The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN)

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

Ceasefires by the government, the Taleban and the United States over the Muslim holiday of Eid ul-Fitr has partially ended with the Taleban ordering their fighters back to “normal operations.” However, the three-day truce resulted in an unprecedented peaceful movement of fighters and soldiers into territories controlled by the other. The media was full of pictures and videos of Afghans in uniform or wearing black turbans fraternising with each other and with civilians. The Taleban rejected President Ashraf Ghani’s call to join government forces in extending the ceasefire, and some Taleban attacks were reported on 18 June, the day after their ceasefire ended. Nevertheless, says AAN Co-Director Kate Clark, the genie may be out of the bottle. It may now be more difficult for those who have just celebrated Eid together to return to killing (with input from Thomas Ruttig, Ehsan Qaane, Rohullah Sorush, Ali Yawar Adli and Ali Mohammad Sabawoon).

The ceasefire to mark the end of Ramadan was a government idea. On 7 June 2018, President Ghani called a unilateral halt to all offensive government actions from the 27thday of Ramadan to the fifth day of Eid (12-19 June). (1) That appears to have bounced the Taleban leadership into announcing their own three-day Eid ceasefire two days later, although they did not refer to the government announcement. It would have reflected badly on the movement if it had insisted on continuing to fight and kill during the religious holiday when the enemy said it would not.

Matters did not look encouraging during the days of the government’s unilateral ceasefire before Eid, when Taleban killed dozens of members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in attacks in Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak, Jurm in Badakhshan, Muqur of Ghazni, Kohistan in Faryab (capturing the district centre and killing the district governor, among others), Qala-ye Zal of Kunduz, Zawol in Herat – a sub-district of Shindand –  and Sayad in Sar-e Pul (press reporting here, here and here [in German]). Even so when the end of Ramadan came and the Taleban truce kicked in, the cadres stopped fighting. They not only obeyed the order to cease fire, but went a lot further than the Taleban leadership could have imagined.

The ceasefire begins

Combatants and officials mainly, but not exclusively from the Taleban, took the opportunity to visit places and see people they had not seen for years (see the annex for a list of reported events). They filmed and photographed themselves, including taking selfies with the enemy and posted the pictures online. Anyone with a smart phone and internet connection has been able to see peace breaking out in many parts of the country: joint Eid prayers, members of the Taleban and Afghan National Security Forces embracing each other, euphoric crowds, a Taleb handing out roses to Afghan army soldiers, Interior Minister Wais Barmak coming back from Maidan Wardak stopping his car to greet some Taleban who had entered Kabul. Such ‘fraternisation events’ were reported in Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Farah, Ghazni, Paktia, Paktika, Logar, Wardak, Kabul, Laghman, Nangarhar, Kunduz, Takhar, Baghlan, Faryab and Badghis. Quite a few meetings involving ‘seniors’ – government and shadow district and provincial governors, police and army chiefs and Taleban commanders – were also reported to have taken place during the three-day truce:

• The Badghis governor Abdul Ghafur Malekzai met Taleban

Provincial governor of Badghis is taking selfie with Taliban fighters #Ceasefire #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/yIfQlhU281

— HBABUR (@Humayoonbabur) June 16, 2018

• The Farah governor Basir Salangi met Taleban

#Farah governor Basir Salangi welcomes the Taliban in his office in second day of the ceasefire and Eid. #AFG pic.twitter.com/voSQKTjrmm

— Shakib Mahmud (@ShakibMah) June 16, 2018

• The Logar governor and Taleban shadow governor offered prayers together

#Afghan governor for #Logar province in joined by his rival #Taliban's shadow governor and together they offedr their #Eid prayers. Others who were also in attendance told #VOA, Taliban governor was unarmed when he entered the mosque. #Afghanistan #Ceasefire #peace pic.twitter.com/qflapUzPHb

— VOA DEEWA (@voadeewa) June 15, 2018

• The Herat provincial police chief met local commanders­
• The Logar provincial police chief, Muhammad Abdali, met commanders
• The provincial chiefs of police and NDS in Uruzgan marched towards Taleban positions to invite them to join Eid celebrations
• A “big meeting” of officials with Taleban in Jalalabad took place at the governor’s office

#Taliban commanders in #Nangarhar governor house, in a big gathering with local officilas and the people to support #ceasefire pic.twitter.com/pZiywceMqu

— Pajhwok Afghan News (@pajhwok) June 17, 2018

• “High-ranking Taleban” met officials in the Zabul governor’s office

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د ولس په اراده د ولس په څنګ کې، له درې ورځني اوربند څخه په استفادې.د زابل ولايتي شورا رئيس وينا د شاجوی په شوبار کې، کليوالو او طالب وسلوالو ته.

Posted by ‎سردار ولی سرحدی‎ on Sunday, June 17, 2018

 

The mingling was spontaneous and uncontrolled, the result, a sort of benign chaos. There was a lot of risk in this. Taleban fighters, for example, did not all leave their arms when they crossed the ‘frontlines’ into government-controlled areas, but ANSF allowed them through anyway. It seems the fighters did not abuse that trust (although fears have been voiced that the Taleban may have pre-positioned armed fighters for after the Eid – more on which below).

Reports from both media and social media were overwhelmingly positive, although there may be some reporting bias here, that fraternisation was reported, but its absence in other places was not. Uneasiness from some in the general population was also reported, although less prominently than the euphoria (see press reporting here and here). Amrullah Saleh, claiming to represent a large swathe of the population, also tweeted his bewilderment at events: “The anti Taliban constituency which provide the bulk of troops to ANDSF [Afghan National Defence and Security Forces] feel betrayed, confused & sold out.”

Women were noticeable by their absence. Where they were publicly involved, it was noted: young activist Muqadasa Ahmadzai going to a Taleban-controlled area of Nangrahar to demand they extend the ceasefire, women in Helmand demonstrating and also demanding the Taleban extend the ceasefire and the BBC’s Malaeka in Kabul going to “challenge” Taleban entering the city on their policy of excluding women from public life.

The ceasefire was broken by only two attacks, both in Jalalabad, and the first, at least, claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). On the second day of Eid, 16 June, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a crowd of Taleban, ANSF and civilians in Rodat district in Nangrahar province. The bomber killed 36 people and wounded many more. On the third day of Eid, a bomb planted near the governor’s office in Jalalabad where people waited for the end of a meeting of government officials and Taleban, killed at least 18 and injured 45, according to the local health department.

The Rodat bombing on the second day of Eid was the official reason given by the Taleban leadership for ordering their fighters to “remain in their trenches [sic] and areas of control and to not venture into enemy controlled areas or cities even briefly.” A statement said they wanted to remove the opportunity for “the enemy” (unspecified) to misuse the ceasefire to harm the Taleban and other Afghans and so were ordering their fighters to stop “participating in… crowds and gatherings.” Ordering Taleban to return to their side of frontlines, however, actually looked like an attempt to stop fighters fraternising with the enemy (more on this below).

The leadership warned it would deal “rigorously” with “cases of violation.” 1TV reported the leadership was angry with Taleban who had taken selfies with ANSF. Given that Taleban were killed in the second bombing in Jalalabad and mingling continued to be reported on day 3 of Eid, some fighters did violate the leadership’s order.

Ghani calls for an extension of the truce, the Taleban go back to fighting

On 16 June, President Ghani announced a unilateral extension of the ceasefire until 20 June and called on the Taleban to do the same. In a series of tweets (2) and a televised address, he said it could be a time when wounded Taleban could seek treatment and family members visit Taleban prisoners. He also, again, offered “comprehensive negotiations” saying that Kabul was ready to discuss an issue of central importance to the Taleban – the presence of foreign forces. This suggestion first came in the final declaration of the February 2018 Kabul Process 2 meeting (AAN analysis here). Ghani also said “issues of mutual concern with neighboring countries” would also be up for discussion – possibly intended to allay the worries of the Taleban’s backers in Islamabad.

The Taleban refused his offer, saying “normal operations” would resume on 18 June. Insisting that their ceasefire had not been a “response to the ceasefire of the Kabul regime,” they said it had proved the cohesiveness of their command, while the welcome given to their fighters “by the people proves that the demands of the Islamic Emirate and the nation are identical – all want the withdrawal of foreign invaders and establishment of an Islamic government.” It called on the US to sit and negotiate with the Taleban and to withdraw its forces, a demand repeated from Taleban leader Hebatullah’s Eid message on 12 June.

The fact that the Taleban only issued a statement saying operations would resume very late on the last day of Eid suggests the decision had not been straightforward. Indeed, The Guardian reported that discussions had been difficult:

According to insiders, the leadership was stunned by the jubilant scenes in city centres. The hardline deputy leader and son of Mullah Omar, Mullah Yaqoob, was particularly dismayed. In an audio message obtained by the Guardian, he said there had been “no permission for mixing with Afghan forces”, which he said “totally disobeyed the terms of the ceasefire”.

One senior Taliban member said the leadership, recognising the pressure for peace within the group’s ranks, was considering a 10-day ceasefire over the next Eid festival, in September. However, he said there was disappointment that Ghani had not been more specific on the subject of US troop withdrawal. “Ghani should have created a timeline,” he said. “That might have created attraction to extend the ceasefire.”

On 18 June, the Taleban did, bloodily, resume, their operations, with the shooting of Subhanullah Khetab, acting governor of Ghanikhel district in Nangrahar, as he drove to his office. According to government officials, there were Taleban attacks in nine provinces, including Nangarhar, Kunar and Laghman in the east and in Helmand and Kandahar in the south, with 12 soldiers killed (media report here).

The end of the ceasefire also coincided with the arrival of the Helmandi peace marchers into the Afghan capital, boosted along the way by supporters. This spontaneous, grassroots, non-aligned initiative is demanding that both sides stop fighting, enter talks, draw up a timeline for the withdrawal of foreign troops and devise a system “acceptable to all sides” (see AAN reporting here). The sight of the men walking 700 kilometres in 40 degrees of heat while abstaining from water during the Ramadan fast, but supported by villagers all along the way, was intended to demonstrate, the marchers said, ordinary Afghans’ “thirst for peace.” It has also helped galvanise popular, pro-peace sentiments in the county.

What does the ceasefire mean?

Calling a unilateral ceasefire was a gamble by Ashraf Ghani that, so far, appears to have paid off. It forced the Taleban first into calling their own ceasefire and then into embracing a stance that publically favours war over talks – after peace was shown to have popular and widespread appeal, including among some of their own fighters.

For the Taleban, who feel they are doing well in the war, taking territory and threatening the government in a number of provinces (see AAN reporting here, here, here and here), the attraction of fighting on is strong. Despite the extreme unlikelihood of anyone winning the war militarily, the leadership may believe they can improve the movement’s relative position. Nevertheless, their insistence on continuing to fight has now cast them strongly as the ‘pro-war party’ and this may be politically damaging for them.

What happened over Eid was deeply subversive, politically and militarily dangerous to any party wanting to prolong the conflict. It demonstrated that a ceasefire, held to completely by both sides, is possible. It revealed a strong peace camp among Afghans that crosses frontlines, and it opened up the imaginative space for Afghans to see what a future without violence could look like. Perhaps most significantly, it allowed human contact between enemies. After the mass fraternisation, it may be more difficult for Afghan combatants to think of killing each other. After praying with your fellow Afghan, it may be trickier to cling on to the view that he is just a puppet of the kufar or of the ISI.

This works both ways of course, but it seems particularly dangerous for the Taleban, given that they have ended the truce unilaterally. Moreover, this is a movement that relies on discipline, obedience and a belief in the rightness of the armed struggle, that members are  fighting a jihad. After the three-day holiday truce, some Taleban may be left wondering why it has become religiously justified to start killing again. Those who came into the cities will have found them not to be the cesspits of decadence and Westernisation they had been told they were, but to be populated by people celebrating Eid as they do (see here).

There has already been some disobedience in the ranks, with not all Taleban following orders and going back to the ‘trenches’ on the third day of Eid. Anecdotally, not all were pleased at being ordered to fight again after the end of the holiday – see statements in the annex. The Guardian quoted one fighter, 22-year old Muhammadullah, saying:

“I and thousands of Afghan Taliban definitely want the ceasefire extended,” …“I went to the city and the mosques were full of people, I did not notice anything against the Islamic rules. After the sweet three days of peace, going back to bloodshed looks strange. How can you even compare peace with war?”

One gathering of Taleban was also reported on 18 June in Paktika’s Urgun district, an area under Haqqani network control where fighters called on their leadership to extend the ceasefire. It is difficult to think of a precedent for this sort of behaviour.

A day after end of Taliban's 3-day ceasefire, some members of the group gather in #Paktika's Urgun district appealing for extension of ceasefire pic.twitter.com/RbKYY31Tsv

— 1TVNewsAF (@1TVNewsAF) June 18, 2018

For any Taleban who have privately pondered the rightness of this war, but (correctly) judged it too dangerous to voice their concerns, it may now be easier to do so. There have been discussions about entering negotiations at the leadership level before, but in recent years, it has been a taboo subject in the ranks. The unsayable may just have become sayable – that negotiations and peace could be both possible and desirable. The mass fraternisation seen over Eid may prove more dangerous to the Taleban’s cause than the deployment of any number of American or Afghan soldiers.

The truce has been very much an Afghan affair, despite the US also honouring it. Where Taleban were quoted in news reports, they often insisted their fight would go on until foreign forces left. Their anti-foreign rhetoric was often reported as going down well with local civilians – and presumably some members of the ANSF (see the annex for details); this might be a sentiment that Afghans could coalesce around.

The old dilemma of who talks to whom, that the Taleban insist they will only speak to the US, while both Kabul and Washington saying the Taleban must negotiate with the Afghan government, remains. Yet it could be cut through with sensitive US diplomacy. This appears to be the conclusion, for example, of the former US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department, Laurel Miller (see here).

Shifts in positions do seem to be occurring. Ghani has said (again) that his government is willing to discuss the presence of foreign forces. There were also hints in US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s statement of the possibility both of US-Taleban and Afghan-Afghan dialogue. He cited Ghani as saying that “peace talks by necessity would include a discussion of the role of international actors and forces” and that the US was “prepared to support, facilitate, and participate in these discussions.” He also said:

We have seen pictures of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan soldiers and police with Taliban fighters offering prayers for Eid side by side.  If Afghans can pray together, their leaders can talk together and resolve their differences.

Agreeing to begin peace talks is an expression of determination to create a unified Afghanistan in which all its citizens can live in peace and dignity.  The United States stands ready to work with the Afghan government, the Taliban, and all the people of Afghanistan to reach a peace agreement and political settlement that brings a permanent end to this war.

What happens next is less predictable. Letting genies out of bottles opens up the possibility of many different unexpected consequences. Much depends on how convinced Taleban fighters remain of the rightness of their armed struggle and whether dissidents remain obedient to the leadership. There also remains a risk that Ghani’s move has allowed the Taleban leadership to pre-position armed fighters in the cities. If matters do go badly, opponents of Ghani’s unilateral peace policy will be strengthened in their belief that it is futile to talk to the Taleban.

If Afghanistan is lucky, the three day ceasefire will have changed the dynamics of the conflict. The various meetings between Taleban and government officials may yet yield local reductions in violence. Those within the Taleban ranks who favour trying to negotiate an end to the conflict may be strengthened. The popular support and pressure for peace so publicly demonstrated in the last few days may also have given a momentum for talks – between Taleban, government and Washington, in various combinations – to actually begin.

 

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

Annex: Reports of Fraternisation

The news agency reports compiled here should be reliable, but tweets may not be. We include them as we want to give readers a taste of what was reported round the country. In the tweets, we have kept the original (mis-spellings and only corrected names where necessary). 

Kunduz

16 June: An unknown number of Taleban entered Kunduz city and were warmly welcomed by people gathered on the streets. Tolonews reported Taleban saying they wanted the foreign troops to leave the country and they would only end their war with Afghan government forces once this has happened. Civilians told Tolo they were happy with the joint celebration of Eid.

Tolo also mentions ANSF here. AP quoted a local resident speaking of nearly 2,000 Taliban seen celebrating in the city, many of them with family and friends.

16 June: Hamid Saifi, a soldier scholar & commander of an #ANA battalion in [Dasht-e] Archi district in #Kunduz, meets the #Taliban commander who he has fought with & lost several men under his command in fierce battles in the last two years. #CeaseFire

17 June: Another CBM [Confidence Building Measure], two cricket teams in Dasht-[e] Archi district of #Kunduz provinceplayed a friendly match. Wonderfully, and surprisingly, one team came from the government and the other from the Taliban controlled areas. Strange people! Cricket diplomacy @ACBofficials @rashidkhan_19

Another CBM, two cricket teams in Dasht-I-Archi district of #Kunduz province played a friendly match. Wonderfully, and surprisingly, one team came from the government and the other from the Taliban controlled areas.
Strange people! Cricket diplomacy @ACBofficials @rashidkhan_19 pic.twitter.com/lzAxu8I11O

— Zeerak (@zeerakyousofi) June 17, 2018

Takhar

Abdul Rahman Aqtash, chief of police of Takhar province and some other local authorities welcomed Taleban in Chawk-e Taloqan city of Takhar. Security forces, Taleban and local authorities chanted the slogan “Let us take part in reconstruction of our country.” and Taloqan residents appreciated that. Both sides invited each other for peace and reconciliation and said it is the ceasefire that paves the way for peace.

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تازه:گروه طالبان را در چوک شهر تالقان مرکز ولایت تخار؛ عبدالرحمن آقتاش فرمانده پولیس و شماری از مقام‌های محلی پذیرایی…

Posted by ‎Habib Najafizada – حبیب نجفی زاده‎ on Sunday, June 17, 2018

 

Baghlan

15 June: Taleban went to Pul-e Khumri citywith their white flag and said “Happy Eid “ to the people and security forces.

16 June: Taleban stood under pictures of Ahmad Shah Massud and Dr Abdullah in the main square of Pul-e Khumri

16 June: Asadullah Shabaz, head of the provincial council, told AP unarmed Taliban joined in prayers at a local mosque.“We are all just so tired of war,” he said.

Badghis

16 June: Governor Abdul Ghafur Malekzai walked to the roundabout of Qala-ye Nawand celebrated Eid and ceasefire with Taleban. Malekzai asked them to enjoy the ceasefire and join the peace process. They prayed together in Qala-ye Naw mosque and kept their fingers crossed for permanent peace.

Provincial governor of Badghis is taking selfie with Taliban fighters #Ceasefire #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/yIfQlhU281

— HBABUR (@Humayoonbabur) June 16, 2018

Herat  

16 June: Police Chief of Herat Meet Taliban Local Commanders

See also here.

Kabul

15 June: Tolo News journalist Tamim Hamid visited areas under government as well as Taliban’s control in Maidan Wardak. Mohammad Naeem Entiqam, a Taliban commander, accompanied the Tolo team to Tangi area in Sayedabad district (…)Taliban members were seen in the only market in Tangi on the same day.

16 June: Tolo News reports dozens of Taliban members on Saturday came to Kabul city from Maidan Wardak and Logar provinces and its journalists met with them and people in parts of the city, reporting the atmosphere was jovial. Kabul police said Taliban members handed in their weapons and ammunition belts before entering the city. However, footage shows that in a few parts of the city, Taliban were carrying their weapons. In Kabul’s Koti Sangi area security forces however arrested a Taliban member who was carrying a weapon.

16 June: Hashmat Stanikzai, advisor to the 101 Asmai Zone police headquarters, told Pajhwok that a number of government opponents were allowed to enter Kabul through the Arghundi gate in Paghman district. Video clips on social media show a number of militants with white flags in their hands stand together with Afghan security forces on Kota Sangi bridge in Mirwais Maidan area of Kabul (see here).

16 June: Interior Minister Wais Barmak, driving back into Kabul from Maidan Wardak, stopped in Pul-e Kampani to talk to Taleban who had come into the city (see here and also here).

16 June: BBC Persian also published pictures showing unarmed Taleban militants carrying white Taleban flags riding motorcycles in Kabul city, a group of young men sitting on top of a bus, carrying government and Taleban flags in the Arghandeh area of Kabul.

17 June: MP Nader Khan Katawazai from Paktika province posted photographs of himself with a Taleban commander in Kabul City.

17 June: Reuters relayed a story doing the rounds on social media that one Taleb, after hugging Kabul residents, asked for directions to Baharistan, to the west of Kabul. “I have heard there is very good ice cream there”.

17 June: Civil society activists hold up red cards to protest the presence of armed Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, June 17, 2018.

Their slogans read (in Persian), “We forgive, but never forget, No to secret peace talks, No to Taliban’s military presence in Kabul.”

Civil society activists hold up red cards to protest the presence of armed Taliban in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, June 17, 2018.Persian writing reads, "We forgive, but never forget, No to secret peace talks,No to Taliban's military presence in Kabul."(AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini pic.twitter.com/9CfgsGeyvf

— Massoud Hossaini (@Massoud151) June 17, 2018

(AP Photos/Massoud Hossaini)

Maidan Wardak

16 June: Residents, security forces and Taleban celebrated Eid together, reported Tolo News. See also pictures from BBC Persian

Ghazni

 17 June: Dozens of Taleban used the ceasefire to visit their families in Ghazni city, reported Sana News Agency. It also reported that the Ghazni Ulama Council had held a press conference, welcoming the ceasefire and demanding peace. They issued a statement saying there was no Islamic justification to continue the conflict.

Logar

15 June: Afghan soldiers test cease-fire with visit to Taliban strongholds, photo shows armed Taleban watching the ANSF convoy.

15 June: Taliban walked freely through the bazaar in the capital of Logar province.

15 June: Franz J Marty* @franzjmarty (an occasional guest author with AAN. See here and here) tweeted:

Yesterday, on Eid (15th of June), first day of #Taliban #ceasefire I witnessed how armed local Taliban gathered on the main road just outside #PuliAlam,the capital of #Logar, talking, hugging and laughing with government forces#ANDSF. #Afghanistan

Yesterday, on Eid (15th of June), first day of #Taliban #ceasefire I witnessed how armed local Taliban gathered on the main road just outside #PuliAlam, the capital of #Logar, talking, hugging and laughing with government forces #ANDSF. #Afghanistan

— Franz J. Marty (@franzjmarty) June 16, 2018

Afterwards, local elders and at least one purported local #Taliban commander peacefully confered with #AfghanNationalArmy in brigade base near #PuliAlam #Logar. No concrete results and unclear, whether it will lead somewhere, but shows what might be possible. #Afghanistan.

Afterwards, local elders and at least one purported local #Taliban commander peacefully confered with #AfghanNationalArmy in brigade base near #PuliAlam #Logar. No concrete results and unclear, whether it will lead somewhere, but shows what might be possible. #Afghanistan

— Franz J. Marty (@franzjmarty) June 16, 2018

Pictures from the #Eid #ceasefire in #PuliAlam #Logar #Afghanistan that I myself took yesterday (16th of June 2018). For more details see description on Instagram:

Afghans celebrating an unprecedented nation-wide #ceasefire in #PuliAlam, the capital of #Logar province, just south of Kabul, #Afghanistan, waving the Afghan national #flag and the white #Taliban flag, many from a #MRAP and a #HMMWV driven by soldiers of the #AfghanNationalArmy #ANA (16th of June 2018). Apart from two very bloody attacks in the eastern province of Nangarhar claimed by the local branch of the self-declared Islamic State, the ceasefire held during three days (15th to 17th of June 2018) over the religious holiday of #Eid which marks the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. The ceasefire lead to before unimaginable scenes of Taliban meeting up with Afghan government forces, hugging them and talking and laughing with them. However, it remains to be seen, whether and what lasting impact these peaceful scenes will have – while the Afghan government intends to extend the ceasefire, the Taliban announced that their ceasefire will end as planned on 17th of June 2018. #conflict #peace #reconciliation #insurgency #reporting #photoreportage #photojournalism #photodocumentary #dangerousplaces

A post shared by Franz J. Marty (@franzjmarty) on Jun 17, 2018 at 7:33am PDT

Pictures from the #Eid #ceasefire in #PuliAlam #Logar #Afghanistan that I myself took yesterday (16th of June 2018). For more details see description on Instagram https://t.co/jvvSFaYK6q. pic.twitter.com/MnzJRN0is9

— Franz J. Marty (@franzjmarty) June 17, 2018

16 June: Chief of Police Muhammad Abdali said: “I, myself, met with six Taleban’s militants in the city. They were happy that were able to enter the city and to visit their families.” (reported by Deutsche Welle)

16 June: AP reported dozens of Taliban on motorcycles roaring through the provincial capital of Pul-e-Alam, some of the vehicles festooned with the Afghan flag. According to provincial police spokesman Shahpur Ahmadzai they were unarmed. Abdullah Faizani, a Taliban fighter from Logar’s Baraki district, said it had been seven years since he has been to the provincial capital.

15 June: Voice of America @voadeewatweeted:

#Afghan Governor for #Logar province in joined by his rival #Taliban’s shadow governor and together they offered their #Eid prayers. Others who were also in attendance told #VOA, Taliban governor was unarmed when he entered the mosque. #Afghanistan #Ceasefire #peace

#Afghan governor for #Logar province in joined by his rival #Taliban's shadow governor and together they offedr their #Eid prayers. Others who were also in attendance told #VOA, Taliban governor was unarmed when he entered the mosque. #Afghanistan #Ceasefire #peace pic.twitter.com/qflapUzPHb

— VOA DEEWA (@voadeewa) June 15, 2018

Rare pictures, #Taliban fighters with #Afghan security forces together on first day of Eid as it is #ceasefire day. The moterbike picture taken by @Haqmal in #Logar PoliAlam seems #Taliban fighters have city tour with no clash from both side. #Afghanistan #Peace

Rare pictures, #Taliban fighters with #Afghan security forces together on first day of Eid as it is #ceasefire day. The moterbike picture taken by @Haqmal in #Logar PoliAlam seems #Taliban fighters have city tour with no clash from both side. #Afghanistan #Peace pic.twitter.com/mn2EyR6cex

— Rahim Gul Sarwan (@rgsarwan) June 15, 2018

Wardak

16 June: According to member of the provincial council, Ahmad Jafari, ANSF members and Taleban prayed together on the first day of Eid in Jalrez district (reported by Deutsche Welle).

Khost

 17 June: HBABUR‏ @Humayoonbabur

Massive gathering in Khost province #Afghanistan due to supports ceasefire with Taliban.

Massive gathering in Khost province #Afghanistan due to supports ceasefire with Taliban. pic.twitter.com/gvCLHAvj0P

— HBABUR (@Humayoonbabur) June 17, 2018

 

Paktia

16 June: Khalid khi‏ @khalid_pk

Afghan citizen makes emotional appeal to Taliban to stop fighting, make peace since both sides of lost many lives, in Paktiaas the country witnesses 2nd day of Eid and ceasefire

Afghan citizen makes emotional appeal to Taliban to stop fighting, make peace since both sides of lost many lives, in Paktia as the country witnesses 2nd day of Eid and ceasefire pic.twitter.com/GPLXhrchwe

— Khalid khi (@khalid_pk) June 17, 2018

17 June: Haqmal Masoodzai‏ @HaqmalMasoodzai

#Ceasfire Taliban, Afghan securuty forces and people are celibrating Eid togather in Gardez city, Paktia Province. Eid 2nd day.

#Ceasfire
Taliban, Afghan securuty forces and people are celibrating Eid togather in Gardez city, Paktia Province.
Eid 2nd day@bbcafghanistan @voadeewa @VOANews @a_siab @BasirAtiqzai @rashidkhan_19 @LaghmanSpoksman @afgexecutive @SecShulkin pic.twitter.com/5WXL4bEnsl

— Haqmal Masoodzai (@HaqmalMasoodzai) June 17, 2018

Paktika

15 June: It is joyful when you look #ANSF and #Taliban rally to celebrate Eid-ul-fitr jointly in #Paktika province #Afghanistan #peace #Love #Ceasefire.

It is joyful when you look #ANSF and #Taliban rally to celebrate Eid-ul-fitr jointly in #Paktika province #Afghanistan #peace #Love #Ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/5Xgw9lVrbg

— HBABUR (@Humayoonbabur) June 15, 2018

18 June: 1TVNewsAF‏Verified account @1TVNewsAFMore

A day after end of Taliban’s 3-day ceasefire, some members of the group gather in #Paktika’s Urgun district appealing for extension of ceasefire

A day after end of Taliban's 3-day ceasefire, some members of the group gather in #Paktika's Urgun district appealing for extension of ceasefire pic.twitter.com/RbKYY31Tsv

— 1TVNewsAF (@1TVNewsAF) June 18, 2018

Uruzgan

17 June: Thousands of Uruzgan civilians and government officials, including the provincial chief of police and NDS director marched towards Taleban’s positions and requested them to join them for peace on the third day of Eid (17 June) (Report from Radio Azadi).

Kandahar

18 June: Radio Azadi reported civilians, along with Afghan soldiers and Taleban celebrating Eid together in Panjwai and Maiwand districts of Kandahar. It also reported dozens of Taleban coming from Daman and Arghandab district to Kandahar city to celebrate Eid. Former governor and currently Minister for Tribes and Border Affairs Gul Agha Shairzai, and former governor Zabul province, Bismillah Afghanmal, said on behalf of worshipers in the Kherqa mosque that the government should invite Taleban to observe a permanent ceasefire and come back to their homes safely.

