorised branches. The picture is not especially convincing.

Local journalists who received calls from ‘Shahid’ claiming the Jalalabad attacks for IS-Khorasan told AAN the voice sounded ‘younger’ than normal and had a Nangrahari accent (Shahid is from Orakzai Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

A step change for Daesh or a grab for publicity? 

So far, Daesh has been prominent in Afghanistan largely on social media and in reports by the media and Afghan officials. Such ‘sightings’, as AAN discovered, usually turn out to be baseless. Where a Daesh presence on the ground has been confirmed (see AAN reporting here) was in the ‘Khorasan chapter’ being announced on 26 January 2015 with known Taleban commander Rauf Khadem at the helm for Afghanistan and a former Pakistani Taleban commander, Hafez Saeed Khan, as the overall ‘governor’ of Khorasan. Khadem’s group was active in Helmand province. However, he was killed two weeks later on 9 February in a drone attack. The handful of others who have proclaimed themselves IS tend, like Khadem, to be disgruntled former Taleban. Several had been kicked out for criminality. For the group to now pull off three attacks in a day, with a fourth thwarted, would be a step change in its operations.

That having been said, if one wanted to start IS in Afghanistan, the east would be the obvious place to start. The insurgency there is much more fractured than in the south, making it potentially easier for new groups to emerge and recruit members. The east also has a stronger history of Salafism, the ultra-orthodox school of Islam followed by Daesh, than other parts of Afghanistan. However, unlike Daesh’s internationally-minded, jihadist Salafism, the main Salafist strand in the east, and across Afghanistan for that matter, has generally been quietist. It has also had Salafi fighting groups since the days of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s. In recent years, such groups have fought alongside the Taleban after failing to operate independently (see AAN’s 2010 piece on the joining of Kunar’s Salafis with the Taleban). Anecdotal observation suggests increased sympathy with global jihadism among the youth in the east (as opposed to other regions), particularly among those fighting with Salafi groups and among ‘cyber-jihadists.’ This trend appears to have gained momentum since the emergence of IS in the Middle East, especially after the announcement of its Khorasan province. (8)

As to the Jalalabad attacks, no other group disputed the ‘IS claim’ for any of the four incidents, including the Behsud attack, which did not cause the kind of collateral damage that might have prompted a denial by the Taleban. This lends some weight to the argument of those speculating that all four attacks, which happened within four hours, were planned for a dramatic launch of Daesh operations in Afghanistan.

It is also quite possible that local fighters, who used to fight alongside Taleban or in semi-independent Salafi groups and are now self-identifying with IS, carried out these attacks. They might have no operational or actual connection to IS, but have adopted its ideology and have enough military experience to plan a series of attacks on one day. However, that could still mean that Shahid’s claim was opportunistic (and the Taleban’s denial genuine). It is difficult to imagine IS’s Khorasan chapter’s ‘media operations’ being that organised or hooked up to self-identifying IS armed men on the ground.

It is also completely plausible that the attacks had nothing to do with IS, or with groups who have rebranded themselves as IS, and was purely opportunistic on the part of Shahid or someone else claiming to be Shahid. The IS claim is reminiscent of ‘Fedai Mahaz’s’ statement that it murdered the Swedish journalist, Nils Horner, in Kabul in March 2014, a claim which AAN looked into) and found to be unverifiable – possible, but highly questionable. That claim did, however, generate enormous amounts of publicity for Fedai Mahaz – as Saturday’s did for Daesh in Afghanistan.

Impact of claim and attack

It is impossible at this stage to say for certain whether these attacks were carried out by the Taleban or by IS or IS sympathisers. UNAMA seems correct in its call for the presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan to be meticulously evaluated to ascertain if militants are committing violence under a different name. More investigation is needed as to who the Kabul Bank bomber was and what his networks were, where he spent the night before the bombing and so on. More should be known generally about how the Taleban run their suicide (fedayi) operations; who endorses suicide attacks, who carries out surveillance, who trains, how is command and control ensured. As to IS, unlike the Taleban’s media operation, which is familiar to journalists – they know who they are talking to and their trustworthiness –, reporters are still in the dark about IS or indeed whether there is an IS to speak to. This makes it more difficult to verify claims.

