The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN)

Since January, around 800 Afghans have arrived in the non-EU country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in an attempt to find a new route into the European Union. They are mainly camping out in dilapidated buildings and makeshift structures in the towns of Bihać and Velika Kladuša, both near to the north-western border with EU member Croatia. Border patrols seek to prevent them from travelling any further. Although some of the Afghans are new arrivals in the Balkans, others have been stranded in neighbouring Serbia for over two years and have recently come to Bosnia. AAN guest author Elizabeth Wait (*) brings rare insights into a journey of an underreported group of Afghans stuck in Bosnia.  

At any one time, you can see twenty or so Afghans pacing up and down the kilometre stretch of road that connects the main informal camp for migrants in Velika Kladuša to the town centre. They pace without purpose.

Intermittently, they break off their walking to perch on the steps in front of shops to ‘people watch’ and connect to the WiFi belonging to a nearby café. “We just walk,” one man, a Pashtun from Nangrahar said, “we have no work, we have nothing, we are refugees.” With no realistic chance of getting into the EU, Afghans who do not have enough money to pay smugglers are left, as they say gaurzai-ra gaurzai  – walking back and forth –  killing time as they cling to the hope that a better future, somehow, awaits.

This dispatch will look at how and why Afghans are now gathering in Bosnia and Herzegovina and what are their prospects. (1) After looking at the situation in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, the landing spot for migrant arrivals, the author draws on observations she made during a trip to two northern towns close to the border with EU member state, Croatia, where the majority of migrants reside. Some of the Afghan migrants in Bosnia lack money to pay smugglers to help them move into the EU. Still, they keep trying to ‘play the game’ – in Dari, game zadan– slang for trying to cross a border without papers. The majority who succeed in crossing the border end up ‘pushed back’ into Bosnia, with male migrants consistently alleging they have been beaten by the Croatian police. Most of the Afghans are single men, mainly Pashtun, but there are a small percentage of families – maybe 15 per cent of the total. Of these, a handful are Hazaras and the majority are Tajik.

An overview: Why come to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

The arrival of Afghans, as well as Syrians, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians and other migrants and refugees to Bosnia and Herzegovina is a relatively recent phenomenon. The first noticeable influx of migrants in the country was detected in the first six months of 2018; the United Nation’s Refugee agency, UNHCR recorded the entry of over 7,600 refugees and migrants to Bosnia in that period. 12 per cent were Afghans. (2) The aim for most migrants is to travel undetected through Croatia and then Slovenia to reach Italy, which is more prosperous and, as yet, more welcoming to those seeking asylum.

In a research study conducted in May 2018, Refugee Aid Serbia (RAS) recorded that 80 percent of the migrants arriving into Bosnia had come from its neighbour to the east, Serbia (see this in-depth analysis here). Remaining 20 percent had arrived from Montenegro to the south.

Of those coming from Serbia, some had recently arrived there from Greece or Turkey, the two countries that host significant number of Afghan and other refugees (via Bulgaria, or Macedonia or Kosovo). These migrants had only spent a few days in Serbia before coming on to Bosnia. Others were among the 7,000 refugees, mainly Afghan, who have been stranded in Serbia since the closure of the ‘Balkan Corridor’ in March 2016. This was the temporary legalised pathway that allowed Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis to bypass border controls after German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a welcome to Syrian refugees in November 2015. It was shut five months later, in March 2016 (See this AAN dossier on Afghan migration to Europe). (3)

As AAN reported in 2017, Afghans trapped in Serbia do not generally want to be there and few claim asylum. Getting out of Serbia to an EU country, either Hungary to the north or Croatia to the west is extremely difficult, though. (4) Coming to Bosnia then for Afghan migrants, represents just a new attempt to find a way through to the EU. However, as this dispatch will show, it offers only slighter better prospect of getting to the EU than Serbia. However, particularly for migrants without the resources to pay smugglers, that slight advantage is enough to bring them to Bosnia.

Whether hoping to settle in Italy or to travel onwards to another country in western or northern Europe, Afghans aim to pass the police spread along the land route from north-western Bosnia to north-eastern Italy, including in Croatia and Slovenia. Only a small percentage of people are lucky enough to slip past the surveillance of the Croatian forces, which are reported to be equipped, along the border, with 150 cameras, a helicopter, night-vision drones, guard dogs and snipers. The EU is planning to triple its spending on border-protection measures, meaning it will only become increasingly harder, if not impossible, to pass through undetected in the future.

Getting from Serbia to Bosnia

As an aid-worker who worked in the Serbian capital Belgrade and in Subotica, a town in Serbia on the border with Hungary between September 2017 and June 2018, this author saw how migrants abandoned attempts to cross into Hungary and other routes out of Serbia. Instead, in January of this year, they started crossing into Bosnia. Phone calls between groups of friends split between the two countries went back and forth and almost always resulted in more migrants embarking on the journey west to Bosnia.

Between January and March 2018, a little over 1,300 migrants arrived in Bosnia. The number of new arrivals to Bosnia increased significantly in April 2018 and reached a peak in early May when an estimated 400 migrants were arriving daily. This resulted, in total, in more than 6,250 new arrivals in Bosnia between April and June.

The Bosnian government tried to clamp down on the route around April when it realised that the local authorities and the only state-run migrant facility at that time, the Asylum Centre in Delijaš, a town 40 kilometres from the Bosnia capital, Sarajevo, were unable to accommodate the influx of new arrivals. However, by May 2018 there were so many people in the Bosnian capital, many had no option but to sleep rough in the park near the City Hall. The NGO, Refugees Aid Serbia (RAS), assessed that in mid-May, there were around 1,000 migrants and refugees in and around Sarajevo (see here). It also reported:

These figures include the asylum facility in Delijaš outside Sarajevo where between 120 and 150 migrants/refugees are sheltered; UNHCR-sponsored hotels/hostels which then accommodate up to 400 beneficiaries; accommodation provided by volunteers and locals, where around 120 people are sheltered; up to 350 migrants/refugees residing in the park near the City Hall, and an unknown number of those sleeping in squats around Sarajevo, which is not below 100.

Out of the 350 people sleeping rough, the NGO reported that 40 per cent were women and 14 per cent were children under the age of 16. This situation was a wake-up call to the government, (see here). In a matter of a few week, the EU provided funding for the Refugee Reception Centre in Salakovac, a village two hours west of the capital, near the city of Mostar. On 18 May 2018, local police forces took 270 migrants from Sarajevo to the newly-opened centre (see here). Nevertheless, like the Asylum Centre in Delijaš, spaces were primarily allocated to families with young children and in both centres, there was capacity for fewer than 400 migrants.

The decision to prioritise families with young children, in combination with the general shortage of accommodation, meant that almost all the single men were forced to continue to sleep rough. The many single men that did not get a place in the shelters moved to be closer to the only food distribution that continued after 18 May 2018, this was carried out twice a day by an unnamed group of international volunteers at the Sarajevo Central Railway Station (see here). The swift departure of migrants from the park near the City Hall was also linked, some local volunteers told AAN, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Sarajevo on 20 May 2018. Erdogan was to be walking through the area with the Bosniak member of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic and, the volunteers believed, the authorities did not want the ‘unsightly’ migrant camp to be on show.

In mid-June and at a time when donations were dwindling, the author met men hanging around the railway station. At night, at any one time, 150 or so migrants were sleeping in the sheltered crevasses of the train station building or behind the backs of similarly large buildings on nearby streets. Although the same group of international volunteers tried to distribute sleeping materials, the lack of donations had meant that migrants were being given only one thin blanket each, or a thick blanket between three. It was not enough. Sarajevo is located in a mountain gorge and therefore typically reaches much colder temperatures than other areas of the country. This desperate setting led migrants to accelerate their attempts to get to the country’s northern border with Croatia and be nearer to the EU.

Waiting in the north to cross the border

Most migrants want to get to the north of Bosnia, which is closer to the border with Croatia. They include families who had been housed in either the Salakovac or Delijaš reception and asylum centres who opted to leave these government-run facilities in the south to prioritise attempts to cross the border. Bosnia’s mountainous terrain makes the long distance between the two state-run facilities in the south and the country’s northern border a difficult and extremely slow journey to make. One man from Kunduz told this author that he and his family were refused re-entry to the Mostar asylum facility following one failed ‘game’ attempt. They had not returned from the border within the 72-hour time limit that migrants are permitted to be away from the premises. Matters in the north were very difficult for migrant families until 24 July 2018, when a government-run facility known as the Hotel Sedra was established on the outskirts of the northern city of Bihać to accommodate 140 families with young children. Up till then, all families in the north had been living alongside single men in squats, in either Bihać or the town of Velika Kladuša. (5)

According to a report published in June 2018, the Ministry of Security in Bosnia, in partnership with United Nations agencies and donor organisations, have been seeking to convert an old factory building in Velika Kladuša linked to the ex-Yugoslav industrial food giant Agrokomerc into a government-run facility. This would accommodate all the unhoused migrants in both Bihaćand Velika Kladuša. At the time of publication, the four thousand or so single men of various nationalities in the north were continuing to squat.

In trips to the two main places in northern Bosnia where migrants are residing, the author was able to get more detail about the Afghan population living there.

Bihać squat: a derelict building

In a small restaurant near the town’s train station, as a thick crowd of Pakistanis and Moroccans chanting loudly in reaction to the restaurant’s World Cup Football broadcast in July 2018, an Afghan from Baghlan told this author he reckoned he was one of only about 150 Afghans in the area. That is out of a total migrant population, according to a local Red Cross estimate, of 3,500. The dominant group here is Punjabi Pakistanis. Most of the Afghans in Bihać are ethnic Tajiks, from the provinces of Kabul, Parwan and Kunduz, and most are in family groups with children. There are also a few Hazaras, again families.

Some of the Afghans are living in rented private properties. Most, however, are in the town’s main squat, a large, derelict, four-storey building next to a small patch of woodland, no further than a ten-minute walk away from Bihać town centre. In July, many of the families were preferring to live outside the building, positioning their tents in among the woodland’s thick, tall trees. Parents were intent on keeping their children at a distance from the building’s glassless windows and doorless doors, or, in other words, huge gaping-holes on the four faces of the tall building.

This author saw several Afghan children happily participating in small-scale youth activities put on by Save the Children. They sat under a white canopy erected in amongst the trees with their mothers. The girls and boys cut out paper shapes and as they replied to questions asked by an international audience, switching between the languages of Dari, English and Serbian. (6) (Serbian, is mutually intelligible with Bosnian, and thus was practiced just as much here). The withdrawn tone of their parents’ voices stood in sharp contrast to their children’s smiles.

All of the Afghan families that this author spoke to in Bosnia had been waiting while in Serbia for their names to turn up on the so-called ‘Hungary List’, a scheme, somewhat dubious in nature and origin, that was run by the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees and was supposed to prioritise vulnerable families. (7) On 23 January 2018, the scheme was reduced to such an extent that only one person per day was permitted entry to each of Hungary’s two processing centres, a decision that led to the abandonment of the wait by the majority of applicant families. Instead they decided to put their trust in the smugglers and thereby ended up in Bosnia. Some were bitter.

“They played with our lives for money,” one 18-year-old girl told this author that she blamed the Serbian authorities, who had accepted financial bribes from families in return for being ‘bumped-up’ several places on the list, for the 17 months that she and her family had spent in a reception centre in Divljana, on Serbia’s southern border with Bulgaria. She had become distrustful after other families, those who had arrived months later than themselves to Serbia, had been transferred more quickly to one of Hungary’s two processing centres – as she understood, they had been unfairly overtaken on the list.

Velika Kladuša: a very informal camp

The majority of Afghans in Bosnia choose to reside in Velika Kladuša, a town very close to the northern border with Croatia. In the absence of government-run accommodation facilities, an informal camp has been created behind the town’s bus station. In an over-crowded field, migrants alongside volunteers had ripped bed sheets to use as sun-shades and had built makeshift shelters out of wood and several layers of grey tarpaulin.

The grassroots migrant-support group, SOS Velika Kladuša, estimate that 1,400 migrants are living in the town. This author, based on a series of observations across Velika Kladuša between 13 and 24 July 2018, estimated that as many as a third of the migrants are Afghans. The population of Afghans here is far larger than in Bihać. They come from the provinces of Nangrahar, Kunar, Kunduz, Logar, Kabul and Baghlan and most are Pashtun, single men travelling alone; the few families present, as in Bihać, tend to be Tajik.

The volunteers at the No Name Kitchen (NNK) estimated there to be 20 to 50 new migrants arriving every day into Velika Kladuša.  This high number meant there was always an ongoing deficit of the sleeping and shelter materials items provided by NNK and SOS Velika Kladuša. The author saw Afghans bringing in no-longer wanted blankets – damp and patchy with dirt – that were then redistributed to newcomers. She saw one new group of Afghans re-using the old blankets and putting up an old camping tent that had been previously abandoned following a heavy rainstorm as shelter for the night.

On 24 July 2018, the families present in Velika Kladuša were taken to the newly-opened government-run ‘Hotel Sedra’. It offered a much-needed clean, sanitary space for changing children’s nappies and a private room providing much-needed privacy for women. For those who arrived after this date, getting into this shelter was more uncertain. Hotel Sedra had no source of drinking water throughout the month of August 2018, so the authorities’ plan to make a total of 500 spaces available was put on hold. Some newcomers were lucky enough to be assigned the rooms of families who had left for ‘the game’ and had not returned within the 72 hours given to residents to be away before they lost their space. Others, less fortunate, were among the five to ten families or so, who, for one reason or another, found themselves in the makeshift shelters in the informal camp in Velika Kladuša.

Although single Afghan men in Velika Kladuša had no access to a government-run camp in the north, for most, this was low on their list of priorities. For the time being, they aimed to remain in close proximity to the border where they could react quickly to the call of a smuggler and attempt ‘the game’ at a moment’s notice. As one twenty-three-year-old Kunari said: “I don’t want a tent, I don’t want blankets, I don’t want clothes… I want there to be no border.”

Moving on from Bosnia – with or without money

In conversations with Afghans staying in the north of Bosnia, it was made clear to this author that a vast number of travellers, Afghans and others, were seeking to complete the route from northwest Bosnia to northeast Italy with the assistance of a smuggler. At a cost of 2,500-3,500 Euros, a migrant can be transported in an unmarked taxi for a large part of the journey, in what the migrants call a ‘paid taxi game’ that is designed to get them into Italy.

Afghans and others without money for smugglers, whose lingering stay in neighbouring Serbia was the result of not having enough money to pay for help to cross the border, believed that getting into Croatia and then Slovenia and then on into Italy was easier from Bosnia than Serbia. The distance between Velika Kladuša and Italy could, at its narrowest points, be attempted entirely on foot and therefore could be achieved without the assistance of a smuggler. Afghans reported that this journey took approximately twelve days.

One Afghan from Logar who had arrived in Serbia in March 2016, two days after the closure of the Balkan Corridor, said he had been stuck in Serbia for 28 months. Unable to pay a smuggler the 2,000 to 3,500 Euros needed to get to Italy, he had tried ‘the game’ several times on foot from Šid (Serbia’s north-west border town with Croatia). He viewed the failure of these attempts as inevitable, but kept trying. Because of the flat terrain that make migrants more visible, he explained how the long journey from Šid to Italy via Croatia and Slovenia, was really only plausible by container lorry or unmarked taxi. In light of this, the Logari had relocated from Serbia to Velika Kladuša to try to take advantage of Bosnia’s shorter route to Italy. One of his friends said the route also offered other advantages. Its rugged terrain is physically demanding, but the steep mountain roads double up as hiding places, offering some protection from the police.

Attempting to get from Bosnia to Italy without papers is risky. Five or six Afghans pointed out the red marks, the bumps and bruises on their friends’ backs and to a migrant who had returned wounded from playing ‘the game.’ Allegations against the Croatian police, that they are beating irregular migrants, have been collected by the No Name Kitchen (NNK) and uploaded onto the online platform, borderviolence.eu. This database of refugee testimonies seeks to shed light on the vast number of human rights violations that take place against migrants in Croatia, Hungary and other countries located ‘on the margins of the EU’.  Although usually only men are beaten – and all men consistently report suffering some form of violence – a minority of women also report having been beaten as well. In one case, an Iranian mother said that she and her fifteen-year-old daughter were forced to take off their clothes and were strip-searched.

One case reported by NNK involved a group of ten Afghans, who included one family with two young children, who were detected on the route to Italy on 8 July 2018. They were stopped by a civilian car carrying seven Croatian police officers. In the next couple of hours, according to the report, the male members of the group were beaten with sticks. One was later confirmed to have fractured bones in his elbow by the doctors in Velika Kladuša. The Afghans, including the children, had been forced to lie down with their face on their ground whilst the Croatian officers checked their bags and clothes: they allegedly took 1,000 Euros in total and kept all the phones they found, keeping some and smashing others. Such damage to phones is a huge problem for migrants, who rely on the phones’ GPS to navigate a route in the absence of a smuggler. If their phones are broken, their ability to ‘re-play the game’ rested on them being able to buy a new one.

A migrant showing their smashed phones in Velika Kladusa, a town in north-west Bosnia. Photo: NNK, June 2018

50 to 100 migrants are estimated to have been returned from Croatia to Bosnia each week during July and August 2018 in a process known as ‘push-back’. This is when the authorities prevent migrants from seeking protection on their territory and return them to the neighbouring country they have arrived from. (8) This practice is considered illegal because it undermines a refugee’s right to seek asylum as stated in international and EU law. Yet, there was little remorse amongst the Croatian authorities responsible.

On August 2018, Balkan Insight, an investigative journalism platform that covers stories in southeast Europe, reported how Davor Božinović, the Minister of Interior of Croatia, denied allegations of police violence. In July, Croatia’s Police Union, SPS, went as far as to commend the police for their attempts to guard Croatia’s external border. Some media sources have reported that Croatia’s hardline effort to protect what is the EU’s external border is motivated by its desire to show itself fit to become part of the Schengen Area, the zone made up of 26 countries which do not have internal border controls.

Croatian police violence was not the only cause of problem faced by migrants that had recently returned from ‘the game.’ “Eating leaves, eating herbs, drinking mountain water,” reported one 18-year-old Afghan from Kabul as other sources of trouble. When his rations of energy drinks and biscuits finished, he had survived five days on the journey with a sore and empty stomach. Another young Afghan, from Nangrahar, had also found himself starving. He had been waiting for an unmarked taxicab for three days in an abandoned field shelter. This period had been so dangerous for two young babies in the group that the smuggler, who was with them, deemed it safer to turn back; he led the migrants into the comparative safety of the Croatian police.

Being pushed back can be not only unpleasant but dangerous. A father of three children from Kunduz explained how his family’s push-back from Croatia to Bosnia had involved the Croatian Police forcing a total of 28 passengers into the back of a van. “I was dying, I couldn’t breathe… I have a heart problem.” With no windows or air-conditioning, his elderly father had almost fainted. Responding to the banging noises made by the migrants locked in the van, the vehicle had eventually pulled over on the side of the road to allow the passengers to breathe fresh air for five minutes.

Reaching Slovenia, but still facing difficulties

Those who travelled successfully through Croatia were likely to face new difficulties in Slovenia. The Afghans without enough money to pay smugglers knew their chances of reaching Italy were slim and as a result, some considered the idea of claiming asylum in Slovenia as a fall-back for if their attempts to get into Italy failed. These were mostly Afghans who had been stuck in Serbia since the closure of the Balkan Corridor.

During this author’s visit to Velika Kladuša between 13 and 24 July 2018, the twenty or so Afghans she met who had tried to claim asylum in Slovenia had been refused and returned to Croatia, which, in turn, had led the Croatian police to slip them over the border back into Bosnia. Several explained how unaccompanied minors (under 18 years of age) had been split from the adult members of the group. These unaccompanied minors were the only migrants who were permitted to remain in the country.

Many of the adult migrants, almost all of whom looked to be in their mid-twenties, said that, in the hours after they had told officers they wanted to claim asylum, they had been made to sign a document they did not understand at the police station. After signing this document that ‘warrants’ their removal from Slovenia, they are resultantly ‘push-backed’ into Croatia. Although, as one volunteer at No Name Kitchen (NNK) who has been collecting testimonies from migrants in Velika Kladuša says, usually, migrants do not get given a copy of the document they have signed. In one case this author saw, an Afghan from Baghlan did return to Velika Kladuša with a paper admitted by the Slovenia police. It seems that, in addition, he was given a reduced 230 Euro fine for violating Article 145 (1) of the Aliens Act, which prescribes a fine of 500 to 1,200 Euros (see here) for the “unauthorised crossing of external borders at places other than border crossing points or at times other than the fixed opening hours In Slovenia”. It is unclear how may migrants crossing illegally into Slovenia were issued this fine.

In the first four months of 2018, the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) reported that 798 asylum claims were submitted in Slovenia only in the first four months of 2018 compared to fewer than 1,500 in the whole of 2017. The report highlights how these higher numbers have put a noticeable strain on the reception centre in Ljubljana, the single facility for new arrivals in Slovenia. The higher number of asylum claims may have triggered the routine denials made to migrants to claim in recent months. On 4 July 2018, when one Afghan expressed his intention to seek asylum in a police station in the village of Stara Lipa (located on the Slovenian south-east border with Croatia), a police officer replied that “No chance to take asylum here, in Slovenia are 600 migrants and here is no space for more”.

Afghans in Bosnia: full of doubts?

This author met a handful of Afghans who had plans to return to Serbia, either wanting to return to the more familiar networks there or affected by the fragility of the situation in Bosnia. A seventeen-year-old boy from Kunar, for example, said he was planning to work backwards. The following day, he was going to take a series of buses in the direction of Visegrad, a town bordering Serbia, where he would then walk through the forest in the direction of the Serbian border, the path that he had taken in the opposite direction four weeks before. Unlike those newly arriving into Bosnia, he wanted to be seen by the border police and pushed back into Serbia. Glancing at his sleeping place reluctantly, a dirty mat on a floor scattered with onion peel and empty milk cartons, it was easy to see why he might gravitate towards the relative comforts of the Krnjača Asylum Centre in the outskirts of Serbia’s capital Belgrade. Since it was recently decided that the Obrenovac Transit Centre was unsuitable for minors, Krnjača now accommodates all new unaccompanied minors.

For other Afghans now in Bosnia, their current experience mirrors the similarly hopeless time they spent in Serbia: they know that, either way, their situation is unlikely to improve. “Bosnia is the same as Serbia, except there, we had a room and here we have a tent,” a nineteen-year old girl from Kabul explained.

One Afghan from Nangrahar, who was living in a dirty barn in Velika Kladuša with thirty or so other Afghans, described how little he had gained from relocating from Serbia into Bosnia. He had spent a combined twenty months in the two countries and was ready to give up, following a series of failed ‘game’ attempts made on foot because of his inability to pay smugglers. Unsure what to do, he knew there were very few options available to him.

He had paid 5,000 Euros to smugglers to reach this point on the journey. The fear of wasting this money, in combination with the threat of having to return to Afghanistan as ‘a failure’ were reasons to keep him in virtual limbo in Bosnia for now. (See this AAN dispatch on what awaits those who opt to return to Afghanistan). An older member of the group he was travelling with had made it his duty to make the Nangrahari continue to try to reach Italy and on into western Europe. This friend was desperate that he not waste the huge sum of money he had already spent reaching Bosnia.

In spite of the obstacles for Afghans lacking the money to pay smugglers to progress onwards into the EU, they feel they must continue to attempt ‘the game.’ The failure associated with returning to Afghanistan and the lack of social and economic opportunities in Bosnia – where 60 per cent of young people are unemployed – leaves Afghans with little option but to continue to try their luck at the border. Afghans in Velika Kladuša are stuck refugees, like those in Turkey and Greece (see this AAN dispatch about situation in Turkey).

In Velika Kladuša, migrants who have ‘gone crazy’ was often the subject of the conversations among the community. Most conversations concluded with statements about zendagi (Dari for ‘life’, also used in Pashto) and qesmet (Arabic for ‘destiny’ also used in Pashto). Almost always, Afghans referred to both when speaking about the series of borders that lay ahead of them. Some of those in Velika Kladuša said their lives were over, but if they succeeded in reaching the EU, it would start again. Their destiny was understood as something that awaited them in western Europe.

Conclusion: another blocked border to the EU?

For the many Afghans who can pay a smuggler and get an unmarked taxicab, whether they go from northern Serbia or northern Bosnia to western Europe is of little importance. A large number of those without the means to pay smugglers believe they must relocate from Serbia to Bosnia. They have some hope of successfully travelling Bosnia’s mountainous and rugged routes into Croatia. In between attempts at ‘the game’, they stroll aimlessly around town, waiting for hoped-for money transfers from friends in Europe or Afghanistan. The money will buy replacement phones, phone-credit, power-banks and energy drinks for the journey. Afghans in Bosnia, like those in Serbia, are stuck, but still endeavouring to move on.

 

(*) Elizabeth Wait is an aid-worker and researcher currently based in Serbia. Elizabeth went to Bosnia between 10 and 24 July 2018 where she collected the information for this dispatch.

Edited by Kate Clark and Jelena Bjelica

 

 

 

(1) Bosnia and Herzegovina is usually shortened to Bosnia.

(2) The 7,600 refugees and migrants who have arrived to Bosnia since January 2018 are only a fraction of the over 920,000 refugees and migrants who, according to European Commission statistics passed through Serbia on the route to the European Union in late 2015 and the first three months of 2016 (see also this AAN dossier on Afghan migration to Europe), the time when the Balkan Corridor was open.

(3) When the Balkan Corridor closed on 7 March 2016, the UNHCR recorded 1,500 trapped migrants in Serbia. The failure to open an alternative scheme to relocate them to northern or western Europe meant their number rapidly increased, as new people arrived. In December 2016, 7,000 migrants were known to be stranded in Serbia accommodated across 18 government-run asylum, reception and transit centres, 49 per cent of whom were Afghans. The UNHCR’s record of the number of migrants in Serbia across 2016 can be found here.

(4) The Asylum Information Database (AIDA) notes the breakdown of asylum applications in Serbia. In 2017, although 236 applications were submitted, just three individuals received refugee status and 11 people received subsidiary protection in Serbia. (See the report here).

The thousands of other refugees stuck in Serbia were without the legal documentation required to access the labour market or rent property and therefore were barred from building a life for themselves in the country. This desperate situation forced migrants to travel onwards to western or northern Europe. Some attempted to cross the fenced-off border with Hungary or the country’s highly guarded border with Croatia, as AAN reported in 2017 (see here). Many of those who were unable to pay the 2,000 to 3,500 Euro fee charged by smugglers to facilitate these journeys were consequently stuck in Serbia.

(5) At the time of publication, no formal statements had been released online or otherwise regarding the opening of Hotel Sedra, the new accommodation facility for refugees in the outskirts of Bihać, in northern Bosnia. International volunteers involved in the move-in process provided information informally to AAN.

(6) Besides their native language, children were usually confident practising the languages that they had learnt in either their camp or in the local school they had attended in Serbia.

(7) The names were put on the list by the Serbian Commissariat for Refugees, once the people registered at the temporary reception centers in Serbia. The list was then communicated to the so-called community leader (an asylum seeker) who is chosen by the Commissariat and who is placed in the pre-transit zone on the Serbian side of the border. The community leader then communicated the list to the Hungarian authorities. The Hungarian authorities allow people into the transit zones based on these lists and communicates the names of the people entering the transit zone in the following days to the community leader, who then informs the Commissariat who then informs the people. There was no official communication between the Hungarian and Serbian authorities on this matter. (see here and here).

(8) Oxfam in cooperation with The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) and the Macedonia Young Lawyers Association (MYLA) in their report, “A dangerous ‘game’. The pushback of migrants, including refugees, at Europe’s borders”, define a ‘pushback’ as:

… the term used to describe the practice by authorities of preventing people from seeking protection on their territory by forcibly returning them to another country… pushbacks violate international and EU law because they undermine people’s right to seek asylum.

To read further, see the report here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Given growing water scarcity and pollution, increasing numbers of residents in Kabul city are struggling to provide enough safe water for their households. Many are forced to turn to the expanding private water business for their needs: eitherby paying for water from mobile water tankers, subscribing to local private water supply companies or buying bottled “mineral water.” Others incur travel costs to get water from public taps or pay for purifiers to filter contaminated water from their wells. The mushrooming private water business is expected to expand even further given the country’s changing water context as a result of climate change, population growth and government negligence in terms of prevention and regulation. AAN researcher Said Reza Kazemi presents his observations and conversations with households and water stakeholders. He concludes that if these challenges are not addressed, the implications of a potential water crisis are likely to be dire.

A changing water context

The water situation is changing in Afghanistan due to several factors: increasing population, the overexploitation and mismanagement of water resources, groundwater depletion and contamination, and climate change. These stresses can be strongly felt in the Kabul River Basin that feeds the city of Kabul and houses 35 per cent or around 8 million of Afghanistan’s population (see page 95 of this journal). Of these, about 4.5 million live in Kabul city alone and this is expected to increase to around 8 million by 2050. This makes Kabul the fifth fastest growing city in the world and among the world’s most water-stressed cities.

As a result, water issues facing Kabul inhabitants are manifold. First is the immense shortage of water. A study by the German development bank KfW has estimated Kabul’s groundwater potential to be about 44 million cubic metres per year (MCM/year) while the city’s water demand in 2015 was 123.4 MCM/year, revealing a striking imbalance between water availability and demand for water. This means that a large part of current demand for water is met from other sources, such as groundwater from aquifers in the Logar-Upper Kabul River Basin. At the same time, many people are left with little or no water. The Afghanistan Urban Water Supply and Sewerage Corporation (AUWSSC), the country’s water and sewage utility, has estimated that about 30 per cent of residents in Kabul city have access to piped water and only around 10 per cent of them receive potable water (see here, and page 49 of this report). Aggravated by climate change (read our recent dispatch here), groundwater in several parts of Kabul city has fallen by 20 metres in recent years (see also this media report). This has serious implications for the sustainability of water supply in the future because “the groundwater extraction rate is faster than the recharge rate” (see here).

Water in Kabul is not just scarce. It is also increasingly unsafe, especially for drinking, cooking and general household use. A team of BBC Persian journalists recently tested Kabul’s water in the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) laboratories (see their report here). They found at least 20 harmful bacteria in the 100 millimetres (mm) they sampled at two locations in western and northern parts of the city. Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) had earlier warned that 70 per cent of Kabul’s groundwater had been so contaminated with “pernicious chemicals and bacteria” that it had become “unusable”. Doctors at the Kabul-based Infectious Diseases Hospital have confirmed that in recent years, 70 per cent of their patients have fallen ill from drinking polluted water.

The AUWSSC, in a workshop in March 2018, linked the poor quality of Kabul’s groundwater to a “lack of civic awareness, excessive and unjust water extraction by the industrial sector and the leakage of wastewater from the household and industrial sectors” (see here). As examples of “unjust water extraction,” the AUWSSC cited excessive use of water from “water pumps, pools and car washing stations” across the city. To address this excessive, unsustainable water consumption, there are increasing calls for what has been described as “hydro-cognizance” or water knowledge in Afghanistan because water has received too little attention in the country. (1)

Two families and their quest for household water

Afghanistan’s water problems are felt most acutely at the household level within the family, particularly in rapidly growing urban centres such as Kabul. AAN spoke with members of two families who explained how the shortage and poor quality of water was affecting their lives and eating into their resources.

“Our electric pump is on from night to morning but the reservoir on our roof rarely gets filled,” the 65-year-old retired father of an extended, lower-middle-class family of 14 members living in the Darulaman area of Kabul city told AAN. He lives with two of his sons and their families in the same compound. He explained that this was caused by a combination of mounting water shortage in their well and low-voltage electricity in their alley in district 6 of Kabul city (like many households in Kabul, their primary water source was a well with an electric pump in their courtyard). He worried about what would happen if their well dried up, as digging a new well would be expensive and cost them around Afs 50,000 (approximately USD 714.29, if Afs 70 is exchanged for USD 1) as well as being an inconvenience. It may also be unsuccessful. A neighbouring family needed to dig a new well but had failed to find water, even though they dug deep in three locations in their courtyard, and were forced to abandon their house last year. There was then no other water supply source, public or private. That house remains abandoned.

Instead the family has been thinking of subscribing to a new private water supply company that has begun providing piped water to residents in parts of Darulaman, although not yet to their neighbourhood. This private supplier has dug a deep well of over 200 metres near Darulaman and installed the electrification, reservoir and piping system needed to pump water to households. Subscribing to this water supplier costs Afs 8,000 (USD 114.29) per house – a one-time expense – and the water is sold for Afs 30 (USD 0.43) per cubic metre. Given the desirable level of a minimum of 80 litres per capita per day (LPCD), this 14-member family would need at least 33.6 cubic metres of water per month, costing them Afs 1,008 (USD 14.4). This might not be a huge sum for a lower-middle-class family but it is a significant amount for economically poor and disadvantaged households, especially on rocky hills in and around the city where private water supply is more than twice as expensive.

For the last couple of years, the family has been boiling their well water to use as drinking water as well as buying it in heavy plastic water-cooler containers (19 litres for Afs 30 or USD 0.43 in their area). The young male members of the family carry these containers on their shoulders, or sometimes they put two or more of them in a wheelbarrow; it is impossible for the old or frail members of the family, such as the father, to do this. The family became especially concerned about the decreasing quality of groundwater in their area after one of the men in their family developed a stomach ulcer caused by the intestinal bacteria Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). A relative of theirs living in the Kart-e Se area was infected with the intestinal illness amoebic dysentery and lost a lot of weight as a result.

The water problem affects men and women differently. In this family the father’s two married sons, both of whom are employed and have office jobs, are mostly responsible for paying for increasing water expenses and in some cases for bringing water home. The women, including the mother and the two daughters-in-law, shoulder other important responsibilities. They often plug in the electric pump when there is electricity and unplug it after many long hours for the reservoir to get filled. More significantly, any water shortage affects the women much more than the men. Less water means greater difficulty in attending to the kids, cooking, washing and house- and family-keeping in general, such as hosting relatives. At the same time, water-borne illnesses are becoming a serious family concern. Water-related problems are thus having an impact on the daily lives of Kabul households, particularly women’s.

Other parts of the city face similar issues. In Old Taimani, an area located in district 4 of the city, a middle-aged father responsible for an eight-member family of middle class status talked to AAN about the problems they had been having with the well in their house:

“Our well went dry a couple of months ago. We dug another well but it hit sand some 60 metres underground, making it difficult and unfit to dig deeper. So we stopped and have just begun digging another well in a different location, in front of the entrance to our house. We plan to dig some 100 metres. In the past, we used to reach water at about 40 metres, now it is at 60 metres, but we plan to go 40 metres deeper to get more groundwater. The whole thing including the well-diggers and plumbers, pipes and electrification will cost us about 60,000 afghanis [USD 857.14].”

The struggles faced by these two families are those of many residents in Kabul city, who try to provide their households with enough water that is safe to use and drink. For low-income families and the poor, getting water home is far more difficult. Access to clean water for household consumption has become a quest for everyone in the city, physically, financially and psychologically. But this quest is related to the wider context of access to water on a global scale, a context that has gradually, if not rapidly, turned domestic water supply into a business in urban centres like Kabul that targets families such as the ones quoted above.

Where do most households get their water?

Starting with the economically poor living in the suburbs and on the rocky hills of the city, many rely on public taps for their household water needs. According to AUWSSC estimates that have been confirmed by recent research, about 390 public taps in or near mosques, schools and public roads provide water for some 580,000 people. The water is free of charge, but difficult to fetch because the taps are often far from their homes. It usually falls on young children, often girls, to carry the water home in buckets and other containers, sometimes on donkeys or mules in some places. People of a slightly higher economic standing often use a rickshaw or car to fill their containers at the public taps and bring them home for domestic use. As the water is piped from AUWSSC-run well fields, (2) it is generally regarded as safe for drinking and cooking.

In areas of Kabul where economically poor and disadvantaged residents have no access to public taps, water is often supplied by small private companies operating water tankers that move from place to place, filling 200-litre barrels for about Afs 50 (USD 0.71). In some places, such as Khairkhana, a barrel of water is twice as expensive (i.e. Afs 100 or USD 1.43), as the area is situated on a hill and more difficult to access, a local told AAN. But there are questions about the cleanliness of this water.

Those who are better-off economically use other, easier options to supply their households with water. Over 60,000 houses are subscribers of a patchy public water supply system that provides piped water to specific areas of the city, according to AUWSSC spokesman Sayed Nawid Saeedi who talked to AAN. The rate for this supply of public water is fixed: Afs 25 (USD 0.36) per cubic metre. Because of water scarcity, most parts of Kabul city that are connected to the public water supply grid only have running water for a couple of hours per day or per couple of days. Residents told AAN they have to store water for use until the following day(s).

Many families with courtyards have dug their own wells ever deeper as the groundwater table has been descending (see also here). This has boosted the well-digging business in town, as people have begun digging wells of 100 metres and deeper, as referred to by the second family quoted above. The cost is around Afs 200–300 (USD 2.86–4.29) per metre, depending on the geological features of the soil, according to two well-diggers who talked to AAN.

Some families who have wells have also subscribed to public or private water supplies because water quality is better and more importantly they want to diversify their water sources. Others are using purifiers to filter their well water. Several companies have seized on this opportunity and now sell water purifiers in the city. To grow their business, they have resorted to expensive advertisements on local TV stations and billboards in well-off areas of the city. This author spoke to families in Kabul city who had bought American, Indian, Italian and Taiwanese water purifiers, costing between Afs 10,000 and 17,500 (USD 142.86 to 250.00).

With specific regards to potable water (see also page 75 of this report), many private companies have developed to provide “mineral water.” Vans deliver plastic water-cooler containers to embassies, companies and private homes in well-off areas of Kabul city, turning the supply of potable water into “a matter of money” (see here). The plastic water-cooler containers are also sold in shops for about Afs 300 each (USD 4.29) and the water in it for Afs 50 (USD 0.71) – this is astonishing because it is about ten times less and represents the cost of a 200-litre barrel of water provided by mobile water tankers in economically poor, disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the city. According to the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) and the Environmental Health Directorate of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), there were 87 registered private mineral water supply companies in 2016, with 58 companies active in Kabul city alone. AUWSSC spokesman Saeedi provided even higher figures, stating that there were over 250 companies offering mineral water in Afghanistan, with most of them focused on the city of Kabul. Many of these companies have dug deep private wells in and around the city where they get their water. But there have been complaints about the quality, including the colour and taste of the water, and even reports that “discarded commercial water bottles … [were] being refilled from wells, resealed and sold as pure” (see here and here). The MoPH does some monitoring of mineral water supply companies and has, at least in one case, issued warnings to ten companies to improve their products.

A lack of regulation and a thriving private business

The lack of regulation of private water supply companies is an indication of a lack of coordination among the relevant Afghan government agencies in general. Several government agencies work in the area of water supply in Afghanistan, including the Water Affairs Regulation Directorate of the Ministry of Water and Energy (MEW), the Water Supply Directorate of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MUDH), the NEPA, the AUWSSC and municipalities in urban centres such as the capital, Kabul, as well as the MRRD in rural areas. But coordination has been generally lacking, mainly because the growth of urban centres such as Kabul has simply overtaken the relevant authorities. AUWSSC spokesman Saeedi told AAN that their agency did not have the power to regulate or monitor the work of private water supply companies. This was corroborated by a former official from the MUDH Water Supply Directorate, who spoke to AAN on condition of anonymity and conceded that not only was there no overarching urban water policy within the Afghan government but that it lacked a single, national authority to monitor urban water supply and enforce applicable rules, notably the Water Law (e.g. see article 21 on licensing water supply, article 30 on addressing water pollution, article 35 on penalties for water offences and article 38 on digging deep wells here and an unofficial English translation here). (3) This was because, as the official said, “water is yet to become a priority for the government.”

The neglect and inactivity of the Afghan government has provided a space for private water supply companies to expand considerably. According to the AUWSSC spokesman, there are some 72 private companies supplying water to thousands of families across Kabul city. “They operate illegally. Their operation is substandard. They charge their subscribers as much as they can up to Afs 50 [USD 0.71] and even more per cubic metre of water. They extract groundwater which is a public good, charge people on the installation of pipes and then sell the water to the people,” stated AUWSSC spokesman Saeedi. Similarly, there have been calls for the regulation of private water supply companies that some have been accused of “having looted Kabul’s groundwater”. It is mostly because individuals and companies have been left free to dig very deep wells and extract groundwater depending on their financial means and political influence without any regulation by the government. Much of this groundwater extraction is aimed at selling water to residents or using the water in the manufacturing of beverages for sale in the marketplace. Several residents have told AAN that they have paid between Afs 10,000 and 30,000 (USD 142.86 to 428.57) to subscribe to private water supply companies and pay between Afs 30 and 80 (USD 0.43 to 1.14) per cubic metre of water. However, the government currently faces a fait accompli to regulate a private water business that has grown in a legal vacuum.

This author has taken a close look at one private water supplier in Kabul city. This supplier operates in Omid-e Sabz Township in district 6 of Kabul city. The officer in charge of water supply in this township, Mohammadpour, told AAN that around 1,700 households were their subscribers. The subscription fee is Afs 12,000 (USD 171.43) and each cubic metre of water costs Afs 35 (USD 0.5). To provide the water, they have dug five deep wells of 200–250 metres. They also use four tankers to add a daily amount of 300 cubic metres of water to add to their reservoir and then pipe the water to their subscribers. Given the daily consumption of 1,100 to 1,200 cubic metres of water in the township, the water supply company is not able to provide running water 24/7; they only provide water for about a couple of hours per day. Mohammadpour confirmed that his company and the private water supply companies he knew were not regulated or monitored by the government. One reason for the continued operation of companies such as Mohammadpour’s is that it is a beneficial business both for the subscribers that can provide their households with water where the public water supply is non-existent, and for suppliers. A similar business is run by the other 70-plus private water supply companies that operate in different parts of Kabul city.

Providing households in inaccessible areas with water is more difficult, such as those located on rocky hillsides in and around the city, a situation that exposes residents to potential exploitation by water suppliers. One local representative in Afshar, an area in district 5 of Kabul city, told AAN that local residents were having many problems with a demanding supplier that had been charging them more and more for supplying them with water. The fee for one cubic metre of water had risen from Afs 45 (USD 0.64) to Afs 80 (USD 1.14) in a couple of years, and the supplier had recently demanded a further increase of Afs 5 (USD 0.07). “Once the water supply system was installed, the supplier noticed we were in need and in a weak position, so he has kept asking us for more money for water. We’ve approached various authorities even the complaints handling section of the parliament but no one cared about us. So we’re left on our own to deal with our water problems,” said the local representative.

Projects and prospects

There are increasing pressures both internally and externally on the Afghan government to take the water issue and the broader effects of climate change more seriously. Most recently, on 14 August 2018, in an open dialogue organised by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and the EU Delegation in Kabul, the participants acknowledged “the importance of groundwater for Afghan livelihoods … and that the development and protection of groundwater has received too little attention in Afghanistan, in part because it is not well understood” (AREU Press Release, 16 August 2018, seen by the author). Days earlier, on 8 August 2018, the European Union (EU) held a dialogue with Afghan stakeholders in Kabul to highlight climate change impacts including the “reduction of underground waters”.

There are also indications that the Afghan government has started working on the water issue, but very few practical outcomes have been achieved thus far. For the waters that flow into neighbouring countries, the MEW has made the construction of hydropower dams a priority – a vision promoted by President Ashraf Ghani – that has raised concerns in countries such as Iran. (4) For the water supply to Kabul city specifically, the Afghan government has several projects, mostly under study, including the Shahtoot dam, the Panjshir Fan Aquifer, the Panjshir River, and the two storage dams of Gulbahar and Salang. Hopes have particularly been pinned on the Shahtoot dam that can store 147 MCM of water and provide for about two million residents in Kabul city, as well as for 400 hectares of agricultural land in the Charasiab and Khairabad districts of Kabul province. There is also the Shah-Arus dam, which is under construction by the MEW and aims to provide water for residents in district 17 of Kabul city as well as for small agricultural purposes. In addition, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is running the Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) pilot project that theoretically aims to help “stabilize or raise groundwater levels, improve the supply and quality of potable water and making Kabul urban water supplies more drought resistant and reduce the risk of land subsidence” (see here).

But the operationalisation of these projects is challenging for various reasons. The important Shahtoot dam will take at least three years to be constructed and its construction has yet to start. It is currently going through an environmental and social impact assessment. It also needs a huge upfront cost, if no other obstacles emerge. The former MUDH official quoted above said that the budget would be provided by several sources, particularly India, and this raises serious concerns for downstream Pakistan not just because of regional rivalry but also due to the decreased downstream flow of water (see also here). Four other potential water sources – the Panjshir Fan Aquifer, the Panjshir River, and the two storage dams of Gulbahar and Salang – are mainly alternative options under consideration by the Afghan government, meaning that there has been almost no practical work to implement them. One reason is that they are economically hugely unfeasible. The next – Shah-Arus dam – is a small water source mainly intended to provide water for one specific district in Kabul city as well as for small agricultural purposes. The MAR is a pilot project whose success is yet to be seen. In addition to the time required for these dams (several years in most cases), economic feasibility and their ability to address urban water supply needs in the Afghan capital, there are political and security considerations — not just overall, but specific to each project, their completion, administration and maintenance. These considerations in part stem from potential reactions of the downstream state of Pakistan to projects such as the Shahtoot dam that is financed by its archenemy India and will limit water flow into Pakistan. All these make the full implementation of these projects unlikely.

From a climate change perspective, even if the Afghan government became more active in addressing water issues in Kabul city and across the country by seriously implementing the aforementioned projects, as well as others, it could still fail to rise to the challenge given the severity of climate change effects on Afghanistan, the wider region and even the world beyond. But this is no reason for the government to do nothing about the problem, which is its current default modus operandi with regards to the issue.

The Afghan government has also been considering the provision of sewage services in cities like Kabul. Kabul city currently lacks a central sewage system and relies mainly on a system of individual septic tanks that are often situated close to water wells. The leakage of sewage into groundwater is considered a main cause of water contamination in urban centres such as Kabul and Herat. (5) According to the AUWSSC spokesman, changes are to be made in the Water Law and the Municipalities Law, requiring any construction license to provide water supply and sewage services as a condition. The intention is to treat wastewater and use it to water green areas in the city, for instance. The AUWSSC has established a new Directorate of Sewage Affairs and has so far designed sewage systems for 28 ministries and 15 government agencies in Kabul, but nothing has been implemented yet.

Several Kabul residents told AAN about the urgency of the water issue. “The main problem is that no one is working to tackle water issues. It is not only the government but also the public that should do their part in solving water problems,” said a long-time real estate agent familiar with the city’s water and housing issues. He further said that good water availability was turning into a major consideration when families decide to relocate to other parts of the city.

Kabul city faces severe water problems that are most intimately felt by its households. If the water issues are not addressed, they could lead to a full-blown water crisis with significant social ramifications, such as increased public health problems, dissatisfaction and even unrest. One thing that could help improve the dire situation is for the government to enhance its regulation of groundwater extraction and private water supply industry. An expanding, well-managed public water supply can help ensure better and greater access to water by the public, both poor and rich, and thereby contribute to public trust in the way the country is governed. This could happen if the Afghan government treats water as a priority, creates an effective and efficient institutional arrangement to implement and enforce it and engages in meaningful cross-border negotiations with affected downstream states. The people should also certainly do their part by increasing their water awareness and consuming water in a sustainable manner for their own and their children’s needs. Otherwise, families will have to resort to expensive private water supply businesses or continue digging deeper to provide their households with water, further depleting and contaminating crucial groundwater resources.

Edited by Martine Van Bijlert and Sari Kouvo

 

(1) Shroder and Ahmadzai, for instance, have called for water education for sustainable development at all levels of education in Afghanistan, from the primary to the technical hydrologic levels. They have presented a multiple perspectives approach for water education including eight major perspectives: (1) scientific, (2) historical, (3) geographic, (4) human rights, (5) gender equality, (6) values, (7) cultural diversity and (8) sustainability. See John F Shroder and Sher Jan Ahmadzai (2017) “Hydro-Cognizance: Water Knowledge for Afghanistan,” Journal of Afghanistan Water Studies, Volume 1, Issue 1, Kabul: Duran Research and Analysis: pages 23-58.

(2) The AUSSWC operates the three major well fields in Logar, Alauddin and Afshar that are respectively located close to the Logar, Kabul and Laghman rivers.

(3) Afghanistan’s Water Law has been criticised for being too far removed from reality. For instance, research shows that its provisions on “permits and licences are not implementable within or even useful for the traditional irrigation systems, but mainly play into the hands of the national hydrocracy and please international donors.” See Kai Wegerich (2010) “The Afghan water law: ‘a legal solution foreign to reality’?” Water International, 35(3), 298–312. An AREU paper calls for compromises between international practices and local preferences that lead to agreements on practical water governance.

(4) For the cross-border implications of Afghanistan’s water issue, see Vincent Thomas with Mujib Ahmad Azizi and Khalid Behzad (2016) “Developing transboundary water resources: What perspectives for cooperation between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan?,” Kabul: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and Duran Research and Analysis (2017) Journal of Afghanistan Water Studies, Volume 1, Issue 1, Kabul: Duran Research and Analysis. Duran Research and Analysis has also developed a rich and useful knowledge base on Afghanistan’s waters, especially their cross-border aspects. See Afghanistan Waters Portal.

(5) Similar water problems exist in Herat city. Groundwater has gone down some 7–12 metres and been polluted in this western urban centre. Source: Hasht-e Sobh daily newspaper, 16 Asad 1397/7 August 2018, page 8.

One of the main goals of Afghanistan launching a new voter registration process – a key provision of the 2014 National Unity Government Agreement – was to more accurately match the number of ballot papers to the number of voters in any given area. It was hoped this would reduce the opportunities for ballot stuffing. However, a review of the registration statistics released by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) – disaggregated by province and by gender – reveal suspicious anomalies. Further vetting of the voter lists and targeted audits of suspicious areas are needed, says guest author Scott Worden,* to address rising doubts about the integrity of Afghanistan’s voter lists. 

AAN has put together a dossier of dispatches related to the coming elections, looking at preparations and political manoeuvring. Each dispatch in Election Conundrum series will be added to it.

Voter registration has long been a weak point undermining the integrity of Afghan elections. The results of the 2009 and 2014 presidential elections and 2010 parliamentary elections were all highly contested because of mass ballot stuffing – with between 10 and 25 per cent of the ballots thrown out because of fraud by the Afghan electoral authorities. That ballot stuffing was enabled in part by the availability of excess ballot papers which had been sent to areas with no independent election observers – because they were insecure, or sometimes also because they had been politically captured by local strongmen. In the 2014 election, there was an estimated total number of voters of around 12 million and 23 million voter cards in circulation (read this USIP report). Eliminating this huge discrepancy was a key goal of the voter registration reforms identified in the 2014 National Unity Government Agreement between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah.

The National Unity Government Agreement (full text here) and the Special Electoral Reform Commission (see AAN background here and here) in 2015 pinpointed the need to get rid of the fake and duplicate voter cards in circulation and tie voters to specific polling centres where they are required to cast their ballots.

The Afghan government initially considered issuing biometric voter registration cards that would include detailed photographs and the fingerprints of each voter. However, this involved tough technical challenges and would be a years-long process to fully implement. In any case, the IEC failed to conduct a proper procurement – it yielded only one bidder that did not have a strong technical track record (see AAN’s previous reporting on debate about use of electoral technology here). The biometric ID project has yet to get off the ground.

The current approach has been to issue voter registration cards to anyone eligible who has a tazkera– the paper, non-biometric national ID card that has been issued to citizens for the last several decades. Although the tazkera is widely considered a reliable ID, a majority of eligible voters did not have one when voter registration began. The agency responsible for issuing tazkeras, the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority (ACCRA), therefore planned to issue up to 10 million new ones so that eligible citizens could register to vote. (More on voter registration procedure in AAN’s previous report here.) (1)

In early August, the IEC told AAN it had registered a total number of 9,072,208 voters, including 5,783,037 men (63.7%) and 3,114,942 women (34.3%) (see here). The total preliminary number of registered voters listed on the IEC website is slightly lower, at 8,910,107 (latest published figures as of 6 July). Either number would be a remarkable achievement considering the IEC’s late start in launching voter registration, its relatively thin public outreach campaign, early low figures (see AAN’s previous reporting on initial low turnout and the government’s incentive and coercive measures to boost it, here) and, above all, conflict in much of the country and an insurgency hostile to the elections. Analysing the IEC’s statistics, particularly breaking them down by province and gender, only sharpens the suspicion that these voter registration numbers are indeed too good to be true. Analysis reveals that registration in several provinces is implausibly high, based not only on the ratio of voters to population and the levels of male and female registration, but also prevailing insecurity.

Based on an evaluation of the provincial level voter registration statistics, there are three integrity issues that deserve further scrutiny: over-registration and the risk of ballot stuffing, under-registration and the risk of disenfranchisement and low (and also questionable) female participation in the electoral process.

Evaluating the Voter Registration data

One way of assessing the recent registration drive is to compare the number of voters registered with the estimated number of eligible voters. It is estimated that half of the population is at least 18 – the minimum age to vote. But Afghanistan has never had a complete census so all population figures are estimates. For the total population, those estimates vary between 28 million and 34 million. This analysis uses the population estimate published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for 2016-17 of 27.7 million, which the IEC has used as the basis for its allocation of parliamentary seats and polling centres. (The CSO numbers for 2017-18 are only slightly higher at 29.7 million.) (2) But whether the number of eligible voters is actually somewhat higher or lower than the estimate is not too important; population figures that are accurate within, say, ten percent of the actual number are a useful tool to identify discrepancies that are an order of magnitude greater.

Based on the IEC’s published registration data, 65 per cent (5.8 million) registered voters were men and 35 per cent (3.1 million) are women. The curious number here is the men’s. Considering that roughly half the population is male, this means that approximately 84 per cent of all eligible men registered to vote. This seems an improbable statistic considering security conditions, a low-key voter outreach effort and a general lack of enthusiasm for elections following several past, fraud-ridden efforts.

As the tables below indicate, there is a wide range of participation rates across Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. At one end of the spectrum, Ghazni has only registered 9 per cent of its estimated eligible voting population. This can be explained by the boycott of the electoral process that has been in place since the second week of registration (see AAN analysis here). Paktia, on the other hand, has registered an implausible 141 per cent of its estimated eligible population.

The balance between women and men registering varies widely as well. Only four per cent of registrants in Uruzgan are women, one of 11 provinces where less than a third of the registrants are women. By contrast, a 57 per cent majority of registrants in Jawzjan are women. Daikundi and Bamyan also have female majorities among registered voters. It is plausible that women in Hazara and Uzbek areas would register in higher numbers because of different gender norms and/or because of savvy mobilisation by more organised political parties there.  But one wonders whether amajorityof female voters reflects the reality on the ground.

Under-registration and the risk of disenfranchisement

Setting Ghazni’s anomalous 9 per cent registration rate aside, six other provinces have less than 40 per cent of eligible voters registered: Farah (26%), Badghis (31%), Kunar (33%), Uruzgan (33%) Kunduz (34%) and Faryab (38%). Six more provinces have less than half of their eligible voters registered, based on the conservative CSO population estimates, namely Ghor, Jawzjan, Wardak, Zabul, Sar-e Pul and Logar. These provinces are scattered across the country, but all face significant threats from the insurgency that would tend to reduce registration rates.