Helmand

15 June: The Afghan Herald‏ @theafghanherald #Afghanceasefire More photos from Shahjoi, Helmand where both #Taliban and Afghan Security forces celebrated Eid together.

#Afghanceasefire
More photos from Shahjoi, Helmand where both #Taliban and Afghan Security forces celebrated Eid together. pic.twitter.com/vlXkrLdb6l

— The Afghan Herald (@theafghanherald) June 15, 2018

17 June: Tolo News reported women welcoming Taleban for the ceasefire and appealing for its extension.

Zabul 

16 June: Zabul provincial council members said 700 Taliban members on Saturday arrived in Qalat city, the provincial capital, and celebrated Eid along with the security forces and the residents, greeted and hugged them and took selfies with each other.

16 June:  The Deputy Chief of Police told BBC Persian that around 500 Taleban had come to Shahjoy district centre to celebrate Eid with locals, who, he said were very excited. This was confirmed to the BBC by a Taleban commander.

17 June: Ata Jan Haqbayan, head of Zabul provincial Assembly met Taleban in the Shibar area of Shahjoy district. He said he had invited some of the Taleban from Shinkai and Arghandab  districts to his home in Qalat city.

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د ولس په اراده د ولس په څنګ کې، له درې ورځني اوربند څخه په استفادې.د زابل ولايتي شورا رئيس وينا د شاجوی په شوبار کې، کليوالو او طالب وسلوالو ته.

Posted by ‎سردار ولی سرحدی‎ on Sunday, June 17, 2018

17 June: Sources from Zabultold AAN that government officials met Mullah Qayum, Mullah Salim and Qari Saifullah in the governor’s house. The source said they were “high-ranking Taleban,” but did not know their exact positions. but the source did not know their exact role among Taleban. Video here.

Farah

 16 June: Shakib Mahmud‏ @ShakibMah

#Farah Governor Basir Salangi welcomes the Taliban in his office in second day of the ceasefire and Eid. #AFG and had lunch together with them.

#Farah governor Basir Salangi welcomes the Taliban in his office in second day of the ceasefire and Eid. #AFG pic.twitter.com/voSQKTjrmm

— Shakib Mahmud (@ShakibMah) June 16, 2018

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بصير سالنگى والى فراه از طالبان در دفتر كارش پذيرايى كرده و غذاى چاشت را با آنها در يك سفره صرف كرده است.

Posted by Bashir Ahmad Qasani on Saturday, June 16, 2018

16 June: Atta Nasib‏ @NasibAtta Atta Nasib Retweeted Shakib Mahmud

Few weeks ago Farah was ransacked by Taliban, and now they’re hugging it out with the governor. Remarkable turnaround, truly emotional what few days of peace mean to Afghans.

Few weeks ago Farah was ransacked by Taliban, and now they're hugging it out with the governor. Remarkable turnaround, truly emotional what few days of peace mean to Afghans. https://t.co/ZXf2Fi5xOZ

— Atta Nasib (@NasibAtta) June 16, 2018

Faryab  

16 June: Following the ceasefire between the government and Taleban, Afghan soldiers and Taleban visited and hugged each other in Faryab. 

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پیام طالبان و پیام نظام الدین قیصاری نماینده خاص جنرال در ولایت فاریاب به ملت.

Posted by ‎M-Akbar Rahimi "محمد اکبر " رحیمی‎ on Saturday, June 16, 2018

Nangarhar

15 June: Government employees, security forces and Taliban member performed the Eid-al-Fitr prayers together at a mosque in Bati Kot district in the eastern Nangarhar province.  Addressing the people at the mosque, a Taliban commander said they will not create any hurdle for government’s development and reconstruction projects in the district. “We obey our leader. During the three-day ceasefire, we will not disobey his order,” Qari Zarif, the Taliban’s shadow district governor for Bati Kot, said. “The Islamic Emirate and the Afghan government should extend the ceasefire,” Abdul Basir, a Taliban fighter, told Tolo News.

16 June: Tolo News reports a large number of Taliban arrived in Jalalabad city, the provincial capital, and in the district centres and met with their relatives and security forces. It quotes Taliban as saying they want the temporary ceasefire to become permanent.

 16 June: Idrees Stanikzai‏ @Stanikzaiii

Zarqavi is a #Talib commander who has seen his home town Nangarhar after 9 years. He says haven’t slept since last night because of so much happiness. He said that #[K]amaDistrict has the best Ice Cream. #AfghanPeaceMarch

Zarqavi is a #Talib commander who has seen his home town Nangarhar after 9 years. He says haven’t slept since last night because of so much happiness. He said that #CamaDistrict has the best IceCream.#AfghanPeaceMarch pic.twitter.com/QBtRYmZzsf

— Idrees Stanikzai (@Stanikzaiii) June 16, 2018

16 June: Young #women activist went to remote area under #Taliban control in Nangarharprovince. Demanded extension of #Ceasefire

Young #women activist went to remote area under #Taliban control in Nangarhar province. Demanded extension of #Ceasefire https://t.co/DmjrXAASId

— Syed Anwar (@Sayed_Anwer) June 17, 2018

@Sayed_Anwer, re-tweeting Muqadasa Ahmadzai in Pashto

نن د اختر دوهمه ورځ له ښاره لرې له یو شمېر کونډو/یتیمانو او قومي سپین ګیرو سره د طالبانو د ولکې لاندې سیمې ته ورغلې وو او د دوی د نوموړې ولسوالۍ له مسولینو سره مو ولیدل.
موخه/او غوښتنې
د اوربند په پار مننه ترې ملاتړ او ستاینه
او د لا غځېدو غوښتنه#KoorCulturalAssociation pic.twitter.com/m1hwPLcJdv

— Muqadasa Ahmadzai (@MuqadasaAhmadz2) June 16, 2018

 

16 June:Pajhwok tweeted

#Talibancommanders in #Nangarhar Governor house, in a big gathering with local officilas and the people to support #ceasefire

#Taliban commanders in #Nangarhar governor house, in a big gathering with local officilas and the people to support #ceasefire pic.twitter.com/pZiywceMqu

— Pajhwok Afghan News (@pajhwok) June 17, 2018

 

16 June: Female parliment candidate from #Nangarhar province along with Taliban during #Eid #ceasefire#ceasefireAfghanistan.

Female parliment candidate from #Nangarhar province along with Taliban during #Eid #ceasefire #ceasefireAfghanistan pic.twitter.com/eRzIAR4zaH

— Rahim لغماني (@RahimLaghmani) June 17, 2018

16 June: Photo from BBC Persian of a mixed gathering in Jalalabad.

Laghman 

Dozens of Taleban members gathered at a mosque in Pul-e-Alam city, the provincial capital, and celebrated Eid. 

Unknown location

16 June HBABUR‏ @Humayoonbabur Watch a video it’s very funny! … later on… a Talib fighter tells : Long live! Mullah Ashraf Ghani…!!!

Watch a video it's very funny! … later on… a Talib fighter tells : Long live! Mullah Ashraf Ghani…!!! pic.twitter.com/kZp1CR9mLx

— HBABUR (@Humayoonbabur) June 16, 2018

 

Punishment for Taleban members  

18 June: Taleban to punish the members who took selfies with people.

18 June: A day after end of Taliban’s 3-day ceasefire, some members of the group gather in #Paktika’s Urgun district appealing for extension of ceasefire.

A day after end of Taliban's 3-day ceasefire, some members of the group gather in #Paktika's Urgun district appealing for extension of ceasefire pic.twitter.com/RbKYY31Tsv

— 1TVNewsAF (@1TVNewsAF) June 18, 2018

 

 

(1) Not everyone on the government’s side (or maybe more accurately, the anti-Taleban side) was happy with the ceasefire. Most vocally antagonistic was the former NDS director and Shura-ye Nizar stalwart Amrullah Saleh who tweeted after it was announced about the “attitude of treacherous compromise in the political constituency of NUG [National Unity Government], entrenchment of fifth column culture & confusion within the ANDSF [Afghan National Defence and Security Forces” and warned that, “Appeasement never brings peace.” When the Taleban announced their ceasefire, he predicted that if they abided by it, it would be their first humanitarian action ever.

(2) Ghani’s tweets in English on 16 June in full:

Few days ago when we were preparing for ceasefire many were skeptical that Taliban will not comply, and also how will it be put into practice? But those doubts were removed once ceasefire began and assumptions made by many analysts and politician were proven wrong.

We’re ready for comprehensive negotiations, all those issues and demands that have been put-forth we are ready to discuss them at the peace talks. The Afghan government is ready to discuss issues of mutual concern with neighboring countries, and presence of foreign forces.

Peace is an urgent need and as it turned out that in the last 24 hours there was a consensus between the Afghan government and the Taliban on peace, it proved that we are all for peace. Fortunately, there’s also consensus among the international community on peace in Afghanistan. 

A good example of this consensus is the joint Eid prayers performed by the Taliban and government employees in different mosques and Eidgahs. 

Both sides sang about peace and harmony, and in Eid the environment during the Eid sermons was different than before, all the religious scholars and Imams spoke about the value, significance and importance of peace in Islam.

To respect the public’s wishes and to support their demands about peace, I am ordering the security and defense forces to extend the ceasefire from the fourth day of Eid. We will soon share the details of the proposed ceasefire with the nation.

We also request the Afghan Taliban to extend their ceasefire. During the ceasefire, we will provide medical assistance to the wounded Taliban, and will provide them any humanitarian assistance if needed. Taliban prisoners will also be allowed to contact and see their families. 

The AAN team would like to wish a joyful and peaceful Eid al Fitr to friends and readers, to all Muslims around the world and particularly to the people of Afghanistan. This year, as the Eid ceasefire in Afghanistan begins, there will be more space for festivities around the country.

Stocked dry fruit shop in Kabul before Eid. Photo: Obaid Ali – 2018

As AAN has reported before, Afghans celebrate the end of the month-long fast and the arrival of Eid al Fitr in many ways. As well as the customary Eid prayers, special food is cooked, friends and family visited, and, for those who can afford it, new clothes are worn. People remember those who have passed away that year. There might be local wrestling competitions, agey jangawal (egg-fighting) or ghursai (one-legged fighting).

Happy Eid to all!

 

 

 

The opiate economy, as measured by the farm-gate value of opium, together with revenues from heroin production and trafficking of opiates to the Afghan borders, has become a crucial component of the Afghan economy, a recently released UNODC socio-economic survey found. This has evolved after years of increasing opium cultivation in the country. But, what are the legal means to fight this illicit economy scourge? AAN’s Jelena Bjelica (with input from Ehsan Qaane and Rohullah Sorush) looks atthe counter-narcotics legal provisions and examines whether some of the legal mechanisms might restore benefits for the state from these trends in the illicit economy.

The Afghan opiate economy was worth between 4.1 to 6.6 billion USD in 2017. This represented 20 to 32 per cent of GDP, the UNODC said in its latest socio-economic survey released in mid-May 2018 (see here). This value exceeded by far the value of the country’s licit exports of goods and services in 2016 (6.9 per cent of GDP). It’s worth roughly equalled the value of the entire licit agricultural sector of the country, which constituted 23 per cent of GDP in 2016/2017, the UNODC found. In its press release the UNODC also said that “opium poppy has become a crucial component of the Afghan economy that secures the livelihoods of many Afghans who engage in cultivation, work on poppy fields or partake in the illicit drug trade.”

In 2017, Afghanistan produced more opium paste than ever before, some 9,000 metric tons according to the UNODC estimate. This compared to 4,800 metric tons in 2016 (see this AAN analysis). In the same year, the Counter-Narcotics Justice Center (CNJC), set up by the Afghan Government in May 2005 with a mandate derived from the Counter Narcotics Law to investigate and prosecute all serious intoxicating drinks and drug-related offences from across the country, in its annual report for 2017 said that the primary court of CNJC convicted 671 suspects. Most cases that ended up in the court were for small amounts of drugs that are punishable by a penalty. This, taken together with a symbolic number of seizures by the Afghan law enforcement agencies (more on this below), means that the country which has almost no legal consequences allows, if not nurtures, the production of over 90 per cent of the world’s illicit needs in opiates, ie opium, and it derivatives – morphine and heroin.

The story of the two laws

Since 2001, three counter-narcotics laws have been adopted in Afghanistan. The first was adopted in 2005. This had been drafted with the support of the UK, the then lead donor country on counter-narcotics. This also established the legal foundations for the CNJC. The second was adopted in 2010 and aimed to address rising cultivation levels that had occurred around 2007. It was then that Afghanistan produced 7,400 metric tons of opium; a record high production level until 2017. The most recent revision of the law began in 2015 to address a gap in criminal provisions related to synthetic drugs; the production and consumption of which had become more widespread in the country (see this AAN analysis). Each law resulted in harsher punishments for crime-related law-breaking. While the 2005 law mainly prescribed fines for drug trafficking, the 2010 law introduced prison sentences for the same crimes. Finally, the new 2018 law introduced even harsher prison sentences than 2010 law. However, it seems that the new counter-narcotics law (available here in Dari/Pashto) that replaced the 2010 anti­­-drug law has been ill-fated from its inception. The Afghan media Radio Azadi and Pajhwok reported that the law was sent to the to the lower house of the Afghan parliament (Wolesi Jirga) in 2016 for discussion and subsequent approval (see here and here). This law has been discussed twice in the Wolesi Jirga. The first time was on 18 January 2017, when Muhammad Saleh Saljuqi, the member of the Health and Counter-narcotics Commission, said that the law was not ready to be presented to the house, because at the joint session of the representatives of standing commissions, the conflicting points about the law had not been resolved. The relevant commissions working on the law were justice and judiciary, legislative, health and counter narcotics. He asked the Speaker of the Wolesi Jirga for another chance to discuss the law. The second chance was given on 12 April 2017 but, due to still unresolved differences, the law was again referred to the commissions.

The differences mainly revolved around formalizing the cultivation of opium for medical purposes that had been stipulated in the draft law. Chaman Shah Etemadi, an MP from Ghazni province and the member of parliamentary commission on narcotic drugs told AAN: “The counter narcotic commission recommended to formalize the cultivation, but unfortunately as this was partially against the constitution, it did not secure enough votes, so it was deleted from the law.”  The 2004 Constitution in the article 7 clearly says: “The state shall prevent all kinds of terrorist activities, cultivation and smuggling of narcotics, and production and use of intoxicants.” Although, some MPs were strongly for legalization of the cultivation, such as Nasima Niazi, an MP from Helmand and Saleh Muhammad Saljooqi, an MP from Herat, others, such as MP Abdul Sattar Khawasi from Parwan, remained firm in their position that such a provision would violate the Constitution. Finally, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, the speaker of the lower house, ruled that the article of the law is against the constitution and that it should be deleted. In the session held on 1 May 2017 when 122 MPs were present, the majority voted for the deletion of article in question and approved the remaining law in that same session of the Wolesi Jirga before sending this onto the president’s office.

On 17 June, the Wolesi Jirga speaker, Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, complained to Tolo news that of 13 draft laws passed by the Wolesi Jirga and the Meshrano Jirga (Upper House of Parliament) and sent to the president, none had been processed; including the anti-drug law.

The law would stay on president’s desk for another six months until early 2018. It was issued on 24 February 2018, only ten days after the new Penal Code entered into force, ie nine months after it has been published in the Official Gazette on 15 May 2017. By then, the new counter-narcotics law  had been stuck in the Parliament for a year (more or less the same period as the Penal Code) and  had been on President’s desk for at least six months. It contained criminal provisions that had not been aligned with the Penal Code. A regular quarterly report by the US Special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) published on 30 April 2018 (see here) noted that the new counter-narcotics law criminal provisions “would have superseded the new penal code and nullified the new penal code provisions.” This major oversight in the new law, led to the post-facto (ie after the law has been signed by the President and published in the Official Gazette) series of high-level meetings, which resulted in a decree repealing the criminal provisions part of the new law. (1) According to the SIGAR report:

The Council of Ministers held an extraordinary meeting where they approved the repeal of the criminal provisions of the new CNL [counter-narcotics law]. On March 6, the Ministry of Justice published on its website the decree repealing the criminal provisions of the new CNL. The decree is coupled with an amendment to the penal code (Article 916), which will now include the language repealing the criminal CNL [counter-narcotics law] provisions, thus maintaining the PC [penal code] as the criminal law of the land.

The entire chapter five of the new Penal Code is dedicated to trafficking of narcotics and where the punishments are pretty much aligned with the 2010 Law. This is with the exception of the trafficking of synthetic drugs and acetic anhydride, which have been added as new crimes (see footnote 1). It also carries higher sentences for narcotic drug-related crimes than the 1976 penal code. Also, it authorises confiscating assets (including land, structures, and vehicles) used in, or earned through, illicit drug production, and trafficking.

What has not been repealed from the new law?

Stripped of its criminal provisions, the law still has something to offer. The mechanism for policy-making and its implementation is much stronger. Its authority and duties are much clearer than in the old law and will stay in place. In the new law, the mechanism, as one body, has three parts, including the High Commission for making policies (articles 5 and 6), the provincial and district commissions for implementing the policies (article 7), and the oversight committee for the implementation of the policies (article 8). The Ministry of Counter Narcotics acts as the secretariat of the High Commission (article 5).

The High Commission consists of one member of the Supreme Court, nineteen minsters and four heads of general directorates, ie almost 80 per cent of the cabinet members, and is chaired by the President or one of the vice-presidents (article 5). The commission is in charge of making all necessary and related policies and strategy. In the old law, the High Commission had only ten members at the deputy level and was chaired by the Minister of Counter Narcotics (article 6). It was in charge of implementing policies but without having the authority to make them. Nevertheless, the establishment of the High Commission for counter-narcotics also conforms to the latest trend in Afghanistan. This saw, under President’s Ghani lead, over 15 high commission and councils established since 2014, all being chaired by the president. The high commissions include those working on development issues, eg, the High Council on Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption; the High Council on Land and Water; the High Council on Urban Development; the High Council on Poverty Reduction, Service Delivery and Citizen Engagement; the High Council on Culture, Education and Human Capital and the Economic High Council. It also includes those working on security issues, such as the High Council on National Security, the High Council on Migration, and so.

Under the new law, the implementation of the strategy and policies is given to the provincial and district commissions (article 8). The duties and responsibilities of the commissions remain as they were under the old law. However, the combination of the commissions has expanded to 24 members, including the local governors.These commissions consist of the highest representatives of ministries (except the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which does not have local offices) and general directorates, which are the members of the High Commission, also at the provincial and districts level. The provincial commissions are chaired by the provincial governors and the districts commissions are chaired by the district governors. Principally, it was seen as being wise to involve all pertinent bodies in the implementation processes. However, practically, it would prove difficult to manage this.

The old law did not have a mechanism to oversee the activities of individuals or companies, and that could deal with licences, process, purchase, sell, storage, distribution, commissioning, import and export, traffic and supply of narcotics drugs. In the new law, a committee of seven experts from six ministries will oversee and control the activities of non-governmental companies and individuals and will grant a permit or license for the preparation, process, purchase, sell, storage, distribution, commissioning, import and export, traffic and supply. This, mainly, has to do with the article 19 of the new law, which states:

The confiscated drugs in agreement with International Narcotics Control Board will either be converted to medicine or sold to one of the countries that has licence. If INCB disagrees that the drugs be sold or used in making medicine, the prosecutor will take the case to a court and the court will issue an order to destroy it.

The 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs does allow for the release of seized materials for licit use. The head of UNODC office in Kabul, Mark Colhoun, told AAN that this fall under the licit control mechanisms for opiates, as well as other drugs, and INCB works with governments to estimate annual requirements of amounts required for medical use. “The provisions of the law would therefore appear to be in line with the requirements under the international conventions,” he said.

However, the article in the new Afghan Law does not specify which kind of drugs. AAN’s reading of the article 24/5 (b) of the 1961 Convention is that the release of seized material for licit use only applies to opium. The quoted article says that a country, which is a party to the Convention, is not prevented “from producing opium sufficient for its own requirements; or from exporting opium seized in the illicit traffic, to another Party in accordance with the requirements of this Convention.” Hence, a question arises as to whether the wording of article 19 of the new Afghan counter-narcotics law was, as usual, sloppy, or whether there was something more to it. AAN sent an email to INCB in mid-April 2018 with a request for a comment, but had not receive an answer by the time this dispatch was published.

Can this work in practice?

The new law’s remaining enforceable parts seem to intend to restore opiate-related economic trends to benefit the state. However, for the state to benefit from the illicit economy, seizures of drugs in Afghanistan would have to increase significantly. According to UNODC, Afghanistan in 2016 (see page 69 of the latest socio-economic survey), seized around 47 tons of opium out of the 4,800 metric tons produced in the same year (see this AAN analysis). This represents less than one per cent which, if added to the 4.6 tons of heroin seized in 2016 equals approximately 46 tons of opium (using a conversion rate for opium to heroin of 1:10). Together, this still makes for less than two per cent of overall’s country opium production in 2016. No morphine had been seized in 2016, according to UNODC. In fact, the new US Special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR) report on counter-narcotics, published on 14 June 2018 noted that “the amount of opium seized over the last ten years is equivalent to about five percent of the estimated opium production in 2017 alone.”

There are other considerations to be taken into account. David Mansfield, Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics International Drug Policy Unit and long-term adviser to AREU warned that past attempts by other countries to export products derived from seized opium were thwarted by the protests of those who produce licit opium and incur the costs of control and regulation. Past practice suggests it will not simply be a case of finding a buyer for illegally produced opiates and selling them on. The outcome will be governed by the INCB and diplomacy,” he said.

Another challenge has to do with a commercial nature of the problem, which is a bigger one. “There are few pharmaceutical companies that want raw opium these days,” he said, adding that is far better to have derivatives that have “higher value to weight ratio, are easier to transport and control, and contain less or no waste.” Yet, if the international demand is not for opium, then Afghanistan would have to invest in its own processing capacity, which would need to meet international pharmaceutical standards. Mansfield added:

“Turkey received international donor support for its processing in Bolvadin in Afyon in the 70s. It’s hard to believe in the current environment in Afghanistan there would be either international support from donors or the private sector – particularly given the challenges above that would indicate an uncertain international market for the final product.”

Conclusion

The story of the new counter-narcotic law shows the extent to which a lack of coordination creates stumbling blocks, as well as all the unnecessary work it generates for some parts of government. Yet, it raises the question: what was the purpose of harsher punishments for smaller traffickers and drug users, stipulated in the repealed criminal provision of the new counter-narcotics law?Presumably, such policies had been inserted to target local drugs consumption market, which according to UNODC’s latest socio-economic survey (see here) is estimated to be worth around 0.5 per cent of the country’s GDP. (2) This compared to a value of 20 to 32 per cent of GDPof an entire illicit agricultural sector, shows that the legislators and the drafters have been more concerned with a single tree, while the forest is on fire. It also shows that a visual proximity of the problem, a number of drug users hanging around Pol-e-Soktha bridge (see this AAN analysis), located in west Kabul, prompt harsher legal responses when it should have prompted a more human approach. Nevertheless, it is also interesting that the Parliament stumbled for six months in the discussion about legalization of cultivation as to whether this was against the Constitution. Meanwhile, at the same time, it passed the law that suspended the new Penal Code. All together, it seems as though, aside from the usual sloppiness in managing the legal matters, counter-narcotics remain very low on the agenda of the Afghan government, and that the problem continues to be addressed from an exclusively Kabul perspective.

 

 

(1) What has been repealed from the new law?

The repealed criminal provision of the counter-narcotics law included all crimes that have been listed in the old law (for an English version of the old law see here) and, in addition, two new provisions related to trafficking of acetic anhydride and synthetic drugs. The sentences, for example, for trafficking of acetic anhydride – a key substance used as precursor to process opium paste into morphine or heroin, and the trafficking of synthetic drugs, such as MDMA or methamphetamine (see this AAN analysis about booming synthetics drugs industry in Afghanistan) – could be from six months to 15 years in prison, depending on the amount of acetic anhydride or synthetic drugs. However, the gravity of the sentence for amounts of these two substances, of course, differed. For acetic anhydride, six months punishment is given for trafficking of less than 25 grams of this substance, while the same punishment is for less than one gram of synthetic drugs. The Penal Code, on the other hand, foresees fines in lieu of a short prison sentence for such small amounts.

The punishment of other criminal acts related to the narcotics and intoxicants had been increased extremely in the new law. Thus this was repealed by the Ministry of Justice decree. For the purpose of historical record and to list just a few: in some cases, sentences had been increased 12 times more and, in some cases, the balance between the act of crime and its punishment did not make any sense.For example, in the new law, the act of trafficking cannabis derivate [chars] will be punished by sentence in prison from two to three years if the amount is more than 100 grams and less than 500 grams. In the old law, the same act was punished by two to three months in prison. In the new Penal Code, the same act is punished by 6 months up to one year’s imprisonment.

(2) UNODC estimated from the 2009 drug use survey that, the number of opium and heroin users in the country was 230,000 (210,000-260,000) and 120,000 (110,000-140,000), respectively. These numbers account for poly-drug use, i.e. one person is counted in both groups if using both opium and heroin.

 

 

Afghans may, just possibly, have a happier Eid than in previous years. The government, the Taleban and the United States military have all called temporary ceasefires. Meanwhile, seven marchers for peace, who set off from Helmand on 13 May have been walking towards Kabul in temperatures of more than 40 degrees while keeping the Ramadan fast. Their demand for a ceasefire during Ramadan was not met, but as AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon reports (with input from Kate Clark), their arrival in Kabul will coincide with the Eid ceasefire.

First came President Ashraf Ghani’s 7 June announcement that government forces would not launch any offensive attacks against the Taleban during the last days of Ramadan, from Lailat ul-Qadr, when Muslims believe the Quran was first revealed, to the fifth day of Eid. His announcement came in a series of tweets that referred back to a meeting of ulema in the capital on 4 June, who declared the Taleban’s fight “had no root in Shari’a law.” They called on the government and the Taleban and other insurgent groups to call a ceasefire and urged the Taleban to join the government in talks. (1)

Ghani’s announcement was soon followed by the commander of US and NATO forces, Commander John Nicholson, saying the forces under his command would “honour” the government’s ceasefire.

Then, on 9 June, the Taleban followed suit: “during Eid days,” they would “suspend their attacks against the insider enemy.” The Taleban also announced that all detainees who guaranteed not to fight against them would be freed to mark the holiday.

The Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Daesh offshoot in Afghanistan, has made no comment on the ceasefires or said what it would be doing.

The government and US military ceasefires will not apply to ISKP and the Taleban said its attacks against foreign forces would continue. Nevertheless, this ceasefire is unprecedented. Afghanistan has not seen such a ceasefire since the outbreak of the post-2001 insurgency.

The conflict does usually quieten down during Ramadan and particularly during both Eid holidays, but there have been some particularly nasty attacks during previous years when Afghans were marking Eid. In 2012, for example, a 15-year old boy blew himself up as worshippers gathered for Eid ul-Adha prayers in Maimana City, targeting the Faryab Provincial Governor. They boy killed 40 civilians, including six children, and injuring 59. The following year, the governor of Logar, Arsallah Jamal, was killed as he delivered a speech for Eid in the main mosque in Pul-e Alam; the bomb had been hidden in the microphone. So blood can and has been shed during Eid and even in mosques. This year, if all goes well, there will be a silencing of the guns and a breathing space for Afghanistan’s people.

Marching for peace

One of the seven Helmand peace marchers, Bacha Khan Mawladad another organizer of the march who is a youth activist, told AAN they were very happy when they heard that both the government and Taleban made their announcements. “A single bullet,” he said, “can take the life of a human being – that’s why we welcome the ceasefire.” He said it was the first of their demands to be met – despite it only being a temporary ceasefire – but as it had not come in response to their protest, they had decided to carry on marching.

The protesters started their demonstrations demanding peace after a suicide car bomb detonated outside near the door of a stadium in Lashkargah city in Helmand province on 26 March: more than a dozen civilians were killed (AAN’s earlier analysis). Those who had lost family members in the attack were among the demonstrators. “Our tears have not yet dried,” one told AAN. Obaidullah, from Nawzad district had lost two nephews and saw four other family members injured in the stadium attack. “We want the Taleban and the government to stop killing innocent people,” (see here.)

The demonstrators pitched tents in the provincial capital and held a hunger strike, which resulted in  some participants being hospitalised. Demonstrators said they would march to the Taleban stronghold of Musa Qala district to meet insurgent commanders but cancelled their plans after the Taleban warned them not to visit. On 9 May, the protestors held a meeting with religious scholars, tribal elders and youth and presented a four demands asking the parties for a ceasefire in the coming month.

1. Respecting the holy month of Ramadan, all sides of war should declare a ceasefire.

2. Specific channels and addresses for peace talks should be identified among all sides of the war, and peace negotiations should be launched.

3. Considering Islamic and national values and interests, practical steps should be taken for forming a system that is acceptable to all sides.

