AFGHANISTAN: The Elderly Wait

. LONDON, England / BBC News / Day in Pictures / November 5, 2009 An elderly shoe cleaner reads a book as he waits for business in Kabul, Afghanistan[rc] © BBC MMIX

AFGHANISTAN: Taliban murder Afghan female rights activist Sitara Achakzai

. LONDON, England /The Independent / News / Asia / April 12, 2009 By Jerome Starkey in Kabul Taliban gunmen murdered one of Afghanistan’s leading female rights activists yesterday, as she stood outside her home. In the latest blow against women’s rights, two men on a motorbike shot Sitara Achakzai in the southern city of Kandahar. Officials said the attack happened in broad daylight. The Taliban have claimed responsibility. Friends said Mrs Achakzai was returning from a provincial council meeting; her assassins were lying in wait nearby. “This cold-blooded assassination puts in question the direction that Afghanistan is heading,” warned Wenny Kusuma, the director of the United Nations Development fund for Women in Afghanistan. “There is no respect for the rule of law.” Legislator Sitara Achikzai was in her 50s. Photo: AFP Earlier this year Mrs Achakzai was instrumental in organizing a nationwide sit-in of more than 11,000 women, in seven provinces. The women ‘prayed for peace’ to mark International Women’s Day. Her death has sent shockwaves through Afghanistan’s human rights community. It comes after Mrs Achakzai suffered shrapnel wounds to her face in a Taliban suicide attack on Kandahar’s provincial council building that left 13 dead a fortnight ago. Yesterday was the first time she had returned there since. A friend said she went to say farewell: frightened for her safety she was to leave Afghanistan on May 1. “She had a ticket to leave,” said a close friend and colleague in Kandahar, who asked not to be named. “She was going to take a few months to see what happened, to see whether things get better or worse.” Mrs Achakzai was living in Germany until 2004, but decided to come back and serve Afghanistan with her husband, who taught chemistry in Kandahar University, the friend said. President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali is the head of the council. The Taliban have offered 200,000 Pakistani rupees, around £1,700, to anyone who murders a councillor. The murder comes just days after President Hamid Karzai was forced to order a review of new legislation which the UN said legalised rape. Fury over the law, which President Barack Obama called “abhorrent,” highlighted the desperate state of women’s rights in Afghanistan. In September last year, Afghanistan’s most prominent female police officer, Lt-Col Malalai Kakar, was shot in a similar attack in Kandahar. The Taliban also claimed responsibility. © independent.co.uk

AFGHANISTAN: Outrage over legalised oppression of shiite women

. Western Outrage over Discriminatory Afghan Law Women have long been considered second-class citizens in Afghanistan, but their situation became even worse under the Islamist Taliban. NATO has said that one of the aims of its mission in Afghanistan is that of improving the lot of women. AP BERLIN, Germany / Spiegel International / April 3, 2009 By Matthias Gebauer and Shoib Najafizada A new law signed by President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan requires Shiite women to ask their husband's permission before leaving the home and forces them to have sexual intercourse. The West is outraged, and German politicians are mulling restrictions in development aid. It was only recently that Afghan President Hamid Karzai placed his signature under a new law pertaining to Shiite families in Afghanistan. But it didn't take long for a storm of protest to begin washing over Kabul. Human rights activists say the new law grants even fewer rights to women than when the Islamist Taliban held sway. And in the West, more and more heads have begun shaking in disbelief. The US and Canada, in particular, are putting pressure on Karzai as a result of the law with other NATO member-states following suit. As intense as the frustration has become, news of the new law passed in Kabul was slow to arrive in the West. Click to continue © SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009

AFGHANISTAN: It's International Women's Day, here too!