Low registration numbers are relevant because the number of votes cast will likely be even lower. It is rare, even in developed, secure countries, for more than 75 per cent of registered voters to appear on election day. If only 40 per cent of a given constituency are registered and only half of them vote, this would translate into a participation rate of just 20 per cent of eligible voters – raising questions over how much the elected members would actually represent their provincial constituencies.

Under Afghan law, there is no legal minimum threshold of votes for election results to be valid. However, there are legal requirements for citizens to have equal access to voting. If voters in a given district are effectively disenfranchised because it was difficult or impossible to register (because of insecurity, uneven distribution of registration centres, or obstacles to obtaining a tazkera for registration), then low voter registration could amount to a violation of electoral law that would have to be considered by the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

The most problematic issue regarding low registration rates, however, is political rather than legal. When district-level voter registration figures are released, they will indicate more specifically where registration was high or low within a province. This can then be compared to observation reports, security conditions and past voting patterns. If registration is comparatively high in a dense urban area, or a district that has seen a lot of refugee resettlement, it may be a plausible increase. But if registration was high in low-density areas or ones with high insecurity, then an audit of the numbers would be warranted.

District-level registration information could also indicate disenfranchisement. If some districts had no registration, then they may miss out on representation in the parliament. In the past, this has been a source of ethnic and political tension and led to delays in certifying election results (most notably in Ghazni and Nangrahar provinces in 2010).

Over-registration and the risk of ballot stuffing

Improbably high registration rates present an even greater risk to electoral integrity because they point to possible fraud in the voter registration process that increases the risk of ballot stuffing.

The national average is 64 per cent of estimated eligible voters registering. Kabul province is a useful benchmark because it contains 18 per cent of total voters and is the most multi-ethnic and diverse province in the country. As such, it had a 72 per cent registration rate. The above average registration may be explained by the facts that Kabul is a relatively safe province, with a more educated population and there was good media coverage about the electoral process during voter registration. However, 13 provinces exceeded Kabul’s 72 per cent participation rate and four – Paktia, Nimruz, Nangrahar and Nuristan – saw more than 100 per cent of their estimated eligible voters registering.

There are many drivers of genuine high voter registration. They include: good IEC public outreach, adequate security, the enthusiasm and effort of candidates, elders and political parties to mobilise supporters and the accessibility of both tazkera-issuing offices and voter registration centres. This all makes it somewhat difficult to determine whether any given registration figure is reasonable or not. However, some broad assumptions can be made to focus attention on likely problem places that deserve further scrutiny.

Most obviously, security conditions have an enormous impact on valid voter registration rates. The Taleban have openly opposed elections in general and voter registration in particular (see AAN’s previous reporting here). Several attacks took place near or on voter registration centres at the outset of voter registration (see here and here). The most recent incident of this kind was a suicide attack on 25 August in front of the IEC provincial office in Jalalabad where people had gathered to protest against the exclusion of one parliamentary candidate; seven people were killed and several others injured. According to the latest Special Inspector General of Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) quarterly report released in July 2018, 229 of Afghanistan’ s 407 districts (56 per cent) are under Afghan government control (74) or influence (155), while 56 districts under insurgent control (11) or influence (45) (p68). The Long War Journal maintains a different list of Taleban controlled or contested districts that puts the number higher, at239 of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, or 59 per cent. In the face ofthose risks, one can expect voter registration to be low in insecure areas (see also AAN’s reporting on failure to hold district council elections here).

Despite this, several of the highest rates of registration can be found in some of the most insecure provinces, including Paktia, Nimruz, Nangrahar, Nuristan, Baghlan, Kandahar, Khost and Kunduz. All of these saw registrations higher than in Kabul, which is more secure and has a greater saturation of public information on the election process. Moreover, the IEC was unable to open many registration locations across those provinces. In the previous elections of 2014, 2010 and 2009, audits of ballot boxes in most of these provinces also revealed high rates of fraudulent voting. All these factors raise questions about whether the registration was conducted properly there.

Another way to identify implausibly high voter registration is to examine registration rates by gender. Given that roughly half of the population has reached the eligible voting age of 18 and half of that population is male, then a quarter of the CSO population estimates are eligible men. Using those numbers, one finds that ten provinces have more than 100 per cent of eligible men registered. Of those, Paktia has an astonishing 164 per cent and Kandahar and Nimruz more than 150 per cent. Factoring in poor security conditions in all of those provinces, the plausibility of such robust participation disappears completely. While population figures in Afghanistan are not precise, the over-registration of men in these provinces is highly suspicious. (3)

Fraudulent registration is a problem in parliamentary elections if it occurs in some districts of a province more than others, thereby giving an advantage to candidates who can mobilise voter blocs in the high-registering districts.

Questions about female registration

Increasing women’s participation in Afghan elections has been an elusive goal. While it is not easy to compare current and past registration rates because the voter registration process has changed, the current numbers suggest that fewer women have registered to vote this time. The ratio of female to male registrants in the 2004 and 2010 elections was roughly 40:60 per cent, whereas the figure now stands at 34:66 per cent. (4) In both cases, however, there is a caveat that there have been widespread allegations of proxy registration (and proxy voting) on behalf of women that were difficult for past audits of election results to prove or disprove (also see this AAN reporting from 2014).

Provinces that conform to the assumption that female registration will be low in conservative and/or insecure provinces include Uruzgan, with only 4 per cent female registration, followed by Helmand (13%), Kandahar (13%), Zabul (15%), Paktika (20%), Wardak (21%), Khost (26%) and Logar (27%). Also conforming to the norm, the areas with the highest female participation rates are in provinces with Hazara or Uzbek majorities (Jawzjan 57%, Daikundi 55%, Bamyan 51%, and Sar-e Pul 49%), reflecting cultural norms that tend to be less restrictive for women. That said, it still seems unusual to have any provinces with a majority of female registration.

Provinces that defy conventional wisdom and may deserve further scrutiny of female voter registration include Baghlan, Nuristan and Paktika, which all have above-average female registration despite poor security that tends to reduce female participation. In these cases, suspicion does not mean guilt, but additional scrutiny of the polling centre numbers and checking of these against accounts of observers would be warranted. Once more detailed information is released on registration at the district level, it will be interesting to compare urban to rural female registration against expectations that women in urban areas would have greater participation.

How to fix the voter registry

A consortium of political parties has already protested that voter registration has been inaccurate, unprofessional and “a tool to pave the way for corruption and crisis” (media report here). They argued that the current voter registration effort should be scrapped in favour of biometric IDs, which, they say, would be much harder to fake. While this might be true and was the goal of voter registration reform in 2015, it would be impossible to carry out in the short time remaining before the parliamentary election on 20 October or even before the April 2019 presidential election. (See AAN’s previous report on other party demands here and here.)

Another way that could help improve confidence in the voter registry would be for the IEC to conduct an audit of the voter lists to determine whether registrations were valid. An audit would need to check two aspects of the voter list. First, are there duplicate registrations across polling centres, which could allow people to vote more than once? Second, are the tazkeranumbers entered on the voter list valid, that is, do they correspond to the records kept separately by ACCRA linking each verified name and tazkera number to the voter list? If duplicate or fake names are entered onto the final voter list, then excess ballots will be sent to polling stations and be available for ballot-stuffing.

To conduct either of these audits, the IEC needs first to complete data entry of its voter registration database. So far, only approximately four of the nine million voter cards that have been issued have been entered into the IEC’s central database. At the current rate of data entry, it will be very difficult for the IEC to complete this before Election Day. It is therefore imperative that the IEC find ways to increase data entry of its voter registration information.

In addition, the IEC would need to check whether the unique tazkera numbers that are recorded on voter lists are valid. This would require ACCRA, the custodian of tazkera records, to complete its own database of tazkera numbers so that voter IDs and tazkeras could be cross-checked. (5) It is unclear whether ACCRA has such a database (see also this AAN’s summary piece).  It is therefore imperative that ACCRA share information on how its records are stored and how many records of different types it has.

If the IEC and the ACCRA databases cannot be automatically searched, it should still be possible to do manual checks of tazkeraand voter ID numbers through random sampling in the most high-risk areas – where the ratio of population to registration seems the most suspicious. If some provinces have their data entered earlier than others, checks could be initiated there first.

Of course, such an audit, even if there is the time and political will to carry it out, might still not result in greater confidence in the voter registry. The findings might be ambiguous, or unambiguous but difficult to address. Also, if tazkera ledgers were used fraudulently during registration and names and numbers from an old ledger were used without that individual appearing at the registration centre, excess ballots could still now be sent to the polling centre and be available for ballot stuffing. Nevertheless, even at this late stage, an audit does remain one option for attempting to clean up the voter lists.

The consequences of a questionable voter registry

Even if no audit is conducted of voter registration, there will still be an opportunity for candidates and voters to assess the quality of the voter list. By law, the IEC is obliged to publish preliminary voter lists before the election. (6) This should be followed by a ‘challenge period’ during which voters, political parties and candidates can question the validity of the voter lists. Those challenges should then be adjudicated by the IEC and ECC.

Publishing specific polling centre lists that identify exactly how many people are registered in each location would also reveal important information on how voter registration breaks down on a district level. It could become clearer whether registration was plausible, based on local population and security conditions. It would also show where voters may have unfair or unequal access to the polls.

Even on election day itself, it would be difficult, but not impossible to mitigate the consequences of a questionable voter registry. It would require integrity and independent observation at polling centres on election day.

To try to get as clean an election as possible, emphasis will have to be placed on 1) hiring polling staff that have integrity, 2) ensuring good training, 3) developing convincing accountability measures for staff caught cheating and 4) having independent election observers and diverse candidate agents at as many polling centres as possible on election day – although there are not enough observers to cover many locations. In other words, good people doing the right things could overcome even questionable voter lists. However, given Afghanistan’s track record on elections, that would seem an unlikely scenario.

As with previous elections, Afghanistan faces a dilemma trying to hold credible elections in an immensely insecure environment with opaque census data: because of insecurity and low women’s registration, even if there was no fraud in the insecure areas, they would be disenfranchised relative to areas with safer access to the ballot box for voters. However, if there is ‘too much’ fraud in insecure areas – where the insecurity and paucity of observers helps ballot stuffers, they will out-vote the secure areas and win more seats than is perceived to be their due.

Possible impact on the 2019 presidential poll

The ultimate consequence of using a bad voter list for the parliamentary election is that it will undermine the credibility of the politically more significant presidential election. There are already credible complaints by candidates and observer groups about the voter lists. There will almost certainly be even louder complaints about the results after the election unless the voter rolls can be validated as clean. Then the task becomes even more difficult to clean up voter lists that have already been used in one election with just six months to go before an even bigger one.

In fact, stuffed voter lists are an even greater problem for the presidential election because, if they result in perceived ethnic or regional imbalances, it will again call the legitimacy of this vote into question. Abdullah Abdullah and Jamiat-e Islami complained bitterly after the 2014 election about alleged inflated ballot totals in southeastern provinces, which show high percentages of registered voters now. If there is no audit of registration before the presidential election, it will tee up the same complaints for a second election in a row.

* Scott Worden is Director of Afghanistan and Central Asia Programs at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, DC (USIP). He has worked for or observed each of the past four Afghan elections and served as an international commissioner on the Electoral Complaints Commission in 2009.The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to USIP, which does not advocate specific policy positions.

In September 2010, Scott guest-authored “Why the West should care about Afghan election fraud” for AAN.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert, Kate Clark and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) However, ACCRA has no system for removing duplicate tazkeras or regularly cleaning up the tazkera registry when someone moves or dies. Therefore, many citizens have more than one tazkera issued in different provinces or at different times that could potentially be used to register multiple time to vote. It is also possible that corrupt officials could use old tazkera logs to create registrations for dead people or those who have moved. Finally, ACCRA has not yet released data on what are reported to be the five million new tazkeras issued this year during voter registration which would enable a proper evaluation of the registration.

(2) Other, non-official sources put the number higher. The CIA World Factbook has an overall population of 34 million in 2017. A satellite-based survey of population completed in 2017 called Flowminder put the overall population at 34 million. Each methodology can be debated in the absence of a full census, which has not been completed since the 1970s. However, CSO figures have been the accepted standard for the IEC in each of the post-2004 elections and are the most acceptable politically.

(3) Similar findings came up in or after previous elections. In the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections, the total number of distributed voter cards (10.5 million) exceeded the total number of estimated voters (9.8 million). This was most pronounced in the east and southeast, where in four provinces – Nuristan, Khost, Paktia and Paktika – registration reached an impressive 140 per cent of the number of estimated voters (see AAN’s 2009 report “How to win an Afghan election“, p19).

Paktika became particularly famous during the 2005 elections for being the most blatant case of over-registration and female proxy voting. In 2005 almost 160,000 registrations were added to the earlier total of 342,000 (which had already represented 140% of the estimated total voters in the province). The implausibly high proportion of alleged female registration in Paktika – 46.5% in 2004 and over 57% in 2005 – despite highly conservative cultural norms, was welcomed as a major achievement. … Interviews in the aftermath of the elections suggested that the manipulation in Paktika was by no means an exception, although it had been taken to the extreme there (p 20-1).

In 2009, there were even higher proportions of female registration than in 2005. In Nuristan, Khost, Logar and Paktia, respectively 71%, 68%, 66% and 62% of the total registrations were ‘female voters’, while Paktika still registered 50% women. There are moreover indications that the practice of female over-registration has spread to other provinces. (In provinces like Kandahar, Farah, Ghazni, Kapisa and Panjshir, there were implausibly high proportions of female registrations in selected districts, but it was not widespread enough to bring the provincial total over 50%. Some northern districts also showed signs of female over-registration, but the number of districts and excess votes was much more limited than in other provinces.) (p 21)

2014 registration figures have shown similar suspicious patterns – high female registration in conservative areas and relatively high registration figures relative to the population, particularly in insecure areas – although the patterns have not been as pronounced as in, for instance, 2009. The provinces with the highest rates of female registration were still largely in the conservative southeast: with the exception of Daikundi, 48%, the highest were in Paktika (47%), Nuristan (44%) and Paktia (43%). Kabul had 33% female registrations (see AAN’s 2014 report “What to Watch in the Elections (1): Voter registration”).

(4) In 2004, which was the last voter registration exercise conducted from scratch (although under different social and security conditions), there were 10,500,000 registered voters of which 4,336,500 (41.3%) were women (here, p8). In 2009, the ratio of registered female voters was given with 38 per cent, as compared to 42 per cent in 2004 (see here, p 4). In 2010, 35 per cent of the 3.7 million newly distributed voter cards were for women (see here); women participation was given with around 40 per cent (see USIP report here).

(5) ACCRA has two kinds of records relevant to voter registration. The first are the handwritten ledgers that go back decades indicating who has been issued with tazkeras in any given district. These are reportedly being optically scanned, but not in a computer-searchable format. ACCRA has also recorded the new tazkeras issued since voter registration began. No data has been publicly released on how many new tazkeras have been issued. Nor is there information on where the new tazkeras have been issued. Nor is it clear whether the new records are in a searchable database

(6) Article 72 of the Electoral Law states:

The Commission shall record the voters list in the National Data Centre (Database) of the Commission and, in compliance with the electoral calendar, make it accessible to the public in the relevant polling centres for their awareness and objections

  

 

This year’s Eid al-Adha comes at a time of escalating war and bloodshed, with horrendous violence across Afghanistan. Many have lost dear ones. Many have been injured. Many have been displaced. Many have seen their houses and shops on fire or destroyed. And the scars of this appalling war will remain for men, women and children well into the future. Acknowledging that many people will have a difficult Eid al-Adha this year, the Afghanistan Analysts Network wishes a quiet, peaceful and, we hope, happy Eid to the people of Afghanistan, to all Muslims and to its friends and readers.

May this Feast of the Sacrifice provide a respite from war and an opportunity for all parties to the tragic conflict to, as Rumi says, sacrifice their pride by starting to thrash out their differences peaceably.

خواهی که تو را کعبه کند استقبال مایی و منی را به منا قربان کن – مولوی (۱)

 

If you want the Kaaba to welcome you

Sacrifice your pride, collective and individual, at Mina (1)

– Rumi

 

(1) This is the second couplet (beit) from quatrain (ruba’i) number 1385 by Rumi (see here). The English translation is by AAN.

Mina is the neighbourhood in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where the Hajj pilgrims make sacrifices to Allah by slaughtering animals such as sheep, goats, camels and cattle.

Afghan Shia Muslims are feeling increasingly beleaguered after two massacres targeting their community this month. Both were claimed by the Afghan ‘franchise’ of Daesh, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). On 3 August, gunmen killed at least 38 men and boys during Friday prayers at a village mosque in the outskirts of Gardez city. Three families lost all their men, from young boys to grandfathers. This week, on 15 August, a suicide bomber walked into an education centre in the Hazara-majority Dasht-e Barchi neighbourhood of Kabul. At least 40 people were killed, most of them teenage students, girls and boys, who had been studying for the university entrance exam. In the midst of this onslaught, AAN felt the need to pay tribute to at least some of the victims, in an attempt to make sure such deaths do not become the ‘routine’ of this conflict. Here, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini looks at what happened when the small community of Shia Sadat (descendants of the Prophet) in Paktia province came under attack.

Sectarian attacks are on the rise in Afghanistan, with Shia Muslim mosques, gatherings and neighbourhoods being targeted. This month has been hard, with first the attack on the Khwajah Hassan mosque in Paktia province and then a lone suicide bomber attacking the Mu’ud education centre in the capital. It left at least 48 dead and 67 wounded, mainly teenagers, dead and injured. “The lecture hall had been so packed,” one journalist wrote, “and the explosion so powerful that nearly half the 230 students were among the casualties.” Many were from the provinces, sent by their families to spend a last year studying in the capital in the hope of passing the kankur university entrance examination and getting into higher education. Some, with no family in Kabul, were buried in a mass grave by their school fellows and volunteers. Unusually, some of the coffins of the girls were carried by women.

Such sectarian attacks are perpetrated by a sliver of Afghan society – ISKP usually claims them – and are always widely condemned. This was the case also in the wake of the attack on the Khwajah Hassan mosque in Gardez where the bereaved were actively supported by their Sunni neighbours. Masses of Sunnis attended the funerals of those killed in the attack and later posted themselves as human shields in Shia mosques and shrines, challenging sectarian haters to kill them as well. AAN has spoken to members of the community, to bring you this account of the attack and of the small community which has lost so many members.

The attack at the Friday prayer

It was around 13.30 on a Friday afternoon. A significant portion of the residents of Khwajah Hassan village had come to the mosque to listen to the preacher deliver the khutba and perform the congregational prayer when two burqa-clad figures approached the precinct. (1) The tattered state of their clothes and their attitude – reaching their arms out from under their cloaks as if to ask for alms – identified them as beggars, who often count on the charity of believers gathered for Friday prayers. The guards at the gates told them to wait a few minutes; as soon as the people completed their prayers, they said, and came out of the mosque, there would certainly be something for them. The two beggars turned as if to comply, but instead drew from under their burqas hidden guns, reportedly with silencers, shot the guards dead, and rushed towards the mosque.

This, according to the few who witnessed it and lived to tell the tale, is how the attack on the mosque of the Imam-e Zaman in Khwajah Hassan village on the outskirts of Gardez on 3 August 2018 started. What happened subsequently was carnage.

The mosque was built only two years ago, with contributions from the whole local Shia community. It replaced an older, smaller one and could host up to 2,000 people. That day between 150 and 200 residents were present – men and boys only, as women and girls, despite having a separate floor at their disposal, did not usually attend the congregational prayer. As is customary, community leaders and elderly men found their places in the first rows, while the youth and children sat at the back. They were the first to be met when the terrorists entered the building. The two gunmen first threw hand grenades into the crowd, then opened fire on those closer to them with the Kalashnikovs they had concealed under their clothes. A majority of the wounds, it was later reported, were from bullets and grenade shrapnel, showing this stage of the attack to have been the deadliest. Then, one after the other, the attackers activated the explosive vests they were wearing, killing and injuring even more of the people around them (see also media reporting here and here).

Survivors and local residents who rushed to the incident started to move the wounded to hospital. Later, those with only minor injuries were taken to the centre of Gardez city where they were paraded in an impromptu protest in front of the provincial government buildings. The people of Khwajah Hassan were not only bewildered by the massacre, but also by the delay on the part of the authorities in sending ambulances and security forces after the attack. Some residents told AAN that this took more than an hour, even though Khwajah Hassan is a suburb of Gardez located in Police District 2, and barely two kilometres from the city centre. Tension was so great that when the police finally arrived at the scene of the attack, armed local residents prevented them from entering the mosque, asking them what they had come for, now that everybody was dead (see also this reporting from Pajhwok).

Meanwhile, local clinics could not cope with the numbers of injured and the dire state some were in. Finally, at around 19:00 in the evening, 19 of the most seriously wounded were evacuated to different Kabul hospitals by military helicopter. Some would nonetheless die from their wounds in the following days.

The victims

This attack killed 33 people and injured dozens more. It devastated a whole community. The Shia Muslims of Gardez are Sadat – descendants of the Prophet. Living far from other Shias, they have developed a deeply intertwined community. The 3 August attack cut through these ties, leaving every family mourning the death of near or distant relations. Three families lost all the men of their household, from the young boys to the grandfathers.

Five children aged between 7 and 15 were killed and a further seven wounded seriously. An additional eight young people under the age of 25 are dead and many more injured. The total number of injured people is, as usual, a fluid figure, as many with only superficial cuts or burns were not hospitalised or counted and some may still die of their injuries. The estimate, however, ranges between 70 and 90, with around a dozen still in critical condition.

Among the dead were some of the community’s elders. The most well-known and respected was probably Dr Ali Shah Musawi, who had the singular distinction of being the only Shia prisoner incarcerated by the United States in Guantanamo Bay. During the 1980s, Dr Musawi had been a commander with the mujahedin party Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami, in the wing led by Mawlawi Mansur. (2) While the Taleban were in power, Dr Musawi resided in Iran and did not take part in politics or fighting. Upon his return in 2004, he was immediately arrested by the Americans and later sent to Guantanamo where he spent two years as a prisoner. He was subject not only to detention without trial, but also, as the sole Shia prisoner among many radical Salafi Sunnis, to sectarian hatred by some of his fellow prisoners. His time in the detention camp was rough, even by Guantanamo standards. (3)

After being released, Dr Musawi went to Iran for a while to see his family, but ultimately settled back in Gardez, where he opened a primary school. More recently, in 2014, he had taken up the position of director of the local Department for the Prevention of Natural Disasters, where according to everybody AAN talked to, he was doing a good job. His nephew on his sister’s side, Sayyed Sajjad, aged 24, an engineer who had graduated from the Polytechnic of Kabul, was also killed.

The following is a list of those who were killed and have been honoured on the martyrdom posters and banners that have appeared across Gardez and in Kabul. Some of those who later died of their injuries do not appear here. We think, for example, that there was a second Sayyed Sajjad was killed in the attack.

1. Sayyed Ahmad Khair Andish, imam of Khawja Hassan mosque, aged 40
2. Dr Sayyed Muhammad Ali Shah Musawi, provincial head of the Disaster Management Office and former mujahedin commander
3. Sayyed Muhammad Musawi, imam of Sadat mosque, originally from Jaghori,
4. Sayyed Asadullah Rezai, taxi driver on the route between between Kabul and Gardez
5. Sayyed Humayun, car mechanic in Gardez, aged 35
6. Sayyed Murtaza, employee of Paktia University (brother of Sayyed Muhammad Reza, number 14, who was also killed)
7. Sayyed Mahram, aged 22, businessman
8. Sayyed Gul Ahmad, shopkeeper
9. Sayyed Asadullah, aged 33, a qari (reader) of the Quran,
10. Eng Sayyed Saifullah, student at Paktia University
11. Eng Sayyed Sajjad, aged 24, head of Paktia Airport and nephew of Dr Musawi
12. Sayyed Najibullah, son of Sayyid Amir Gul, lecturer at the Paktia University, aged 34
13. Sayyed Muhammad Reza, shopkeeper (brother of Sayyed Murtaza, number 7)
14. Sayyed Jan Ali, guard at the mosque
15. Sayyed Agha Zia, son of Sayyid Nur Agha, aged 28, guard at the mosque
16. Sayyed Mahram, aged 60, car mechanic
17. Sayyed Zalmai, labourer
18. Sayyed Ali Shah Musawi, tribal elder
19. Sayyed Murtaza, a student at Paktia University
20. Sayyed Rukai, a 17-year old school student
21. Sayyed Kabir, a 16 or 17-year old school student
22. Sayyed Muhammad Hussain, policemanoriginally from Bamyan
23. Sayyed Muhammad, shopkeeper
24. Sayyed Muhammad Agha, guard at the mosque
25. Sayyed Nematullah, shopkeeper

The following victims were all children, still at school:

26. Sayyed Nasrullah
27. Sayyed Hujjat Musawi
28. Sayyed Ali Asghar, aged 9
29. Sayyed Hussain Shah
30. Sayyed Murtaza
31. Sayyed Ali Ahmad
32. Sayyed Khalil
33. Sayyed Wahidullah

The Sadat of Gardez, a tiny Shia island in Loya Paktia

The location of the attack – Paktia province, which had thus far been spared sectarian violence – and the fact that it devastated a small and somewhat isolated Shia community lent it a particular vicious and destructive character.

Khwajah Hassan is a relatively big and prosperous village. Located at the northeastern edge of the town of Gardez, it sits right by the highway leading towards Logar and Kabul. With maybe a thousand families residing in and around it, Khwajah Hassan is reportedly the biggest village in Paktia to be inhabited by speakers of Dari as a mother tongue  – although most of the Sadat are fully bilingual, speaking Pashto as well. Despite being at the core of the Pashtun heartland, with inhabitants renowned for vigorously following tribal customs and Pashtunwali, Paktia also features a consistent minority of people who speak Dari as their first language. They are not newcomers to the area, but rather the remnants of ancient populations that once inhabited many parts of what is today southeastern Afghanistan (such as the Barakis of Logar and the Farmulis of Paktika). Once called Farsiwan, they nowadays mostly fall into the macro-ethnic category of Tajik, except for the Shias among them (as the Tajik identity has come to implicitly assume a Sunni creed). Moreover, these Shia communities often trace their ancestry to the family of the Prophet Muhammad, forming a separate group called Sadat (singular Sayyed).

The Sadat’s claim to a distinguished ancestry usually confers on them a certain amount of religious charisma. Throughout history they have often provided religious leadership for other Shias and engaged in learned professions and education.  The Sadat from Khwajah Hassan claim to have arrived from Sabzevar near Nishapur (nowadays in eastern Iran) shortly after the Islamic conquest of the Gardez area and to have lived there ever since, developing a prosperous and well-respected community, despite their distance from other Shias.

It seems the Sadat of Khwajah Hassan have had no conflict with their Sunni neighbours, be they fellow Dari-speakers (Tajiks) or Pashtuns. On the contrary, residents of the village interviewed by AAN pointed to instances of cooperation and unity between them and the Sunnis, from their shared participation in the jihad against the Soviets and the communist government to their united defence when Pacha Khan Zadran attacked Gardez in 2002.

After the attack on the mosque, masses of Gardez’s Sunnis attended the mourning ceremonies for the dead, provided armed security during the burials and later posed as human shields in Shia mosques and shrines, challenging sectarian haters to attack them as well.

The likely perpetrators

The residents of Khwajah Hassan seemed taken completely by surprise. In the past few weeks, the local NDS headquarters had issued threat warnings that attacks were to be expected, but the warning had not specifically referred to Khwajah Hassan and had also been issued to Sunni mosques along the highway to Ghazni. Security at the mosque was low: only a couple of armed guards had been stationed there, as had always been the case for the past few years. They were local youths who received a salary through the Ministry of Interior.

The choice of the target and the level of wanton violence against unarmed civilians worshipping in a mosque, indicates sectarian hatred as the motivation. However, the Khwajah Hassan attack is an outlier in terms of attacks on Shias because of its location. The Sadat of Gardez had never previously been attacked. Militants based in Paktia province had, thus far, so far avoided targeting whole communities. The province, like neighbouring Khost, features an active insurgency, but it remains somewhat curtailed by strong tribal affiliations and cohesive local communities. The sworn hostility of even a minor community can be a logistical nightmare for insurgents, as they have to rely on mountain routes or secrecy for the security of their movements and the success of their operations. This discourages acts that would antagonise whole communities.

Also, despite the Taleban’s not always clean record in the past (such as during their conquest of Mazar-e Sharif in the 1990s), sectarian violence is something they now publicly and emphatically condemned and distance themselves from. (4) Indeed, within hours after the attack, community leaders of Khwajah Hassan started receiving phone calls from Taleban front commanders in Janikhel, Zurmat and even Paktika province, denying any involvement in the attack, expressing their condolence for the victims and extending offers of assistance.

The actor that, since its appearance on the stage of the Afghan conflict in 2014 (see AAN analysis here and here), has proved more than willing to carry out such horrific sectarian attacks is Daesh/ISKP (see this AAN analysis). A string of attacks on Shia religious sites suggests that the group considers violent sectarian attacks an important part of their strategy – to gain resonance and renown at the national and international level, and to try to attract new recruits and funds (see this AAN analysis). The recent increase in such attacks may also be a response to the crisis the movement finds itself in, now that combined Taleban and government/US pressure has virtually eliminated Daesh from much of the territory it had controlled in Afghanistan in Nangrahar and Jawzjan (see AAN analysis here).

ISKP indeed claimed ownership of the attack, but only a full day after it happened, in the late afternoon of Saturday. On previous occasions, the group has usually been very keen to declare ownership and made claims within hours of an incident.

From the point of view of capability, Daesh, is also not the best-positioned to carry out an attack like this. Khwajah Hassan’s mosque may have been a soft target, but Daesh has never so far operated anywhere close to Gardez, and even a simple attack would have required extensive reconnaissance and knowledge of the area. A lot depends on the possibility that Daesh recruited militants in Gardez, because to bring in men and weapons from other provinces, at a time when the government controls the highway and the Taleban all the other routes, would have been very difficult.

Inhabitants of Khwajah Hassan – both Sunni and Shia – are adamant that the attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network. They believe this is the only group that could have carried it out with ease. This may well hold true in terms of operational capacity, but when it comes to motivation, things are less clear. A resident interviewed by AAN provided examples of how the Haqqanis have shown hostility against Shias in the past. During the jihad years and shortly after, the group’s fighters would harass Shia and object to their celebration of the festival of Ashura (the Sadat would then seek the mediation of Mawlawi Mansur, as many of them had fought in the ranks of his faction of Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami). On another occasion, Jalaluddin Haqqani had insulted the local Shias in a public speech after the Taleban had come to power. (5) This alone, however, does not provide a clear reason for the current Haqqanis to perpetrate such a savage attack now.

The perpetrators of the attack, if they were trying to light the fire of sectarian hatred, causing a breach between the Sadat and their fellow Paktiawals, will be disappointed. Support for the grieving community has been strong. In the words of a political analysts hailing from Paktia: “The only fortunate thing in all this is that Paktiawals joined together for the commemoration of the dead of Khwajah Hassan. We stood collectively in abhorrence of this unprecedented attack.”

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Kate Clark

(1) Not all Shia communities across the world maintain the need for the faithful to join the khutba, a sermon on religious, social and even political topics given before the Friday prayer, although this is usually the case among Afghan Shia communities.

(2) Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami-ye Afghanistan was one of the major Sunni mujahedin parties that made up the ‘Peshawar Seven’. In 1982, Mawlawi Nasrullah Mansur, from Paktia’s Zurmat district, split from the main party, led by Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi, to form his own faction. This party, led by Nasrullah’s brother, Abdul Latif Mansur, would come to play a central role during the Taleban Emirate and in the insurgency after 2001. It is now known as the Mansur Network (for a background of the party and its resumed activities see here). That Dr Musawi and many Sadat joined what was basically a faction of traditional Sunni mullahs instead of seeking affiliation with one of the Shia mujahedin parties bears testimony to the high degree of integration the Sadat have enjoyed in Paktia society.

(3) Dr Musawi had come back to his home town in 2004 along with four friends and relatives (who were also returning home from Iran). The very night of their arrival, US soldiers broke into the house where they were staying, seized them and carried them to Bagram. His four companions were later released, but Dr Musawi was sent to Guantanamo where he spent two years. In his memoir Haqaiq-e nagofta-e Guantanamo (“Untold Facts about Guantanamo”), published after his release in 2006, he relates the problems he faced there, including performing prayers, given the sectarian intolerance of some of the more radical prisoners towards Shias.

(4) For a look at the historical record and context, see three dispatches AAN wrote in the wake of an attack on Ashura mourners in Kabul in December 2001 here, here and here)

(5) When making an introductory speech for the newly appointed governor in Gardez, in the presence of all the community elders of the province, Jalaluddin Haqqani reportedly praised the people of Paktia, comparing the province to a basin filled with pure, clean water only defiled by a few noxious vermin. At that point he paused and addressed the malik (headman) of Khwajah Hassan village who was in attendance in the front row, asking him if he was right in saying so, at which the poor man could obviously only nod, cowed in fear.

More recently, in 2011, the Haqqanis meddled in the age-old Sunni-Shia conflict in Kurram Tribal Agency of Pakistan. The Pakistani press claimed that two senior members of the Haqqani family had played a pivotal role in a ceasefire between the Turi tribe (Shia) and its Sunni neighbours (see our reporting here). The Haqqanis’ interest back then was to secure logistical routes crossing Turi territory, while for the Pakistani military, this present an opportunity to present the Haqqanis as ‘good Taleban’, willing to fight only inside Afghanistan and be helpful in Pakistan (as compared to the ‘bad’ TTP). The ceasefire, however, was either a hoax or a failure; it collapsed in a matter of weeks when the killing of Shia travellers by the local chapter of the TTP resumed.

Afghan authorities have solved one of the most long-standing and consequential problems in the country‘s complex election system: the number of districts. It is 387. This is pending a final decision by parliament, as there are some so-called ‘temporary’ districts that could boost the number. If parliament takes this issue up, however, there is a chance that it throws this hard-won unanimity over board again. This is because the number of districts is not just an administrative matter but also one of resources and influence. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig (with input from Ali Yawar Adili) have looked at the figures, what they mean and what questions are still open.

Afghanistan’s more than bumpy road to the next elections has led to at least one positive outcome. Almost unnoticed,the country’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) have, for now, come up with a joint, consolidated list of how many districts Afghanistan has. It has handed this list over to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) that has used it in preparing the elections. The number is: 387 (see the list here, in Dari).

Now the three major election-related Afghan institutions are using the same numbers. With this, a major technical hurdle has been cleared on the way to holding the country’s first district elections.

Previously, both IDLG and CSO had divergent and inconsistent lists. For instance, in May this year, AAN was given an IDLG print-out titled “The structure of administrative units of the provinces and districts of Afghanistan 1396 [2017-18]” that said Afghanistan had 382 districts. The same number appeared in the CSO’s annual “Estimated Population” review for 2017-18 – but only the total was similar in both lists. They deviated on which districts existed in several provinces. (1) Some international actors in Afghanistan are still using sometimes significantly different figures (more about this below). Even so, it is really good news that the CSO and IDLG have come up with a joint result.

The bad news is, as reported by AAN, that the IEC, facing a severe shortage of candidates for the 20 October 2018 district council elections, felt compelled to suggest a delay until April next year, when the presidential and provincial council polls are being held. That sounds like a tall order. It is possible that the delay could re-open the discussions about district numbers – as will be explained below.

What does the CSO/IDLG list look like?

The new, consolidated district list does still have one small flaw and some major gaps. The flaw is that its serial numbers run up to 389, not to 387. One district – Ghormach – turns up twice. It is listed under both Badghis and Faryab provinces, with the remark – in red – that it had been “temporarily transferred” to Faryab. This means that the authors forgot to give it only one serial number (this looks like an Excel sheet problem). However, even when this is corrected, the list still contains 388, not 387 districts.

The remaining discrepancy can be solved by looking at four large gaps in the list where the districts for four provinces, Daykundi, Nangrahar, Paktia and Uruzgan, are completely missing. The reason, as the IEC’s head of field operations Zmarai Qalamyar told AAN in a phone conversation in late July 2018, is that the CSO had yet to provide the population figures of some newly-established districts in those provinces. (2)  (The authors could have put in the district names anyway, as they seem to be uncontroversial, and just left the population figures open, but chose not to.) How many districts there are in these four provinces can be gauged from the missing serial numbers in the alphabetical order of the provinces: namely, Uruzgan has six, Paktia 14, Daykundi nine and Nangrahar 24 districts. The same numbers also turn up in a – complete – list of all districts given on the CSO website in its latest “Estimated Populatiuon [sic] of Afghanistan 2018-19.”

This CSO list also solves the riddle of the superfluous 288th district: it is Nawmesh (sometimes called Nawamesh) which, similar to Ghormach, is listed under two provinces and counted twice (more background in this AAN dispatch). This district– a Hazara majority area – was split from the Pashtun-majority Baghran district in northern Helmand by a presidential order in March 2016 and the IDLG temporarily transferred the administration of its security, administrative and logistical affairs to Daykundi in June 2017. But the IEC announced that the elections would still be managed from Helmand, which has led to protests among the local population who prefer to be handled by Daykundi – see this photo in an Afghan media report, saying, “We Don’t Accept this Decision”.) (3)

Nawmesh is also a so-called ‘temporary’ (mu’aqati) district – in contrast to ‘official’ districts that are uncontroversial (but not yet officially delineated and recognised by parliament). The IDLG defines a ‘temporary district’ (in an 11 June 2017 official letter to the IEC of which AAN obtained a copy) as those districts that have been approved after entry into force of the 2004 constitution by the president due to security or other considerations, but have not yet been approved by parliament. MPs have the final say on this, according to the constitution.

Other district lists

The most recent quarterly report from the United States government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) (here, on p131) published in July 2018, cites two sets of district numbers when it analyses district control: “There are 407 districts in Resolute Support’s dataset and 399 districts in USAID’s third-party monitor’s dataset.” Both differ from the CSO/IDLG list. It is surprising that even the different institutions of Afghanistan’s largest donor have not reconciled their own data. Resolute Support’s list of 407 districts includes the 34 provincial centres, but taking them out would leave only 373 districts, still different from the USAID and CSO/IDLG lists. (It can be seen in Appendix F of the report, pp 239-49.).

The United Nation’s humanitarian coordination agency, UNOCHA, uses a list – like USAID – of 399 districts when compiling the data on conflict-induced internal displacement. The European Asylum Support Office (EASO), an European Union institution that, among other tasks, provides security-related data about the countries of origin of asylum seekers, including Afghanistan, cites 368 districts in its most recent country report from December 2017. The most recent UN Office of Drugs and Crime’s opium survey (for 2017)  has a list of 413 administrative units which also includes the 34 provincial centres, so that this results in a list of 379 districts.

Districts as perks and the for-ever delay of district council elections

One of the reasons why district council elections have never been held, despite being mandated by the 2004 constitution is that the number of districts is highly controversial. In particular, the delineation of their borders is disputed, ie which areas, villages etc belong to which district and where their inhabitants should vote. This means that an authorised list has never been finally approved by parliament. (4) Despite the consolidated CSO/IDLG list, this still remains to be resolved.

When this author, as a United Nations member of staff, was involved in helping to organise the Emergency Loya Jirga (ELJ) in 2002, the delegates for which were determined through a district-based selection-and-election process (5), the figure of how many districts existed in the country was already a problem. There was no generally accepted list of districts, but after long discussions, the Afghan interim authorities, the Independent ELJ Commission and the UN in an advisory (but driving) role settled on 339 districts. (6) That is almost forty districts or 12 per cent fewer than are counted now.

The additional problem is that there are not only ‘temporary’ districts created after 2004, ie under presidents Hamed Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, but others which are sometimes called “unofficial.” These were created before 2004, by previous governments, often by splitting older, existing districts. This was done under the various regimes of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) (AAN background here), as well a the mujahedin and Taleban regime. Since 2001, under Presidents Hamed Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, new ‘unofficial’ districts have been created in the same way. (New provinces have also been created using this model.) (7)

Sometimes, these rearrangements answered to local demands by certain population groups who felt underrepresented in the larger ‘old’ district or simply in order to create paid administrative jobs for the clientele of a particular powerful politician. Badakhshan, with its record number of 27 districts, might be a point in case (former president Borhanuddin Rabbani was from there), Panjshir with its very small population but now nine districts, or Kandahar, where the Karzai family’s home area, Dand, was made a district.

It looks, as if the list of existing districts has been uncontroversial up to the breakdown of state institutions in the violent transition from the PDPA to the mujahedin government in the early 1980s and then further on to the Taleban regime and after its fall. (8) Now, no one dares ‘dismantle’ districts from those periods, in order to not confront those who created them, as some of those politicians or their followers are still powerful in parliament and elsewhere.

Conclusion: A step forward, but not yet the final one

While administratively, the country’s institutions have solved – at least for the time being – the long-standing issue of the number of officially recognised districts, parliament has still to approve it. It also has to tackle the still pending issue of district delineation. Both are more than just administrative problems, as the creation of districts and the allocation of resources to them (their tashkil of staff and budget) has been used by consecutive governments to the benefit of themselves and their allies. The mash of official, unofficial and temporary districts and the vested interests behind their creation has made the issue extremely difficult to resolve.

In combination with Afghanistan’s still absent population data (there has still been no census), this issue has stood and stands in the way of the legitimacy of any election in Afghanistan. Holding a census is also hampered by severe disputes about whether it should also be used to determine the numbers of the diverse ethnic groups in the country. Holding a census, therefore, throws up similar – actually more serious and dangerous – controversies as the distribution of new ID cards has done (AAN analysis here and here).

But so far, the failure to organise district council elections has allowed everyone to ignore this problem. With the district council elections that are (or were – the decision on whether to delay them is pending) scheduled for 20 October 2018, this was no longer feasible. Without an exact number of districts, it would be simply impossible to hold district elections.

The possibility of a delay of the district elections has mixed blessings. As the IEC and IDLG have argued, the time won by a delay might help them sort out other related issues, such as what exactly the district councils will be responsible for, what their budgets will be and what and whether councillors will be paid. At the same time, parliament – with its opposing interest groups – might take up the issue and open the district list up again.

Edited by Kate Clark

 

(1) In December 2017, AAN received a list from the (now former) IDLG spokeswoman Munera Yusufzada which had 385 districts. These figures were also used as the basis for the polling centre assessment in August and September 2017 (see its AAN analysis here), as Shahla Haque, the (then) acting head of the IEC secretariat, confirmed to AAN on 27 December 2017. Since then, however, two more districts have been created so that Yusufzada’s list was probably already correct and coordinated between CSO, IDLG and the commission.

(2) Afghanistan’s population statistics is another issue. There has never been a full census. The following information is based on data the author received when working for the UN in 2002 and a 2014 article by Najib Manalai published at the Afghan economy-focussed news website Wadsam:

The CSO was founded in 1972 with USAID funding in order to prepare and conduct a comprehensive survey of Afghanistan’s population. The survey was preceded by the collection and aggregation of compiled data from the ministries of interior (conscription and National ID cards distribution) and of agriculture and irrigation (quantity of fertilizer distributed). The results of this survey were published in 1973 as the “Provincial Gazetteer of Afghanistan” (PGA). It counted a total population of about 14 million, which included a presumed number of two million Kuchis. A census had been planned for the summer of 1978, at a time when large parts of the country were already in a state of war. CSO staff claimed that the ‘objectives’ of the census were reached to only about 70 per cent. The results were partially published in 1983 as the “Locality Gazetteer of Afghanistan.” It counted 16 million Afghans. All CSO records published since (under the communists, the mujahedin’s Islamic State of Afghanistan and the Taleban Emirate are based on the 1978 figures with subsequent extrapolations on the basis of an assumed growth rate – initially 1.9 per cent and,since 2007, 2.05 per cent.

In 2004, the United Nations Population Fund conducted a countrywide household survey which is now used as the CSO’s basis to project the total in-country population. For 2017-18, the CSO gave a figure of 29.7 million.

Manalai also quotes other sources and figures, such as figures based on household data collected during the National Immunization Days (estimate of 44.8 million for 2014) and estimates provided by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development based on the National Solidarity Program (36.3 million in 2014).

(3) The not yet final joint CSO/IDLG list contains the following 16 temporary districts:

Bamian (1): Yakaolang II (Yakaolang having been split into two)

Panjshir (1): Abshar

Kunduz (3): Kalbad, Aqtash, Gortepe (in the list, it is mistakenly called “Gultepe” – perhaps someone deliberated changed the nasty-sounding ‘Tomb Hill’ into ‘Flower Hill’). These districts are all under Taleban control (read more here)

Kandahar (2): Dand (the Karzai’s family’s home place), Takhtapul

Kunar (1): Sheltan (this district is older than 2004; it already appeared on the 2002 district list used by the Emergency Loya Jirga)

Laghman (1): Badpash (background in this AAN dispatch)

Nimruz (1): Delaram

Herat (4): Zerkoh, Zawol, Poshtkoh, Koh-e Zawar (the list contains a fifth district marked as ‘temporary’, Shindand – but that is actually the remainder of the older, larger district from which the four others were divided from)

Helmand (2): Marja (more here), Nawamesh.

The IDLG, however, says there are altogether 23 temporary districts, so seven must be missing from the latest but incomplete CSO/IDLG list.

Four others are, however, included in the IDLG letter sent to the IEC in June 2017:

Uruzgan (1): Chinarto

Paktia (2): Laja Mangal, Mirzaka

Daykundi (1): Pato

This means that since June 2017, three more temporary districts seem to have been created. Where they are, we will only learn when the CSO and IDLG publish their complete list.

(4) The size (number of seats) of the planned district councils is also determined on the basis of the size of the district’s population, as article 60 of the relevant law stipulates:

Each district shall have a council, members of which shall be elected by the voters of the same district for a term of three years. Allocation of Seats to District Council

Article 61:(1) The seats of the district council are allocated in proportion to the population of each district as below: 1 A district with a population of up to forty thousand, 5 seats. 2 A district with a population of more than forty thousand up to seventy thousand, 7 seats. 3 A district with a population of more than seventy thousand up to one hundred thousand, 9 seats. 4 A district with a population of more than one- hundred thousand, 11 seats. (2) A minimum of 25% of the seats of each District Council shall be allocated to female candidates. (3) A nomad may participate in district council elections of any district as a voter and or a candidate.

There are 175 districts with five seats. They are: 1) Badghis: Muqur; 2) Bamyan: Kahmard, 3) Shibar, 4) Saighan, 5) Yakawlang Two; 6) Badakhshan: Jurm 7) Shuhada, 8) Yawan, 9) Taskhan, 10) Baharak, 11) Tagab, 12) Shighnan, 13) Darwaz-e Payin (Mami), 14) Shaki, 15) Yamgan/Girwan, 16) Darwaz-e Bala/Nisi, 17) Kuf Ab, 18) Warduj, 19) Kohistan, 20) Khwahan, 21) Arghanjkhwah, 22) Wakhan, 23) Eshkashem, 24) Karan wa Manjan, 25) Zibak; 26) Baghlan: Deh Salah, 27) Khenjan, 28) Tala wa Barfak, 29) Pul-e Hesar, 30) Andarab, 31) Khwaja Hejran/Jelga, 32) Farang wa Gharu, 33) Guzargah-e Nur; 34) Balkh: Kaldar, 35) Marmal; 36) Parwan: Koh-e Safi, 37) Salang, 38) Shiekh Ali; 39) Paktika: Barmal, 40) Geyan, 41) Zarghun Shahr, 42) Dila wa Khushamand, 43) Mata Khan, 44) Janikhel, 45) Sar Rawza, 46) Wazakhwah, 47) Yahyakhel, 48) Yusufkhel, 49) Sarobi, 50) Nika, 51) Omna, 52) Gomal, 53) Wurmamai, 54) Tarwa; 55) Panjshir: Rokha, 56) Anaba, 57) Paryan, 58) Dara, 59) Shotul, 60) Abshar; 61) Takhar: Kalafgan, 62) Bangi, 63) Dasht-e Qala, 64) Baharak, 65) Chal, 66) Darqad, 67) Khwaja Bahauddin; 68) Hazar Sumuj, 69) Namak Ab; 70) Jawzjan: Khwaja Du Koh, 71) Qarqin, 72) Qushtepa, 73) Khaneqa, 74) Khamyab; 75) Khost: Nader Shah Kot, 76) Gurbuz, 77) Spera, 78) Haji Maidan, 79) Bak, 80) Shemal, 81) Qalandar; 82) Zabul: Arghandab, 83) Shamulzai, 84) Kakar/Khak-e Afghan, 85) Shinkai, 86) Nawbahar, 87) Tarnak aw Jaldak, 88) Mizan, 89) Atghar; 90) Samangan: Feruz Nakhchir; 91) Ghazni: Giro, 92) Jaghatu, 93) Nawa, 94) Ajrestan, 95) Ab Band, 96) Wali Muhammad Shahid/Khugyani, 97) Khwaja Omari, 98) Rashidan, 99) Zana Khan; 100) Ghor: Dolina, 101) Saghar, 102) Dawlatyar, 103) Charsada; 104): Faryab: Khan Chahar Bagh, 105) Qaramqul; 106) Farah: Bakwa, 107) Qala-ye Kah, 108) Khak-e Safid, 109) Lash wa Juwayn, 110) Anar Dara, 111) Shib Koh; 112) Kabul: Chahar Asiab, 113) Istalif, 114) Kalakan, 115) Musahi, 116) Guldara, 117) Farza, 118) Khak-e Jabbar; 119) Kapisa: Alasay, 120) Kohband; 121) Kunduz: Kalbad, 122) Aqtash, 123) Gultepa (Gurtepe); 124) Kandahar: Daman, 125) Arghestan, 126) Maruf, 127) Khakrez, 128) Mianeshin, 129) Nesh, 130) Shurabak, 131) Ghorak, 132) Reg/Shaga, 133) Takhtapul (temporary); 134) Kunar: Sawki, 135) Khas Kunar, 136) Nurgal, 137) Chapadara, 138) Narang wa Badil, 139) Narai, 140) Watapur, 141) Sirkanay, 142) Bar Kunar, 143) Marawara, 144) Ghaziabad, 145) Dangam, 146) Shaigal, 147) Shiltan; 148) Laghman: Dawlat Shah, 149) Badpakh; 150) Logar: Kharwar, 151) Khoshi, 152) Azra; 153) Maidan Wardak: Behsud One, 154) Dai Mirdad; 155) Nuristan: Nurgram, 156) Kamdesh, 157) Manduwal, 158) Waigal, 159) Barg-e Matal, 160) Wama, 161) Du Ab; 162) Nimruz: Chahr Burjak, 163) Khashrud, 164) Asl-e Chakhansur, 165) Kang, 166) Delaram; 167): Herat: Farsi, 168) Chesht-e Sharif, 169) Pusht-e Koh, 170) Koh-e Zur; 171) Helmand: Rig (Khaneshin), 172) Dishu, 173) Washir, 174) Marja, 175) Nawa Mesh.

There are 85 districts with seven seats. They are: 1) Bamyan: Yakaolang One; 2) Badakhshan: Darayem, 3) Yaftal Sufla, 4) Shahr-e Bozorg, 5) Raghistan, 6) Khash; 7) Baghlan: Khost wa Farang, 8) Dahana-ye Ghori, 9) Baraka; 10) Balkh: Kushenda, 11) Nahr-e Shahi, 12) Chaharkent, 13) Zari, 14) Shurtepa; 15) Parwan: Jabal ul-Seraj, 16) Sayyedkhel, 17) Shinwari, 18) Surkh Parsa; 19) Paktika: Urgun; 20) Panjshir: Hesa-ye Awal/Khenj; 21) Takhar: Eshkamesh, 22) Farkhar, 23) Yangi Qala, 24) Warsaj; 25) Jawzjan: Darzab, 26) Mengjak, 27) Faizabad, 28) Mardyan; 29) Khost: Tanai, 30) Manduzai/Ismailkhel, 31) Terezai/Alisher, 32) Musakhel; 33) Zabul: Shajoy, 34) Dai Chopan; 35) Sar-e Pul: Gusfandi, 36) Sayyad, 37) Balkhab, 38) Suzma Qala; 39) Samangan: Dara-ye Suf Bala, 40) Ruy-e Du Ab, 41) Hazrat Sultan, 42) Khuram wa Sarbagh; 43) Ghazni: Gilan, 44) Muqur, 45) Deh Yak, 46) Waghaz; 47) Ghor: Shahrak, 48) Tolak; 49) Faryab: Kohestan, 50) Belcharagh, 51) Khwaja Sabs Posh Wali, 52) Dawlatabad, 53) Qurghan, 54) Andkhoy, 55) Ghormach; 56) Farah: Purchaman, 57) Gulestan, 58) Pusht-e Rud; 59) Kabul: Bagrami, 60) Sarobi, 61) Deh Sabz, 62) Mir Bacha Kot; 63) Kapisa: Kohestan Two; 64) Kunduz: Aliabad; 65) Kandahar: Arghandab, 66) Maiwand, 67) Shah Wali Kot, 68) Dand; 69) Kunar: Dara-ye Pech; 70) Logar: Charkh; 71) Maidan Wardak: Narkh, 72) Jalrez, 73) Jaghatu; 74): Herat: Karkh, 75) Zendajan, 76) Kohsan, 77) Adraskan, 78) Kushk-e Kohna, 79) Zer Koh, 80) Zawal, 81) Shindand; 82) Helmand: Baghran, 83) Sangin, 84) Musa Qala, 85) Nawzad.

There are 45 districts with nine seats. They are: 1) Badghis: Qades, 2) Jund, 3) Ab Kamari; 4) Bamyan: Panjab; 5) Badakhshan: Kashm, 6) Argo; 7) Baghlan: Nahrin, 8) Dushi; 9) Balkh: Chemtal, 10) Chahr Bolak, 11) Khulm, 12) Dehdadi; 13) Takhar: Chah Ab, 14) Khwaja Ghar; 15) Jawzjan: Aqcha;16) Khost: Sabari (Yaqubi); 17) Sar-e Pul: Kohestanat; 18) Samangan: Dara-ye Suf Payin; 19) Nawur, 20 Malestan; 21) Ghor: Taiwara; 22) Faryab: Shirin Tagab, 23) Gurziwan, 24) Almar; 25) Farah: Bala Bulok; 26) Kabul: Shakardara, 27) Qarabagh; 28) Kapisa: Tagab, 29) Kohistan One; 30) Kunduz: Dasht-e Archi, 31) Chahardara, 32) Qala-ye Zal; 33) Kandahar: Panjwayi, 34) Zherai; 35) Laghman: Alishing; 36) Logar: Baraki Barak, 37) Muhammad Agha; 38) Maidan Wardak: Chak-e Wardak; 39) Herat: Gulran, 40 Ghorian, 41) Oba; 42) Helmand: Nawa-ye Barakzai, 43) Nad Ali, 44) Garmsir, 45) Kajaki.

And there are 31 districts with 11 seats which are: 1) Badghis: Bala Murghab; 2) Bamyan: Waras; 3) Baghlan: Baghlan-e Jadid; 4) Balkh: Balkh, 5) Sholgara, 6) Dawlatabad; 7) Parwan: Bagram, 8) Siahgerd/Ghorband; 9) Takhar: Rustaq; 10) Sar-e Pul: Sancharak; 11) Ghazni: Jaghori, 12) Qarabagh, 13) Andar; 14) Ghor: Lal wa Sar Jangal, 15) Pasaband; 16) Faryab: Pashtun Kot, 17) Qaisar; 18) Kabul: Paghman; 19) Kapisa: Nejrab; 20) Kunduz: Hazrat Imam Saheb, 21) Khanabad; 22) Kandahar: Spin Boldak; 23) Laghman: Qarghayi, 24) Alingar; 25) Maidan Wardak: Markaz-e Behsud, 26) Sayyedabad; Herat: 27) Enjil, 28) Guzara (Nezam Shahid), 29) Keshk/Rubat Sangi, 30) Pashtun Zarghun; 32) Helmand: Nahr-e Seraj.