What is certain is that Daesh’s name made this particular attack international news, something which the Taleban now struggle to do. The Daesh name also caused uneasiness among the Afghan public. Already, there was disquiet that certain savage tactics had been (re-) introduced into the war, following the release of a video of an Afghan soldier being beheaded by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) earlier this month and the kidnapping of more than 30 Hazaras allegedly by the same group in Zabul in late February (AAN will be publishing a piece on this soon). There is fear that the emergence of IS in the Middle East and the announcement of its Khorasan chapter may embolden the more radical of the militant networks in Afghanistan – and particularly in the east – who have worked under the supervision of the Taleban. The cooperation emerged not because they share the Taleban’s doctrine and vision, but because they could not operate independently. IS may be an attractive alternative for such radical jihadists operating in Afghanistan, giving them an opportunity to align themselves with the new brand. There is also the possibility that ‘good publicity’ for IS in the wake of the Jalalabad attack may encourage others to switch groups, including those with long, military experience. Of course, more savage attacks would be unlikely to help Daesh find favour with Afghans generally, and, as the Taleban found, very brutal tactics tend to result in popular backlash (again, see AAN’s paper on the Taleban Code of Conduct); they are not a sustainable way to build support.

Afghanistan had already been preparing for a bloody year after 2014 saw an intensification of the conflict, with the highest number of civilian casualties in any year since 2001 and a war which failed to fall into its normal winter lull. Whether genuine or not, the Taleban denial, the Daesh claim and the president’s apparent endorsement of both gave weight to fears that this year could see more savagery and fewer red lines in the Afghan war.

 

(1) Injunctions include: suicide attackers must “avoid casualties among the common people” (art. 57); Taleban must “with all their power…be careful with regard to the lives of the common people and their property’ (art. 65); “anyone who harms people in the name of the mujahedin shall be punished (arts. 65, 66) and; “Taking care of public property and the lives and property of the people is considered one of the main responsibilities of a mujahed” (back cover).

(2) Other attacks included one on a Finest Supermarket in Kabul in January 2011, supposedly targeting the head and workers of the private security company, Blackwater, but killing nine Afghan civilians, including the mother, father and four children of one family, and another attack, in February 2011, in Kunduz, on men supposedly registering for the Afghan local police; of the several dozen killed, many had simply been trying to renew their IDs and were clearly far too young or too old to have been conceivably trying to join the ALP.

(3) UNAMA wrote:

 A Taliban statement released on 4 January 2015 reported a revised definition of “civilian” to include “any person who is not engaged in activities against the Taliban: “those people who do not stand shoulder to shoulder with the enemy forces and are not carrying out actions against Jihad are to be considered as civilians.” The 2013 statements reported a definition of “civilian” which included women, children, elderly persons and those who “live an ordinary life” under the category of civilians who must be protected from attacks.

(4) Collateral damage normally refers to civilians killed or injured ‘incidentally’ in an attack on a military target. The Taleban consider many people classed under International Humanitarian Law as civilian (because they are not in the armed forces or participating in hostilities) as legitimate targets. So, with the Taleban, it is more accurate to talk about their high tolerance for collateral damage among the common people, rather than civilians.

(5) From a war crimes perspective, targeting civilians per se is illegal – the International Criminal Court’s preliminary examination into war crimes in Afghanistan includes an assessment of the Taleban’s deliberate targeting of civilians. Also illegal are indiscriminate attacks, where no discrimination is made between military and civilian, as well as attacks on military targets where it could be foreseen that the loss of civilian life would be disproportionate to the military gain. UNAMA gives the following examples of disproportionate harm done:

On 28 December, an IED detonated in front of a shop in Alingar district, Laghman province. The shop was located near an ALP check-point and was owned by a tribal elder who was a member of the district Afghan Social Outreach Program (ASOP). The detonation caused five civilian casualties (two killed, including the shop owner, and three injured including a 13-year-old boy). The Taliban claimed responsibility on their website.

On 13 December, a 17-year-old a suicide attacker detonated his suicide vest against an [Afghan National Army] ANA shuttle bus in Kabul city, killing and injuring 14 ANA combatants. The detonation also seriously injured 14 civilians, including a woman and two children. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter.