. Afghan women wear blue scarves to symbolise justice during International Women's Day. Source: The First Post, London

AFGHANISTAN: I fled the secret police

. LONDON, England / The Guardian / Life & Style / First Person / January 23, 2009 When her husband defied Afghanistan's Soviet-backed regime once too often, Shabibi Shah had to lead her family on foot to safety in Pakistan Shah ... 'For 15 days we walked over mud, mountain and through rivers'. Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian I was born in the city of Kabul in 1947. Growing up there in the 50s and 60s was a good time to be in Afghanistan. Young people, men and women, were encouraged to get an education, and after school I went to Kabul University. There I met Zafar, a fellow journalism student. We married and Zafar worked as an independent political journalist, while I became a teacher. He spent three years studying in America, but when he returned in 1976 he was concerned about our country's political situation and the growing power of the communist party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). In 1978 the PDPA seized control in a violent coup. They took over the ministry of defence, bombed the royal palace and killed the president, his family and bodyguards. We were at home when the bombing started. My five-year-old daughter, Parissa, fell off her chair at the first explosion, hitting her head on the floor. It went on for hours until the evening sky was filled with smoke. There was a short announcement broadcast by the PDPA, but we had no idea what had happened or how our lives would change. Religious leaders and politicians were the first to be imprisoned and killed. Television and radio were brought under communist control, the free press was banned and government propaganda took over. Suddenly it felt as though every word we uttered risked being heard by a spy. We didn't even feel able to talk freely in our own homes. Our oldest boy, Yama, was 10 and we worried that he would unwittingly pass on what we said to his cousin, a member of a communist youth group. Ordinary people were accused of being enemies of the state and gradually people stopped going to the mosque for fear of being labelled anti-government. Those first few years were terrifying. People disappeared from our block of flats and no one knew if they had been taken or had run away. One night, two uniformed men came to take my father's cousin for questioning. An honest man with no knowledge of politics, he went with them readily, not even putting on a jacket or shoes. He never returned and although his desperate sons searched all the prisons we still don't know what happened. A good friend and teacher at my school had no male relatives left - all of them were in prison. My husband was now working for the Libyan embassy as a translator but, unable to tolerate the new repressive regime, he continued to write against the government, secretly distributing his work among friends and acquaintances. Realising that he could be a target in Kabul, Zafar found work in a small town in northern Afghanistan. There he was secretly taped talking against the government with a few colleagues. Communist supporters tried to blackmail him with the tape, and when he refused to pay, he was tied to his bed and beaten, losing four of his teeth for his careless words. He returned to Kabul and, despite my pleas, continued to write. An argument with Russian police saw him imprisoned for three nights by the KHAD [the Soviet-controlled secret police] and when he returned he was restless and incapable of rational conversation. He suffered a mental breakdown and spent two months in a hospital ward. Afterwards he took a job with the Palestinian embassy, but his writing eventually ended up in the wrong hands and landed him in prison for eight months. It is considered improper in Afghanistan for women to visit prisoners, but when I found out, I had to see him. The prison was an overcrowded, filthy place that stank of urine. In a desperate bid to get him out, I went from office to office, bribing anyone I thought could help. The government was in chaos and I couldn't find a lawyer to represent him. After months of getting nowhere, I wrote a letter directly to the minister of the interior, begging for Zafar's release. Two weeks later, I found myself face to face with the minister himself. He knew Zafar had been a well-respected journalist and promised to help. Zafar's case came to court a few weeks later and he was expected to defend himself. I was allowed to attend and was the only woman in the room. When it came to Zafar's time to stand up and read his defence paper, he was agitated and after a couple of sentences started to laugh irrationally. In desperation, I stood up and asked to read it for him. It was unheard of for an Afghan woman to defend a man in court, but I took the paper from Zafar's hand and began. I had never seen the paper before and the legal terms were unfamiliar. I could hear my voice echoing round the silent courtroom but couldn't have told you a single word of what I read. Drenched in sweat, I sat back down and after a short break, the judge declared Zafar innocent. To my relief, he was allowed home with me straight away. Zafar returned to work until another of his anti-government articles was discovered in his office bin by a KHAD agent. He told me that people were after him and that he had to escape to Pakistan immediately. We agreed that the children and I would follow shortly after. At 4am, with no money and just a few clothes in a bag, Zafar left. In the days that followed, I panicked that he wouldn't make it or that the KHAD would discover he had fled and take my son instead. After 15 agonising days, I said tearful goodbyes to my closest family - it was too risky to tell them more details - and took my three children, Yama, 14, Parissa, 10, and Sulaiman, just four months old, to Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border. Here we began our journey over the mountains to join Zafar. For 15 days we walked over mud, mountain and through rivers, travelling at night to avoid being caught. It was March and very cold, but when one of my shoes slipped down the mountainside, I walked barefoot. They were days of unimaginable anxiety yet somehow, utterly exhausted, we arrived in Pakistan to be reunited with Zafar. But Peshawar was overcrowded with refugees and makeshift shanty towns and we struggled in the sweltering heat and flies. A year later, an Englishman called Joseph approached our house, asking for Zafar. He told us that he had come to take us to the UK. It sounded like a crazy dream but Joseph knew a friend Zafar had studied with in America. When he heard of our troubles, he sent a message to Joseph to see if he could help. Amazingly, Joseph came all the way to find us in Pakistan. He organised our paperwork and we were eventually granted visas to Britain. We arrived in south London in 1984. Life was frugal and our first 11 months were spent squeezed into one-room hostels, but we eventually ended up in a small home in south Croydon, where we live today. My children quickly settled into their new life, learning the language and making friends. It wasn't until they had grown up that I really focused my energies on learning English. Zafar had passed away, leaving me sad and lonely, so I took English classes. Four years ago - and more than 20 since our escape - I made my first trip back to Afghanistan. It was heartbreaking to see what my city had become after so many years of war. Kabul used to be beautiful, but when I returned the streets were strewn with rusting remains of cars and full of beggars. I remember a little girl walking with no shoes and dressed in ragged clothes carrying two pieces of toilet paper in her hands. She was trying to sell them. I starting writing to improve my English, but it soon became my therapy. Friends encouraged me to write a book of my life and I spent hours in the library, reading and writing in English. My book is a simple cry for myself and my people who died, suffered, lost their children, became disabled, were widowed and became refugees. But I also hope it can help more people understand what it means to live in exile and that refugees are the most vulnerable people on Earth. • Shabibi Shah was talking to Esme McAvoy. Where Do I Belong? From Kabul to London - A Refugee's Life by Shabibi Shah is published by Longstone Books, £6.99. © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