4. Based upon the agreement of all sides in this war, a specific timeline should be set for the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

Both Taleban and government, we reported, appeared wrong-footed by the protests, unsure how to respond. No ceasefire occurred. Instead, the annual onset of the summer fighting season brought a sharp increase in violence across the country. One count of incidents by Pajhwok Afghan News estimated about 3,000 people were killed and injured in the month of May, a 42 per cent increase from the previous month. As usual, Helmand ranked among the most violent provinces. Adding to the intensity of this year’s battles there has been the recent US deployment of High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers. The Taleban launched attacks on several district and provincial capitals, including Farah (see AAN reporting here and here and Ghazni, including on Andar (see AAN reporting here).

As violence intensified, the Helmand demonstrators decided to try a different approach. Youth activist and former journalist Eqbal Khaibar told AAN on 13 May: “When our declaration was not listened to by either warring party and they did not offer any response, we decided to start a long march from Helmand to Kabul.” They began marching on 13 May. (2)

Temperatures climb above 40 Celsius in the southern provinces in June, and Highway 1, that snakes northwards to the capital, offers almost no shade from an unremitting sun. Nevertheless, marchers have observed the Ramadan fast, abstaining from water from dawn till dusk. They say they are undertaking this punishing ordeal as a way to make plain the thirst of Afghan citizens for peace. They have also faced the insecurity that Highway 1 has become infamous for, not just the risk of insurgent attack, but also highway robbery.

The peace marchers march in Ghazni city. (2018: the peace marchers)

Warring sides reluctant to stop the fighting?

The government has been, at best, lukewarm in its response to the marchers. Deputy presidential spokesperson Durani Waziri told AAN that, generally speaking, the Afghan government supports any kind of step taken for the sake of peace but it “has yet to reflect on this particular group.” She said they would prepare a response by the time the group arrives in Kabul. Spokesman for the High Peace Council Ihsanullah Tahiri did praise the marchers to AAN, but mentioned the Taleban alone as needing to respond; he said the council hoped they would “welcome the voice of peace and declare their readiness for peace talks.”

Peace marcher Khaiber was scathing about the government’s stance: “[It] has no determination when it comes to peace,” he told AAN. He accused the government of merely making “peace propaganda” in the media, while actually making hurdles for the marchers. He believed that certain posts on social media hostile to the marchers – for example claims that they were funded by ‘the Americans’ – which undermined their security had come from people linked to the local office of the High Peace Council and (un-named) Helmand-based politicians. However, he had scant evidence for this stance and it was denied by the High Peace Council nationally. “We complained to Helmand security department to arrest these people,” Khaibar said. “The security department called them and told them to delete their posts. They did delete them, but have not been arrested.”

As for the Taleban, Khaibar pointed to what he said was a false statement on 20 May from the Taleban spokesman that American money had paid for the protester’s tents. Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taleban spokesman, again appeared to threaten the marchers in this written response to a question from AAN: (3)

If these activists do these actions from the deepest part of their hearts, they should go to the American bases [and demand] they end their invasion and pave the way for a real peace. If they only ask us for a ceasefire while the invaders remain in their positions, then the protestors are examples of [General] Nicolson’s remarks. He said last month that they would pressurize the Taleban on military, social, political and religious bases. Unfortunately, we see that planned pressure… As we have destroyed their conspiracies for 17 long years, we will disable their current weapons as well.

The accusation was clear: the marchers were merely tools of the Americans. There is also the implied warning that the Taleban will ‘disable’ them. The Taleban accusation of US backing, Khaibar said, had hurt their campaign in Taleban-controlled areas. Nevertheless, despite the accusations and the implied threats, they had kept on marching and, the marchers said, found support from ordinary Afghans, not only civilians but also Taleban.

The peace marchers meeting residents of Ghazni in a mosque in the province. (2018: the peace marchers)

Solidarity from ordinary Afghans—including some Taleban fighters

The marchers told AAN the response they had had from ‘the street’ had been very different from either of the warring parties. Religious leaders and tribal elders had praised them for their efforts, and people who live along the highway had opened their homes to them, giving them food and shelter. They had had some hostile reactions, they said. For example, in the Khirqa Mosque in Kandahar, a man had grabbed the microphone, interrupting the meeting to say peace would never happen. However, the response had in general been overwhelmingly positive. That included, on their way through Zabul, Khaibar said, a group of armed Taleban fighters coming to meet and welcome them.

They said they were local Taleban and tired of war.” We accepted the risk of death,” they said “knowing the government forces might attack us [if we came to meet you]. We just came to convey our message. We support you! You go ahead! We do not know who we are fighting with and for. Somebody commands us by walkie-talkie, and we do not know who he is. Sometimes, we are told to go ahead and fight and then we are told to retreat for no [apparent] reason.

The number of marchers has swelled a little along the way. They now include a congenitally blind young man who joined in Zabul. An old woman whose three sons had been killed in the conflict, reported Afghan media, had also wanted to join the marchers, but they encouraged her to pray at home instead of making the arduous journey. They are understood to have reached Qarabagh district of Ghazni province with 37 marchers and arrived in Ghazni city with nearly 60. “The women and men of Ghazni city welcomed us,” he said, telling AAN that they planned to stay there for two more days to talk to different people and will set off Kabul on 11 June. Ghazni-based journalist, Habib al-Rahman Tasir described to AAN how two teams of girls and boys from Nawabad school of Ghazni had come to welcome the marchers by singing anthems of peace. Tasir said majority of boys and girls who sung the peace anthem were Hazara The march organizers said that large numbers of youths from Ghazni and Wardak provinces had also registered their names to join the march, promising to join as it approached the capital.

A dangerous journey

Three of the marchers were hospitalized for two days with exhaustion in Zabul. Doctors urged them to rest, but they carried on. As well as the onslaught on the body they have endured, they have also been shot at and threatened. When they reached the Greshk crossroads in Kandahar and turned toward a village at night, for example, police started shooting at them. When they asked the villagers why, the villagers explained that the marchers had been carrying a lamp, something banned by the police in that village so as to differentiate civilians from insurgents (who do carry lights). On another occasion, the marchers were travelling at night from Daman district to Shahr-e Safa, still in Kandahar, when all of a sudden some people shouted at them and told them to stop and take everything out of their pockets. After hearing about the peace march, however, the villagers apologized for bothering them. The marchers had not informed security officials about their route, but said that after this incident, they had decided to keep the police in the picture about their movements.

Peace to survive and fighting for no outcome

The Helmand marchers have accepted great risks on their path to peace. As they approach Kabul, they have said they will not meet government officials in Kabul, but will keep their protest alive by meeting ulema, young people and tribal elders in the mosques. They insist they want a public presentation of their demands to both the sides in conflict. Mawladad told AAN that the parties to the dispute already know about the declaration. So while the ceasefire is welcome, there are still three other demands from the marchers: talks, forming a ‘system’ acceptable to all and a timetable for foreign troop withdrawal. He said that if their four demands were not met, they would extend the march to other provinces and continue around Highway 1, which rings the country, returning back eventually to Helmand. “We will never give up,” he said.

The marchers have not reached a critical mass where numbers could force action from one or both of the warring parties. Still, the fact that their arrival in the capital is coinciding with the first ceasefire of the post-2001 insurgency feels symbolic. What happens after Eid is another matter. Will Afghans wake up to renewed bloodshed or is there any possibility for this ceasefire – so sweet, but so short – to be extended?

Edited by Graeme Smith, Sari Kouvo and Kate Clark

(1) Ashraf Ghani announced the ceasefire in Dari and Pashto – available here and in a series of tweet:

The Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan announces ceasefire from the 27th of Ramadan until the fifth day of Eid-ul-Fitr following the historic ruling [Fatwa] of the Afghan Ulema.

The Fatwa declared that violence and suicide attacks are not only against Islam but also strictly forbidden in our religion. We also welcome the unprecedented fatwa that only the state can declare jihad thereby rendering violent campaign by any group anything but a holy war.

#Afghan national defense and security forces will only stop offensive manoeuvres against Afghan armed Taliban and will continue to target Daesh and other foreign backed terrorist organizations and their affiliates.

This ceasefire is an opportunity for Taliban to introspect that their violent campaign is not wining them hearts and minds but further alienating the #Afghan people from their cause.

With the ceasefire announcement we epitomize the strength of the Afghan government and the will of the people for a peaceful resolution to the Afghan conflict.

(2) The group initially consisted of the core organizers of the Helmand peace movement: Eqbal Khaibar, Bacha Khan Mawladad, Abdul Malik Hamdard, Sardar Muhammad Sarwari, Abdul Salam Bayan and Bahlol Patyal. Khaibar said when they reached Kandahar eight other youths joined them, including Zmary Zaland, the champion body builder.

(3) An earlier statement by the Taleban on 28 March said the protestors “should go to Shurab and Kandahar airbases of [the] American forces and ask them for peace instead coming to Musa Qala.” The statement warned against protestors visiting Taleban areas because international forces or intelligence services might take advantage of the situation “and something might happen to you.” (Pashto version: here)

 The Taleban have been a persistent and growing force in Farah since 2001, rebuilding their strength quietly after the U.S. invasion and then seizing territory in remote districts. Insurgents now challenge pro-government figures for control of valuable trade and smuggling routes, assisted by the disarray among their opponents as the provincial government is hobbled by frequent changes of leadership and mismanagement. AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig with input from Graeme Smith provides background to the Taleban’s latest attack on Farah.

This is the second of two dispatches that analyse the recent Taleban attack on the city of Farah. The first dispatch, focused on the attack and its immediate aftermath. This second dispatch situates the attack within the broader framework of post-2001 developments in Farah.

Mujahedin stronghold and post-2001 Taleban area of retreat

The Taleban were never fully defeated after 2001, maintaining armed groups in many parts of Afghanistan. This included Farah province, where the Taleban retained a strong presence, particularly in the area of Shiwan village (sometimes written ‘Shaiban’) in Bala Boluk district. According to UN information seen by AAN, “thousands of Taleban” remained there after the fall of their regime in 2001, with “no efforts made by central government or Coalition Forces to disarm these inactive Taliban” (emphasis added by AAN). As in other provinces throughout the country, many Taleban had stopped fighting and returned to their communities, waiting to see what developments would occur under the administration of then-interim leader Hamid Karzai, and whether they might be able to join the political process. (1)

Shiwan is inhabited primarily by ethnic Pashtuns from the Alizai tribe (2) who are known as naqelin, or Pashtuns who migrated from their original home area. Many of them are Alizais forcibly moved from Musa Qala district in Helmand by the Afghan monarchy some 100 years ago and resettled in Shiwan. This explains the close links between the Taleban in Farah and the movement’s strongholds in Helmand (AAN analysis here). Other naqelin from Musa Qala were also moved further north to Shindand district, another hotbed of Taleban activity in neighbouring Herat province. This may explain the Farah Taleban’s close connections to the movement’s leadership in the greater Kandahar region. (3) 

There is a history of revolt in Farah. Bala Boluk district was one of the first areas in the country to rise up against the Soviet occupation that started in late 1979. The so-called Sharafat Koh Front (“mountain of honour” front) emerged, named after a landmark in its area of operation in the district. The area was originally called Lwar Koh, or High Mountain, a range whose highest peak reaches 2,553 metres and cuts through the Ring Road (Highway 1) between Kandahar and Herat. This forbidding geography made the area difficult to control for the Soviets and later the Americans. This same region was also the 2015 birthplace of a self-declared “dissident” Taleban faction under Mullah Muhammad Rasul, a native of adjoining Bakwa district. Rasul had been one of the Sharafat Koh Front’s commanders, associated with the mujahedin organisation, Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami (see AAN analysis here).

The insurgency’s comeback

During a visit by the author to Farah in 2006, the commander of the local US Provincial Reconstruction Team reported recent shelling of his compound. He said this was the first-ever attack on the PRT compound and it may have been a significant moment for the insurgency in Farah. The commander warned that the province was already a “combat zone”. Local sources confirmed later that the shelling had resulted in the arrest of Taleban commander who had previously been considered ‘inactive’.

In 2006, the Taleban leadership sent missions to Farah to reactivate former fighters, as it had already done in other provinces. In September 2006, Mullah Abdul Manan – not Mullah Omar’s brother but a pre-2001 district police chief in Farah – had established himself as Farah’s insurgency leader with the support of the Quetta Shura, mainly in Bakwa and Bala Boluk districts, but also in Anar Dara. The local drug mafia, linked to Baloch smugglers further south in Nimruz, with their century-old connections with Iran and Pakistan, was already involved in weapons smuggling from Iran, to the benefit of the Taleban. This may have been assisted by the small Baloch minority in Farah.

From then onwards, Taleban activity intensified on an annual basis in a pattern familiar to other provinces, including bomb attacks and assassinations as well as attacks on district centres. The violence steadily closed in on the provincial capital. As early as November 2004, attacks on UN and other aid convoys were already reported in Farah province. The first mid-ranking official was killed in August 2006, as insurgents ambushed Gulistan’s district governor Nesar Ahmad.

In May 2007, the Taleban sent more fighters to their strongholds in Shiwan in Bala Boluk and Diwar-e Sorkh village in Khak-e Safed, and warned local residents to evacuate the area as a clash with government forces was imminent. This led to population movements to villages near Farah city. (3) By the same year, the districts of Bakwa, Gulistan, Bala Boluk, Poshtrud, Delaram (4) and Khak-e Safed, with the exception of their centres, were under Taleban control. On 29 May 2007, the Taleban captured Poshtrud district centre in the first of such assaults, but only for two hours. In November that year, Khak-e Safed, Gulistan and Bakwa were also temporarily held by the Taleban and sections of the Ring Road in Farah were closed “on a daily basis,” according to a report by an international organisation seen by the author. In March 2009, Mullah Rasul was appointed shadow governor of Farah by the Quetta Shura. (5)

An attempt by a joint Afghan-US mission to push the Taleban from their stronghold in Shiwan in May 2009 turned into a disaster, with one of the highest civilian casualty losses of the entire war. Reuters reported, “140 villagers” killed,93 of whom were children “and only 22 were adult males.” Afghanistan Rights Monitor said in the same year that 113 of the killed were civilians, with “at least 26 women and 61 children.” (6) In October 2009, Afghan and US forces temporarily managed to capture Shiwan. In the same year, Taleban in Khak-e-Safed district warned civil servants to step down from their posts.

On 22 June 2010, the Taleban attacked the provincial governor’s compound in Farah city for the first time. They used an IED, injuring the head of the provincial council who was there for a meeting. In July that year, the Taleban organised a spectacular jailbreak from Farah prison. They smuggled in explosives with which inmates blasted open the front gate. In May, July and September 2012, Taleban fighters launched a series of ‘complex’ and bomb attacks on the governor’s compound, killing ten people in total. During this period the insurgents also conducted an assassination campaign in Farah, killing at least five high-profile figures. Among the dead were the controversial former Purchaman district police chief and governor Salim Mubarez; a former Jamiati-turned-Taleb-turned-Jamiati; the NDS district chief of Qala-ye Kah; and two other former Taleban commanders that had changed sides after 2001 and became district chiefs or Afghan Local Police commanders (AAN analysis here). In April 2013, nine Taliban suicide bombers killed themselves and 44 other people in an attack on a courtroom in the Farah governor’s compound where their comrades were on trial.

The Taleban failed twice in their attempts to take over Khashrod district of neighbouring Nimroz province in December 2016 and August 2017 and Bakwa in November 2016, although they temporarily succeeded in Gulestan in December 2015.

Attacks on the outskirts of Farah city began in October 2016 with fighting that lasted for over a week. The Taleban came as close as two kilometres to the city centre, to an area called Bagh-e Pul and had to be pushed back by airstrike. When the Taleban closed in on Farah city in Poshtrud district in early 2018, as reported above, this also had immediate effects on the general situation in the city. The Washington Post reported that “robbery and theft surged in the [provincial] capital as the conflict neared. Families fled to neighbouring provinces amid the chaos, and angry protests broke out.” It quoted a local resident as saying that “we have two governments — one on the other side of the river, and one on this side.” Provincial council members warned that Farah city was “on the verge of collapse.” During this period, locals feared the encirclement of the city as the insurgents took positions to the north and northwest across the Farah River and also about eight to nine kilometres south and southeast of the city, including in the Hasan Ghagh area. 

Misgovernance, factional conflict and drugs

Some of the reasons for the bad situation in Farah were the corruption and rivalry among local pro-government strongmen who have undermined security, as well as the increasing convergence of interests between the drug trade, elements in the local administration and Taleban networks. At that time, there were only 20 to 30 policemen formally assigned to each district centre. Even if the official roster reflected the reality of personnel strength in the field, such numbers would have been too small to protect even the major towns.

The situation was exacerbated from the beginning by factional conflict. In Bala Boluk district, Zabet Jalil rose to prominence in the years after 2001 as the nephew of the powerful Noorzai tribal leader and Wolesi Jirga member Mohammad Naim Farahi. Jalil was pitted against former Taleban commander Mullah Sultan in a conflict over transport and smuggling routes, leading from Herat south to Nimroz and Iran. Ismail Khan in Herat, as the self-declared ruler of western Afghanistan, was vying for control of his neighbouring provinces and took Jalil’s side in the dispute. Jalil became head of the largest transport company in the province, serving mainly the coalition troops. Jamiat-e Islami and Hezb-e Islami competed for influence in a number of districts, making them vulnerable to Taleban infiltration. Armed conflict also erupted over land disputes in Gulistan and other districts. All this led to significant loss of civilian lives. But not too many people in Kabul noticed, as Farah – at the far western border – was remote and there were many more problems near the capital.

The provincial leadership, including governors and chiefs of police, changed on an almost yearly basis. Sometimes the central government appointed leaders from within the province, and sometimes from outside. Nothing worked. By the end of 2009, Farah had had ten provincial police chiefs and seven governors. After that, the frequency of these changes only marginally slowed down.

Farah’s government officials competed over the seven unofficial border crossing points to Iran, at which they collected customs – and apparently pocketed most of it. This allegedly continues. In a programme aired on Ariana TV on 22 January 2018, Homayun Shahidzada, a political commentator from Farah, said every day over 100 tankers of poor-quality oil were imported from Iran through Farah. But the taxes and tariffs paid “do not go to the government, but into pockets of mafia.”

Shahidzada further accused the provincial governor, the chief of police who has now been replaced, the head of customs and the NDS as well as the chairman of the provincial council and some other members of being “part of the mafia.” On 23 January 2018, Kabul daily Etilaat-e Ruz estimated the value of Farah’s total revenues collected at the border as five billion Afghani per year (around $70 million US dollars).

 Over the last years, the Taleban have increasingly taken over some of the ‘taxing’ of the cross-border traffic. They have also been collecting taxes on inland routes. Etilaat-e Ruz reported on illegal mobile ‘customs offices’ on the highway connecting Farah and Nimroz in the south, and toward Herat, in the north (read report here).

The fight for control over transport and smuggling routes is deeply connected to Farah’s drug economy. In Afghanistan’s west, it is the largest and countrywide the seventh largest poppy-growing province. Growing and trafficking the produce is much of the population’s main source of income, particularly in Bakwa, Bala Boluk, Khak-e Safid, Gulistan, Poshtrud and, less significantly, Purchaman districts, according to UNODC. Not coincidentally, those are the districts with the earliest and strongest Taleban presence. According to UNODC figures, the area in the province under opium poppy cultivation rose by almost 40 percent from 2016 to 2017, from 9,101 to 12,846 hectares. (7) This has also spurred on the US military under its new strategy, which now also targets heroin labs as part of an attempt to deny the Taleban key income sources (AAN analysis here). In early April 2018, US and Afghan forces targeted 11 “Taliban narcotics production facilities” in Farah and Nimruz, according to a Resolute Support press release. 

Although the number of security forces in Farah increased from the mid-2000s, to “about 6,000”, as the Washington Post reported in early 2018, (8) this was “less than half the number in next-door Helmand.” But official numbers might still be exaggerated. The article further quoted Abdul Sabur Khedmat, a member of parliament from Farah, as saying “60 percent of the police are ghost officers.”  

Others suggest that Iran has undermined the government in Farah. MP Belqis Roshan, when talking to AAN on 16 May, claimed Iran supported the Taleban with ammunition and other logistics, an assertion that is widespread among local government officials (see here and here). Others, such as governor Salangi, deny this but officials in western Afghanistan told the author as early as in 2006 that they found it difficult to publicly speak against Iran, given its strong influence in the region. 

Although there is no doubt that Iran has been influencing the situation in western Afghanistan for decades and that there is some Taleban presence in Iran, the extent of its involvement is not clear. Some allegations might also serve as a pretext to cover up the shortcomings in provincial and central governance, and might represent an appeal to the current US administration in the context of deteriorating relations with Tehran.

Conclusion: A long build-up to a strong presence

 For some days in mid-May it looked as though the Taleban might take Farah city. This would have been their biggest military triumph since the capture of Kunduz for two weeks in 2015, including some near-misses in 2016 and 2017. The attack in Farah ended without success after three days, but the Taleban maintain their pressure on the city. Continued fragility of the provincial capital and district centres seems likely, as Taleban raids give the insurgency fresh supplies of weapons, ammunition and vehicles. Local insurgent commanders may have greater self-interest in cementing their control of lucrative checkpoints, rather than mounting ambitious assaults on well-defended government centres, but the movement’s leadership will continue to see the overthrow of a provincial capital as a way to show the world the Taleban’s potency. Given that the Taleban were never fully defeated in Farah and that their presence – as well as their capabilities and resources – have been rebuilt over the last decade, they remain a threat and one that is unlikely to be defeated militarily.

 

 

(1) Many of the Taleban remained armed after 2001 — as witnessed by the author in Ghor province in February 2002, for example, as well as in Paktia province, where a Taleban hideout was attacked during Operation Anaconda in March 2002 (see a 2002 Time magazine reportage here).

(2) This tribal affiliation partly explains the intra-Taleban split in 2015 (media report here) and the emergence of the “Rasul faction”. Rasul is an Alizai, a tribe that felt sidelined under the rule of Taleban chief Mullah Mansur (2012-15), an Eshaqzai. Mansur was felt to have promoted members his own tribe at the expense of other tribes in the Taleban leadership. The long-standing enmity between Alizai and Eshaqzai was exploited by the Afghan government, which supported Rasul in his efforts to break away from the Taliban and build a militia that often cooperated with government forces. (more AAN analysis here).

(3) In contrast to the NATO and UN categorisation of Afghanistan’s regions, which puts Farah in the west with its centre in Herat, Farah (and Nimruz) are traditionally seen as belonging to southern Afghanistan, the region sometimes referred to as Loya Kandahar (“greater Kandahar”) now, also encompassing Helmand and Zabul. (Farah’s and Nimruz’s attachment to the west also has to do with western Afghan strongman Ismail Khan’s ambitions in that region.) Even more traditionally, the Kandahar region was known as the southwest, while Loya Paktia was referred to as the south (as, immediately south of Kabul).

(4) This group was led by Mullah Sultan, an influential tribal elder and leader of the post-2001 ‘inactive’ Taleban. He initially refused to join the new insurgency, but involved himself later again, in mid-2005, was arrested and held in Bagram in 2006. He apparently became inactive again following his release in 2007. 

(5) Delaram was listed under Nimroz province in 2013.

(6) Rasul already ran into trouble with the Quetta Shura after the killing of his rivals and leading Farah Taleban commanders during a joint Afghan-coalition operation in August 2009. The Taleban leadership launched an investigation into the possibility that Rasul might have had a hand in the killings.

(7) Report not online, in the author’s archive.

(8) The area under cultivation, however, was higher in previous years, beginning with 2007 (and with the exception of 2009).

(9) According to an Afghan media report, this included two battalions of the Public Order Police from Herat and two from the Herat army commando.

An attack on Farah city had long been feared. For years now, the Taleban have been taking control of the provincial capital’s outlying districts and inching their way towards the central hub. For a few days in mid-May, it looked as though the Taleban were about to take Farah city, which would have been their most significant military triumph since capturing Kunduz for two weeks in 2015. Their strategy of consolidating control over rural areas then digging in at a provincial centre’s outskirts before launching an attack appears to be an increasing trend. While they lost the battle in Farah on this occasion, the Taleban still pose a serious threat to the area. AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig together with Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Rohullah Soroush and Obaid Ali unpack the attack and its aftermath.

This is the first of two dispatches examining the recent attack on the city of Farah. This first dispatch focuses on the attack and its aftermath. The second contextualises the attack in light of post-2001 developments in Farah.

The Farah attack

The Taleban attacked the provincial capital of Farah (1) in the early hours of 15 May. This was on day 21 of their annual military campaign announced earlier in April and just a few days before the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Within a few hours they had pushed through to the central chowk (junction) of the city. According to a local government military spokesman (quoted here), the Taleban set up checkpoints around the city and checked identity cards, trying to prevent people from fleeing. The Taleban had warned citizens over social media to stay indoors “and pray.” Many radio and television channels in the province stopped broadcasting, fearing for their employees’ lives, according to media watchdog Nai.

The Taleban started their attack at around two am from Regi and Chahar Bagh, areas to the immediate northeast and west of the city centre where the Taleban had concentrated their forces (media reports here and here).

During the first attack on 15 May, the Taleban moved towards Zara Ferqa, the old army division headquarters, now defunct, around three kilometres outside the city centre (media report in Dari here), and from there to the provincial headquarters of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), just south of it and located only 800 metres away from the provincial governor’s compound. The same morning, media footage from Farah showed black smoke rising above the NDS compound, although its defenders held out.

All three areas, Regi, Chahar Bagh and Zara Ferqa, are situated on the south bank of Farah River, which runs to the north of the city. It used to be the demarcation line between government and Taleban-held areas. That the Taleban took up positions there and were able to retreat to them and hold them after their attack was pushed back, demonstrates the continued threat to Farah city.

The Taleban also attacked the compounds of Farah’s police districts three and four, south of the NDS and the provincial prison, which is next to the provincial headquarters of the Afghan National Police (ANP). Afghan media reported that they used “heavy and light weapons.” They also employed suicide attackers against the police and, according to local reports, including several US-made armoured Humvee vehicles captured from Afghan forces. They had apparently been able to capture these during previous raids on police posts in Bala Boluk district in February, March and on 11 May 2018 as well as in Farah city on 11 May 2018  (more about the use of this weapon in this AAN analysis) – a clear indication that this attack had not come out of the blue.

Video clips also appeared on social media showing fighters inside the city seizing more weapons, ammunition and military vehicles from Afghan security forces. Most of this footage was filmed the first morning. Photos posted on social media also showed Taleban ‘special forces’ in gear not dissimilartothat of the Afghan army. In January 2018 the governor’s spokesman, Nasser Mehri, told Kabul-based daily Etilaat-e Roz that the local Taleban were equipped with helmet cameras and night-vision goggles.

According to Farid Bakhtawar, head of the provincial council, local government officials did manage to flee the city (see here). There were also reports that provincial governor Basir Salangi, a former mujahedin commander who was appointed in January 2018 (2), had left the city the night before fighting broke out and had relocated to a military base “a few miles from the city”, as the New York Times reported quoting “numerous local officials.” Ahmad Shah Fetrat, a local journalist in the city, told AAN “The city is empty, government offices, schools and shops are closed.” Tolo News quoted a local citizen as saying “people are running from the city.”

The Taleban, however, were unable to capture Farah airport’s runway or prevent reinforcements, particular of Afghan army commandos, arriving from Herat. Police special forces arrived from Kandahar (media report here) and Afghan and US air forces also carried out a number of airstrikes. Local journalists in the provincial capital confirmed to AAN that they had seen US and Afghan helicopters flying over the city, and NATO’s Resolute Support mission also confirmed US airstrikes in the province (read here and here).

In the afternoon of 15 May, government forces managed to push back the attackers to the Regi area (media report here). There were also reports about Taleban sheltering in residential areas within the city’s limits, from which they had driven out residents.

On 17 May, new fighting broke out “in some key parts of the city,” according to Afghan media reports (for example here and here), with attacks on the ANP headquarters, the prison and the residence of the head of the provincial council. According to Reuters, at least one more suicide bomb attack was launched near the police headquarters. The third police district reportedly fell to the Taleban. The same day, the Ministry of Education ordered that all schools in the province remain closed “till the situation has improved”. Fighting subsided after a few hours of battle; the city has been quiet since.

According to governor Salangi, about 300 Taleban, 15 soldiers, ten policemen and five civilians were killed during the first day of fighting. These figures are likely too low, though. The Taleban claimed the number of their casualties was much lower, in the single digits only. Independent sources estimated that 180 people had been killed from all sides, but without differentiating how many from each. The Interior Ministry in Kabul confirmed that provincial deputy police chief Abdul Razeq Sherzad was among the injured.

Salangi said 1,000 Taleban had been involved in the attack, with another 1,000 reinforcements brought in during the day on 15 May. The numbers cannot be confirmed, but AAN heard from several sources that the Taleban had gathered fighters from Farah, Helmand and Herat’s Shindand district (see this AAN analysis).

An attack foretold

An attack on Farah city had long been feared. The Taleban have systematically worked their way towards the city over many years (see the second dispatch), and their efforts have intensified over recent months.