On 1 November, a [vehicle-born] IED attacker targeted a joint check post of ANA and ALP in Azra district, Logar province. The explosion caused 29 civilian casualties (five killed, including a pregnant woman and a child, and 24 injured, including four women and three children). The blast damaged five civilian houses and a mosque. The attack also killed and injured 21 combatants (ANA and ALP members). The Taliban’s claim of responsibility indicated that the attack killed 28 ANA, ANP and ALP members and injured 19 other members of Afghan national security forces. The statement said that five civilians, including two children had been slightly injured.

(6) The same account had, on Friday, posted pictures supposedly of an IS training camp in Logar under the leadership of Saad Emarati, the former Taleban commander in Azra district who has defected to IS.

(7) The Daily Beast reported a denial by Muslim Dost whom they name as a spokesman for IS. However, this Afghan, based in Pakistan, is a Salafi scholar who pledged allegiance to IS. For more detail about him, see AAN’s first report on Daesh.

(8) In Nangrahar, locals in Chaparhar district, about 20 kilometres from Jalalabad, have told AAN that insurgents there who were already mostly Salafi have been tilting towards IS in recent months, as evidenced by more IS flags and more talk about IS. AAN has verified accounts of men from Chaparhar going to fight in Syria/Iraq and some being killed there in September as already being reported. Some of these Chaparharis who have ‘migrated’ to the IS heartland (and married there) are actively in touch with local supporters on social media.

Members of parliament have endorsed all sixteen candidates put forward by Afghanistan’s national unity government. This means that, six months into its term, the country has an almost complete cabinet – only the defence minister is still missing. This is the MPs’ second such vote. The first, on 28 January 2015, saw only a third of the candidates getting through. Kate Clark, Ehsan Qaane and Qayyum Suroush ask why there has been a change of heart from the parliament and hear charges of vote-buying and MPs’ fears that, if they did not endorse the sixteen, they would be castigated by a public impatient for the government to get on with governing.

Under the constitution, every minister needs the approval of parliament to take up his or her post. When the government put through its first choice of suggested ministers, MPs only endorsed a third of them. One third had already fallen by the wayside because they dual nationals, were wanted for criminal prosecution or had no higher education and never made it to the vote. One of those who had a second nationality, Sayed Mansur Naderi, re-appeared on the current list, although for a different ministry. A further third of the candidates in January were rejected. AAN wrote at the time that the list was rather weak, with few big-hitters and many candidates who had little experience or were not obvious fits for their proposed ministries. Today’s list had similar characteristics: half have no experience working in government and many lack experience in the subject area of their ministry. For example, Afghanistan now has a medical doctor at Justice, a women’s rights activist lawyer at Counter Narcotics and a businessman at Education. Other ministers do look better suited, eg a hydraulics engineer at Water and Energy. Several of the appointments also look to be political pay back for support during the election.

It is not obvious why the parliament voted in all candidates today when it rejected many on a similar list in January. In general, MPs endorsement does not necessarily mean they like what is on offer, as voting in favour or against often has as much to do with mood and timing and what messages MPs want to send the executive and the country. It might just be that the parliamentarians, like the general public, are tired of not having a government and also feared being lambasted if they were seen as having stood in the way of a cabinet finally being formed. However, there were also allegations that money had changed hands to ‘persuade’ MPs to endorse candidates. Hasht-e Subh, for example, reported that MPs were asking for iPhones and money and that government officials were complaining that, compared to the Karzai era, bribes had gone up “terribly.”

In the January vote, MPs rejected all the Hazara, Uzbek (the third and fourth largest ethnic groups respectively) and women candidates. Today’s sweeping endorsement of all sixteen candidates does mean that Afghanistan has a fairer-looking cabinet. Of the 25 ministers, there are four women (still not enough, many activists would say, but at least the number President Ghani had promised) and, as to ethnicity, nine Pashtuns, seven Tajiks, three Hazaras, two Uzbeks, one each from Ismailis, Shia Sayeds and Turkmen and one minister who is reported by different sources as either Tajik, Uzbek or Turkmen.

This is still not quite a full cabinet. The all-important post of defence minister remains to be filled. It was the reported cause of a major rift between Doctors Ghani and Abdullah earlier in the month. Abdullah was reportedly incensed by what he said were unilateral announcements by Ghani for Afzal Ludin as defence minister (1) and Shukria Barakzai as head of the Election Reform Commission. There are also some other significant gaps: the Attorney General, Head of the Supreme Court, Head of the Central Bank and most of the country’s governors.