AFGHANISTAN: Coping with a traumatised nation

. KABUL, Afghanistan / BBC News / January 21, 2009 According to studies cited by the Afghan health ministry an astonishing 66% of Afghans suffer mental health problems, reports Martin Patience At a small, white-washed building on the outskirts of Kabul, a handful of doctors try to cope with one of Afghanistan's biggest problems. Rugs hang from doorframes to keep out the bitter winter cold, and patients, along with their visiting families, crowd into the bare hospital wards. According to studies cited by the Afghan health ministry an astonishing 66% of Afghans suffer mental health problems. And yet this hospital is the only facility in the country dedicated to mental disorders - and there are just 40 beds. The resident psychiatrist, Musadiq Nadimee, has a weary look as he paces up and down the building's corridors. "This hospital is just for the complicated cases that are referred to us from across the country," he says with a resigned shrug. One father has admitted his teenage daughter, Hamida, who suffers from schizophrenia. "She's got a lot better," he says, a smile breaking across his face. 'Vicious cycle' But most experts agree that the mental health problems here go far deeper than the illnesses that are commonly found in almost all countries. Patients have just one dedicated mental health facility in the nation. Photo: Mahfouz Zubaide Afghanistan is a traumatised nation. In 30 years, hundreds of thousands of Afghans have died and most of its people have witnessed horrendous violence at some point in their lives. Many of the mental disorders are connected to these experiences, say health officials. Local journalist Hanif Sherzad says that Afghans continue to be traumatised by their past and the continuing violence. "Many people don't feel safe, they simply don't feel secure," he says. "Even those people that have good physical health and are living in secure places are constantly hearing bad news. It affects them and the vicious cycle continues." The Afghan health ministry readily admits that there simply are not enough facilities or doctors to even begin dealing with the most serious cases. Click to read more © BBC MMIX