Haji Khair Muhammad Nurzai, deputy head of Farah’s provincial council, told AAN in January 2018 that Mullah Muzammel, the Taleban’s shadow governor during an earlier, failed attempt to capture Farah city in late September/early October 2017, had now become the commander of the Taleban’s south-western military zone. This had given him the means to gather a larger number of fighters. AAN had already heard in January 2018 that 300 to 400 Taleban from the three provinces under the command of a Mullah Daud had started attacking government security posts and establishing makeshift checkpoints on the Herat-Farah road to try to find and sometimes kill government officials or staff working for international NGOs. One such incident was reported by Jamila Amini, a member of Farah’s provincial assembly, who told the media on 6 January 2018 that three or four out of twenty bus passengers had been abducted by the Taleban (she did not give the exact location). According to her, those abducted had been former police and government employees (read here).

On 28 February 2018, the Washington Post reported that the Taleban were “over running several security outposts, killing at least 43 policemen and wounding more than 50,” and crossing “the dried Farah Rud River, a natural barrier to the city, and attack[ing] a suburban outpost.” At that time in January 2018, fighting had already been going on for 20 days, and Gulbahar Mujahed, the province’s acting police chief, had been killed by a roadside bomb. Three days later Muhammad Ismail, intelligence chief of Poshtrud district, was also killed in a Taleban ambush.

A provincial council member warned Afghan media, that “every night five to ten security force members are killed and Taleban seize their equipment. But the government so far has not done anything to tackle the issue” (here and here). Approximately 7,000 families had fled the area, according to the local representative of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations.

In late March, Afghan commandos attacked a Taleban commanders meeting in Bala Boluk district, but this did not prevent the 15 May attack on the provincial capital.

In late April 2018, two weeks before the recent offensive, members of Farah’s provincial council expressed concern over the increase in Taleban control throughouttheir province. Deputy council head,Khair Muhammad Nurzai, was quoted by the Afghan media as saying that three districts – Bakwa, Khak-e Safid and Gulestan – were under the Taleban’s complete control, although this claim was later denied by provincial police chief Sherzad. Gul Ahmad A’azami, an MP from Farah,said six districts were largely controlled by the Taleban – Bakwa, Gulestan, Poshtrud, Bala Boluk, Anar Dara and Khak-e Safid – with government presence limited to the immediate district centres. Just before the latest attack on the city in mid-May, local sources had told the author that, in fact, this was the case in all of Farah province’s ten rural districts. In the remaining four districts, Purchaman, Qala-ye Kah, Shib Koh and Lash wa Juwayn, the government was comparatively stronger, according to senator A’azami .

The centre of Anar Dara was briefly overrun by the Taleban in March 2018, as was Shebkoh centre in October 2017. In November 2017, the Afghan army had to use helicopters in Khak-e Safid’s district centre bazaar to repulse a Taleban attack.

A quarter of all provincial centres are under threat

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defence has indirectly confirmed the Taleban’s strategy of surrounding provincial cities. On 16 May 2018 its spokesman, Muhammad Radmanesh, said with some understatement and reacting to a media query: “Yes. (…) a few cities are under pressure.”

Apart from Farah city, he listed Maimana (Faryab), Pul-e Khumri (Baghlan), Tirinkot (Uruzgan), Kunduz and also Faizabad (Badakhshan). The media report, also added Ghazni. There, intense fighting was reported in two districts on the same day. One of these districts – Zana Khan – is just outside the provincial capital. Fighting in the province continues.

Lashkargah (Helmand) and Sar-e Pul (where incidents are underreported) could also be put into this category, although the immediate pressure on the latter has been somewhat relieved by the military successes of both Afghan and US troops, part of President Trump’s mini-surge (AAN analysis here), by taking back Nawadistrict centre just outside Lashkargah from the Taleban in July 2017 (media report here). This means that more than a quarter of the country’s 34 provincial centres face a threat from the Taleban.

Kabul could be added to this list, although the threat there is of a different nature; while the country’s capital is not close to falling to the Taleban, it is under constant threat of suicide and so-called complex attacks on strategic installations. This assessment has frequently been confirmed by UNAMA’s regular reportingon civilian casualties, which has shown for a few years now that Kabul suffers a disproportionately high number of attacks. In 2017, “16 per cent of all civilian casualties during the year occurring from such attacks in Kabul city.” Kabul province also saw the highest number of civilian casualties of the country’s provinces. Some Afghan politicians, such as Interior Minister Wais Barmak, have spoken about a city “under siege,” and Kabulis definitely feel this (see, for example, this report by Afghan journalist and former AAN colleague Ali Latifi). This has also been confirmed in Europe where some governments are talking security threats down in the context of their policy of deporting rejected Afghan asylum seekers. Recently, on 9 March 2018, the Cournationale du droit d’asile, France’s highest asylum court, has described Kabul as a “high-intensity situation of indiscriminate violence” (see here).

Reports by AAN and others have shown for a long time how the Taleban have implemented their strategy, moving slowly towards and encircling provincial centres. The most successful example was – and still is – Kunduz. Although the Taleban quickly lost control of the provincial capital in 2015 – and only came close to maintaining some control in 2016 and 2017, they haverepeatedly shownthat they have been able to penetrate the city, reaching its very centre. Symbolic snapshots taken at the city’s central chowk (junction) are of symbolic value for them. They did the same at Farah’s central chowk in the morning of 15 May 2018 after sweeping in there.

In Kunduz, the Taleban built a fundament from which they could move forward for years to come. As this AAN report showed, they started creating footholds in Pashtun pockets there as early as 2005 and increased their military activity from 2009 onwards (see how the build-up occurred in this AAN dossier). Establishing positions near important road links has also been part of their strategy, such as near the Ring Road in the districts of Baghlan-e Jadid and Dand-e Ghoriin Baghlan province, to the south of Kunduz (see this AAN analysis), with the aim of creating options to block government troop reinforcements during attacks in Kunduz (see here). This is what happened during their successful attack on Kunduz in 2015 (AAN analysis here).

The Taleban had in fact closed in on Kunduz city before this (AAN report here), as seen by their control over most rural districts, much like in Farah. Repeated government ‘clearance operations’ have been unable to permanently drive them out, even from the city’s outskirts where their positions can be seen with the naked eye (see here). Control over most districts has changed hands frequently between the insurgents and the government. The last Taleban takeover happened in Qala-ye Zal district, again, in mid-April 2018 (media report here; earlier AAN analysis here).

As in Farah, Taleban advances in Kunduz have been made possible by a combination of factors such as factional conflictswithin the provincial administration (AAN analysis here), weak leadership and a lack of cooperation among the different security forces (see here), as well asthe misrule of pro-government auxiliary armed forces (see here). Kunduz’ situation was exacerbated further by ethnic tensions and the settling of old scores along these lines (see an early Human Rights Watch report here).

Although Baghlan’s situation is less acute than that of Kunduz, the environs of its provincial centre Pul-e Khumri have seen a build-up of Taleban control and repeated low-level fighting since 2014 (AAN report here). The outskirts of the town are also where the Taleban blew up a power line pylon in March, which provides electricity to Kabul – power is still patchy as we write (media report here). That the government is still unable to repair the damage is testament to the fact that it does not have a grip on the area. The current fighting over Talawa Barfak district in Baghlan is part of the regional picture, as its centre controls an alternative route between the Kabul region and Kunduz. Talawa Barfak centre was captured by the Taleban on 8 May 2018 and recaptured by governments on 18 May 2018 (media report here), a repetition of events in March 2017 (media report here).

Further south, from Ghazni, the New York Times reported on 9 May 2018 that the city was “on the brink of falling to the Taliban”as“an increasing number of insurgents live openly in the city. Their fighters regularly kill officials [and] a Taliban court claims jurisdiction over the city.” Already in December 2017, the Afghan news agency Pajhwok had quoted Hassan Raza Yousufi, a member of Ghazni’s Provincial Council, that “[b]usinessmen, Provincial Council members, governor house officials and other individuals give taxes to the Taliban.” According to the same report there are frequent attacks on police stations in the city. Deputy provincial governor Muhammad Aref Nuri was quoted as saying in November 2017 (source: BBC Monitoring) that there had been16 assassinations in the past eight months in the city.

The Taleban had raided Ghazni city before, on 14 September 2015 (an AAN’s reconstruction of events here). During that attack, the Taleban did not only storm the provincial prison but they also ransacked the local NDS office, capturing intelligence files. This attack, however, was not a means to take over the city. Given certain parallels, it might suggest that the recent attack in Farah was not designed to capture or hold Farah either, but to strike and show the vulnerability of the Afghan forces and to stay in positions nearby. The Taleban’s modus operandi of only briefly capturing district centres, where government forces have repeatedly been forced to react and recapture, might be part of this strategy. This is not to say the Taleban would be able to hold a large provincial city for a longer period.

Over the past few months, frequent fighting hasalso been reported from Deh-e Yak, Khwaja Omari and Andar district, all three situated just outside Ghazni city. For example, the Taleban laid siege on Andar district in October 2017, attacked Deh-e Yak several times in November 2017, and temporarily overran Khwaja Omari in April 2018, shooting dead the district governor and police chief. AAN heard from locals that they dug a trench across that road, ambushing approaching vehicles of the security forces.

Information AAN received from local sources indicates that the attack on Jaghatu in particular, where the district headquarters was defended by only 15 to 20 police and NDS was orchestrated by the Taleban in order to seize weapons. According to these reports, they took a ranger vehicle and a mortar and burned whatthey could not carry. They set fire to the police HQ building as well. Reinforcements arrived very late, and could only retrieve the bodies of the 11 dead and five injured.

While AAN has covered the situation in Helmand and around Lashkargah in two long dispatches (see here and here) and in Faryab as well as its centre, Maimana, which is surrounded in all but one direction, less information is available for Uruzgan and Sar-e Pul provinces.

But reports of fighting near the two provincial centres, Tirinkot and Sar-e Pul, are frequent. Local reports from Uruzgan indicate that the situation is not greatly different from that in Farah; with most districts – except their immediate centres – under Taleban control and their fighters in the vicinity of the provincial centre. The last media reports are about a – failed – Taleban attempt to take over the centre of Chinartu district in January 2018 (here), both sides suffering consider casualties during fighting near Chora district centre in March and late May. On 31 May, Major Muhammad Sadiq, spokeman for Atal Military Corps 205, a military corp operate in the southern region of the country, told VOA Pashto that they had killed 12 Taleban in their air and ground attacks. He said that they had recaptured a number of areas of Chora district from the insurgents and that there was no risk of Chora district collapsing. The Taleban’s spokesman, on the other hand, tweeted on 30 May that they had captured Chora district. There was also a report in May that most voter registration centres in the province were“closed due to insecurity.”In Sar-ePul, the Taleban have brought relative stability to Kohistanat, a district they have controlled since 2015, while frequently threatening Sayyad district, which is next to the provincial capital, as well as Sancharak district. A rare indication of the complicated situation in Sar-e Pul city was given by the Afghan election observer organisation, the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) in September 2017, when a representative told AAN (see here) that the Independent Election Commission only managed to access the provincial capital for its polling centre assessment. In general, though, remote Sar-e Pul is more like an area of retreat for Taleban fighters in provinces nearby, including Jawzjan and Faryab.

Finally, it is no coincidence that the three provinces withthe highest number of districts under Taleban control – Uruzgan, Kunduz and Helmand (according to the US military – USFOR-A) – are all provinces where the provincial capital is also under threat (quoted from 30 April 2018 SIGAR quarterly, see here):

USFOR-A identified the provinces with the largest percentage of insurgent-controlled or -influenced districts as Uruzgan Province, with four of its six districts under insurgent control or influence, Kunduz Province (five of seven districts), and Helmand Province (nine of 14 districts), all unchanged since last quarter.

Conclusion: A war of attrition and a waiting game

The Taleban strategy of surrounding and putting pressure on a number of Afghan provincial centres might be a deliberate strategy or just the coincidental outcome of their efforts to ensure territorial gain. Despite some fluctuation in their territorial gains, the Taleban have managed to establish and hold positions that are threat to a number of key population centres and national highways. From there, they can almost strike at will; government troops are mostly on the defensive and constantly forced to react by sending in the few élite troops that they have – which may well lead to their attrition (see AAN analysis here).

The Taleban apply a similar modus operandi to district centres, with a strategy that could be called assault-and-retreat. The fact that the Afghan Minister of Defence recently called (media report here) 216 of the 407 districts “unsecure” reflects that this strategy is both paying off and widespread.

Given the slow pace of the Taleban’s actual territorial gains, around one per cent per quarter according to figures given in the most recent SIGAR quarterly report in April 2018, this kind of war could go on for a long time. It depends on which side can hold its breath for longest, the insurgents or the Afghan government and its allies. It could also depend on which of them may be prepared to take a bold step to break out of this vicious circle, vicious mainly for the Afghan people and the country’s infrastructure.

With regards to Farah, the fact that the Taleban were only pushed back to positions just outside the provincial capital from where they started their attack means that new attacks can be expected. Farah is only one example for a situation that prevails in at least a quarter of Afghanistan’s provinces. It remains to be seen what happens if they acquire the capacity to attack several provincial capitals at the same time.

 

 

 

(1) The capital of Farah is inhabited by between 38,000 to 108,000 people depending on different sources. The lower figure stems from the Afghan Ministry of Urban Development and Housing’s report, “State of Afghan Cities” (2015) – it also gives 5,299 “dwelling units” for the city; the higher figures is from the Afghan Central Statistics Office 2012.

The term “city” for Farah should be taken with a pinch of salt. As many other provincial and most district centres, it does not have much of an urban character, with most buildings being low and many of traditional style. They are more village-like, and – more importantly – there is not much infrastructure that holds them together.

(2) His predecessor had stepped down following local protests regarding corruption and deteriorating security, citinginterference by powerful “individuals” in his work (see here).

 

 

A new short book-length report, “Incremental peace in Afghanistan” looks at what is needed to end the Afghan conflict. It explores the many drivers towards the war continuing – external backing for both sides, the war economy and basic persisting disputes about power-sharing – but also details what could drive a peace process – the many concerns shared by Afghans, the view of the war as pointless and, they say, international interest in achieving peace. The new report has an interesting mix of contributors – female, male, Afghan and international, civilians, Taleban, activists, politicians, academics and military. In this review, AAN Co-Director Kate Clark finds the report is timely and full of fresh voices and ideas.

Talk of peace in Afghanistan is in the air, at least more than it was a year ago. 2018 has seen the Taleban publishing a “Letter to the American people” on 14 February which appeared to propose talks with the US (1) and on 28 February President Ashraf Ghani offered peace talks to the Taleban without pre-conditions (read AAN’s take on that here). Positive noises came from the NATO’s Foreign Ministers meeting on 27 April (2) and from Resolute Support and United States military commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson on 30 May. As Radio Free Europe reported, he said some Taleban are talking, with a lot of “diplomatic activity and dialogue… occurring off the stage, and… at multiple levels,” with “mid-level, senior-level Taliban leaders engaging with Afghans” (full text of his press briefing here).

This year as well, a new, non-aligned, (very) embryonic peace movement has emerged after civilians in Helmand, fed up with being killed by both sides, called for a ceasefire; groups in more than half of Afghanistan’s provinces have since come together to echo these demands (see AAN reporting here). Many Afghans are also looking admiringly at the mass demonstrations known as the ‘Pashtun Long March’ that have been held across the border in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Pashtun civilians there are demanding civil rights and an end to insurgency and counter-insurgency being played out by Pakistani Taleban and Islamabad in their lands (see media reporting here and here).

As the Afghan conflict enters its fortieth year, there is actually quite a lot of agreement about it – virtually everyone agrees neither side can win and that the conflict is causing atrocious damage to Afghanistan and its people (ten thousand civilians killed and injured last year, to mention just one of the nasty statistics of this war – see more here). Yet even those who want to prioritise peace-making are often left stumped with many unanswered questions: what to do, who should speak to whom, what would peace ‘mean’ and how can we help (the author has heard the last question raised in many military and civilian international circles in recent weeks).

A timely publication

The publication by Conciliation Resources of “Incremental Peace in Afghanistan” is therefore very timely. (3) It is also very good, providing context, information and quite a lot of fresh thinking. This is how the editors lay out what they feel they have done with this publication:

[We] identify the need for a radical change in approach to move beyond peace rhetoric in Afghanistan through a progressive, step-by-step process towards political settlement, which builds stability, confidence and legitimacy over time. This would pursue two phased objectives: first, short-term – to reduce violence which inevitably involves a central role for the conflict parties, principally the Taliban and the Afghan government; and second, long-term – to achieve a more broadly inclusive social contract representative of all Afghans which is only achievable with involvement and ultimately endorsement across Afghan society.

There is a good range of contributors, including local perspectives from civilians in four provinces and from senior Taleban commanders and leaders in four areas of the country and from Quetta, analyses from academics like Barnett Rubin, Muhammad Nazif Shahrani and Thomas Barfield, the thoughts of senior politicians/military leaders including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Yunus Qanuni, Habiba Sarabi and retired US general Douglas Lute and statements from High Peace Council chair Abdul Karim Khalili and spokesman for the Taleban’s political office in Qatar Muhammad Suhail Shahin.

The report is split into three parts: historical lessons from the conflict and from earlier attempts at peace-making, priorities for peace initiatives, and options for institutional change. The lessons-learned section aims at understanding “how departures from established, violent political paths might be possible” and includes historical analyses of the Afghan state, critiques of the Bonn agreement and of Dr Najib’s late PDPA era attempts at ‘national reconciliation’ and a setting out of how the Taleban view the post-2001 era.

The final section of the report looks at the possibilities for institutional changes and features the thoughts of Hekmatyar and Qanuni and the views of Afghans living in rural Balkh, Nangrahar, Herat and Ghazni on elections, peace and reconciliation. It was thesecond section, ‘peace initiatives’, however, which contained some particularly interesting insights.

Fleshing out some detail when looking at initiatives for peace

Sippi Azarbaijani-Moghaddam manages to get away from focusing on women’s representation as mainly a tick in the box exercise to actually asking what would women’s participation mean for the peace process and how a range of Afghan women could be represented. For example, she writes:

There is also often an assertion that gains from a peace process absent of women would not be sustainable. But it is not clear how women’s participation would guarantee sustainability if women participants are in any case disempowered and must be granted space and permission to engage in the first place. This comes across as fearful and anxious rather than a proactive approach to entering the peace marketplace and seeing what is on offer. On the other hand, proactive approaches to peacebuilding on a small scale and at a local level have been fruitful, as a woman activist working with local shuras to reduce civilian casualties recently told me.

Perhaps the most surprising chapter is when of the publication’s editors, Anna Larson, hears from senior Taleban commanders and leaders from five ‘caucuses’ in the north, west/north-west, south-east, south and Quetta. “All groups currently self-identify as Taliban and belong to the central Taliban movement,” she writes, “but some have expressed the desire to become autonomous from it.” The conversations took place “in person over the course of several days in spring 2018 at an undisclosed location outside of Afghanistan, to which the five caucuses concerned had travelled in order to begin talks with
a group of high-level actors representing several countries, including Afghanistan and the United States, about the de-escalation of violence and potential for reconciliation with the Afghan government.” One of the positions common to all five caucuses, says Larson, is that, “Above all, it is critical to end the needless killing of Afghans. We want to work towards the establishment of peace in our country.”

There is a lot that is interesting and unexpected in what these particular Taleban say. Among other things, those in the north complain about their marginalisation by  “Kandaharis and Zadranis,” (4) a reference to the predominance of Kandaharis in the leadership and the clout of the Haqqanis. And, one of the west/north-westerners complains about the lack of local Pashtun political representation on the Provincial Council and in parliament – he also compares government help to his area, unfavourably, with the previous efforts of NATO’s Provincial Reconstruction Teams. A “senior member of an opposition group that has links to the Taliban” in the south-east insists they started fighting the ‘US invasion’ only in self-defence:

We are not the followers of fighting. We want to continue towards peace – we are not against democracy, it is not against Islam. We have three clinics and we have female doctors too. No one can control local security as well as we can. There is a dam being built in one of our districts and we have 60 people providing security for that project. No engineer has died or been kidnapped. We are supporting them. Police are in their jobs, we are supporting them also.

…No one will find anything in
our history that connects us to suicide bombers. In our mountain areas there are foreign fighters – Chechen, Punjabi, etc – and we try to stop them as far as possible but we cannot do this all the time. We do not allow them to come to the villages or the mosques. Foreign fighters have a lot of money and weapons but still we try to stop them. We have no funds from opium. The Peshawar Shura is supporting the Haqqanis but it is not supporting us.
This is our story.

This chapter shows that there are different voices within the Taleban. Those featured in the report may be critical of their own leadership, but, it should be noted, they are even more scathing about the Kabul government, complaining about corruption, the “criminals in power” and government forces who they allege sell their weapons to the insurgents and do not come to the aid of their comrades. These Taleban are not interested in surrender or coming over to Kabul, but they are interested in ending the conflict. It is also interesting that they talk about jobs, representation, power in Kabul and the districts, and the influence of Pakistan – all very normal concerns for Afghans generally.

Even though the Taleban controls or influences much of Afghanistan (how much is argued over, see here) for the discussion), the voices of individual fighters and commanders are rarely heard. Not all of this chapter is easy reading, but it is a welcome contribution, adding nuance, detail, complexity and some internal contradictions into what some Taleban within the movement think.

Also in the section on peace initiatives, Julius Cavendish writes about three local peace ‘accords’ that were made between Taleban and communities in Helmand province in 2006 and 2010 and which were successful but which ultimately failed. Although they had the support of some international players, they also suffered from a lacklustre response from provincial and central government and hostility by senior US commanders (described in this 2014 dispatch for AAN).

The accords show, Cavendish writes, that “even in the midst of very violent conflict, peace is possible in Afghanistan – and that local populations are prepared to take calculated risks to make it happen.” He believes the way the accords worked – and ultimately failed – also point to “several simple yet critical lessons.” They are: recognise that good brokers can play essential roles
in peace mediation but have ambiguous identities; empower local communities; honour commitments punctually; be realistic about central government support; recognise that local deals can nonetheless pave
the way for a national settlement and; coordinate military and political activities. On that last point, Cavendish writes:

This fundamental disconnect between Afghan and British officials pursuing a political deal on the one hand, and
US warfighters on the other, was also evident in the contrasting narratives with which each described the second Sangin accord. Senior US commanders framed the deal as a surrender by Taliban-aligned fighters to the coalition rather than a compromise with honour – a depiction that many [Upper Sangin Valley] found both insulting and inaccurate. At the same time, US commanders insisted on ‘testing the deal’, sometimes by contravening its terms….

Where political and military action was coordinated, however, as it had been in the build-up to the first Sangin accord, the results were effective. Most notably, the exercise of ‘heroic restraint’ by British forces through
the first half of 2010 was viewed positively by local communities, and contrasted sharply with abusive behaviour by out-of-area Taliban personnel, whose actions bred resentment and eventually led them to be perceived as occupiers – precisely as the district governor and his advisors intended.

Michael Semple, now a professor at Queen’s University, Belfast, but previously with both the United Nations and European Union mission in Afghanistan looks at what will be needed to foster a peaceful Afghanistan that is stable in the long-run. “A single, comprehensive peace agreement to agree a new social contract is unlikely to be achievable,” he warns. “A more viable alternative model would involve an incremental, phased approach that builds confidence over time.” He posits ten (rather daunting) priorities that need to be discussed and dealt with to create the sort of new ‘social contract’ which would foster peace and stability. They include “the preservation of national unity and Afghan identity; international military forces; security, respect and basic needs for combatants and people affected by conflict; state-citizen relations and the role and privileges of elites.” (5)

Dialogue and reform is needed, but cannot begin, he insists, without first an end to the violence:

The best way to shape the conditions conducive to
such a sustained process of dialogue and reform would be to agree a pause in the fighting early on. Conflict parties wishing to participate in such a sustained peace process would need first to sign up to the suspension of violence.

Conclusion: drivers towards peace… and war

This new publication makes plain the very real factors driving the horrible persistence of war in Afghanistan:

… a well-established war economy, which fuels and funds violence. Both main parties to the war – the Taliban and the Afghan government – remain determined to fight on and have secured sufficient external backing to do so. Underlying the violence are persistent political disputes over how power is shared and how future reforms are configured.

Yet it also highlights how much Afghans of all stripes have in common, with concerns shared and even some of their narratives overlapping. There is a communal weariness with the war and a collective view that the conflict is pointless – what actuallyis it over? Also positive in the drive for an end to the war, say the authors, is that there is international interest in achieving peace.

The editors recognise both the many real difficulties and dangers and the many positive pro-peace forces. For them, after eighteen months of research on the topic, unless there is to be anindefinite continuation of violent conflict, an incremental progress towards sustainable peace is needed:

The cessation of violence would represent the single most important
action to build confidence and help launch dialogue on core substantive issues. Such an approach recognises the importance of rebuilding relationships between the parties in expanding the possibility of agreement. Rather than involving a single text such as the 2001 Bonn Accords, an incremental peace in Afghanistan might consist of a series of agreements sequenced from easy to hard, with agreed reforms and confidence-building connecting the parallel short- and long-term tracks over a period of years.

As Afghanistan enters its fortieth year of conflict, this reviewer, at least, was happy to be reading something fresh and practical about how to achieve peace.

 

(1) Part of the Taleban’s letter read as follows:

The Islamic Emirate had asked America from the very beginning to solve her issues with the Islamic Emirate through talk and dialogue. The use of force has adverse consequences, and you might have now discerned the bitter consequences of American aggression against Afghanistan. If the policy of using force is exercised for a hundred more years and a hundred new strategies are adopted, the outcome of all of these will be the same as you have observed over the last six months following the initiation of Trump’s new strategy.

According we still believe that it is not too late for the American people to understand that the Islamic Emirate – as representative of its people – can solve its problems with every side through healthy politics and dialogue. Needless use of force only complicates the issues by creating new dimensions which gradually move out of the realm of control. The Islamic Emirate is a regional power with deep roots which cannot be subdued by sheer force. The chances of dialogue however are not exhausted. The American people must understand that the Islamic Emirate understands its responsibility and can play a constructive role in finding a peaceful solution for issues but this can never mean that we are exhausted or our will has been sapped. It is our policy that logic should be given a chance before the use of force. Whatever can be achieved by logic, should not be relinquished due to the use of force. It is the moral obligation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to inform you, the American masses, about these realities.

(2) The Foreign Ministers’ statement included the following (emphasis added of a phrase which seems to point to the role of NATO forces in the country):

NATO Allies are united in their support for this proposal of an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process. We will respect and support a negotiated political settlement led by the Afghan Government which ends violence, cuts ties to terrorism and protects the human rights of all Afghan citizens. We also support the Afghan Government’s intention to address all contested issues between the parties, including those relating to the future role of the international community in Afghanistan.

(3) Conciliation Resources (www.c-r.org.) describes itself as “an independent international organisation working with people in conflict to prevent violence, resolve conflicts and promote peaceful societies.” It publishes reports, roughly one a year, in a series titled “Accord”.  These are aimed at informing and strengthening “peace processes by documenting and analysing the practical lessons and innovations of peacebuilding.”

(4) This should be ‘Zadran’, used for both single and plural members of the tribe

(5) Semple’s other priority areas are: inclusive security reform; property, economic rights and the illicit economy; structure of government and consolidation
of electoral democracy; promoting Islam and religious freedom; judiciary and legal system; and ethnicity, social inclusion and equality of opportunity.

 

 

Violence against women – be it murder, beatings, mutilation, child marriage, the giving away of girls in marriage to resolve disputes (baad) or other harmful practices – remains widespread throughout Afghanistan, despite the government’s efforts to criminalise such practices, the UN has found. Its new report highlights how mediation by government and traditional actors, which is widely used to resolve cases of violence against women, deprives them of access to justice and hinders their fundamental rights. AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig summarise the report’s key findings.

Injustice for women victims of violence – generally called survivors – and impunity for perpetrators are still widespread in Afghanistan. Most cases involving violence against women, including for the five ‘serious’ offences stated in Afghan Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW) law – rape, enforced prostitution, publicising the identity of a victim, burning or using chemical substances and forced self-immolation or suicide (apart from murder, which is regulated by the penal code) – are not prosecuted by or adjudicated in courts. By contrast, more than a half of the 237 cases monitored by UNAMA between 2015 and 2017 were referred for mediation. The Afghan authorities, as evident from the UNAMA reports, exacerbate the situation for victims by allowing mediation mechanisms to resolve serious offences and by not carrying out their duty to investigate or prosecute these offences.

These are the key findings of a new UN report released today, 29 May 2018, in Kabul. The report, entitled “Injustice and Impunity: Mediation of Criminal Offences of Violence against Women” jointly prepared by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) (read the full report here) is the sixth UNAMA report on violence against women since 2009, when the UN mission in Afghanistan began monitoring the implementation of the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) law.

The report is based on interviews and focus group discussions with survivors of violence and women’s rights activists as well as both traditional and government mediators. It is also informed by 237 cases of violence against women reported to EVAW institutions in 22 provinces monitored by UNAMA between 2015 and 2017 and 280 more cases of murder and “honour killings” documented throughout 2016 and 2017 by the UN mission. (1)

The legal framework: 2009 EVAW law and 2018 penal code

The EVAW law adopted in 2009 is a progressive law within the Afghan context. In addition to a broad approach to the issue of violence against women, including their harassment, the law also addresses forced and early marriage as well as polygamy for the first time in Afghan legal history (see this AAN analysis here).