As AAN and others have reported, there is growing discontent in the country with the lack of governing going on, particularly given the ailing economy and disturbing attacks by insurgents – 31 civilians kidnapped in Zabul in late February and still not freed, soldiers captured and beheaded in Badakhshan on 10 April 2015 and today, a major attack in Jalalabad which left more than thirty dead and more than one hundred injured and which overshadowed parliament’s vote. Addressing the nation live on television from Badakhshan today, President Ghani said:

On one hand, we are in a very sad situation, but from another a very happy one. What happened in Badakhshan and Nangarhar is our sad situation, but the approval of our 16 ministerial candidates by the parliament is the happy one. We have had problems in the economic sector and were not able to implement policies due to the lack of ministers.

The real test of the new cabinet is whether, now that the government’s key team is largely in place, it can finally start to govern better.

How the vote went

239 MPs voted (out of 246). To be confirmed, candidate needed a simple majority of 120 votes. The votes for the sixteen (read their full biographies here) went as follows:

(AA) and (AG) refers to whether it is believed Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani put forward the candidate

1. Abdul Bari Jahani, Culture and Information (AG): 120 votes in favour (66 rejected, 35 blank, 6 invalid)

One of the leading Pashtun poets of modern times, a Kandahari who, for many years, worked in broadcasting with Voice of America in the United States. (2)

2. Assadullah Zamir, Agriculture (AG): 192 votes in favour (28 rejected, 15 blank, 4 invalid)

An ethnic Tajik in his late thirties, born in Kabul, one of the co-founders of Fourteen Hundred / 1400, a group of young(ish) Afghans interested in influencing policies; has many years of experience working in various ministries (rural development, education, mines and agriculture).

3. Muhammad Gulab Mangal, Border and Tribal Affairs (AG): 188 votes in favour (28 rejected, 13 blank, 8 invalid)

A Paktiawal and member of the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan before it seized power in the Saur Coup of 1978, who later joined the mujahedin; a former governor of Paktika, Laghman and Helmand.

4. Engineer Mahmud Balegh, Public Works (AG): 168 votes in favour (38 rejected, 23 blank, 8 invalid)

An ethnic Hazara from Daikundi and one of the youngest ministers; an engineer by education, a former editor of Eqtedar-e Melli newspaper (published by the Shia political party Hezb-e Eqtedar-e Melli, which split off the mujahedin party Harakat-e Islami under the late Kabul MP Mustafa Kazimi after the Taleban regime came down) and now a businessman, part owner of one of the largest construction companies in the country.

5. Abdul Satar Murad, Economy (AA): 152 votes in favour (51 rejected, 29 blank, 6 invalid)

A Tajik from Parwan province in his late 50s, he was deputy head of Abdullah’s electoral campaign team and chairman of the political committee of Jamiat-e Islami; taught English at a mujahedin military academy in the 1980s, served in the Rabbani government and in various Islamic State embassies and, post-2001, set up a construction company and was governor of Kapisa.

6. Dr Muhammadullah Batash, Transport and Aviation (AG): 176 votes in favour (32 rejected, 25 blank, 6 invalid)

An Uzbek in his mid-50s from Kunduz with a PhD from Moscow University who is a Jombesh party activist; has served as deputy and acting minister of transport, as governor of Faryab and as a government advisor.

7. Sayed Sadat Mansur Naderi, Urban Development (AG): 202 votes in favour (18 rejected, 10 blank, 4 invalid)

Son of Sayed Mansur Naderi (the Ismaili religious leader and former militia commander who was with the PDPA government until 1992 and then was one of the warring parties in the civil war, allied with the ‘Northern Alliance’) who is chair of a group of companies active in nearly all of Afghanistan’s main economic sectors (including fuel import and storage, construction, precious metals and gems, security, property dealing, advertising, supermarkets and insurance).

8. Dr Abdul Basir Anwar, Justice (AA): 138 votes in favour (65 rejected, 30 blank, 5 invalid)

An ethnic Tajik from Parwan and leading member of Hezb-e Islami; holder of a medical degree, he was deputy minister of health during the Rabbani government and advisor on social affairs to former President Karzai.