(5) The more than 1000 delegates for the ELJ were chosen in a combined selection/election (entesab/entekhab) process. There were district assembles held in which all ethnic, political and social groups were supposed to be represented and which agreed, by acclamation, who the district’s representatives would be. These were then sent to the provincial centre to decide, in a secret ballot, who the province’s delegates would be. The numbers of representatives and delegates were based on a population-related quota system.

(6) The district list of the ELJ is in the author’s archive. Under today’s circumstances, it would contain only 337 districts, as Panjshir and Daykundi were not yet provinces, and their later provincial capitals would be classed as districts. (Provincial capitals will not have district elections, but, also at some point in the future and again, according to the constitution, municipal elections.)

(7) For example, the following provinces were created:

Paktika latest by 1970s (no exact year available) from eastern parts of Ghazni (called Katawaz) and the southern parts of Paktia

Sarepul, the former southern half of Jawzjan, by the PDPA in 1988

Khost from the eastern of Paktia between 1988 and 1992

Nuristan from the northern halves of Laghman and Kunar, apparently under the mujehedin government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan in the 1990s

Panjshir from the northeastern part of Parwan in 2004 (around 1973, it temporarily belonged to Kapisa)

Daykundi (the northern, Hazara-populated half of Uruzgan) also in 2004.

Particularly unsafe districts have also been shifted, similar to Ghormach, for example Shindand and Farsi from Farah to Herat, Darzab (then still including Qushtepe – the area in which, until recently self-proclaimed Islamic State groups operated, see AAN reporting here) from Faryab to Jawzjan and Kaldar and Kholm from Samangan to Balkh (under the PDPA) and Azra from Paktia to Logar (under Karzai).

There are also longstanding demands to create a ‘Turkmen’ province in northern Jawzjan or another ‘Hazara’ province from Ghazni’s western districts. This is reflected in the current discussions about splitting the provincial constituency of Ghazni for the Wolesi Jirga election into three, to ensure better, ethnically-balanced representation (AAN analysis here).

(8) A reader, Roger Helms, has kindly directed us to a collection of maps that he has compiled and put on the ArcGIS On Line platform and show Afghanistan’s provinces and districts over time (see here) which, among others, includes a 1973 map with then 29 provinces and 325 and one from 1998 with 32 provincesand 329 districts. Separately, he has worked existing CSO district data into a list that shows the current situation (here). It corresponds both with the CSO/IDLJ list and confirms our findings where the list had the gaps described above.

In between the 1973 and the 1998 maps falls an undated district list from the mid-1980s – ie before the creation of Khost and Sarepul by the PDPA regime in 1988 – that is in this author’s archive. It also shows 29 provinces, but a significantly lower number of 230 districts (not counting the provincial capitals). The difference between this list and the two mentioned maps is that it only contains districts (wuluswalis), not also the subdistricts (elaqadaris) which then, however, also still existed. Elaqadaris were dropped as a level of administrative units after 2001; they were either upgraded to districts or merged with or into other administrative units.

 

 

Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for 20 October this year, three and a half years late. They were delayed so that the electoral system could be reformed – although what that delay achieved in terms of reforms, is questionable. The country’s first district elections are also still scheduled for the same day, although the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has proposed a delay to them and to the Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni province. In general, multiple, serious problems are emerging ahead of October’s planned elections, to do with, among other things, insecurity, voter registration, controversies over the two institutions charged with overseeing the vote and, less than three months before the poll, a call by some major political parties to change the election system. Not surprisingly, given the uncertainty over so many aspects of the parliamentary elections, doubts are increasing as to how good and inclusive they can be. To (hopefully) aid understanding, we have gathered together all our reporting on electoral reform and preparations for the 2018 elections since the establishment of the National Unity Government in September 2014 – here the introduction to this new thematic dossier by Ali Yawar Adili (with input from Thomas Ruttig).

With October’s Wolesi Jirga elections, Afghanistan’s third electoral cycle will be completed for three important institutions (the presidency, parliament and provincial councils). The third presidential (together with provincial council) elections were held on 5 April 2014. This poll revealed problems in the election-related institutions and the overall electoral framework, including related legislation.

The 2001 Bonn agreement on Afghanistan had stipulated that presidential and parliamentary elections be held simultaneously, “if possible.” It turned out to be impossible to do so during the very first electoral cycle, planned for 2004 and the presidential election went ahead separately, so there would at least be one achievement the then-United States president George Bush could point to going into his second term election. The first parliamentary elections were delayed for one year, to 2005.

The first-ever district council elections are still scheduled to be held simultaneously with the 2018 parliamentary polls, but now the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has proposed a delay to them and to the Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni province. The election of district councillors was supposed to close some of the gaps in the implementation of various election-related requirements in the country’s constitution. These probably will not happen: sufficient candidates have nominated themselves in less than a tenth of Afghanistan’s districts and the IEC has proposed a delay. This would move the district council elections to April 2019 when presidential and provincial council elections are scheduled, further complicated what should be the start of Afghanistan’s fourth electoral cycle.

The three and half year delay of the parliamentary elections means that, for the first time since the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001 and Afghanistan’s embarking on a road toward democracy, the country is completing one electoral cycle (its third) while the next, (the fourth) is about to start. The next presidential elections have been scheduled for 20 April 2019, and it is foreseeable that the aftermath of the parliamentary poll – counting, adjudication and dealing with complaints – will crash into the start of preparations for the presidential and other elections. The delays and the problems resulting from this will likely mirror a significant drop in the quality of the Afghan elections and flag severe shortcomings in Afghanistan’s aspiring democracy.

69 days ahead of elections day, there are any number of unresolved issues to do with the parliamentary elections.

The 20 October 2018 elections

Voter registration and electoral system

Thehead of IEC field operations, Zmarai Qalamyar, on 8 August, gave AAN a precise breakdown of voter registration. He said 9,072,208 had registered – 5,783,037 (63.7%) men, 3,114,942 (34.3%) women and, as separately registered groups, 173,646 (1.9%) Kuchi (nomads) and 583 (0.006%) Hindu and Sikh voters. As of 8 August, the details of more than 3.5 million registered voters have been entered into the IEC’s database, according to IEC chairman Gula Jan Abdul Badi Sayyad. The IEC is currently working to input the remaining registered voters into its central database, before it verifies and approves the final voter list.

AAN’s conversations with national and international election experts show that the IEC’s database can only detect two types of fraudulent voter registration: underage voter registration and multiple or duplicate registration using the same tazkera (national ID) with the same serial number. However, it cannot discover multiple registrations with fake tazkeras which have different serial numbers; these can only be identified by cross-checking with the database of the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority (ACCRA). This understanding was confirmed by Sayed Ibrahim Sadat, the head of the IEC’s IT department, on 6 August, as reported by Tolonews (see here).

To achieve this goal, Sayyad said that the IEC planned to establish a technical joint committee with ACCRA to identify fake tazkeras used in the voter registration. This means that the committee will cross-check the tazkeras used for registration with the ACCRA database. However, the question is whether ACCRA has a credible database for the paper tazkeras and whether there is enough time to ascertain more than the nine million tazkeras. Therefore, it is likely that that many instances of fraudulent voter registration using fake tazkiras may not be unearthed.

Many political parties (1) are questioning the voter registration and said that biometric voter registration should have been undertaken from the start. In addition to this, they have two additional demands: changing the current electoral system, Single Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV), into a system called Multi-Dimensional Representation (MDR) and allowing parties to have an observation room within the IEC to observe preparations for the elections. A joint committee of representatives of political parties, the government and the IEC led by second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh have been discussing these demands in five rounds of meetings, with the first one held on 28 July (see here). On 1 August, the committee held a technical meeting (see here) in which, according to a source from Danesh’s office, a German company called Dermalog had a presentation on the use of “biometric technology,” this less than three months ahead of the poll.

In its last meeting on 5 August, the committee could not agree to the parties’ demands. According to Danesh’s media office, the committee concluded that the government “had stressed the use of biometric technology in elections more than any other organisation in the past.  Now if the IEC agrees, the government does not have any problem [with it] and the government also calls on the IEC to pave the way for using this technology in the [next] presidential elections.”

With respect to the parties’ demand to change SNTV into MDR, the vice-president’s media office reported that the committee had concluded that this proposal “in addition to the time constraints, has its own complexity and, thus, requires a broad national debate. Even if this proposal could be passed through a presidential legislative decree, it might still be rejected by the parliament. Therefore, the best way is that the [next] Afghan parliament [should] decide about changing the electoral system.”Since then, the political groups have been saying they will not accept the results of the elections held using the current manual voter registration and in the absence of any change to the electoral system (see this Khabarnama report quoting Anwarul Haq Ahadi, head of the New National Front of Afghanistan). Jamiat-e Islami member Nur Rahman Akhlaqi also told AAN on 9 August that the parties were considering not allowing the elections to be held using the manual voter registration. Any hardening of positions by these political parties could, of course, adversely impact the poll.

Electoral calendar

The IEC is lagging behind in the 2018 elections’ electoral calendar which sets specific deadlines for various important activities. The calendar specified 30 June to 2 July as the timeframe for addressing the complaints against the preliminary candidates’ list; the IEC should have published the final list on 3 August. However, it was only on 4 August that the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced it had disqualified 25 candidates for having links to illegal armed groups. It gave two days, as per the electoral law, to these candidates to appeal against the ECC decision. That meant that, on 8 August, the ECC was still holding an open session to address the appeals of the disqualified candidates (see here).

The Ghazni problem

In late July, the IEC proposed a postponement of both the Wolesi Jirga and district council elections in Ghazni as well as district council elections in the entire country. The IEC reasoned that “serious security situation and other problems” in Ghazni could prevent fair and inclusive representation from the entire province (media report here). It also argued that as only 40 out of Afghanistan’s 387 districts had an adequate number of candidates standing, this render district elections pointless (see media reporting here). In accordance with the electoral law,both proposals have been submitted to a high-ranking committee that has yet to convene. The National Security Council (NSC), whose members are part of the committee, discussed the IEC proposal concerning both district council elections and elections in Ghazni in its 7 August meeting. According to a report on the website on the presidential palace, the NSC, after “detailed discussions, decided that technical and practical studies and consultation were needed in this regard and asked the IEC to present a report on specific and practical alternatives in this regard for the necessary decision-making.”

The presidential election

During the 1 August press conference, the IEC also announced 31 Hamal 1398 (20 April 2019) as the date for the next presidential and provincial council elections. A day before, on 31 July, the IEC held a consultative meeting with the ECC leadership, representatives of political parties, civil society and international organisations where they discussed this date in terms of “operational, financial and administrative, security as well as climate aspects.” The IEC reported that a “majority” of the participants had agreed with the 20 April 2019 date.

The announcement of the presidential election date has been made well ahead of the legal deadline. The presidential term expires on 22 May 2019. According to the electoral law, the election for a new president should be held 30 to 60 days before the expiry date. This means that the next election should be held between 22 March and 22 April 2019. Article 71 of the electoral law stipulates that the IEC should announce the election date at least 180 days in advance, and publish the electoral calendar at least 120 days before the election day. This means that the respective deadlines are 22 September to 22 November to announce the date and 22 October 2018 to 22 December 2018 to publish the election calendar.

However, the early announcement of the date by the IEC was made in response to a call by the President Ghani. On 22 July, during a meeting in the Palace with the IEC members, the United Nations and the European Union special representatives and a number of ambassadors of countries supporting the elections, the president asked the IEC to “set thepresidential election date and share it with the people as soon as possible.” UNAMA welcomed the announcement as “an important moment for democracy in Afghanistan.” However, some election observers called the IEC’s announcement of the date “a rush.” Executive director of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) Yusuf Rashid told the media on 1 August that either the date would be missed or the elections would be held [on 20 April 2019] [but with] a myriad of problems. “We are worried about the consequences of the next [presidential] elections,” he said.

The IEC during its 1 August press conference called for the “cooperation of the international community and the government in funding the next presidential election and ensuring its security.” This call for cooperation came a few days after UNAMA had announced on 25 July that “at the third project board meeting to support the upcoming parliamentary and district council elections, a new agreement was signed to enable enhanced contributions to Afghanistan’s electoral budget” and “[d]onors pledged to fund an additional US$57 million to the elections budget, in addition to pledging ongoing assistance to the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).” (UNAMA press release here) and media reporting here.)

More than three years for reform

AAN has covered attempts at and discussions of electoral reform extensively. There was an opportunity of more than three years for reform, but little was done. During this period, AAN’s reporting particularly featured the NUG leaders’ wrangling over the establishment of the Special Electoral Reform Commission (SERC), which had been envisaged in the NUG’s 2014 political deal; the SERC’s discussions and recommendations for electoral reform; parliament’s rejection of presidential legislative decrees that had adopted some of SERC’s recommendations and finally; changes to the electoral law which were endorsed by legislative decree and the appointment of new electoral commissioners for the IEC and the ECC. All of this is covered by AAN’s dispatches under section B.

Go to the dossier here.

 

(1) Following is a list of 21 parties that first coalesced around the demand in February 2018. Since then, they claim that the number has increased up to 35 (see here).

• [Hezb-e] Eqtedar-e Melli
• Afghan Mellat
• [Hezb-e] Paiwand-e Melli
• Jabha-ye Nawin-e Melli Afghanistan
• Jabha-ye Nejat-e Melli Afghanistan
• Jamiat-e Islami Afghanistan
• Jombesh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan
• Herasat-e Islami Afghanistan [previously known as Hezb-e Wahdat-e Melli Islami-ye Afghanistan]
• Harakat-e Islami Afghanistan
• Harakat-e Islami-ye Mutahed Afghanistan
• Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan
• Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan [both Hekmatyar and Arghanidwal factions]
• Hezb-e Islami-ye Mutahed Afghanistan
• Hezb-e Etedal-e Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Haq wa Adalat
• Rawand-e Hefazat az Arzeshha-ye Jihad wa Muqawamat
• Hezb-e Qeyam-e Melli Afghanistan
• Mahaz-e Melli Islami Afghanistan
• Nahzat-e Hambastagi-ye Melli Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan
• [Hezb-e] Wahdat-e Islami Mardom-e Afghanistan

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has proposed a delay in the district council elections, citing a lack of candidates. According to a report from the body, only a tenth of the country’s districts have enough male and female candidates to compete. The IEC listed several reasons as to why so few people wanted to stand: insecurity, lack of a legal framework, a requirement on educational qualifications that was too stringent, lack of clarity on salaries and benefits for councillors and, in rural areas, an unfavourable ‘cultural context’.  In this, the latest dispatch in his series on the preparations for Afghanistan’s elections, AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili assesses these reasons and points also to a hostility towards district council elections from within the state from the outset.

This is part ten of a series of dispatches looking at the preparations for the parliamentary elections. Part one dealt with political challenges; part two with an initial set of technical problems, including the date, budget and use of biometric technology; part three  with electoral constituencies; part four with controversies surrounding the appointment of a new IEC member after its former chief was sacked by President Ghani; part five with a demand by political parties to change the electoral system; part six with the date of the polls and with voter registration; part seven with a deficient polling centre assessment; part eight with controversies over voter registration, and; part nine with controversies over holding elections in Ghazni province.

Setting up district councils should be an important endeavour. They have, potentially, a significant political role to play. In establishing them two important institutions would be completed: according to the constitution, one third (34) of the 102 members of the Meshrano Jirga should be elected by district councils and district councillors should make up more than half of the members of any Constitutional Loya Jirga (the only body which can change the Afghan constitution). District councils could also provide accountability at the local level by checking local administration and district governors (see also this USIP article here). They could contribute to efforts to secure peace with the Taleban and other insurgent groups by providing a platform for local communities to feel included, represented and engaged in local government.

However, despite being mandated by the 2004 constitution, elections for district councils have never been held. This time again, efforts to hold them are failing. On 29 July 2018, the IEC proposed that they should be postponed (they are due to be held on 20 October, together with the parliamentary elections). The IEC argued that only 40 out of Afghanistan’s 387 districts had an adequate number of candidates to compete. (See media reporting here, which quotes the IEC letter On 31 July, the head of the IEC’s field operations department, Zmarai Qalamyar, said that out of three elements necessary to an election – “voters, candidates, and competition” – one was missing; in other words, the number of candidates standing was inadequate. He also said that re-opening a fresh candidate nomination was not feasible at this stage as it would delay the Wolesi Jirga elections.

This is the second proposal by the IEC regarding a postponement of a 2018 election. It had earlier recommended delaying all elections in Ghazni province, arguing that due to the “serious security situation and other problems” in the province, fair and inclusive representation from the entire province could not be ensured (media report here).

Both proposals were made to a committee that has been set up, as stipulated in article 104 of the electoral law which says that if “security situations, natural disasters, and other similar conditions make impossible the principle of general and fair representation,” elections should be postponed for a period of four months, based on a proposal by the IEC and with the approval of the committee. (1) The committee, according to the article, comprises the head and members of the National Security Council, the speakers of two houses of the parliament, the chief justice and the chairperson of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitutions. Qalamyar said the committee has not decided on the IEC proposal yet.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) and Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) provided a list of 387 districts to the IEC for planning the district council elections. The statistics that AAN received on 26 July 2018 show the following problems:

• No male or female candidates in 42 districts
• No female candidate in 120 districts
• The number of candidates in 166 out of the 206 districts that have female candidates is equal or less than the number of the seats allocated to women in those districts
• The number of male candidates in 39 out of the 326 districts that have male candidates is equal or less than the number of the seats allocated to those districts (excluding the women’s quota of 25 per cent seats)
• Only 40 districts have an adequate number of male and female candidates

On 30 July, Kabul daily Etilaat Roz also reported similar statistics that it claimed had been prepared by the legal department of the IEC. AAN’s conversations with election specialists privy to the IEC’s internal discussions (as well as Etilaat Roz report quoted above) show that IEC officials have concluded that the reasons for the low number of candidates include: the stringent education requirements, insecurity, the need to resign from civil service and government positions before standing, a lack of clarity on the councillors’ authorities and responsibilities – a problem that also had applied to the provincial councils (AAN analysis here) –, and a lack of clarity on salaries and benefits that councillors will enjoy. However, as I argue below, more overarching factors were at play; the reasons why so few Afghans wanted to stand should be seen as secondary factors in causing a delay – or, in the end, abandonment of the district council elections. There has been hostility by sections of the National Unity Government to holding them at all. That has allowed a basic lack of clarity to linger over various issues which needed to be certain before elections could take place. Among these were the number of districts in the country, that has only recently been clarified between the Central Statistics Office and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (each had previously used different figures) and their boundaries (this issue will be looked at in a separate dispatch).

Earlier pushback against district council elections

The drive towards holding district elections for the first time came from the 2014 National Unity Government agreement. The Abdullah camp wanted to change the constitution and this was agreed to by the Ghani camp. Changing the constitution needs a Constitutional Loya Jirga whose members must include the elected heads of district councils. However, since 2014, some elements of the government have displayed a reluctance to hold these elections. Last year, on 21 August 2017, Vice-President Sarwar Danesh, who was speaking at an event organised jointly by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on reviewing the constitution, openly said that there was no need for district council elections (or village council or municipal council elections). He argued that four elected institutions (the presidency, Wolesi Jirga, mayoral and provincial councils) were enough. He also said that Afghanistan did not have the money to hold all these elections, nor did it have the expertise to manage the various elected bodies and nor was there any need for them in terms of democracy and popular will.

Vice-President Danesh’s argument for removing district council elections from the constitution ran counter to what the Special Electoral Reform Commission (SERC) – the commission that was tasked in 2015 by the government to come up with proposals for electoral reform – had, earlier in late 2015, recommended when it discussed the issue of multiple elections in Afghanistan (see AAN analysis here). The SERC’s recommendations were that the constitution be amended in a way to provide for the indirect election of provincial council members from among the district and municipal councils. It also said that the Constitutional Loya Jirga should reconsider having village council elections. (2) The SERC’s recommendation was based on two things: the desire to reduce the number of elections to make them affordable, and to localise representation. The argument was that district councils would be closer to the local population than the provincial councils and they could just as well be elected indirectly. This system would work in a similar way to the Afghan Senate where one third of the members are elected by provincial councils and one third should be elected by district councils.

Vice-President Danesh’s remarks were noticed with concern by some parties. For instance, on 16 September 2017, Abdul Sabur Khedmat, an MP from Farah province, said: “The second vice president says that we cannot hold the district council elections, but the commission says that we will hold parliamentary anddistrict council elections.” (emphasis added) (see here.)

AAN’s research at the time also showed that officials at the IDLG were arguing against holding district council elections in 2018. These officials pointed to a number of reasons why a delay was desirable: the cost of the elections and the salaries to the elected councillors, and the lack of institutional structures within the IDLG to administer and oversee almost 400 district councils (more on the number of districts below). AAN’s research also showed that the IDLG had suggested to President Ashraf Ghani that district council elections be held together with the next presidential and provincial council elections in 2019. Officials from both the IDLG and the Palace, the author found out, only wanted to hold district council elections at all so as to complete the constitutional requirements to hold a Constitutional Loya Jirga which could then remove district councils altogether. One IDLG official in conversation with AAN argued that district councils could provide a huge network of clients for national powerbrokers and could therefore play a destabilising role in politics.

Remarks aimed at disincentivising potential candidates also came from the IDLG halfway through the period for candidate nomination when, on 4 June, the head of its department for coordination of local councils, Sayyed Ahmad Khamush, told Etilaat Roz that the IDLG did not have the financial ability to pay salaries and benefits to the district council members in the same way it paid MPs and provincial council members. He said that the IDLG intended to build on the experience of developing community development councils (CDCs), which worked voluntarily with the National Solidarity Programme in the past and now with the Citizen’s Charter programme. A week later, on 11 June, he told Tolonews (see here) that there were around 2,800 district council members and the government would need to hire over 800 civil servants to carry out their administrative work. Khamush estimated that around 500 million Afs (around 6.9 million USD) would be needed per annum to pay the district councillors’ salaries and benefits and this, he said, was beyond the government’s financial capability.

These remarks came during the candidate nomination period (for both district councils and Wolesi Jirga elections, this started on 26 May and ended on 12 June.) The IEC extended the period for nominations for district councils for two more days, until 14 June, after it realised that not enough people, especially women, had chosen to stand. AAN’s conversations with different national and international election experts suggest these remarks did dampen potential candidates’ interest and that the possibility that they were deliberately made cannot be ruled out. This suspicion was also flagged by Mohiuddin Mahdi, an MP from Baghlan affiliated with Jamiat-e Islami, who wrote on 27 July in a Facebook post that “the most important reason for women and men’s disinterest in nomination was the government’s untimely – but meaningful – announcement of the district councillors not having material benefits.” AAN has also heard anecdotes indicating that, in certain provinces, candidates had resigned from their government jobs to run in district council elections, but rushed to withdraw their resignations after hearing the remarks from the IDLG.

It seems that, although the IEC did incorporate district council elections into election planning from the very beginning when it announced the election date, there has been no sign of political will or genuine support from the government for holding them, although the president officially stuck to the line that both elections should be held as planned (see for example on his website here).

Some attempts to re-incentivise potential candidates by discussing their salaries and benefits came far too late, after the nomination period was already over. For instance, on 18 June, some MPs signed a proposal and submitted it to administrative board of the Wolesi Jirga to revise the law on the salaries of government officials to include salaries for district council members. Baghlan MP Mehdi, who was part of this effort (a copy of the proposal posted on his Facebook page, told the media that:

District councils are a fundamental foundation stone of democracy as well as a primary component of a Constitutional Loya Jirga. Therefore, I suggested that specific benefits be envisioned for their members. Inter alia, if they are [a government] employee or a teacher, they should be given additional benefits in addition to them maintaining their job and salary, while those who are newcomers and do not have a working background, should be provided with fixed salaries and benefits.

Similarly, it was only on 25 July that, that the issue was clarified at the highest level of government: the High Council of Rule of Law chaired by President Ghani discussed the district council law and salaries and decided that the law be finalised soon and “salaries be set for members of district councils.”

It might also be the case that this late effort on the part of the government was intended to avoid responsibility for the unravelling of the district council elections.

What is the constitutional status of district councils?

A more fundamental antipathy to having elected district councils could be because they are a prerequisite for changing the constitution. They are needed to complete two important institutions: a Constitutional Loya Jirga and the upper house of the parliament. Not having elected district councils could always, therefore, be used as an excuse to reject any demand for convening such a Loya Jirga. The constitution is very clear about this. Article 140 of the 2004 constitution (3) establishes district councils elected by local residents “for 3 years through free, general, secret, as well as direct elections.” A separate law to regulate the authorities and responsibilities of the councils has to be approved by parliament and the president. The IDLG has been reportedly holding consultative meetings in different regions of the country on what roles should be codified for district councils. (media report here) However, as yet – less than three months before the planned elections – nothing has been authorised.

It is article 110 (4) of the constitution that discusses district councillors’ part in any Loya Jirga which, according to the article, “is the highest manifestation of the will of the people of Afghanistan.” A Loya Jirga consists, the article says, of: 1) members of the National Assembly; 2) heads of the provincial councils; and 3) heads of the district councils. The Loya Jirga has crucial functions, as prescribed in article 111 of the constitution: to decide on issues related to the independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity and supreme national interests; amend provisions of this constitution and; impeach the president in accordance with the provisions of article 69 of the constitution. None of these three functions can be performed without a Loya Jirga and it cannot be constitutionally convened without having district council elections.

This was the reason why the National Unity Government in its September 2014 political agreement (see here) committed itself to holding district council elections “as early as possible on the basis of a law in order to create a quorum for the Loya Jirga in accordance with Section 2 of Article 110 of the Constitution.” The aim of convening a Loya Jirga was to amend the constitution and consider “the proposal to create the post of executive prime minister.” On 27 July, MP Mahdi, after it was revealed that the IEC was considering proposing a delay in district council elections, called this “the antidemocratic decision” of the government taking “pre-emptive action” against convening a Loya Jirga “to amend and reform the constitution.” He claimed the Loya Jirga was “a demand that recently parties and civil society organisations have strongly insisted on and emphasised.”

Moreover, according to article 84 of the constitution, one third of Meshrano Jirga members should also come from the district councils: “From amongst district councils of each province, one individual [is] elected by the respective councils for a three-year term for Meshrano Jirga.” (5) However, both the previous and current governments have filled this set of Meshrano Jirga seats with provincial councillors. The indirectly-elected two-thirds of senators should outnumber the one-third appointed by the president and could, therefore, provide a stronger check on him (or her), particularly given that the senators elected through the district councils are, in principle, supposed to strongly represent the interests of the rural population.

Given the 387 districts in Afghanistan now agreed upon, the district councils would actually comprise a majority of Constitutional Loya Jirga members. Against the 387 heads of district councils would be 386 others – 250 MPs, 102 Senators and the 34 heads of the provincial councils. Since the district councils would also elect 34 members of Meshrano Jirga, the total number of Constitutional Loya Jirga members coming directly or indirectly from the district councils would be 421, as opposed to 352 others. The district councils’ share of a Loya Jirga membership could further increase as more districts than 387 might be created in the future (more on the number of districts below and in an upcoming dispatch).

Legal requirements and constraints

The low number of candidates for district councils was also caused by too strict criteria for nomination. The 2016 electoral law stipulates what some election experts consider as too high requirements for potential candidates for district (as well as provincial and village) councils which are discussed in this section. This could indicate how random and flawed the – still largely incomplete – electoral reform was.

For instance, while there is no education criterion for Wolesi Jirga candidates who are supposed to enact legislation in a broad range of fields and approve fundamental lines of the country’s foreign policy as well as other international treaties (which should require education), the electoral law sets out completed 12thgrade education (apart from being at least 25 years old) for prospective candidates of the three above-mentioned councils. (6) AAN’s conversation with election specialists and potential candidates as well as the IEC report showed that the legal requirements for the district council candidates have actually harmed candidate nomination. Article 40 of the electoral law sets the following requirements for people to stand in district – and provincial – councils:

A further dampening of enthusiasm may have been article 44 of the electoral law (7) which bans seven categories of people from running, including civil servants. They have to resign before standing for any elected position. Given the lack of clarity on salaries and benefits (and of the chance of being elected), this stipulation may have put off teachers and other civil servants from standing as district councillors.

Districts outside the government control

According to the IEC’s report, insecurity was one of the main reasons for not enough people standing for the district council elections. The government has never cited insecurity as an argument against district council elections. However, as three security assessments showed, it is a real problem. Even if the IEC were to rescind its proposal to delay the district council elections, holding an inclusive ballot looks near impossible.

The US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has been conducting an assessment of Afghanistan’sdistricts since it began receiving ‘control-of-district’ data from the United States military and Resolute Support in November 2015. According to its latest quarterly report published on 30 July 2018, out of the country’s 407 districts, which SIGAR uses as the unit of assessment, as of 15 May 2018, 74 districts were under Afghan government control and 155 others under government influence, a total of 229 districts (56.3%). It said 11 districts were under insurgent control and 45 others under insurgent influence, a total of 56 districts (13.8%). The remaining 122 districts (30%) were contested, meaning they were controlled neither by the government nor the insurgency. In sum, SIGAR found the Taleban to be controlling, influencing or contesting 178 districts (43.7%).

The Long War Journal, which has been tracking the status of Afghanistan’s districts since the summer of 2015, six months before SIGAR, published its own assessment of the districts on 1 May 2018. According to the Journal and its three assessment levels (government-controlled, insurgent controlled, and contested), the Afghan government controls 159 districts (39%), the Taliban 39 districts (9.5%) (8), leaving 200 districts (49%) contested. It said it was not able to determine the status of 9 districts (2%). According to its data, the Taleban controls or is contesting 239 of Afghanistan’s 407 (59%) districts. (see here).

In early May this year, Defense Minister Tareq Shah Bahrami and Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmak provided their own security assessment of the districts to the Wolesi Jirga. They considered 216 districts out of 387 districts (55.8%) to be insecure.

There is no sign that the balance between government and insurgency control or influence has significantly changed since these assessments.This is underscored by SIGAR’s new quarterly report published on 30 July which reported that while “the Afghan government halted the insurgency’s momentum in gaining control of Afghanistan’s districts” this quarter, “it failed to improve its own areas of control.” (see here.)

Whatever the exact numbers are, it is clear that much of Afghanistan will be too insecure to hold elections safely, given the conflict and the Taleban’s stated hostility to elections. The IEC was not able even to access 32 districts in 14 provinces due to insecurity when it conducted its nation-wide assessment of polling centres last year (this is according to a list received by AAN from the IEC in early January 2018 – see AAN’s previous reporting here). (9) Then, a day after voter registration was launched, on 15 April 2018, the Taleban called on the “Muslim and Mujahed people to boycott the cosmetic and fake process under the name of election,” making the statement (see AAN’s previous reporting on this here).

Since then, both the Taleban and the Daesh branch in Afghanistan, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), have claimed attacks on election staff and sites. As we reported at the time of voter registration, insecurity was a major factor causing initial low turn-out. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report about election-related incidents and civilian casualties on 10 May. It had, by then, verified 23 election-related security incidents since voter registration began on 14 April 2018. Not all attacks were claimed by or attributed to the Taleban. They had resulted, said UNAMA, in 271 civilian casualties (86 deaths and 185 injured) and the abduction of 26 civilians (read the report here). Since then, more election facilities and personnel have been targeted, see this media report of the Taleban storming a voter registration centre in Chakhansur district of Nimroz, killing seven police officers, and seizing election material after the raid, for example.

Conclusion: no future for district council elections?

The IEC did include district council elections in election planning. It then conducted an unsuccessful candidate nomination operation, with only 10 per cent of the country’s 387 districts producing enough nominations for a sensible and competitive election to be held. This insufficiency of candidates in 90 per cent of the districts has rendered elections politically meaningless, for lack of competition, in a majority of the country’s districts. If the IEC reopened a new candidate nomination process and then prepares the preliminary and final lists, it would cause a delay in the Wolesi Jirga elections, if both elections were not split. Moreover, security has not improved and it is not clear at all whether people will take an interest in nomination in the future. As a result, the IEC has proposed a delay in the district council elections.

The option now is to hold the district council elections together with the presidential and provincial elections, planned for 20 April 2019, as it can be surely assumed that a third election within six months is completely unimaginable. This would give the IDLG some more time to set the legal framework for the district councils. However, holding district council elections with the presidential and provincial council elections as well as the Wolesi Jirga election in Ghazni would severely complicate the presidential election, as would any overspill such as the long-winded disputes which have characterised most previous elections.

The likely unravelling of the 20 October district council elections appears to have stemmed from the government’s lack of clear and firm determination to hold them, exacerbated by contradictory and unhelpful remarks by certain officials. Those who have stood – according to the IEC report, a total of 6221 people (5801 men and 420 women) in districts in 33 provinces (excluding Ghazni; the number of those districts is not mentioned in the report), with 70 candidates (61 men and 9 women) excluded from the preliminary list – number 6,151. They were expecting to stand in and hoped to win their district council election. Some may be locally influential – and not very happy about matters.

The failure to hold district council elections will also delay the holding of any possible Constitutional Loya Jirga and therefore any amendments to the constitution. These may be wanted – whether because of efforts to find peace with the Taleban or because something solid has emerged out of the (interminable) debates about changing Afghanistan’s political system. Adopting any other mechanism apart from a Loya Jirga to amend the constitution would be tantamount to overturning the current constitutional order and starting a new arrangement from scratch. This also would add a significant amount of political instability to an already instable situation.

Edited by Kate Clark and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) Article 104 of the electoral law sets out following provisions and procedures about postponement and suspension of elections:

• When security situations, natural disasters and other similar conditions make impossible the principle of general and fair representation and undermine the credibility of the electoral process if elections are, the elections should be postponed from the specific date for a period of up to four months. The postponement or suspension is proposed by the IEC and approved by a committee, which should comprise head and members of the National Security Council, speakers of the two houses of the parliament, chief justice, and chair of the Independent Commission of Oversight of Implementation of the Constitution of Afghanistan 
• If the situation mentioned above which led to postponement or suspension of the elections does not improve within the period of four months, the committee may extend the postponement or suspension of elections for a period of another four months.
• The committee takes its decision by majority of votes of its members.
• If the situation mentioned above is limited to one or more electoral constituencies, the committee may postpone holding elections in those particular electoral constituencies till improvement of the situation.
• If elections in an electoral constituency are proved as defective, the IEC may order conducting new elections in that particular electoral constituency.
• If elections are postponed or suspended, members of the elected bodies (for instance the Wolesi Jirga) should continue to serve in their positions until holding of a new elections and announcement of its results. (This does not apply to the delay in district council elections as they have not been elected before, but does apply to the current Ghazni MPs who, according to this provision, should continue to serve in the Wolesi Jirga if the Wolesi Jirga elections are postponed in that province.)

(2) Point eight of SERC’s recommendations on amendment to the constitution says:

Article (138) of the constitution about the provincial council elections should be revised in a manner that their members can be elected indirectly through Districts and Municipal Councils. 

Point nine says:

Based on the statistics provided by the Central Statistics Office, there are 45 thousands villages throughout the country, which constitute 70% of the population of the country. On the other side, conducting secret and direct elections at this number of constituencies in accordance with article (140) of the constitution will have numerous difficulties considering financial, security and logistical challenges. The Commission is recommending that Loya Jirga shall consider easier ways for the implementation of this article.

The idea here was to elect village councils informally, similar to community development councils under the National Solidarity and Citizen Charter programmes.

(3) Article 140 of the constitution reads:

Councils shall be established to organize activities as well as attain active participation of the people in provincial administrations in districts and in villages, in accordance with the provisions of the law. 

Local residents shall elect members of these councils for 3 years through free, general, secret, as well as direct elections. 

Participation of nomads in these local councils shall be regulated in accordance with the provisions of the law.

(4) According to article 110 of the constitution, cabinet ministers, the chief justice and members of the supreme court, as well as the attorney general will also participate in a Loya Jirga sessions but without the right to vote.

(5) Article 84 of the constitution says:

Members of the House of Elders shall be elected and appointed as follows:

1. From amongst each provincial council members, one individual shall be elected by the respective council for a 4-year term;
2. From amongst district councils of each province, one individual, elected by the respective councils, for a 3-year term;
3. The remaining one third of the members shall be appointed by the President, for a 5-year term, from amongst experts and experienced personalities, including two members from amongst the impaired and handicapped, as well as two from nomads.

The President shall appoint 50 percent of these individuals from amongst women. The individual selected as a member of the House of Elders shall lose membership to the related Council, and, another individual shall be appointed in accordance with the provisions of the law.

(6) These are additions to the general requirements of being a voter in Afghanistan according to article 37 of the law: being a citizen and at least 18 years old; not having been deprived of civil rights by the law or a competent court; being registered on the voter list.

Of all these stipulations, what proved most problematic was the education criterion. To put the provision on educational qualification into practice, the IEC put in place even a more rigorous regulation (approved on 6 May) than the law itself for nominations: Prospective candidates had to “present clear and attested copy of graduation certificate from grade 12,” that is, the document had to be first copied and then attested to that “the copy is in accordance with the original” with the stamp of the Ministry of Education. (See the regulation in Dari here).

While this may have been aimed at screening candidates without genuine 12thgrade education, it will have been time-consuming for potential district council candidates to get the paperwork and may have put off some would-be councillors from standing.

(7) Article 44 of the electoral law lays down the following rules:

• the following persons have to resign from their positions before nominating themselves for any elected seats: chief justice and members of the supreme court and other judges; attorney general, prosecutors and professional members of the Attorney General Office; ministers, advisor minister, advisors to the president, deputy ministers, heads of agencies and their deputies, chairpersons and members of independent commissions, provincial governors and their deputies, district governors, ambassadors, and the staff of the political missions of the country resident abroad; military personnel of the Ministry of National Defense and Ministry of Interior Affairs and General Directorate of National Security and other ministries and bodies with military set-up; civil servants; temporary or permanent staff of the IEC; instructors of the governmental institutes of higher education and members of the academic cadre of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan. If the above-mentioned categories of potential candidates do not win election, they may be re-appointed in accordance with the provisions of the law, except for the civil servants and instructors.
• It also bans persons who are commanders or members of illegal armed groups from participating in elections as a candidate. A separate commission comprising representatives of the Ministries of National Defense and Interior Affairs, General Directorate of National Security and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance to be chaired by the chairperson of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) vets and decides potential candidates’ links to illegal armed groups. The ECC adjudicates any complaint in this regard and its decisions are final.
• If members of an elected body intend to nominate themselves for a seat in another elected body, they should resign from their current seats. (Members of the provincial and district councils who nominate themselves for the membership of Meshrano Jirga or members of Meshrano Jirga who nominate themselves for the membership of provincial or district council are an exception to this provision.)
• If an appointed member of the Meshrano Jirga intends to nominate themselves for an elected seat, they should resign from their current seat.
• No one can nominate themselves at the same time in more than one electoral constituency or for more than one elected seat.

(8) Following is the list of districts that, according to the Long War Journal, are under Taleban control. As seen below, the Journal also provides additional background information about most of these districts (with some additional comment by AAN):

Helmand: 1) Reg (Khaneshin), 2) Dishu: the Afghan government admitted Dishu was under Taleban control in June 2015; 3) Kajaki: the Journal previously identified it as contested. Assessment based on Resolute Support/SIGAR determination; 4) Naw Zad: it is contested between Taleban and Afghan government control. The Taleban claimed to have captured the district on 29 July 2015. Reuters reported the district is under Taleban control in December 2015; 5) Baghran: it has been under the Taleban control since before the US surge began in 2009; 6) Musa Qala: it fell to the Taleban on 26 August 2015. Afghan forces claimed to retake the district four days later. Reuters reported in December 2015 the district was still under Taleban control. It fell back under the Taleban control on 20 February 2016; 7) Sangin: the Taleban overran the district center in March 2017 and paraded their forces there.

Kandahar: 8) Maruf: the Taleban seized control on 16 October 2017. The Taleban previously overran the district centre on 27 September 2017 and seized weapons and other supplies, and then withdrew hours later. 9) Miya Neshin.

Paktika: 10) Wazakhwa: the Taleban has controlled the district since the summer of 2016; 11) Gayan: in May 2017, the Taleban enforced sharia in this district, threatening students with large fines for shaving beards, wearing ties, or contacting the government; 12) Omna: it fell to the Taleban on 5 September after a five day siege.

Ghazni: 13) Nawa: it is a traditional stronghold of the Taleban. The ANA recaptured the district briefly in May 2015, but the Taleban claimed that they retook the district on 15 May 2015. The Afghan government admitted in June 2016 that the Taleban controls Nawa. Afghan media also said on 31 July 2017 that the district was controlled by the Taleban; 14) Andar (also known as Shilgar): the Taleban overran the district centre on 17 October 2017. Afghan forces claimed that they retook the district on 20 October. The district had been contested for years. 15) Zana Khan: seized by the Taleban in August 2017 after clashes with ANSF.

Zabul: 16) Arghandab: the Taleban have controlled the district so thoroughly that in 2015 clashes between rival factions broke out; 17) Kakar (also known as Khak-e Afghan): the Taleban have controlled the district so thoroughly that in 2015 clashes between rival factions broke out.

Farah: 18) Gulistan: The Taleban claimed they took control there on 23 December 2015; 19) Bala Buluk: the Taleban overran the district centre on 14 October 2015; 20) Khak-e Safid: the Taleban captured it on 30 September 2015.

Faryab: 21) Ghormach: the Taleban overran it in August 2017. This remote district has changed hands several times since late 2014; 22) Pashtun Kot: the Taleban overran it on 8 October 2015; 23) Kohistan: it switched several times between Taleban and government control during the summer and fall of 2017. Currently, the Taleban control it.

Jawzjan: 24) Darzab: the district was controlled by a self-declared ISKP group until recently, but the Taleban have wrested back control (AAN analysis here). The government maintains some token presence in the district centre.

Sar-e-Pul: 25) Kohistanat: the Taleban overran it on 28 July 2015.

Baghlan: 26) Dahana-ye Ghuri:  as of 27 October 2016, Afghan troops abandoned several bases in the district and fled to the district centre; 27) Guzargahi-e Nur: the Taleban overran it in July 2017.

Badakhshan: 28) Warduj: the Taleban overran it on 1 October2015. The district has changed hands several times in the past; 29) Yamgan (Girwan): it has switched hands several times. Most recently, the Taleban claimed it recaptured the district on 18 November 2015.

Kunar: 30) Chapa Dara: the Taleban overran it on 25 August 2017.

Kapisa: 31) Tagab: while security forces are present in the district, the Taleban are enforcing sharia there.

Logar: 32) Azra: the Taleban control all but four villages in this district; 33) Charkh: more than 95 per cent of it is under Taleban control, Afghan officials said in December 2014; 34) Kharwar.

Maidan Wardak: 35) Sayed Abad, with some token government presence.

Paktia: 36) Jani Khel: the Taleban overran Jani Khel, a known stronghold of the Haqqani network, in July 2017; situation remains unclear; 37) Zurmat:  it is firmly in control of the Taleban and “they can operate in the open there,” one intelligence official told the Journal. The government maintains some token control and US and Afghan forces resort to airstrikes to target the Taleban operating there.

(9) Following is the district list that AAN received from IEC:

1) Maidan Wardak: Jaghatu; 2) Nangarhar: Hisarak; 3) Baghlan: Dahana-ye Ghori; 4) Ghazni: Zanakhan (under Taleban control), 5) Giro (only district centre with the government) 6) Ajristan (only district centre with the government) 7) Nawa; 8) Paktika: Neka, 9) Gyan and 10) Dela; 11) Badakhshan: Warduj and 12) Yamgan (both are completely under the Taleban); 13) Kunduz: Qulbad and 14) Gul Tape of (both under the Taleban control); 15) Urozgan: Chora, 16) Shahid-e Hassas and 17) Chinarto; 18) Kandahar: Miyaneshin, 19) Shorabak and 20) Reg; 21) Faryab: Kohistan; 22) Helmand: Nawzad, 23) Sangin, 24) Musa Qala, 25) Reg (Khanneshin), 26) Baghran and 27) Disho; 28) Badghis: Ghormach; 29) Herat: Farsi, 30) Zer Koh and31) Pusht Koh; 32) Farah: Bakwa.

 

 The Taleban have eliminated the self-proclaimed Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) group that had been holding an enclave of territory in the isolated districts of Qush Tepa and Darzab in Jawzjan province for the last three years. It was the only ISKP-aligned group with territorial control outside the east of Afghanistan. The group failed to withstand a concerted, month-long offensive by the Taleban. In the end in an unexpected turn of events, reports AAN’s Obaid Ali (with input from Thomas Ruttig), most of their remaining fighters and leaders were rescued by the government. It has yet to say why it did this.

For the past three years, Qush Tepa and Darzab districts have been strongholds for fighters claiming affiliation with ISKP (also known as Daesh in Afghanistan). Their original leader was Qari Hekmat, a disgruntled Taleban commander from Darzab who took his fighters over to ISKP in 2015 (read AAN analysis here and here). In this dispatch, we describe the group as ‘self-proclaimed ISKP’, rather than just ‘ISKP’ because we have found no solid evidence to claim the group had connection with ISKP in Nangarhar province.  The ISKP there is recognised by ‘Daesh central’ in Syria and Iraq as a branch.

Qari Hekmat’s fighters were largely Uzbek and Tajik, with a small number of Pashtuns and some foreign (Central Asian) fighters. In February 2017, his group killed six staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and kidnapped two others (read media report here). Qari Hekmat led the group for more than two years, before being killed by a United States airstrike in April 2018. The group then appointed Mawlawi Habib Rahman as his successor. Habib Rahman is originally from Sholgara district of Balkh province and joined Qari Hekmat’s group in 2016 (read AAN analysis here). In terms of territorial control, the government has continued to ‘hold’ both district centres, although, according to locals in Darzab, the district  governor had been absent since June this year and the police chief was holed up in a local ANP base. The Taleban hold the districts surrounding the enclave.

Previous Taleban attempts to deal with the group

The dissident insurgent group had been a thorn in the Taleban’s side since it emerged in 2015. Local Uzbek Taleban made a few attempts, in 2016 and 2017, to negotiate a peaceful settlement; they wanted to avoid fighting their fellow Uzbeks. These efforts failed to convince the group to re-join the Taleban. Both Taleban and ISKP accused each other of being ‘puppets of the foreigners’.

Most recently, at the start of July, the newly-appointed Taleban shadow governor for Faryab, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman, who is a prominent Uzbek Taleban figure, sent a written message to Mawlawi Habib Rahman, again asking him to lay down his weapons and surrender (read more background details on Mawlawi Abdul Rahman here). If he did not, Mawlawi Abdul Rahman warned, there would be serious consequences. His offer was rejected and Mawlawi Habib Rahman instead threatened to eliminate the Taleban in Jawzjan province. This rejection paved the way for an escalation of fighting between the two insurgent groups.

The Taleban have also tried to clear the group out of its strongholds by force. In December 2017 and again, in January 2018, they launched major offensives, but failed to oust them (read AAN’s previous analysis on Taleban attacks against ‘ISKP’ fighters here). This time, the offensive was much more massive.

Details of the battle

At the beginning of July, after the self-proclaimed ISKP leader’s refused to surrender, the Taleban began a new offensive to oust the ‘ISKP’ fighters from Qush Tepa and Darzab that lasted for about a month. The leadership tasked Sheikh Matiullah, their newly appointed commander for the northwest zone, and Mawlawi Abdul Rahman, Taleban shadow governor for Faryab to lead the offensives. They were joined by the shadow provisional governors for Faryab, Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul provinces.

Taleban operations started simultaneously from the south and west. From the south, two local commanders from Sayad district of Sar-e Pul province, Sher Muhammad Ghazanfar and Mullah Nader, launched an offensive from Belcheragh district of Faryab province and Sayad district of Sar-e Pul, targeting the self-proclaimed ISKP in its main local base, the Sar Dara area of Darzab.

From the west, Taleban fighters moved in from Khwaja Sabz Push and Shirin Tagab districts of Faryab, targeting the self-proclaimed ISKP fighters in Qush Tepa district. This front was led by Mawlawi Abdul Rahman, the Taleban’s shadow governor for Faryab and Mawlawi Suntullah, their shadow governor for Jawzjan. Aminullah Amin, the government’s district governor for Qush Tepa, confirmed the Taleban’s large-scale offensives and said Taleban from neighbouring provinces, Faryab, Sar-e Pul and Ghor, had been mobilised for the fight. Further, he told AAN that Taleban had been using Humvee vehicles and heavy weapons.

In Qush Tepa, the fight lasted just two weeks, with, local sources said, serious casualties on both sides.  The self-proclaimed ISKP group lost strong positions in Khanaqa, Beg Sar and Chakhma Chaqur villages. Both of its leading local field commanders were also killed. One was Haji Murad, a local Uzbek from Beg Sar village with 200 fighters under his command who had been appointed deputy leader of the group in Jawzjan and put in charge of Qush Tepa district in 2018. He was reportedly killed on 23 July. The other was Commander Zaid, head of the self-proclaimed ISKP’s ‘police unit’. The deaths of these two prominent field commanders demoralised their fighters.

From the south, the Taleban also exerted serious pressure on the self-proclaimed ISKP’s positions in Darzab. The group had strongholds in at least three locations there: Sar Dara, Moghul and Bibi Maryam areas. Multiple sources close to the Taleban told AAN that fighters loyal to these groups planted roadside mines around Sar Dara and Moghul areas of Darzab to protect their positions. This meant the Taleban victory took longer. Local government officials confirmed that fighting had been intense in the district. Speaking to AAN, district police chief for Darzab Muhammad Ismail said the Afghan security forces were not involved in the fight, but stayed in the district centre.

There were earlier reports, however, in April in Afghan media (here and here) of Afghan National Army (ANA) airstrikes and “Afghan and U.S. special operations coupled with U.S. airstrikes” to “decimate the heart of IS-K in Darzab.” This followed the death of Qari Hekmat on 5 April 2018, also as the result of an airstrike.

Not an easy victory

Qari Hekmat’s group inflicted serious casualties on the Taleban, including killing a number of field commanders. On 17 July, two ‘ISKP’ fighters pretended to be Taleban fighters and took part in a Taleb commander’s funeral. They then opened fire inside the dead commander’s house where dozens of Taleban fighters were gathered. As a result, 15 Taleban, including Nur Muhammad and Haji Rahim, both field commanders, and family members of Sher Muhammad Ghazanfar, the Taleban shadow district governor for Sayad district of Sar-e Pul, were killed. A statement released on the Taleban’s official website said 17 Taleban fighters had been killed and 13 wounded. It claimed 153 ISKP fighters were killed, 100 were wounded and 134 ISKP fighters captured. Local sources, however, thought Taleban casualties were far larger. Speaking to AAN, local elders in Darzab said they thought around 100 Taleban fighters had been killed, with dozens more wounded. Initial reports that Ghazanfar himself was among the killed turned out to be incorrect.

Despite inflicting heavy losses, the self-proclaimed ISKP group could not resist the large number of Taleban and the onslaught coming from two directions. The Taleban also enjoyed reinforcements, which the dissident insurgents did not, and managed to retain control over logistics and supply routes, preventing any supplies reaching their enemy.

Surrender

On 1 August 2018, the self-proclaimed ISKP group was ousted from its last positions. In the face of certain defeat by the Taleban, its remaining fighters and leaders were left with only one option and that was surrender: the choice, then, was should it be to the Taleban or the government. The group contacted the Taleban seeking a ceasefire. By this point, however, it was too late to be acceptable. The Taleban’s response was to demand that the fighters hand over their leaders, Mawlawi Habib Rahman, head of the group, Mufti Nematullah Qawim, his deputy and Mullah Suhbatullah, head of finance, before any ceasefire could be agreed. The fighters then split; some preferred to surrender to the Taleban, while others reached out to the government.

Those who feared Taleban punishment for rejecting their earlier call for a peaceful settlement made overtures to the government. According to the head of the Provincial High Peace Council, Mawlawi Akram, some individuals expressed their willingness to “join the peace process.” There was, however, he said, “limited access to escape routes.” Eventually, the group’s leaders reached out directly to the government, seeking protection from the Taleban.

According to Haji Assadullah, a tribal elder in Darzab, Afghan commandos arrived by helicopter late in the night of 31 July and opened an escape route over land for the group. The ‘ISKP’ fighters walked from Mughol village to Darzab district centre, which takes about 20 minutes. From there, they were evacuated by Afghan National Security Force flights to Sheberghan.

Assadullah said that Mawlawi Habib Rahman, Mufti Nematullah, Mullah Suhbatullah and Hussain Qahraman, head of the military unit of the group, along with 200 fighters, were rescued in this way. After surrendering to the government and safely arriving in Sheberghan city, Habib Rahman told media outlets that he was tired of war and had therefore joined the Afghan government’s peace process. “If the government wants, I can work within the government structure,” he said. “Otherwise I start an ordinary live like an ordinary person” (see the interview here). He made no mention of having been driven to surrender by the Taleban’s offensive. Photos posted on social media and, as Tolonews reported, by the local ANA corps (see here) showed Darzab district governor Zabihullah and police chief Ismail Topchi standing with a relaxed Habib Rahman talking on the phone. Both government officials are Uzbeks and belong to Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum’s Jombesh party, and it can be assumed that the shared ethnic background helped in the surrender.

Local government officials in Jawzjan confirmed the surrender of 230 ISKP fighters – among whome appear to be many minors (see photo here) –, but did not explain why they had accepted them. Provincial governor Lutfullah Azizi told media, “Those who committed crimes will be prosecuted based on the Afghan law and those who were not involved in crime will be freed, based on the Afghan government’s general amnesty policy.”

This will be an interesting case of whether the so-called ‘amnesty law’, which gives a blanket amnesty for all those who reconcile, no matter what crimes or atrocities they have committed, will be implemented. The ‘amnesty law’ is anyway controversial because it marginalises victims, overlooking their right to justice, and because amnesties for war crimes and gross human rights violations are no longer considered legal under international law. (For more detail on the law, see AAN analysis here.)  In this case, given that the self-proclaimed ISKP fighters and leaders were forced to surrender, rather than willingly leaving the insurgency, it would be especially strange if the government did grant amnesties. In particular, it will be worth watching to see if the matter of the murder and kidnap of the ICRC staff will be addressed – or overlooked. There have also been accusations of more recent war crimes and demands by local civilians for justice. At the end of July, the media quoted several local women accusing ‘ISKP fighters’ of abducting and raping girls (see here). The New York Times also reported on 1 August that Darzab residents had traveled to the provincial capital, Sheberghan, “to petition the governor to punish the Islamic State prisoners for the crimes they committed while in control of their area, according to local officials.”

Meanwhile, other members of the group, mostly Central Asian fighters, who had contacted the Taleban prior to the Afghan commandos’ arrival, surrendered to the Taleban. According to sources close to the Taleban, 19 Central Asian fighters in Darzab district surrendered and were evacuated, along with their families, to Kohistanat district of Sar-e Pul province.

The Taleban proclaimed victory on 1 August: “During the fight, all areas in Darzab district were cleared from the seditious group of ISKP.” The statement praised the northern fighters for demolishing the ISKP group despite what it said were severe challenges.