However, the law has faced tough resistance from conservative circles, including in parliament, from the beginning. As a result, it was adopted by presidential decree, bypassing parliament. In 2013, MP Fawzia Kufi, the Wolesi Jirga’s (lower house) chairwoman of the Women’s Rights Commission, advocated pushing the presidential decree through parliament to make the EVAW law permanent. But she did so against the advice of other women’s rights activists, thereby risking a no-vote by the conservative majority. This was stopped by procedural tricks and as a result, the issue has still not been voted on by the lower house (see AAN dispatches here and here).

The new penal code adopted in 2018 also required a later amendment by presidential decree to make EVAW law crimes enforceable. Its draft had originally included a specific chapter on the elimination of violence against women, which, according to the UNAMA report, incorporated provisions to criminalise the majority of the 22 acts set out in Article 5 of the EVAW law. It had also included new provisions prohibiting both the detention of women on charges of “running away” and the practice of “exchange marriage,” or baad(when feuding families or clans exchange brides in the settlement of disputes). However, the final adopted version of the 2018 penal code did not include any reference to criminal offences of violence against women (with the exception of rape). The amendment was issued in a presidential decree (number 262) on 3 March 2018, which criminalised all five serious offences mentioned in the EVAW law.

While there is some political will among mainly women parliamentarians to vote on the laws, most MPs are still hostile towards criminalising violence against women, which, in Afghanistan, is often embodied in harmful traditional practices (honour killings and baad). As a result, EVAW-related issues have so far only been addressed through presidential decrees. This makes the existing legislation vulnerable to a backlash by the conservative majority in parliament.

Murders and “honour killings”

The UNAMA report found that the murder of women represents the second most prevalent form of violence against women in Afghanistan (the first being battery and laceration). UNAMA documented 280 cases of murder, including “honour killings” of women from January 2016 to December 2017. “Of these, 50 cases ended in a conviction of the perpetrator and subsequent prison sentences, representing 18 per cent of documented cases,” the report found, adding that “the vast majority of murder and ‘honour killing’ cases involving women never reached prosecution and the perpetrators are still at large.” (2)

UNAMA also found that in more than one third of cases documented over the two-year period, the police did not forward the cases to prosecutors. All of this, according to UNAMA, implies that the vast majority of murder and “honour killings” of women result in impunity for the perpetrator.

The report notes “deficiencies in Afghanistan’s applicable legislative framework for prosecuting ‘honour killings’ may have contributed to impunity during the period covered in this report.” This apparently has to do with the fact that “honour killings” are not criminalised in the 2009 EVAW law and appeared in Afghanistan’s 1976 penal code even as a mitigating factor to murder. Article 398 of the 1976 penal code states that “a person who kills or injures his wife or a relative in order to defend his honour will not be subject to the punishment for murder or laceration, and instead shall be imprisoned for a period of no more than two years.” The 2018 penal code, however, does not contain this reference and the justification of “honour killing” can no longer serve as a mitigating factor in murder trials, the UNAMA report said.

“Justice sector officials should investigate, prosecute and adjudicate ‘honour killings’ under the general murder provision in Article 512 [of the 2018 Penal Code], and sentence convicted persons accordingly,” the UNAMA recommended in its report.

Wide use of mediation: Misinterpretation of law and even “unlawful”

Of the 237 cases monitored by UNAMA, both traditional and government mediators resolved 145 cases. Mediators in most provinces informed UNAMA that these cases included murder, beatings, attempted rape, acid attacks and causing other injuries, domestic violence, “running away”, forced marriage, baad or forced suicide.

UNAMA found that EVAW institutions and non-governmental organisations not only conducted mediation proceedings, but also “referred cases to traditional mediation mechanisms, observed mediation sessions, or knew about mediation taking place, in relation to ‘honour killings’ and other serious offences stated in the EVAW Law.” The report said “Mediators in some provinces were either not aware of the limits on their authority to mediate cases, or did not admit to mediating the five serious offences, despite UNAMA findings to the contrary.”

According to UNAMA, the two different types of mediation carried out by traditional dispute resolution mechanisms related to violence against women – the mediation of criminal offences of violence against women and the mediation of wider disputes leading to decisions that result in violence against women – are both unlawful and constitute human rights abuses. An example given in the report states:

[…] Jirgas sometimes decide to give a girl in baad as a gesture of good will in order to resolve a dispute or criminal act between families. Traditional mediators however also mediated criminal offences of violence against women such as beating by spouses, harassment, causing isolation and more, in a similar way to the mediation carried out by EVAW institutions. In such cases, traditional mediators’ decisions largely involve commitment letters by the perpetrator to refrain from violence in the future.

The traditional mediation mechanism’s decision that is frequently harmful to women is often related to an exchange marriage. For example, UNAMA documented a case from the eastern region in which local families referred the case of a girl who had “run away” from her home because of an arranged marriage, to a jirga for resolution. The jirga decided, the report said, to give another 13-year-old girl from one of the families to the other family involved, in order to resolve the dispute. “The two families involved in this case insisted to the authorities that they had carried out a routine exchange marriage, which under the EVAW law may also be illegal,” the report said, adding that “UNAMA’s monitoring revealed that the illegal practice of baadhad taken place following the Jirga’s decision.” (3)

In nine provinces – Badghis, Paktya, Ghazni, Kunar, Maidan Wardak, Paktika, Khost, Balkh and Jawzjan – UNAMA found that mediators had adjudicated murder cases and that such practices were carried out almost exclusively by traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. Traditional mechanisms, the report states, “are not state-actors, and are not legally mandated to resolve criminal cases.” “Such mechanisms operate in an unofficial and unregulated capacity, their decisions in criminal cases are unlawful, and as such, are not subjected to any government oversight or scrutiny,” the report said.

This, according to the UNAMA report, amounted to misinterpretation of the EVAW law:

Article 39 of the EVAW Law is commonly used to justify referrals to mediation in criminal offences of violence against women. The article allows survivors to withdraw their complaint at any point of the judicial proceedings with the exception of the five serious offences, where the State is duty-bound to conduct investigations and prosecute such cases even without a complaint. The article however makes no reference to, or permits mediation.“

In spite of the large number of cases resolved through mediation,” the report said, “there are no policies on minimum standards of mediation, resulting in a great disparity of standards, procedures, referral of cases by EVAW institutions and capacity of the mediators.” Furthermore, the report said, there is no code of conduct or certification for mediators.

Furthermore, UNAMA documented that some survivors decided to withdraw their official complaints and agreed to mediation for fear of economic and social repercussions on their lives. For many survivors, the withdrawal of a complaint may be the only viable option, as dwindling international support has impacted the already limited shelter provisions in Afghanistan (see this AAN analysis on aid effectiveness); there are few other options for women who do not have the protection of their families. A recent attempt by the government to take financial control of around 40 non-government-run shelters, legal aid offices and halfway houses for women fleeing violence may further reduce the number of these safe havens for women (see here and here).

UNAMA further found that the main objective of mediators in violence against women cases was to achieve a re-unification of families, at the expense of criminal accountability and formal justice. “The woman’s choice about the matter is not properly taken into account,” the report said, adding that “insufficient or no attention is given to the protection of the survivor from future violence.”

The UNAMA report warns that there is no specific provision in Afghan law that permits or prescribes the mediation of criminal cases. It also highlights that the wide use of mediation in criminal offences of violence against women “promotes impunity, encourages the reoccurrence of violence and erodes trust in the legal system.”

“Where the five serious offences including murder and ‘honour killings’ were mediated by authorities or by others with the acquiescence of the authorities, this amounted to a direct breach of the EVAW Law, the Penal Code, and constituted a human rights violation on the part of the State,” the report said.

A vicious circle of violence

Many of the findings set out in the report are consistent with those previously published by UNAMA in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015. This indicates that despite some progress, the general situation has largely remained unchanged. The conclusions of the joint UNAMA-OHCHR report highlight how dire the situation is. They include that state officials frequently fail in investigating, prosecuting and punishing perpetrators and providing reparations to victims. This has contributed to the existing high rate of impunity and strengthens the normalisation of violence against women in Afghan society. The wide use of mediation promotes impunity, encourages the reoccurrence of violence, erodes trust in the legal system and is unlawful. Women’s access to justice remains limited, and women continue to face inequality before the law.

Traditional mediation mechanisms – which, in an increasing number of countries are prohibited legal tools in cases of violence against women – do not have a mandate and are insufficient to prosecute serious offences of violence against women. Mainly composed of men in a male-dominated society such as Afghanistan, their rulings are often extremely unjust and largely punitive towards women. The “honour killings” of women show a particularly brutal aspect of a society that is suffering from violent conflict and which annually claims the lives of over 10,000 civilians. Yet the fact that these cases go unprosecuted shows just how far the country has to go.

There is little hope that Afghanistan, which ranks 154 out of 157 on the global Gender Inequality Index (4), will reduce violence against women in a society that is largely misogynistic. As the UNAMA report shows, the perpetual cycle of violence against women extends beyond traditional communities, and unfortunately it is often the state that contributes to the further victimisation of survivors.

 

 

(1) Between 1 August 2015 and 31 December 2017, UNAMA selected 237 cases of violence against women reported to EVAW institutions in 22 provinces (Kunduz, Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan, Balkh, Samangan, Faryab, Jawzjan, Bamyan, Farah, Herat, Ghazni, Paktya, Khost, Kandahar, Kunar, Laghman, Nangrahar, Kabul, Panjshir, Parwan and Maidan Wardak) and monitored and documented their progress through the justice system. UNAMA conducted this monitoring in two separate tranches. Between 1 August 2015 and 31 March 2016, UNAMA monitored and documented 165 cases across 20 provinces; and between 19 January and 31 December 2017, UNAMA monitored an additional 72 cases across 21 provinces. The report’s key criteria for case selection were that cases of violence against women be criminalised by EVAW law and that cases could be monitored by UNAMA field teams through direct access to survivors.

UNAMA also documented and monitored 280 cases of murder and “honour killings”: 104 cases in 2016 and 176 cases in 2017.

In addition to monitoring the progression of cases, UNAMA conducted interviews and focus group discussions across Afghanistan, documenting the experience of survivors, mediators and women’s groups. UNAMA carried out 103 individual interviews with mediators and representatives of EVAW law institutions in 24 provinces (Badakhshan, Kunduz, Baghlan, Takhar, Faryab, Saripul, Jawzjan, Bamyan, Daikundi, Badghis, Farah, Ghor, Herat, Khost, Ghazni, Laghman, Kunar, Nangrahar, Paktya, Kandahar, Nimroz, Uruzgan, Zabul and Helmand); 44 focus group discussions with mediators in all 34 provinces; and 39 focus group discussions with women activists in all provinces. UNAMA consulted 1,826 mediators, representatives of EVAW law institutions and women’s rights activists.

(2) UNAMA’s findings in this regard are broadly consistent with those of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), which documented 160 murder cases of women during the first 8 months of 1395 (21 March to 21 November 2016) of which 119 were reported to be “honour killings”. According to the AIHRC only 33 percent of such cases were referred for prosecution. (AIHRC Report in Dari here).

(3) A new UNICEF study entitled “Child Marriage in Afghanistan: Changing the Narrative” and carried out in Bamyan, Kandahar, Paktya, Ghor and Badghis – in urban, semi-urban and rural locations informed by household surveys, case studies, focus groups and key informant interviews, found that 42 per cent of households in these provinces indicated that at least one member of their household had been married before the age of 18. However, the study shows significant disparities between provinces, from 21 percent of households in Ghor to 66 percent in Paktya reporting a marriage involving a child in their home.

(4) The Gender Inequality Index measures gender inequalities in three aspects of human development—reproductive health, measured by the maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates; empowerment, measured by the proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and the proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years or older, with at least some secondary education; and economic status, expressed in labour market participation and measured by the labour force participation rate of men and women aged 15 years and older.

As the Independent Election Commission (IEC) struggles to prepare for parliamentary and district council elections due to be held on 20 October 2018, one key prerequisite – voter registration – is not going well. Registration turnout, so far, has been very low, in part, due to security fears stemming from a new system aimed at reducing fraud: fixing stickers onto Identification cards after voters have registered. The problem is that the Taleban then know, who has registered. A proposal to increase turnout by fixing stickers to a copyof people’s IDs, has proved controversial and led to an open dispute between President Ashraf Ghani and two members of the IEC on the one hand, and the majority of IEC members and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah on the other. The proposal has subsequently been rescinded. Yet, say AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili and Thomas Ruttig, it has left a strong impression of chaos and lack of forethought. This dispatch also examines the debacle surrounding the appointment of a new chief electoral officer and translates the newly-published electoral calendar into English.

This is part eight 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, the budget and the 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, and; part seven with a deficient polling centre assessment.

Voters – but not that many – start to register for the October elections

On 14 April 2018 (25 Hamal 1397) the IEC launched the first phase of voter registration, covering provincial capitals. It was supposed to end on 13 May (23 Saur) but has been extended for another month. The second phase is scheduled to take place between 15 and 28 May (25 Saur to 7 Jawza) in district centres, and a third phase from 30 May to 12 June (9 to 22 Jawza) in rural villages.

As AAN wrote in a previous report, the need for a completely new voter register came from a provision in the 2016 Electoral Law (articles six and eight) that requires the IEC to prepare a voter list by linking each voter to a specific polling centre. This means that, for the first time, people will only be allowed to vote in the polling centre where they are registered. It also means that voter registration is being done from scratch and will not simply be an exercise in registering those never previously registered or who had come of voting age since the last election.

This provision was an attempt to stem the massive fraud of previous elections, which had been facilitated by the lack of a reliable central voters list and the highly inflated number of voter cards in circulation. This, in turn, was a result of massive over-registration in the past: a total of 21 million voter cards were distributed throughout the various previous registration and top-up exercises for an estimated maximum total voting population of 15 million people (see AAN’s previous report here). This enabled multiple voting, among other forms of manipulation.

Article six of the Electoral Law states that voters should be registered based on their tazkeras or other identification documents specified by the IEC (the law was cautious because some Afghans, especially women in rural areas, do not have tazkeras). (1) The IEC, however, in its decision of 26 November 2017, specified that “only” tazkeras could be used for registration, to limit multiple registrations. This made it necessary for prospective voters who did not possess a tazkera to first obtain one. Therefore, the IEC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority (ACCRA) to issue around ten million tazkeras in a bid to include and enfranchise those who did not yet have them.

The IEC developed a voter registration procedure whereby eligible voters present their tazkeras at a registration centre. The voter’s information is then recorded on a registration and a confirmation form. Confirmation of registration – in the form of a sticker – is then separated from the registration form and fixed onto the reverse side of the voter’s tazkera; the voter is asked to use this same tazkera to vote.

The voter registration confirmation sticker includes the province and district where the voter lives, the name and code of the polling centre to which she is now linked, whether he is a Kuchi (because Kuchis are not tied to a specific polling centre) and a unique eight-digit serial number which, as former head of the IEC Secretariat Shahla Haque told AAN on 17 May 2018, was to identify individual voters. There are also various anti-counterfeiting features, including a hologram and a watermark and the use of what is called optical variable ink to prevent people making fake duplicates. The registration forms with the same features, along with additional information which remain in the registration books, are scanned and transferred to the national data centre. The scanned data is entered into the database by IEC employees and at the end of voter registration, a voter list will be developed for all polling centres and stations.

This new voter registration method will be able, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah promised a meeting of elders, influential people and youth on 15 April 2018, to “seriously prevent large-scale and organised fraud.” He said that, this time, the voter registration would be different from what they had been in the past.

Low turnout

The IEC has been releasing voter registration statistics, albeit not on a daily basis, and they are not looking good. The latest data from 22 May 2018 (English here and Dari here show that over the course of just over a month (14 April to 21 May), a total of 2,461,488 voters (1,688,676 male, 718,409 female, as well as 53,961 Kuchi and 442 Hindu and Sikh) registered to vote in 34 provincial capitals and districts. (The IEC does not provide a gender breakdown of Kuchi, Hindu and Sikh voters.) These figures does not represent the actual number of voters who have successfully registered as there has yet to be a verification process of voters, intended to exclude multiple registrations. Media reports from various provinces have described the turnout as low, with security threats highlighted as a major reason. (2)

Two domestic election observer organisations have mentioned another reason – the lack of public awareness about voter registration – as being behind the low turnout; see statements by the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) on the first day of registration (14 April) and Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), on 15 April.

Stickers on tazkeras

From the outset, there were warnings that the registration confirmation stickers on paper tazkeras were discouraging voters from registering. On 15 April 2018, a day after the first registration phase began, FEFA, said that, according to observations conducted by 700 volunteers, the turnout on the first day of registration was very low, highlighting, it said, that the stickers on the back of voters’ tazkeras were a “deterrent.”

Similarly, on 28 April 2018, Tolonews blamed the stickers as one reason for low turnout. It quoted MP Nazir Ahmadzai as saying that those living in insecure areas could not have their tazkeras labelled for fear that the Taleban – who have called for an election boycott (more details below) – might punish people with documents showing their willingness to vote.

Broader security dilemmas

The Taleban have threatened anyone who registers to vote. On 14 April 2018, President Ashraf Ghani, while launching the voter registration campaign, called on the Taleban to participate in the upcoming elections or act as a political party as per the government’s peace offer. A day later, on 15 April 2018, the Taleban rejected this offer in a statement published on their website, saying the country was under occupation and their “first priority was how to protectthe country and people from occupation.” They called on “Muslim and Mujahed people to boycott the cosmetic and fake process under the name of election[s].” (3) Tolonews also reported, on 28 April, that it had been told by the Taleban that the elections were about deceiving people and that they would use all options available to stop any election-related activity.

Media also reported that the Taleban have been warning people in certain regions not to participate in the elections. For instance on 28 April 2018, Reuters reported that the Taleban had threatened villagers in Balkh province that they would “burn down the house of anyone” who voted. A resident of Rahmatabad village, in Balkh told Reuters that the Taleban, during a visit to his area, had assembled the villagers in the local mosque and warned them that if they went to registration centres and voted, the Taleban would burn down the village. Shams, a resident of Balkh’s Dowlatabad district, said, “’The most recent visit by Taliban tax collectors levying ushr (land tax) and zakat (an Islamic tax) included an explicit warning to stay away from the elections.” Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, while denying that any warnings to burn down houses had been made, admitted that the Taleban were telling people to stay away from the elections. However, one Taleban commander was quoted as saying that “[b]urning a house is a small punishment if they are caught in supporting this U.S. operation to prolong their stay in Afghanistan.” The Taleban’s position regarding the upcoming elections and the overall deterioration in security seems to be the chief reason for the low turnout in voter registration in provincial capitals which tend to be more secure. Phases two and three of voter registration, in districts and villages, will also likely see low turnout given many of these more rural areas are more vulnerable to insurgent attack.

The Taleban have already backed up their threats with violence. On 10 May 2018, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released a report verifying 23 election-related security incidents since voter registration started 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).

The vast majority of those casualties, reported UNAMA, occurred in one incident on 22 April 2018, when a suicide attacker detonated his improvised explosive device (IED) in a crowd outside a tazkera distribution centre in a Hazara-dominated neighbourhood west of Kabul city. 60 people were killed and 138 injured (198 civilian casualties in total). The aim of the attack appeared to be two-fold, disrupting the elections and, in particular, trying to stop Hazaras from voting. This was the conclusion of Muhammad Karim Khalili, head of High Peace Council, former vice-president under President Hamed Karzai and leader of one of the Hazara mujahedin factions; he said the attack was aimed at “preventing participation of a specific segment of society [eg the Hazaras] in the process of determining their future political destiny and preventing their presence in decision-making structures.”

The 22 April attack also prompted the Shia Ulema Council to issue a statement on 25 April 2018 calling on people not to register or apply for a tazkera until the government could ensure the security of voter registration centres. Its head of cultural affairs, Rezwani Bamyani, told Tolonews that it did not mean the council was boycotting the elections, but rather was setting preconditions for participation. However, the council does not represent all Shia Ulema. Many consider the voter registration process too important to boycott. The Bamyan Provincial Centre’s Ulema Council (Shura-ye Ulema-ye Markaz-e Bamyan), for example, issued a counter-statement on 27 April encouraging people “to appear at the voter registration centres and make yourselves eligible voters.” It said that anyone who opposed the elections or somehow prevented people’s participation in this national process was striking “an irreparable blow to the collective destiny of the people” and was “intentionally or unintentionally aligning themselves with the enemies of peace and progress of the country.”

Political leaders from the Hazara community also called on people to go to voter registration centres. For instance on 7 May, Muhammad Mohaqeq, leader of one of the larger Hazara political parties and Deputy Chief Executive, urged religious scholars during a meeting to support voter registration “since the enemy considers election as a factor of stability [and] tries to prevent our people from [participating in] elections by carrying out violent operations. Therefore, the people should take voter registration seriously, for the sake of their destiny.” However, earlier in the wake of the 22 April attack, he also cautioned that “today a big question on people’s mind” was “if today the security of people is not ensured during registration and distribution of tazkera, how will security be ensured on election day when millions of people should turn out?”

UNAMA confirmed in its 10 May 2018 report that putting stickers on tazkeras was only one of a number of security concerns. It said that “In some areas, the Taliban have reportedly threatened election-related staff with death or cutting off their fingers if they continue their work on the elections, and teachers have been warned that their schools will be targeted if they are used for voter registration purposes, resulting in school closures.” On 19 May 2018, Pajhwok reported that local residents had closed a school a month ago, after it was designated as a voter registration centre in a refugee township in Pul-e-Alam, the provincial capital of Logar, as they feared Taleban attack. The school closure came after students stopped attending classes. About 1,100 students have been deprived of education.(4)

Another incident which may have been linked to the elections has been brought to the attention of AAN. An eyewitness described seeing the bodies of two travellers who, he said, had been stopped and killed by the Taleban in the Ziwallat area of Jalrez district in Maidan-Wardak province on 10 May 2018. The eye-witness said he believed that one, from the Chap Dara area of Bamyan, was killed because he had had a voter registration confirmation sticker on his tazkera. (The other was from Ghorband valley and, he said, worked transporting injured government forces.) Whether the killing was election-related or not, this eye-witness and others believed it was – and that, in itself, is significant.

Taleban threats come in a context: in much of the country, they have the potential to act on them. According to the most recent quarterly report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published on 30 April 2018, only slightly over half of the country’s 407 districts were either under the government’s control or influence, ie 229 districts (56 per cent) as of 31 January 2018. The remaining districts were either under full “insurgent control” (13 or three per cent), under “insurgent influence” (59, or 14 per cent) or “contested” (119, or 29 per cent), indicating security problems that influence the preparation and carrying out of the elections.

Defense Minister Tareq Shah Bahrami and Interior Minister Wais Ahmad Barmaktold the Wolesi Jirga in early May (media report here) that they considered 216 districts to be insecure and that security forces would launch clearing operations there before the start of the second phase of voter registration. Bahrami said that 7,183 army personnel would be involved in the voter registration process across the country. (Barmak also announced that 10,000 police would be tasked with election security, with four to eight police posted at each polling centre.) However, the recent trends have not been promising. There is no sign that the government has been expanding its control or influence since the two ministers spoke to MPs. On the contrary, between the start of the Taleban’s annual military campaign announced on 25 April and 17 May 2018 , they had overrunat least five district centres in Badakhshan, Badghis, Faryab, Ghazni, and Kunduz, (as observed by the Long War Journal).

Initial incentive and coercion measures by government to boost turnout

The government has tried to help government employees and their families to register. It called on ministries to give a day off to their employees for registration, as family members of AAN staff working with ministries reported. President Ghani instructed 34 provincial governors in a video conference on 19 April, to ask government employees to accompany their eligible family members to voter registration centres to register. He also instructed the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs to ask ulema to speak about the importance of voter registration in their Friday sermons and encourage people to participate.

There has also been some coercion. The media has reported government agencies refusing services to clients who did not have registration stickers on their tazkeras: see for example this report by Tolonews report from 6 May 2018 which featured two people, one from Kabul and one from Jowzjan complaining about this. Kandahar police chief General Abdul Razeq said when he registered on 17 April 2018 that he had instructed all government agencies not to accept applications from citizens who did not have a tazkera or a voter card (see media report here and here). A relative of an AAN staff member who is a teacher at a Kabul high school was told by the school principal to register to vote, or her salary would not be paid.

AAN also received reports that many citizens had come up with their own strategy to avoid being punished by the Taleban for having registration stickers on their tazkeras: obtaining new tazkeras and claiming, falsely, they had either lost their old one or did not have one. This would enable the voter to use the new, marked tazkeras for both registration and voting only and the old ‘clean’ ones for day-to-day business, thereby making it less likely that, should they be stopped by the Taleban, they could be identified as registered voters.

A controversial solution for low turnout

As registration continued to be low, the IEC and the government came up with two solutions: firstly, on 10 May 2018, the IEC announced it would extend voter registration in provincial capitals by a month, until 12 June (22 Jawza 1397). Secondly, the IEC came up with the idea of allowing registration stickers to be put on copies of voters’ tazkeras, not on the original. This, it said, would enable voters fearing encounters with the Taleban to use their original tazkeras for normal business, and the copy with the sticker only on election day.

This idea, however, became highly contentious, dividing both the IEC and government leaders, and threatening to trigger the collapse of the entire IEC. The dispute came to a head on 10 May 2018 when four IEC members rejected the proposal in an internal vote, while two others, including chairman Gula Jan Abdul Badi Sayyad, supported it. Those opposing the ‘sticker-on-copy’ proposal argued it could undermine safeguards against multiple registrations and thus facilitate fraud. Later in the afternoon of 10 May, according to sources privy to this discussion, the president – who supported the idea of using a copy of the tazkera in order to boost registration turnout – called in IEC members to a meeting. He questioned the IEC’s authority to decide on the issue and told those IEC members who had voted against it to resign. This unfolding of events was also reported by social media activists (see for example here as well as the media the following working day (see here). (IEC deputy head for administration and finance Mazallah Dawlati confirmed during a television debate about elections on 22 May that President Ghani had indeed told those IEC members who disagreed with the proposal to resign (see full video here).

The Palace reported later that evening (see here and here) that the IEC had decided that staff could fix stickers onto copies of tazkeras “if applicants [potential voters coming for registration] want [this].”  This stance was backed up by an IEC press release issued later that night (here and here) The IEC statement said that people “living or travelling in insecure areas” had shared their concerns about putting stickers on original tazkeras and as safety was “extremely important for the IEC,” it launched a widespread consultations with stakeholders, in particular political parties, tribal elders and civil society. The result, it said, was a consensus that “eligible voters would be able to go to voter registration centres with copies of their tazkeras” and have stickers labelled on them. However on election day itself, eligible voters would have to bring their original tazkeras along with the copy of their tazkera in order “to enjoy their right to vote.”

The IEC also said, without going into detail, that it would “take necessary measures to prevent duplicate registrations.” It warned that those who registered more than once would be deprived of their right to vote on election day and perpetrators would face prosecution.

Three days later, on 13 May 2018, a document was leaked to the Afghan media (see here and here bearing the signatures of the four commissioners who had resigned. The document said that “the IEC, through its decision number 30-1396, dated 18 Jaddi 1396 has approved the regulation for voter registration and the preparation of the voter list according to which voter registration confirmation [stickers] are stuck on the back of original tazkeras” The document said that no changes had been brought to this regulation and cited article 19 of the electoral law according to which the IEC “cannot amend relevant regulations and procedures during the electoral process.”

Those who signed this decision were IEC deputy chair of operations, Wasima Badghisi (a Tajik from Badghis), deputy for finance and administrative affairs, Abdul Qader Quraishi (an Uzbek from Balkh), Mazallah Dawlati (an Aimaq from Ghor), and Maliha Hassan (a Hazara, born in Kabul). Those who did not sign the document were IEC chair Gula Jan Abdul BadiSayyad (a Pashtun from Kabul), Rafiullah Bedar (a Pashai from Nangrahar) and Sayyed Hafizullah Hashemi (a Pashtun from Laghman) (see AAN’s previous report on the IEC members’ profiles here and here). (According to an AAN source privy to the IEC’s internal voting on the issue, as well as media reports, Hashemi had been travelling when the decision was made. Media reports)  also quoted IEC deputy heads as saying that they took the decision in the presence of United Nations representatives, including UNAMA chief election officer Grant Kippen, and acting IEC CEO Shahla Haque.

The issue became more dramatic when Shahla Haque, acting head of the IEC Secretariat, resigned in protest against the proposal on 13 May 2018 and, a day later, on 14 May 2018, during the weekly Council of Ministers meeting, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah weighed in on the issue and spoke publicly against putting pressure on IEC members. There have been conflicting reports as to who proposed the ‘stickers-on-copies solution’. Chief Executive Abdullah suggested that the solution had been proposed by the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority ACCRA. President Ghani’s spokesman, Harun Chakhansuri, however, said on 14 May it had been the Chief Executive’s own proposal (see media report here). (5)

Shahla Haquespoke to AAN on 14 May. She said that, aside from any legal arguments against fixing the sticker on a copy of voters’ tazkeras, it also made fraud easier because it is far easier to produce a copy – or multiple copies – and use them to register in various voter registration centres than to try to get multiple tazkeras. Secondly, she said, it would not solve the issue of low voter registration turnout, as stickers were only one security concern. Other, more serious concerns, she said, had also “led to low turnout.” She said that many voter registration centres had not even opened. The IEC had planned, she said, to open 1,419 registration centres for the first phase of voter registration, but security agencies had told the IEC that 44 would not open for security reasons. As registration had got underway, Shahla said, a further 87 centres had also remained closed (131 in total or about nine per cent).