AFGHANISTAN: Life and Death

. al.com YELLOWHAMMERING AFGHANISTAN Posted by Michael Tomberlin May 29, 2008 The military calls it "re-integration." It's the process of re-connecting with your family and your previous life after being deployed for war. Such touchy-feely concepts don't sit well with soldiers who are convinced they can do anything and there should be nothing to picking up where you left off when you get back home. The truth is, re-integration has been easy for me and I'm sure it has for others. But I also know it's hard on families. This deployment has caused divorces and strained relationships in families among many soldiers close to me. We spent over a year focused on a mission. We had almost a singular purpose in life and each day was spent advancing that mission. In some ways it was larger-than-life. The intensity of each day and the dangers we faced amplified everything for us. Now we are back to just life. I get to help my daughters with homework, attend their school plays and participate in the waning days of the school year. I get to cook meals in the kitchen with my wife, listen to her highlights and frustrations from the day at work and help with the laundry and housework. A year in Afghanistan puts things in perspective and makes everything a joy. If you can't appreciate what you had - both great and small - then you wasted an opportunity for personal growth unlike any other that may come along in your life. But there is nothing like death to focus things. After a prolonged illness, my wife's grandmother passed away earlier this week. "Grandma Lettie" was someone I knew as a kind old lady I saw on the big holidays and special occasions. At her funeral yesterday, I learned about a woman who lost her husband early to a tragic accident and had to raise her five children alone. She was a woman who touched a lot of lives over the years and had an overflowing crowd come see her off to her final resting place. This little woman in a nondescript house in rural Cullman County rarely traveled more than a few miles from her home, but her life made a difference in the lives of many and she didn't even have to try. To me, it was all a reminder of how important the so-called "normal life" is. A lifetime of our day-to-day has an effect beyond what we are able to see while we are going through it. It's a cue to all of us who were in Afghanistan and those who have been to Iraq. There, we were well aware of the work we were doing each day and its significance in the world. Back here at home, one of the greatest challenges to re-integration is feeling like you are doing something that matters as much. Remembering Lettie Byrd made it clear that everything we do matters to someone and that should be all that matters to us.

AFGHANISTAN: Simple projects change many lives

Clearing canals: In Afghanistan simple projects change many lives Anur Gul, an elderly woman whose voice was muffled by a black veil, said the work made her so happy she volunteered to help, bringing jugs of water from the ... ZAKAR KALAY, Afghanistan (The Canadian Press), March 8, 2008: Drew Gilmour's eyes widened as the van took a turn on the bumpy rural road and suddenly dry dusty land was replaced by soaking wet earth. "This is just since this week?" he asked, in disbelief. Yes, the Afghan engineer replied proudly. All this, just this week. What Gilmour was staring at was hundreds of hectares of previously dead farmland now awash in water from a series of irrigation canals finally completed in a village about 18 kilometres from Kandahar city. Water started running through the first of them this week. Gilmour's company, Development Works, a private company which receives funding from the Canadian government, is overseeing the clearing of about 26 kilometres of canal altogether in the village. Eventually, more than 3,600 hectares of farmland will be opened up for use, allowing farmers to increase their harvests by as much as 50 per cent. Though it's high-profile causes like women's rights, polio eradication or the building of schools that often capture the most attention in developing countries, in Afghanistan, it is the little things that have the potential to make the biggest difference - like canals. "We are starting everything from scratch," said Mohammad Ehsan Zia, the minister of rural rehabilitation and development in Afghanistan. "It is the things at the community level which are the most successful." His ministry, which receives funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, completed more than 350 simple rebuilding projects in Kandahar province over the last year alone. But the work in Zakar Kalay is different. Gilmour runs Development Works, whose long-term goals in Afghanistan are to set villages on the path to economic self-sufficiency. The development projects they do are designed to give communities the infrastructure to then develop industry and business. Development Works' approach is different from that taken by Zia's ministry or by civil-military co-operation teams because they don't just do one project in a village a time, but several at the same time. "All of this stuff is untested and no one has the right answer," said Gilmour. "But I think this is the right direction." Where others might see plain patches of ground, Gilmour sees potential. In Zakar Kalay, shovels have already hit the ground for a bakery, where 60 per cent of the profits will go to paying teacher's salaries. Next will be a solar-powered market and then a metal shop. Over 2,000 metres of sewer have been built and 500 metres of road. "This place will go from a collection of huts to a real village," said Gilmour. Development Works has received a $4.9 million grant from CIDA through to December 2008 to carry out its work in Zakar Kalay and in other places. Altogether in Zakar Kalay, they will spend $300,000. "You have picked us up off the floor and helped us stand," said the village's deputy district leader Haji Mohammad Khan. Villagers here don't speak of what happened to them during the time of the Taliban - they weren't around to see it. Many of them fled to Iran and to Pakistan during the Soviet invasion in the late 1970s. Haji Ali Mohammad, the village leader, points at the hills overlooking Zakar Kalay. "From there the Russian tanks bombed us," he said. "And then the Russian airplanes bombed us. They destroyed everything." Now, Mohammad said, more than 800 families have come back to the village in the last six months. "They have heard we have sewers, that there is water here now," he said. "So they are coming back to rebuild." About 700 people from the area are being paid about 200 Afghanis a day (about C$5) to work on the canal-clearing project and on sewer reconstruction. Anur Gul, an elderly woman whose voice was muffled by a black veil, said the work made her so happy she volunteered to help, bringing jugs of water from the well to wet down the concrete. "Everything will be safe, everything will be fine," she said. One of the key socio-economic issues facing Afghanistan is a lack of jobs. Poverty is cited as a contributing factor to why young men join the Taliban, but also why farmers choose to grow poppies for their valuable opium, making Afghanistan the world's largest producer of the narcotic in the world. Farmer Lal Mohammad said the canal project can solve both those problems. With the increased available of land, he said, he'll be able to harvest almost double the amount of grapes this year compared with last year. "This will be much more profitable than growing poppy," he said. It wasn't clear how much money the farmer could make from the grapes, though the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has said there is no legal crop in Afghanistan that can match the price paid to farmers for opium. But, the larger harvest will also mean he'll need to hire workers, and he expects to get about 28 men to help. "Nobody from here, from anywhere, wants to join the Taliban," said deputy leader Khan. "Everybody just wants to do a job for themselves." Copyright © 2008 The Canadian Press.

