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What You Should Know About Women’s Rights In Afghanistan

Anand Gopal | Apr 13th, 2009

Just as the world’s eyes are turning towards Afghanistan once again, a few conservative Afghan lawmakers are trying to pass a law that would, amongst other things, legalize marital rape, prohibit women from leaving the home without permission, deny them the right of inheritance, force a woman to “preen for her husband as and when he desires,” and set the minimum female marital age to sixteen.

The draft proposal, which is aimed only at the country’s Shia minority, recalls for many the harsh strictures of the Taliban era and has been roundly condemned in the international community: Hillary Clinton said that she is “deeply concerned” about the law, Obama found it “abhorrent”, and others in the West have asked, “Is this what our soldiers are dying for?” The international condemnation has forced the Karzai administration to shelve the law for the time being, as the Afghan government pledges to look at the details of the bill more closely.

While the world buzzes about this latest setback for Afghan women, you might be wondering just what exactly the bill says about women’s rights in Afghanistan.

NATO, US seek alternatives to Pakistan supply routes

Anand Gopal | Apr 12th, 2009

Kabul, Afghanistan - Militants attacked a supply depot Sunday in Pakistan that serves Western forces in Afghanistan, increasing the pressure for US and NATO officials to find alternatives to their beleaguered supply lines.

In a predawn raid in the northwestern city of Peshawar, scores of Pakistani Taliban guerrillas torched trucks stationed at the supply terminal. The assault is the latest in a series that have targeted the Western supply convoys that run through Pakistan to replenish forces fighting in Afghanistan.

Attacks on convoys and depots increased dramatically in 2008 after militants gained a foothold in the Khyber Agency, an area bordering Afghanistan through which supply routes run. The guerrillas have torched more than 500 vehicles in the last year, and a number of times they even succeeded in temporarily halting the supply chain altogether.

Some 70 percent of Western supplies come through the militant-infested western Pakistan. To add to US and NATO difficulties, another major supply route via a base in Kyrgyzstan, is slated to close.

“This is strategically vital,” says Waliullah Rahmani, policy analyst with the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. “For the Americans to win this war, it’s important to find another route.”

US officials are actively seeking such routes. A series of recently-inked agreements allow the movement of non-lethal materiel through the former Soviet Central Asian States. The Monitor recently reported on US efforts to open a supply route through Uzbekistan. Officials are also considering other, even more complicated routes that pass through the caucuses.

But the alternatives come with difficulties of their own. The new “northern route” utilizes a complex rail network through many different countries, taking longer and costing more than the Pakistani route. And American overtures to the former Soviet states, in what is widely considered Russia’s sphere of influence, might spark tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Still, Moscow fears the growing strength of Islamic militants on its flank, and may be willing to work with the US and NATO. Click here to read about it.

But replacing Pakistan supply routes completely won’t be easy. The American military uses jet fuel of a standard only produced in the Gulf States and Pakistani refineries. “This will make it hard for the US to abandon Pakistan even if the northern routes work out,” says Mr. Rahmani.

Yet Another Reason Why Indian News Is Awful

Anand Gopal | Mar 3rd, 2009

If there’s one rule of thumb when reading the Indian press, it is this: never believe a word it says. At least when it comes to Paksitan. The Times of India recently carried a real doozy, titled: Pakistani ISI Top Boss Met Osama Aide, which itself was based on “reporting” from the TV station TimesNow.

The report states that ISI officials met with Siraj Haqqani, leader of the Haqqni network, a prominent Afghan insurgent group. “Highly placed intelligence sources”

said that the subject of discussion in the meeting was the shifting of Haqqanis operations from North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan to Afghanistan in exchange for ceasefire with Pakistan army and to halt military operations if the Haqqanis moves their operations from the NWFP into Afghanistan.

Another topic was the construction of the Khost-Gardez road being built by Indian company in Afghanistan. The ISI urged Haqqanis to sabotage efforts by the Indian government to help Afghanistan government to build the Khost-Gardez road.

Let’s give TimesNow the benefit of the doubt and assume that by “highly placed intelligence sources” they mean on the Indian side, not the ISI! The article says that the ISI was trying to get the Haqqanis to shift operations from NWFP to Afghanistan, which is absurd on many levels:

1) The Haqqanis have never operated in NWFP. No one has even accused them of this. The Haqqanis operate out of Waziristan, which is in FATA, not NWFP.