Conclusion

Over the past few years, the Taleban have been pushing to expand territorial control in the northern and eastern parts of Jawzjan province, as well as in the strategic areas around the provincial centre. They did not have a strong presence in Qush Tepa or Darzab and neither did the government. Into this power vacuum, came the self-proclaimed ISKP group. The government has carried out no full-scale offensive against the group, despite repeatedly flagging the presence of alleged ISKP and foreign fighters there. Government inaction helped the late Qari Hekmat and his successor to recruit fighters against the Taleban and survive for three years. Neither its long inaction or its decision, in the end, to take action to rescue the remnants of the group have been explained.

The Jawzjan group remained isolated. It failed to establish any strong operational connection with the ISKP in Nangarhar province. Neither its existence, therefore, nor its defeat will affect the ISKP in its Nangarhar strongholds.

However, in Jawzjan, the defeat of the ‘ISKP group’ has made the Taleban the dominant power in Darzab and Qush Tepa again. The way the only visible, self-proclaimed ISKP group outside the Afghan east was eventually wiped out may also be viewed as a lesson by other disgruntled Taleban or potential dissident insurgents in the north. It may make them think again about opposing the Taleban.

Edited by Kate Clark and Thomas Ruttig

Although the Eid ceasefires have been and gone, they have rekindled hopes across Afghanistan that peace is possible. Helmand’s peace movement is keeping up the pressure. It has staged sit-ins in front of embassies in Kabul and sent letters to countries participating in or supporting the war effort. The movement has also reached other parts of the country. Its members claim that the Taleban have softened their approach towards them. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon and Thomas Ruttig (with input from Emilie Cavendish) have been looking at the peace marchers’ latest activities, as well as their strategy.

Following the Eid ceasefires, the Helmand Peace Movement that formed after a suicide attack in Lashkargah in March (with a subsequent high-profile 770-kilometre march lasting 37 days to the capital, Kabul, where it arrived as Eid celebrations were underway), is keeping up the pressure on all sides involved in the Afghan war in its attempts to bring the conflict to an end. Iqbal Khaibar, the head of the People’s Peace Movement (in Pashto, De Sole Wulusi Harakat) told AAN on 20 July, “The Eid ceasefire influenced our efforts well. People contact us every day. They motivate us and tell us that they are with us. […] We got a public image now.”

There are “120 individuals from Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Wardak, Bamyan, Nangrahar, Herat, Baghlan, Paktia, Paktika and Kabul” now participating in the movement in Kabul, Khaibar told AAN:

As we do not have [enough] money for food, we send half of them home, and then those who have gone home come back and then the rest of the protestors [takes a rest]. The Kabul money exchanger union and the Jaji [tribal] shura are giving us food. Sometimes women come here and they offer us food. Our only problem is money, and the colleagues are all poor people.

Bismillah Watandost, the People’s Peace Movement spokesman, told AAN on 8 July one of the latest to join the cause was a small convoy from Logar province consisting of eight men and six women. He said, “The men are still with but we told the women to go back to their homes.” The protestors felt they had no appropriate place for the women as “we spent our days and nights on the roads,” and their permanent presence was not “suitable because of traditional sensitivities.” He added that “Those women still sometimes come to participate in our sit-ins and then go back home.”

The activists continue mobilising people throughout the country and now plan to move north. They are also trying to put pressure on countries they perceive to be external drivers of the war, as well as on the UN. They have renewed their attempts to get in touch with the Taleban in order to persuade them to join talks through tribal contacts in southeastern Afghanistan. At the same time, they are trying to consolidate their movement, avoiding relations with other protestor groups they presume to be too close to the government.

What is the marchers’ strategy?

Khaiber told AAN, “in the beginning we were concerned, fearing that any group might attack us, and our efforts for peace will end.” But on their march, more and more people were joining, first in Maiwand district of Kandahar, during the marchers’ first attempt to contact the Taleban. Then, on their march to Kabul, Khaibar said, the marchers set up new support groups along the way. He said “If we are attacked or killed our groups could continue our efforts. (…) Now we have the strength to continue our efforts countrywide.”

He further explained that the marchers do not want to take part directly in peace talks. Khaibar told AAN that “our movement only raises the issue and paves the ground. We wants the Taleban to stop fighting and the government [to understand] that it is not enough to say we are ready for talks. We want the government to mitigate for [those] Taleban who contact the government for talks.”

Khaibar even claimed that new international peace efforts – such as the US initiative to seek direct talks with the Taleban (media report here) are a result of their movement. In any case, together with the Eid ceasefires (AAN reporting here and here) it has definitely contributed to a changing atmosphere.

The Taleban also appear to have modified their position towards the peace marchers. Khaibar told AAN that they had claimed, through a message, that their initial rejection was not directed at them but at (other) groups “that were established by the government or linked to it.” At the same time, he said, “family member of Taleban of the Quetta shura are coming to us, they are in close contact with us. Relatives of Taleban ex-leader Mullah Mansur have contacted us. All of them are very eager for peace.” The Taleban had initially alleged that the Helmand marchers were carrying out an agenda on behalf of foreign forces, which had made them feel threatened (media report here). Khaibar responded by telling Tolo News that he was prepared to stand trial in a Taleban court should they find evidence to prove their allegations.

Working the provinces

Since their arrival in the capital, the Helmand activists have received further local support. Khaibar told AAN that on 20 July:

The people of Paghman district in Kabul made a big event for them. Hundreds of people gathered there. They invited us. We went there and the people assured us that they were with us and asked us not to quit the efforts. The ulema (religious scholars) talked about peace. Talking about peace in Afghanistan, especially from the mosque, was a big risk [so far].

Khaibar referred to the frequent killings of ulema who had previously done so. (The New York Times reported “hundreds” killed since 2016.) Elders from Dehsabz, a mainly Pashtun area to the north of Kabul, also came to meet the marchers.

The movement recently sent a five-man delegation to Paktia in the southeast to talk to tribal elders and community members there (more on peace initiatives in Paktia soon). It included a former university lecturer, a retired colonel, a student and a former journalist, and it has now proceeded to Khost. According to Bacha Khan Mawladad, responsible for communication in the Helmandi People’s Peace Movement, the delegation has already spoken with tribal elders and other influential people both in Paktia and Khost. He told AAN “they will be working on organising small jirgas to go to Taleban areas and talk to them.” He said they had not succeeded on talking to the Taleban yet but that the delegation, together with the elders, would continue their efforts.

On 2 July, religious scholars, tribal elders and young people gathered in Wama district in Nuristan to ask that the Taleban engage in peace talks, praising President Ghani for the Eid ceasefire. One participant, Muhammad Ahmadi, told Radio Liberty’s Pashto service that “Afghan peace is needed for Afghans like water for a thirsty man. Peace is the divine order. In every case we need peace. Afghans, whether they are Taleban or government soldiers are brothers.”

The marchers’ next target is the country’s north. Khaibar said, “If the people there are responsive to the peace effort, we will travel by vehicle. If the people in north are not very keen, then we will march. We endure the difficulties in order to awake the people for peace.” One of the participants of a recent sit-in in Kabul told AAN they were even ready “to go there barefoot, if need be.”

The tent at the stadium in Lashkargah where the movement started is still standing. Mirwais Kanai, one of the People’s Peace Movement’s local organisers told AAN on 29 July that the tent remains erected “as a symbol of protest” but that they had relocated for their organisational work to a two-room office within the same stadium. A group of university teachers is helping them. Kanai said “We [continue to] go to villages and meet the people to support our efforts.” He added that “in the beginning some people had doubts and were blaming the protestors for being a project of foreigners or the government, that’s why only a small number of protestors marched to Kabul. We have been working on people’s mindset and now the people have understood that [we] are really working for peace.”

Peace march participant Sardar Muhammad Sarwari from Helmand. Source: Mohammad Omar Lemar

Nur Zaman Haidar, a civil society activist in Helmand told AAN that the movement started by Khaibar and his colleagues was “a real movement.” He said, “in the beginning, I and some of my colleagues were criticising the movement because they were only asking the Taleban to stop the war. Their banners were reading like “Taleban brothers: Stop the war.” Haidar said he thought that was “thoroughly one-sided, but after they continued their protest and started marching to Kabul, we realised the movement was really for peace.”  He also said “We believe their effort would succeed because they do what every single Afghan wants.”

Nazar Muhammad Rudi, the head of the coordination office for Helmand province’s civil society organisations told AAN on 25 July, “I, along with my friends, was participating every day in the People’s Peace Movement by the time they were protesting in Lashkargah, and now we convey the messages of peace to our people [elsewhere] in Helmand. We have had meetings in Nawa and Gereshk districts and in Lashkargah city. We will continue our efforts until the peace prevails.”

More and more people want to join the peace movement bandwagon, but not all of them are welcome among the Helmandis, who want to avoid being associated with either the central or local government, and are ready to cut ties. Khaibar said “in the beginning of our efforts people erected [sit-in] tents in 16 provinces to support us”; but, he added, some of these initiatives “were not according to our hopes.” The people who had organized a sit-in in Kandahar, he said, “took money from the members of provincial assembly. And in Zabul province government officials were sitting in the tent all day long. Also in other provinces the tents were under the influence of government. Our policy is that we do not want the government officials to join us and we do not accept money from them.” The reason, Khaibar told AAN, was that the organisers want the movement to be “completely people-centric” and not “affiliated with one or the other group.”

Another example is a group from Kunar, which arrived on 28 June and launched a sit-in in Chaman-e Hozuri, a large public space in eastern Kabul near the National Stadium. The leader of the convoy, Doctor Nematullah Safai, who also heads De Sole Ghag Tolena (Voice of Peace Society) spoke with AAN on 2 July, confirming that they had not joined the delegation from Helmand but had had meetings with them. He explained there were some “minor differences” between them and Helmand’s peace marchers’ but he hoped the two delegations would unify soon. Safai also explained that De Sole Ghag Tolena had been lobbying for peace for the past year; its initiatives included sponsoring events at universities and schools.He told AAN on 18 July that they were waiting to meet the president and would then “share our agenda with the Taleban and then with United Nations.”

Another group of peace marchers arrived in Kabul on 28 June from Peshawar across the border in Pakistan including six students and an Afghan refugee representative called Jamil Khan Azizi, who had marched from the border crossing at Torkham to Nangrahar and who then drove on to Kabul. According to Azizi, Laghman’s governor, Asef Nang, welcomed them in his province, as did the minister for refugees, Sayed Alemi Balkhi, in Pul-e Charkhi, Kabul’s door to eastern Afghanistan. The group did not join the Helmand or the Kunar peace activists, Azizi added, as it had a different agenda. AAN did not receive a clear answer as to what the ‘minor differences’ and the ‘different agendas’ between the different peace movements were, except for some veiled accusations that the Helmandis would concentrate on Kabul too much and the other groups “go to the provinces” (which, indeed, the Helmandis have done from the beginning).

On 2 July, members of the lower house (Wolesi Jirga) praised the peace protestors arriving in Kabul. Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, head of the lower house, stated “Their opinions must be heard and they must be assisted.” He added that a commission had already been tasked to visit the demonstrators and to bring their demands to the lower house. On 17 July, Khaibar told AAN that two members of the security committee of the lower house had come to them to discuss a meeting. He said they had told them they were ready to meet them but they did not appear again.

Embassy sit-ins in Kabul

Over the last few weeks, the Helmandi marchers in Kabul have staged a number of sit-ins or erected a blue protest tent in front of offices and embassies. They have also attempted to hand over letters to both foreign governments and their country’s citizens, as well as hanging up banners with country-specific slogans. Khaibar said, “Our strategy is now to show our people that the [countries represented by these] embassies are involved in the war in our country. We meet the people in Kabul to engage them in peace efforts.”

Helmand peace marchers in front of the UN Office in Kabul. Photos: People’s Peace Movement/2018

This part of their campaign in Kabul started on 24 June, with three days in front of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) office. There, a poster asked, “What have you done for peace in Afghanistan over the past 17 years?” The marchers also sent a letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres with the same complaint. The UN mission in Afghanistan issued a short statement online (quoted here) to welcome the sit-in, saying the “UN in Afghanistan committed to support Afghan peoples will for the extension of a ceasefire and the beginning of Afghan-led Afghan-owned peace talks to end the war.” Liam McDowall, UNAMA’s chief of communications, told AAN on 25 July through a text message:

We have a real respect for the peace marchers’ dedication and dignity, but mostly for their singular focus on ending the senseless bloodshed. The peace marchers and the UN share the same overriding objective: bringing peace to Afghanistan. We respect that each party working for peace has their own strategies and processes. The UN is tasked by member states to use its diplomatic channels to achieve progress in getting a peace process started and supporting an Afghan-led peace process. We are dedicated to doing just that.

From the UNAMA office the protestors then went to the US embassy. From there they sent a letter to the US Congresson 5 July 2018, after they had camped there with hundreds of people, both Kabulis and with people from other provinces accompanying the Helmandis for nine days. Near the Massud Circle, protestors defied the sweltering summer heat, squatting on cheap carpeting on hot asphalt, protected from the sun with only straw hats and thin gowns. The Afghan media noted the presence of a number of female participants.

Although the embassy sent Afghan staff to invite them to come in to talk or to meet at the Norwegian embassy, being a ‘neutral venue’, the protestors refused, arguing their rule was to talk outside the embassies. According to Khaibar, they said to the Americans, “we are the representatives of the people and the message of their convoy was clear, [namely] to stop the fighting in our country. We do not have other demands to talk more with you.” Khaibar said representatives of the embassy then came out to them and the protestors handed them the letter.

In the letter, they praised the United States’s assistance to Afghanistan but complained that the military intervention had failed to bring security to the country in the 17 years since the troops’ arrival. The letter further included a statement saying they would demand the withdrawal of the US troops if they did not care better for the Afghan people (the following quote is from the English original):

We should re-emphasise, if you people don’t care about our pain and sorrow, we will [consider] your aid and assistance wasted. We will infer that your help wasn’t truthful, [and] at the end Afghans will be displeased from you people and will force to sit at the door of your embassy [in order to] ask you to leave your job here and go out.(1).

Bismillah Watandost, the spokesman for the Helmand Peace Movement, told AAN on 8 July that the letter in three languages, Pashto, Dari and English, was addressed “to the American people and the US Congress.” He said, “We gave a copy to the media, one copy to the US embassy to convey our message to the Congress and one copy [was addressed] to all Afghans living in America to share our concerns with the people of America and with the Congress.”

Khaibar said they had sent the letter to Afghans living in the United States and also in European countries. In the US, they submitted the letter to Congress.

The following day, on 6 July, the protestors moved on to the Russian embassy and staged their next sit-in there, again with hundreds of participants, where they remained until 12 July.

The marchers also sent a letter to the people of Russia, containing a request to pressure their government not to support the war in Afghanistan. Khaibar told AAN “the Russians have once again started interference in our country and they support the Taleban to continue the war in our country.” He added Russia had made the mistake of invading the country between 1979 and 1989 and they “should not commit the same blunder again.”

Khaibar told AAN on 20 July that the Russian embassy responded in a polite manner, also through a letter: “Before we reached the embassy, their representatives came along with some answers to the questions we had already shared with the media. In the letter, they said that they were not supporting the Taleban and were always trying for peace of Afghanistan.”

On 12 July, the protestors moved on to the Pakistani embassy, where they erected their protest tent once again. They put banners on the walls in four languages, including in Urdu, addressing the Pakistani public: “ O, the people of Pakistan: your government is killing us.” Another banner read: “ Dear Pakistani public! We are happy you have educational institutes but your government destroys our schools.” Khaibar said:

We want the Pakistan not to support Taleban. We want them to release the Taleban and their families and children from their prisons. We want them not to kill those Taleban who refuse to fight. (…) We want Pakistan to stop the direct attacks on our country, ie [in border areas of] Kunar and Jaji Maidan in Paktia.

Khaibar said that even after 13 days nobody from the embassy had come out to meet them. In response to this, they submitted a “white letter” to the UN on 25 July, entitled: “To the Pakistani people.” Before, as announced, Khaibar cut his hand and put his blood on the letter. Watandost told Tolo News their “’bloodstained letter’ was a symbolic move and aimed to highlight that Pakistan has been a ‘harmful’ neighbour to Afghanistan for decades.” He said Pakistan has literally “given the knife to some people in Afghanistan to kill their own countrymen”.

Helmand peace marchers in front of the British embassy in Kabul. Photo: People’s Peace Movement/2018

Then they went to the Iranian embassy, where they also held a press conference. There, some of the banners read: “To the people of Iran! Your government is equipping militant groups in Afghanistan. (…) The current situation in Afghanistan is bad for us but it is not beneficial for you as well. Put pressure on your government to participate in Afghan peace process.”

At the British embassy, where they had set up camp on 27 July, for the first time an ambassador, Sir Nicholas Kay, came to sit and talk with them on 29 July, shunning usual security precautions. The peace marchers urged his government to put pressure on Pakistan to help find a peaceful solution for Afghanistan, echoing the widespread assumption among Afghans that Britain had the biggest influence on the rulers in Islamabad.

Helmand peace marchers in front of the British embassy in Kabul. Photo: People’s Peace Movement/2018

According to spokesman Watandost, the sit-in were then scheduled to congregate at the offices of the European Union and the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), an umbrella organisation of 50 Islamic states. Watandost told AAN on 31 July, however, that the OIC Permanent Representative – the Turkish diplomat Huseyin Avni Botsali – had promised to visit them at their tent at the Chaman-e Huzuri on the same day. There, as they had told AAN, they handed him an empty letter, as a symbol of what they felt was the indifference of the Islamic countries about the bloodshed in Afghanistan. The protestors told Afghan media that their “pain and sorrow“ about this was “so high that we [we]re not able to write anything on paper.”

There was also support for the marchers outside Afghanistan. Afghans living in Belgium and other European countries, “some hundred” according to organisers, gathered in front of NATO headquarters in Brussels on 22 July (videos here and here). A 25-kilometre peace march has been planned in Italy for August, with the participation of some of the Helmandi marchers. (The movement’s Facebook page is here.)

On 9 August the marchers are planning a huge gathering in Chaman-e Huzuri for which they expect convoys (“karwans”) from Nimroz, Kandahar, Helmand, Kunduz, Maidan-Wardak, Paktia, Nangrahar, Kunar, Khost and Logar provinces to join those who are currently in Kabul. Watandost told AAN that on the following day later, “ten to 15 people” would start a barefoot march to Balkh province, while others would escort them on vehicles and possibly motorbikes. Once in Mazar-e Sharif, they plan to meet people from the northern provinces and decide on next steps.

Conclusion: Rays of hope

The Helmand Peace Movement emerged at an auspicious time. It came about in response to the Afghan government’s proposal for ‘unconditional talks’ with the Taleban, made public during the the Kabul Process meeting on 28 February 2018, which included an offer to discuss the withdrawal of foreign troops, and the Taleban’s subsequent lack of official response. Since then, new momentum in the search for peace seems to have been gathering: a fatwa issued by the participants at an international conference of ulema in Riaydh in July, in which intra-Muslim violence – without mention of the Taleban –  was called “strictly forbidden under Islam”; reports that the White House had ordered US diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taleban to break the deadlock, and that first contacts had already taken place; reports that the Taleban leadership might have ordered a stop to terrorist attacks in populated areas – which were quickly denied; and that the Afghan government will reportedly announce another unilateral ceasefire during Eid-ul Adha in late August.

Claims by the Helmandi marchers that these developments were triggered by their initiative are somewhat exaggerated. However, their march arrived in Kabul during Eid, when the Afghan government and the Taleban implemented their ceasefires, which, as AAN wrote then, “allowed Afghans to imagine their country at peace”. The march and their occasionally unorthodox ways of protesting could be a catalyst for helping the complex Afghan conflict onto a path towards a peaceful solution, particularly when the marchers manage to remain impartial. If their claims are correct and leading Taleban family members are in touch with them, the Helmand marchers may even be able to build a bridge between the Afghan government and the Taleban.

Edited by Sari Kouvo

 

 (1) Here the protestors’ letter to the US, first its unedited English version, followed by the Pashto and Dari versions:

To the respected people of America and the Congress:
First of all we would like to share you our Afghans’ good wishes and greetings. As you better know a large number of your troops have come without any permission to Afghanistan after a bleeding incidents of September, 11. Just we would like to thank that you shared your own pities as a public and you supported us from your monthly salary and incomes. As the result of your cooperation we have gotten freedom of speech, rehabilitation cycle have been started, education level have grown, agricultural system slightly developed, and we also have experienced quite good changes in other parts.

Despite all these improvements, unfortunately, your troops and political representatives have not performed their promised about peace, they promised us a peaceful Afghanistan, rather than their existence have brought many wars and day to day it is increasing and extending. To the year 2003 all the warriors and insurgents particularly Taliban were peacefully submitted, due to the worst plan and policies of your governments they enforced Taliban to fight again. Despite of this your troops and some money-preferred-Afghans have gathered, they haven’t just made them to fight again but also made them a hand-devices of neighbors. Still today they have abducted Taliban’s’ family and enforced them to fight.

Dear respected people of America: Afghans are not people who forget benefaction. At the kingdom of Zahir Shah Baba, America have worked truthfully and Afghans were loving them too much and it is a popular notice about your engineer who were working in Helmand, Lashkargah. The story was: At the time that American were busy at rehabilitations’ projects an engineer whom belong to you has misplaced, a shepherd has found him unconscious and he kept him in his tent until he recovered healthy, at that time after his health recovery all Americans freely traveled to every area of Afghanistan, Afghans loved them because they see their truly cooperation but unfortunately Afghans hatting America too much now, even if they find an American engineer they are killing him. We are not naturally born with this abhorrence, but it has come from your troops’ bad behaviors. American troops carelessly have bombardment our Mosques, weddings, madrasas, homes, schools, hospitals, funerals, and markets. They have killed some Taliban with their bomb but in each bomb they have created hundreds numbers Taliban because they have received many casualties to civilian. Civilians are joined with Taliban to take their revenges from Americans’ troops. So this is the point that day to day Taliban become powerful and also due to the worst polices of your government warrior groups are increasing and they are ruining our schools, bridges, civilian, and other public places. Sadly we are going to say in each fourteen minutes we have one victim of war, war objects are that much common in every places that less amount of people may be without of guns. Unfortunately, even our child have access to guns.

Fight is a revenge in Afghanistan now, people are moving toward fight, the atmospheres are full of gun’s powder, civilians are infected mentally illness, and poverty has increased too much even people hardly find bread in Ramadan for their fasting. We have started these demonstrations in Afghanistan to send you our truly images and make you civilian (American-civilian) to ask your governments why they didn’t performed their promises? Your governments are able to destroy and eliminate the whole government in 15 days but they cannot bring peace in seventeen (17) years? We were trusted too much to the year 2003 and hoped we will be core of technology with the help of America like Japan and Germany, because America made these countries as the core center of technology and education. Ask them why we still witness these fight in our country? We don’t want anything except peace. If you people work beside Afghans for eliminating of fight and violence so you will witness that America will get their successful name again from this losing name. Abhorrence will end and we will return to story of Lashkargah again, deserts will become green, gardens will give us fruits again, the birds and animal will return to mountain, and immigrants will return to their villages and cities and will continue our life again. If you people do not so, no one will eager for your friendship, our own and world generation will hate you more. We should re-emphasize, if you people don’t care about our pain and sorrow, we will accept your aids and assistances wasted. We will infer that your help wasn’t truthfully, at the end Afghans will be displeases from you people and will force to sit at the door of your embassy and will ask you to leave your job here and go out.
#PPM ( People’s Peace Movement)

دامريکا ولس او کانګرسه!
په پيل کي درته درنښت وړاندي کوو.
تاسو ته ښه معلومه ده چي د سپټامبر د یوولسمي نېټې له خونړۍ پېښي څخه وروسته ستاسو پوځونه افغانستان ته په لوی شمېر کي نابللي راغلل.
فقط ستاسو څخه مننه چي د ولس په ډول مو زموږ سره د خپلي خولې ګوله شریکه کړه او د خپلو معاشاتو یوه اندازه مو موږ ته راولېږله.
ستاسو د همکاریو په پایله کي افغانستان کي د بیان آزادي رامنځ ته سوه، د بیا رغوني چاري پیل سوې، پوهني وده وکړه، کرهڼه څه ناڅه ښه سوه او په نورو برخو کي هم د پام وړ بدلون راغلی.
د دې ټولو پرمختګونو سره، سره له بده مرغه ستاسو پوځونه او ستاسو سیاسي نمایندګیو هغه ژمنه پر ځای نه کړه چي په افغانستان کي به دایمي سوله او امن راولي، بلکي د دوی په شتون کي ناامني او جګړې ورځ تر بلي پراخي سوې.
تر ۲۰۰۳زېږدیز کال پوري ټولي جنګي ډلي په ځانګړي ډول طالبان پر کورونو ناست وو، له بده مرغه ستاسو حکومت د ناسمو پالسیو له مخي طالبان جنګ ته اړ کړل.
همدا راز ستاسو پوځیانو د یو شمېر پیسه خوښه افغانانو په ګډون په طالب مشرانو پسې څراغونه راواخستل او له بده مرغه هغوی ئې نه یوازي دا چي جګړې ته اړ کړل، بلکي د ګاونډيو هیوادونو غېږې ته ئې واچول.
همدا اوس د یو شمېر طالب مشرانو کورنۍ برمته دي او هغوی جګړې ته اړ ایستل سوي او کېږي.
د امريکا ولسه!
افغانان احسان هېرېدونکي نه دي، د ظاهرشاه بابا د واکمنۍ پر مهال امريکايانو په افغانسان کي رښتنی کار کاوه، نو ځکه ټولو افغانانو د زړه له کومي مينه ورسره درلوده.
په لښکرګاه کي ستاسو د هغه وخت د انجينرانو په تړاو يوه ډېره مشهوره کيسه ده: هغه مهال چي امريکايانو په هلمند کي رغنيز بنيادي کارونه ترسره کول يوه ورځ په دښت لګان کي ستاسو يو انجينر ورک سو، بيا زموږ يوه پوونده پيدا کړی و چي بې هوښه پروت و، خپلي کېږدۍ ته يې د درملني له پاره بېولی و او تر رغېدو وروسته ئې بيرته خپلي کورنۍ ته سپارلی و.
هغه مهال ټول امريکايي پرسونل ازادانه د افغانستان هري سیمي ته تللای سول، افغانانو په دې خاطر د زړه له کومي مينه ورسره کوله چي ښېګڼه ئې ليدله خو له بده مرغه اوس په عامو افغانانو کي دامريکايانو په وړاندي دومره زياته کرکه سته چي که کوم امريکايي انجينر په لاس ورسي ژوندی به پاته نه سي.
دا کرکه زموږ په ذات کي نه وه، بلکي دا کرکه د امريکايي ځواکونو له بد چلنده را وزېږېده.
امریکايي پوځيانو دلته پر ودونو، مسجدونو، مدرسو، کورونو، ښوونځیو، روغتونونو، جنازو، کورونو او بازارونو بې پروا او بې درېغه بمبارۍ وکړې.
د هر بم په غورځولو ئې که يو شمېر طالبانو ته مرګ ژوبله اړولې وي، خو په سلګونو نورطالبان يې ځکه بيرته زېږولي چي د بم له غورځولو سره نورو عامو افغانانوته هم مرګ ژوبله اوښتې ده.
نور عام افغانان د انتقام اخستلو په خاطر د طالبانو ليکو ته تللي او تر اوسه پوري د بهرنیو ځواکونو په وړاندي جنګېږي.
په همدې خاطر خو دا پنځلس کاله کېږي چي د طالبانو لیکي ورځ تر بلي پياوړي سوي او کېږي.
همدا راز ستاسو د حکومت د غلطو پالسیو له کبله نورو جنګي ډلو ته زمینه برابره سوې چي ښوونځي، پلونه او پلچکونه، عوام او عامه تاسيسات او نور ځایونه له منځه یوسي.
له بده مرغه بايد ووايو چي هرو څوارلسو دقيقو کي يو افغان د جنګ له امله وژل کېږي، جنګي وسايل تر دې کچي عام سوي چي ډېر کم شمېر کورنۍ به وسلې نه لري.
له بده مرغه اوس زموږ ماشومانو لا وسلو ته لاسرسی موندلی دی.
په افغانستان کي جنګ په بدۍ بدل سوی، خلک مو ورو، ورو په جنګ روږدي کېږي، هوا مو يو مخ د بارودو بوی نيولې ده، ولس مو يو مخ په رواني ناروغيو اخته دی، په کليوالي سيمو کي غربت دې کچي ته رسېدلی چي حتی په روژه کي هم خلک روژه ماتي ته شلومبې په سختۍ پيدا کوي، نور خوراکونه خو پر لویه لار پرېږدئ.
موږ په افغانستان کي دا لاريونونه ځکه پیل کړي چي تاسو عام ولس زموږ له اصلي انځوره خبر سئ او تاسو له خپلو حکومتونو څخه وپوښتئ چي ولي مو خپلي کړي ژمني پوره نه کړې؟
دا چي په پنځلس ورځو کي يو نظام نړولای سئ، ولي مو په اوولس کاله کي امن رانه ووست؟
تر ۲۰۰۳زېږدیز کال پوري موږ سخت باوري وو او تمه راته پيدا سوه چي د امريکا په راتګ به زموږ هيواد لکه د جاپان او جرمني غوندي د ټيکنالوژۍ مرکز وګرځي، ځکه هلته د امريکا په ورتګ هغه هيوادونه د پوهي او تکنالوژۍ مراکز وګرځېدل.
دا چي دلته بيرته ولي جګړه راپيل کړل سوه، دا تاسو ورڅخه وپوښتئ!
موږ نور هيڅ نه غواړو، يوازې جنګ ورک کول غواړو، که تاسو د امريکا ولس د افغانستان په مسئله کي مداخله وکړئ جنګ او تشدد ورک کولو کي کار وکړئ نو په سيمه کي به امريکا خپل بايللی نوم بيرته ترلاسه کړي.
نفرتونه به له منځه ولاړسي، بيرته به د لښکرګاه د کيسې ژوند ته وګرځو، وچ فصلونه به مو بيرته راشنه سي، وران باغونه به مو بيرته ورغېږي، له غرونو تښتېدلي څاروي او الوتونکي مارغان به بيرته راسي، تیت او پرک مهاجر افغانان به بيرته خپلو کليو او بانډو ته ستانه سي او ژوند به مو بيرته عادي سي.
که تاسو عام ولس داسي ونه کړئ بيا به هیڅ څوک د امريکا ملګرتوب ته زړه ښه نه کړي، زموږ راتلونکی او د نړۍ راتلونکی نسل به له تاسو سخته کرکه او نفرت کوي.
بايد بيا ټينګار وکړو، که تاسو عام ولس د افغان ولس په درد، دردمن نه سئ په غم ئې غمجن نه سئ، ستاسو را استول سوې مرستي به ضايع وګڼو.
موږ به و انګېرو چي ستاسو مرستي حقیقي نه وې او په پای کي به افغان ولس له تاسو هم خپه سي او مجبور به سي چي ستاسو د سفارت د دروازې مخ ته داسي کښېني چي نور ئې خپل کار ته پرېنږدي.
#PPM

 

2 Dari Version of letter to Americaمردم عزتمند و کانگریس ایالات متحده امریکا!

اول تر از همه با ابراز احترامات فایقه؛
طوریکه می‌دانید بعد از سانحه ۱۱سپتامبر، نظامیان بی شمار شما خود سرانه به افغانستان داخل شدند. فقط از شما مردم امریکا سپاسگزار هستیم که لقمه های خود را با ما شریک ساخته و مقداری از مالیه و معاشات خود را به ما ارسال مینمودید.
در نتیجه همکاری های شما آزادی بیان تهداب گذاشته شد و کار عمران و بازسازی کشور آغاز گردید، معارف بطور قابل ملاحظه رشد نمود، تا جایی زراعت هم رو به ترقی نهاد و در قسمت‌های مختلف آثار تغییر قابل لمس بوجود آمد.
با این همه پیشرفت ها، بدبختانه با حضور نیروهای نظامی و نمایندگی های سیاسی شما، بعوض آوردن صلح و امنیت دایمی، دامنه جنگ و نا امنی ها گسترش قابل ملاحظه یافت.
تا ۲۰۰۳تقریبا تمام مخالفین نظامی دولت بخصوص طالبان در خانه های خود نشسته بودند ولی نظر به پالیسی های نادرست تان آنها را به جنگ مجبور ساختید و دوباره به میدان جنگ کشانیدید.
یک تعداد نظامیان شما به همکاری یک تعداد افراد پول پرست افغان، برای پولدار شدن چراغ بدست خانه به خانه عقب طالبان می‌گشتند و آنها را نه تنها مجبور به جنگ می‌نمودند بلکه در افتیدن آنها در دامن همسایه ها نیز کوشش نمودند. همین حالا فامیلهای یک تعداد از سران طالبان در گروگان است و آنها مجبور به جنگ شده و میشوند.
ملت امریکا!
افغانها مردم احسان فراموش نیستند، در زمانه حکومت محمدظاهر شاه، زمانیکه در اینجا امریکایی ها واقعا برای عمران افغانستان کار مینمودند، امریکایی ها محبوب ترین دوستان افغانها بودند. در لشکرگاه در مورد انحنیران شما این قصه مشهور است؛
حینیکه امریکایی ها کار پروژه های اساسی و تهدابی را در هلمند اجراء می‌نمودند در دشت لگان یک انجینر شما مفقود گردید، یک چوپان وی را در حال ضعف باز یافته بود، او را به غژدی محقر خود برای مداوا برده و بعد از صحت یابی به فامیلش باز گردید.
در آن وقت امریکایی ها بطور آزاد در تمام حدود جغرافیایی افغانستان گشت و گذار می‌کردند، این بخاطری بود که در آن زمان امریکایی ها صرف برای خدمت و آبادی افغانستان کار می‌کردند، ولی حالا بدبختانه نفرت و انزجار مردم در حدیست که شاید در حالت دستگیری هیچ امریکایی بطور زنده از مردم نجات نیابد.
این همه نفرت در سرشت مردم افغانستان وجود نداشت و این همان عکس العمل مردم در مقابل کار کردهای نظامیان امریکاییست.
بمباران نظامیان امریکایی بالای مساجد، مدرسه ها، مکاتب، محافل عروسی، جنازه ها، خانه ها و بازارها بنام محو طالبان با گذشت هر روز به تعداد طالبان از لحاظ کمی و کیفی افزودند و آتش کین افغانها را شعله ور تر از قبل نمودند.
انتقام در فرهنگ ما میراث جدید نیست و انتقام از تلفات بمباردمانها هر روز صفوف طالبان را قوی و قویتر می‌سازد. تجربه تاریخ نگاری افغانها و تجربه۱۵ساله حضور نظامی شما در افغانستان شاید این حقیقت را به شما ثابت ساخته باشد.
پالیسی های ناخردمندانه ادارات و نظامیان شما منتج به آن گردیده که نیروهای جنگی دیگر نیز دست به تخریب تاسیسات عام المنفعه، مکاتب، پلچک ها وغیره بزنند.
بد بختانه در هر پانزده دقیقه یک افغان کشته میشود و فرهنگ تفنگ و اسلحه آنقدر رشد یافته که هیچ فامیل بدون اسلحه را نمیتوان سراغ یافت و حتی کودکان ما نیز دسترسی به اسلحه دارند.
در کشور ما جنگ به یک انتقام مبدل شده و با گذشت هر روز اعتیاد جنگ قوی و قویتر میگردد، فضای طبیعت زیبای ما را دود و غبار بارود به سر گرفته، امراض روانی رو به گسترش است، فقر و بیکاری در شهر ها بیداد می‌نماید.
مردم روستاها در ایام رمضان در این همه گرمی حتی دسترسی به دوغ خالی را نداشتند.
ما این همه تظاهرات و راهپیماییها را برای آن آغاز نمودیم تا شما از تصویر واقعی افغانستان و مردم آن با خبر گردیده و از حکومت تان بپرسید که چرا تعهدات تانرا بجا نیاوردید؟
شما که در ۱۵روز یک نظام را از صحنه تاریخ نابود کرده می‌توانید! چرا با گذشت ۱۷سال امنیت و ثبات را آورده نتوانستید و یا نیاوردید؟
تا ۲۰۰۳ما به این باور بودیم که با آمدن امریکایی ها به این سرزمین، افغانستان همانند جاپان و جرمني به مراکز ترقی و تکنالوژی مبدل خواهد شد، زیرا آن کشور ها بعد از رسیدن امریکایی ها به مدارج عالی ترقي انسانی رسیدند. اینکه اینجا چرا جنگ بار دیگر شروع گردید؟ از آنها بپرسید!
ما جز توقف جنگ خواسته دیگری نداریم، اگر شما مردم امریکا در مساله افغانستان مداخله نموده و برای امحای جنگ و خشونت کار نمایید، شما میتوانید نام باخته شده امریکا را بار دیگر در این خطه احیاء نمایید، ابر نفرت‌ها را می‌توانید زدود و می‌توان به مناسبات زمان قصه فوق در لشکرگاه روح جدید داد، فصل های خشکیده ما بار دیگر جوانه خواهد زد، باغ‌های خشکیده و دود زده روح تازه خواهد یافت، حیوانات و پرندگان وحشي فراری به دیارهای خدا داد شان خواهند برگشت، مهاجرین سرگردان افغان به خانه وکاشانه های غریب ولي با غرور خویش باز خواهند گشت و زندگی ما بار دیگر به حالت عادی و انسانی خود باز خواهند گشت.
اگر شما مردم ایالات متحده امریکا به تعهدات خود عمل نکنید، شاید هیچ کسی در دنیا با شما رفاقت و دوستی را ادامه نخواهند داد و با شما صرف نفرت خواهند کرد، کارکرد شما در این باره روابط آینده شما را با سایر ملل تعیین و ترسیم می‌نماید.
یک بار دیگر بالای مردم ایالات متحده امریکا صدا میکنیم که:
اگر شما مردم امریکا در غم و اندوه ما غمگین نه شدید و این آواز صلح خواهانه ی ما را نه شنیدید، کمک های ارسالی شما را ضایع می‌دانیم، ما خواهیم پنداشت که این همه کمک ها حقیقی و راستین نبوده و در نتیجه مردم افغانستان از مردم امریکا آزرده خواهد شد‌. ما مردم افغانستان مجبور خواهیم بود تا در نتیجه ی آزرده بودن از شما در راه های سفارت شما نشسته و دیگر اجازه ی کار برای شما در کشور ما نخواهیم داد.
#PPM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) has reported that in 22 of Afghanistan’s provinces, cumulative rain and snowfall during the ‘wet season’ – October 2017 to May 2018 – was 30 to 60 per cent below average. The northwest of the country has been particularly hard hit. AAN’s Jelena Bjelica (with input from Obaid Ali and Kate Clark) reports on drought and displacement there and looks at the underlying problems – climate change and government neglect.

A closer look at the consequences of the drought in the northwest

Locals from the northwest Afghanistan say this year’s drought is the worst they remember. “I don’t remember it being this dry,” former Badghis MP Mullah Malang told AAN, “since I was 14 or 15 years old. That was in 1964.” Available reports show that drought there has crippled the local, mainly rainfed agriculture and left people without the basic means to survive. The World Food Programme (WFP) reported on 24 July 2018 that it plans to distribute urgent food assistance to 441,000 people in the drought-affected provinces of Badghis, Faryab, Ghor, Herat and Jowzjan. Some people have already been forced to leave their homes in these provinces.

The United Nations (UN) Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in July 2018 (see here) that approximately 7,400 families, or over 50,000 people, have moved in the past months to Herat city from neighbouring Badghis and Ghor provinces as a result of drought and conflict. Badghis’s population is a little over half million people, according to the Afghan Central Statistics Organization 2017/18 census estimates (see here), of which over 496,000 people are from rural communities. Similarly, of a total of over 738,000 people in Ghor province, only some 7,700 live in urban settlements.

The 7,400 displaced families, according to the Norwegian Rescue Committee assessment, reside in 174 sites on the outskirts of Herat city on the road to Badghis. The number of families at each site ranges from 20 to several hundred. 1,760 families have received tents, while others live in makeshift shelters on open land in high summer temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius. The humanitarian workers in the area said they have never seen people living in such disheartening conditions. They said they are living on bread and water, as they do not have enough money to afford rice or meat. OCHA, in its report, said that “children show visible signs of malnutrition and illness, including skin diseases and eye infections due to dust.” None of the children in the displacement sites attend school, it said, and in rural villages the dropout rate is high for boys and girls.

Sher Aqa, a landowner from Faryab, confirmed Mullah Malang’s assessment that this is the worst drought seen in decades and said some men from his province had migrated even further away than Herat to Iran, Pakistan and Turkey in search of work. According to the OCHA report, this traditional coping mechanism, ie labour-driven migration, may be less effective than in previous years. The report quotes an Afghan from Badghis who sent two sons to Iran. “One got arrested and deported, and the other is still hiding in Iran but has not found any work,” he told the UN. The latest reports also show that the number of deportations from Iran is on the increase (see here). This coincides with an Iranian currency devaluation by some 40 per cent over recent months (see here).

Another UN report seen by the author reports that families from areas where the impact of drought has been compounded by conflict have said they will not return to their villages, “even if they received food assistance in the areas of origin.” (1) This is because “they expected the conflict would still be ongoing for at least six months.” Instead, these families have chosen to stay in the overcrowded camps in and around Herat city. Some international organisations have reported increased tensions between long-term and newly-arrived Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and between IDPs and local residents in some locations. The same report said “there were a few incidents of killing, maiming and abduction of children reported by the families in the sites,” adding that “displaced people in informal settlements in Herat city live amongst poor host communities,” in which “sharing of resources, as an expression of solidarity, is something few families can afford.”

Various north and north-west provinces– Samangan, Balkh, Sar-e Pul, Faryab and Badghis, as well as the northern parts of Ghor and Herat – generally suffer more than the rest of the country from extended dry spells, localised drought, and above average temperatures (see this report by the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System (FEWS). (FEWS covers 36 countries around the globe, rather than being a local natural disaster management authority).

The extended dry spells and drought in the northwest are related to local changes in climate in this part of Afghanistan that have been triggered by deforestation during the four decades of war and, subsequently, a lack of planned development and adequate management of natural resources. The Afghan government said in 2015 in its Paris Climate Change conference documents that between 1990 and 2000 the country lost on average 29,400 hectares of forest per year (see AAN analysis here). In Badghis province, for example, climate change has also been caused by extreme deforestation over the last forty years. The WFP reported in 2017 that, based on Department of Agriculture records in Badghis, there were 90,000 hectares of pistachio forest before the war, ie before 1978, and that drought and cutting of firewood has left the province with only some 28,000 hectares, one third of the original forest. The Independent newspaper, described Badghis in 2014 as a province where “grain has become the only currency that matters,” and was then in “its fourth year of a drought, which has destroyed the rural economy.”

In these provinces, opium poppy cultivation has increased at the expense of wheat (see AAN analysis here). One reason for this switch might be the scarcity of water, as opium poppy is relatively more drought-resistant. Usually, however,  the reasons behind a farmer’s decision to cultivate opium are multiple, as reported in a number of studies (see here; here and here). (2) Nevertheless, in the northern region of Baghlan, Balkh, Faryab, Jawzjan, Samangan and Sar-e Pul, the United Nation Office for Drug Control (UNODC) has noted a rapid expansion of opium poppy cultivation since 2014 (see this AAN analysis). The FEWS June 2018 outlook found that opium poppy cultivation in this zone in 2018 had increased by approximately 10 to 15 percent when compared to the 2017 figures. The report also reported a decrease in the area under wheat. The report offers a rather grim economic prospect, “the brief poppy harvest generates some local employment opportunities, often paying several times the wage rate of other sectors for a period of roughly two weeks.”

According to the FEWS outlook, licit agriculture production in this zone in 2018 is expected to fall below the production levels of 2017 – then already below the national average – while, “the availability of drinking water and fodder for the livestock are significantly worse than normal.” The FEWS reported:

Field reports indicate that June livestock prices are 30 to 40 percent lower than last year. Many drought-affected households are selling their livestock in unusual high quantities due to the need for cash and due to inability to properly care for the animals.

AAN interviews with farmers from Faryab and Sar-e Pul provinces confirmed that livestock prices have dropped in the north because of the drought and shortage of summer pasture, and that animals are being sold for almost half the usual price. Shortage of rainfall has badly affected the farmers in these provinces, where the prices for wheat, rice and other staple food have all gone up. Sher Aqa, the landowner in Faryab, told AAN that

… some wheat always grew, not as tall as usual, but it grew, and also poppy. Humans could not use the crops, but at least the animals could. They had fodder. This time, we don’t even have that.”

Both he and former Badghis MP Mullah Malang pointed to the steep drop in the price of sheep in their provinces, from around 7-8,000 Afghani to 1,500 Afghani. For Malang, this was an unquestionable sign of trouble yet to come. Selling livestock because there is not enough grazing to keep flocks alive or because of the need for cash for food means is a survival strategy of last resort. Malang said worse is to come:

In two or three months’ time, the pressure will be much greater. Winter is coming, food stocks will be finished, and the number of people escaping the province will go up.

The people are from the provinces of Badghis, Faryab and Ghor and left their homes and farms because of drought. Now, most are living in hot, harsh and dusty conditions beneath flimsy shelters made of sheets, blankets and tarpaulins. Many claimed that their livestock had died. As has been the case for other crises in western Afghanistan over the years, people gravitate toward the population hub of Herat City believing there will be resources and organisations to assist them. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2018.

Changing climate conditions in Afghanistan

Climate change and climate hazards in Afghanistan were well-documented in the 2009 National Capacity Needs Self-Assessment for Global Environmental Management (NCSA) and National Adaptation Programme of Action for Climate Change (NAPA) Afghanistan final report. This document identified the key climate hazards for the country as periodic drought and a rise in temperature (see also this the 2017 Guardian report from the Afghanistan’s central highlands). Since 1960, the document said, the country has experienced regular droughts: two in the 1960s, in 1963-64 and 1966-67; one in the 1970s, in 1970-72; and the longest and most severe drought in Afghanistan’s known climatic history between 1998 and 2005/6 (see also AAN analysis here). The Stockholm Environmental Institute said in 2009 that “drought is likely to be regarded as the norm by 2030, rather than as a temporary or cyclical event.”

In June 2018, the FEWS warned that below average wet season precipitation levels will lead to a reduction in yields for rainfed staple crops, lower quality grazing pastures and poor livestock conditions and lower animal prices. In February 2017, FEWS released a similar warning as the October–December 2016 precipitation had been below average throughout most of the country. This shows that, for the second year in a row, Afghanistan is facing below-average precipitation levels during the wet season (October to May). These have coincided with the global atmospheric condition called La Niña. (3)

The two dry spells combined resulted in the lowest detected ‘snowpack’ in Afghanistan in February 2018 since 2001, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA’s) earth observatory reported. Snowpack is made up of accumulated layers of snow, compressed and hardened by their own weight, and are an important source of irrigation in much of Afghanistan. The above-average spring temperature in 2018 has also led to a roughly one month earlier than normal melt and depletion of snowpack in most basins. The snowmelt and increased precipitation levels late in the season resulted in deadly floods in Panjshir province in early July 2018 (see here, here, and here).

For Afghanistan’s agriculture, which is 80 per cent rainfed, low precipitation is potentially disastrous. The FEWS Food Security Outlook in June 2018 estimated that there will be a 2 to 2.5 million metric tonne national deficit in wheat, with most crop losses occurring in rainfed areas in the north, central, and western provinces. The domestic production of staples is already below average, particularly in rainfed production areas, FEWS reported, adding that most grazing pasture in the central highlands and northern Afghanistan had not regenerated as normal and that this would likely lead to poor livestock conditions and lower animal prices. As was reported above, this is already the case.

FEWS also found that on-farm labour demand and wages in June 2018 were lower than normal in most parts of the country and especially in the northern, north-eastern, and north-western rainfed wheat growing areas. Among the most likely food security outcomes for the whole country, the FEWS outlook from June 2018 reported that:

The prevalence of acute malnutrition at the national level is likely to deteriorate over the scenario period [July 2018 to January 2019], because of seasonal peak of diarrheal diseases from June to September. Furthermore, constant conflict, particularly in western, southern, eastern, northern, and northeastern regions, is also likely to limit access to health and nutritional services and access to agriculture products and food.

In April this year, the spokesman for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority in Kabul, Hashmat Khan Bahaduri, told Reuters that “this year drought has reached a level that we will have to announce an emergency in several parts of the country.” It seems, though, that the emergency warning has not been issued yet, not even for the north and northwest of country which have been so hard hit this year.

Nevertheless, OCHA recently launched the revised 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan asking for an additional 84 million USD for food assistance to drought-affected people (see here). Currently, only 29 per cent of the 546.6 million USD 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan is funded.

Conclusion

Prolonged dry spells, compounded with the fighting in the northwest, have taken their toll on the lives of ordinary people. It is evident that the situation there calls for the relevant government authorities to take a more proactive and engaged role. However, the government’s lack of initiative or preparedness to deal with the consequences of natural disasters is striking. Afghanistan is one of 168 countries who are signatories to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005 – 2015 that states a need for member states to “identify, assess and monitor disaster risks and enhance early warning.” Yet, the government has failed to respond to the early warnings provided by FEWS.

Afghanistan does have a body which should be doing this. The Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) was established in 2007, following the 2006 London Conference Communique, which stated, “[B]y end‐2010, an effective system of disaster preparedness and response will be in place.” The ANDMA has received an abundance of funding from a number of international organisations, including capacity-building from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Today, its website is still under construction and offers only one news-related item concerning the current situation in the northwest, ie the distribution of food items in Faryab province in June 2018.

The WFP, in its June 2018 Afghanistan update, reported that the Central Statistics Organization, and not the ANDMA, was leading a post-harvest emergency food security assessment with support from WFP, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster. This suggests that the Central Statistics Organization is the lead for drought response assessment. The ANDMA has not been mentioned at all in any of the recent drought-related reports and appeals.

As to the country’s latest national disaster management plan, it is four years old, dating from 2014 (Dari version here; see here for related documents and plans). According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) 2017 guidelines on national disaster risk assessment, such plans are usually produced in time horizons of three to five years. However, as the Afghan plan does not stipulate which timeframe it covers, its relevance for the current situation, caused by the relatively recent La Niña conditions, is questionable.

Finally, AAN sources in the northwest said that most government offices in this part of the country are not open, indicating that local early warnings through the relevant ministries probably also did not happen.

Yet the desolate situation in ‘remote’ provinces such as Ghor, Badghis, Samangan, and parts of Faryab is also a consequence of a lack of development. As AAN recently reported on the state of aid and poverty, around 40 per cent of the country has not been privy to donor funds. Badghis province, in particular, has suffered from a lack of development funding (see this AAN analysis). There has been a lack of targeted development to mitigate the effects of regular and expected climatic crises such as droughts. This raises the question of whether displacement from the northwest is only a consequence of natural disaster or is also a result of government neglect and lack of planning.

Edited by Sari Kouvo and Kate Clark

 

(1) Report: Inter-Cluster Coordination Team Mission Herat and Badghis 7 – 11 July 2018. Seen by author, not available online.

(2) An Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) paper (quoted here), for example, points to a combination of factors beyond infrastructure that feed into farmers’ decisions to grow opium poppies as opposed to alternative crops. These include the following: (i) the position of key elites vis-à-vis poppy cultivation, (ii) food security, and (iii) social equality. This means that, where key government officials or power-holders are opposed to poppy cultivation, their opposition could prevent farmers from planning the crop, even where conditions otherwise seemed ripe for it. In addition, AREU found that greater food security and social equality lead to reduced poppy cultivation. Ultimately, the study found that that “the absence of opium cultivation was more than a matter of water.” Therefore, the report suggests that water availability is a necessary, but insufficient, condition to enable a switch to alternative crops. In fact, under certain conditions, strong irrigation systems may incentivise poppy cultivation.

See also this AREU paper from 2007 which states:

For the poor, opium poppy is attractive because it is a low-risk crop in a high-risk environment, not because it allows them to maximise economic returns. Some crops — particularly as part of mixed cropping systems and combined with non- farm income opportunities — can compete in terms of financial returns with opium poppy when opium prices are lower, but no crop can offer the same qualitative attributes, including: relative drought resistance, a non-perishable product, an almost- guaranteed market, and traders who offer advance payments against the future crop.

A word of caution related to opium prices; UNDOC found that, during years of high production, eg 2006 to 2008, the average price decreased (137 USD in 2006 to 91 USD/kg in 2008), whereas, following a supply shortage (for example, the Taleban ban on opium in 2001), the average price strongly increased (295 USD/kg in 2001; 382 USD/kg in 2002; 355 USD/kg in 2003). In 2017, an average price of opium was 155 USD/kg. For more see here.

See also this 2006 AREU case study on Balkh and Kunduz’s opium cultivation and water management, which says: “It is also unlikely that there is any one single determinant for whether or not opium poppy is cultivated – there are multiple reasons and farmers’ decision-making is contingent on context and time.”

(3) La Niña, the direct opposite of El Niño, occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean drop to lower-than-normal levels. The cooling of this area of water near the equator, which typically unfolds during late fall into early winter, yields impacts around the globe. (see here).

La Niña conditions in the atmosphere tend to push the jet stream northward over Central Asia and reduce the frequency of storms over Afghanistan, leading to a reduction in precipitation totals and an increased risk for dry spells. This anticipated weather pattern generally occurred over Afghanistan, particularly through the winter and early spring. Although precipitation improved late in the season, seasonal totals in some areas remained 50 percent below average according to satellite-based estimates, with extended periods of dryness and drought in much of the northern part of the country, particularly the northwest. Accordingly, peak snow water equivalent in most hydrological basins was well below average. Low total snowpack and above-average spring temperatures have led to early depletion of snowpack in most basins, roughly one month earlier than normal. FEWS NET’s Seasonal Monitor report from June 6, 2018 provides further summary of the 2017/2018 wet season.

According to the Environmental Science website El Niño and La Niña change or affect climate change in the future is now of tremendous importance thanks to the known effects over the last century or more. However, “the conditions are still not very well understood, though the phenomenon has been known since the early 1600s.”

Ghazni is one province where the Taleban have long-established significant influence. Actually, they dominate it militarily, with the exception of the provincial capital, all but one of the 18 district centres and some larger areas in three districts. Over the spring of 2018, the Taleban – although not capturing more territory –, have significantly expanded their threat to so far secure districts and other areas. AAN’s Ehsan Qaane looks at the reasons and assessed the overall security situation of Ghazni with its significant shifts in this last spring.

Spring 2018 ended with three days of a genuine ceasefire between Afghan government and the Taleban forces. From 15 to 17 June, over the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr, the two sides’ independent and different long truces overlapped. Over the three Eid days, Ghazni city hosted dozens of Taleban militants who entered the city to celebrate the holiday with their families. They freely walked in public places and fraternised with members of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) (AAN reporting here).

This was a positive, but short exception from their usual behaviour. Before the ceasefire, the Taleban had carried out a whole series of large attacks in 14 of the 18 districts of the province and in villages nearby its capital. The attacks started on 12 April 2018 in the district centre of Khwaja Omari. Apart from this, Muqur, Jaghatu, Andar, Deh Yak, Ajrestan, Gilan, Waghaz, Khugyani, Ab Band, Giro, Qarabagh and Rashidan, as well as the villages of Spandi, Shahbaz, Qala-ye Qazi and Arzo that belong to the provincial capital’s district, were also assaulted. The New York Times reported in May “the central government in Kabul expressed fear that the Taliban had made it a priority to overrun Ghazni [city].”