9. Abdul Razaq Wahidi, Telecommunication (AA): 152 votes in favour (53 rejected, 28 blank, 5 invalid)

A Hazara from Kabul in his late 30s who grew up in Iran and returned in 2002 to teach mathematics at Kabul University, after which he served on the Kankur Committee of the Higher Education Ministry and as General Administrative Director and Deputy Minister for Administration at the Ministry of Finance.

10. Dilbar Nazari, Women’s Affairs (AA): 131 votes in favour (70 rejected, 28 blank, 9 invalid)

An Uzbek from Balkh in her 50s with a background in education and NGOs (including Oxfam, German Agro-Action and UNICEF); a former MP.

11. Salamat Azimi, Counter Narcotics (AG): 155 votes in favour (60 rejected, 23 blank, no invalid)

A lawyer and women’s rights advocate from Andkhoi in Faryab (sources put her variously as Tajik, Uzbek and Turkman) who has served as professor, head of the criminal law department and deputy director of Balkh University, head of the section for children’s rights at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Mazar-e-Sharif and a delegate at several loya jirgas.

12. Dr Farida Momand, Higher Education (AG): 184 votes in favour (31 rejected, 18 blank, 5 invalid)

A Pashtun from Nangarhar, a doctor, former professor at Kabul Medical University and dean of the pediatric department.

13. Dr Nasrin Oryakhel, Labour and Social Affairs (AG): 169 votes in favour (62 rejected, 21 blank, 5 invalid)

A Pashtun medical doctor from Paghman and leading member of President Ghani’s election campaign who has been the director of both Rabia Balkhi and Malalai hospitals in Kabul.

14. Ali Ahmad Osmani, Water and Energy (AA): 168 votes in favour (36 rejected, 29 blank, 5 invalid)

An ethnic Tajik in his early 40s, a hydraulic engineer by education and work experience (with the World Food Programme and in private business).

15. Humayun Rasa, Trade and Industries (AA): 170 votes in favour (39 rejected, 24 blank, 4 invalid)

An ethnic Hazara (with a Bayat mother) from the Qarabagh district of Ghazni who served as Deputy Minister for Literacy with the Ministry of Education and Deputy Head of Logistics in the National Directorate of Security.

16. Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, Education (AA): 161 votes in favour (27 rejected, 25 blank, 24 invalid)

An ethnic Tajik in his fifties from Balkh and member of Jamiat-e Islami (he was particularly close to the late Marshal Fahim); schooled at the Abu Hanifa madrassa and Sharia Faculty of Kabul University, he reportedly also studied in Saudi Arabia; a former ambassador to Kuwait and owner of a construction company.

 

(1) Afzal Ludin was commander of the presidential guard under Najibullah. This would have given the second ‘power ministry’ to a former PDPA regime representative, after Ulumi as interior minister.

(2) The one candidate to scrape through, Abdul Bari Jahani at Culture, was only given permission to present himself to the house this morning and accepted onto the voting list at the last minute.

A special commission had been in charge of reviewing the required documents of the candidates including university degrees, citizenship documents and documents showing they had committed no crimes. There were suspicions over the documents – citizenship or education – of eight nominees (Zamir, Baligh, Murad, Naderi, Osmani, Rasa, Balkhi and Batash), but in the end, only Bari Jahani was, initially, not allowed to present himself to parliament because of an alleged second (American) citizenship.

He should have appeared at the house on Wednesday 15 April 2015, but instead on that day, a letter was read to the house issued by the United States embassy in Kabul and sent via the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. This, however, was deemed insufficient to prove that Bari had started cancelling his second citizenship. Some of the Pashtun Kandahari MPs, such as Lalai Hamid Zai and Abdul Rahim Ayubi, shouted in the session, saying some MPs were not allowing a Kandahari to be a minister. Lalai asked for Jahani to be given the vote despite his dual citizenship. Hafiz Mansur was the only MP who argued against giving one more chance to Jahani, saying the special commission had given enough time to the candidates and he should be out of the list. Finally, the speaker asked the commission to review the US embassy letter, ask the US embassy for clarification and make a decision on Jahani’s case. The commission  then allowed Jahani to make his presentation before the vote today and to be included in the vote.