AFGHANISTAN: Fighting Corruption is Top Priority

A jihadist against corruption: Afghan Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet. Photo: Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR

KABUL, Islamic Republic of Afghanistam (NPR News), July 11, 2007:

In August 2006, Afghanistan's attorney general Abdul Jabar Sabet, 62, a Pashtun lawyer from Montreal was given the task of cracking down on corrupt practices by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. At that time Abdul Jabar Sabet declared it his jihad, or holy war.

"We have corruption because of the war that we had and because of the poverty that we have here and because of too much money that came to us all of the sudden from the international community."

When asked to clarify, Sabet said, "Temptation, poverty and war. "For example, prosecutors make an average of $60 a month. That's nothing. You people spend $60 some days on your parking."

During one year that he has had the task, Afghans had high hopes Sabet would end government corruption. Critics however add that Sabet's confrontational style has overshadowed his role as a crusader against corruption.

Copyright 2007 NPR

AFGHANISTAN: Elderly Angry As Young Are Killed By US Bombings

SHINDAND, Western Afghanistan (BBC News), May 31, 2007

Each time the old woman breathed out you could hear a small groan of pain as she sat, her head in one hand, her other shoulder shattered by shrapnel and fixed in a coarse plaster.

Her son Mohammad and his wife Khwara sat next to her - they were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son and her brother. Both were among 57 killed - almost half of them women and children - when American forces bombed their village in Shindand, western Afghanistan, and destroyed 100 homes.

"The bombardments were going on day and night," said Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who had to flee their mud house in the Zerkoh Valley. "Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They didn't care if it was women, children or old men."


Khwara explained how it started: "Americans came to the village without consulting any elders," she said. "They just came into to the women's part of the house, so we women went to the elders, and we told them if you don't stop this, we women will stand against them." "Death to the America that killed my son," she shouted.

Bombardments
The US special forces were in the valley looking for an arms cache. Shindand is not under Taleban control, but intelligence reports suggest some locals may have been gun-running for them.

Even under the Russians we haven't witnessed bombardments like it before, said Baryaly Noorzai.

Baryaly Noorzai was knocked out by a bomb, while he and his wife and child were fleeing their home. The village elders were angered by culturally insensitive house searches. And there have been a large number of civilians killed recently - more than 70 in three months according to the AIHRC commissioner, Nader Naderi.

Abridged version of report by Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Afghanistan
© BBC MMVII