According to media reports, in Uruzgan alone, 53 of 65 registration sites remained closed, as did 77 of an unreported total in Paktika and 7 out of 20 sites in Logar’s provincial capital Pul-e Alam (see here; here and here).

Moreover, even in Kabul voter registration had been low according to Haque, despite the fact that people in Kabul do not often travel to provinces and generally do not have the same security concerns about having a stickers on their tazkera.

She suggested that, even for those who do travel to insecure areas, there could be a solution, which, according to her, was to carry a copy of their tazkera when travelling to reduce their vulnerability to the Taleban threats.(She in fact echoed a solution that was later on adopted, see below)

The four dissenting IEC members reportedly contemplated resigning collectively. This apparently led to a diplomatic intervention. (6) In the end, the decision to fix stickers onto tazkera copies was overturned and the threat of the IEC falling apart was averted. The IEC confirmed this on 16 May 2018, announcing that voter registration would take place “based on original tazkeras” (see statement here). IEC member Maliha Hassan told AAN on the same day that the press release regarding the decision to put stickers on tazkira copies had been taken down from both the IEC’s website and Facebook page. She also said that ACCRA had been told to issue duplicates of tazkeras for those who travel (so they could carry the duplicates and not those original with stickers). This compromise  throws the country’s national identity tazkera system into disarray while also providing a backdoor for those who do obtain duplicate copies, who fear for their security as a result of registration. (7)

Although the controversy was resolved after six days, it tarnished the credibility of the IEC (as their internal voting based on majority rule was not respected and appeared to have been influenced by an external source). It also raised questions regarding interference by the government, in particular the presidential palace, especially as this is not the first reported interference by the president in the IEC’s work. For instance on 21 April 2018, Afghan media reported that during a video conference,President Ghani had ordered provincial electoral officers (‘PEOs’, also known as heads of the IEC provincial offices) not to release voter registration details to the media but only to IEC headquarters. FEFA executive director Yusuf Rashid criticised the president’s move, saying it would pave the way to fraud. He added that FEFA’s observers had been prohibited from “taking pictures at registration centres” which, he said, would “question the credibility of the process.” Rashid told AAN on 22 May 2018 that FEFA’s observers had begun to face this problem four or five days after registration began, and that IEC employees at voter registration sites were still being inconsistent in providing information regarding registrations.

No head of the IEC Secretariat

One immediate impact of the sticker dispute was the resignation of the acting head of the IEC’s secretariat. It came, not only when the IEC is trying to ensure smooth voter registration, but as another key activity was starting – candidate nomination. It began on 26 May. Now, there is no leadership in the secretariat at all. This particular debacle should never have arisen. The vacancy at the head of the secretariat has been there for more than seven months.

On 21 October 2017, the previous chief election officer or CEO, Imam Muhammad Warimach, was dismissed by President Ashraf Ghani on 21 October 2017 (see AAN’s previous reports here and here. He continued to serve as CEO until 16 January 2018 when Shahla Haque, until then head of the IEC’s training department, was appointed as the acting head.

Like the IEC commissioners, the chief election officer is a very important appointment, which, according to article 22.3 of the electoral law, is made by the president from among three candidates proposed by the IEC. After Warimach’s sacking, the IEC advertised the position on 20 February 2018. Within the six-day deadline, 29 people applied according to an IEC press release. The IEC started shortlisting on 12 March.

Shahla Haque had told AAN before she arrived that she had not applied for the position as she lacked certain legal requirements for the post (the applicant should have a degree in certain fields, which did not include hers – medicine). A UN election specialist expressed concern to AAN that, if Haque were replaced, things could unravel – especially if a new chief election officer with no experience was appointed. According to this source, things had been moving well with election preparations since Haque had served as the CEO. (See also AAN’s previous report.

On 21 May 2018, the IEC announced their selection of candidates: Ahmad Jawed Habibi (former deputy head of the IEC Secretariat for operations and currently an adviser with the Ministry of Finance), Abdul Basir Azemi (former deputy minister of water and energy) and Ahmad Khaled Fahim (head of the Swedish Committee in Afghanistan). They put forward their choices to the president for him to then appoint one of them as the head of the IEC Secretariat (see the IEC’s decision here and media report here). There are accusations against two of these candidates. Multiple sources told AAN that a corruption case had been brought against Habibi about actions he had taken during the 2014 elections in his capacity as then deputy chief election officer. They said he had close allies within the president’s camp. The same sources said that Azemi, who is Herat MP Qazi Hanafi’s son-in-law, also has a corruption dossier against him. He is affiliated with Jamiat and is in the Chief Executive’s camp. AAN is not in a position to confirm these corruption accusations against either man. The final candidate, Fahim, is affiliated with and supported by Hezb-e Islami. He ran the Nasrat English and Computer Course in the Shamshatu camp in Peshawar around 1995-2002.

The appointment of the chief electoral officer may take some time. Warimach was appointed by a panel that included President Ghani, Vice-President Sarwar Danesh and Chief Executive Abdullah. A likely disagreement among the government leaders cannot be ruled out given the backgrounds of the three candidates. This important appointment has yet to be finalised. Meanwhile, the date of the election, 20 October,creeps ever closer.

Conclusion: Saving the 2018 election?

The IEC began registering voters in mid-April. It is an important step in preparing for October’s parliamentary and district council elections and for next year’s presidential and provincial polls. Threats by the Taleban and actual violence by it and ISKP have helped dampen turnout. The decision to put voter registration confirmation stickers on voters’ tazkeras made many people vulnerable if they travelled to or through rural areas where Taleban checks were likely. Attempts by the government and the IEC to find a solution ended in controversy, as is so often the case on Afghanistan’s bumpy ride before an election. Sensible arguments and legal provisions collided. Diplomatic intervention was required to prevent the process from derailing, as the IEC was close to disintegration. Actually, neither of the options on how voter registration stickers should be applied – on original tazkeras or copies – could solve the fundamental security threats facing Afghan voters.

(1) For instance, on 6 May 2018, Pajhwok reported that 80 per cent of residents in Pato district in Daikundi province did not have a tazkera. According to the report, Haidar Ali Dawlatyar, a civil society activist in Daikundi, said people in Pato were ready to pay money from their pockets to finance mobile tazkera distribution teams.

(2)For instance on 20 April 2018, Tolonews reported that Muhammad Zaher Akbari, the head of the IEC provincial office in Paktia, warned of threats against a number of voter registration centres in the province. Akbari also complained about low voter registration turnout, calling on security agencies to “boost their cooperation with us in order to move the process forward.” A day later, on 21 April 2018, Tolonews reported that Badakhshan activists and elders had started a campaign to encourage people to register and that people there hadcomplained that insecurity was one of the reasons stopping people from registering.

Similarly, according to a Pajhwok report on 21 April 2018, Ahmad Shah Sahebzada, Helmand’s provincial IEC officer, while citing insecurity as a major reason for public distrust in voter registration, complained that despite the fact that security officials had assured full security, people remained scared and were not coming to registration centres in large numbers. Pajhwok also reported, on 22 April 2018, that, according to Sahebzada, elections were impossible in five out of 14 districts in Helmand province: Baghran, Musa Qala, Nawzad, Khanshin and Dishu, all of which are under Taleban control.

On 7 May 2018, Salam Watandar reported that Abdul Ali Faqiryar, district governor of Pusht-e Koh in Herat province, had said that, despite the fact that there was security in most parts of the district, 14 voter registration centres allocated to the district had been cancelled by the IEC for unknown reasons. Herat provincial electoral officer, Muhammad Daud Sediq Zad, reportedly said that the decision had been taken due to security threats. A number of people in Pusht-e Koh district warned that they would be disenfranchised if the centres were not reopened soon. On 7 May 2018, Tolonews reported that officials from the IEC provincial offices in Khost, Paktia and Paktika had said that turnout for voter registration in these provinces was low and that women’s participation was insignificant. They also listed terrorist threats and growing insecurity as reasons for low turnout in registration. On 9 May 2018, Tolonews reported IEC provincial officials as saying that 113 voter registration centres in the eastern region of the country faced high security threats. According to the report, these centres included: 48 out of 157 voter registration centres in Nangrahar; 38 out of 124 voter registration centres in Laghman province; seven voter registration centres in Kunar and 20 voter registration centre in Nuristan.

Diplomats in Kabul have also noted the low turnout in voter registration. For example, on 6 May 2018, Canadian ambassador Francois Rivest, in an interview with Tolonews, said that the people’s reluctance to register was a challenge and that the ‘international community’ was providing advice to the government and the IEC which, he said, was “looking at steps to improve the level of registration.”

(3) Below is AAN’s working translation of the Taleban’s statement:

Yesterday, during the launch ceremony of the voter registration for elections, the head of the Kabul Regime Ashraf Ghani called on the Islamic Emirate to participate in it and we clarify our position as below:

The Islamic Emirate believes that our dear homeland, Afghanistan, is under occupation. Thousands of foreign soldiers are based in the country and the occupiers are making important civil and military decisions. Considering this, the first priority of the Islamic Emirate is how to protect the country and people from occupation and besides [upholding] other rights, retake the right of deciding political leadership and elections from the occupiers.

If [the questions of] who leads the people [presidency] or [who sits on the] council [Wolesi Jirga and/or district or provincial councils] are decided under the occupation, this will be a big disloyalty to the country and the Muslim nation and it will be only cheating fellow citizens and internationals. It is because we saw how, in previous elections, the people were cheated under the name of ‘election’. The final decision was made by US foreign secretary John Kerry and the National Unity Government was set up at the US embassy by American officials.

Nothing else can be expected from the forthcoming elections. Authority will be given to those who are already accepted by the White House or elected by the Pentagon. Therefore the Islamic Emirate asks its Muslim and Mujahed people to boycott this cosmetic and fake process under the name of election, instead of participating in it and to deliver on their religious and national obligation to fight the occupiers and Americans for the independence of their country and bring about an independent and legitimate system and spend all their talents in fighting the evil of the disbelievers and bring about a pure Islamic system.

(4) The IEC conducted a polling centre assessment in 2017 (see AAN’s previous reporting here, as  result of which it moved the majority of the polling centres to schools. The IEC proposed 7,355 polling centres across Afghanistan. 11 additional centres were added after a complaints procedure, bringing the total to 7,366. A security assessment of the centres by the security agencies showed that 3,190 of them (43 per cent) faced either a medium or high threat, or were in areas not under government control. Stickers on copies or on originals of tazkeras would not make much difference to the threat facing people in many areas, as long as the Taleban threatens or controls close to half of the polling centres.

(5) Abdullah’s spokesman Mujib Rahimi, however, contradicted his boss on 23 May 2018, as he told Ariana News that though the proposal had first been made by Abdullah, he opposed it after a number of IEC members opposed it. He also said, “The IEC was compelled [by president] to issue a statement without the desire of the majority of them [IEC members] [and] against [their] approval and the IEC members were complaining and objecting to this and it was there that the Chief Executive announced [his] position and explained that the decision is taken by the IEC, not by the government.”

(6) For instance, Etilaat Roz reported on 21 May 2018 that Tadamichi Yamamoto, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, in a meeting attended by IEC members, called the president’s decision “regrettable and dangerous” and stood by the IEC.

(7) It is not clear who told ACCRA to issue duplicate tazkeras to those who travel, but the IEC’s 16 May statement said: “…the commission carried out technical consultations with ACCRA for addressing the security concerns of citizens and has finally reached this understanding that those citizens of Afghanistan who suspect that they face threat due to having stickers on their tazkera scan go to ACCRA and obtain duplicate tazkeras. ACCRA will issue duplicate to those applicants if they have [their] original tazkera with a sticker with them.”

Annex: The Electoral Calendar

Based on the electoral law, the electoral calendar should be prepared and published by the IEC 120 days before election day. The IEC did publish this on time (see here and here), on 22 April 2018. It looks as follows– AAN has translated it into English and added the Gregorian dates, with important dates in bold):

Number Activity Start date End date Gregorian dates 1 Announcement of Election Day 11 Hamal 11 Hamal 31 March 2018 2 Voter Registration 25 Hamal 22 Jawza 14 April to 12 June 3 Filing of objections and complaints regarding voter registration and addressing them 25 Hamal 1 Sartan 14 April to 22 June 4 Publishing the voter list 23 Asad 23 Asad 14 August 5 Publishing the electoral calendar 2 Saur 2 Saur 22 April 6 Registration of candidates for the Wolesi Jirga and district councils 5 Jawza 22 Jawza 26 May to 12 June 7 Reviewing candidates’ registration information 6 Jawza 6 Sartan 27 May to 27 June 8 Publishing the preliminary candidate list 7 Sartan 7 Sartan 28  June 9 Filing challenges to the preliminary candidate list, as well as corrections 7 Sartan 9 Sartan 28 to 30 June 10 Addressing challenges to the preliminary candidate list 9 Sartan 11 Asad 30 June to  2 July 11 Final date for candidate withdrawal 8 Sartan 10 Asad 29 June to 1 August 12 Publishing final list of candidates 12 Asad 12 Asad 3 August 13 Finalising polling centre list in terms of security 2 Sartan 2 Sartan 23 June 14 Establishing a Media Commission 6 Sawr 28 Hoot 26 April 2018 to 19 March 2019 15 Campaign period for the Wolesi Jirga election 6 Mizan 25 Mizan 28 September to 17 October 16 Campaign period for district council election 11 Mizan 25 Mizan 3 to 17 October 17 ‘Silence period’ (no campaigning) 26 Mizan 27 Mizan 18 to 19 October 18 Filing complaints about the campaign period 6 Mizan 27 Mizan 28 September to 19 October 19 Voting day 28 Mizan 28 Mizan 20 October 20 Tabulation of the Wolesi Jirga 28 Mizan 19 Aqrab 21 Filing complaints about voting and the count and addressing them 28 Mizan 29 Aqrab 20 October to 20 November 22 Announcement of the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 19 Aqrab 19 Aqrab 10 November 23 Filing complaints about the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 20 Aqrab 21 Aqrab 11 to 12 November 24 Addressing complaints about the preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 21 Aqrab 14 Qaws 12 November to 5 December 25 Sending the final decision(s) of the ECC to the IEC 14 Qaws 21 Qaws 5 to 12 December 26 Announcing final results of the Wolesi Jirga elections 29 Qaws 29 Qaws 20 December 27 Tabulation of votes of the district council elections 20 Aqrab 17 Qaws 11 November to 8 December 28 Announcement of preliminary results of the district council elections 18 Aqrab 18 Aqrab 9 November 29 Filing complaints about the preliminary results of the district council elections 18 Qaws 20 Qaws 9 November to 11 December 30 Addressing complaints about the preliminary results of the district council elections 20 Qaws 22 Jaddi 11 December 2018 to 12 January 2019 31 Sending decision(s) of ECC to IEC 23 Jaddi 28 Jaddi 13 to 18 January 32 Announcing final results of the district council elections 4 Dalw 4 Dalw 24 January 2019

 

The Taleban look to be preparing for a new onslaught on Andar district centre. The name ‘Andar’ is still full of political resonance, gained in the summer of 2012 when the Taleban were suddenly and swiftly pushed out of a large part of the district. That counter-insurgency in an insurgent stronghold was styled the ‘Andar Uprising’ and was promoted enthusiastically by the government and United States military they hoped it marked the start of a wave of popular revolts against the Taleban. But by late last year, the last areas captured by the uprisers in 2012 were lost back to the Taleban. The government now controls just a tiny sliver of land and that precariously. Roads to the district centre are cut off and residents are preparing themselves for a new onslaught. In this latest in a series of dispatches on the Andar uprising published by AAN since 2012, Fazal Muzhary and Kate Clark consider why the government has failed so badly in Andar and what it tells us about the attractions and perils of raising ‘community defence forces’.

This piece draws on earlier AAN research on the Andar uprising (1) and subsequent developments, as well as a range of new interviews with locals (both combatants and civilians) and international officials. Revisiting Andar is an opportunity to put events there in context, in the light of a research project* which in part is looking at community defence forceswhat makes them successful or not. Andar is a good example of a community defence force which failed. Although the uprising group and the Afghan Local Police (ALP) which it soon mainly turned into were initially successful in their fight against the Taleban – with strong Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and international military backing – they ultimately failed to hold territory. In addition, introducing a local counter-insurgent element led to extreme violence, producing the opposite outcome from the ‘population protection’ mantra that has been used to justify the mobilisation of community defense forces.

This dispatch can be read alongside a forthcoming analysis of the ALP in Yahyakhel district, in neighbouring Paktika, looking at why it has been highly successful.

The arc of government failure in Andar

All the signs are that the Taleban are preparing to launch a fresh attack on Andar district centre. On 4 May, as witnessed by one of the authors, they used an excavator to dig a hole on the outskirts of Ghazni city on the main, asphalted road which leads to Andar and then on to Paktika. The highway was already blocked in the other direction, meaning Andar was already cut off from the Afghan National Army (ANA) base at Chahardiwal,to the east of the district headquarters. With a third road also blocked by the Taleban, supplies can only now reach the district centre by air, with government helicopters vulnerable to insurgent rockets. A government operation to open the Ghazni-Paktika highway began on 14 May, but failed to get beyond the outskirts of Ghazni city. Residents in Andar told AAN the insurgents have distributed letters to officials offering amnesties: if they surrender their weapons and go home, they have been told, they will not be harmed. Provincial council member Ahmad Faqiri warned that “If the district doesn’t get supplies and reinforcements, there will be a disaster.”

Local people have been waiting, as they have all winter, for the Taleban to again attack the district centre. In October 2017, it suffered an intense offensive and three-day siege – after the Taleban had blocked supply routes. (2) 60 Afghan National Police (ANP) and ANA managed to hold out against a Taleban force of 300 for three days, from 17 to 20 October. (Significantly, there were no longer any indigenous uprising or ALP forces still operating, only a small number of Shinwari ALP from Nangrahar, who did not fall back from their posts just outside the district centre on the road to the ANA base, to defend the town centre.) The Taleban onslaught was broken only by intense air strikes by US forces and the eventual arrival of ANSF reinforcements, including commandos. More than 70 people, including civilians, security forces and Taleban, were killed and injured in the attack. (3) The Taleban also captured pretty well the last of the territory they had lost to the uprisers in 2012. Government forces were left controlling just the district centre – now badly damaged – and four nearby villages.

Since the three-day siege, the ANA was making occasional forays against the Taleban and the insurgents were lobbing occasional rockets at the district centre and attacking ANP checkposts in the nearby villages. However, the government failed to regain control of any of the area round the district centre. Few people from outside town were risking coming to thebazaar and only three of the 16 families who fled the district centre and surrounding villages in October returned. The Taleban warned residents they would attack Andar again. They now fear that is imminent.

What happens in Andar is strategically important. It lies on the east-west road joining Ghazni city (37 kilometres away) to Paktika province and forms one of the ‘gateways’ to Ghazni’s provincial capital. The main Kabul-Kandahar highway also passes through the western part of the district; insurgent control makes this vital road vulnerable to closure. The district also hosts one of the most important madrassas in Afghanistan: Nur ul-Mudares has, for decades, served as the religious hub for the whole south and south-east of Afghanistan, supplying top-level mullahs, madrassa teachers and imams. Andar also retains its political significance because of the 2012 uprising. Six years ago, it was the bellwether for those who hoped popular uprisings would lead to a routing of the Taleban. This dispatch looks at the reasons for the government’s failure there.

The nature of the 2012 uprising

Andar (also known as Shelgar) district went over to the Taleban insurgency very early on after the collapse of the Taleban regime, with young men who had mainly been madrassa students when the Taleban were in power taking up arms against the new government and its foreign backers as early as 2003. By 2012, Andar had been solidly held by the Taleban for years. Yet in May and June of that year, a new, local group of counter-insurgents formed. They called themselves De Melli Patsun Ghorzang (the National Uprising Movement), a term soon used for similar groups elsewhere in the country; members called themselves patsunian. In a rapid and unexpected campaign, the uprisers gained outright control of 46 out of the district’s 480 villages and stopped or reduced Taleban influence in others, so that the insurgents’ freedom of movement was hampered and constrained in about half of Andar (see detail here). The most immediate effect of the change of control was that schools, which the Taleban had closed in response to a government ban on unregistered motorcycles, which were being used to launch attacks, were re-opened.

Many in the media, in government and among Afghanistan’s foreign backers hailed the event as a ‘popular uprising’. “Villagers take the counterinsurgency into their own hands,” reported The Economist. Radio Liberty described how “[a] group of angry Afghan villagers have got the Taliban scrambling after they mounted an unlikely rebellion against the insurgents in eastern [sic] Afghanistan – and won.” Meanwhile the Washington Times wrote that, “Fed up with the Taliban closing their schools and committing other acts of oppression men in a village about 100 miles south of Kabul took up arms late last spring and chased out the insurgents with no help from the Afghan government or U.S. military.” Influential American commentators, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan writing in the Wall Street Journal, differed in the detail, but not in their enthusiasm:

The Taliban attempted to crush this nascent resistance. But local fighters supported by NATO and Afghan forces defeated them, sending shock waves through the Taliban leadership and the Afghan government… As a result, many villages across Afghanistan are now modeling the “Andar Uprising,” by which they mean forming anti-Taliban groups that seek the help of NATO and the Afghan military. This phenomenon is not as widespread or pivotal as Iraq’s “Anbar Awakening” in 2006-07, when Sunni tribesmen helped turn the tide against al Qaeda-backed insurgents. But it is extremely important as a harbinger.

Yes, as AAN research at the time found (read it here), the ‘uprising’ in 2012 was far messier than generally reported. This was an intra-militant struggle, rather than a case of popular resistance. The revolt was initiated by a group of young Hezb-e Islami members who had joined the Taleban. Their decision to move against their comrades was certainly buoyed up by widespread local discontent with the Andar Taleban’s particularly harsh rules; these included the widespread closure of schools and bans on development work and visiting the district centre, including the Mirai bazaar, which is located there. They had also forbidden mullahs from giving Islamic funerals to those killed by the Taleban because they worked with the government or were ‘spies’. Calling the rebellion a ‘popular uprising’, though, in the sense of an uprising organised and carried out by local communities was a misnomer. Local people, aside from the Hezbi fighters, were not actively involved.

Moreover, a variety of patrons, both pro-government politicians and US special operations forces, rushed to support the counter-insurgents, leading to splits, including from the original rebels who said they were with neither the Taleban nor the government. They condemned the politicians trying to harness the uprising as Mafiosi. The various splinter groups which emerged had different loyalties and chains of command, recruiting young men largely through informal networks. One international working in Ghazni at the time described the rivalries among those seeking to control and benefit from the force, including between Governor Musa Khan Akbarzada and Ghazni-born former governor and then NDS Director Asadullah Khaled. (4) “They spoiled the dish from the beginning,” he told AAN. “There was no chance of a genuine, endemic, local rebellion from the bottom up that had legitimacy from local people to develop.” In August 2012, AAN reported that among locals, “feelings are mixed about what has happened.” Some celebrated the re-opening of schools and of the Mirai bazaar and the distribution of aid. Others were already worried:

…people had more optimism for the change in the beginning when it was mainly ordinary local youths who were fighting. Later, when they saw former commanders getting involved and when members of the arbakai started harassing some people who were or had been sympathetic to the Taleban, concerns started to overcome the optimism. Many now worry about the way power changed hands and fear a new phase of factional violence could be looming: internecine conflict among the Andar tribespeople would have long-lasting repercussions.

In that same August 2012 dispatch, we reported that the government had refrained from officially adopting the Andar ‘rebels’ as an ALP unit under the Ministry of Interior, “[T]his would seem prudent,” we said, “given the lack of tribal cohesion among the Andar and the local residents’ hesitance [sic] to support a government-designed plan.” However, by October, a new ALP unit had been established.

Why set up an ALP in Andar

According to both ALP regulations and the ethos of the programme, local involvement is an integral and essential element in setting up ALP units. However, according to local people, they were not consulted on whether they wanted an ALP and if they had wanted it, who they wanted to serve in it. (For detail on the regulations and how they were all too often ignored, see here and here, especially pages 12-17). One respected local businessman, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told AAN that most locals were simply unaware that the ALP was being set up in their district. He said they only learned about it when they saw armed men wearing ALP uniforms in the district centre. “The only difference between ALP and the upriserswas the uniform,” he said, “The upriserswore no uniform.”

Rather than community demand driving the decision to establish an Andar ALP, various Ghazni politicians were pushing for it and, most significantly, the US military wanted it – or at least, the leadership did. There was actually a great deal more scepticism about the wisdom of supporting both the uprising and the ALP among internationals working in Ghazni, as several have described to AAN (all asked not to be named). Along with another international working at mid-level in ISAF HQ, they described a disconnect between what the international military leadership wanted to believe was happening and what those on the ground knew was happening.

“News of the uprising had reached ISAF HQ,” remembered the international working at ISAF headquarters, “They were desperate to find anything that looked like progress or demonstrated a change in the engagement in the population to support their mission.” In Ghazni itself, though, he stressed, both civilian officials and military officers did have an accurate idea of what was going on.

We had fidelity of information at the tactical and operational level. There were smart people there. They had been able to work out what was actually going on. The decision-making at the centre was more influenced by politics in the home nations… and there was a real desire to represent [the uprising] as progress. Headquarters wanted a good news story. They had a cartoon view of the uprising in their heads: the Taleban were trying to close the schools and the kids had risen up and said, “We want our education,” because they wanted jobs and a future… I would characterise some of the thinking as cognitive dissonance.

The leadership, he said, did not want to hear what was actually going on in the field. He cited an example of a senior officer refusing to relay a report from the field upwards because it contradicted what the command wanted to hear.

Another interlocutor based in Ghazni described US civilian officials in Kabul as “gushy and breathless about how [the uprising] was going to change everything.” He said they thought “the locals are fighting the Taleban. There will be a genuine, local endemic rebellion and we’ll be able to leave. They were blind. They didn’t see what was happening because they didn’t want to see what was happening.”

At the time, the man in charge of US and NATO forces was General John Allen. He had been a key commander overseeing the Anbar Uprising in Iraq. The similarity of the place names – Andar and Anbar – and the hope that the Sunni Awakening could be replicated as a counter-Taleban counter-insurgency in Afghanistan appears to have been too tempting. Despite advice to the contrary, which interviewees told AAN he was given, Allen publically drew parallels between the two utterly different uprisings. “This is a really important moment for this campaign,” he told Foreign Policy magazine (quoted here: “because the brutality of the Taliban and the desire for local communities to have security has become so, so prominent—as it was in Anbar—that they’re willing to take the situation into their own hands.”

Those in the US military tasked with setting up the ALP found willing partners in the various politicians from Ghazni who had already been quick to try to leverage the uprising and any new force, especially if it was internationally-backed, to enhance their own power and gain resources (armed men or money). These includedGovernor Musa Khan and NDS Director Khaled, and two jihadi-era rivals, both of whom were former MPs and commanders, Khial Muhammad Hussaini (Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami) and Abdul Jabar Shelgari (Hezb-e Islami). More details about the lobbying and rivalry of commanders, politicians and notables and how this created splits in local forces along sub-tribal lines and between mujahedin factions can be found in AAN reporting from August and September 2012 and April 2013.

Recruitment into the ALP

Most, but not all uprisers became ALP. There was also fresh recruitment. If the ALP had been a genuine community force, one would have seen fathers introducing their sons to the force, or a part, at least, of the community coming together to organise some of their young men to join. Instead, the view from the ground, as described to AAN, was that most of the recruitment was based on friendship relations between peers. The local businessman referred to earlier described how the ALP would “immediately recruit” those put forward by existing members “and give them weapons” with little scrutiny as to their competence or checking in with the community. He said many of those recruited were jobless youths recently expelled from Pakistan. They joined the ALP not out of a desire to liberate their communities from the Taleban, but, said the businessman, because they needed jobs, and because being in the ALP and having a weapon would make them powerful men in their villages. A resident of one of the villages where the uprising started, who also asked not to be named, said “The actual tribesmen were not consulted about the creation of ALP. Neither were they told to introduce men to serve in it.” Rather, he said, in those villages already controlled by uprisers, youth would individually decide to join the new force. “Every day, we would learn that this or that person had joined.” The UNAMA Protection of Civilians annual report for 2012 also said that “community members reported dissatisfaction with… the ALP recruitment processes.”

Another perspective on ALP recruitment in Andar comes from military academic, Matt Dearing, who was a member of the civilian Human Terrain Team in Ghazni advising the US military at the time and is now an assistant professor at the National Defence University in Washington DC. (5) He described a local figure called Khalil Hotak, a former Jamiat-e Islami commander, influential political activist and head of a council of tribal elders from across Ghazni, the Community Salvation Council, as having carried out training and recruitment of “resistance fighters into the ALP.” The US special forces were then responsible for vetting and training those put forward.