2) They are trying to convince the Haqqanis to focus on Afghanistan–which is the only place they’ve ever directed attacks! There has never been a recorded instance of the Haqqanis attacking inside Pakistan.

3) They want a ceasefire with the Haqqanis–but the Haqqanis are not fighting with Pakistan! There has never been any record of the Haqqinis ever fighting with Pakistan. The author of the article might be confusing Haqqani with Baitullah Mehsud and the Pakistani Taliban.

This all is as absurd as saying India had a secret meeting with the Tamil Tigers to convince them to stop fighting in India and direct their fire against the Sri Lankan government.

Reuters interviews Mullah Zaif

Anand Gopal | Jan 23rd, 2009

“The Taliban want to expel foreign troops, not win power.” So says Mullah Salaam Zaif, the movement’s former ambassador to Pakistani, who is now on good terms with the Karzai government.

The Taliban doesn’t want to win power? Are we expecting the Talibs to just go back to their villages and plant wheat once the foreigners leave? Zaif is either lying to Reuters or he is lying to himself. Even most Taliban would probably laugh at this assessment.

Pak. Taliban Commander Killed in Mohmand?

Anand Gopal | Jan 22nd, 2009

Pajhwok reports that the Pak. military has killed Omar Khalid. Khalid, the head of the so-called Shah Khalid group, was in control of Mohmand agency.

Khalid, whose group generally acted as the TTP (Pakistani Taliban) representative in Mohmand, was one of the highest-ranking leaders in the Pakistani Taliban movement. He was a close ally to Faqir Muhammad of the Bajaur agency, who in turn has been linked to Zawahiri. He has led fighters into Afghanistan to attack US forces there, according to several reports.

The Long War Journal describes Khalid’s career trajectory:

Khalid became the dominant Taliban commander in Mohmand in July 2008 after defeating the Shah Sahib group, a rival pro-Taliban terror group. Khalid’s forces killed 10 members of the Shah Sahib group and captured another 80. Among those killed were Muslim Khan, the leader of the Shah Sahib group, and Mullah Obaidullah, the deputy leader. The groups reconciled after Baitullah Mehsud ordered an end to the fighting.

The Shah Sahib group consists of fighters of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, which operates in Mohmand and across the border in Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The Lashkar-e-Taiba took part in the July 13 attack on a US outpost across the border in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, and has conducted numerous high-profile terror attacks inside Pakistan, Kashmir, and India, including the November 2008 terror assault in Mumbai.

We still don’t have official confirmation of Khalid’s death, however

Good times in Pakistan

Anand Gopal | Jan 21st, 2009

Things are devolving by the day. The Pakistani Taliban is now demanding that buses in the northwest cannot carry audio or video players. The Riaz Khan of the AP reports:

Transport workers in Mardan town received letters this week from militants saying that buses offering such entertainment were guilty of spreading “vulgarity and obscenity,” Walid Mir, general secretary of the town’s transport union, told The Associated Press.

The militants said they would check the buses and that suicide attacks would be carried out against vehicles that still had audio and video equipment — prompting union members to act quickly, Mir said.

Meanwhile, TNSM is strengthening its grasp of Swat. The Daily Times in Pakistan (via the MEMRI blog) reports that women are no longer allowed in the central market. And while we’re at it, we might as well mention that the Pakistani Taliban forced a popular Pashtun comedian to renounce his work, MEMRI tells us.

Lovely.

Hekmatyar Reaching Out to Kazai? Update

Anand Gopal | May 7th, 2008

It looks like we have some confirmation of last week’s post on Hekmatyar’s letter to Karzai. The Afghan online news site Quqnoos is reporting that the President is indeed close to opening talks. Might we see a return of Hekmatyar to the Afghan government? The last time Hekmatyar held a government post, you might recall, he was much too busy shelling Kabul and murdering Afghans to attend to his government duties.

The Quqnoos story in full:

PRESIDENT Hamid Karzai’s office says it is “optimistic” about striking a peace-deal with the leader of one of the country’s most hard-line Islamic groups, Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), whose leader is on the US’s most wanted list of “terrorists”.

The president’s spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said today (Tuesday) that there was fresh optimism about the possibility of holding talks with HIA’s leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is frequently accused of collusion with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

“We are optimistic to have some developments for you in the near or far future,” Hamidzada said.

The spokesman was answering questions about claims that sources close to Hekmatyar said recently that the HIA leader planned to hold talks with Kabul in the near future.