Taleban attacks on Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) checkpoints or district centres are not new with a long list of attacks with a growing number in 2017. In September 2014, the Taleban almost captured of Ajrestan (a media report here and AAN reporting here), which is far from the provincial capital and badly staffed. In 2017, there were near falls of Waghaz, Giro and Gilan; a series of attacks in Deh Yak in the same year and various sieges of Andar, just outside Ghazni city, the last time in autumn 2017; see also AAN reporting about the failure of local uprising forces here).

This year the Taleban, for the first time in 17 years, managed to seize centres of relatively safe districts close to the provincial capital. This occurred in Khwaja Omari and Jaghatu on 12 April and 21 May 2018. In both cases, the Taleban left these centres within hours following their capture. This retreat was without any further clashes with the ANSF so as to keep their casualty figures low.

On 3 May, they also blocked the Ghazni-Paktika highway to civilian and military traffic for more than two months. This was a unique development since the Taleban’s re-emerged as an insurgent group in south-eastern Afghanistan. This highway is crucial for Ghazni’s defence, as it connects the city to the base of the Tandar Corps, the Afghan National Army Corps 203 based in Gardez in Paktia, further east of Paktika. This corps is the command centre of the Afghan National Army for south-eastern Afghanistan, ie the three provinces of Loya Paktia, Logar and Ghazni.

In addition to their attacks, the Taleban have created problems for the residents of Ghazni city by carrying out assassinations and collecting taxes. The residents of the three secure districts, particularly Jaghori, have suffered after mines were planted and temporary checkpoints were erected on the roads that connect them to Ghazni city. Previously, the Taleban occasionally had blocked this road and the Kabul-Ghazni highway, but only for a few hours each time.

In April and May 2018 alone, the Taleban killed at least four high-ranking local officials, including Ali Dost Shams, the district governor of Khwaja Omari, Faiz Muhammad Tufan, the chief of police of Deh Yak, Haji Barakatullah Rasuli, the commander of the reserve police unit of Ghazni province and Baryalai Rezai, the district head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) of Khwaja Omari.

It looks as though the Taleban new military strategy for Ghazni is to expand their threat to secure districts, while the closure of the Ghazni-Paktika highway is a further step to put pressure on the provincial capital.

The Taleban’s Ghazni surge

The new surge of insecurity in Ghazni started at the beginning of 2015. This followed the withdrawal by mid-2013, first of the Polish troops who had provided the majority of the local Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), and then, by the end of 2014, also the US troops. This left the war against the Taleban in this large, multi-ethnic province – the population of which has been estimated at 1.3 million in 2018 by the Afghan Central Statistic Organization; more data here) – on the shoulders of the ANSF. However, the ANSF’s tashkil(number of personnel allocated) has been too small to cope, at least in the eyes of local officials. The current tashkil for Ghazni is 2,500 ANP and 4,200 ANA, according to provincial council member Hamidullah, talking to AAN. This has opened space for the Taleban since to expand their territory and power in the province.

Currently, a number of US troops have returned to the provinces, according to provincial officials quoted in Afghan media. However, their number – as with the overall number of extra troops sent to Afghanistan under the Trump strategy – has not been made public.

Even by 2015, the Taleban controlled more of Ghazni province than the Afghan government (see this map). This equation has since further changed in their favour. This trend did not continue in 2018 but, as the result of their spring offensive, the local the government’s grip on the so far relatively secure areas, such as Jaghatu and Khwaja Omari has become shaky. Since April 2018, control over some of their areas, including their centres, has changed hands between the ANSF and the Taleban – Jaghatu twice and Khwaja Omari once. Across the province, the government currently only controls the city of Ghazni, the three Hazara-dominated districts of Nawur, Malestan and Jaghori, and the district centres of the remaining districts, except Nawa where, exceptfor one week in May 2015, had been under Taleban control ever since 2001.

Case studies of some significant attacks

1. Muqur: mining gold

At midnight of 12 June 2018, the Taleban’s Red Unit (Pashto: Sra Qeta, read more about it in this AAN analysis) attacked the headquarters of the district governor of Muqur. Muqur is located on the Ghazni-Kandahar highway and contain Zarkashan gold mine, one of the biggest gold mines in the country. They began their assault by detonating a Humvee full of explosive material at the main entrance of the compound and then entered into the building. As the result, Afghan media reported, five ANSF members were killed and 25 others, including the district governor, Habibullah Muquri, and head of NDS unit in Muqur, injured (see here and here; these reports do not mention the Red Unit, this information comes from a local journalist). However, the Taleban failed to seize the whole building and withdrew from the area in the morning.

This attack occurred on the first day of the government’s unilateral nine days truce. Presumably, the Taleban had apparently hoped to find the ANSF with their guard down (AAN reports about the ceasefire here and here).

On 7 February 2018, a group of Muqur residents, including some from Zarkashan, came to Ghazni city and complained that the Taleban were mining in Zarkashan with the support of Pakistani engineers and that the government was not preventing this from happening, as Afghan media reported. The report quoted a protester and an elder from Muqur, who said, “if the Taleban did not attack the district centre of Muqur so far, it was because of the mining.”

2. The temporary capture of Jaghatu and Deh Yak

On 21 May 2018, the Taleban captured Gul Bawri, the district centre of Jaghatu, and Deh Yak’s district centre, which has the same name as the district. (Notice that two districts are named Jaghatu: one in Ghazni, one in Maidan Wardak province; both have a joint border.) They killed the district chief of police of Deh Yak, together with five other ANSF members. The Taleban also burned down the district governor’s office, as Nasir Ahmad Faqiri, a member of the Ghazni provincial council, told AAN on 23 May.

Another member of Ghazni provincial council, Hamidullah Nawruz, told AAN on 22 May 2018 that Gul Bawri was seized by the Taleban even twice in one week. The first time was 16 May. Both times, the Taleban assaulted at midnight, using night-vision equipment and heavy weapons, and captured the police district headquarters. During the first attack, the Taleban cut off the road that connects Gul Bawri and Ghazni city by planting mines to prevent government support forces reaching the town. According to him, these reinforcements, including from Unit 333, an elite unit of the national police, Afghan National Army (ANA) commandos and regular ANA forces only arrived at the district centre at 9am, after the Taleban had left the area. Yasin Joya, the district governor of Jaghatu, in an interview with AAN on 20 May, stated that the Taleban are provided with safe haven in the villages of Zamankhel, Safarkhel and Mirokhel, which are only one kilometre distant from Gul Bawri, in Khugyani district. According to him, Khugyani, and Waghaz districts – Pashtun majority areas – as well as mixed Tajik-Pashtun Rashidan, were split from the mixed Hazara-Pashtun Jaghatu as new administrative units during the mujahedin and Taleban eras. As Gul Bawri was the district centre of the former ‘greater Jaghatu’, as Joya called it, after the division, it found itself located at the border of these insecure districts, whilst their Taleban dominance made it particularly vulnerable. He said it would better to shift the district police office to Sarab, where the district governor’s office had already been moved three years ago, and name Sarab as the new district centre for Jaghatu. He added that moving of the district governor’s office to Sarab had not been decided upon due to insecurity, but rather to bad communication: “It was difficult for locals to travel to Gul Bawri as it is located in a [distant] corner of the district.”

When the Taleban attacked Jaghatu district centre for the second time, the reinforcements were already present there. However, they withdrew after heavy fighting with the Taleban, Faqiri told AAN on 23 May.

3. Ajrestan, isolated and deserted

On 20 May 2018, the Taleban took two key villages of this remote district at the border with equally unruly Uruzgan. In Muhammadkhel, where district governor, Hamdullah Hasibzai, was living and working, and Adrakey, where the district chief of police, Obaidullah was working and living, they looted all houses – both villages are outside the district centre, but not far away. Only by the ANA military base that the Taleban have failed to capture uses the official premises of the district governor in the district centre.

“The attack was started on 17 May 2018 by the local Taleban together with Taleban militants from Uruzgan, Helmand and Kandahar,” Hasibzai told AAN on 16 July 2018. After the Taleban took all the local check-points; three on the second day of their attack, two on the third day and the last one on the fourth day, all civilian government and military personnel – except the ANA in the nominal district centre further away – escaped to Mir Amur district in neighbouring Daikundi; 105 people in total, including 50 ANA soldiers, the district governor and the district chief of police. On their way, they were ambushed again. As a result, five of them were injured and 22 others, including five civilians, captured by the Taleban. The Taleban later released the civilians, but kept the 17 ANSF personnel. All who managed to escape, including the district chief of police and the district governor, are living in Ghazni city now. Around 50 families of Afghan National Police and Afghan Local Police also came and joined their men. The Taleban sent a message to the Ajrestan personnel saying, “if you want to live, don’t return to your homes.”

Hasibzai told AAN that he resigned from his position because working in Ajrestan without the full support from the government was “suicide.” He added that all four roads connecting it to its neighbouring districts – to Malestan and Nawur in Ghazni, Mir Amur in Daikundi and Khas Uruzgan in Uruzgan – were closed by the Taleban to government employees ever since the Taleban re-emerged in the area again years ago. As a result, military supplies are impossible to bring in by road. He added that, over the last 15 years, the government employees were only able to travel to and from the Ghazni city, 200 kilometers away, by air. According to Hasibzai, the Taleban now control almost 90 per cent of Ajrestan.

Compared to the attacks on Khawja Omari, Jaghatu and Deh Yak, this was the heaviest attack of this last spring. Lasting three days, it constitutes an exception to the strategy of ‘quick assault and withdraw’ usually employed at other places. This approach is favoured given the extreme isolation of Ajrestan district. The conflicting reports whether (by the Taleban) or not (by the government) the district centre was taken during this attack relate to the fact that the district centre proper, with the ANA base, was not taken, but the two resident villages of the district governor and police chief, which function as the de facto district centre.

4. Khawja Omari, safe so far

On 13 April, the Taleban attacked the district centre of Khwaja Omari, only 16 kilometers to the north of Ghazni city. Thus far, it had been one of the relatively safest districts of the province. The Taleban killed the district governor, Ali Dost Shams, and 20 ANSF members, including the head of National Directorate of Security (NDS) for the district, Baryalai Rezai, son of a mixed Hazara-Pashtun family native to Khawja Omari.

On 16 May, AAN interviewed a commander of Afghan Local Police (ALP) who was there on the night of assault (he requested AAN not to be named). According to him, the attacks started around 1am from two directions in the same time. One group attacked the checkpoints close to the district police HQ and the other group attacked the residence of the district governor. Within one and a half hours, the Taleban seized the control of the district centre. He added: “Only we – eight members of ANSF – remained in the building of district police HQ and resisted.”

The Taleban stayed in the district centre for two hours only and left the area before sunrise when support forces from the provincial centre arrived.” The ALP commander told AAN that a small group of forces headed from Ghazni city to Khwaja Omari soon after the attack started. However, they first had to return to the city after they hit mines at the Ziarat-e Kushk area, six kilometers outside Ghazni city. As the result, one of their Humvees was destroyed and eight of their personnel killed or injured. He added: “Until 9am no more support forces arrived on the ground.”.

The ALP commander told AAN that the Taleban in Khwaja Omari also used night-vision goggles. He gave an example to prove his claim: “When eight policemen left the district police HQ to support the governor, four of them were shot immediately at the gate. Each of them was killed only by one bullet in the head.” Referring to the intelligent reports, he told AAN that 120 Taleban militants from Paktia, Logar and Maidan Wardak provinces participated in the attack. Before the attack, they had gathered in Jaghatu district of Maidan Wardak, which shares a border with Khawja Omari. He also said that Jaghatu’s local Taleban were not involved in this onslaught. It can only be speculated why this was the case: as their numbers are relatively small, they might have been afraid of the revenge from those attacked.

Media reported that 59 of the Taleban attackers were killed by an airstrike in the same morning of 13 April in Maidan-Wardak’s Jaghatu where they celebrated their victory.

5. Attacks on the security belt of Ghazni city

On 21 May 2018, the Taleban raided ANSF checkpoints in villages that are administratively part of the provincial capital, Spandi and Shahbaz. They also ambushed Haji Barakatullah Rasuli, the commander of the reserve police of Ghazni in Spandi. Rasuli and his four bodyguards were killed.

Ghazni city has been partially under Taleban siege to the west and south since 2015. It also has been the target of a series of spectacular attacks. In 2014, the Taleban blew up the local NDS office and other installations with a massive truck bomb, in September 2015, when their fighters broke into Ghazni provincial jail and freed 355 prisoners, including high-ranking commanders, they also captured the NDS office and obtained important files (AAN’s report on breaking jail here) and, in 2016, when they stormed the Ghazni courthouse.

Qala-ye Qazi, located two kilometres to the west of Ghazni city, and Spandi, four kilometres to the south, demarcates the frontline between the government and them. Mangur village, some seven kilometers to the south of Ghazni city, is the centre for the Taleban, who are in charge of the city and its surrounding rural areas, which together are one administrative unit. According to a local journalist (who talked with AAN on condition he was not named), Hanafi Muhammadi, the head of Taleban’s military commission for Ghazni’s provincial capital, and Mullah Shams Wadood, who is in charge of collecting ushr(Islamic tax) there, are living in this village. In early May 2018, the New York Times reported how the Taleban systematically collect taxes in Ghazni city and were openly living in some parts of it, quoting a senior police officer as saying “They have their homes here and can do whatever they want to.”

Wahidullah, the local journalist confirmed this to AAN. According to him, Taleban have issued death threats to Ghazni residents, including the local media, if they do not pay taxes to them. For their safety, the residents obey the Taleban. Hamidullah Nawruz, a member of the Ghazni Provincial Council, told AAN the Taleban collect ushr from residents of Ghazni city and in all places they have control over. In the city, they contact the wakil guzar (neighborhood representative) and representatives of professional associations, asking them to collect specific amounts from the residents or members of their guzaror associations on behalf of the Taleban and to hand it over to the representatives of the Taleban’s economy commission. The venue for handing it over, which is usually in Mangur village, is set via the phone.

Nawruz also told AAN on 16 July 2018 “seven months ago, my colleagues and I did a rough estimation based on documents we obtained. We found that the Taleban’s revenue from tax collection is around 25 million Afghanis per year only in Ghazni province.”

In addition to this, the neighbouring district of Ghazni city, including Deh Yak, Zana Khan, Khugyani, Waghaz and Andar districts, are almost fully controlled by the Taleban. From there, they can launch attacks and assassinations, and easily retreat back afterwards. Only in April 2018, nine people were reportedly assassinated in Ghazni city. (There were 18 in 2017, according to Afghan 1TV (source BBC monitoring, 10 November 2017).) The assassins use ordinary pistols with silencers and, after their assaults, escaped riding motorbikes out of the city. Local officials said that they arrested five people accused of involvment in these assassinations. Wahidullah, the local journalist, told AAN on 12 July, though assassinations have declined after the Eid ceasefire, the previous incidents have poisoned the atmosphere and people are really scared.

Hasht-e Sobh (8am), an Afghan daily newspaper, quoted Aref Nuri, the spokesman of the Ghazni provincial governor admitting that the local officials knew about the Taleban tax collection, but, apparently, they cannot do much about it. Instead, as Nuri said in this interview, they arrested two people for paying tax to the Taleban. Noori added that these two people were released after elders intervened on their behalf.”

What messages do these attacks convey?

1. Tactical issues

Almost all these attacks occurred during the night. According to local sources, the Taleban used night-vision equipmentand sniper rifles, while the ANP and ALP, who tried to beat back these attacks, do not possess such technology. According to an ALP commander in Khwaja Omari, the members of ANSF have two options to face this problem: stay in their check-points to be killed from short range or escape and be shot while doing so over a longer distance. Aref Rahmani, an MP from Ghazni, in his interview with AAN on 14 June 2018, criticised the National Unity Government (NUG) and said, despite ALP and ANP guarding parts of the country which are insecure or bordering Taleban territory, it has not provided them with heavy and modern weapons. He believes that, because the ALP and ANP have lighter weapons and less personnel than the Taleban, their casualty figures are higher in comparison to the ANA. (Although the ANA, and particularly their commandos and the Air Force, are also involved in combatting the Taleban, most of the brunt of this fight is borne by the police and auxiliary police forces.)

There are also communication problems. During the night, most high-ranking officials switch off their phones, so that it is harder to contact them in the provincial centre or in Kabul for help. For example, when the Taleban attacked Khwaja Omari disctrict centre, the district governor was only able to contact the deputy governor of Ghazni, Aref Wahidi. According to Shams’ brother, the cell phone of the provincial governor, Abdul Karim Matin, was out of the coverage area and the cell phone of the provincial chief of police, Mohammad Zaman, was switched off. The Taleban, of course, understand this. Furthermore, the ANSF limit their patrols in the evenings. In addition, the Taleban plant mines along the routes that reinforcements have to take to get to the target areas.

As a result, their night assault tactic gives them two advantages: better vision and fewer threats by reinforcements.

2. Threatening or conquering?

These assaults on districts centres and Ghazni’s suburban villages also indicate that the Taleban are looking to increase their pressure on the areas in Ghazni province still under government control, rather than to necessarily expand their territory in Ghazni. Although they are theoretically able to easily gain control of at least the centres of Andar, Giro and Ab Band, where their presence is the strongest and where they easily can bring in reinforcements from neighbouring Paktika and Paktia, they still prefer to carry out sudden attacks, followed by quickly withdraw. They also used this tactic in their attacks on Khawja Omari and Jaghatu on 13 April and 22 May. While avoiding casualties for themselves (and the local population) from counter air strikes, this allows the Taleban to keep the initiative, while the – often outnumbered and qualitatively outgunned – government forces remain on the defensive. It also inflicts more casualties on the ANSF. In addition, the Taleban benefit from the situation that the government has to supply its forces in often besieged district centres with weapons and ammunition by breaking through their siege. This inevitably allows some supplies to fall into their hands. Also, their attacks on ANSF checkpoints provide them with extra hardware.

The Taleban attacks on Khwaja Omari and Ajrestan revealed that the Taleban gather militants from neighbouring locations for these assaults. This needs pre-planning. The fact that the attacks happened means, the Afghan (and other) intelligence services were unable to discover them in advance, or there were simply insufficient forces available to send to help the defenders. On the other hand, collectively, such attacks make sure the local ANSF are outnumbered and ensure relatively easy, if only temporary, victories for the Taleban. The ALP commander from Khwaja Omari told AAN that the Taleban who attacked on Khwaja Omari were 120 armed men, while ANSF were only 28-30. The Taleban used this advantage and defeated ANSF. Attacking, briefly capturing and then withdrawing are classical guerrilla-style pin prick operations to force the more static enemy to be constantly on the watch and to shift around its best forces too often (see this AAN analysis).

The Taleban’s attacks also reveal that they are able to strike in various districts at the same time. For example, when they attacked Jaghatu (the first and second time) and Ajrestan, they also assaulted Giro, Andar, Deh Yak, Waghaz, Rashidan and Khugyani districts, as well as the security belt around Ghazni city, in order to split the ANSF and hide their main target areas. This is a tactic the Taleban had already employed in 2014 when they attacked the local NDS office and other installations.

3. Government shortcomings

On 22 May 2018, while the district centre of Ajrestan was being besieged and the district centres of Jaghatu and Deh Yak captured by the Taleban, President Ashraf Ghani held an emergency meeting in Kabul. He talked via video call with Ghazni provincial governor, Abdul Karim Matin (he dismissed him from his position some days later), and Sho’ur Gul, the commander of Tandar Corps. According to the president’s website both officials gave a report about the Ghazni security situation and the problems there. In response, as it was put on the website, “the President ordered them to prioritise their works and to do comprehensive efforts.”

Although the website does not give more details on what the president exactly meant, Ghazni MPs have usually criticised local officials in the province for their lack of cooperation and gaps in their war strategy. For example, Aref Rahmani mentioned to AAN on 14 June 2018 the lack of cooperation among the civilian and the military leadership of Ghazni as one of the main gaps in fighting the Taleban in that province. This point was illustrated by Hamidullah, a member of the Ghazni Provincial Council, who told AAN on 15 July that the provincial chief of police usually took orders directly from Kabul, and not from the provincial governor. He said this is “a bad practice in Ghazni regardless who the provincial governor or provincial chief of police is.” (This is a problem in the other provinces, too.) Therefore, he was pessimistic that Ghani’s changes to the province’s leadership would alter the situation, as it does not integrate the chain of command.

The NUG has renewed the civil and military leadership of Ghazni various times in May, June and July 2018. On 12 May, after the Taleban attack on Khwaja Omari, Muhammad Zaman was dismissed and Farid Mashal appointed in his place as the provincial chief of police. Instead of Abdul Karim Matin, Wahidullah Kalimzai, originally from Wardak province and former provincial governor of Kunar, was appointed as provincial governor on 2 June. Finally, on 9 July, Muhammad Amin Mobalegh, former deputy to the provincial governor of Wardak, was made deputy provincial governor.

In the emergency meeting, President Ghani also ordered the related institutions “to provide resources of a first-grade province [to Ghazni] as it is a first-grade province”. (Afghanistan’s provinces are divided into three categories, according to their population.) So far, Ghazni has received resources only as a third-grade province with military personnel, leading – among other issues – to the above-mentioned current ANSF tashkil of 6,700 ANP and ANA. This allows the government forces to retake lost territory, but they are insufficient to hold it permanently. When, in May 2015, ANSF recaptured Nawa, it failed to keep it safe for more than one week. Ghazni centre did not have enough personnel to deploy there, so the ANA had to leave again. Similarily, Hamdullah Hasibzai, the former district governor of Ajrestan, told AAN on 15 July 2018, that, although Afghan commando and ANA are in the district centre of Ajrestan since 22 May 2018, they have not ventured to retake those villages the Taleban have taken in May. He argued also that there the number of local security personnel is too low to safeguard the villages after a withdrawal of the ANA and Afghan commandos.

These are obviously meaningless expenditures of human and financial resources without any long-term security impact. This explains why the ANSF remains on the defensive in Ghazni – and probably in many parts of the country.

Conclusion

Although Ghazni city and some districts are considered part of government-controlled territory, the Taleban are exercising sovereignty by collecting taxes there. It looks as if the government cannot stop the Taleban.Its resources seem too weak, and there are grave shortcomings in coordination and general governance.

The Taleban may not want, or may be unable, to extend their territorial grip in Ghazni in the near future. Already, they have control over those parts of the province where they can recruit militants among the locals most easily. This is mainly in the Pashtun areas (although not all locals support them). The Hazara majority areas – often isolated from the Ring Road – are under pressure by the Taleban dominance and their frequently closing the roads connecting them with Ghazni city. Therefore, the Taleban occasionally are able to coerce local communities into mutual non-aggression deals.

In the current situation, the Taleban would only be able to capture the remaining parts of Ghazni, including Ghazni city,if at all, for a short time. The Taleban do not have much local support in the three Hazara districts and in Hazara-dominated areas in mixed ones, such as Jaghatu, Khwaja Omari and Qarabagh. In Ghazni city, the government is still much stronger than the Taleban, despite the Taleban’s ability to threaten and pressure its residents by assassinations and taxation. The Taleban presence in districts nearby, however, keeps up a serious threat for Ghazni’s centre and its residents. Militarily, the initiative remains on their side, while the government forces often only can react.

Due to this constellation of factors, the areas under Taleban control even appear more secure when compared to those in government-controlled territory. The local populations in the territory of the Taleban may not be happy with their rule, but at least they enjoy a degree of security. It looks like the situation favours the Taleban, until such time that the government can increase its military personnel (which seems to be the case with the expansion of the ANA ‘territorial’ forces, see AAN analysis here) and increase its offensive position operations after which territory can be held.

The Taleban’s approach and the government’s shortcoming – although they might differ in detail and due to different geographic circumstances – echo those reported by AAN from Helmand, Kunduz, Baghlan, Jowzjan and Farah.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

“Directorate S” is Steve Coll’s second major study of the CIA’s role in recent Afghan wars. While “Ghost Wars” chronicled the years 1979-2001, “Directorate S” – referring to a subdivision of Pakistan’s inter-services intelligence directorate that covers Afghanistan – takes up the story in 2001 and follows it through to 2016. AAN Advisory Board member Ann Wilkens found Coll’s renderings of the lack of cohesion between the US and its Western allies, as well as between various US institutions, particularly compelling. Equally powerful was Coll’s startling account of the shifting and frequently contradictory views the US held of its Pakistani ally – and the slow unraveling of the bilateral relationship.

Steve Coll has shed more light on the murky politics that govern the relations between the intelligence services of United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan than any other writer. His seminal work “Ghost Wars, The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001”, first published in 2004, chronicled the role of the CIA in the defeat of the Soviet army in Afghanistan during the emergence of the Taleban movement and in the pre-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden. Earlier this year, it was followed by “Directorate S, The C.I.A. and America’s Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016”. Directorate S refers to a branch within the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the most powerful of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, that deals with Afghanistan. It provides a rich and detailed account of the prolonged failure of the international community to bring stability to Afghanistan, recording the minutiae of ‘who-said-what-to-whom-and-when’in an accessible narrative form. This review and dispatch will concentrate on Coll’s coverage of Pakistan’s intelligence service.

Western incoherence

The lack of cohesion among members of the international intervention in Afghanistan has been well-documented previously, and emerges once again in “Directorate S” as a major cause of Western failures in Afghanistan. The divide between the United States and ISAF partners is richly illustrated through the book’s focus on the CIA (which ran its covert war in parallel with, not inside, ISAF). Coll cites as one example the “Riedel review”, compiled in 2009 by former CIA officer Bruce Riedel to help define the Obama administration’s approach to Afghanistan, in which Riedel “found that the United States had only one truly ‘vital’interest in the region: to defeat Al Qaeda. […] America had other interests in the war, such as stability in South Asia and the reduction of heroin trafficking, but Al Qaeda trumped all others.” (p. 366) State-building in Afghanistan, an important goal for ISAF partners, is shown not to have been an American priority, at least not in the early stages of the intervention. When it does become more prominent, with the counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy launched by ISAF commander Stanley McChrystal in 2009, it is accompanied by a military surge emulating developments (then deemed successful) in Iraq two years earlier. Similarly, partner countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom, hardly figure in the many conversations rendered from decision-making circles in Washington. People talk about Afghanistan as if it were an American war, not the joint international effort hailed in official contexts.

Incoherence stands out as a hallmark of decision-making within the US as well. Already during the Bush administration an “incoherent command structure […] had grown up in Afghanistan as a result of ad hoc compromises with N.A.T.O. and within the American military.”In Kandahar and Helmand, the units deployed included “American ‘black’or covert Special Operations units, ‘white’or Green-Beret-style American Special Forces, British forces, Dutch forces, U.S. Marines and multinational Provincial Reconstruction Teams.”(p. 331-332) At the beginning of 2010, Coll writes, there were three different strategies for Afghanistan in Washington: “From ISAF headquarters, Stanley McChrystal commanded an intensifying ground war based on the clear-hold-build-transfer principles of counterinsurgency. […] From the Global Response Center in Langley, the CIA independently ran a drone war against al Qaeda and the Taliban holed up in Waziristan. […] Simultaneously, from the ground floor of the State Department, [the US’s special representative for Afghanistan] Richard Holbrooke and his aides […] pursued a third: trying to talk to [Taleban leader] Mullah Mohammad Omar’s lieutenants about peace. […] On paper, Obama’s National Security Council supported all three policies. But it would require feats of mental gymnastics to call these lines of action synchronized.”(p. 438)

Among these actors, Holbrooke –who passed away in 2010 –seems to be the only one to have focused on the wider, regional picture. Coll renders a private conversation Holbrooke had with a reporter in 2010: “There are three countries here – Pakistan, Afghanistan and India – with vastly different stages of political, social and economic development. They share a common strategic space. As has happened so many times in history, the weak state is the one that sucks in the others. That’s the history of Afghanistan and now the Great Game is being played with different players. The India-Pakistan relationship is an absolutely critical driver.” (p. 430-431) His boss, Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton, is also wary of the possibility that the US might get bogged down in contradictions: “What was the ‘end-state vision’that the United States sought in Afghanistan? Clinton asked. That was perhaps why Karzai pressed so hard for Israel-like guarantees – perhaps he sensed correctly that the Obama administration did not know the answer. ‘Pakistan knows what end state they want,’Clinton said. ‘They have gotten more threatening to Afghanistan recently. They are letting loose the Haqqani network. But we don’t know our end-state vision because we don’t have one. We don’t have a Pakistan strategy or a reconciliation strategy. Just words and process.’” (p. 455-6)

In his concluding chapter, Coll comes back to the US-Pakistan-India relationship: “The rising, embittered skepticism toward Pakistan at the Pentagon, in Congress, and at the C.I.A. engendered by America’s experience of the Afghan war after 2001 helped to solidify ties between the United States and India; after 2001, the two countries judged increasingly that they shared a common enemy. Yet India proved to be cautious about working too closely or explicitly with Washington in Afghanistan or the region. The country’s noisy democratic politics contained a large strain of skepticism about American power. And India’s security establishment remained wary of taking risks in Afghanistan – say, by providing lethal military aid and troops to bolster Afghan forces against the Taliban – that might confirm Pakistan’s fears of encirclement and thereby provoke I.S.I. to retaliate by sponsoring more terrorism inside India.” He also touches on the Pakistan-China relationship: “The fallout from the Afghan war also persuaded Pakistan’s leaders, after 2011, to give up on any strategic partnership with Washington and to deepen ties to Beijing. This effectively opened Pakistani territory to Chinese companies and military planners, to construct transit corridors and bases that might improve China’s regional influence and links to the Middle East. Overall, the war left China with considerable latitude in Central Asia, without having made any expenditure of blood, treasure or reputation.” (p. 663)

Pakistan’s consistently ambiguous stance

In contrast, Pakistan’s policy stands out as consistent, ie, as being consistently ambiguous. Coll describes Pakistan’s support to the Taleban as “just enough to keep the war broiling, while avoiding aid so explicit that it might provoke the international community to impose sanctions on Pakistan or withdraw military sales.”(p. 679) Still, while consistent, the strategy was not cohesive. While Pakistan used a variety of channels to supply the Taleban, the theory of a “rogue I.S.I.” is refuted: “American intelligence reporting on individual, serving I.S.I. case officers, who managed contacts with the Quetta Shura or the Haqqanis /…/ showed that they were clearly in the Pakistan Army’s chain of command.” However, the picture is complex and confusing: “Overall, it was very difficult to reach a judgment that ‘Pakistan’did this or that or even that there was such a thing as ‘Pakistan’s policy’, when there were so many actors and when Directorate S was engaging diverse militant groups for different purposes at different times. In the tribal areas, I.S.I. sometimes made deals with violent radicals for defensive, tactical reasons – to forestall attacks on themselves or to get military supplies through to isolated bases. Other times the I.S.I made deals for strategic reasons – to encourage the groups to enlarge their influence inside Afghanistan or to attack Indian targets there. Still other times the army attacked these same groups in retaliation for attacks inside Pakistan.” (p. 289)

Throughout the book, Washington deals with the Pakistani army, not its government, as its natural counterpart. The civilian government structure hardly figures, much less parliament or civil society. After the replacement of the Musharraf regime by a civilian PPP-led government, the US ambassador in Islamabad warned her government: “’Let’s not fool ourselves that we have a democracy’to work with in Islamabad. The United States had to work with the Pakistan army.” (p. 403)

Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

The period covered throughout the book largely coincides with Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s position at the helm of, first the ISI and then of the army, for a prolonged tenure (2004-2013). Kayani, thus, is the central Pakistani character in the drama surrounding Afghanistan. He comes across as sophisticated (more so than some of his American counterparts), low-key and circumspect. And consistent – he never comes close to giving up on the idea that Pakistan needs to exert influence in Afghanistan to counter the threat from India, ie the old concept of “strategic depth”. He is also better at keeping his cool when bullied by Americans than Hamed Karzai, the Afghan president who keeps irritating his US sponsors. With Kayani, there is no shouting, no show-downs, just quiet reservation and, yes, consistency in the face of a host of different American interlocutors.

One of them is CIA deputy director Steve Kappes, dispatched to Islamabad to challenge Kayani after the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on 7 July 2008, which, according to “American, British and other allied intelligence services”, had been carried out by “a special Haqqani unit […] under I.S.I. orders to hit hostile targets in Afghanistan, including Indian ones.”During the meeting, Kayani “was reticent, professional, a listener, but his method was to never really say yes and never really say no.”(p. 308) Kayani’s main counterpart as army chief, however, was Mike Mullen, the most senior military officer on the American side. Between 2008 and 2013, Mullen visited Kayani in Pakistan 27 times, in addition to many meetings elsewhere and frequent telephone conversations. Mullen’s hypothesis about the ISI was a layered one: “At the very top of its hierarchy, I.S.I. was a black-and-white organization, fully subject to discipline and accountability […]. In the middle the organization started to go gray, fading into heavily compartmented operations that drew upon mid-level officers, civilians, contractors, and retirees. Then there were retired I.S.I. director-generals or senior brigadiers with their own followings among militants.” (p. 322) Other American analysts “started to grasp that the Taliban forces operated on a formal rotation system – training in Pakistan, field deployment, and then rest and recuperation back in Pakistan. Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps troops along the Pakistani border were firing on American border posts to provide covering fire for the Taliban to infiltrate into Afghanistan and return – the same tactics Pakistani forces employed for Kashmiri militants along the Line of Control.” (p. 329-330)

Providing a sign that the relationship between Kayani and Mullen went quite deep, Kayani discusses even his possible prolongation as army chief with his American counterpart: “When he met Mullen, Kayani returned to a delicate subject they had been reviewing privately for months. Should Kayani engineer and accept a three-year extension as chief of army staff and de facto head of state? Mullen wanted him to extend but talked to him gently about the pros and cons. In public, the Obama administration emphasized the importance of Pakistani democracy and civilian rule; in private, it negotiated for the continuation of favorable military control.” (p. 500).

Osama bin Laden

Ironically, while these rather intimate conversations were taking place, CIA analysts started investigating a certain compound in Abbottabad, suspected of housing Osama bin Laden and his family. On this subject, Coll writes: “Kayani had been I.S.I. director for less than a year when Bin Laden set up in Abbottabad. The Al Qaeda emir and his family enjoyed support from a sizable, complex network inside Pakistan – document manufacturers, fund-raisers, bankers, couriers, and guards. His youngest wife, Amal, gave birth to four children in Pakistani hospitals or clinics after 2002. Bin Laden limited his movements, rarely leaving his homes, but he did travel on Pakistani roads numerous times without getting caught, as did his sons and wives. Amal traveled at least once on an internal flight. In one case a man dressed as a policeman accompanied Bin Laden, according to one of the women who traveled with him. It is entirely plausible that I.S.I. ran a highly compartmented, cautious support operation involving a small number of case officers or contractors who could maintain deniability. Yet there remains no authoritative evidence – on-the-record testimony, letters, or documents – of knowing complicity by I.S.I. or the Pakistani state. […]

C.I.A. and other administration officials have said that they possess no evidence – no intercepts, no unreleased documents from Abbottabad – that Kayani or Pasha or any other I.S.I. officer knew where Bin Laden was hiding. Given the hostility toward Pakistan prevalent in the American national security bureaucracy by 2011, if the United States possessed such hard evidence, it almost certainly would have leaked.” (p. 548-549)

If Kayani had indeed been unaware of Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, the same may not have been true of Mullah Omar’s presence. When US Foreign Secretary John Kerry hosted Kayani and Karzai in Brussels in 2013 to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations with the Taleban, “Kayani insisted that he did not know where Mullah Mohammed Omar was. More than two years later, the Taliban would admit that on [that] very day […] Omar died of tuberculosis in a Karachi hospital. If Kayani knew of the Taliban emir’s dire condition, he kept it to himself while working on the statement in Omar’s name. None of the Americans had a clue. Kayani continued to represent to the Americans that he was carrying messages from Omar. Afghan intelligence did have a sense that Omar might be dead, but it could not prove it to the satisfaction of the Americans.” (p. 637-638) (1)

No advice, please

After his appointment as commander of US and ISAF forces in 2009, General McChrystal flew to Brussels to meet Kayani, who had been invited to talk at a NATO meeting there. Together with Mullen and General David Petraeus, later to become McChrystal’s successor, he met separately with Kayani to discuss the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. According to one of the meeting’s participants quoted in the book, McChrystal talked of the need “to hit the center of gravity.”Kayani disagreed: “’You don’t identify the center of gravity for the purpose of attacking it […]. You find ways to unbalance it without going straight at it.’He might have been describing I.S.I.’s twenty-year strategy against Kabul. ‘This will become a revolving door in the south – you’ll go in and out, the Taliban will go in and out’.” The Americans, however, ”were in no mood to take military advice from Kayani. Petraeus became aggravated. The last person he wanted to take advice from about the war in eastern Afghanistan was a general whose refusal to tear down the Taliban leadership in Quetta or to clean their militias out of North Waziristan was itself undermining N.A.T.O. strategy enormously. Pakistan’s sanctuaries were probably the biggest vulnerability in their military plan. […] Petraeus made his irritation plain and Kayani went outside to cool off with a smoke.” (p. 369)

”A long history of schizophrenia”

Overall, Coll describes the relationship between Washington and the Pakistani army as being one of “a long history of schizophrenia.”(p. 314) Apart from the dependence on Pakistan for transit traffic supplying the troops in Afghanistan, a major reason for the US’s continued wooing of Pakistani generals with aid and consultations was Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal: “The [Bush] administration had ‘regular’reports of Al Qaeda and other groups plotting to steal nuclear weapons. They did not want to do anything that would destabilize Pakistani command and control.” (p. 312). The Obama administration, in spite of mounting pressure to deal more harshly with Pakistani counterparts, by and large follows the same pattern. In his conclusion, Coll states: “America failed to achieve its aims in Afghanistan for many reasons: underinvestment in development and security immediately after the Taliban’s fall; the drains on resources and the provocations caused by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq; corruption fed by N.A.T.O. contracting and C.I.A. deal making with strongmen; and military hubris at the highest levels of the Pentagon. Yet the failure to solve the riddle of the I.S.I. and to stop its covert interference in Afghanistan became, ultimately, the greatest strategic failure of the American war.” (p. 667)

Conclusions

The conclusions drawn in “Directorate S” are relevant. As the Afghan war lingers on with yet new decision-makers in Washington, a number of old truths illustrated in the book remain clear. While not always immediately apparent, they are also significant factors in the 25 July national election in Pakistan:

–   Geography will not change. Since the 1947 partition, Pakistan has defined its strategic interest as having access westwards, in Afghanistan, in the face of a threat from the East, ie, India. This position has survived periods of great turmoil without any substantial change. The likelihood that this will now change, with China emerging as Pakistan’s default supporter, seems remote;

–   Relations between Pakistan and India remain at the centre of the regional conflict, which cannot be solved unless the international community works on these relations too – from both sides;

–   On the Pakistani side, the strategy should not be continued one-dimensional support to its army, which has a vested interest in maintaining its central role. The democratic process has to be supported, strengthened and used for unlocking the stalemate. “Directorate S” needs a counterweight.

 

 

(1) For a Taleban version of the circumstances of Mullah Omar’s death, see this AAN dispatch.

It is one of the few ‘truths’ of the Afghan insurgency that the Taleban hate arbaki– their term for locally-recruited defence forces, primarily the Afghan Local Police and uprising groups.These forces have always been a mixed bag, with some abusing the local population or captured by ethnic, factional or criminal interests. However, especially where they have local legitimacy, they have posed a serious threat to the insurgency. Borhan Osman* and Kate Clark identify three phases of Taleban reaction to such forces – denial, all-out war and then ‘counter counter-insurgency’ – and discuss what this says about the model of mobilising local, pro-government forces.

This dispatch is published as part of a joint three-year project by AAN, the Global Public Policy institute (GPPi), and the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. The project explores the role and impact of militias, local or regional defence forces and other quasi-state forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, including mechanisms for foreign assistance to such actors. Funding is provided by the Netherlands Research Organisation.

Afghanistan has seen a range of militia forces established since 2001, but from 2009 onwards, the international military increasingly organised them according to a specific model, the community defense force (also called local or village defence force). The American military, in particular, came to believe that the defeat of the Taleban lay in winning over ‘the tribes’ and ‘local communities’; local defence forces, they thought, were in a better position to do so than the national forces of the corrupt Afghan state. (1) Local militias were set up under a variety of names, but in 2010, most coalesced into a new national force, the ‘Afghan Local Police’ (ALP). Since 2012, it has became increasingly institutionalised within the Ministry of Interior and officially numbers 29,000 today.

Another type of local force also emerged from 2012 onwards. So-called ‘uprising forces’ (patsunian in Pashto and khezesh in Persian) were supposedly spontaneously rebellions organised by locals against the insurgency, although they usually turned out to have been prompted by or were soon supported/co-opted by the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and/or Independent Directorate of Local Government (IDLG). (For detail on all the various militias, see this background paper.)

Locally-recruited forces – both ALP and uprising groups – have posed a serious enough threat to the Taleban for them to take extreme measures against them – vilification and attempts at annihilation and, more recently, co-option. The Taleban’s extreme response raises an interesting question: does the model of community defence force work? 

Despite a plethora of research and analysis on the ALP, in particular, and their continued renewal for eight years and counting, there has been little conclusive evidence that the community force model delivers on its security promises – to protect the population and help the government hold territory. (2) It is an important question because this is a model that the international military and, albeit less frequently, the Afghan government has kept returning to, especially when looking at what can be done to maintain government forces’ control of territory in the face of inadequate conventional state forces. Most recently, we have seen the start of pilot projects for a new community defence force, the Afghan National Army Territorial Force (ANATF), to be organised under Ministry of Defence command. (3) Understanding why the Taleban have viewed community defence forces as a particular threat offers at least a partial verdict on their effectiveness. It also says a lot about the dynamics of community mobilisation in Afghanistan.

Four district case studies

In trying to assess Taleban attitudes and conduct towards the ALP and uprising forces, the authors looked at four districts in the Taleban’s heartland: Andar and Muqur in Ghazni province, Arghandab in Kandahar and Shajoy in Zabul, with Panjwayi’s ALP in Kandahar also referred to, but to a lesser extent.

• Ghazni’s Andar and Muqur districts both saw the emergence of uprising groups in 2012. Both largely transitioned to ALP later that same year, although some uprisers remained as ‘remnant’ independent uprising forces. (For an analysis of Andar, see “Uprising, ALP and Taleban in Andar: The arc of government failure” by Fazal Muzhary and Kate Clark, 22 May 2018, which also quotes earlier extensive reporting by AAN)
• Zabul’s Shajoy district saw an ALP unit established in 2011. (For detail, see AAN reporting in “How to Replace a Bad ALP Commander: In Shajoy, success and now calamity” by Fazal Muzhary, 21 September 2016)
• Arghandab was the site of one of the early, experimental community defence forces known as ‘Local Defence Initiatives’ (LDI). It was established in the district in 2009 and transitioned to ALP in 2010. (4)

Our observations are drawn from regular field research and investigations into Taleban and security force developments since 2010. One of the authors, Borhan Osman, conducted 13 trips to Ghazni and Kandahar between 2010 and 2017 and many of the insights in this dispatch derive from observations and conversations during those trips. He also conducted interviews in Kabul with locals from the studied areas. In total, he held more than 70 conversations and interviews with Taleban fighters and officials, members and ALP commanders and uprising groups and civilians in the studied districts. 

The authors wanted to see if the trends in violence observed by us and reported by both civilians and combatants locally, could be borne out statistically. We therefore consulted a western security expert who has maintained a database of security incidents in Afghanistan since 2012 and compared our conclusions with his statistical evidence. The expert in question asked to remain anonymous and for AAN not to publish actual numbers.

There is no clear, spelled-out, top-down Taleban policy on arbaki – the Taleban refer to both the ALP and uprising groups with this term used in its contemporary sense as an undisciplined and abusive, pro-government militia. (5) Also, as always in Afghanistan, local dynamics vary. Nevertheless, when looking at what happened in the studied districts, similarities in Taleban attitudes and behaviour become very evident. We argue that there were three phases in the insurgents’ approach to community defence forces: initially, the Taleban dismissed them, then used extreme violence and vilification to try to annihilate their new enemy and finally, embarking on a ‘softly-softly’ approach of counter counter-insurgency trying to co-opt and defuse the ALP and uprising groups by winning over individual police and fighters and their communities. These three phases are looked at in detail below.

Phase 1 (2009-2011): Denial

The ALP and uprising forces sought to draw on a constituency which the Taleban considered their own – rural communities, especially in the south and east of Afghanistan. Such communities had long served as the Taleban’s bedrock, supplying the insurgency with almost all its needs, from fighters to food and shelter. It is this support which has enabled Taleban fighters to use populated areas for their military bases and hideouts. The Talebanhad always taken the support – or at least consent – of local communities in their heartland for granted. They assumed the ‘Islamic Emirate’, as they call their organisation, and the ‘mujahedin’ as they call themselves, were rooted so firmly in their communities that nobody could pose a serious challenge. The emergence of a community force opposed to the Taleban, then, was simply unimaginable for members of the movement, both fighters and commanders.

At first, as ALP (and various precursor forces in areas like Arghandab) appeared in increasing numbers across the south, the Taleban disregarded them. Rumours, circulating in 2011 that the ALP programme was going to be expanded dramatically into a nation-wide counter-insurgent force, were dismissed by higher-level Taleban interviewed by Osman during field trips. (6) They described the rumoured plans as an American ploy doomed to fail. Conversations with Taleban fighters in the studied southern districts from 2011 through early 2012 typically ran along the lines of: the Islamic Emirate is the most authentic popular force – how can the nation turn against the mujahedin? Nevertheless, when the rumours came to pass and the number of ALP expanded dramatically from 2012 onwards, the Taleban understood the threat they were facing. Taleban commanders described finally realising that the ALP programme amounted to more than just isolated instances of externally-supported opposition forces. The Afghan Local Police became the Taleban’smost dangerous enemy, worse even than the American and other foreign forces which, thus far, had been their primary adversary.

Phase 2 (2012 – 2014): Extreme violence and vilification

As the ALP became institutionalised, it increased in numbers and absorbed most other community defence forces. The threat posed by the new force became evident. They were as close to the community as the Taleban. Local policemen and uprisers and local Taleban knew each other by name. They knew each others’ families, clan networks and sympathisers. Members of the new forces knew the insurgents’ places of shelter, their usual ambush points and exit and supply routes – normally unknown to outside forces. Some were former Taleban members. (7) Even when the new forces were not universally popular with the communities in which they operated – for example, in Andar – they were still able to pose a threat because of the support of their particular clan and family networks.

An equally significant characteristic of the new local forces was that, unlike members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), who could always retreat when under attack, the ALP tended to stand their ground. Local fighters had nowhere else to go. Once mobilised, community defence forces, whether ALP or uprising groups, were defending their home area. It was an existential fight for them as much as it was for the local Taleban – and both sides fought the harder because of this.

As the Taleban realised the new threat in their midst, all the more shocking because it came from those they had long considered their own, they responded by unleashing brutal campaigns aimed at compelling the new forces to submit. This was in contrast to their approach to the ANSF. Facing the Afghan National Police (ANP) or Afghan National Army (ANA), the Taleban deployed a range of tactics – fiercely attacking the ANSF, trying to broker non-aggression deals, and when facing attack themselves, standing and defending ground, or tactically retreating. With the ALP and uprising groups, the Taleban were only aggressive. The Taleban wanted to destroy their local foe. In this, they used three tactics: all-out war against the forces themselves; violence against their civilian supporters and; propaganda.

All-out war

First, since Taleban fighters were bent on eliminating the new community defence forces, not just putting pressure on them, they sought to maximise fatalities. For example, when attacking an ALP check-post, Taleban fighters typically laid siege to it from all sides and made sure all routes for reinforcements were blocked. They wanted to leave no means of escape for the local policemen and gave no quarter. Local residents who witnessed these attacks described them as far tenser and more brutal then attacks on ANSF units. For example, in Andar in Ghazni province, where an uprisingforce emerged in 2012, Taleban fighters in the summer of that year mobilised a disproportionally huge force to encircle an uprising stronghold, a qala (fort) in Qadamkhel village, with the aim of eliminating their enemy within. The siege failed, but only because it was broken by ANSF and US forces.

Interviewees described another pattern emerging at this time, the Taleban’s concerted use of attacks by ‘insiders’, men planted inside an ALP unit or ALP members who had been persuaded to go over to the insurgency and betray their comrades. Examples of such attacks, not exclusively from the studied districts, include: nine ALP killed as they slept in Yahyakhel, Paktika, in March 2012; five ALP killed by their commander as they slept in Jawzjan (no district given), reported along with four sleeping Afghan National Police (ANP) killed in Uruzgan in December 2012 and; a unit of newly-trained 17 ALP “wiped out” (drugged and killed) in Andar, Ghazni, reported along with an ALP commander and several of his men drugged and killed in Panjwayi, Kandahar, in January 2012.

Observations by authors and interviewees concluded that ALP units were hit more frequently and more severely by insider attacks than regular ANSF forces deployed to the same area, and that this trend was particularly marked in Andar and Shajoy. Media reports from the time also suggest the threat to the ALP from insider attacks was greater. The New York Times, for example, reported in February 2017 that the ALP programme was “contentious” in many parts of Afghanistan partly “because of insider attacks.” The paper quoted Afghan military analyst, retired general Atiqullah Amarkhel as saying the ALP were suffering particular losses: “‘This type of attack is so deadly and disastrous,” he said, “both in terms of loss of human life and in critically undermining trust and confidence among the Afghan national security forces and in particular the A.L.P.’.”

Of course, the high number of attacks against the ALP may not only have been because the Taleban were concertedly targeting them. The new force was also more vulnerable to attack. In the communities which ALP members were drawn from, everyone knows everyone, so the Taleban could more easily find ways to communicate and persuade or threaten individual local policemen to betray their comrades than when they were looking for ‘fifth columnists’ inside the regular ANSF. Also, the recruitment and vetting of ALP recruits was reported as having been particularly poor, especially because of the haste to get ‘boots on the ground’ (see for example, this article which describes a halt in ALP training by US special forces, in this case, because of the threat ALP recruits were posing to their trainers and the section on recruitment in this dispatch about the Andar ALP which describes US officers on the ground overlooking ‘local concerns’ (such as abuses and accountability) because of pressure from above to recruit rapidly.

In contrast with the Taleban’s ‘maximum lethality approach’ to the ALP, the authors observed that, unless an ANSF unit or its commander was a particularly sought-after enemy, the Taleban would more often use military pressure to try to demoralise police and army units, to persuade them to escape or surrender, rather than trying to wipe them out. This changed in 2017, when Taleban attacks against ANSF did become more lethal and were aimed at causing mass casualties, (8) but the trend, and contrast with ALP, before that point is notable.

The harsher treatment of ALP is also supported by the difference in Taleban attitudes towards detention, depending on who was being captured: while the insurgents frequently detained members of the ANSF, rather than killing them, they took a ‘take no prisoners’ approach to the ALP. By contrast, when ANSF posts have been overrun, the Taleban have captured soldiers or police by the dozens. In most cases, when soldiers or regular police surrender or are captured alive, they have been kept as prisoners in mobile prisons for the purpose of exchange, or sent home after promising not to go back to the ANSF. Taleban videos often document captured ANSF members being allowed to go home – see occasional reports here, here and here and Taleban videos here and here. Yet, in research over many years, the authors have not come across a single example of Taleban trying to capture ALP alive. When attacking the ALP, the Taleban gave no quarter. In all the studied districts, especially in Shajoy in Zabul through 2012-13 and Muqur in Ghazni in 2013-14, the Taleban also raided houses of off-duty ALP and uprising members or grabbed them from, for example, wedding ceremonies, killing them on the spot.

The authors of this dispatch wanted to see if what we had observed on the ground and been told by local people, both civilians and combatants – that the Taleban were more violent towards the ALP than the conventional ANSF – could be borne out statistically. To this end, the international security expert we consulted created two data sets; the sets compared assassinations of ALP and ANP and ‘killing after abduction’, again for ALP and ANP. There has been variability in the force strength of both ALP and ANP over the years, but generally, the ANP has been five to six times the size of the ALP. Despite the fact that the ALP is dwarfed by the regular police force, the number of ALP killed after abduction compared to ANP was far higher in all the years from 2012 to 2017. Only tiny numbers of ANP were killed in this way.

When it comes to assassinations, about half the number of ALP were assassinated as ANP in 2013, four-fifths in 2014, half in 2015 and a third in 2016 and 2017. Given the relative sizes of the two forces, the statistics are starkly clear: an individual member of the ALP has been far more likely to be assassinated than a member of the ANP and to be killed by the Taleban if captured.

Again, there might be several factors combining to lead to the relatively high number of ALP assassinations. ALP are easier to kill because they are more lightly armed and live ‘in the community’ and, unlike ANP, there is nowhere for ALP to run to unless they are willing to give up their homes. Nevertheless, the view of local people asked about this in Argandab and Muqur was that the high assassination rate was also a result of the Taleban assiduously targeting the ALP. This was the view too of the western security expert: “It took some time [for the Taleban] to get going, but [they] were definitely targeting the ALP vigorously in 2013-14.”

Violence against civilian supporters of the ALP and uprising groups

A second tactic, and one that marked out the Taleban versus ALP conflict from more general patterns of violence seen in the insurgency, was the level of violence meted out by the Taleban against civilians connected to the ALP. This sometimes amounted to collective punishment. For example, in a few cases, the Taleban in Andar killed almost all adult male members of families involved in an uprising or ALP unit, including in one case during this period, an old man who was clearly a non-combatant. One of the leaders of the Andar uprising, former Taleb Mullah Rahmatullah lost at least five members of his family, including his father and a brother, between 2013 and 2014. It should be stressed that in places like Andar, the violence went both ways, with the ALP and uprising groups also targeting civilians whom they believed were sympathetic to the Taleban; there were some killings and beatings – some severe – but more commonly, illegal detention and extortion of money or goods (for more details, see here). The very local nature of the two parties to the conflict appears to have fostered an especially nasty, intimate form of violence. ALP and Taleban, who could trace individual fighters on the other side to families and sympathisers, would use these familial and kinship ties for leverage and to cause particular hurt to the enemy.

The insurgents conveyed a message of zero tolerance by coming down hard on anyone they suspected of supporting the new ALP and uprising forces. They launched assassination campaigns targeting tribal elders who supported such initiatives. More than a dozen influential community elders were killed by the Taleban from spring 2012 to the end of 2013 in Andar, Muqur and Shajoy districts, most of them, locals believed, because of their (alleged or actual) support for the ALP. Such assassinations rarely made it into media reports. Additionally, in some instances, the Taleban resorted to what amounted to the collective punishment of an entire community which actively supported the militias, treating all its members as ‘legitimate targets’. For example, in Arghandab, one of the districts where the ALP was established in the earliest period, a bomber blew himself up at the wedding party of an ALP commander in 2010, killing 40 guests, only some of whom were ALP members. Similarly, a roadside bomb hit a convoy of the wedding guests of an ALP member in Andar district in 2013, killing at least 19 people, mainly women.

Another noteworthy ‘collective punishment’ type of attack happened in Yahyakhel district of Paktika, on 23 November 2014, when the Taleban targeted ALP commanders attending a volleyball match; ten ALP members were killed, including two commanders, but also 53 civilians, including 21 children (a further 85 civilians were injured, including 26 children – figures from UNAMA. The Taleban officially condemned the Yahyakehl attack in a statement and promised to hold those responsible to account; yet, a pro-Taleban website provided an apologist account and detailed justification for the attack. In all these cases (the two weddings and the volleyball match), the attacks took place in villages that were known as ALP hubs and against family members, guests or friends of an ALP member.