KhalilHotak enjoyed good relations with the US military from 2001 onwards and, said Dearing, was often at the US military base in Ghazni. (He has also been accused of grabbing thousands of acres of state land in Ghazni province (see for example, this report from Khaama news agency.)  In conversation with AAN, Dearing said the men Hotak put forward were mainly, but not all local – they also included people from Kabul and Wardak. Nevertheless, they were men he could vouch for. He was, said Dearing, “central to ALP recruitment.”

This outsourcing of some ALP recruitment to Hotak appears to have represented the extent of ‘community involvement’ in the creation of the new force. As to why the US military chose to outsource this crucial task, Dearing said, “Khalil Hotak was someone who was able to make himself appear to have a lot of influence throughout Andar district. His name was always there or brought up in key leader engagements, he would come to the base and bring food and host dinners for the special forces. He was always lobbying, for his own interests possibly, or the interests of the greater community, I don’t know for sure.”

Normal procedures for recruitment may been shortcut because, as Dearing described it, US conventionalforces – three companies – were preparing to draw down in the province (6) and special forces teams had “limited intelligence on demographics and the needs of the rural population, let alone the Uprising.” At the same time, however, the US military in Ghazni were under immense pressure to mobilise ALP rapidly:

At an individual level, there were US commanders who realised and wanted to know if there were abuses going on, realising that there needs to be accountability and disciplinary measures. There were people at battalion or company level in Ghazni, dealing with these things on a daily basis and meeting uprising leaders, but they were getting a lot of pressure from above to make [the ALP] happen. [They were told]: “There needs to be ALP. We have to have X number of ALP by such and such a date.” The need to get the numbers up took precedence over micro-level local concerns.

Whether a genuine community defence force – defined as one where the community is consulted, agrees to the force and has some control over membership, and recourse if that force behaves badly – could have been established in Andar is, of course, unknown. The district is almost completely mono-ethnic and mono-tribal – practically all the inhabitants are Pashtun Andars. However, there are many sub-tribes and Andars are notoriously disunited – local people use the phrase “as disunited as Andar” proverbially. Moreover, tribal solidarity had worsened both during the reign of the brutal mujahedin commander Qari Baba in the 1990s – himself an Andar and fighting with Harakat – and the Taleban insurgency.

At the same time, however, Andar people have proved their ability to organise and take collective action: in 2013, for example, gatherings were held on both sides of the frontline to consult on and set bride prices because they had become too high (see here). In December 2013, local people also gathered to discuss building bridges (see here) across the river passing through the district. These gatherings were organised by local people without government involvement. This level of community coordination and collective action suggests that consultation on the ALP might have been possible. (Whether the community would have then supported such a proposal is another question – by this time, the indiscipline and non-accountability of the armed young uprisers may well have made the idea of setting up a formal local defence force unattractive to many.)

Whether possible or not, it appears neither the state nor the US military sought to consult the population. Instead the first introduction of the idea to the community wasa ceremony held on 21 October 2012 to formally announce the formation of the ALP in Andar district, and introduce the members. Even then, few Andar elders were present to witness Ministry of Interior officials, including the head of the ministry’s ALP section, inaugurating the first unit. All those who came were from areas under the complete control of the uprisers,and almost all were already or would soon became involved in the ALP, either directly or through their sons. (7)

Why two forces?

Andar got an ALP, but it also retained uprising forces. In April 2013, they amounted to a few dozen fighters, mainly were from the original Hezbi group of rebels (see reporting here and here which also describes a third group who left altogether out of disgust at their movement being ‘hijacked’ by the government). Some of those who stayed as uprisers gave personal reasons for not joining the ALP – they said they still had a separate and different cause – but there were also ‘demand’ factors causing the continuation of two separate forces, argues Dearing. “While patrons offered strong incentives to join ALP, they also continued to incentivise… [the uprisers] by maintaining alliances, weapons and resource provisions, and conducting joint operations.” For them, “… the necessity for a local, informal security response led to continued state support to predatory paramilitaries in Ghazni.”

Both the ALP and uprisers in Andar were touted by government and the US military as ‘community defence forces’, but actually they answered to other interests and that, in the end, had an impact both on their behaviour and on the weakness of the community in getting them held to account. Locals rarely differentiate between the two forces, referring to both (as do the Taleban) by the now pejorative term, ‘arbaki’ (here meaning an undisciplined and unruly pro-government militia)

Andar versus Andar, an intensification of violence

In autumn 2012, we reported that Andar had become “one of the most heavily militarised zones in Ghazni.” As well as the newly formed ALP, there were the remnant uprisers – different armed groups, each with its own chain of command, clustered in the villages immediately to the west and south of Mirai, where the uprising had started. The ANP and ANA deployed forces – UNAMA described a “strong” ANSF tashkil– to the district centre, as did the NDS (it has paramilitary units). US troops, including special forces, were also operating in the district. The ALP, formally under Ministry of Interior command, had strong and influential local patrons. As to who the remnant uprising forces answered to, that was not clear, but they were supported by and carried out joint operations with NDS and US special forces. Taleban were also still present, “roaming freely and calling the shots in most parts of the district,” we reported that autumn. Locals told UNAMA there had been “an increase in Taliban forces from outside Afghanistan in the area following the uprising.”

The mobilisation of anti-Taleban local forces led to an intensification of violence. One estimate of the total number of Andars killed from all sides in 2012 was 102, which would have made it the bloodiest year for the district since the start of the insurgency. (8) The impact specifically on civilians was documented by UNAMA in its 2012 annual Protection of Civilians report: 45 civilians were killed or injured in Andar that year, the majority of whom were directly or indirectly related to the uprising. “While the uprising movement did not involve the direct targeting of civilians,” UNAMA said, “the presence of a new fighting force, an increased presence of ANSF counter-insurgency activities and the establishment of ALP combined with increased numbers of Taliban sent to counter the uprising, all contributed to civilian casualties.” (9) The high number, it said “highlighted the frequency of violent clashes” in Andar.

Over the winter of 2012/13, the militias expanded their foothold by capturing more villages from the Taleban in the south of the district and to a small extent in the east. These villages had already been abandoned by the Taleban and had been serving mostly as buffer zones. However, the majority of villages in Andar never came under ALP or uprising control.

In spring 2013, both government and Taleban were promising to eliminate the other’s forces in Andar. By November of that year, AAN was reporting that the violence there had become “increasingly savage,” with rough estimations by local elders and notables of more than 300 people killed since the start of the uprising, far exceeding all the dead of the conflict between summer 2003 and summer 2012. “More shockingly,” AAN wrote, “the conflict has spread not only in numbers, but in the quality of the violence, with a widening of targets and tactics.”

As a future dispatch looking at Taleban attitudes towards community defence forces, which uses Andar as one of its case studies, will show, Taleban violence against the ALP and uprisers was extreme during this period. No quarter was given (by contrast, the Taleban allowed ANA and ANP to withdraw or surrender). The Taleban also made attempts to infiltrate the ALP and get ALP members to defect in order to carry out mass ‘green-on-green’ killings of local policemen. They continued to carry out reprisals against civilians associated with the ALP and uprising forces. UNAMA had already reported on this in 2012 when it documented five targeted killings of pro-uprising civilians. In November 2013, a roadside bomb targeted a van of wedding guests travelling in an ALP area. It killed 19 people, almost all women. Locals lynched a young man assumed to be with the Taleban whom they caught allegedly running away from the scene and beat him to death. As we wrote “…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, an enmity which has been partly fuelled by rival mullahs.”

2013 also saw a ban by both sides on the Islamic burial of enemy combatants. Six clerics were killed that year for violating this ban, two on the Taleban side, two on the ALP side and two others, whose ‘affiliation’, if any, was not clear. In November 2013, a Taleban mullah was reported to have issued a ruling that everyone in ALP villages was a target (he was subsequently killed by the ALP). A year previously, locals had reported to UNAMA that a Taleban mullah had issued a fatwaagainst members of the uprising, for them to be killed and their wives taken. The judge was killed in November 2012 in a search and raid operation by ANSF and international military forces – the Taleban condemned the killing of the “local imam” by arbakiand international forces.

Both sides fought hard. The Andar ALP was one of the most robust ALP stood up, tough in battle, and also enjoying a lot of support, at least initially, from both US and Afghan forces. The remnant uprising force also received money and support, especially from the NDS and US special forces. Both fought in joint operations with other Afghan and US forces. Like the Taleban, ALP and uprisers carried out reprisals against those they believed belonged to or were sympathetic to the other side; as detailed below, the victims included civilians.

Abuses by the ALP and Uprisers

Only in the very early days of the uprising were fighters relatively well disciplined. As we reported, at first, the extent of uprising fighters bothering locals was to ask them to provide food or money for their basic survival. By October 2013, that had already changed, with residents reporting armed youth arresting people coming from Taleban-controlled villages and those whom they suspected of being pro-Taleban. Frequently, the detainees were released only after paying money or being robbed of their goods. Some were beaten. Such abuses, particularly of the population of newly conquered villages, continued into 2013.

Over the next two years, reports of serious abuses by both the ALP and remnant uprising groups persisted. In 2014, AAN detailed ALP units extorting money from detainees. For example, the commander for Andar district centre, Rohullah, arrested a mullah, Faiz Muhammad from Tut village, in the district bazaar in late May 2014, beat him and freed him only after he paid 180,000 Pakistani rupees (roughly 1,800 USD). In early June 2014, ALP members detained another mullah, the imam of a local mosque in Mirai under the pretext of interrogating him again about his alleged relations with the Taleban. “Such detentions and extorted payments for release,” we wrote, “resulted in a widespread frustration among locals, especially after customers, concerned about these developments, stopped coming to the bazaar.” In November 2015, Killid reported that ALP men arrested and killed a well-digger, Shah Wali, from the Taleban-controlled village of Mehman, near an ALP post in the Kajera area and then ran their Ranger vehicle over his body.

As for uprising forces, UNAMA devoted a whole section of its 2014 protection of civilians report to those in Ghazni. (It analysed ALP nationally and in a separate section.) It reported “an incident of collective punishment and alleged crimes involving more than 40 civilians that involved severe beatings, including with metal chains” which had been carried out in January 2014 in Andar. Al-Jazeera detailed the alleged killing of three people in Andar in June 2014 by an uprising commander, Abdullah. The allegations were given weight by then head of the United Nations human rights unit in Afghanistan, Georgette Gagnon, saying they had “investigated and verified allegations of extrajudicial killings of three men by a pro-government militia.” According to al-Jazeera, US Special Operations forces and Afghan National Army commandos had carried out a night raid on Alizai village on 1 June and detained about a hundred men from the village in a compound. Late on the following morning, it said, a mix of uprisers and ALP commanded by Abdullah came by. They returned that afternoon and took away three of the detainees who were later shot. Al-Jazeera quoted Abdullah saying, “‘[I]t was a raid and I caught them… If anyone is saying these were civilians, that person is pro-Taliban, a Talib himself, or is spreading Pakistani propaganda.’”The following year, The New York Times reported on a father accusing one of Abdullah’s sub-commanders of having killed his son, a 13 or 14 years old, in January 2015 after questioning him about roadside bombs. Abdullah was quoted by the paper calling the US special forces “my brothers.”

Locals did complain. Abusive behaviour towards the residents of newly captured villages in early 2013 prompted a rare demonstration by hundreds of residents of Andar and the adjacent Deh Yak district (where the first squad of 50 ALP had been deployed) on 16 March against “the arbaki”. “The people of these districts,” we wrote had “probably never publicly protested against local actors before. The lack of a culture of demonstrating and local disunity makes it difficult for them to even think of coming together for such an untraditional action and yet they did.” In 2014, residents of Gelan district managed to get one abusive uprising commander removed, reported UNAMA, “following interventions with Afghan national security forces and Government authorities.” It observed, however, that “the removal did not improve civilian protection.” In 2016, Andar women went to Ghazni city to protest (see a video here against the abusive behaviour of arbaki who, they said, were forcefully breaking into homes and abusing women. They said they were fed up with this behaviour. However, little, if anything, was ever done.

Command and control of ALP and uprisers

Both the ALP and uprisers were abusive towards at least some members of the local population. Trying to judge if one group was worse than the other is difficult. People in Andar do not differentiate between the different types of ‘arbaki’, and there is also not enough publically available data on abuses from sources like UNAMA to properly assess. On paper, the ALP should have had better command and control, given that the force had a legal underpinning, clear official lines of command from district and provincial police chiefs and a mechanism in the Ministry of Interior for dealing with ALP infractions. According to the ethos of the programme, ALP units should also have come under community control.

By contrast, there is no basis in Afghan law for the existence of uprising groups and it has never even been clear who they answer to in practice. The Andar uprisers’ patrons, primarily the NDS and US special forces (both themselves less transparent and less accountable than the ANP or the regular US military), supplied them with weapons and funding. However, UNAMA said, in 2014, the uprisers in Ghazni province had perpetrated crimes against the civilian population with impunity. The government, it said, had undertaken “no investigations or remedial efforts.” In the same report, assessing measures undertaken by the Ministry of Interior to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing by the ALP nationally, it said these had improved marginally and from a very low level (nationally, the crimes the MoI had investigated ranged from murder and arbitrary detention to illegal search operations, forced evictions, extortion and mistreatment. (10)

Dearing thinks the ALP was less abusive than the uprising forces and puts this down to better control from both the community and Ministry of Interior, although he provides little evidence for this in his writing. (11) In conversation, he argued that there was a freedom that came from being a member of the uprising force:

They could be a little more brutal and predatory, more than the ALP was allowed to be. Uprisers could do what they wanted and still get resources and funding from the NDS. American and Afghan special forces and NDS could always go to uprisers for clearing and offensive operations… The ability of those forces to not hold them account, to look the other way was certainly there. That’s why you use these types of militias and paramilitaries, partly because they are cheaper and partly because they are not attached to you, but they do your bidding to a certain extent. It’s a dangerous game. We could always turn our backs and say, ‘We don’t control them.’

Dearing takes this subject onto a new and important theme – how tight discipline and protection of the civilian population may actually notbe in the core interests of a patron, or at least not interesting enough for the patron to try to deal with. The uprisers, Dearing writes, were able to bring their “unique intelligence capabilities” to bear primarily because they “resided outside the chain of command.” Indeed, the support given by patrons to the uprisers to act as a covert counterinsurgency force gave them “greater latitude to operate with impunity.”

After 2014 – The Taleban gain territory

From 2014 onwards, it was the Taleban who saw military gains in Andar. The onslaught from them on the Andar ALP between 2012 and 2014 had succeeded in breaking the momentum of the counter-insurgency and the government began to lose territory, sometimes one or two villages at a time, sometimes many more. In February 2016, for example, they lost the villages of Khar, Karpal, Sanginaka, Mahkam, Rustam and Manar all at once. This change in fortune also coincided with the ANSF taking responsibility for security as international forces withdrew.

ALP and uprisers themselves blame government negligence for their decline. For example, in this opinion piece written by a leading member of the uprising force under a pseudonym on 5 August 2013, the author says lack of state support was undermining their ability to fight, to recruit and attract the population to their cause. Four years later, ALP demonstrating in Ghazni city in January 2017 told Pajhwok that, “The Afghan government promised us money and weapons, but provided us nothing.” There was no significant ANP and ANA deployment to the villages under threat. In the face of Taleban violence, militiamen had no sense that the government was protecting their backs.

As a forthcoming dispatch on Taleban attitudes to the ALP will detail, the movement’s tactics also changed around 2014. Although the Taleban military campaign against the militias in Andar continued, they were no longer regarded as their most important enemy. The insurgents started to use a more ‘softly softly’ approach in Andar and elsewhere, trying to persuade ALP men to switch sides, offering amnesties and trying to address the grievances of communities which may have supported the ALP.

Significantly, the Taleban have not undertaken acts of reprisal against those living in re-captured villages.That pragmatic approach has extended even to former ALP members and their families who sought amnesties and chose to stay in their areas. For example, according to businessmen speaking to AAN in 2017, when Taleban fighters detained two former ALP men, they let them go after a few days. Even though active ALP and uprisers remained targets, we also saw in 2016 the Taleban handing over the body of an ALP man whom they had killed after forcing him from his car on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. Such behaviour would have been unimaginable at the height of ALP-Taleban hostilities. Andar went to the brink of an abyss in terms of the ferocity of intra-tribal violence. It seems that for now, at least, the Taleban have realised that better behaviour towards local people, including those who went over to the other side, can be militarily useful to their campaign in the short-run – for winning back territory – and thelong-run – keeping that territory.

As the ALP and uprisers in Andar were gradually pushed back, their numbers also dwindled. In early 2017, then ALP commander Baz Muhammad said there were still 50 or so ALP and uprisers. About a dozen defected or surrendered to the Taleban in the autumn of 2017. Others went to Ghazni city or Paktia or Khost provinces where they started businesses. By October 2017, none of the original group of uprisers or ALP were left. The only serving ALP in the district were Shinwaris, drafted in from Nangrahar province (an exception to ALP regulations); this was reported by locals and confirmed to AAN by an official from the Ministry of Interior, who asked not to be named, and said it had been necessary because “locals aren’t interested in serving.”(12) These ALP men are holding a couple of security posts on the road leading to the Chahardiwal area which houses the ANA base.

Baz Muhammad, who ended up commanding most of the remaining uprisers,himself finally left the ranksout of frustration with the formidability of the task of ensuring security in a difficult area, and because of the lack of popular support. The ALP and uprisers, he told AAN, found themselves increasingly surrounded by the enemy and trying to operate in a terrain in which the population – after experiencing different types of armed actors – had lost interest in actively supporting any brand of people under arms. Baz Muhammad joined the ANP in February 2018 and was assassinated at his post earlier this month. (13)

Assessing the Andar uprising and the ALP

The uprising in Andar district failed to hold the territory it captured. In terms of the human cost, according to provincial council member and brother of an early ALP commander, Amanullah Kamranai, more than 700 uprisersand ALP men have been killed since 2012. An unknown number of civilians, ANSF and Taleban also died in the violence, which was particularly intense between 2012 and 2014.

Several themes emerge from the arc of failure in Andar. First, changes in the battlefield in Afghanistan can be rapid and unexpected. Winning over local civilians appears to be one crucial means of making gains long-lasting. In insurgencies, the support of civilians can tip the balance between warring parties, for example, if they chose to give – or withhold – tip-offs and intelligence. By the end of summer 2012, abusive behaviour by uprisers, the mercenary behaviour of local politicians, and probably, as well, the local forces’ alliance with foreign forces, was already limiting their potential support from local communities. Whether a popularly-based ALP could have been established then is unknown: the force that was stood up was created without consulting or involving local communities. Nevertheless, the ALP and uprisers could still manage to draw on the support of part of the community because of the importance of extended family networks and this made them a threat to the Taleban –  as we wrote in October 2013:

If the Taleban had been an external force without indigenous roots, they would have easily been swept out of the district by such a powerful local militia. However, the Taleban have established support among a considerable segment of the society and it is this entire segment of society which has found itself the enemy of the ALP. At the same time, the ALP also has local support and those within the community who are or are perceived to be ALP-aligned now find themselves the target of the Taleban. The result has been relentless bloodshed perpetrated by both sides and a polarisation within the Andar tribe.

That last sentence is also important. A second theme emerging from events in Andar is that introducing a local element into a counter-insurgency is risky, in terms of the prospects both for stabilisation and protecting the population. Although the ALP and uprisers fought hard against the Taleban, they never managed to get enough local support to become the dominant force in Andar, which meant their presenceworsened the violence and reduced protection for civilians. The consequence was an intensification of the conflict, and, ultimately, no clear counter-insurgency win. Indeed, the situation eventually reverted, after a lot of blood was shed, to the status quo ante.

Inserting a local counter-insurgent force also localised the conflict to a much greater degree, producing a more brutal and intimate type of violence, something likely to be more pernicious and de-stabilising in the long-term. Before the 2012 uprising, the war in Andar had mainly been fought out between Taleban with a local recruitment base and foreign soldiers, with some Afghan ANSF. After the summer of 2012, it was Andar versus Andar. Those fighting knew each other and each others’ families and the conflict was fought out in their own villages and over their own lands.At the height of the struggle between the Taleban and the militias, the level and nature of the violence was worse than anything seen before, even under the ruthless rule of Qari Baba. The arming of two sections of the community – Taleban and uprisers/ALP – poisoned intra-tribal relations among the Andar and led to extreme acts of reprisal. That Taleban have not carried out revenge attacks in re-conquered villages in Andar – presumably for pragmatic reasons – can only be seen as fortunate.

The local nature of forces such as the Andar ALP and uprising group is what makes them attractive to various patrons, both Afghan and international. They bring tactical advantages – local knowledge of the terrain and the community, and clan and family networks. In the case of Andar, in the early years of the uprising, these paid dividends in terms of territory taken. Raising local forces may therefore be good for those planning the counter-insurgency, while having bitter consequences for the community. In Andar,  regardless of whether the ALP or uprisers had managed to retain the territory they won, the long-terms harm of raising local militias was clear from very early on.

Finally, although the ALP and uprisers were ‘advertised’ as community defence forces, the communities did not control them. There was very little evidence, either, of any proper accountability of uprisers (by the NDS) or ALP (by the Ministry of Interior), or by US special forces of either. The indiscipline of these militia forces cost civilians dear, in terms of greater insecurity and criminality. Such indiscipline may have seemed a reasonable price to pay by patrons wanting a robust and dependable counter-insurgency ally against the Taleban, which they could hold at ‘arm’s length’. However, that predatory behaviour ate away at civilian support, ultimately weakening the force. Even though the ALP and uprisers could count on some backing from some of the community, it was never going to be enough to enable them to hold territory, however well they fought, if they also abused the citizenry.

That the Andar experience of ‘community defence forces’ is not inevitable can be seen by looking at what happened in Yahyakhel district in neighbouring Paktika provinces. The establishment of the ALP there sheds light on how it is possible to stand up a good local force, which both protects civilians and reduces violence, a force that is seen as legitimate by the ‘host’ community. This will be explored in a forthcoming second dispatch.

Edited by Erica Gaston

* This research for this dispatch is 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.

(1) For AAN’s earlier dispatches on the ‘Andar Uprising’, see:

• “AAN Reportage: Who Fights Whom in the Andar Uprising” 10 August 2012,
• “AAN Reportage (2): The Andar Uprising – has the tied already turned?” (3 September 2012),
• “Guest Blog: the Andar Uprising – Co-opted, divided and stuck in a dilemma” 30 October 2012,
• “The Morphing of the Andar Uprising: Transition to Afghan Local Police” 2 April 2013,
• “Killing Mullahs and Wedding Guests, Banning Last Rites: the Worsening of the Andar Conflict”, 6 November 2013,
• “Finding Business Opportunity in Conflict: Shopkeepers, Taleban and the political economy of Andar District”, 2 December 2015,

(2) A more detailed account of the battle is as follows:

On 17 October, a Taleban suicide bomber blew his vehicle up near the district compound, leaving the way open for about 30 Taleban to attack on foot; their numbers swelled to 300 the following day. There was a three-day siege, with the district headquarters defended, District governor Muhammad Qassim Disiwal told AAN, by about 60 ANP and ANA. The Taleban blocked the three main routes which the government could have used for sending reinforcements. Two of the roads were mostly passing through Taleban-controlled areas that are located in the northern and western parts of Mirai, while on the third road which connects Mirai to the closest ANA base, in Chardiwal, and then onto Paktika to the east, Taleban fighters set up ambushes near Sultanbagh town, as well as near Ghazni city in the Urzu area. The siege was only broken by ANSF reinforcements, including ANA commandos and intensive air strikes by US forces, starting from late night on the evening on 19 October, 2017. According to villagers near the district centre, the Taleban started to retreat after suffering casualties from the airstrikes.

As well as the seventy or so people killed or wounded, Andar district centre’s infrastructure was left badly destroyed in the latest Taleban onslaught. A newer concrete building in the administration withstood the explosion, but a second, older, mud-built building was left mostly destroyed. Six shops in the Mirai Bazaar also caught fire because of Taleban shelling and burned to the ground. IEDs laid by the Taleban on the road to Chardiwal left the main asphalted road to Paktika damaged in three places near Salam Gudali village. The ANP who fell back to defend the district centre never re-took those checkpoints and the government lost some of the last villages it had controlled.

(3) Our best estimate of the casualties is 46 killed and 31 injured. Conflicting information has been provided by Afghan officials about the number of ANSF, Taleban and civilian casualties, ranging between 20 and 60 fatalities. The father of two ANP who were killed was allowed to enter the district building after sunrise on 17 October to look for their bodies and was reported as saying he saw the bodies of more than a dozen security forces lying on the ground. Officials in Ghazni told a BBC Pashto reporter that 30 people including 25 security forces, mostly Afghan National Police (ANP), and five civilians had been killed. However, a Provincial Council member Abdul Jami Jami told the BBC that 35 security forces were killed. Meanwhile, district governor Disiwal told AAN that ten security forces were killed, another 24 were wounded, ten of them with fatal injuries.

As for the Taleban, local businessmen in the district told AAN that the airstrike had killed 16 of their fighters. However, government officials claimed that more than 90 Taleban fighters were killed, while breaking the siege and in the air bombing that happened after the siege. Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Pajhwok that only seven of their fighters had been killed and as many wounded in the three-day siege.

(4) Asadullah Khaled, who is from Ghazni, had been the Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs when the uprising started. In September 2012, he became director of the National Directorate of Security (NDS). He enjoyed a pre-2001 working relationship with the CIA, a close relationship subsequently also with the US military and the Karzais, and a well-deserved reputation as a torturer (read his biography here.)

(5) Matthew P Dearing is now director of the South and Central Asia Security Studies Programme at the College of International Security Affairs. His analysis of Andar’s ALP and uprising force was published in 2017 by the journal, Small Wars and Insurgencies, “A double-edged sword: the people’s uprising in Ghazni, Afghanistan,” (28:3, 576-608, 10.1080/09592318.2017.1307611) (unfortunately, it cannot be read for free).

(6) Responsibility for security was transferred from the NATO ISAF mission to the ANSF in Andar in the fourth tranche of Transition (Enteqal), announced on 31 December 2012. The fifth and final tranche of Transition was announced on 18 June 2013. This NATO map shows when districts and provinces were transitioned.)

(7) A local businessman named some of those present: Haji Mirza a tribal elder from Qadamkhel, another elder Muhammad Raza from Mullah Muhammad Gudali, a religious figure Mawlawi Ibrahim from Mir Hazar, Mir Ahmad from Ghundi, and Nur ul-Haq Akhundzada from Gandaher (Mir Ahmad and Nur ul-Haq Akhundzada were later killed by Taleban). The only man at the ceremony not to join the ALP, he said, was Haji Wazir from Akal. Another person there, 33 year old Baz Muhammad Khaksar, had been a member of the uprising groupfrom the first. He named some other elders whom he said also participated in the gathering: commander Fatah from Alamkhel, Haji Zahir from Ghundi and 85 year old Haji Amin from Mahkam. All three were later killed by the Taleban, Fatah and Haji Zahir in their houses and Haji Amin outside his village mosque one evening in the month of Ramadan. Baz Muhammad said all three had been prior sympathizers with the uprisersand supported their ‘upgrade’ to ALP.

(8) The estimate was from MP Khial Hussaini, reported here. It counts only the Andar dead and includes combatants. It excludes police, army, Taleban or Hezb-e Islami from other districts who were killed. UNAMA documented 45 civilian casualties (deaths and injuries) in 2012, in Andar as well as 20 ALP and uprising combatants.

(9) The Taleban also carried out a number of ‘preemptive’ assassinations in 2012 of former Qari Baba sub-commanders who could have been persuaded to lead the new pro-government militias. For example, they killed Haji Muhammad from Bagha village and Ashraf Khan from Sher Qala village. Both men were previously with Qari Baba.

(10) UNAMA wrote:

In 2014, the ALP Monitoring and Investigations section of the ALP Directorate investigated 68 accounts of ALP-related human rights violations, including murder, extortion and mistreatment, arbitrary detention, illegal search operations, extortion of “taxes” and forced eviction. Officials in the ALP Directorate reported that the investigations led to 64 arrests and four convictions – the highest number of ALP convictions recorded. UNAMA also noted an improvement in the Ministry of Interior’s case tracking through its new documentation and reporting on the number of prosecutions and convictions resulting from ALP investigations.

(11) The Uprisers turned predatory, Dearing wrote, but ALP “could be considered a relatively protective organisation.” He thinks command and control of the ALP largely worked: “When patrons and the community engaged in complementary governance over the paramilitary group, in this case through the ALP, paramilitary behavior was protection of the civilian population. However, when patrons and communities failed to provide complementary governance, as the case of the remaining Uprising force after ALP institutionalization, the paramilitaries engaged in predation of the local population.”

(12) The Ministry of Interior official said that 32 Shinwari were present in Andar (out of a tashkil of 50). According to current regulations, as the ALP is a defensive force, checkpoints should be no more than one kilometre away from local policemen’s villages. ALP should not be deployed away except under the express orders of the Provincial Police Chief (this happened during the defence of Kunduz in 2015, and Lashkargah in 2016, for example). Deployment to another province and not even a neighbouring one and for routine, rather than emergency duty is far beyond ALP procedures.