Hekmatyar, who founded HIA in the mid-1970s, has reportedly tried to open negotiations with the Karzai government for the past four years. His group was long-considered one of the most radical Islamist groups before the emergence of the Taliban.

Hamidzada also said the president welcomed talks between Pakistan’s new coalition government and the Pakistani Taliban, although talks between the two sides recently broke down when the government refused to withdraw troops from the country’s tribal areas.

In April 2002, the US Central Intelligence Agency tried and failed to kill Hekmatyar with an unmanned predator drone.

Four years later, he was wrongly reported as captured before he allegedly took credit for Al-Qaeda leader Osma bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora during the US-led invasion of 2001.

In 2003, the US government blacklisted HIA a “terrorist” organisation and the UN put its leader’s name on a list of people accused of supporting the Taliban.

In related news, CBS has a video a interesting new interview with Hekmatyar, which you can watch it in full here - just after the ad for the new Buick Enclave.

Hekmatyar reaching out to Karzai?

Anand Gopal | Apr 29th, 2008

As bullets flew and MPs scampered on Sunday, many wondered how insurgents were able to penetrate such tight security. The Taliban claims that they didn’t intend to kill Karzai, but of course you wouldn’t expect them to say otherwise. However, if history is any guide, they might actually be telling the truth. During the last presidential elections the guerrillas curiously avoided attacking polling stations, a clear sign that they would rather have Karzai in power than a Northern Alliance commander or other such unknown quantity.

The prolific Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times Online claims that the Haqqani Network and Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami engineered Sunday’s attack. If true, it might suggest another reason why the attackers may have been content to just turn the heat up a bit and not actually try to kill the President. On Saturday a well-placed source (a former Taliban official who is now in close contact with Rabbani of the Northern Alliance and Mr. Karzai) told me that Hekmatyar sent a letter to Karzai in an attempt to open negotiations. The letter reads, in part:

I have devoted my whole life to struggle, but I am now old. I only want what is best for my country of Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar goes on to ask Karzai to remove all foreign troops from urban centers. It isn’t clear what Hekmatyar says he will do in return, but the obvious inference would be that he’d lay down his arms and accept a post in the next government. The existence of such a letter fits well with the latest rumor on the Afghan street: Hekmatyar is angling to join the government (a rumor most recently spread by Zaynab TV)

How seriously can we take all this? The letter comes at an interesting time - see my article about Hizb-i-Islami’s growing presence in the north. Antonio Giustozzi suggests that Hizb-i-Islami is flush with funds and is increasing activity in the north. Why would a letter like this come now? Surely Hekmatyar isn’t so out of touch to realize that his boys have got a long way to go before they can actually play for state power. Therefore he might be using his newfound wealth to force the Karzai government take him more seriously.

Or it might be, like everything else in Afghanistan, a dirty game of conceit, lies and misinformation.

For those that don’t know: more on Hekmatyar

Interview with Qari Yousef Ahmadi, Taliban Spokesman

Anand Gopal | Apr 19th, 2008

What’s your opinion of the negotiations between Taliban and National Front?
I can tell you that the National Front is the same as the foreigners in this country. It is very difficult to negotiate with them. We don’t want to negotiate with National Front until the foreign forces leave Afghanistan. Karzai supported the National Front in negotiating with the Taliban. Karzai is like a figurehead and he takes his power from the US. But in this country there is corruption, fighting everything. So why doesn’t he stop these things? He is like the second Shah Shujah.

What’s your opinion of the Mujeddedi commission?
Mujaddedi’s commission is in name only. He is only acting when he talks about bringing in the Taliban. He’s with America and Karzai as well. They are sick and being kept alive be US money. They keep saying we will shoot the Taliban. On the one hand they say that Pakistan supports Taliban. On the other hand they that the Afghan people don’t have any interest with or in the Taliban. So how can I join with someone who says this?

If National Front come to an agreement with you will you stop fighting?
We want only Islamic law. And we will support Islam always. Rabbani said: Bomb the Taliban, so how can I join with the National Front? We will never negotiate with anyone, not with the National Front, not with Karzai, not with Mujaddedi, not anyone. They are not Muslim, they do bad things and they are not moral. They brought the foreigners here, so what difference is there between them and foreigners? We are not ready to negotiate with anyone until foreigners leave Afghanistan.

What is the difference between National Front and Karzai?
There’s no difference between Karzai, the National Front, and foreigners. When the foreigners came and said “Muslims are our brothers” Then why don’t they change their religion? They should follow Muslim laws.