Such high-casualty attacks with the prospect of many civilian casualties have been comparatively rare in rural locations during the insurgency. They are more usually reserved for high-value urban and/or difficult-to-reach targets, especially in Kabul, where spectacular attacks can be expected to make headlines. Interviewees in the districts understood the attacks against ‘ALP plus civilians’ as the Taleban sending a specific message to the local population not to support the ALP. The message was particularly strong, interviewees said, because the attacks breached taboos in terms of the norms of Afghan warfare. As AAN reported in a piece looking at the conflict in Andar in 2013, “the belief that the ‘other side’ would want to kill female wedding guests (and it is hard to think of a killing with a stronger taboo) stems from the mounting aggressiveness and hatred perpetuated by both sides involved in this conflict…”

Another red line crossed was disrespect for the dead. Both sides in Andar banned the Islamic burial of their enemies; in 2012, six mullahs were killed for breaking this ban, two pro-Taleban, two pro-ALP and two whose ‘alignment’, if any, we could not determine. “Even the most divided Afghan communities are bound together by events of mourning and marriage,” AAN reported. “However, the strife in Andar is threatening even these most basic of bonds.”

Propaganda 

The aim of the Taleban’s aggressive anti-arbaki campaign was to spread anxiety among the communities in which the ALP or uprisers were based by appealing to their most cherished values and concerns about personal security and honour. Stories of militiamen’s perceived or real immorality were magnified and exaggerated. The Taleban have characterised elopement, bacha bazi and rape as examples of ‘arbaki practices’. They have even coined new conceptual terms from the arbaki root, such as arbakism (a linguistically interesting use of a Pashto term with a Latin, through English, suffix, on the model of ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘Marxism’). They have applied this term to any thinking or behaviour that departs from socially-accepted norms, including criticism of mullahs by independent political activists. Vocal anti-Taleban activists on social media have also been classified as arbakis, for example, not only for their support of the local defence forces, but also their ‘liberal’ thinking. One such social media activist, in response to such characterisation, has dubbed himself as an arbaki fi sabilillah (arbakiin the cause of Allah) as versus mujahed fi sabilillah (a mujahed in the cause of Allah). Here the pun was aimed at the Taleban (and wasnotpoking fun at religion). This anti-arbaki narrative can be seen promoted on Taleban and pro-Taleban websites, for example, here, here and here.

The Taleban have been helped in their propaganda campaign by the actual conduct of some ALP and uprising groups, which have indeed been guilty of abusive, immoral and criminal behaviour, although such abuse is not limited to militia commanders. ANP commanders are more commonly accused of bacha bazi, for example, (see media investigations into the practice here and here and this special report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction). Even so, actual bad behaviour from some militias, together with Taleban propaganda have together transformed the term arbaki,traditionally such a positive brand, into an insult.

Phase 3 (2014 – present): Counter-counter-insurgency 

After a few years of intense confrontation with the local community forces, the Taleban strategy changed. This was motivated partly by a tacit acceptance that the ALP could not be removed and a recognition that they could be made strategically irrelevant. In effect, the Taleban learned to counter the counter-insurgents. This shift began about 2014 in most areas, but was earlier in the case of Arghandab, from 2013 onwards, and later in Shajoy, from 2015.

In contrast to the peak of violence during phase 2, the Taleban’s levels of violence and their particular targeting of the ALP decreased during this third phase. The insurgents’ military campaign did continue, but the ALP as an enemy was de-prioritised. The Taleban realised their local enemy could not be eliminated. To keep fighting it aggressively was exhausting their own energy and resources, and in most areas, the gains were not worth the effort.

In Andar, Muqur and Shajoy, the ALP’s main strength – its community support – had been broken, largely due to the ALP/uprisers’ predatory behaviour. In Andar and Muqur, the Taleban onslaught had also now broken the momentum of the local defence forces. The ALP/uprisers had proved to be a locally limited force that was not worth pursuing over other more significant campaigns. In Arghandab, the ALP was relatively resilient and had popular support and could not be completely defeated. Continuing to focus on it was weakening the Taleban locally. After 2013, the Taleban gave up directly contesting or trying to eliminate the ALP in Arghandab and used their energy and local resources instead to advance into other strategic areas. (9)

Attacks by the Taleban on ALP units did continue during this phase but without the previous intensity of violence. Significantly, the Taleban also undertook other types of effort to marginalise or mitigate the ALP threat. In all the studied cases except Arghandab, where the ALP remained relatively strong, the Taleban succeeded in de-escalating the conflict with the ALP locally, even venturing into peace-making with local units. They looked for pragmatic strategies, of co-option and persuasion, to weaken their enemy.

ALP men in Andar, for example, were subject to a systematic campaign by the Taleban to encourage them to ‘come in from the cold’. According to Taleban commanders in Ghazni who were interviewed at multiple points from 2014 to 2017, the insurgents of Andar, on orders from their superiors in the Taleban Leadership Council, made efforts from 2014 onwards to win over the local ALP and uprising forces directly, or through their families. The Taleban gave assurances that ALP men would not be hounded after they quit the ALP and even held public celebrations for those defecting. As the Taleban recaptured almost all the villages in the district they had lost to uprising forces and ALP in 2012, they have not undertaken acts of reprisal against residents. This pragmatic approach has extended even to former ALP members and their families who sought amnesties and chose to stay in their home areas. Examples illustrating this change in Taleban tactics given by interviewees include: in 2017, two former ALP men in Andar who were detained by the Taleban were released unharmed after a few days, and; in 2016, the Taleban’s handed over the body of an ALP man whom they had killed after forcing him from his car on the Kabul-Kandahar highway for his family to bury. Previously, the Taleban would have killed the mullah who gave such a man an Islamic funeral.

Many ALP have been persuaded by such incentives to defect, especially if they have grown tired of struggling on in communities where the fight appears to be a losing battle. That the former members of the local community forces can now trust Taleban assurancesis a far cry from a few years ago, when the only response they could imagine from the insurgents was to be butchered.

Although the patterns of violence and attempts at co-option varied somewhat in the studied districts, an overall trend towards less violence and, in three of the districts, more talking appeared evident. Looking at the statistics of violence provided by the international security expert, they also show a trend of violence towards the ALP nationally peaking in what we have called phase 2 (2012-14) and then falling away considerably in phase three (2014 onwards). Data sets for the targeted killings of ordinary ALP and of ALP commanders, and the killings of ALP after abduction all peaked in 2013 and 2014. (10) The other type of attack for which the security expert had data on – the number of ALP killed in ‘green on green’ attacks, ie by their comrades – was steadier across the five years from 2012 to 2017.

Again, a word of caution is needed when assessing these statistics as the trends could just be mirroring trends in the wider war. Levels of violence increased overall in 2013 and 2014. However, the international security expert said his understanding was that the Taleban were targeting the ALP particularly assiduously in the early years and that the violence did fall away:

My sense at the time and looking at the stats is that [there was a] deliberate determination [by the Taleban] to challenge a force that had been set up to deny them physical access to much of the rural hinterland. The way in which they were dealt with, much more brutally than other parts of ANDSF [Afghan National Defence and Security Forces] suggest that this was not just an increase in line with increasing general levels of violence after the relative lull of 2012.

Conclusion: a potentially effective, but risky model

 The Taleban’s reaction to community defence forces – observed locally and borne out by available statistics – suggests that the framers of the ALP did get at least one thing right – community-supported, pro-government forces can present a significant threat to the Taleban. There is a reason, then, why the US military, in particular, has kept coming back to this particular model of local force. This is even despite the risks – detailed extensively elsewhere – that such forces are vulnerable to co-option by factional or criminal interests and to becoming abusive and therefore counter-productive in the fight against the Taleban. Community defence forces can pose a real threat to the Taleban. They can be highly effective at holding territory and they tend to fight tenaciously.

However, what can make a community defence force such a strong counter-insurgent tool – its intimate knowledge of the enemy and preparedness to stand and defend territory – also brings dangers and risks to local people. The violence directed by the Taleban towards the ALP and uprising groups was both intense and intimate, far worse than the violence directed towards non-local forces. It spilled out to hurt family members and other ALP-aligned civilians and broke taboos of Afghan warfare. Mobilising such forces fundamentally changed the nature of the conflict locally because fighting those you know is different from either fighting foreign soldiers or Afghans from outside your area. So while community defence forces may be a highly effective tool for those planning a counter-insurgency and wanting to capture or hold territory, the potential harm to those on the ground makes this a risky venture. Recruiting local pro-government forces to fight locally-recruited insurgents can poison tribal and community relations. The risk of setting up enduring cycles of violence is obvious, although this prospect, at least for now, appears to have been reduced because of Taleban pragmatism.

The success of the ALP in some areas in mobilising community support also revealed weaknesses in the Taleban’s outlook and tactics. As with any group that has enjoyed solid power, it developed a dogma that assumed the unquestioning support of the communities in which it operated. In official rhetoric and in fighters’ narratives about themselves, the Taleban projected themselves as the true, even sole, representative of ‘the nation’. They were therefore unable to recognise the threat posed by the emerging ALP and uprising groups. Their assumption that they had local support meant they failed to identify signs of popular discontent with the movement in some of their heartland constituencies. The emergence of local community forces taught the Taleban a huge lesson: there is no absolute support in Afghanistan in any part of society for any party to the conflict, including the Taleban. The insurgents also cannot assume that consent by a community is a guarantee that support will be ongoing. Community support – or acquiescence – can be won or lost and this is pertinent both for the Taleban and the government.

* Borhan Osman’s research and initial drafts for this dispatch took place while he was a researcher with AAN. He has since joined the International Crisis Group.

 

(1) The need to ‘win over the tribes’ became received wisdom among US military planners after the publication of an influential 2009 paper by Jim Gant, “One Tribe at a Time: a strategy for success in Afghanistan,” United States Army Special Forces, 2009 and reviewed for AAN here. For an analysis of the community defence forces of that era, see Mathieu Lefèvre, “Local Defence in Afghanistan: A Review of Government Backed Initiatives, AAN Thematic Report”, (Afghanistan Analysts Network, 2010).

(2) For a discussion of the competing evidence on their security effectiveness, see “Backgrounder: Literature Review of Local, Community or Sub-State Forces in Afghanistan” by Erica Gaston and Kate Clark at pages 5-9. This publication also gives a lot of detail on the various militias set up – or re-cycled – since 2001, including the predecessors to the ALP.

(3) AAN wrote about this possible new community defence force when news of it leaked in September 2017 (see here and here). Since then, as a Ministry of Defence official and Resolute Support officers explained to AAN in April 2018, eight locations have been chosen for pilot projects for the new force and recruitment and training has commenced. The new force is under the command of the Afghan National Army and Ministry of Defence and will have ANA officers from outside the province commanding local soldiers.

(4) The Panjwayi ALP was established in 2012 (there was a misreporting of ALP recruitment as an ‘uprising’ in 2013 – as we reported in “The Making of Another ‘Uprising’: The ALP in Panjwayi” in April 2013.

(5) Historically, arbaki are a Loya Paktian institution, a force that is local, tribal, unpaid, voluntary, non-state and temporary. It is chosen by a special procedure and established to help implement the decisions of a jirga, secure the territory of the tribe or community and maintain law and order (see Osman Tariq’s paper “Tribal Security System.” Since locally recruited defence forces were raised outside Loya Paktia, the term has generally become an insult, now generally used by Afghans to refer to undisciplined, abusive, pro-government militias. The Taleban use the term arbaki to refer to ALP, uprising forces and unauthorised pro-government militias. They do not use it for militias which come under or work extremely closely with US forces, such as the Khost Protection Force and Kandahar Strike Force. For these militias, the Taleban have adopted the US military’s term, ‘campaign (forces)’.

(6) The initial tashkilc of 10,000, planned to be reached in March 2010, was indeed expanded to 30,000 in 2012.

(7) There are ample instances of former Taleban recruited into the ALP, despite the Ministry of Interior saying this would not be allowed, AAN documented it happening in 2011 in the north and ISAF commanders speaking about it as policy compare Derksen page 35 on Kunduz and Baghlan. International Crisis Group also reported in 2015 that former Taleban were recruited into the ALP in Kandahar.

(8) What appears to be a new tactic of launching massive attacks against the ANSF began in April 2017 with the assault on the 209th Shahin Corps in Balkh which killed at least 140 ANA soldiers. The authors counted more than a dozen attacks on the ANSF which inflicted more than 20 fatalities in 2017. In 2018, the trend has continued, especially since the start of the al-Khandaq offensive.

(9) The Taleban also retreated in Panjwayi where the ALP had proved to be a formidable force, helped by their close relationship with Afghan state forces in Kandahar. The ALP in Pajwayi are drawn from the Achakzai tribe, as is the most powerful man in Kandahar, Provincial Police Chief General Abdul Razeq. Only in 2017, did the Taleban start to make a comeback in Panjwayi.

(10) In terms of actual numbers, the peak for these type of attacks was 2014. However, if the force strength of the ALP is taken into account – it reached its full strength in 2014 – relatively speaking, 2013 was as deadly for the ALP as 2014.

 

 

UNAMA has released its mid-year assessment of the harm done to civilians in the Afghan conflict. It found that more civilians were killed in the first six months of 2018 than in any year since 2009 when UNAMA started systematic monitoring. This was despite the Eid ul-Fitr ceasefire, which all parties to the conflict apart from ISKP, the local ‘franchise’ of Daesh, honoured. Particularly worrying trends, says AAN co-director Kate Clark, were Nangrahar province becoming almost as bloody as Kabul and an increased targeting of schools.

Every day in the first six months of 2018, an average of nine civilians, including two children, were killed in the conflict in Afghanistan. An average of 19 civilians, including five children, were injured every day.

UNAMA in its mid-year report for 2018  found that these civilians were killed and injured in ground engagements (29 per cent of the total), suicide and complex attacks (28 per cent), by IEDs (17 per cent), in targeted and deliberate killings (9 per cent), in air attacks (7 per cent) and by leftover unexploded munitions (5 per cent). (1)

They were most likely to have been killed or injured by insurgents (67 per cent of the total), although a fifth (20 per cent) were killed and injured by pro-government forces and ten per cent in fighting between the two. (2)

UNAMA attributed 42 per cent of total civilian casualties to the Taleban, 18 per cent to the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), 17 per cent to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), two per cent to the international military and one per cent to pro-government armed groups. The remainder were not attributable to any single party.

Civilians in the provinces of Kabul, Nangarhar, Faryab, Helmand and Kandahar were the most likely to be killed or injured in the war.

In total, for the first six months of 2018, there were 5,122 civilian casualties, 1,692 deaths and 3,430 injured.

These figures, painstakingly put together by UNAMA, (3) show that bloodshed so far in 2018 has remained at the same high level as in each of the last four years. Since 2014, the first half of each year has seen around 5000 civilian casualties, of which around 1600 were deaths. (4) There have been only slight fluctuations between the years. In 2018, slightly more civilians were killed than last year (a one per cent increase), while slightly fewer were injured (six per cent), resulting in an overall decrease in casualties of three per cent.

This high level of civilian casualties persisted in 2018 despite the Eid ceasefire when, for three days (15-17 June), the government, Taleban and US military pledged to conduct no offensive operations against each other (see AAN’s analysis of the ceasefire and our collection of Afghans’ thoughts and feelings about it.) There is always a lull in violence over the Eid holidays in Afghanistan, but this year there were, unprecedentedly, almost no incidents.

The two exceptions – and they were brutal ­– were in Nangrahar province, where the ISKP is relatively strong. It did not join the ceasefire and nor were its forces protected by the other parties’ truce. On the second day of Eid, an ISKP suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a crowd of Taleban, Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and civilians in Rodat district. The following day, a bomb planted near the governor’s office killed and wounded people waiting for the end of a meeting between officials and visiting Taleban. UNAMA described how these two attacks, which killed 48 civilians and injured 133 others, “crushed the peaceful atmosphere in Nangarhar,” marring what had otherwise been a calm holiday:

The break in fighting led to unprecedented improvements in freedom of movement for ordinary Afghans, some of whom visited family homes in Taliban controlled areas that they had been prevented from reaching for years. It also spared the lives of countless Afghan civilians, who continue to suffer at extreme levels from the armed conflict… Apart from [the ISKP attacks in Nangrahar], UNAMA documented almost no other civilian casualties during the break in fighting. The brief ceasefire offered a glimmer of hope to the civilian population at a time when many may have been unable to imagine respite ahead.

The ‘exceptional’ behaviour of ISKP during Eid underlined what a dangerous foe it is and how, even if other parties to the conflict manage to negotiate an end to the violence, it would likely position itself outside any agreement as a dissident group continuing to fight.

The Eid truce was honoured by Taleban, government and US forces and the government unilaterally began its ceasefire earlier and extended it (18 days in total, 12-29 June). Yet, this was not enough to pull overall figures down for January to June 2018.

Trends in the war: How civilians were killed and injured

The number of civilian casualties caused by suicide and complex attacks increased markedly in the first half of 2017, by 23 per cent, with the number killed increasing by 65 per cent. (5) Bearing in mind that the 2017 casualty figures for this type of attack were already 17 per cent higher in 2016, the upward trend is very clear. ISKP was responsible for half of the deaths and injuries caused by this tactic between January and June this year.

The two places suffering the most from what are usually mass casualty events are Kabul and Nangrahar. In Nangrahar, nearly two thirds of all civilian casualties were caused by IEDs, mainly suicide and complex attacks. (6) Almost half were claimed by ISKP. It was because of this tactic that the overall number of civilian casualties in Nangrahar doubled in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2017. They are now almost at the levels recorded in Kabul.

Casualties caused by ground engagements fell by 18 per cent in the first half of this year, said UNAMA. Civilian casualties attributed to both sides fell, by anti-government elements, mainly the Taleban, by 23 per cent, and by pro-government forces, mainly the ANSF, by 21 per cent. UNAMA acknowledged that actions taken by the government have reduced the civilian casualties resulting from its operations, particularly during ground fighting. (7) Deaths and injuries from pressure plate IEDs, which are used by insurgents, mainly the Taleban, also fell, by 43 per cent. The pressure-plate IEDs is considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions because it is an inherently indiscriminate weapon, killing whoever steps on it, whether combatant or civilian. “UNAMA,” the report says, “has engaged in extensive advocacy efforts with parties to the conflict on civilian casualties caused by pressure-plate IEDs and ground engagements over the past several years.”

There was also, said UNAMA a “significant decrease from targeted and deliberate killings,” during the first half of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017.

The trend towards more civilians being killed and injured in air strikes continued in 2018, with a 52 per cent increase in January to June this year compared to the first half of 2017 (353 civilian casualties; 149 deaths and 204 injured). That was itself a 43 per cent increase on the 2016 numbers. UNAMA’s ability to attribute civilian casualties caused by air strikes has improved markedly. UNAMA attributed 52 per cent to the Afghan Air Force and 45 per cent to international military forces, with only three per cent unattributed to either. The unattributed figure in 2017 was 33 per cent. Hopefully, this greater accuracy will help with its advocacy work on mitigating casualties.

Trends in targeting

Insurgents have been targeting election officials and sites since voter registration began on 14 April. There have been 341 civilian casualties (117 deaths and 224 injured). Most of these (250) came from two attacks in Kabul (22 April) and Khost (6 May).

UNAMA has recorded attacks on centres distributing tazkiras (IDs) and registering voters, attacks on election workers and police guards and through insurgents’ use of IEDs, suicide attacks and targeted killings. UNAMA has documented threats, abductions and killings of candidates and supporters. This election-related violence has also hurt children’s education because voter registration is often carried out in schools and these have then become the focus of attack. UNAMA recorded 39 attacks on schools used as voter registration centres. The result has been children killed and injured, schools closed and attendance reduced.

UNAMA also noted an “emerging trend” of insurgents attacking and threatening schools as a response to operations by pro-government forces. In Nangrahar, ISKP targeted education facilities in retaliation for air strikes; UNAMA recorded 13 incidents in June, including the targeting of schools and education officials and a complex attack on the provincial education offices in Jalalabad which killed six civilians and injured 17 others. In March in Charkh district in Logar province, 29 schools were also forcibly closed by the Taleban after the house of one of their commanders was targeted by pro-government forces.

ISKP has continued to target Shia Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Hazara. 115 Shia civilians were killed in the first half of this year and 251 injured (366 casualties in total), nearly all from suicide and complex attacks claimed by ISKP.

The proportion of civilian casualties caused by insurgents deliberately targeting them has also gone up – by 28 per cent in the first half of 2018, compared to the same period in 2017. Indeed, more than half of all civilian casualties from insurgents came in attacks claimed by the Taleban or ISKP. For each group, that increase was four-fold.

Finally, there has also been an increase in civilians being killed and injured in search operations by pro-government forces, including partnered operations between the ANSF and international military forces (UNAMA does not specify which forces, but both CIA paramilitaries and US special forces are possible). In particular, UNAMA says, National Directorate of Security (NDS) special forces and pro-government militias such as the Khost Protection Force have “caused increased civilian casualties and other abuses.” UNAMA warned about the behaviour of these forces and their international partners and their impunity in 2017 and 2016. Human Rights Watch in February 2018 also reported summary executions by NDS forces. In UNAMA’s latest report, it says:

These forces are of particular concern as many of them appear to operate outside of the Afghan National Security Forces’ chain of command, resulting in a lack of clear oversight and accountability given the absence of clearly defined jurisdiction for the investigation of any allegations against them.

Conclusion

The only solace UNAMA’s report gives is those downward figures on civilian casualties caused by ground engagements and pressure plate IEDs. Yet, it is important to note that in these cases, advocacy and political pressure appears to have succeeded in encouraging the parties to the conflict to put in place some measures to spare civilians. Set against the huge total number of civilian casualties and continuing bloodshed, the increase in civilian casualties civilians from suicide and complex attacks and by air strikes, this may seem a small thing. However, any reduction in the harm done to civilians is welcome. That UNAMA has also apparently become better able to differentiate who launches airstrikes resulting in civilian deaths and injuries – the American airforce or the Afghan airforce – is also a good sign. It provides an opportunity for greater and more focussed advocacy and support in reducing losses to civilians.

Overall though, the picture is bleak. The war continues to take the lives of Afghan civilians in vast numbers. Even the Eid ceasefire, which gave a tantalising vision of a country at peace, was ended by the Taleban with the launch of more than two dozen offensive operations. The level of violence in the country all too quickly returned to ‘normal’. The Eid truce may have sown the seeds of eventual peace through the opportunity it gave for Afghan combatants and civilians to travel to enemy areas and fraternise, and for local leaders to meet. For now, though, Afghanistan’s peaceful Eid already seems lost in the post-Eid bloodshed. Indeed, it would seem foolish after reading this report to hope for any major reduction in civilian casualties by the end of the year when UNAMA collates its annual report.

 

(1) UNAMA’s breakdown in how civilians were killed and injured was as follows:

• Ground engagements (29 per cent of the total): 1494 civilian casualties; 360 deaths, 1194 injuries
• Suicide and complex attacks (28 per cent): 1413 civilian casualties; 427 deaths, 986 injuries
• IEDs (17 per cent): 877 civilian casualties; 232 deaths, 645 injuries
• Targeted and deliberate killings (nine per cent): 463 civilian casualties; 301 deaths, 162 injuries
• Aerial operations (seven per cent): 353 civilian casualties; 149 deaths, 204 injuries
• Explosive remnants of war (five per cent): 239 civilian casualties; 149 deaths, 204 injuries

(2) UNAMA gave these figures for those who caused the civilian casualties:

• Anti-Government Elements (67 per cent of the total): responsible for 3413 civilian casualties; 1127 deaths, 2286 injuries
• Pro-Government Elements (20 per cent): 402 civilian casualties; 427 deaths, 645 injuries
• Jointly attributable (10 per cent): 503 civilian casualties; 123 deaths, 380 injuries

(3) For verification of each incident allegedly involving a civilian casualty, UNAMA says that it

…requires at least three different and independent types of sources, i.e. victim, witness, medical practitioner, local authorities, confirmation by party to the conflict, community leader or other sources. Wherever possible, information is obtained from the primary accounts of victims and/or witnesses of the incident and on-site investigations. This form of investigation is not always possible, primarily due to security-related constraints affecting access. In such instances, UNAMA relies on a range of techniques to gain information through reliable networks using as wide a range of sources and information as possible, all of which are evaluated for credibility and/or reliability.

For more detail, see the methodology section in UNAMA’s last annual report.

(4) Figures for the first six months of the years 2014-2018:

2014: 4,895 civilian casualties of which 1,686 were deaths

2015: 4,982 civilian casualties of which 1,615 were deaths

2016: 5,275 civilian casualties of which 1,644 were deaths

2017: 5,272 civilian casualties of which 1,672 were deaths

2018: 5,122 civilian casualties of which 1,692 were deaths

The previous years saw: 2,492 civilian casualties (2009), 3,271 (2010), 3,916 (2011), 3,138 (2012) and 3,138 (2013)

(5) In the first half of 2017, suicide and complex attacks caused 1,151 civilian casualties; 259 deaths and 892 injuries.

(For detail, see UNAMA’s 2017 mid-year report).

In the first six months of 2018, suicide and complex attacks caused 1413 civilian casualties; 427 deaths and 986 injuries.

(6) Since 2017, UNAMA changed its categories and started counting complex and suicide attacks as a subset of IEDs attacks.

(7) The numbers do not appear to add up, ie the reduction from both parties is less than the overall reduction. However, they do not account for those casualties which UNAMA could attribute to either side.

 

 

 

Even before the Eid truce suddenly made a peace process in Afghanistan imaginable, international civilian and military circles were wondering what they could do to support one. The government, the High Peace Council (HPC) and donors are also currently negotiating future funding for the HPC. It seems a good moment, says AAN’s Kate Clark, to look back at Afghanistan’s previous experiences with ‘funding peace’, especially at the four programmes aimed at DDR and reintegration. All were costly failures. If there is to be a genuine peace process, understanding what went wrong with these programmes, which drove corruption and remilitarisation, is important.

The author started writing this dispatch well before the Afghan government, Taleban and US military ceasefires over Eid and the resulting mass fraternisation made it possible to imagine what peace in Afghanistan might look like (read AAN analysis here and some reactions from Afghans here). Afghanistan’s international backers were thinking what they could do to support a peace process. Also, the High Peace Council Joint Secretariat, headed by Muhammad Ekram Khpulwak, who is also a senior adviser to President Ghani, had been sounding out donors for a new reintegration project. The donors proved to be sceptical about this, AAN was told, but have been negotiating new funding for the High Peace Council with more limited aims (more on which later).

If there is traction on a peace process, or if even the possibility that one can be talked up, one can envisage future calls by Kabul for funding to ‘persuade’ fighters to stop fighting or reward ‘their’ communities, for setting up new institutions, or just to keep the Kabul government going on its ‘road to peace’. However if there is to be a genuine peace process, another ill-thought out reintegration programme, or any other premature funding to promote peace could be poison. Particularly as Afghanistan heads into elections, any programme seeking fresh funding should be transparent and accountable.

Trying to encourage peace with aid money has proved counterproductive. Fishstein and Wilder in their in-depth research on deploying aid in Afghanistan in a bid to improve security and stabilisation concluded it had the opposite affect:

The most destabilizing aspect of the war-aid economy was in fueling massive corruption that served to delegitimize the government. Other destabilizing effects included: generating competition and conflict over aid resources, often along factional, tribal or ethnic lines; creating perverse incentives to maintain an insecure environment, as was the case with security contractors who were reported to be “creating a problem to solve a problem”; fueling conflicts between communities over locations of roads and the hiring of laborers; and, causing resentment by reinforcing existing inequalities and further strengthening dominant groups, often allied with political leaders and regional strongmen, at the expense of others.

The four main post-2001 reintegration schemes in Afghanistan are other examples of how programmes aimed at encouraging peace have done the opposite. They have also helped consolidate the political positions of powerful players­ and proved to be vehicles for corruption.

The first two – Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration or DDR, (2003–05) and Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups Programme or DIAG (2005 and ongoing) – dealt with pro-government armed groups. The second two – Program-e Tahkim-e Sulh or PTS, Strengthening Peace Programme (2005-10) and the Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme or APRP (2010-16) – were aimed at insurgents.

Repeating Failure: the four post-2001 attempts at DDR

1. Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (2003–05)

The DDR programme, launched in 2003, dealt with the armed men of what were called the Afghanistan Military Forces, or AMF. This term was given to those who had been fighting the Taleban. They included men from the various factions of the Northern Alliance as well as others belonging to militias which had mobilised only after 9/11. The AMF came under Ministry of Defence command – which had itself been captured by the most powerful Northern Alliance faction, Shura-ye Nazar (a network within Jamiat-e Islami) when it took Kabul in November 2001. The Ministry of Defence gave the AMF military designations in a notional eight corps structure. (1) DDR of the AMF was supposed to operate in parallel with the creation of a new Afghan National Army (ANA) free of factional and ethnic bias. As the programme got going, a new verb, ‘to DDR’ swiftly entered both English and Dari (dee-dee-ar kardan).

The UNDP’s Afghanistan New Beginnings Programme (ANBP), set up to support Security Sector Reform in general, ran DDR on behalf of the government. The ANBP had two overarching goals:

1) to break the historic patriarchal chain of command existing between the former commanders and their men; and 2) to provide the demobilised personnel with the ability to become economically independent—the ultimate objective being to reinforce the authority of the government. (ANBP website – no longer accessible – quoted by Derksen’s 2015 report, “The Politics of Disarmament and Rearmament in Afghanistan”, page 8)

 The Ministry of Defence selected units and individuals for DDR and these were then vetted by a government official, five village elders and a member of the ANBP. The reintegrees handed in at least one working weapon and received $200 each, but as this was generally pocketed by their commanders, handouts of rice, flour, cooking oil and clothes were given instead. By July 2005, when the programme ended, 63,380 men had been demobilised and 55,054 received reintegration benefits. 106,510 weapons has also decommissioned, Hartzell noted in a 2004 paper for the United State Institute for Peace: 38,099 light weapons and 12,248 heavy munitions were handed over to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and 56,163 weapons were destroyed.

There were numerous problems with this scheme. First, the numbers of men in the AMF had been grossly inflated, reported Harzell:

Initial estimates of the number of combatants eligible to participate in the program ranged from 50,000 to 250,000. Because no comprehensive needs assessment was conducted to inform the program’s design, ANBP officials had to rely on figures from the Afghan Ministry of Defense. A compromise figure of 100,000 participants was initially settled on. The ANBP later lowered this figure to 50,000, recognizing that AMF commanders had overstated the number of combatants in order to collect salaries from the ministry. The lower number also accounted for the spontaneous demobilization of many militia members after the Taliban’s defeat. (2)

 Many of the fighters had had mobilised temporarily in 2001 and then gone home – all by themselves. Derksen describes, for example, how the 54thDivision in Kunduz was empty until DDR began when 982 men turned up to be DDR-ed. She quotes a former senior DDR official, “‘There was no army… What were we disarming? A group of Afghan farmers who had been called to arms and since the fighting had gone back to farming. There was no certainty on who we were disarming.’” Hartzell also quotes a report looking at the central region which found that 80 percent of participants were not legitimate candidates “as they had not served as full-time fighters for the required eight months; rather, they were members of self-defense groups selected to participate in the process by commanders who sought to retain control of seasoned [ie experienced] troops.”

As to weapons, most observers were sceptical of the type and quantity handed in. Reporters, including this author, saw some very old, antique and broken weapons among those collected. Derksen’s conclusion was that, “Fearful of rivals exploiting their disarmament, commanders generally kept as many weapons as they could, facilitated by the fact that there was no way to verify that they were handing in all their weapons and no mechanism to force them to do so.”

Secondly, for fighters and commanders who actually existed there were various paths through DDR. Those who were DDR-ed tended to be the weaker commanders. “Many second‐tier commanders who were reintegrated under DDR,” wrote Waldman, “were deeply dissatisfied with the process and considering remobilisation. They not only lost income, but also their former authority, status, and public respect derived from the resistance.” Derksen wrote that such commanders

…often kept their networks, which instead of being disbanded were simply pushed underground. In the southwest, they either joined the Taliban or remobilized as anti-insurgent militia. In the northeast, they often pursued criminal activities until they remobilized later, when the insurgency spread there after 2007.

 By contrast, commanders with good links to either the Ministries of Defence or Interior (also controlled by Shura-ye Nazar at this time) or the US military usually managed to maintain their groups of armed men, recycling them directly into other armed formations, both state and non-state. Many commanders found their way into the new police force, taking their men with them. This reinforced the paramilitary, rather than civilian policing nature of the ANP. It also resulted in factional command structures, loyalties and patterns of behaviour surviving. That has tended to dissipate over the years, although as Giustozzi would write almost a decade later, “Efforts directed at restructuring and training the police achieved mixed success, and even by 2011, the uniformed police ‘was still more like a fragmented coterie of militias than either a paramilitary police or a civilian police force.’”

Although the ANA was set up from scratch with the aim of it being free of ethnic discrimination and factional bias, this was only partially true, said Hartzell in 2004.

The politicization of the disarmament and demobilization processes carried over into the formation of the ANA. One source reports that “although U.S. plans for the creation of a new national army allowed for only 10 to 20 percent of all recruits to come from the ranks of the DDR-ed militias, the Ministry of Defense managed to allocate that reduced quota almost entirely to Shura-i Nazar’s militias.” Although international stakeholders have pushed to construct a more ethnically diverse army, discrepancies that fuel factionalism and deepen patronage networks continue to exist. (3)

In the south and east, meanwhile, US special forces and the CIA were trying to hunt down ‘Taleban remnants’. This maintained the market for the local militia allies who had mobilised in 2001 to fight the Taleban. Typically, these were the same groups as had been disarmed or fled across the border to Pakistan when the Taleban captured the south in 1994 and 1995. Commanders managing to ally themselves with US forces were able both to protect their forces from DDR and consolidate their positions vis-à-vis rivals.

The US’s enemy at this time was a fantasy. There were no ‘Taleban remnants’, in terms of fighting forces offering resistance, after the final battle of the intervention in March 2002 in the Shahikot mountains of Paktia. Taleban foot soldiers had overwhelmingly gone home after the collapse of their government – spontaneously demobilising – while many mid and higher ranking figures reached out to those they knew in the new administration to seek amnesties, using normal Afghan mechanisms which allow the vanquished to acknowledge the victors and live in peace. (4) Few were allowed to take this path. Instead, both former Taleban and Afghans completely unconnected to the Taleban, including those who had actively opposed the regime, were targeted in the hunt for ‘Taleban remnants’.

The US’s new Afghan allies were able to exploit its desire to capture members of the Taleban and al Qaeda by presenting their personal or factional enemies as terrorists, getting them detained and their homes raided. The US practice of giving bounties for intelligence only fuelled the targeting of innocent people. This is all very well documented, as is the way this persecution was a factor eventually sparking actual rebellion (see footnote 5 for detail and sources). Then, as a real insurgency began to grow, at first slowly and patchily, and from 2005/2006 more seriously, US and other international forces only became more reliant on these highly problematic local allies. Such reliance was reinforced by the fact that the ANA had mobilised only slowly.

Meanwhile, from 2003 onwards, ISAF began to expand from Kabul into the provinces. It established Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) whose mission, to ‘stabilise’ Afghanistan, was interpreted, with only one exception – the UK PRT in Mazar-e Sharif – as carrying out aid work. (6) Those Afghan civilians who had welcomed ISAF deployments on the assumption that foreign soldiers would protect them from abusive local militias (for examples of such abuse, see this 2003 Human Rights Watch report)  could only watch as the foreign soldiers routinely allied themselves with the local strongmen. In research conducted in 2004, the author found PRT commanders saying ‘green on green’ conflict, by which they meant non-Taleban Afghan versus Afghan violence, was not their business. Such violence could include threats to civilians, inter-factional violence and refusals to DDR. Moreover, because of concerns with ‘force protection’, PRTs usually turned to local strongmen to guard their bases. ISAF’s expansion gave Afghan commanders an opportunity to ‘re-hat’ their men as guards protecting the new international bases and supply chains, strengthening “the historic patriarchal chain of command existing between the former commanders and their men.”

All of this meant that, during the period of the DDR programme, armed groups did not disappear; they morphed, turning up in state forces and US-allied militias and as guards for ISAF, as criminals and Taleban insurgents. The fundamental problem with DDR was that it was undertaken in an environment where factional leaders and commanders had already taken power. The manner of the American-led intervention in 2001 – air strikes, plus arming and funding local armed men to fight the Taleban – meant it was they who took territory when the Taleban fell. Commanders and factional leaders became the first governors, ministers and NDS, police and army officers in the post-Taleban era. The first cabinet, for example, included just a handful of members who were neither military nor linked to one of the fighting factions (they included Hamed Karzai, who had been a civilian member of the mujahedin in the 1980s, as chair and Simar Samar as vice chair of the Interim Authority and Suhaila Seddiqi at Health). DDR’s first goal of “breaking the historic patriarchal chain of command existing between the former commanders and their men,” was always going to be difficult when most of those in power were there because they were leaders of armed men. As to DDR’s second goal “reinforc[ing] the authority of the government,” the government had already been co-opted by factions and commanders.

The achievements of DDR were limited, then. At best, it can be seen as part of a wider move to contain the leaders and commanders of armed factions and groups. This did not mean that chains of command were broken, or that leaders could not­ mobilise armed men swiftly if needed, or that civilians were protected from violent abuse by armed men, or that the state had a monopoly on violence. It meant that, from 2001 onwards, those on the government side who could have mediated their rivalries through violence – as they had before – have generally not done so. (7)

2. Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) (2005 and ongoing)

The DIAG programme, launched in 2005, was supposed to clear up those militias left over after DDR. Although it was also supported by the UNDP’s Afghan New Beginnings Programme, Derksen argued that it was more ‘Afghan owned’ than DDR had been, as it was driven by what she calls the “Westernized faction of the Karzai administration, which included former communication minister Mohammad Masum Stanekzai and Minister of Interior Ali Ahmad Jalali.” Stapleton, however, in a report for AAN said the government in general stalled “wherever possible” and also that international actors were reluctant “to take DIAG seriously.” This time, the motivation to demobilise and disarm would not be individual benefits, but development projects for communities in districts free of Illegal Armed Groups.

However, DIAG coincided both with ISAF’s further expansion into the south of Afghanistan and a grave flaring up of the insurgency there. In 2009, there was also the three-year ‘surge’ when President Obama ordered an increase in US troops to more than 100,000. There was a concomitant proliferation of international military bases and posts and a sharpened need for local allies. Derksen has described the “frequent collaboration” by the international military with “unofficial militias targeted for disbandment” by DIAG and indeed, “a push for their legalization.” The armed groups survived again.

Some were re-branded as new quasi-state forces, of which there were a bewildering variety during this period. Most of these were supposed to be ‘community defence forces’, ie they were supposed to be recruited from the local community and it was supposed to both want this defence force and be involved in vetting and oversight. However, a little analysis often showed the capture of such forces by local strongmen wanting to legalise their armed men; that pattern was stronger in some forces than others. These quasi-state or local forces included:

• 9000-strong Afghan National Auxiliary Police in 2006, a Karzai enterprise, funded by NATO to combat the insurgency, described by Wilder as “a mechanism for the international community to pay militia salaries that currently the government had to pay through the governors.”
• 10-000 strong Community Defense Initiative in 2009, a government funded project designed supposedly to protect the polling stations during the presidential elections of that year, units were described by Goodhand and Hakimi as “vehicles for strengthening patronage relationships ahead of the polls.”
• 1100-strong Afghan Public Protection Program (AP3) in 2009, a joint project between US Special Forces and the Ministry of Interior in Wardak in which half of the forces were reported as co-opted by local strongmen, with accusations of harassment and abuses against villagers.
• Local Defense Initiative, initiated by US special forces, despite hostility from Karzai, in various insurgent-plagued districts to improve on AP3 and reportedly with better results, in terms of community engagement and being less abusive
• 1100-strong Critical Infrastructure Program (CIP), an ISAF Regional Command North initiative (German and US, with American funding), dismantled by Karzai when he found out about it, the aim was to stop existing militias extorting food, fuel and money from citizens by paying them. UNAMA in 2012 said CIP “may have unintentionally contributed to expand and solidify the power of armed groups in the north and northeastern regions… as in some areas, it “reinforced and strengthened existing armed group structures, bringing members together, providing training and increasing numbers under an association with Pro-Government Forces. After disbandment, most members went to either the ALP or ANP. UNAMA reports the same happening with two other similar regional international military funded militia projects, the Intermediate Security for Critical Infrastructure (ISCI) in Helmand and the Community-Based Security Solutions (CBSS) in Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan provinces.
• Afghan Local Police (ALP), begun in 2010 as a Ministry of Interior/US military project, this was a nationwide, semi-formalised, paramilitary defence force. Evidence of local strongmen incorporating their militias into some ALP units and of their capture by factional forces is multiple (see for example here and here and fine-grained analysis by AAN at the district level about Khas Uruzgan in Uruzgan hereand here, Dand-e Shahabuddin in Baghlan province and Chahrdara, Khanabad and Kunduz city in Kunduz province). Since 2012, the ALP has been increasingly Institutionalised, with, eventually, better Ministry of Interior command and control, and vetting for ‘strongman influence’ over units. For a latest review of the force, which now officially numbers around 29,000, see here.

For more detail on all these groups, including original sources, see “Backgrounder: Literature Review of Local, Community or Sub-State Forces in Afghanistan” by Erica Gaston and Kate Clark at pages 5-9.

Another path for armed groups to be regularised and escape DIAG was through their rebranding as Private Security Companies (PSCs). These were hired to guard international military bases and supply convoys, and as can be imagined, demand for them was huge, especially during the years of the surge. (8) A US House of Representatives investigation into the guarding of convoys supplying US bases published in 2011 described:

A typical convoy of 300 supply trucks going from Kabul to Kandahar, for example, will travel with 400 to 500 guards in dozens of trucks armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

The investigation found that security for the US supply chain was “principally provided by warlords” with contracts going to “warlords, strongmen, commanders, and militia leaders who compete with the Afghan central government for power and authority.” This was not quite true – at least the line between state and non-state was by no means so clear-cut. Many of the PSCs were ultimately owned by relatives or close allies of the most powerful figures in government, including the president, vice president, former defence minister and speaker of the Senate. (9)

The need to guard the US military supply chain ensured foreign dollars reached the pockets of those who could mobilise armed men as guards. It also facilitated a huge protection racket. Trucks could only reach US bases by paying for safe passage. The report describes those bribed as “local warlords” while, at the same time, reporting: “The largest private security provider for HNT [the name of the contract] trucks complained that it had to pay $1,000 to $10,000 in monthly bribes to nearly every Afghan governor, police chief, and local military unit whose territory the company passed. Taleban were also paid off.

The PSCs were eventually replaced, from 2011/2012 onwards, by guards from a state-owned enterprise within the Ministry of Interior, the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF).

In trying to assess DIAG and how many illegal armed groups it had demobilised, Stapleton, in a report for AAN, quoted figures from UNDP’s Afghan New Beginning’s Programme at its conclusion in 2011. It reported that of the 1496 illegal armed groups which survived DDR, DIAG had demobilised 759. However, she points out that an illegal armed group could number just five people and most of the groups on the demobilised list were indeed this small. “Low-hanging fruit” was the phrase used to describe such ‘DIAG-ed’ groups at the time. In other words, the official numbers were meaningless.

Stapleton described DIAG as essentially a “propaganda exercise.” Like DDR, she said, DIAG had “very limited outcomes.” She believed the fundamental problem was that Afghanistan’s international backers were “virtually in a state of denial over the key question of who actually wields authority on the ground.” This, in turn, she said “obscures how planned-for outcomes can and are subverted by such actors and their networks.” (10)

3. Program-e Tahkim-e Sulh (Strengthening Peace Programme), PTS (2005-10) 

This programme was set up by President Karzai in 2005 and supported by the US military. Karzai was worried about ‘marginalised Pashtuns’ in the face of the still strong Northern Alliance factions and the growing insurgency, then overwhelmingly in Pashtun areas. The US, mainly concerned with the much worse violence in the other war it was fighting in Iraq, hoped PTS would dampen the growing insurgency in Afghanistan.

Those registering in the PTS were supposed to disarm and accept the constitution in exchange for a guarantee they would not be arrested. (11) There were few who took this path. In 2008, when the three-year old PTS claimed to have reconciled more than 8,000 insurgents (the figure included released prisoners), Zabihullah Mujadeddi, who ran the programme on behalf of his father, mujahedin leader Sebghatullah Mujaddedi) could only show this author the names of a dozen ‘serious’ commanders. Even they mostly turned out to be actually minor figures. Michael Semple’s review of the records (“Reconciliation in Afghanistan”, Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace, 2009) revealed that the great majority of those who went through PTS had not recently been involved in fighting and so their undertaking to lay down their arms was to all intents and purposes meaningless. In many cases, he says, it seemed that people signing up had simply been doing a favour to PTS staff, helping boost their numbers. Derksen concluded that the essential problem with the programme was that “neither side was genuinely interested in reconciliation.”

PTS was closed down in 2010, according to an internal document (reported on here), on the insistence of donor governments for being “morally and financially bankrupt.”

4. Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Programme (APRP) (2010-16)

The idea for the fourth programme attempting to deal with armed men since 2001 emerged ahead of the ‘National Consultative Peace Jirga’ called by President Karzai in 2010 (see AAN reporting here, here and here). He urged disaffected Afghans – “upset brothers” as he called them – to leave the Taleban and come over to the government side. He also urged donors to fund the mechanisms to do this: a new institution, the High Peace Council, and a new programme, the APRP.

The HPC had seventy members, who were mainly former jihadi commanders, Provincial Peace Committees and a Joint Secretariat. Former president and Jamiat leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani served as the HPC chair (after his assassination in September 2011, he was replaced by his son, Salahuddin). The HPC’s Joint Secretariat was led by Masum Stanekzai. The current chair is former mujahedin leader and former vice president Karim Khalili while, as mentioned before, Khpelwak is director of the Joint Secretariat. (For an organogram useful for the HPC at least until 2015, see here).

The APRP developed into a fully-fledged programme aimed at outreach, mediation between reconciled insurgents and their communities, development projects for communities and support to those insurgents who had been vetted and demobilised, including 120 dollars for the first three months, training and religious mentoring. APRP was administered by the Joint Secretariat and supported by UNDP whose tasks included managing the Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund, thereby ensuring, says UNDP “that donor funds are used in the most efficient and effective manner.” The UNDP website, like the HPC, still wrongly lists the APRP as a current programme. It lists its accomplishments as including:

• 10,404 former combatants have renounced violence under this programme, with 10,286 receiving financial assistance to reintegrate into their communities.
• The APRP became a National Priority Programme
• The HPC established “important” contacts with the insurgency’s leadership
• “[P]ublic awareness and support for the peace process”and “regional support and opportunities for initiating dialogue” increased
• Provincial peace councils forming “a nationwide structure for peace activities at the local level” were established
• 250,000 women’s signatures calling for peace were collected (12)

UNDP says that APRP received 178 million dollars, which (13) on a crude calculation, works out at an eye-watering 18,000 dollars per reintegree. In the absence of any actual peace process, a programme to reintegrate reconciled Taleban had almost no chance of success. Taleban fighters have shown strong ties of loyalty to their movement, obedience to the leadership and a reluctance to surrender to the government. Even for those who might want to come over, the APRP showed itself unable to protect them from their former comrades. The numbers of actual Taleban encouraged to switch their allegiance by the APRP have been small. Most of those ‘reintegrated’ have been from the north and west and many were not even combatants, let alone Taleban. Reports from the provinces have frequently revealed empty Provincial Peace Councils (PPC) offices. Like PTS, men connected to HPC members and staff have been ‘reintegrated’ to push up the numbers. Derksen wrote:

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.

UNDP has made a damning assessment of the programme it supported, according to reporting by the Special Inspector for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in his second quarterly report for 2018. SIGAR reported UNDP describing the APRP as “overly ambitious, assumption-laden and structurally unsustainable, lacking accountability, and producing no satisfactory results.”

Many, including this author, saw the High Peace Council and the APRP as actually created to fulfil quite a different mission – and in this it was successful. It brought in a lot of money from donors – who wanted to be seen to be doing something on ‘peace’ – but actually funded Karzai’s patronage through the appointment of the HPC members. Derksen also concluded that the resources of both the APRP and the PTS, “seem to have been mostly captured by elites in the provinces and in the capital.”

Recent support to the High Peace Council

Working out recent HPC activities and donor support is tricky. The UNDP website still speaks of the APRP as a current programme and lists donor support up till 2018. However, the APRP has ended; various people AAN spoke to were unsure about when this happened, but after checking paperwork, one said it had been the end of 2016. Since then, the HPC has been limping along, with funding still coming via UNDP and covering operational costs, including of the Provincial Peace Councils (PCPs) and some activities such as workshops and conferences, but no longer reintegration.

The HPC was officially re-vamped in February 2016 (see AAN analysis here, with a new chair, Pir Seyyed Ahmad Gailani and new deputies and a reduction in members from 70 to 50. After the pir’s death in January 2017, the leadership of the HPC, in June 2017, fell to Karim Khalili. Meanwhile, as of April 2017, the Joint Secretariat has been run by presidential advisor, Ekram Khpelwak. Despite Khalili’s very public role as chairman, which means that any shortcomings in the HPC are liable to reflect back on him, many of the HPC’s activities are conducted by Khpelwak’s Joint Secretariat. It also does most of the day-to-day management of funds.

AAN was told funding of the HPC has become much more limited, although the UNDP figures do not show a particular falling off. (14) Only three donors are now left: South Korea, the United Kingdom and the US. SIGAR, reporting in April, spoke of the US State Department providing $3.9 million to the UNDP “to support reconciliation (including the activities of the High Peace Council” in what it described as an “initial pilot” from September to December 2017, “extended to March 2018.” An attempt by the HPC to reform its (very expensive) Provincial Peace Councils (PPCs) was launched in September 2017 (it reduced the overall number of members and increased female representation). According to SIGAR, UNAMA assessed the reforms and was not impressed:

UNAMA found that the effectiveness of the reformed PPCs is still highly variable. The capacity of PPC members does not appear to have improved measurably under the new membership structure, and in some provinces, the overall quality of the PPC membership appeared to have been reduced as a result of the reforms…While PPCs reported some achievements in outreach, reconciliation, conflict resolution, and violence reduction, UNAMA concluded that these successes were generally isolated and lacking in strategic direction

Negotiations between the HPC, government and donors are ongoing as they try to put together a new project to support the HPC, again funded via UNDP. SIGAR said that UNDP had reported that the new project “would be informed by lessons” from APRP and would be “more modest and practical” with three outputs: supporting the HPC, including strengthening the Provincial Peace Committees; strengthening “peacebuilding actors and networks to mediate conflict” and supporting “collaborative research, knowledge-sharing, and communications for peace- building.” The draft proposal was for $30 over three years, but that and details on programming could still change. 

Donors are certainly much more sceptical than they were. Lisa Curtis, who is in charge of the Afghanistan file at the US National Security Council said in June, for example, that the US prioritised “the pursuit of a peace process” and was following “multiple lines of effort,” but they did not “intend to re-create earlier efforts that tended to be unsuccessful. These included the APRP which serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of graft.”

The main impetus to keep funding the HPC seems to be that it exists and now is not the time to ‘de-fund’ it, even though, were a ‘peace institution’ to be set up from scratch now, it would look very different. AAN was told that discrepancies between the donors and the HPC on its objectives, sub-national presence and oversight mechanisms remain. The negotiations continue.

Conclusion 

DDR and its successor DIAG were supposed to create a monopoly of violence for the new Afghan state and break the link between faction-related commanders and men. Yet militia forces were re-cycled into new iterations. State forces, especially the ANP, were factionalised and there was often a strengthening, not a breaking, of bonds between commanders and militiamen. This should not have come as a surprise. By 2001, Afghanistan had been at war for a quarter of a century and regime change had brought factional forces and commanders to power. They were not going to be dislodged easily. Moreover, attempts at demobilisation were made while other elements of the international intervention were supporting and mobilising non-state or quasi-state armed groups. PTS and APRP, both aimed at bringing Taleban from the cold, have had a negligible effect on the insurgency and, like DDR and DIAG, turned out to be vehicles for graft. They have made it look as though the Kabul government has seen ‘peace’ as just another means to make money and that donors were comfortable with that.

The comparison between the four DDR and counter-narcotics programmes in Afghanistan seems apt; ‘eradication’ in both cases has been manipulated by more powerful players to target weaker rivals and consolidate their market share. Donors have continued to fund programmes despite their clear failures and malign consequences because ‘peace’, like an ‘opium-free’ Afghanistan, would be good.

Looking at these four programmes now is pertinent because prospects for something shifting in the Afghan war look somewhat more hopeful following the Eid ceasefire than they have done for many years. Not everyone is happy at the possibility of negotiations – see the mixed reaction to the ceasefire garnered by AAN, but Ghani has repeated his call to the Taleban to talk and there is also international support for a peace effort (the US National Security Council’s Liz Curtis’ speech on 7 June was more openly ‘pro-peace’ than this author can remember an American official making).

The question remains, though, of what could – or should – happen when and if there is a genuine peace process and the fighting stops. Afghanistan will be faced with a situation not seen before. In 2001, Taleban demobilised by themselves, as did many of the temporary fighters on the Northern Alliance side. However, this was in the face of a clear victory. The Taleban had suffered overwhelming defeat, not just military but psychological, when Afghans did not come to the regime’s aid. Foot soldiers went home. Seniors among the defeated Taleban reached out to those holding power to surrender and get security guarantees.

A negotiated settlement with the Taleban now would produce a very different sort of peace; one could envisage large numbers of armed men on both sides, neither of which had been defeated. The failures of the four DDR programmes attempted since 2001 are a warning of the dangers of funding without accountability and of funding programmes which claim one thing – that may be noble – but deliver something else.

Edited by Sari Kouvo

(1) The new Minister of Defence, Qasim Fahim, used his position to favour his own and allied commanders: Kabul and the northeast (Shura-ye Nazar’s heartland), wrote Derksen “saw an almost immediate proliferation of military units, with no less than 14 divisions and several smaller units in existence by the end of 2002.” As to generals, which in Afghanistan is a virtually unsackable, job-for-life position, out of a total of 100 appointed by Fahim in early 2002, reported Giustozzi, 90 belonged to Shura-ye Nazar.

(2) Compare Giustozzi’s figures in his paper, “State reconstruction and international engagement in Afghanistan”, 30 May – 1 June 2003, London School of Economics and Political Science and University of Bonn (see here). He wrote that, the AMF commanders claimed an overall tashkil of around 700,000 men, although “the actual number of ‘full-time’ soldiers is reckoned to be closer to 200,000 and possibly as small as 80,000. Another 50,000-75,000 (depending on the source) former combatants had already been incorporated into a newly established police force.” Notably, as of April 2002, Giustozzi writes, Defence Minister Fahim “still only had complete control command over the 18,000 or so troops of his own Shura-i Nezar faction.” Bearing in mind this was the dominant faction in the Northern Alliance, it says something about the likely numbers of actual fighters who may have needed demobilising.

(3) Hartzell found this initial bias in the ANA still present in 2004:

An analysis of data from an Afghan official in January 2010 finds that Pashtuns represented 42.6 percent of the army, Tajiks 40.98 percent, Hazaras 7.68 percent, Uzbeks 4.05 percent, and other minorities 4.68 percent, and concludes that while the presence of Pashtuns at all levels of the military corresponds to their proportion of the general population, Tajiks continue to dominate the officer and noncommissioned officer ranks. 

(4) For detail, see pages 9-14 in Kate Clark “Kafka in Cuba: The Afghan Experience in Guantánamo” (November 2016), published by AAN and Michael Semple, “Reconciliation in Afghanistan”, United States Institute for Peace, 2009. The most famous Taleban attempt to surrender was by Taleban leader Mullah Omar to Hamed Karzai. It is documented in a number of places, including Anand Gopal, “The Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar”, New American Foundation, November 2010.

(5) In the AAN report “Kafka in Cuba” (see footnote 4), we gave the following examples of such detentions (sources in original):

• In Kunar, the anti-Taleban, Salafist leader, Haji Rohullah Wakil, had been chosen to represent the province in a national gathering, the Emergency Loya Jirga, in June 2002. Two months later, in August 2002, he was detained and taken to Guantánamo. It seems a rival, keen to scoop up logging business and contracts for counter-narcotics work and the building of US bases, had told the US he was a terrorist. Rohullah Wakil’s detention was “widely seen as a tipping point in turning the province against the new government and the United States.”
• In the south, van Bijlert reported, Uruzgan’s first post-Taleban governor, Jan Muhammad, a man with close, long-standing ties to the Karzai family, “used his relations with US Special Forces and his reputation as an effective Taliban hunter to target a wide range of tribal leaders and former Taleban officials, particularly from the Ghilzai and Panjpai tribes.”
• In Kandahar, “entire tribes, like the Ishaqzai in Maiwand, a district west of Kandahar City… were systematically targeted and denounced as Taleban.” The tribes in Maiwand had indeed supported the Taleban when they first came to power in 1994, but “US forces were unable to recognize when those same tribes switched allegiances in 2001.” This was precisely what made Maiwand so lucrative in the eyes of the new US-allied governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, and his men: “There were weapons to be requisitioned, tribal elders to be shaken down, reward money to be collected – boundless profits to be made.”
• In Paktia, a province where popular revolt had driven the Taleban from power, some al Qaeda fighters held out in the Shahikot mountains in Zurmat district. In March 2002, with some local Taleban support, they fought US forces. It might have seemed a black and white task to then work with local allies to find and detain the final Taleban and al Qaeda sympathisers in Zurmat. In reality, the US entered a minefield of duplicitous allies and old conflicts – Khalqi communists versus mujahedin and Harakat-e Enqelab versus Hezb-e Islami versus Jamiat-e Islami, as well as tribal feuds. Some Taleban were detained, but there were also members of the pre-Taleban, local, political leadership, opponents of the ‘Islamic Emirate’, ordinary folk, and two 14-year-old boys, Asadullah and Naqibullah, who were being kept and raped by a pro-American commander (he fell out of favour with his US allies and ended up in Bagram).

One of the main denouncers was the provincial police chief, Abdullah Mujahed, a Jamiat commander, US ally and, said people in Paktia, one of the main sources of crime in the province; he was himself eventually also sent to Guantánamo along with a number of his drivers, cooks, and guards. Policeman Nur Agha, described how he was detained and tortured on a tiny US base, spending “days… hanging from a prison ceiling.” In Zurmat, he said, “There was no one left standing in the end. It was as if the whole system just devoured everyone.”

(6) Insights are from unpublished research on PRTs: Clark, Malikyar and Rubin, “Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: Can They Help Rebuild the National State?’ (New York: Center on International Cooperation, New York University, 2005, unpublished). The British PRT in Mazar-e Sharif, which alone avoided aid work, interpreted the stabilisation mission as largely to do with improving security. It sought to reduce the power of commanders and strongmen and defusing conflict – the threat of inter-factional fighting was high in the region – and DDR. In this it cooperated closely with UNAMA.

(7) This was reinforced by a separate programme, the cantonment of heavy weapons, whose success did limit the scope of damage from any factional fighting.

(8) Numbers here are patchy, but Aikins gives some figures indicating the growth of PSCs: 3152 PSCs were registered as employed by the US Department of Defence in September 2007 and 3,689 were registered PSCs, December 2008. Employment of PSC guards rose by 400 per cent, from December 2008 to December 2010. (During 2006-11, US forces increased from 20,300 to almost 100,000). Matthieu Aikins, “Contracting the Commanders: Transition and the Political Economy of Afghanistan’s Private Security Industry,” New York: Center on International Cooperation, 2012, p7.

(9) Malyar Sadeq Azad, “Top Leaders Tied to Security Companies”, The Killid Group, 21 August 2010.

(10) Officials at DIAG, Stapleton wrote in 2013, told her the programme was no longer dealing with criminal groups, but only with armed insurgent groups.

(11) As Sari Kouvo and Patricia Gossman wrote in the AAN report, “Tell Us How This Ends: Transitional Justice and Prospects for Peace in Afghanistan”, 2013.

the promise of amnesty was made in direct conflict with UN Security Council sanctions and US policy at that time. The offer had no legal basis and was inconsequential because the programme ending up dealing with foot soldiers and low-level commanders. Even so, Kouvo and Gossman argue, it can be seen as one of the many steps that laid the groundwork for the Amnesty Law (passed by parliament in 2007 and gazetted in 2008) which provided a blanket amnesty for past combatants and any current combatants if they “join the process of national reconciliation’ and ‘respect the Constitution and other laws’.” (art. 3(2))

(12) UNDP full list of APRP ‘accomplishments’, as reported on its website is:

• APRP has become a National Priority Program with a robust structure and implementation capacity.
• The HPC has established important contacts with the leadership of the insurgency. Members, including women, participated in a number of informal talks with Taliban representatives leading up to the first formal talks in July 2015. These efforts have increased public awareness and support for the peace process and widened understanding of how the insurgency operates, how it is supported and how to reach out to it.
• Through regional and international events and forums, the HPC has tried to convince countries in the region that instability in Afghanistan poses a serious threat to the stability of the region as a whole. This has resulted in increased regional support and opportunities for initiating dialogue.
• Provincial Peace Committees have been established to conduct local outreach, negotiation and reintegration in 33 provinces, forming a nationwide structure for peace activities at the local level.
• 10,404 former combatants have so far renounced violence and joined the peace and reintegration program. Of these, 10,286 received financial assistance to reintegrate into their communities.
• 146 small grant projects have been implemented (consisting mostly of small community infrastructure projects). These provided temporary employment to former combatants during reintegration, as well as benefitting over 154,000 local people.
• 820 former insurgents and 1,058 members of communities where they were reintegrated in 8 provinces worked in road maintenance jobs provided by the Ministry of Public Works and funded by APRP.
• 1,965 former insurgents and 3,058 members of communities where they were reintegrated in acquired marketable skills through APRP-funded vocational training programs.
• 805 former insurgents and 2,867 members of communities where they were reintegrated worked on reforestation, irrigation and farming projects implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock and funded by APRP.
• Women peace activists collected over 250,000 signatures from Afghan women for the “Women Call for Ceasefire and Peace” campaign in February 2015.

(13) The figures are strange. UNDP gives $178,000 as the overall funding given to APRP (it lists donors as the UNDP, Germany, Japan, Korea, the US, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark and South Korea). However, the breakdown of funds from 2012 to 2018 (including the two years after the APRP had concluded) only add up to $114,000

(14) UNDP gives the following breakdown of funding for APRP by year:

2018  $3,951,962 2017  $20,454,500 2017  $19,847,964 2016  $16,018,431 2015  $25,475,176 2014  $27,838,956 2013 $11,470,99

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Protests continue in front of the Independent Election Commission’s office in Ghazni, though it was able to reopen on 27 June following a 63-day sit-in protest at its gates that shut it down, stymying election preparations throughout the province. This comes despite the IEC’s legally problematic about-face to split Ghazni province’s electoral constituencies for the upcoming polls, according to the protestors’ wish. Protests are now taking place over the issue of which areas will be allocated to the new constituencies while others deem the split to be illegal. The original protest was motivated by the outcome of the 2010 parliamentary elections, when all seats in the province went to Hazaras following a low Pashtun turnout. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili looks at Ghazni’s protestors’ demands as well as the IEC’s reactions to them, and concludes that both the government and the IEC face a dilemma about how to hold an inclusive election.

 This is part nine of a series of dispatches looking at the preparations for the parliamentary elections. Part one dealt with political challenges; part two with an initial set of technical problems, including the date, budget and use of biometric technology; part three with electoral constituencies; part four with controversies surrounding the appointment of a new IEC member after its former chief was sacked by President Ghani; part five with a demand by political parties to change the electoral system; part six with the date of the polls and with voter registration; part seven with a deficient polling centre assessment, and; part eight with controversies over voter registration.

The IEC has decided to split Ghazni province into three separate electoral constituencies for the parliamentary elections scheduled for 20 October 2018. The IEC ‘s decision came on 25 June in which it said that “considering the recent problems in Ghazni province and given the protests and repeated demands of people of Ghazni province, the Independent Election Commission after sending an authorised delegation [referring to the 28 May delegation it had sent to Ghazni] and listening to comprehensive views of the people of the province on solving the existing problem and in consultation with relevant government agencies and civil [society] organisations, decided in accordance with paragraph two of article 35 of the electoral law that Ghazni be exceptionally divided into three constituencies and voter registration and candidate nomination be carried out in the province as soon as possible in order to ensure justice in representation.” (See here and here). With this, it revoked its 20 May decision (here and here) not to change the previous practice of using the country’s 34 provinces as unitary, multi-seat constituencies in the upcoming parliamentary polls.

The IEC’s decision is another U-turn. In late 2016, it was actually tasked by President Ashraf Ghani, through a presidential decree, to come up with a solution that would prevent the repetition of ethnically unbalanced elections outcomes such as the one in Ghazni in 2010, and suggested in February 2017 to split up a number of populous provinces into smaller constituencies. The proposal did not pass the cabinet, though. On 20 May, the IEC finally announced, based on a legal opinion from the Palace, that there would be no changes to the constituencies (see AAN’s previous report on the background discussion on the debate about electoral constituencies here).

The second U-turn – of only splitting the Ghazni constituency – only came after dozens of people, mainly Pashtuns but also some Tajiks and Sayyeds, had forced a shutdown of the IEC provincial offices in Ghazni city for more than two months, from 26 April to 27 June. They were protesting that insecurity in this multi-ethnic province in south-eastern Afghanistan might lead to lopsided participation in the districts – high in the Hazara areas, low in the Pashtun areas – if the IEC left electoral constituencies unchanged. This raises the chances that the divisive outcome of the 2010 parliamentary election in Ghazni could be repeated. That year, all 11 Wolesi Jirga seats in the province went to Hazaras, with no Pashtun representation. Then-President Hamed Karzai intervened and tried to broker a deal that would have partly revoked the results but failed (see AAN’s reporting here and here). Both groups make up almost half of the province’s population according to a UN provincial profile, with Pashtuns’ numbers slightly higher. (1)

The recent protest led to almost a complete halt of electoral operations in that province.The ‘how’ of the IEC decision, however, is still opposed by some of the original protestors but, more importantly, has also produced further backlash. This came from the Hazara residents of the province who started their own protest against the decision on 28 June and shut down the IEC office on 2 July once more. They argue that the IEC decision to split the province is illegal.

Who are the original protestors?

13 days into the first phase of voter registration in the provincial capitals (see AAN’s previous reports here and here), on 26 April protestors shut down the IEC provincial office in Ghazni city by pitching a tent at its gate and starting a sit-in. They called for dividing the province into smaller electoral constituencies in order to ensure balanced ethnic representation. (It has been difficult to verify the exact number of the protestors; an Afghan media report put their number at some “dozens.”).

The demand (and similar demands raised in other provinces such as Maidan Wardak) (2) had previously been dampened by the IEC 20 May decision (here and here) not to change the constituencies for the 2018 Wolesi Jirga election.

Mawlawi Muhammad Ismail Ruhani, a Pashtun protest leader, Islamic scholar and potential parliamentary candidate from Giro district of Ghazni, told AAN on 30 May that the reason for the sit-in was to “see ourselves [represented] in the framework of the system and parliament.” He added that over the last eight years, local Sunnis did not have any representatives in parliament, “because our areas and districts are under the Taleban’s influence [or] threat, and therefore our people could not participate in elections.” He referred to the fact that most of the Pashtun-dominated districts are either controlled or contested by the Taleban. (3) Ruhani insisted that the protest was not Pashtun-only. According to him there was a leadership council of 22 people – four Tajiks, one Sayyed and 17 Pashtuns – which led the sit-in tent and organised the protestors. (4)

Abdul Razeq, the second protest leader, a Tajikfrom Ghazni centre, also claimed that the protestors include ordinary Pashtuns, Tajiks and Sayyeds from various parts of the province. A source from the IEC Ghazni provincial office told AAN on 30 May that the demonstrators also include a number of potential Pashtun and Tajik candidates. Among them, according to the source, were two Tajiks from the provincial capital, Dr Ismail Khanjar and Mualem Razeq, and 12 Pashtun candidates from the rural districts. Ruhani admitted that some, including himself, would likely be candidates, too. Still, he estimated that more than 180 candidates would be nominated from the Pashtun, Tajik and Sadat communities and not all of them were part of the protests.

What are the protestors’ demands?

The protestors’ main demand was to divide Ghazni into 11 electoral constituencies, corresponding with the 11 seats the province has been allocated in parliament. This, in effect, would result in single-member constituencies and break with the multi-member constituencies under the prevalent SNTV electoral system.

The protestors’ reasoning is that if the whole province is used as a single, multi-member constituency, candidates in insecure districts will not get enough votes as had happened during the previous parliamentary elections in 2010. Then, Pashtun candidates were disadvantaged in relation to Hazara candidates who mainly live in secure districts. But if the province is divided into 11 constituencies, there will be a candidate elected from each of those constituencies, regardless of varying voter turnout in the districts.

The government, however, rejected this demand. On 13 June, the president’s deputy spokeswoman, Durani Waziri, told AAN that the law must apply to all provinces equally, that there would be no exception for Ghazni province and that it was legally impossible to divide the electoral constituencies at this late stage. She ruled out any separate Ghazni ‘solution’ “hundred per cent”, calling such a thing “irrational.” The government, she said, was instead “trying to ensure security.”

The protestors also have a number of other demands. Firstly, they are calling for an extension of voter registration and distribution of tazkeras. This emanates from the fact that the IEC office in Ghazni has been closed during almost the entire registration period affecting all electoral activity in the province. Secondly, they demand that the IEC bring ethnic balance to its provincial office. Ruhani claimed that among 15 key provincial IEC positions, only two are occupied by Pashtuns, one by a Tajik and another by a Sayyed. The remaining positions are occupied by Hazaras, whom he described as dominating the IEC office. Nazer Hussain Nabizada, the acting head of the IEC Ghazni office, rejected this claim. He said there was a mix of Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, Sayyed and Bayat employees in the office, hired based on tests conducted under the supervision of an authorised delegation from the IEC headquarters in Kabul. (5)

Gender issues also appear to have played a role in the recruitment dispute. The local IEC official claimed that protestors refuse to allow women from their communities to work, and therefore wanted men recruited in place of women on the employee roster. The provincial IEC office said this was not possible.

Thirdly, the protestors want a rebalancing of polling centres and reopening of some polling centres that they claim have been closed by the IEC. Ruhani claimed in conversation with AAN that “14 districts plus the provincial centre had 85 polling centres while three Hazara districts alone – I mean the overall Shia population – had 174 polling centres.” The list of polling centres that AAN has received from the IEC Ghazni provincial official, however, contradicts this claim and shows 164 polling centres allocated to Pashtun dominated districts (see overview in footnote 6). Ruhani also questioned the location of some of the polling centres, saying that the IEC closed a polling centre in Khenyan village of Qarabagh district, which is the site of an Afghan Local Police headquarters but opened a polling centre in the remote village of Barla, which is a hotbed of the Taleban. Ruhani said that they wanted the polling centre in Khenyan to be re-opened. IEC member Hafizullah Hashemi told AAN that this was a legitimate complaint and the IEC was considering it. He added that the polling centres were assessed over a long period of time and “ghost polling centres were removed” but that security conditions could have changed in the meantime.

Nabizada said that the IEC allocated the polling centres fairly, but whether those centres were secured or not (and thus opened or not) was a different question. “Neither the IEC nor the Hazara residents could ensure their security,” he said. According to him, there are 406 polling centres in Ghazni in total, with 55 of them allocated to the provincial capital. Zaher Akbari, the head of IEC’s Paktia office who has been seconded to Ghazni as acting head to replace Nabizada following the protest, also said that the protestors had not been able to distinguish between the IEC’s polling centre assessment and the security review of the polling centres, but he admitted that there were some problems with the IEC assessment. (AAN previously reported that the assessment had been deficient.) Akbari also blamed the security forces for planning to secure only 260 out of the total 406 polling centres spread across the province. He claimed that this issue was soluble, but this does not seem to be a realistic promise given the very complicated security situation in the province. (7)

The problem of ethnic representation

The situation in Ghazni boils down to the issue of ethnic representation, which in turn stems from the persistent insecurity in most of the Pashtun-dominated districts. However, the protestors try not to frame the problem in ethnic terms. Ruhani told AAN, “We never say that our Shia brothers have taken our rights. We say that the president and the system [of government] have taken our rights.”

However, occasionally, the grievances are expressed in ethnic terms, including complaints that the current Ghazni MPs did not do anything for Pashtuns or Tajiks. These sentiments are occasionally expressed more directly, as on 5 May when protestor Mawlawi Rahmatullah Andar said that Ghazni MPs belonged to a single “tribe” and had been imposed on them. “They violate our rights instead of serving us,” he said. Even Ruhani, who claimed there was not an issue with the Hazaras, said that he argued with the IEC delegation that if the Pashtuns and Tajiks were not able to elect their representatives, then it would be a corrupt election and they would not participate in that as it would be assistance to the corruption, which, he said, “is not allowed by the holy Quran.”

The suspicion is mutual: Aref Rahmani, an MP from Ghazni, in a conversation with AAN, alleged that the government was plotting a conspiracy against Hazaras. He noted that when he was elected, the governor, provincial NDS director, and head of the IEC provincial office were all Pashtun. He further said that Ghazni MPs were shunned by the executive branch during the Karzai administration, meeting the Ghazni MPs only once and speaking to them dismissively.

It is difficult to judge these claims. However, they are used as a basis for arguments and as a departure point that now the Pashtuns want to get assurances ahead of the upcoming elections that not all the seats will go to the Hazaras, who, in turn, want to ensure that any political assurances do not tip the balance to their disadvantage.

The fallout of the protest

The sit-in and closure of the IEC office has stymied electoral operations in the province. The IEC launched the first phase of voter registration on 14 April, covering provincial capitals. It was supposed to end on 13 May but was extended until 12 June countrywide. The second phase started on 15 May and was supposed to end on 28 May in district centres, but was extended for ten days until 7 June (see the IEC’s decision here). A third phase was supposed to be carried out from 30 May to 12 June in rural areas, but was postponed until the end of the second phase. It started on 9 June and is supposed to end on 6 July. (See the IEC’s decisions here and here). The first phase was hampered by the protest in Ghazni, and the second and third phases have not started in the province at all.

Voter registration statistics released by the IEC on 14 June, covering the period between 14 April when the exercise was launched and 12 June when the first and second phases ended, show that only 57,951 people have registered to vote in Ghazni. The IEC Ghazni’s Nabizada told AAN that due to the closure of the Ghazni office, they were only conducting voter registration in the provincial capital. He said that most of the polling centres there were running out of registration materials and could not resupply because the additional material was stranded in the central provincial office. Nabizada further said that out of 55 polling centres in Ghazni centre, six were under high security threat and security agencies have declared in advance of voter registration that those centres would not open. According to him, as the voter registration started, IEC officials realised they could not open six more centres because of security problems.

Similar problems occurred during candidate nomination for both parliament and district councils, which started on 26 May and ended on 12 June (with nomination of district council candidates extended until 14 June). This activity has not yet been carried out in Ghazni at all. The candidate nomination statistics released by the IEC on 13 June show zero nominations in the province.

How the IEC tried to solve the problem

The IEC sent a two-member delegation to Ghazni on 28 May to talk to the protestors. (8) From the beginning, the IEC had emphasised that it wastrying to address the demands that fall under its authority but could not address two main demands: security and dividing the province into constituencies, which are the responsibility of the government. (As mentioned above, the government had already said there was no chance of dividing electoral constituencies but promised to provide additional security in the protestors’ areas.) Still, there are no indications that the government can actually secure those parts of Ghazni that are controlled by the Taleban. As a result, the IEC has addressed only one of the protestors’ demands, namely dividing the province into three constituencies.

When the IEC announced its decision to divide the province into three constituencies on 25 June, it emphasized, in order to prevent similar demands from other provinces, that this was “exceptional.” It further said that the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) in cooperation with the Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) and other relevant agencies, in accordance with article 36 of the electoral law, and in understanding with the IEC, would be duty bound to draw the boundaries of the constituencies in the province in a balanced way, as stipulated by paragraphs four and six of article 83 of the constitution.

The IEC and IDLG have not explained publicly how exactly the three constituencies would be delineated and based on which considerations and criteria. Kabul daily Etilaat Roz, however, claimed it had obtained the documents. According to those, it reported, the province would not be divided fully along ethnic lines: one constituency with four parliamentary seats would consist of the two Pashtun-dominated districts of Ajrestan (majority Pashtun and some Hazaras) and Rashidan (Pashtun and Tajiks) as well as the three Hazara districts of Jaghori, Malestan and Nawur along with the mixed majority Hazara (along with Pashtuns, Bayat and Sayyeds, sometimes also called Sadat) district of Jaghatu. The second constituency, withfour seats, will bring together(a more diverse) Ghazni centre of Tajiks, Pashtuns, Hazaras, Bayats, Sayyeds, Sikhs and Hindus, the five Pashtun districts of Waghaz, Khugyani (both have Tajiks), Andar, Zana Khan and Deh Yak, along with the ethnically mixed district of Khwaja Omari (with a majority of Hazara along with Pashtuns, Bayats, Sayyeds and Tajiks). The third constituency, with three seats, will comprise the five Pashtun districts of Muqur, Gilan, Nawa, Ab Band and Giru along with the mixed Pashtun/Hazara district of Qarabagh. The three women seats of the province will also be divided among the three constituencies. (9)

A source from the IEC confirmed this proposed delimitation to AAN on 26 June.

Reactions to the decision

The decision has been criticised by some election observers as illegal (see Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan here). Yusuf Rashid, executive director of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan has also said that splitting the province into three constituencies is not “a simple question” and that it might not be implemented within one or two weeks.

In Ghazni itself, Mawlawi Rohani, the protest leader, told AAN on 26 June that they would continue their sit-in until there was a fair division of the Ghazni provincial constituency. He said that the province should be delimited differently. He argued that Ajrestan and Rashidan should not go with the secure districts of Jaghori, Malestan and Nawur as the two districts could not compete with them given their security situation. He also said that an earlier census undertaken in ‘Daud Khan’s time’ – the president between 1973 and 1978 – should be used for any redrafting of the constituencies (in fact no census ever took place in that time; he was very likely referring to the one started – and never completed – in 1979; see here). Rohani also worried about Pashtun women who, according to him, have mostly not obtained tazkeras,which would additionally negatively influence a possible turnout. However, a day later on 27 June, the protestors removed their sit-in tents and allowed the IEC office to reopen. Following this, Ismail told AAN that they would still continue to push for fair delimitation.

On the other hand, all 11 Ghazni MPs held a press conference on 26 June voicing their opposition to the IEC’s decision. (See the video here). Two days later, on 28 June, a number of Hazara residents in the province waged another protest and sit-in close to the IEC office, calling the IEC’s decision “totally illegal” and demanding that the commission revoke it. In a resolution (AAN has received a copy of it), they argued that given the social and ethnic fabric of the province, the decision to split the province was technically challenging and could cause social problems. Bashir Ali Shafaq, a protest organiser affiliated with Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom led by deputy chief executive Mohammad Mohaqeq, told AAN on 1 July that the protestors had moved their tent close to the IEC office gate the day before and that they would talk to the acting head of the office once he was back from Kabul. He said that if the IEC’s decision is not rescinded, the protestors would make their next move which could include shutting down the IEC office in Ghazni, which they did the following day.

These protestors are supported by Hazara political leaders. Karim Khalili, head of High Peace Council and head of another faction of Hezb-e Wahdat, on 28 June also called “the exceptional division of Ghazni into constituencies as illegal, unfair and not applied on all provinces (ghair-e sarasari).”  A day later, Mohaqeq also criticised the decision as “against the electoral law” and “indicative of undue discrimination among brotherly ethnic groups of Afghanistan as well as an organised effort for countering the legal presence of some ethnic groups in the highest decision-making authority, the Wolesi Jirga.” The Hazara-dominated Enlightening Movement also joined in this opposition, saying the IEC’s decision could be accepted only if the province was divided into three or at least two provinces, not constituencies.A source from the office of Vice-President Sarwar Danesh – the highest-ranking Hazara politician in the government – had earlier told AAN that his position was that the entire Ghazni province, like all other provinces, should be used as one electoral constituency.

Conclusion: The problem of inclusive elections in war

If implemented the latest IEC decision will allow the Ghazni population to elect their representatives in a way that better reflects the province’s ethnic composition. But the devil is in the detail. Its concrete on proposal how to divide the province – which is not even officially public yet – has still to fully convince the original protestors. Furthermore, it has produced a new backlash from the Hazara residents of the province, backed by Hazara political leaders like Khalili and Mohaqeq at the national level.

On the other hand, the IEC’s bending to the protestors’ will – regardless of whether their demands are valid or not – has created a number of legal problems. First, the commission’s statement that this was “exceptional” for Ghazni is not very convincing, as it breaks with the general rule that could (if implemented – and the delineation of the new constituencies is still pending and fought over) open Pandora’s box, as people in other provinces have already made similar demands and might increase political pressure, too, if they see that the Ghaznawi people get their way. Secondly, the decision came more than two months after the legal deadline for any re-drawing of constituencies. If it is challenged in the courts, it might open up another legal battle that could drag on and impact the preparations for the elections.

If, on the contrary, the decision is not implemented, the original protestors might return to the scene. And this is possible: the country’s Independent Commission for the Oversight of the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC) has now called the IEC’s announcement about splitting the Ghazni constituency “outside the specified period [legal timeframe]” and “a violation of article 36 of the electoral law” in a statement issued on 1 July. In this light, it will be very difficult to find a way to fully please all parties involved.

Additionally, there is a larger practical double-bind. Without establishing security in the areas dominated by Pashtuns, any political solution for enfranchising them remains theoretical. The Taleban’s behaviour so far in 2018 suggests that the insurgents may be generally less willing to allow voter participation than in previous elections. (The Taleban have both threatened and called on the people to boycott the elections and backed up their threats with violence, see AAN’s previous report here. This might well play out in the Pashtun-dominated areas of Ghazni. Holding elections without securing these areas and without any division or any political solution prior to the elections, however, will most likely disenfranchise them. The issue has the potential to evolve into deeper conflict between the two ethnic groups in the province, and beyond, which may manifest itself in different forms.

Finally, the Ghazni elections tensions are just the tip of the iceberg, a result of the unfulfilled election reform promises of the National Unity Government. To hold elections that produce ethnically and otherwise inclusive representation in the provinces, while parts of them are controlled or contested by the Taleban (a problem aggravated by strong ethnic feelings), continues to be an almost insoluble dilemma for both the government and the IEC.

Edited by Graeme Smith and Thomas Ruttig

 

 

(1) As a result of the incomplete 1979 census (and none carried out later), no precise statistics exist about the country’s population in general and its ethnic breakdown in particular. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) does not provide any ethnic breakdown of the population in general and of the provinces in particular. According to a provincial profile updated by UNAMA in July 2017 (AAN has a copy of it), the province has, in total, a population of approximately 1.25 million: about 50 per cent Pashtun, 44 per cent Hazara, and six per cent Tajik. A source from the CSO who did not want to be named, told AAN on 12 June that the UNAMA statistics do not reflect reality as they fail to account for minority groups such as the Bayat, Qezelbash and Sadat. In the absence of reliable statistics, people from different groups in Ghazni tend to inflate the size of their own ethnic group.

(2) A day before the IEC announced its decision to declare each of the provinces as an electoral constituency, on 19 May 2018 residents of six districts in the neighbouring province of Maidan Wardak gathered in the provincial capital, calling for a division of the electoral constituencies. (See media report here). According to their resolution (AAN received a copy of it from IEC’s Maidan Wardak provincial electoral officer on 21 May 2018), they demanded that Maidan Wardak province be divided into “small constituencies.” Maidan Wardak has nine districts, including the provincial centre. They are: Maidan Shahr (provincial centre), Nerkh, Jalrez, Chak, Sayyed Abad, Daimerdad, Hessa-ye Awal-e Behsud, Jaghatu and Markaz-e Behsud. It has five seats in the Wolesi Jirga. In the 2010 parliamentary elections, three of them (two female and one male) were won by Hazara candidates and the remaining two by Pashtun candidates. The result of the 2005 parliamentary elections was even worse for the Pashtuns in the province as it “returned four Hazara and only one Pashtun to the house” (see this AAN’s previous report here). Election observer organizations had also highlighted similar problems “in Ghazni, Maidan-Wardak, Kapisa and Baghlan” (see media report here).

(3) According to the Central Statistics Organisation’s (CSO) latest population estimate of the year 1397 (2018-19) (see here), Ghazni has a population of 1,315,041. It has 19 districts, including the provincial centre.  These districts can be divided into three categories: ten Pashtun-dominated districts (Andar, Waghaz, Khugyani, Zana Khan, Deh Yak, Muqur, Gilan, Nawah, Ab Band and Giro) with a population of 487,713; three Hazara districts (Jaghuri, Malestan and Nawur) with a population of 385,585 and ; ethnically mixed districts: two Pashtun majority districts (Ajrestan and Rashidan) with a population of 51,070; two Hazara majority districts (Jaghatu and Khawja Omari) with a population of 55,305; and Qarabagh and Ghazni centre where there is a lack of clarity about their ethnic balance and with a population of 335,361.Waghaz, Khugyani, Rashidan and Ghazni centre have varying numbers of Tajiks, while Jaghatu and Khawja Omari and Ghazni centre have a varying degree of Bayat and Sayyeds. A small number of Sikh and Hindu also live in the centre. This is a rough assessment of the spread of ethnic groups across the province and the AAN’s calculation of the district’s population above is based on the CSO’s population estimate.

According to the January 2018 quarterly report of the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), of these districts, six are contested: Ajrestan, Andar, Giro, Zanakhan, Waghaz, Qarabagh; 11 districts are under the government’s influence: Khugyani, Rashidan, Nawur, Muqur, Malestan, Khawja Omari, Jaghuri, Ab Band, Deh Yak, Gilan, and Jaghatu; one is under government control: Ghazni; and one is under insurgent control: Nawa. This assessment may not reflect the fluid security situation in the province. AAN research (forthcoming) shows that the government controls the three Hazara districts of Jaghori, Malestan and Nawur and central Ghazni city. The Taleban do not hold any part of Jaghatu or Khawja Omari but do threaten them. Nawa is fully controlled by the Taleban and the rest are largely controlled by the Taleban with only district centres under the government’s control.

(4) He provided the following list of leadership council members: 1) Mawlawi Muhammad Ismail Ruhani; 2) Zainuddin Bazaz; 3) Abdul Bari Khanikhel; 4) Muhebullah Khpelwak; 5) Ali Khan Andar; 6) Abdul Razeq; 7) Muhammad Ismail Khanjar; 8) Sayyed Obaidullah Sadat; 9) Khalilullah Hotak; 10) Muhammad Mirza Hemmat; 11) Mirza Andar; 12) Fariduddin Waezi; 13) Mawlawi Hakimullah Lailzai; 14) General Turan Tarakai; 15) Muhammad Sharif Amiri; 16) Naqibullah Tarakai; 17) Humayun Alikhel; 18) Muhammad Faruq Poya; 19) Ataullah Mujahed; 20) Naqibullah Khaksar; 21) Abdul Bari Shelgarai; 22) provincial council member Amanullah Kamrani (see AAN’s report here). At least two of them, Kamrani and Hotak have had connections with local anti-Taleban uprising forces (more on this in a forthcoming AAN dispatch about ALP).

(5) Earlier, on 24 May 2018, Aref Rahmani, one of the incumbent MPs from Ghazni, described the IEC recruitment as follows: the IEC recruited two Pashtuns but they turned out to be on the IEC blacklist for involvement in fraud during previous elections. Then the IEC recruited two people from the waiting list who happened to be Hazara. He claimed that the IEC provincial office did not have any role in their recruitment. He further claimed that the IEC members acknowledged this when the MPs from Ghazni met them on 20 May. IEC member Hafizullah Hashemi told AAN that he had also heard this, but added the IEC was reviewing it. On 13 June, IEC chairman Gula Jan Abdul Badi Sayyad said during a press conference that the protestors had complained about recruitment and the acting head of the IEC provincial office, adding that the IEC “sent a new acting head – who is competent and we are sure that he can solve the issue – a week ago. We fully authorised him to revise and correct the recruitments that were said to have taken place based on tastes.” (See the video here). The new acting head of the Ghazni office, Akbari, a Pashtun, told AAN that there had indeed been biased recruitment in favour of one ethnic group (Hazaras), adding that the recruitment had been carried out by the provincial office under the supervision of the delegation from the IEC’s headquarters. He said that the IEC was reviewing the recruitment and tashkil (staff quota) and would revise the staffing based on the IEC’s procedures and human resource procedure.

(6) In response to this, Nabizada said that polling centres had been determined based on population and geographical distance. He said it was unfair to compare, for example, Hazara-dominated Khwaja Omari district with Pashtun dominated Andar district, because, according to him, Andar was a first-grade district, which was both physically larger and had more people than Khwaja Omari. By the same token, comparing Pashtun-dominated Zana Khan district with Hazara dominated Jaghori was unfair. He provided the following breakdown of polling centres per district: seven for Ab Band; eight for Ajrestan; 40 for Andar; 16 for Deh Yak; eight for Rashidan; nine for Zana Khan; 19 for Giro; 17 for Muqur; 14 for Gilan; eight for Khugyani; eight for Waghaz; 10 for Nawa; 37 for Nawur; 46 for Qarabagh; 31 for Malestan; 22 for Jaghatu; 7 for Khwaja Omari; 46 for Jaghuri; and 55 for Ghazni centre.

(7) According to UN figures, Ghazni was among the five provinces with the most security incidents in 2016 and among the six most violent between 15 February and 15 May 2018 (no similar UN figures exist for 2017). In a map depicting ‘conflict severity’ in 2017 – a combination of three indicators: security incidents, civilian casualties and conflict-induced displacement – UNOCHA places Andar district in the highest category. Most of the districts along the Kabul-Kandahar highway, Deh Yak, Ghazni centre, Waghaz, Qarabagh, Giro, Muqur and Gelan, and the western district of Ajrestan were in the highest two categories of conflict severity. The western districts of Jaghori, Malestan and Nawur are in the lowest category. (p65- 66) According to a January 2018 BBC report based on research conducted between 23 August and 21 November 2017, the Taleban fully control 14 districts nationwide, including the district of Nawa in Ghazni. Further, they have a ‘high’ ‘active and physical presence’ (districts attacked at least twice a week) in Rashidan, Jaghatu, Khwaja Omari, Zanakhan, Ghazni, Dehyak, and Andar. The rest of the province saw ‘medium’ (districts attacked at least three times a month) or ‘low’ Taliban presence (district attacked at least once in three months) except for Malestan and Jaghori districts.

(8) On 28 April, two IEC members Sayyed Hafizullah Hashemi and Quraishi travelled to Ghazni. According to Hashemi, they talked to the protestors and collected their views. Mawlawi Ruhani told AAN that the delegation assured the protestors they would arrange a meeting with the president on the division of the provincial constituency as this fell within his remit. Ruhani added that the delegation said the IEC would meet other demands under the IEC’s remit. Ruhani said that the sit-in tent is at the IEC office gate and  would remain there until they had received a response from the president.

(9) According to the Etilaat Roz report, the proposal was discussed in a meeting attended by six IEC members (the seventh member, Wasima Badghisi, was absent), and ECC members, presidential representative Fazl Fazli, the chief executive’s representative Ghulam Faruq Majruh, IDLG representative Timor Sharan, NDS representative Ajmal Abedi, MoI representative Salem Ehsas, as well as representatives of ACCRA, CSO and the Land Authority. Sharan and Maleha both opposed the division and Maleha did not sign the IEC’s decision. (See here).

Coverage of the Eid ceasefire mainly focussed on the most spectacular consequence, the mass fraternisation between combatants. AAN researchers wanted to try to understand what civilians thought about the truce and what sort of Eid holiday they had enjoyed – or not. We interviewed ten Afghans, four women and six men, to try to find out. We heard from those who had visited their home villages for the first time in years or who were still too frightened to travel, and those who, witnessing  the scenes of Taleban in cities and ANSF and Taleban hugging each other were, variously, bewildered, frightened, joyful, hopeful and sceptical. The interviews were carried out by Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Ehsan Qaane, Ali Yawar Adili and Rohullah Sorush and edited by Kate Clark.

AAN published a dispatch, “The Eid Ceasefire: Allowing Afghans to imagine their country at peace” on 19 June looking at what happened and the possible consequences for a peace process.

All the interviews were carried out between 19 and 21 June, so just after the mutual ceasefire ended (on 20 June) and while the government’s unilateral ceasefire was maintained. 

Leya Jawad, women’s rights activist, lives in Kabul, originally from Logar

Leya Jawad chairs a national civil society organisation and is both a defender of and advocate for female victims of war. Because of her work, she received warning letters and calls from the Taleban in 2016. She believes these warnings were sent by members of the Taleban living in her home village in Logar.

1 How was this Eid different for you? Why?

The ceasefire was an opportunity for me. I used it to go to my village, together with my husband. I hadn’t been there for two years. I hadn’t trusted the Taleban to the truce, but then, on the first day of the ceasefire and of Eid, my relatives travelled to our village with no trouble from the Taleban. I was also watching TV news showing the Taleban and Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF] praying and celebrating the first day of Eid together. So I decided to travel to my village to see my relatives. My husband and I go there for one day, travelling in our own car. What happened during the ceasefire was unexpected.

Even so, I was afraid going to my village. Whenever I went out, I covered my face with my scarf, remembering those who had sent the threatening letters. Seeing armed men carrying their white flag in my village and on my way back to Kabul only increased my fear. On my way back to Kabul, two things in particular scared me. First, I heard about the explosion during the gathering of ANSF and Taleban militants in Nangrahar. I thought the same thing could happen at any moment during the gatherings I was seeing on my way back to Kabul. Second, I thought if clashes started, it wouldn’t be easy to control all those armed men.

During my stay in the village, I saw a relative of my husband, whose son, Sayed Mujahed, had been assassinated by the Taleban ten days previously, giving Taleban food, water and tea. When I criticised him, he said that if this brought peace, he would forgive the Taleban what they had done to his son. He had been an ALP commander in the village. That day and then two days after the end of the ceasefire, I asked him not to trust the Taleban because neither the war or the peace is in the hands of the armed men fighting on the frontline.

Two days after the end of the ceasefire, the Taleban killed this relative’s second son, Sayed Ismael. He had been 21 years old and had just joined the ALP to replace his dead brother.

Azizullah Wardak, journalist from Wardak province based in Kabul

1) How was Eid different for you? Why?

It wasn’t so different for me, personally, as I’ve been able to travel to my village for previous Eids, as well as for other occasions. I always thought it was a little risky going to these areas before the ceasefire, but this time I went feeling no risk.

Speaking about the nation, it was a totally different Eid, something nobody could have anticipated. On the third day of the holidays, I went along with my family members and brothers and their family members to Sayedabad district, to our village. I even met Taleban commanders there. I talked to them. A Taleban commander told me he had received a message on WhatsApp from his superiors that the ceasefire might be extended to fifteen more days without announcing it officially – although this didn’t happen.

We were in the village until late afternoon. When we were on our way back home, the ceasefire ended. It was eight o’clock when we were passing a police post. All of a sudden, we got a puncture. I was fixing the tyre when the Taleban attacked the post. I escaped the area, driving on that punctured tire, while my children were crying out of fear.

2) Do you remember any exact feelings you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

Like other people throughout the country I was happy, but also kind of sceptical. In the last seventeen years, we have experienced this kind of announcement, but it was never implemented in practice and there was never a good result.

3) Did this ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

I was expecting the ceasefire would just be for three days and the fire would start burning again after three days – this has happened according to my expectations. However, the consequences of the ceasefire was extremely different and more than I had anticipated.

At first, when I saw the white flag of the Taleban in the hands of one man in the Kot-e Sangi area of the city, I thought how stupid the man was. When I reached the Company neighbourhood [on the outskirts of Kabul on the road heading out towards Wardak], I saw the Taleban riding on motorbikes, their flags in their hands. I saw police and civilians waving both the national and Taleban flag, even on police vehicles. I started putting together a report for my radio programme. I talked to the Taleban, police and civilians, but when I was trying to express my feelings on the radio, I couldn’t speak because I was weeping. I tried three times, but failed to get the words out. Then I changed what I was saying so that I could talk. The editor called me afterwards to find out what had happened to me, as for the last 17 years I had always been able to deliver even more sensitive and far sadder reports than this, without showing my emotions. I told him that, when I saw the Taleban, police and civilians, when I saw the poverty in their faces and how they were showing love to each other even though they had been killing each other only two days before, I found it extremely hard to express what this made me feel.

Latifa Frutan, teacher from Malestan working in Khas Uruzgan district of Uruzgan province

Latifa Frutan, a Persian literature graduate, teaches on a special project to get female teachers into insecure areas. She described to AAN how the number of pupils has decreased this year due to fear of the Taleban and because some families have moved to the more secure Malestan and Jaghori districts of Ghazni. She said the girls are frightened going to school as Taleban sometimes stop them on the way if they don’t have a male relative with them. Recently, for example, a girl was on a motorcycle with a boy and Taleban followed and stopped them.

1.  How was this Eid different for you? Why?

This Eid was very different. I hadn’t dared travel to Kabul before as I was afraid of being stopped by the Taleban and of fighting. When I heard that the Taleban had abided by the truce, I was very happy and on the second day of Eid, I set off for Kabul. (I had already travelled from Khas Uruzgan to Malestan, a few days before the holidays.)

We were stuck in a car jam in Ghazni city for two hours because the Taleban had gathered in various parts of the city, including Massud Square and Hakim Sanayi Park. The provincial police chief had [reportedly] ordered police forces not to prevent them from assembling. They were chanting slogans: “Death to the enemies” and “Long live the Taleban.” The Taleban had stuck their heads out of the windows of their vehicles chanting “Allahu Akbar.” Pashtun residents from Ghazni also joined the Taleban, wearing white scarves. There were also a few non-Pashtuns. My companions and I were very frightened, because everyone is afraid of the Taleban, given their past deeds, oppressing both men and women. We wondered what would happen and whether they would carry out explosions or suicide attacks.

2.  Do you remember an exact feeling you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

I was pensive. I was wondering whether the Taleban, after all these [years of] explosions and suicide attacks, would finally make peace with the government. What would happen after the ceasefire? I’m afraid of the Taleban as there is always fighting in Khas Uruzgan. The district centre is controlled by the government, but the Taleban attack it at night. In fact, the Taleban rule it at night. The wounded Taleban are brought to Palan clinic for treatment. This happened after the Taleban forcibly closed the clinic last year because doctors weren’t treating them.

3.  Did this ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why?

I didn’t expect any explosions or suicide attacks, but we saw there were explosions in Nangrahar. The question is: why did they happen. [There were two attacks, one claimed by ISKP, which wasn’t part of the truce. For detail, see here.] The Taleban failed to prove that they really want peace, as they resumed fighting right after the truce ended. That showed that they only chant slogans of peace.

Wahida Arefi, works in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

Before Eid, Kabul city faced many security threats and that stopped me from doing my usual Eid shopping. Just a few days before Eid, a huge suicide attack at the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development killed more than 15 people and injured many more [The attack was claimed by ISKP: more detail here]. An unpleasant scene before Eid was the increasing number of Afghan security forces in Kabul city searching vehicles, following the government’s unilateral ceasefire. The security warnings and notifications from the ministry for interior added to the pressure.

We had planned to spend the Eid holidays in my husband’s village in Jaghori district in Ghazni province. However, we heard about the deteriorating security before Eid in Ghazni. We weren’t sure whether the Taleban would abide by their ceasefire or not. My fear was that the Taleban might use it to come down to the main roads and stop travellers. I could simply not risk what I thought was our likely encounter with the Taleban along the way. A friend of mine also advised me not to travel to Ghazni. So we changed our minds and stayed in Kabul.

2) Do you remember an exact feeling you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

I was happy to hear the Taleban following the government’s suit by announcing a ceasefire for Eid. However, I was quite shocked at first and then sad that terrorists were hanging around freely in the city, making people, particularly women, feel uncomfortable. It reminded me of the bad days for women under the Taleban regime. As a woman, I couldn’t stomach seeing the Taleban return to Kabul. I was also worried about what would happen after the ceasefire. Although I wasn’t in Kabul during their regime, I don’t want to imagine a day when women are kept away from education, work and public life. It would be very difficult to see a small group controlling very personal aspects of people’s lives, like what they wear, as was the case during their regime. When I heard about the ceasefire, I was happy. But when I saw the Taleban coming into the capital without any peace framework or conditions, I was worried that chaos could ensue.

3) Did this ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why?

No, this ceasefire gave rise to many concerns and questions about peace negotiations, which include whether the government wants to bring in the Taleban based on whatever terms and conditions they dictate, regardless of what different groups of citizens want and expect to see in peace.

After the ceasefire, the Taleban said the reason some people welcomed them and took pictures with them was because they were very popular. The ceasefire provided the Taleban with ample opportunity for unconstrained manoeuvring. I don’t think people have forgotten the war crimes they committed. But since the people aren’t engaged in the peace process, the Taleban will probably be granted immunity by the government during peace negotiations in the same way they were granted immunity during the truce to manoeuvre and in the same way the Hezb-e Islami leader [Gulbuddin Hekmatyar] was granted immunity.

Another concern is that people aren’t optimistic about the unilateral extension of the ceasefire by the government. They’re worried it could provide the Taleban with latitude and breathing space to orchestrate and carry out more deadly and complex attacks.

Saifullah Sadat, from Kabul, originally from Jaghatu district of Wardak province, standing in the 2018 parliamentary elections

1) How was Eid different for you? Why?

It was a unique celebration. This Eid was an opportunity for opposing groups to meet each other. They congratulated on the Eid and embraced each other. People who work for the government, NGOs and other organisations haven’t been able to return to their villages to see their relatives in the past. They feared they would either be harmed directly or caught up in fighting between the Taleban and the government along the way. This year, people who hadn’t seen their relatives for Eid over the last 17 years were able to go to their villages, and villagers came to Kabul to see their relatives. On the third day of Eid, I had guests at my home, but I had gone to my province, Wardak, before then. I met the Taleban, along with my relatives and the police who were all wishing each other a happy Eid. They were very happy, their eyes were tearing up and they were telling each other that we are all brothers. The Taleban and police were asking each other: why are we fighting?

2) Do you remember any exact feelings you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

I was both really surprised and happy when I heard about the ceasefire and thought I’d go to Wardak province, to my village. But I was still not satisfied that the ceasefire would be implemented. So I couldn’t make my mind up as to whether to travel to Wardak province or not. But when I saw both the Taleban and police embracing each other and when our relatives were calling us to come to the village, saying the people were celebrating not only Eid but the ceasefire as well, I decided to make the journey.

3) Did this ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

The ceasefire exceeded my expectations. When two opposing groups don’t fight each other based on an agreement for a limited time, we call that a ceasefire. But to me and to all the people, it meant more. It was like a peace agreement where people could happily meet and celebrate Eid. I thought the opposing groups wouldn’t be able to observe a ceasefire for three days, that it wasn’t practical. But when I saw the Taleban in Kabul city, as well as in the provinces and districts, then I thought peace could happen. Both sides did not recognise each other as enemies. They were taking selfies and eating meals together. Taleban were offered food in people’s homes.

Ahmad Zia, school teacher in Bamyan province, central district

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

This Eid was different because both warring parties announced a ceasefire. Both Taleban and Afghan security forces behaved well with the people. Both sides hugged each other and said Happy Eid. I could see and feel that both sides are tired of war. Eid was celebrated in a peaceful situation. In the past, Eid hasn’t been like this – people are usually wary of the security situation.

2) Do you remember an exact feeling you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you happy, sad, pensive or confused?

When I first heard about the ceasefire, I guessed something might have happened in secret, behind the curtain, as we say, ie both sides had agreed to it and now one side was announcing it. I was concerned about whether there was a consensus for the ceasefire and that, if other government stakeholders weren’t in the picture, this could lead to a crisis. Then I saw that some people weren’t very happy about it. They weren’t positive about the ceasefire.

3) Did the ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

My expectations were met to some extent because it made us hopeful for a permanent peace, but unfortunately, we heard that the Taleban violated the ceasefire in [Andar district of] Ghazni and detained seven ANA soldiers, taking them with them [see news report here]. The Taleban didn’t extend the ceasefire and on the fourth day of Eid, began their attacks again in nine provinces.

Taxi driver from Jaghori district, Ghazni (asked not to be named)

The driver has been carrying travellers back and forth between Jaghori and Kabul for the last seven years,. He says that over the years, he has encountered the Taleban several times and was stopped two to three times last year, mainly in the Nani area between Ghazni’s provincial centre and Qarabagh district. He says the Taleban searched him and his passengers for any documents indicating they might be working for the government or NGOs or that they might be studying. The Taleban took some passengers whom they thought suspicious to a nearby compound for further interrogation. They never found any suspicious documents on him and always let him and his passengers go, eventually. He says that each time he was checked by the Taleban, he was struck dumb with terror. He asked not to be name in the report, referring to the risks of his profession.

1 How was this Eid different for you? Why?

This Eid wasn’t different for me, personally. The only difference was that I, like other people, felt a trace of hope that the Taleban might finally make peace with the government and the people, but that was dashed after the war started up again after Eid.

2) Do you remember an exact feeling you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

I was a little happy, but I was also sure that the truce was just ‘empty talk’ (gap-e muft), because the Taleban have always deceived the people and the government. The more the government trusts the Taleban, the more it’s cheated.

3) Did this ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

I didn’t have any specific expectations. The Afghan government doesn’t have the capacity to ensure people’s safety. The Taleban don’t stop ordinary people, only government employees and students. Before Eid, the Taleban attacked several places in Ghazni, which didn’t leave us any room – mentally – to have any expectations as to how the ceasefire might turn out.

Reza, ALP commander, Jalrez district, Maidan Wardak province

Reza was serving in this capacity in 2015 when the Taleban attacked a checkpoint killing 24 ALP.

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

Even though there was no incident during Eid, I was always thinking about what would happen after the ceasefire ended. I said to my men, “There is a quiet before a heavy storm,” and asked them to be prepared for any kind of attack. I was bewildered when I saw large numbers of Taleban militants marching in Jalrez during the ceasefire. There were many more than I had expected. I think Taleban sympathisers encouraged ordinary people to also go out hold and carry Taleban flags. It was a kind of [propaganda] manoeuvre for the Taleban, showing off their power and men. Seeing Taleban marching in areas under ANSF control was disconcerting.

During Eid, many tourists passed through Jalrez on their way to Bamyan. Our work [providing security for them] was much easier than at any time in the past few years. It was the only good thing, that made us happy, during this time. We don’t trust the Taleban so we were all conscious of everything that could go wrong.

The end of the ceasefire left me indifferent. For me, it is a return to normal life. Although I’m still waiting for the storm, I’m satisfied that no major incident has taken place since the end of the ceasefire, especially given the many tourists returning to Kabul from Bamyan.

Atifa Qudsi, principle of a private school in Kabul

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

People were really happy, this Eid, and sure that, at least during this holiday, there would be no suicide attacks or explosions and people would be able to visit relatives and friends peacefully and without fear. But from another point of view I believe this was the calm before the storm. I was concerned the day after Eid due to the weakness of the government. In the past, you could rely on the government to provide security, but not anymore.

2) Do you remember any exact feelings you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

When I heard about the ceasefire, I was very happy. You know our people have suffered so much in the past 40 years of war. Our people are psychologically affected, so when you hear about a ceasefire after a lot of violence, of course, you get excited and happy. I made a wish as soon as I found out about the ceasefire. I wanted it to be permanent. What was interesting to me was that Afghan security forces and the Taleban hugged each other happily, which showed that both sides are tired of war and want a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire.

3) Did the ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

I was expecting the ceasefire to continue so that our people, who have suffered so much, could be hopeful and live happily and that those Afghans who live hard lives outside Afghanistan could return to their country.

Farhad, government employee, Ghazni city

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

During previous Eids, I was very afraid of the Taleban and it was difficult to move around freely. I couldn’t go to see my parents who live in Jaghatu district. This year, Eid was different because of the government and Taleban ceasefire. So this time, Eid was calm and I returned to my village after a long time to see my parents. Some of my colleagues had the same experience. They could go to their villages without having to worry about security.

2) Do you remember an exact feeling you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you happy, sad, pensive or confused?

When I heard about the ceasefire, I was very happy because it meant we could return to our villages to see our families and relatives. I thought, if the ceasefire really happens, people for the first time would be able to celebrate Eid safely and fortunately this did happen.

3) Did the ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

The ceasefire met not only my expectations, but also a lot of other people’s. People are thirsty for peace. We’ve experienced fighting and violence for such a long time and everyone is tired of this situation. Everyone wants peace. People were happy as they could celebrate Eid in a friendly and calm atmosphere. I know people want the ceasefire to continue, and while the government announced its extension unilaterally, the Taleban didn’t accept it. We expected both sides to agree to the continuation of the ceasefire, but it didn’t happen.

Employee at the Ministry of Energy and Water in Kabul (who asked to not to be named)

1) How was this Eid different for you? Why?

The difference this year was the ceasefire which meant the Taleban could come to the cities to be among the people and celebrate Eid. I wanted to go to Bamyan to visit my family and relatives, but I was sceptical that the Taleban would keep their promise [of not fighting]. I was afraid they would disrupt my journey as I don’t think they’re united or have just one leader.

2) Do you remember any exact feelings you experienced when you first heard about the ceasefire? Did it make you sad, happy, pensive or confused?

When I first heard about the ceasefire on the radio, I was happy and said that people might be able to celebrate Eid peacefully. But I was still concerned about its outcome as I thought the Taleban might enter the city and remain there, causing trouble in the future. I heard on the news that some of the Taleban didn’t return home after Eid.

3) Did the ceasefire meet your expectations? Please explain how and why.

To some extent the ceasefire met my expectations, although only for the three days of Eid. I wasn’t expecting them to extend the ceasefire.

Following his February 2018 offer of peace talks to the Taleban, President Ashraf Ghani proposed that they run as a political party in the upcoming elections. In 2011, his predecessor, Hamed Karzai, had offered something different, that the government would support the Taleban’s recognition by the United Nations Security Council as a “party to the conflict.” The Taleban understood this would give them a place at peace talks. The proposal never came to fruition because of the assassination of High Peace Council chairman Ustad Borhanuddin Rabbani and the death of Taleban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. However, AAN guest author Khalilullah Safi* and AAN’s Thomas Ruttig argue that, for the Taleban, the difference between being seen as a political party or a party to the conflict is crucial – and therefore also crucial for any attempt to find peace through negotiations.

One of the authors, Khalilullah Safi, has worked on the peace process for the United Nations and various NGOs and helped to organise and participated in most of the meetings described in the text. This and follow-up conversations with current and former Taleban officials participating in those meetings have informed this text.

Recognition of the Taleban as a party to the conflict – an idea from 2011

It was during the heyday of US-Taleban talks in 2011 that the offer to recognise the Taleban as a party to the Afghan conflict was first made. Both sides had been in touch since around 2009 (read more here)  and were talking about confidence-building measures. This included exchanging prisoners and opening a Taleban liaison office outside Afghanistan to facilitate further negotiations. Both eventually happened. In 2014, five senior Taleban who had been detained at Guantanamo were exchanged for captured US soldier Bowe Bergdahl (AAN reporting here). They were transferred to Qatar where, in June 2013, a Taleban office had been opened. Although it was swiftly closed, it is here that the movement’s Political Commission still sits (AAN analysis here).

The US-Taleban talks had also made informal contacts between the government in Kabul and the Taleban easier, and it was the Afghan government which took up a Taleban demand for recognition. On 23 July 2011, two high-level officials representing the Afghan government – then still under President Hamed Karzai – and the High Peace Council met with an authorised representative of the Taleban, an advisor to their leadership, in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Both sides came to a verbal agreement that the Afghan government would send an official letter to the United Nations Security Council requesting that the Afghan Taleban would be recognised as an “independent political party to the Afghan conflict” – in the Pashto original: “de Afghanistan pe qaziye ki yau mustaqel siasi jehat.”

While the English translation might be confusing, the Pashto original is very clear: the word used – jehat (جهت)– means a party or ‘side’ in a war or also in a sports match. A different term would have been used for a political party – siasi gund (سیاسي ګوند; see, for example, Article 35 of the Afghan constitution). Several things were understood by the use of the phrase “independent political party to the Afghan conflict.” Firstly, the Taleban would meet on equal terms with what they see as their main adversary in the conflict, ie they would be talking to the United States, and in a later stage with the Afghan government. Secondly, the Taleban were not giving even indirect consent to joining the existing political party system. However, their demand did acknowledge that they were interested in a political solution to the conflict; by this phrase, their adversaries should recognise that the Taleban movement was a player in the conflict and wanted a political solution to it.  The use of the word ‘independent’ possibly hints at and rejects the regular allegation that the Taleban are nothing more than puppets of Pakistan.

The agreement was for the letter to be written in the name of the High Peace Council. The next step would then have been the Taleban starting official negotiations with the Afghan government. The agenda of the talks was to include certain Taleban demands, such as a phased withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan – and a timeline for this – and the revision of the constitution (the current one, they said, was ‘insufficiently Islamic’). (1) In the July 2011 meeting, the Taleban also demanded that the government agree to their opening a political office for negotiations, the deletion of Taleban from the UN sanctions list, the release of all Taleban prisoners in Afghan and US custody and changes to the national security and judicial institutions, including the Attorney General’s Office. In this meeting and in subsequent discussions, the Taleban also brought up the idea of creating an interim government (hukumat-e mu’aqat).

The Taleban also mentioned in the 23 July 2011 meeting that a discussion about the future structure of the government and their possible participation in it would be necessary. However, they did not elaborate further on this.

The talks between Taleban and Kabul continued via a messenger into September 2011, with both sides agreeing to hold another face-to-face meeting in Dubai on 28 September 2011. It was also decided that the agenda for this meeting would include scheduling future negotiations, setting an agenda and looking into the question of whether an international mediator should be proposed.

The 28 September 2011 meeting was to have been between then chairman of the High Peace Council, former president Borhanuddin Rabbani, and a well-known senior Taleban member who had been a top diplomat during the Taleban regime and went on to become a member of their Political Commission. On 20 September 2011, however, Rabbani was assassinated at his home in Kabul by a suicide bomber masquerading as an envoy from the Taleban leadership (see part one of five AAN analyses on this murky case). The Taleban did not take responsibility for or deny the attack, choosing to remain silent about it (AAN analysis here). However, the movement was widely blamed, including by the Afghan intelligence service (AAN analysis here). Talks between the government and the Taleban faltered.

The deputy and de facto leader of the Taleban at that time, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, according to one of the authors’ interlocutors, hoped to continue the unofficial dialogue in spite of the killing of Rabbani. At the same time, Mansur was investigating whether anyone had leaked information about the talks to spoilers who might have carried out the assassination in order to sabotage them. However, all channels to the government remained closed for eight months.

Contacts resumed in the middle of 2012 through messengers. At that time, the Afghan government was ready again to engage with the Taleban. It had found a replacement for Professor Rabbani as the head of the High Peace Council in the person of his son, Salahuddin Rabbani. He was appointed in April 2012. Then education minister Faruq Wardak also assumed a leading role in the process. In these exchanges, both sides agreed, among other points (2) and again verbally, that the UN Security Council should be asked to recognise the Taleban as an ‘independent political party to the conflict’.

On 17 December 2012, a Taleban delegation took up the same proposal during a meeting with an international third-party mediator (3) who was trying to work out a road map towards peace through talks between the Taleban, the Afghan government and the United States. The meeting took place in Dubai again, with a three-member Taleban delegation led by former Taleban health minister Mullah Abbas Akhund (who would also lead the Taleban delegation to the Murree talks in 2015, read AAN analysis here). Abbas had been involved in the Taleban’s Political Commission since 2010 again. He was authorised by the Taleban’s de facto leader Akhtar Mansur as hiskhas astazai(special representative). However, Mansur had not revealed the character of this meeting to the Taleban’s Political Commission as a body, nor to its then director, Sayed Tayeb Agha who had been appointed by Mullah Omar as his special representative and the Taleban’s chief negotiator (AAN portrait here).

Then, within five weeks, developments of fundamental importance took place on the Taleban side. On 22 January 2013, their leader and amir al-momenin (commander of the faithful), Mullah Muhammad Omar, died. Only close relatives and the team handling Omar’s security, who reported to Mansur, knew about it. Mansur had to use all his skills to hide the fact of Omar’s death from other leaders – and particularly from Tayeb Agha. He managed to do this for two years. (4)

This event somewhat delayed further talks, but a second meeting did take place in May 2013 in Doha. The Taleban delegation again confirmed their willingness to have an international mediator appointed and their intention to request through him [sic] that the movement be recognised as a ‘political party to the conflict’. Over the following years, the Taleban brought up this demand repeatedly in meetings with international contacts in meetings described below, but it was never acted on.

There were several factors that came in the way of this. The Taleban office in Doha was opened in June 2013, but quickly closed again; President Karzai had been furious that the group had been allowed to display the trappings of a state, including raising their flag. Although the ‘Doha office’ continued to function as a point of contact, including for Afghan government representatives (read AAN analysis here and here), bilateral relations cooled. Then, after the 2014 presidential election when Ashraf Ghani took power in a National Unity Government, he decided to focus on multi-party formats, reaching out to Pakistan which he saw as the Taleban’s main backer to try to end the war. The Pakistan track failed to make any progress as did various other faltering multi-party formats. (5)

In all of this, the Karzai government’s offer to recognise the Taleban as a party to the conflict was not repeated. In late February 2018, President Ghani offered the Taleban “unconditional” peace talks (AAN analysis here) and followed this up in mid-April by urging them “to act as a political party and participate in the elections” (parliamentary and district elections are scheduled for October 2018). The wording of the second of these two proposals indicates that it was not informed by the preceding discussions over this topic.

Are the Taleban a political party, or do they want to become one?

Whether or not it would be good for the Taleban to function as a political party, now or in future, there is the question of whether they are or could be one. In their own eyes, they do not consider themselves a political party. Originally, before they took power in Kabul in 1996, the Taleban called themselves a movement, De Talebano Islami Ghurdzang, sometimes also De Talebano Islami Tahrik (both mean Islamic Movement of the Taleban). They set themselves up in opposition to the various mujahedin tanzims, the term Afghans use for organisations such as Hezb-e Islami, Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Wahdat which signifies their dual military and political character. The Taleban said they were fighting to end the tanzims ’factional wars which had broken out after their takeover following the collapse of the Soviet-installed Najibullah government in 1992. (6) The Taleban also insisted they were not fighting for political power; at this time, they said they did not even aspire to ruling the country beyond a transitional phase. This changed in 1996.

After they captured the capital, Kabul, the Taleban started calling themselves the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ (dropping the term ‘movement’) and established a government, beginning to use terms such as ‘minister’ for their highest government officials. This was even though most ministers also remained active battlefield commanders. The real abode of power remained in the Leadership Council under amir ul-momenin Mullah Omar who stayed in Kandahar.

In power, they did not allow any political party or group to be openly active. Even former mujahedin factions that had endorsed the Taleban and urged its members to join them, such as Harakat-e Enqelabi-ye Islami-ye Afghanistan (more AAN background here) and Hezb-e Islami (Khales), were not allowed to maintain separate political structures. (7) One could describe Taleban rule as a ‘one-party state’ – but without an organised ruling political party.

After 2001 when the Taleban re-emerged as an insurgent group, they formed shadow government structures, in the form of commissions, which resemble ministries, and provincial and district structures, with district and provincial governors, health, education and other commission representatives. Militarily, the Taleban mainly organise around ‘fronts’ (mahaz), ie commander-driven groups of armed men, with provincial military commanders and a military commission (more about this here).

Whether in power or out, the Taleban have never behaved like a political party. They have never had a structure or modus operandi that resembled one. They are primarily a military organisation and have always, even when in government, prioritised the military struggle over governing or using political means for (re-) gaining power. There is no grass-root membership except in the form of the local military fronts, no political mobilisation, no party congresses and no clearly spelling out of any political programme beyond the Taleban leaders’ regular Eid messages (see for example the earliest detailed Eid message from 2011 and the most recent one, published in June 2018).

The Taleban have also never had an organised political wing, in the way other armed groups have done. In Northern Ireland, for example, Sinn Féin operated as the ‘political face’ of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and ran in elections on both sides of the British-Irish border, while the IRA conducted its ‘armed struggle’ against British rule in the north. Sinn Féin was also one of signatories to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the Troubles. The same pattern can be seen in the Philippines where the Communist Party (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, have repeatedly conducted negotiations with the government via its political arm, the National Democratic Front, a CPP-dominated umbrella group. Yet, this is not the model chosen by the Taleban.

The Taleban even share the widespread antipathy among ‘traditionalist’ Islamic groups – as which the authors of a 2017 AAN report about the evolution of the Taleban’s ideology characterise them in their initial phase – against political parties as such, as they see them splitting the umma, the community of believers. This is not withstanding the fact that some ‘modernist’ Islamists, for example in Egypt, Algeria or Palestine, have set up in parties and contested in elections. Indeed, it was telling that the mentioned AAN report did not find it necessary even to discuss whether the Taleban could be considered a party or not.

All in all, the Taleban have shown less ‘politics’ even then the tanzims showed during their years of armed struggle when, for example, they had ‘party’ offices inside and outside the country and were engaged in coalition-building. (Since the fall of the Taleban regime, they have all registered as political parties and contest elections, although they also maintain the ability to mobilise armed groups at any time.)

The Taleban have shown no desire to organise or participate in elections. Even if they did, it would be questionable how successfully they would compete. Although they currently control or influence up to 70 per cent of the country’s districts, according to a January 2018 BBC study, and up to a third of the country’s population, according to the latest SIGAR quarterly report, they could not claim that this translates one-to-one into political support. They could not assume the entire population in those areas would vote for the Taleban if there were free elections and the movement was ready to participate. While the Taleban likely have some genuine political support, there is also a strong element of coercion in their current control.

It is only individually that a handful of former Taleban officials have run in elections and this was generally earlier on and few won seats. Before the 2005 parliamentary elections, so-called reconciled Taleban were encouraged by the Afghan government and its international allies to run as candidates and also to start a ‘moderate Taleban party’. Former Taleban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmad Mutawakel and Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Abdul Samad Khaksar, for example, both ran as candidates in Kandahar as independents, unsuccessfully so. (8) They refused the party idea. (Khaksar was assassinated in 2006.) In contrast, Mullah Abdul Salam, known as ‘Raketi’ (the Rocketeer), and Mawlawi Muhammad Islam Muhammadi won seats in Zabul and Samangan, respectively; but both were not as close to the Taleban leadership as Mutawakel and Khaksar and Salam was originally Jamiat-e Islami and had retained good links with Jamiat, one of the winning factions in 2001.

Currently, there are Taleban dissidents who continue to view the Taleban as a ‘movement’ (tahrik), and not a state (although they still use the Emarat title) or a government-in-waiting. The dissidents suggest the Taleban should adopt their position in order to secure a role in future Afghanistan. Abdul Wase Mutasem Agha Jan, for example, head of the Taleban’s Political Commission from 2005 to 2007 but a dissident since then and disowned by the Taleban, repeated this view in a Skype discussion with the author on 4 March 2018. In his view, the Emirate failed and was finished in 2001. He thinks the best path for the Taleban now would be to accept a role as a ‘political party’ and join a broad-based Islamic government. (9)

What future political system?

All this, however, does not mean that the ‘mainstream’ Taleban do not have a political project. Gopal and Strick van Linschoten argued in their above-mentioned AAN paper that the Taleban have in fact become more ‘political’ since 2001:

While the movement once typified a ‘traditionalist’ Islam – that is, it sought to articulate and defend a particular conception of Islam found in the southern Pashtun village – it is now, during its insurgency phase, closer to the form of political Islam espoused in the Arab world.

In the absence still of any political programme in writing, the Taleban have laid out somewhat more detailed positions on their preferred future political system in their Eid messages.

From the start of their movement in 1994, the Taleban only stated their political objective for Afghanistan in very general terms: ending the factional wars; the implementation of a ‘true Islamic system’ (waqe’i Islami nezam) based on sharia and; later, after the US-led intervention of 2001 and the downfall of their regime, the ‘re-establishment’ of the country’s ‘independence’ through the withdrawal of all foreign troops. Only after this last prerequisite is fulfilled, they insist, will they be ready to hold talks with the Afghan government and all other ‘influential’ Afghan parties on domestic issues.

Over some years now, the Taleban have also developed the idea of a “prakh-benseta Islami hukumat” (broad-based Islamic government). This was stated, for example, in their already quoted 2011 Eid message. Also, at a conference organised by a French think tank in Chantilly, near Paris, in December 2012, Taleban representatives Mawlawi Shahabuddin Delawar (ambassador in Islamabad and Riyadh during the Taleban regime) and Muhammad Naim Wardak, both members of the Political Commission, read a statement (English translation and AAN analysis here; Pashto original here) that explained for the first time that by ‘broad-based Islamic’ they mean that all “ethnic groups” and “political parties” should have a representation in future political institutions. When asked by international and Afghan interlocutors in this and subsequent meetings held with Taleban how this could be achieved, they gave the following options, all of which would be able to protect and guarantee the “political and civil rights of all Afghans.”

The first option would be an Islamic style body called a shura-yeahl al-hal wa’l-aqd. It can be composed of representatives suggested by various political parties as it was the case in 1992 when various mujahedin tanzims extended the term of then interim president Borhanuddin (see here). The Taleban also used this phrase for the body that chose their current leader in 2016 – this was not a multi-party body (read AAN analysis here) (10) The second option would be a Loya Jirga, a body traditionally convened when decisions about the country’s fate are at stake – see for example the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga (AAN analysis here) and 2003/04 Constitutional Loya Jirga (AAN analysis here) – and widely accepted by Afghans as a decision-making body. (11) Finally, there could be a melli shura (national shura). Interestingly, this Pashto term (shura-ye melli in Dari) is also the official name of the current Afghan parliament (which consists of two chambers, the Wolesi Jirga with its elected MPs and the Meshrano Jirga with its appointed senators and members elected from the provincial and – theoretically only so far – district councils).

However, at a meeting in Doha in 2014 at which one of the authors was present, Taleban representatives from the Doha office said the current parliament was unacceptable for them due to what they said was the dominance of warlords and criminals among its members. They said the prevalence of organised crime and armed political factions over the formal state institutions created in Afghanistan after 2001 delegitimised all the current claims of the Afghan government to guarantee the civil rights of its citizens. Saying this, they mighthave indirectly indicated that they did not reject the parliament as an institution in principle. However, they were not necessarily saying they saw themselves becoming members of a reformed parliament. Asked for elaboration, they were evasive.

In general, the Taleban have claimed in recent conversations with one of the authors during research for this article that they want “reforms” (eslah) of the current governmental institutions which they consider to be “insufficiently Islamic.” This includes revising the constitution. According to Taleban thinking, the drafting would be done exclusively by Afghan religious scholars, jurists and law specialists – (ulama, fuqaha au qanun-pohan) – and without international expertise and excluding anyone they feel is “under foreign influence” – as Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai, then head of the Political Commission and member of the Taleban Leadership Council, put it in a meeting in January 2016 in Doha that had been organised by Pugwash, an international non-governmental organisation involved in mediation between the Taleban and Afghan actors since 2012 (AAN reporting here). (12)

Taleban representatives have also indicated in various meetings that they largely want changes in the personnel of the security and judicial institutions, but do not want to abolish them – to prevent, they argue, a repetition of events “after the fall of Dr Najib’s regime” when the government’s security forces disintegrated and members joined the various competing mujahedin factions. None of our interlocutors among the Taleban have had convincing ideas on what should happen to the current leadership personnel – including ‘the warlords and criminals’ in the words of the Taleban – currently occupying state institutions.

The Taleban’s stated preferred ideas of political pluralism, inclusivity and decision-making is based on the shura principle which, in practice, amounts to a top-down selection of representatives of certain parties for decision-making political institutions by their respective leaderships. (The existing Afghan tanzims function the same way; democratic participation of their often large memberships does not occur in practice very often (see AAN’s recent political parties paper). This has been reiterated again in an article by the spokesman of their political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, for a 2018 international publication (here, p72).

The Taleban statements on wanting a broad-based Islamic government and not wanting to enjoy a monopoly of power themselves (more on which below) do not mean, though, that they have given up the idea of re-establishing an Emirate. Theo Farrell and Michael Semple, in a 2015 paper, describe the Emirate as still the “central Taliban political concept.” Taleban statements, however, show that they do recognise the balance of power on the ground in Afghanistan and the need for some political pragmatism and adaptability. Or at least, they want to pretend that they do.

No claim to a monopoly of power?

As a sign that they recognise they are not the only force in Afghanistan, the Taleban have repeatedly said they do not aim to re-establish a monopoly of power such as they enjoyed in areas of the country under their control during the 1996-2001 Emirate. In the 2011 Eid message, for example, they stated that their ‘Emirate’ “does not have a monopoly-seeking policy.” At the Chantilly conference in December 2012, the Taleban representatives presented the official Taleban position:

… In the future Islamic government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the balance of power or participation in government of by all Afghan parties [they use the Pashto word arkh (اړخ) here, a synonym for jehat, in clear distinction from gund, for ‘political party’] must be [stipulated] in the constitution. […] With the blessing of [the future] constitution, [the] way shall be paved for political power balance and all Afghan parties to participate in the upcoming government.

In Chantilly, the Taleban also reiterated that they would “respect political rivals.” However, they also rejected Kabul’s demand to “join the government” based on the 2004 constitution, saying this would amount to “surrender.” At two later conferences, organised by Pugwash in Doha in May 2015 and January 2016 (see here), Taleban representatives led by Abbas Stanakzai repeated this same position.

Since then, Taleban representatives have repeatedly spoken, in the presence of international, including American, and Afghan interlocutors, and on various occasions, about wanting a “broad-based Islamic government.”

Furthermore, starting from the Chantilly meeting, the Taleban have frequently sought direct interactions with representatives of other Afghan political forces. For example, Political Commission members held side meetings after the May 2015 Pugwash conference in Doha with Mawlawi Atta al-Rahman Salim from Jamiat-e Islami, who is currently serving as one of the deputies in the High Peace Council, Engineer Qutbuddin Helal a senior member of Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan, Assadullah Saadati, MP and representative of Hezb-e-Wahdat (Khalili), Dr Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, former leader of the Afghan Mellat party and now with the New National Front, Haji Rohullah Wakil, leader of the Afghan Salafis, and Sayed Eshaq Gailani leader of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan. They reported that the Taleban had assured them they do not aspire to a monopoly of power, but do want to revise the constitution and establish a “broad based Islamic system.” (13) They said the Taleban even used the word ‘elected’ in connection to this system – seemingly, however, not referring to ‘one person, one vote’ democracy, but to the Islamic shura mechanisms outlined above.

Participation in elections?

This brings us on to what the Taleban say about elections. During a 2016 meeting organised by Pugwash, the Taleban were asked whether power-sharing with other Afghan political parties would mean they would participate in elections. They were evasive in their answer. Delawar cited verse 38 from Sura 42 of the Holy Quran, al-Shura, which is typically referred as their source by proponents of the Islamic shura system: “[God will reward] those who answer the call of their Lord and establish worship, and whose rule [could also be affairs or command] is a matter of counsel among themselves, and who spend of what We have bestowed on them…” Delawar explained that the Taleban “accept elected shuras (muntakhab shuragane) at the national, provincial, district and village level.” It appears that the Taleban see the role of other political forces in their future proposed system as participating in such councils. This idea is, of course, not identical with the current (at least in theory) “one person, one vote” principle.

When Taleban interlocutors were asked for clarification about how elections could be conducted, their answer would be a standard statement that it was “the right of the Afghan nation to choose their political system and the leadership of the country.” This was reiterated to one of the authors again by Abbas Stanekzai when contacted in early 2018.

Women’s political rights

Another political issue about which many would like more detail is what the Taleban’s policy on women is, including education, work and participation in public life. At the 2014 Doha meeting, Taleban representatives said they saw civil rights as including all human rights not in conflict with Islam and that they extended to both men and women. In several meetings with both Afghans and foreigners, members of the Taleban Political Commission admitted they had not observed human rights, women’s rights, freedom of speech or freedom of the media when they ruled the country. They pledged not to repeat these mistakes. They said Afghan women would be able to fully participate in public and political life, becoming ministers, governors, members of shuras or active in trade.

However, they also reiterated their standard qualifier of the need for observing Islamic moral codes for women in accordance to the provisions of the Hanafi interpretation of sharia, eg compulsory veiling of the body except the hands, feet and face, but that in practice they would leave this issue be determined by ‘the traditions’ and ‘the woman’s choice’ (which might contradict each other). On political rights, sharia limitations, they said, would include women not being able to stand as the national leader (president), act as prayer leaders in mosques or adjudicate cases reserved for hududpunishments (prescribed penalties) in sharia courts.

Conclusion: Taleban as ‘Party to the conflict’ or ‘political party’?

The Taleban’s organisational structure is military with some quasi-governmental aspects. It is not that of a political party. This does not mean that they have no political project. Nor does it mean that they would be unable to turn into a party. However, they have been unwilling to do so up till now, first, because they have always prioritised the armed struggle and secondly because their ideas about how the Afghan state and political system should be organised is not based on the ideas of a political parties-based, parliamentarian, one-man/one-woman-one vote system.

From the point of view of the government and for large parts of the political class and population, Ghani’s offer to the Taleban to function as a political party makes perfect sense. To them, the Taleban are one armed faction among many: why not pursue their aims through politics like everyone else does? However, for the Taleban, Ghani’s proposal amounted to asking them to act within the existing legal framework and to become part of the political system they are fighting against and which they have said they want, at least, to substantially ‘reform’. The option of joining the half dozen other tanzims– whom they view as part of the enemy, the opposing ‘party in the conflict’ – does not appeal to them.

Practically, the Taleban must also be surely aware of the fact that political parties formally play only a marginal role in Afghanistan’s political system. Merely participating in elections as a political party would not satisfy their ambition to rule – as shown by their sticking to the Emirate title and related government-in-waiting status. Seats in parliament alone would not guarantee them much influence, as it is often sidelined and circumvented in decision-making. Moreover, no political party-based factions or groups are allowed to operate inside the house. Turning themselves into a political party would make them one among more than 70 others (see recent AAN report about Afghanistan’s political party landscape here), a status they definitely do not see for themselves. Participating in parliamentary elections, for both ideological and practical reasons (ie as a possible route to power) has no appeal to the Taleban. (14)

In the light of all this, including in the light of the Karzai government’s earlier readiness to support a UN recognition of the Taleban as a ‘political party to the conflict’, President Ghani’s latest offer looked like backtracking. The Taleban expected the Kabul government to use the same framework as the Karzai administration did.

For all these reasons, it is impossible to imagine the Taleban taking up Ghani’s offer to function as a political party and participate in the elections in the current political system. They want to be recognised as a ‘party to the conflict’, on a par with the US and – without saying so, as officially the Kabul government is for them just a ‘puppet’ of the Americans – the Afghan government. This role, they believe, gives them the option of playing their military hand, including their still expanding control of territory and population (AAN analysis here), in a future political deal that necessarily would include a sharing of power.

Edited by Kate Clark

 

(*) Khalilullah Safi, from Kama district of Nangarhar, has degrees in agriculture from Kabul University and International Relations from Peshawar University. Since 2003, he has worked as a peace activist in Afghanistan, including as director of the Afghanistan National Youth Organization (2003-04), Peace and National Unity Organization (2007-10) and Peace Research Society (since September 2014). During this period, he was also a consultant on the peace process with the Office of the European Union Special Representative for Afghanistan (2005-06), Public Liaison Officer with the High Peace Council (2011), Political Outreach Officer with UNAMA (2011-14), advisor to the UN Special Representative to the Secretary-General (SRSG) on the peace process (2014-15) and Country Director for Pugwash (January 2016-January 2017). 

(1) For Taleban attitudes, particularly at the lower commander and foot soldier level, on this, also see former AAN colleague Borhan Osman’s 2018 paper for USIP.

(2) The other important point that both sides agreed was that international mediation was required, preferably through the United Nations. They agreed on a shortlist of two former UN envoys as the best candidates. (This role never materialised, though.) The Taleban continued their contacts with the Americans in a separate track through a third country’s mediation, Norway.

(3) In this case, the third-party was Norway again, as became known from chapter 9 of the so-called Godal report, published in Norwegian in 2016 (here) and in English in 2017 (here). Read an AAN analysis of the report here.

(4) A source close to his son, Mawlawi Muhammad Yaqub, told one of the authors that Mullah Omar died in Afghanistan.On 25 January 2013, Akhtar Mansur informed some members of the supreme council of the Taleban about the death of the amir al-momenin and stated that it was the fourth day after his passing. On that day, the participants of the meeting agreed among themselves that the death of Mullah Omar would be kept secret. They deemed this necessary for the unity of the Taleban movement and the morale of Taleban fighters. In consequence, the members of the Taleban Political Commission (which had meanwhile relocated to Doha in Qatar where their office was opened on 13 June 2013 – read AAN analysis here), were kept in the dark about that fact. Tayeb Agha would step down from this position after the death of Mullah Omar became known in 2015, because Mansur had kept it secret from him.

(5) These initiatives included the Murree talks hosted by Pakistan in July 2015, that included Taleban representatives (AAN analysis here), and the Quadrilateral Coordination Group consisting of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China that tried to rekindle direct Kabul-Taleban contacts, which met without Taleban representation (AAN analysis here).

(6) See also Taleban expert Felix Kuehn, in a recent publication exploring ways to “Incremental Peace in Afghanistan” (also the publication’ title, see here, p37):

In contrast to how they were perceived externally as well as by some other Afghan factions, the Taliban did not consider themselves to be party to the civil war of the early 1990s.

Kuehn is co-author, together with Alex Strick van Linschoten, of the acclaimed book, An enemy we created: The myth of the Taliban/Al-Qaeda merger, 1970–2010 (Hurst, 2012).

The publication cited was reviewed by Kate Clark for AAN, here.

(7) Khuddam ul-Furqan – a pre-1978 Islamist group – was able to maintain its own network during the years of the Taleban regime (more about the group in this AAN paper).

(8) Mutawakel received 0.9 per cent and Khaksar 0.1 per cent of the votes in their province.

(9) Others are ready for the Taleban to be recognised as a political party. A source close to Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, the deputy leader of the Taleban splinter group, the so-called ‘High Council of Afghanistan Islamic Emirate’, also known as the ‘Mullah Rasul group’ (background in this AAN analysis), told the author on 4 March 2018 that they would like to be recognised as a political party. The group had started with big ambitions, reflected in its name – namely presenting themselves as the ‘real Taleban’ – but it lost much of its initial strength and does not represent a significant current in the wider Taleban movement anymore.

(10) Shura-ye ahl al-hal wa’l-aqd means, ‘council of those who solve problems and make contracts’. According to some Islamic political theorists in medieval times, such a council would be composed of religious scholars and other influential, pious members of the community who were qualified to choose the best person as leader.

(11) There are, however, different ways to convene a Loya Jirga, and therefore there sometimes is controversy about this, the delegates competencies and the validity of their decisions – whether they are binding or advise only to the convener (see AAN analysis here and here). The 2002 and 2003/04 ones have been convened by the chairman of the subsequent interim and transitional authorities (both times Karzai) on the basis of the 2001 Bonn agreement. The institution of the Loya Jirga has also been enshrined in Afghan constitutions since 1923, including in the current one.

(12) Officially called the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, it is an academic network that is engaged in what it calls “dialogue across divides,” worldwide.It won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995.

(13) A five-member Taleban delegation consisting of Mawlawi Shahabuddin Delawar, Mawlawi Abdul Salam Hanafi, Mawlawi Nek Muhammad, Shaikh Sayed Rasul Halim and Muhammad Sohail Shahin, also met a group of individual, non-party Afghan politicians in Dubai at least twice between July 2015 and January 2016 in meetings organised by the Peace Research Society, a Kabul-based civil society organisation, and the Pugwash Conference. The politicians’ group included Nangarhar MP Mirwais Yasini, former minister of mines and industries Wahidullah Shahrani and President Ghani’s uncle Dr Abdul Qayyum Kuchai. There were also meetings with Muhammad Omar Daudzai, a former interior minister. The Taleban have been in regular contact with these politicians since that time. (Daudzai confirmed to one of the authors in January 2018 that he also still has contact with the Doha based political office of the Taleban.)

(14) The Taleban might also be aware of the recent experience of the FARC guerrilla in Colombia which entered into a peace agreement, laid down arms and turned itself into a political party that only received a marginal number of votes in the recent parliamentary elections.

 

 

In a recent television appearance, the Turkish Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, said that 15,000 Afghans have been sent back home from Turkey. While it is likely that this number has been exaggerated, there is no doubt that in April and May of 2018, thousands of Afghan migrants were sent back on charter flights from Turkey to Kabul. This is the Turkish government’s response after a 400 per cent increase in arrivals of Afghan migrants to Turkey during the first quarter of 2018. In early April of this year, the first charter flight carrying Afghans back to Kabul flew out of Erzurum, a city in eastern Anatolia that has become the centre of these returns. AAN’s guest author Amy Pitonak visited Erzurum to find out first-hand about the situation for Afghans there.

Afghans make up the second largest group of protection seekers in Turkey, totalling around 157,010 people. The largest displaced group remains Syrians who number approximately 3.5 million. However, they are classed under the ‘temporary protection regime’, rather than the “international protection regime” which encompasses all non-Syrian protection seekers. This number of Afghan protection seekers consists only of those who have managed to register in Turkey and maintain that status throughout their stay. It is likely that there are thousands more Afghans in Turkey who do not fall into the category of protection seekers (1). The Turkish Directorate General of Migration Management says 46,495 undocumented Afghan migrants have been apprehended between 1 January 2018 and early June 2018. Although this count does not specify how many of these are new arrivals, it is slightly more than the 45,259 migrants for the entire year of 2017 (for more detailed statistics on undocumented migration into Turkey, see here). The province of Erzurum in northeast Turkey has seen particularly levels of Afghan transit migration, given its locational on the migration routes to Western Turkey. The HurriyetDaily News has quoted government officials saying that over 20,000 undocumented Afghan migrants crossed through Erzurum in the first three months of 2018.

In April 2018, the Turkish government increased its efforts to stem Afghan migration across the Iranian border. These efforts began in Erzurum during the first week of April, after a group of Afghan officials arrived, at the Turkish government’s behest, having agreed to provide travel documents to Afghans detained in Erzurum’s removal centres so that they could be returned to Afghanistan. In previous years the Afghan government had been unwilling to readily provide such documents (see here). This visit only concerned the removal centres in Erzurum, although, judging by later deportations from other provinces, it is likely that the question of travel documents was raised in these locations as well. While removal efforts have spanned the whole of Turkey, Erzurum has witnessed the largest number of Afghans deported. Charter flights out of Erzurum have brought approximately 2,334 people back to Afghanistan (2).

The arrival of the Afghan officials to Erzurum was followed by high-level bilateral visits between Turkey and Afghanistan. On 8 April 2018, the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said, during a joint-press conference with the Afghan Chief Executive, Adbullah Abdullah, that the two countries “have reached an agreement on the matter of sending back those who arrive illegally.” (see here). However, there does not appear to be a formal readmission agreement between the two countries, and the Afghan government themselves seem conflicted as to what the agreement entails, or if any agreement exists at all. Hafiz Ahmad Mikhail, the media adviser for the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, has said that his ministry had not been consulted about the deportations, and that no such agreement had been reached with Turkey (see here, condensed English version here).

This dispatch aims to examine the conditions in Erzurum given its importance as a place of transit, detention, and now deportation of Afghan migrants. It will then examine the deportations of Afghans on a national level, the laws surrounding detention and deportation in Turkey, and the possible motivations for the Turkish government’s sudden and widely publicised deportation initiative.

Reaching Erzurum

Erzurum has been a city of migration and transit for over a millennium. Located 2,000 meters above sea level on the Palandöken Mountains, it was a major stopping point for voyagers traveling from Iran to Western Anatolia on the Silk Road (3). In modern times, it has become a point of transit for Afghans who have crossed into Turkey from Iran. Erzurum’s authorities largely tolerated this movement, up until March of 2018.

In order to reach Turkey, most Afghans cross over from Iran by foot. It is the final stretch of a journey that spans Afghanistan, sometimes Pakistan, and Iran into Turkey, with Europe as the preferred final destination. Afghans coming into Turkey from Iran most often cross into Iğdır, Ağrı, or Van provinces and, to a lesser extent, the eastern portion of Hakkari province. It is often in these provinces that they meet up with smugglers who will take them further into Turkey. The district of Doğubeyazit in Ağrı, which sits on the Gürbulak border gate with Iran, is a known hotspot for smugglers, not only of migrants, but also cigarettes and narcotics. There are claims that Iranian border guards make no attempts to prevent undocumented migration into Turkey, with one Afghan migrant telling Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency that an Iranian border guard let up to 500 migrants pass in one night (see here). From these provinces, many continue approximately 300 kilometres westward into Erzurum (4). Those who are unable to find smugglers to take them by vehicle, or who are abandoned by smugglers early on in their journey, must walk.

The head of the Erzurum Development Foundation, Erdal Güzel, says that these flows into Erzurum started in 2010 and 2011. They were initially composed almost exclusively of Afghan and Iranian migrants. Over the past few months, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of Afghan arrivals, alongside Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who had not previously been seen in large numbers. The Human Rights Association of Turkey identified most of the Afghans crossing through Erzurum in 2018 as young men between the ages of 12-25. However, there are also families and much more rarely, single women.

Güzel offers four explanations for this increase in arrivals: the end of a harsh winter in Turkey’s northeast, where temperatures reached minus 21.3 degrees Celsius in Erzurum this year; Erzurum’s reputation for having locals who are friendly towards migrants; authorities who were, until recently, willing to allow transit migrants to continue on their way;and, perhaps most importantly, a desire to enter Turkey before a 144 kilometre border wall with Iran is completed that spans the Turkish provinces of Ağrı and Iğdır. The Minister of the Interior said in May that the Iğdır portion of the wall is almost finished, with the Ağrı section 50% completed, and projected due to be finished by September 2018.

The instability of Turkey’s migration policies also has created a perception amongst potential migrants that Turkey is a safe transit country. Many of them saw the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speeches, in which he said refugees were welcome in his country, or heard from family and friends that local authorities had a capture-and-release approach to undocumented migrants. This has led to some migrants coming to Turkey with high expectations, only to have those expectations shattered if they are arrested and told they have the choice of remaining in detention or being sent back. This disappointment is amplified by the fact that many pay large amounts of money to get into Turkey from Iran. A report by the Erzurum branch of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD) placed the amount paid between 800 and 1,100 euros.

Erzurum also houses its own population of Afghan residents. The estimates vary widely regarding their numbers.  Güzel, head of the Erzurum Development Foundation, places their number at around 400 families. The Erzurum IHD’s migration commission gave a higher estimate of around 750 families. Güzel says that many of the Afghans currently residing in Erzurum were those who arrived in prior years and did not have enough money to continue their journey onward to Europe, and who choose instead to apply for international protection. They became used to living in Erzurum, and started learning the language and sending their children to school. Güzel says that the cultural similarities between Afghans and locals help in their integration, saying that the local population comprises largely conservative Muslims who feel it is their duty to accept refugees.

In Erzurum, where international organisations have less of a presence than in larger cities, local civil society groups, such as Ebru Ishak and the Erzurum Development Foundation, work to provide protection seekers with food, medicine and clothing (5). However, these civil society groups are forced to centre their work around Erzurum’s long-term population of Afghan migrants. In previous years, the Erzurum Development Foundation and Ebru Ishak were able to provide support for Afghans who were simply passing through, but now the demand has greatly exceeded their capacity. A member of the Erzurum IHD’s migration commission also says that, while these groups are doing their best to provide for Afghan migrants in the province, they are unable to fully address their socio-economic difficulties. The fact that there is no large-scale and comprehensive aid mechanism, paired with the migrants’ lack of knowledge of available resources and rights, means that living conditions remain difficult for a large number of Afghans, who often live in shanty-houses outside of the city.

Removal Centres and Deportations

Erzurum has two removal centres, or centres for foreigners placed under administrative detention, located in Aşkale. This is a small district with a population of around 22,000 people located an hour away from the city centre. Each centre has a capacity of 750 people, making them the largest in Turkey. Despite their size, they were so overcrowded this year that detainees had to be housed in gyms. The creation of these two centres was funded through the EU’s pre-accession funding (IPA funds). Construction began in 2011 and the centre became operational in 2015 (see here). These funds also contributed to the construction of centres in five other cities (6).

Prior to April 2018, Erzurum’s removal centres were rather arbitrary in how they dealt with undocumented migrants. While some were released within days to other cities, others were held for months on end, with no indication of when they would be released. However, starting in March until mid-May, no undocumented single Afghan migrant caught in Erzurum was allowed to go free. Single Afghan women have been treated the same as single men. Families, minors and pregnant women are allowed to go to other satellite cities in Turkey, largely of their choosing, or special accommodation centres in the case of unaccompanied minors with no relatives in Turkey.

In previous years, human rights groups have issued numerous reports highlighting human rights abuses at Aşkale. A joint report from 2016 by the Turkish migrant rights organisation, Mülteci-Der,andthe German ProAsylum organisation quoted a migrant who described the centre as: ” [Erzurum centre] was really difficult. The treatment was really bad. The conditions too…” (see here). In 2016, the Turkish Bar Association’s Human Rights Centre published a report in which they detailed instances of violence within the Aşkale centre, including severe beatings during an incident of detainee unrest, and the suspicious death of a Syrian detainee. Both these incidents occurred in 2015 (see full report here). An Amnesty International report in 2015, and an Asylum Information Database (AIDA) report from 2017 (please see here and here) document detainees having restricted access to lawyers, and an inability to contact their families. Güzel, of the Erzurum Development Foundation, points to overcrowding as the main source of problems inside the removal centres. Çorbatır agreed “as counts rise, so do the problems”. However, Çorbatır also added that, while conditions in the centres have improved over the past few years, these improvements provide only half of what is necessary. While European countries are keen to provide material support, there is also a need for personnel training and monitoring mechanisms. However, AAN inquiries found that the 2018 situation in the Erzurum centre has not improved for Afghans, with verbal and physical abuse being reported.

Often, Afghans who had stayed in the Erzurum centre for months on end had requested to be sent back. However, the Afghan government initially refused to provide travel documents for them, requesting proof that they actually wanted to be sent back. The matter of travel documents was resolved after an Afghan delegation visited Erzurum in early April 2018, and agreed to provide travel documents more readily. Several sources, including the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM), say that the Afghan consulate continues to confirm that every Afghan sent back from Turkey did indeed request to return before providing travel documentation. According to ASAM, those who refuse are now sent to the Düziçi camp, in the Southern province of Osmaniye, where they are held while awaiting further developments on their case.

According to Turkish law, individuals cannot be held in removal centres longer than a year. They are not always informed of this fact while in detention. Others may not be aware that they can apply for asylum through the UNHCR and its local implementing partner, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum-seekers and Migrants (ASAM).  ASAM says that it informs the detainees who are able to make contact with them of their ability to apply for international protection from within the removal centre. It also notifies them of their right to appeal their detention and assists them in requesting legal aid in this matter. However, many Afghans may not even be aware of the existence of ASAM. Also, there is no set mechanism in place that would ensure that detainees are able to consult with them.

Amnesty International, in its urgent appeal from April 2018, reported that Afghans in the Düziçicamp had been coerced into signing return documents that are only in Turkish. There have also been cases of coerced signing of the return documents from the removal centres at Erzurum. In regards to return documents only being provided in Turkish, migration professionals in Turkey who AAN spoke to said that this was not the case in Erzurum, and did not see why it would occur in other camps. They described the standard operating procedure as providing documents in whichever language (usually Dari or Pashto) is spoken by the signatory, alongside a translator who reads the forms out loud. The Afghan government’s statement also corresponds to this. The Afghan Consul General in Istanbul, Zakaria Barakzai,said that the documents given to the Afghans were in Pashto, Dari and English. He emphasized that all returns were voluntary, saying that Amnesty’s report “does not reflect reality” (see here).

It is likely that, due to the signing of these forms, the Turkish government is able to classify and qualify these returns as ‘voluntary’. However, given the conditions in the centre, and detainee’s lack of information regarding their rights, it is questionable how ‘voluntary’ these returns actually are. Hafiz Ahmed Mikhail, the media adviser for the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, echoed this sentiment, said “They have apparently signed papers for a voluntary return, but they were kept in camps where the situation pushed them to choose to come home” (see here). Ali Hekmet, the chairman of an Afghan refugee rights association in Turkey, said in an interview in April with Deutsche Welle that he did not believe the cases of the first wave of deportees had been examined, considering the size and speed of the deportations (see here).

Although the largest numbers of deportations were carried out from Erzurum, this location is not the only city from which Afghans have been deported. Based on announcements from the Directorate General of Migration Management on their official twitter account and to the press during April and May 2018, 1,326 Afghans were deported from the provinces of Ağrı, Izmir and Gaziantep (7),in addition to the 2,334 deported from Erzurum. Batman’s Provincial General of Migration Management also has said that 500 Afghans had been deported from there during the period from November 2017 to the end of April 2018, although it was not specified whether any of these deportations were framed under the Turkish government’s most recent initiative. The IOM records 1,142 Afghans being returned from Turkey through its Assisted Voluntary Return Program during the period 1 January 2018 to 2 June 2018, and said that it is not handling the caseload of the thousands of other Afghan deportees. However, it is unclear as to whether the Turkish authorities are including this number in their count.

Operations targeting undocumented migrants are also being carried out in provinces across Turkey. Operations in provinces that are considered to be ‘gateways’ to Europe tend to be large-scale sweeps in which undocumented Afghans are caught up alongside many other nationalities (such as an operation in Edirne that apprehended 571 people, see here). Others, such as a raid in Istanbul’s Beykoz district, which has been dubbed a “market for Afghan workers”, seem to be particularly focused on Afghans (see here). Several Afghans in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu district, which also has a large population of Afghan immigrants, told AAN that police had been performing checks at workplaces, and asking Afghan workers to sign documents, give their fingerprints, and have their photos taken.

It is quite possible that the volume of returns in April and May 2018 has been exaggerated. The IOM in Afghanistan did not confirm the official number of 6,800 given by the Turkish government for the first week of the deportations in April. The total number of people deported, based on announcements by the Directorate General of Migration Management (3,670) is also far below the number given by the Ministry of the Interior. Moreover, while Turkey’s Migration Administration was quite public with its deportations during April and the beginning of May, reports of 50-60 Afghans being released from the Aşkaleremoval centrein mid-May may be a sign that Erzurum’s migration authorities are resuming their old practices of releasing undocumented migrants to other cities.

While this wave of deportations appears to be the largest, and most heavily publicised, it should be also noted that Turkey has been apprehending and deporting undocumented Afghan migrants for years. A notable example of this is Amnesty International’s report that 30 Afghan asylum seekers were sent back to Afghanistan directly after the signing of the EU-Turkey deal (see here). However, there are countless reports in Turkish media of undocumented Afghan migrants being arrested in previous years. These articles generally stated that the apprehended migrants “will be” deported. Since there is no effective monitoring system in place, there is no way of knowing whether the deportation procedures were actually carried out for these individuals.

Legal and Policy Framework

Due to Turkey’s application of the geographical limitation to the 1951 Geneva Convention, which stipulates that only those fleeing from “events occurring in Europe” can become refugees, protection seekers from non-European countries cannot be classified as refugees per se (see this AAN analysis here). Rather, they are classed under conditional forms of protection. While Syrians are classified under a separate “temporary protection” regime, other nationalities who are unable to return to their home country due to a fear of persecution, indiscriminate violence, torture, or other degrading treatment have the right to apply for ‘international protection status’. This status grants one the right to stay in Turkey, while awaiting transfer to a third country. This wait can take years, and those who cannot find a third country willing to take them may end up staying in Turkey indefinitely, with no right to residence status beyond that of international protection. Third country resettlements for Afghan protection seekers are decreasing: in 2016, 495 Afghans were resettled from Turkey, while in 2017, that number dropped to 213 Afghans. For both years, the US and the UK were the only two countries to take in Afghan protection seekers from Turkey. For the first quarter of 2018, 27 Afghans were resettled; 23 to the US and four to Canada.

Despite Turkey’s application of the geographical limitation, the principle of non-refoulement is still recognized in Turkish law. Article 4 of Turkey’s Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) states that no one “shall be returned to a place where he or she may be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment or, where his/her life or freedom would be threatened on account of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Article 63 of this law also states that those facing serious threat owning to violence or conflict in their country may avail themselves of subsidiary protection.  Applicants or beneficiaries of international protection are not to be subjected to removal decisions unless they are found to be a threat to national security, or are convicted for an offense against public order. Moreover, the cases of all foreigners subject to removal proceedings must be examined individually to determine whether or not they meet the criteria for international protection prior to deportation, as per Article 4(2) of the Implementation Regulation of the LFIP. Judging by the size and speed of Turkey’s deportations of Afghan migrants, numbering at the very least 3,670 between 8 April and 5 May 2018, it is doubtful that Turkish authorities were able to comprehensively examine the files of all deportees.

In relation to detention, Article 57 (2) of the LFIP states that foreigners subject to a removal decision may be placed in administrative detention if they are a flight risk, have breached entry or exit rules, have used fake documents, have not left Turkey, and/or pose a security or health threat. The case of those in administrative detention is to be reviewed regularly, and is to be immediately suspended if no longer necessary. Administrative detention can be extended for a maximum length of one year, and detained foreigners have the right to appeal, with free legal counsel to be provided for those unable to pay for an attorney. However, Article 96(7) of the Implementation Regulation on the LFIP states that those who apply for international protection while already in administrative detention will continue to be detained on the basis of Article 57. (8) Since the decisions regarding whether or not to place and keep a foreigner in detention is largely up to the discretion of a province’s migration authority, the application of the laws governing detention varies between provinces, and even amongst implementing officials, as evidenced by the uneven application of detention procedures in Erzurum.

Turkey has no formal readmission agreement with Afghanistan, such as those that Turkey has entered into with Ukraine, Nigeria, and several other countries. During his visit to Afghanistan on 8 April 2018, following the arrival of a delegation of Afghan officials to Erzurum, the Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yıldırım, emphasized that Turkey and Afghanistan’s cooperation in regards to the question of refugees was nothing new as it dated back to 2015 and even before. Indeed, Turkey and Afghanistan signed the ‘Strategic Cooperation and Friendship’ agreement in October of 2014, whose second article on security mentions cooperation in the areas of undocumented migration and border control (see full text of agreement here). Thus, the ‘agreement’ that Yıldırımannounced as having reached with Afghanistanmay simply be applying the second article of the 2014 agreement with renewed vigour. It is also possible that Yıldırım was referring to the proposal of a readmission agreement, rather than a signature; the EU’s Turkey Report, dated April 17th 2018, says that a draft proposal for a readmission agreement had been submitted to Afghanistan, but Turkey was still awaiting a response.

Motivations behind the Returns

Given the clarity of Turkey’s laws against refoulement, one may wonder why the Turkish government, who often touts its treatment of migrants as more humanitarian than that of the West, would be so vocal about mass deportations to one of the world’s most conflict stricken countries. There are three possible answers to this: the sudden media storm surrounding the arrival of Afghans from Iran; the upcoming elections on 24 June 2018; and, a desire to extract more funding from the EU.

The outcry in the media over the arrival of Afghan migrants may have pushed the Turkish government to show it was taking action on the issue. After a widely circulated article by CNN Turk published on 30 March 2018 quoted Erdal Güzel, of the Erzurum Development Foundation, as saying that “1.5 million people were waiting to enter Turkey”, media reactions to Afghan migrants in Turkey blossomed into hysteria. Articles emerged qualifying Afghan migration into the country as a “great danger”, as “waves” coming into the country, and as an “explosion of illegal migration”. While Güzel stood by this 1.5 million number in his conversations with me, he did say that the subsequent reporting on it was over-the-top. However, Selin Unal, the UNHCR’s Turkey spokesperson, said that this number could not be confirmed.

The snap elections for 24 June 2018,  called on 18 April  may also have contributed to the return decisions. It is likely that the current government, led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) wished to show itself as tough on migration prior to these elections amidst a domestic atmosphere that is increasingly hostile to migration, and an opposition that has often criticized the AKP for its “soft” migration policies. Three days prior to Prime Minister Yıldırım’s visit to Afghanistan, an MP for the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Fikri Sağlar, spoke in parliament on the dangers of the AKP’s open-door policy towards refugees, adding that the public needed to be informed of the mechanisms behind the Erzurum Migration Administration’s policy of giving Afghan migrants travel documents and sending them to other provinces. The Iyi party, another opposition party seen as being able to attract votes away from the AKP, has also made combatting undocumented migration part of its election platform. It is likely that the current government feared that any inaction on the issue of undocumented Afghan migration would provide easy fodder for the opposition, and decided to take drastic, and public, measures. Undocumented migration features heavily in the AKP’s election manifesto, including mention of plans for a “national voluntary return mechanism”.

The deportations may also be a way for Turkey to pressure the EU for more funding to combat undocumented migration. Interior Minister Soylu addressed Europe in a recent speech, pointing out that migration from Turkey to Greece had fell from 8,500 a day to 61, and saying “If you want, we can open the doors….we are doing you a favour-acknowledge it” (see here). In their speeches, Turkish officials have also exaggerated the increase in Afghan migration, possibly in an attempt to magnify the perceived effects of the deportations. European countries have not shied away from providing Turkey with aid to prevent undocumented migrants from reaching their borders. Projects that were recorded as ongoing at the end of 2017 included 60 million Euros in IPA funds to meet the needs of returnees to Turkey under the EU-Turkey deal and other undocumented migrants apprehended in Turkey. The UK also allotted around 1,3 million pounds for projects relating to voluntary returns, combatting undocumented migration, and maintaining removal centres. The mass return of Afghans demonstrates that Turkey is putting these funds to use, while also implying that a new wave of migrants could reach Europe if the funding is cut (for in-depth analyses on Afghan migration to Europe see this AAN thematic dossier) .

‘Voluntary returns’ as an effective deterrent?

The Afghan and Turkish governments’ lack of transparency on return procedures, number of returnees, and existence of an agreement makes independent monitoring of the situation nearly impossible. This lack of transparency also enables the arbitrary application of Turkish laws on detention and deportation. Obscuring the return mechanism and number of returnees may be intentional, as it provides the Turkish government with a means of touting its number of returns to a domestic audience, but without facing possible repercussions for unlawful deportations, while also enabling the Afghan government to avoid domestic and international condemnation for facilitating these returns.

The European Union also should reconsider funding removal centres that have questionable human rights records, as they are potentially sending people who meet the criteria for protection status back to danger. Several Turkish migration researchers and humanitarian workers told AAN that these returns implicitly suit the EU’s interests by preventing Afghan migrants from reaching Europe via land and sea routes from Western Turkey. Humanitarian workers in Erzurum also questioned why a community in one of Turkey’s poorest regions was expected to accommodate thousands of Afghan migrants with what they perceive as limited support in terms of aid from the EU, when the EU is unwilling to resettle even a portion of these migrants on its own territory.

Erdal Güzel says that no matter what measures are put into place, Afghans will still find a way to come to Turkey, considering the immeasurable risks they have already proven willing to take. Deportees on one of the flights from Erzurum seemed to confirm this, telling reporters that “We will return, either illegally or with a passport.” (see here).  If this is proven to be true, it is likely that Erzurum will remain a point of transit, and sometimes refuge, for Afghans who cross into Turkey from the Iranian border. In his pamphlet The Fall of Kars, Karl Marx wrote that Erzurum is the key to Istanbul. It appears that recent developments are giving a new meaning to this statement; we might now say that that Erzurum is the key to Europe as well.

 

 

(1) One member of parliament from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has said that there are approximately 200,000 Afghans living in Istanbul alone, while Yaşar Yıldız, President of the Afghan Turk Foundation, places the total number of Afghans in Turkey at close to 450,000.

(2) Not all of the people on these flights were detained in Erzurum; detainees from Ağrıand Van were also brought to Erzurum in order to be deported, as Erzurum’s airport is bigger.

(3) Erzurum was also a strategic city during the Russian-Ottoman wars, which, themselves, created major population movements to and from the region.  It also witnessed a massive exodus of Armenians in 1915-1916 during what most of the international community calls the Armenian genocide, but which locals insist was a period of mutual violence.

(4) While Erzurum is the primary point of transit for those crossing from Ağrı and Iğdır, some may travel through the Black Sea provinces.  Afghans crossing through from Van also frequently cross through Erzurum. However, others have continued on the Muş-Bitlis highway further south. Those who crossed through from Hakkari may travel northward towards Van before going west, or far more rarely, continue traveling through Turkey’s southern provinces.

(5) Ebru Ishak, which provides daily hot meals, as well as a supply of dry goods and bread, feeds around 600 people a day, the majority of them Afghan and Iranian migrants. They provide food at a centre for under-age migrants in Erzurum, which houses around 200 people. The Erzurum Development Foundation also provides basic goods to migrants in need. It is also trying to expand its efforts to get young protection seekers into university, and is currently providing university test preparation to a group of Afghan students.

(6) The other centres built with EU funding are in Gaziantep, Van, Kayseri, Izmir, and Kırklareli.Although six of the seven centres were meant to be ‘reception’ rather than ‘removal’ centres, Metin Çorbatır of IGAM, an independent research centre focusing on migration and asylum in Turkey, says that all seven have been turned into removal centres now. There are a total of 18 removal centres in Turkey, with a total capacity of 8,276 people, alongside the Düziçi container camp, which has a capacity of 4,000 and is now being used as a removal centre. There are also plans to build another removal centre atIğdıraimed at stemming Afghan migration flows. The Aşkaleremoval centres’ operations are currently funded through a combination of EU funds, and funds from individual countries, such as Holland, or the UK, some of which are channelled through the IOM as funds for “capacity building”.

(7) In April 2018, 227 Afghans were deported from Ağrı, and 324 from Izmir; in May, 324 Afghans were deported from Izmir, and 451 from Gaziantep.

(8) Rather than the Article 68 of the LFIP, which states that international protection applicants are not to be placed in detention except under exceptional circumstances, and this is not to exceed thirty days