(13) Baz Muhammad, his brother told AAN, he joined the ANP in February 2018 and was deployed to Gilan district where he was the commander of four checkposts. On 1 April 2018, an informant asked him to come to a village near his security post, but when Baz Muhammad arrived, Taleban fighters were waiting. They tried to kidnap him, but he fought back, said his brother and, along with two other ANP, was killed.

 

Two new reports have found that despite improvements in some sectors, aid delivery in Afghanistan is still largely ineffective and poverty has risen. A joint Oxfam and Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) report on aid effectiveness reveals that while development aid has decreased, donor support continues to be fragmented and aid dependency remains high. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s new Living Conditions Survey shows that poverty is more widespread today than it was immediately after the fall of the Taleban regime. AAN’s Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig summarise, contextualise and analyse the reports’ findings.

A new joint report by Oxfam and the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) entitled “Aid Effectiveness in Afghanistan” (1) assessed efforts by both donors and the Afghan government to align with criteria provided by the 2005 Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness and builds on a 2008 Oxfam report on aid effectiveness. (2) The report – which was informed by a comprehensive review of the ministries’ and other government institutions’ primary data as well as interviews with key-informants among government, donors, development partners and civil society – comes to the conclusion that the continuing “fragmentation” of aid provided in many sectors still “leads to ineffective aid.” The report states that:

There are over 30 different international donors disbursing aid in Afghanistan, each with their own agenda and aid agreement with the government, and effective donor coordination and harmonisation is not a practice adopted universally […] Yet there are still major issues of fragmentation, with donors bypassing government systems in multiple areas of the development sector, and it is this fragmentation that leads to ineffective aid.

The 2008 Oxfam study had already uncovered worrying facts and figures about how ineffectively aid in Afghanistan had been disbursed and spent in the period from 2001 to 2008. The report revealed that over two-thirds of the aid – then around 20 billion USD in total – bypassed the Afghan government. Donors justified this practice by pointing to the endemically corrupt Afghan system, arguing that channelling money through government and non-governmental organisations guaranteed better financial accountability. This argument was bolstered by the findings in the report that the Afghan government did not know how the remaining third of the aid, which was around five billion USD, had been spent, due to a lack of internal communication and coordination.

The 2008 report also found that “over half of aid is tied, requiring the procurement of donor-country goods and services.” Furthermore, it pointed out that large sums of development money was siphoned off, particularly through reconstruction contracts “for international and Afghan contractor companies,” where profit margins were “often 20 per cent and can be as high as 50 per cent.” It also criticised the exaggerated salaries of “most full time, expatriate consultants, working in private consulting companies, [who] cost 250,000–500,000 USD a year.” It estimated that 40 per cent of aid since 2001 – around six billion USD – had returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries, effectively turning aid into donor countries’ export promotion. A World Bank report published in the same year stated that spending “on” Afghanistan did not equal spending “in” Afghanistan, and that “only 38 cents of every aid dollar spent in Afghanistan actually reaches the economy through direct salary payments, household transfers, or purchase of local goods and services.” (More in this AAN analysis)

What does the new Oxfam/SCA report say in detail?

Around 66 per cent of Afghanistan’s budget in the financial year of 1396 (March 2017-February 2018) was funded through international donor support, according to the Oxfam/SCA report. Only 33 per cent came from domestic revenues, even though revenue has tripled over the last ten years, from around USD 750 million in 2008/09 to USD 2.5 billion in 2017/18. These figures reflect a continuing high level of aid dependency. (3) Additionally, the report said (with reference to a 2016 Afghan government update through the Self-Reliance Through Mutual Accountability Framework (SMAF) that 59 per cent of development aid provided by the international community had gone through the government’s core budget that year. But this percentage fluctuates on a yearly basis: in 2015, for example, of 3.73 billion USD disbursed, around 40 per cent was provided through the budget (see here).

The funds Afghanistan receives are mainly channelled through donor-run projects as well as trust funds, which are usually designed as multi-year endeavours and managed by donors. For example, for a major aid investment such as the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), although it is a fully ‘on-budget’ programme, programmatic decisions are still made by the World Bank. This is strongly influenced by donors’ investment choices and restricts governmentownership of the ARTF, as the Swedish government’s development agency SIDA reported in a 2015 evaluation (http://www.sida.se/contentassets/72dc94b2318644e9b70242b037660cfd/7a6d0a72-27e6-4bad-b17d-a44c1028ae45.pdf). This approach to budgeting, however, has resulted in the ‘over-aiding’ of the country by allocating more funds than needed for the multi-year cycles. This was also highlighted by the 2016 Afghan Ministry of Finance annual performance assessment report.

The fragmentation of aid is reflected by the fact that funds for the 6.659 billion USD Afghan government budget for 2017/8 were provided by over 30 different international donors. (4) The Oxfam/SCA report stated that each donor maintains its own agenda based on separate aid agreements with the government and highlighted that donors mainly choose to fund areas that appeal to their constituents back home:

With the government largely only able to influence where the money goes, donors are free to fund areas that are appealing to their constituents back home. Therefore, when it comes to the National Priority Programs, where the government has a clear plan for what they would like funded, donors have been known to compete for the most attractive projects, with other development areas neglected if they do not appeal.

In conclusion to its extensive analysis about whether the Afghan government and the international community have met their aid effectiveness commitments pledged in the past four international conferences on Afghanistan (Kabul 2010, Tokyo 2012, London 2014, Brussels 2016), the report reiterated the same finding: development support continues to be fragmented. However, it commended the efforts made by the Afghan government and the donor community to better align and coordinate aid, with the development of national priority programmes (NPPs) and the strengthening of the Joint Coordination Monitoring Board (JCMB), and noticed that in some sectors, however, donors do coordinate well. Mechanisms such as the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) and the Afghan Infrastructure Trust Fund (AITF) are given as examples of this “harmonised approach.” SIGAR’s new report on the ARTF, however, disagreed with this Oxfam/SCA finding. According to SIGAR, the World Bank, which manages the fund, “restricts donor and public access to how it monitors and accounts for ARTF funding, leaving donors, and their taxpayers, without important information necessary to understand the activities they fund.” The SIGAR report also states, “the Bank is not following its own policy to provide donors and the public access to ARTF records that should be publicly available.”The World Bank press release in response to the SIGAR report called “most of the findings […] somewhat anecdotal.” Nevertheless, both the SIGAR and Oxfam/SCA report, while they contradict each other on this particular topic, point to poor management, coordination and monitoring of development aid money in Afghanistan. While the Oxfam/SCA report notes this is the case in general for all development aid provided, the SIGAR report states the same for a specific trust fund. Both reports also note that the lack of transparency further exacerbates the unaccountability of development aid funding in the country.

According to the Oxfam/SCA report, the area that has received most financial support is social infrastructure and services, with over 14 billion USD from 2011 to 2015. This is followed by economic infrastructure and services (4 billion USD), humanitarian aid (2 billion USD), and production sector support (1.6 billion USD). It further offers a detailed overview and effectiveness assessment of the projects funded in each of the above-mentioned sectors.

It also found that in 2014 the majority (58.7 per cent) of donor financed ‘off-budget’ projects were below one million USD, and nearly a third between one and ten million USD. “By contrast,” the report stated, “more than a quarter of ‘on-budget’ projects in 2014 were in the 10-50 million USD category and only 21.7 per cent of on-budget projects were less than 1 million USD.” This, according to the report, means that donor support is more fragmented when provided off-budget:

The implementation of a large number of small projects, involving a large number of implementing agencies, despite existing coordination mechanisms, can lead to increased transaction costs for both donor agencies and the Government. Donors may decide to deliver aid this way to reduce their reputational risk, however it can actually increase their fiduciary risk with more resources needed to keep an eye on multiple projects, and eventually increase the long-term development risk as government ownership of this type of development approach remains limited.

It is also evident from the now publicly available and searchable Afghan annual budgets, that the government annual budgets are structured around projects (see here)and not, for example, on sub-national units like provinces or districts.

Additionally, the report states, “a decreased appetite for risk, due to the deteriorating security situation,” the report said, “impacts on their ability to coordinate […] on their ability to share information and agree to common efforts for development advocacy and planning.” This inevitably impacts national development priorities as set out by the government, and often means donors are unable to fund projects in large parts of the country. A development worker who wished to remain unnamed, told AAN that around 40 per cent of the country was not privy to donor funds. This further widens the gap between rich and poor, increasing inequality in society, as mentioned above. A lack of donor coordination and an uneven distribution of donor funds, as well as favouritism of certain projects have contributed to an increase in anti-government sentiments in some parts of the country.

The report does not adequately address the question of the extent to which aid spent by the Afghan government and the international community has been effective (or spent on intended purposes). In the report’s analysis of projects, it is unclear whether they were funded by the government or directly by donors.

What budgeting has to do with aid effectiveness

According to financial experts, the aid channelled through donor-run projects and trust funds almost never uses policy-based budgeting techniques (see here; see also the explanation about ARTF, above), ie the funding associated with these projects lacks the precise identification of public policy objectives, delineation of the means and resources for accomplishing them and an accurate assessment of accomplishments. The funds channelled through projects are linked to “results targets” and “log frames,” the set of qualitative and quantitative measurements that are set in project management paradigms and not budgeting and fiscal accountability paradigms, which should be the case when it comes to state-level budgeting. This, in practice, translates into what the 2008 Oxfam report described as:

[…] A large proportion of aid has been prescriptive and supply-driven, rather than indigenous and responding to Afghan needs. [… Aid] has tended to reflect expectations in donor countries, and what western electorates would consider reconstruction and development achievements, rather than what Afghan communities want and need. Projects have too often sought to impose a preconceived idea of progress, rather than nurture, support and expand capabilities, according to Afghan preferences.

The 2008 Oxfam report highlighted that,according to the 2006 Paris Declaration Survey, only 52 per cent of development aid allocated to Afghanistan during the early years of the intervention had been disbursed “in agreement with the government.” This estimate included all funds provided – both to the core budget and for projects where there was a signed agreement or memorandum of understanding with a ministry or government agency. In the period from 2012 to 2014, according to the Afghan government donor coordination report quoted in the 2018 Oxfam/SCA report, only 4.4 billion USD of development assistance were considered to be aligned with national priority programmes; the remaining 8.4 billion USD were considered counter to estimated needs and priorities. (See also the 2016 Ministry of Finance annual performance assessment).

Over the years, this approach also increased incentives to so-called auction-based budgeting (see here). This, in practice, means that annual budgets in Afghanistan are designed in an auction-like process. This happened most recently in 2017 when the Afghan annual budget was only passed by parliament after the Ministry of Finance agreed to allow each MP to have ‘their’ projects included in the budget (see AAN analysis here). (5) The process of auction-based budgeting, nevertheless, is where the largest incidents of misallocation, mismanagement, and outright corruption usually take place, experts say. The amount of rents, experts estimate, that can be lost through the auction process can be as high as 20 to 40 percent of a budget.

Many reports on Afghanistan reflect exactly this: that a considerable amount of donor funding to Afghanistan has been misappropriated through corruption or misallocation, despite both donor and government efforts to create accountability and transparency mechanisms (see here). A 2016 report entitled “Corruption in conflict: Lessons for the U.S. experience in Afghanistan”  from the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), for example, strongly criticised its own government for pouring billions of dollars into Afghanistan with so little oversight that it fuelled a culture of “rampant corruption” and undermined the US mission (see also here and here). (6)

Dropping aid levels

The Oxfam/SCA report also provides an overview and analysis of development and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan during the period 2010 to 2015 that equalled 34.3 billion USD. This is part of a total of development aid assistance, between 2001 and 2016, of over 71 billion US dollars in commitments – and slightly over 61 billion US dollars in actual disbursements, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (see dataset here). The main donors were the US, UK, EU, Japan, Germany, the Nordic countries, Australia and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Kabul-based financial experts who prefered to remain anonymous estimate that the country received more than double that amount in military support over the same period; the exact figure is not in the public domain. (7) Recent figures on US spending alone seem to confirm this ratio. According to a 2018 report entitled “Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy In Brief”:

… Congress has appropriated more than $126 billion in aid for Afghanistan since [financial year] 2002, with about 63% for security and 28% for development (and the remainder for civilian operations, mostly budgetary assistance, and humanitarian aid).  

But aid levels to Afghanistan have fluctuated since 2001. After years of a slow rise, the aid total peaked in 2011, only to decrease significantly afterwards (see here). According to the Oxfam/SCA report, Afghanistan received 6.867 billion USD in 2011, compared to 4.239 billion in 2015(see figure 1 below). The World Bank estimated a decline from an annual average of 12.5 billion USD between 2009 and 2012 to around 8.8 billion USD in 2015. As indicated in this dispatch, records on development aid for Afghanistan vary from source to source.

Figure 1: Development aid disbursed by international community from 2010-2015 (World Bank). Table made by Oxfam/SCA report.

The Oxfam/SCA report also pointed out discrepancies in the reported amounts of development aid for Afghanistan:

In its report, the Ministry of Finance states that Afghanistan received a total of USD 12.9 billion in development assistance in the period 2012-2014, which is less than a figure of 16.8 USD billion reported by the World Bank for the same period. […] The challenge to obtain accurate data on how much development aid has been received from 2010-2106 points to a lack of transparency and coordination within the aid sector of Afghanistan where clear financial data is not readily available, and agreed upon.

The report, in addition, highlights that aid disbursements have been far lower than the pledges. But this is hardly news, as the same finding came out of the 2008 Oxfam report, which said that “donors are far quicker to make promises than to report on disbursements and shortfalls.” In the period 2002 to 2008, out of 25 billion USD committed, Afghanistan actually received less than two-thirds, or around 15 billion USD for development and reconstruction, the 2008 report found. (In the same period Afghanistan received an additional 5 billion USD for the government.)

The new joint Oxfam/SCA report, however, says that there has been some improvement in the ratio between commitment and disbursement. According to the Afghan Government’s Central Statistics Organisation (AGCSO) data, the report noted “the international community has been improving since 2009/10 when only 31 per cent of pledged funding was disbursed, to 2016/17 when 71 per cent of what it had pledged was disbursed.” This point was also reiterated in an earlier International Crisis Group report, which said that between 2001 and 2011, 57 billion dollars of aid money had been spent in Afghanistan against 90 billion pledged (see this AAN analysis).

Changed aid paradigm: Development now for development’s sake?

Another factor that has influenced aid fluctuations is that ten years after the 2008 Oxfam report, the donor landscape in Afghanistan as well as the dominant development paradigm has changed. Some of the major aid actors, ie the international military, which distributed the lion’s share of development and humanitarian aid through its Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), have almost completely disappeared. The PRT Commanders Emergency Response Program (CERP) set up by the US, for example, spent about 1.5 billion USD alone between 2004 and 2011. But this high spending contributed little to the desired outcome of stabilisation, which had been the dominant development paradigm up until then.

As noted in 2009 by Andrew Wilder, “given the centrality to the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy of the assumption that aid is an important stabilization tool, and the billions of development dollars allocated based on this assumption, there is surprisingly limited evidence from Afghanistan that supports it.” Wilder also noted that despite the amount of money spent, “Afghan perceptions of aid and aid actors had been overwhelmingly negative” (see also this Tufts University study on PRT in Helmand here). In contrast to the 2008 Oxfam recommendation to increase development aid to Afghanistan at the expense of military support, donor support to development and humanitarian needs has decreased over the years.

Aid dependency still high

Afghanistan’s aid dependency rate, meanwhile, remained extremely high. Between 2005 and 2011, it averaged 76 per cent of the country’s GDP (see here). This means that over that period Afghanistan’s aid dependency was more than three times higher than the rule of thumb proposed for optimal aid levels for a functioning, sovereign state by the Washington-based Institute for State Effectiveness, at around 20 per cent of GDP (see here). According to the World Bank, this rate decreased to 45 per cent in 2017, still more than double the recommended rate.

In short, the country has been swamped with money since 2001, which has driven its heavy dependence on development aid to new levels. Between 1977 (the last full year of the Republic) and 1988 (the last full year of Soviet troop presence), foreign (mainly Soviet) aid roughly covered between one fourth and one third of state expenditures, according to a 2007 Canadian study (see here).

 Rising poverty as a key outcome?

Another trend becomes apparent when reading the Oxfam/SCA report and the Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey released on 2 May 2018 by the Central Statistics Organization (CSO) in cooperation with the Afghan Ministry of Economy and the World Bank (see here): that the large amounts of aid disbursed since 2001 have not reduced poverty in Afghanistan. This is nothing but a result of continuing ineffectiveness. While the rate of Afghans living in poverty was lowered from the 2003 World Bank’s baseline of 51.4 per cent of the population in 2003 – ie during the immediate post-Taleban era, when aid flows were still moderate – (see here) to around 34 per cent in 2007/08, these gains were subsequently lost again. The paradigm shift around 2011 – which should have been in the right direction, making development the paradigm instead of stabilisation – was accompanied by a slump in aid money alongside the gradual withdrawal of foreign troops, the transition (‘handover of responsibility’) and the Afghan government’s paradigm of going from transition to ‘transformation’. This seems to have resulted in a higher poverty rate, once again. It increased to around 38 per cent in 2011/12, which was, until recently, the last official CSO figure (see here). (8) It is now 54.5 per cent. In fact, this is even higher than the 2003 figure in the immediate post-Taleban period. During the Taleban regime, international aid was as low as 564 million USD for the entire period between 1995 and 2000, according to the OECD data set already quoted above. This, combined with the non-policies of the Taleban, led to widespread impoverishment.

In 2015, the Afghan Ministry of Economy explained the lack of poverty reduction in spite of growing development assistance in its Afghanistan Poverty Status Update by an increase in inequality, measured by the Gini index.  (9) According to the document, this index in Afghanistan increased from 29.7 per cent in 2007/08 to 31.6 in 2011/12, when the country received the highest amount of development aid (see figures 2 and 3). It stated, “Had Afghanistan’s economic growth been more widely shared, poverty could have declined by as much as 4.4 percentage points.” That the Gini index had decreased by 2016/17 (despite an increase in poverty) does not mean, however, that growth was being shared more widely or more equally. It is a statistical phenomenon resulting from an almost 20 per cent increase in the poverty rate.

Figure 2: Data downloaded from the Central Statistics Organization (CSO) dashboard. Table made by AAN.

Figure 3: Data downloaded from the Central Statistics Organization (CSO) dashboard. Table made by AAN.

 A possible way forward

It is expected that at the Geneva donor conference in November this year, the 2016 Brussels conference commitments will go through a mid-term review. It also means that a new set of indicators and targets could be designed to measure Afghanistan’s progress towards self-reliance. At the same time the question remains open as to who will measure how donors align themselves with the 2005 Paris Declaration and how they will deliver on their financial promises. The non-governmental Oxfam/SCA report may be a good example of an exercise in self-scrutiny, but there is still a lot to be done by other actors, too, particularly among governments. Part of the problem concerns Afghanistan’s chronic corruption and points to a lack of statesmanship among the country’s political élite. They see power as a way of accessing ‘rent-seeking’ while proving unable to address the large and rising portion of their fellow Afghans languishing in poverty. This requires a behavioural change on their part. But an equally radical change is probably required by donors, who need to review their way of doing business in Afghanistan, in line with some of the recommendations made by the recent reports on aid effectiveness.

Edited by Sari Kouvo

 

(1) The Paris criteria (from the Oxfam/SCA report):

1. Ownership: Developing countries set their own strategies for poverty reduction, improve their institutions and tackle corruption.
2. Alignment: Donor countries align behind these objectives and use local systems.
3. Harmonisation: Donor countries coordinate, simplify procedures and share information to avoid duplication.
4. Results: Developing countries and donors shift focus to development results and results get measured.
5. Mutual accountability: Donors and partners are accountable for development results.

(2) Oxfam and SCA had the support of Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) for this report. The report was prepared by ATR Consulting in Kabul, Afghanistan, the views and recommendations presented in the report are those of ATR, and do not necessarily reflect those held by SCA, Oxfam or CAFOD.

(3) This is also evident from the budgets for the last seven years, which are now available to the public on the Ministry of Finance’s website (see also AAN’s analysis on the Afghan budget for 2018/19). Publicly available and in searchable formats (PDFs and excel) budgets for the last seven years, are the latest attempts of the current Afghan government to make its public finances accessible and transparent and in line with the best international open government practices.

(4) According tothe Oxfam/SCA report the budget was split into two categories: 62 per cent for the operating budget and 38 per cent for the development budget. Donors gave money to both budgets, 1.9 billion USD for the operating budget and 2.214 billion USD for the development budget. In the development budget, donors provide both discretionary (493 million USD) and non-discretionary (1.674 billion USD) funding (see here).

(5) A recent Afghan media report explains how this works in practice, quoting an Islamic scholar and a civil society representative speaking at an election-related press conference in early May 2018:

[Mawlawi] Rahmatullah Andar, an Islamic scholar, told the press conference that […] “The government approved 75 development projects for Ghazni [province] this fiscal year and reserved only 14 to as many districts while the rest of the other projects are given to four districts which have representatives in the Wolesi Jirga.”

A civil society activist from Ghazni, Inayatullah Naseri, also said only four people from as many districts out of Ghazi’s 18 [district centres] represented the whole province in the parliament.

(6) A leading Afghan anti-corruption civil society organisation, Integrity Watch Afghanistan’s (IWA) 2016 national survey on perceptions and experiences of corruption, found that more than 70 per cent of Afghans thought that corruption in 2016 was worse than it was in 2014 when a similar survey was conducted.

(7) According to CSIS figures (quoted in this AAN analysis), the US ratio between military and civilian spending between 2001 and 2012 in Afghanistan was 16:1.

(8) There are more recent World Bank figures (see here), putting the 2011/12 poverty rate at 36 per cent and giving one of 39 per cent for 2013/14 – deviating somewhat surprisingly from the CSO figures, despite the fact that the World Bank cooperated with the CSO on the figures in the Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey, formerly known as the National Risk Vulnerability Assessment.

(9) The Gini index or Gini coefficient is a statistical measure of distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912. It is often used, including by the UN, as a gauge of economic inequality, measuring income distribution or, less commonly, wealth distribution among a population (see here).

 

 

In April, Qari Hekmatullah, the self-proclaimed commander of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), was killed in a US airstrike. Under his command, a local affiliate of the Afghan-Pakistani Daesh affiliate, ISKP, had challenged both the government and the Taleban and established almost full control over two remote districts of Jawzjan province, Darzab and Qush Tepa. In this update of earlier reports on the situation in the area, AAN’s Obaid Ali takes a look at the latest dynamics there following Hekmat’s death and finds that his group is still in charge.

The killing of Qari Hekmat  

On 5 April 2018, a US airstrike killed Qari Hekmat – as he was usually known – an ISKP-affiliated commander in northern Afghanistan. According to a statement released by US military headquarters, Hekmat was killed in Qorogh village of Belcheragh district in neighbouring Faryab province. General Faqir Muhammad Jawzjani, the province’s police chief, also confirmed that he had been killed in a US airstrike (media report here).

Sources close to Hekmat told AAN that he had survived a drone attack a day earlier, on 4 April 2018, while he and two of his bodyguards were en route to visit fighters in the village of Qorogh (where he was killed the following day). The attack that killed him along with one of his bodyguards was carried out as they attempted to return to his base in Sar Dara village in the district of Darzab. The second bodyguard was wounded.

Qorogh is a village on the Faryab side of the border between this province and his stronghold in Jawzjan. But it is surrounded by a number of villages that belong to Darzab district. For this reason, Qorogh’s inhabitants interact mainly with residents from Darzab. Hekmat’s presence there was due to the proximity of the village to his base and was not a sign that he was planning to expand his activities in Faryab.

Qari Hekmat was a former Taleban commander who, in 2015, joined the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), a recognised branch of the Syria/Iraq-based Islamic State (IS) for Afghanistan and Pakistan, an area the IS calls Khorasan. Under the ISKP banner, Hekmat took over most of Qush Tepa and Darzab districts and established his own parallel administration (read more AAN background on Qari Hekmat here and here).

A new leader

After Qari Hekmat’s killing, the group’s decision-making council appointed Mawlawi Habib Rahman as his successor. Hekmat had established the council, which consists of 14 loyal commanders, although its exact composition is not known. With its military and administrative structures, the council serves as the core management body for the local ISKP branch (more AAN reporting here). It discusses and decides on military, public outreach, finance and security issues every month.

Unlike Hekmat, 31 year-old Mawlawi Habib Rahman is a relative newcomer to the Jawzjan insurgency and not a local. The Uzbek from Sholgara district in Balkh province joined Hekmat’s forces in 2016. Previously he had served as the head of the group’s shadow judiciary and as a member of the decision-making council (read AAN’s previous analysis here). He had thus demonstrated his capacity to serve in a relatively high position within the group under Hekmat’s command. Despite his young age, limited local knowledge and military experience, his appointment seems to have happened without dispute and largely due to the fact that he is a religious scholar and was Hekmat’s close aide in the early stages of the pro-ISKP formation.

Habib Rahman is also the brother in-law of a former Taleban shadow district governor in Qush Tepa, Mufti Nemat, who surrendered to General Abdulrashid Dostum in 2015. He later switched sides again to join the late Hekmat. Mufti Nemat continues to operate in Darzab and might also have supported the appointment of Habib Rahman to lead the group.

The consequences of Qari Hekmat’s death

The killing of Qari Hekmat has not led to a visible weakening of the military position of the group in either of the districts they control. This has been confirmed to AAN by various sources. In the eyes of Sher Muhammad, an Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander in Darzab district, the killing did not have “any negative impact” on the group or its grip over the two districts. He told AAN “The Daesh front line is only 500 metres away from the Afghan security force’s base in Darzab district centre.” The district governor of Qush Tepa, Aminullah Amin, confirmed this to AAN. According to him, Daesh continues to occupy most parts of Qush Tepa and Darzab. While the exact number of ISKP-affiliated fighters in Jawzjan is unclear, Amin further told AAN they were strong enough to defeat the local Afghan security forces. Local sources close to the group told AAN that Mawlawi Habib Rahman currently leads 300 to 400 fighters that include some Central Asians.

Local elders told AAN that the local pro-ISKP group does not have a military base or any other permanent presence in the villages of both districts but that fighters visit villages on a weekly basis, distributing announcements to obey the ISKP’s instructions. But in contrast to this agency report, the ISKP fighters do not dwell “in caves” but occupy houses abandoned by the local population. This is also the case with their headquarters in Sar Dara, a wide valley used for agricultural purposes in Darzab. Despite the lack of a permanent ISKP presence there, neither government forces nor Taleban fighters attempt to enter these villages, for fear that they might be trapped by pro-ISKP fighters.

Following the killing of Qari Hekmat, neither the ANSF nor the local Taleban have attempted to carry out large-scale counteroffensive against pro-ISKP fighters in Darzab or Qush Tepa. The only operation conducted was one by Afghan Special Security Forces (ASSF) and US Special Operation Forces (SOF) in Darzab.  According to a statement released by the US-led Resolute Support mission on 11 April – six days after Qari Hekmat’s killing –, the ASSF and SOF killed 22 ISKP fighters in the district. The statement further said that since the beginning of 2018, 90 ISKP fighters had been killed, the majority in Darzab (full text here).

The Resolute Support figure, however, was not confirmed by AAN’s local sources. Speaking to AAN, local elders from Darzab confirmed the 11 April Special Forces operation there but said only “a few” pro-ISKP fighters had been killed and that the US and Afghan forces had left the area again. Local officials also told AAN that there had not been any attempt to carry out a large-scale counter-offensive against ISKP fighters in the province so far. Sher Muhammad, the ALP commander, and district governor Amin, however, insist that such an operation must be carried out in order to eliminate the ISKP threat. Speaking to AAN on 13 May 2018, Najib Danesh, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said the Afghan security forces would soon conduct clearance operations against Taleban and ISKP in Jawzjan.

The limited number of local Afghan security forces in Darzab and Qush Tepa hampers such an operation. They are stationed in only a few bases in the district centres and are only capable of protecting the centres as well as a few nearby villages. Deploying reinforcements and logistical supplies to Qush Tepa and Darzab is a serious challenge, as the highway connecting the provincial centre Shebarghan to both districts is mostly controlled and often blocked by Qari Hekmat’s fighters.

Neither have the Taleban yet responded to the pro-ISKP fighters in Jawzjan after their fighters retreated to the neighbouring provinces of Faryab and Sar-e Pul in January 2018 (AAN’s previous report here). This is largely due to the local Taleban commanders’ failure to recruit new local fighters as well as their fear of being targeted by ASSF or US SOF airstrikes. Therefore, the pro-ISKP network in Darzab and Qush Tepa continues to enjoy a monopoly of control in most parts of both districts.

Links with ISKP Central?

It is still not clear how strong the group’s connections are with the ISKP’s main foothold in Afghanistan, in eastern Nangrahar province. In June 2017, a delegation from Darzab visited Nangrahar province (see AAN’s analysis here) but further face-to-face contact has not been reported. In March 2018, a video clip that was apparently filmed by Uzbek fighters operating in Jawzjan under the ISKP flag and released by ISKP supporters on Facebook, featured fighters in Jawzjan pledging an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State. The video also showed a group of young Uzbek boys completing military training and expressing loyalty to the Islamic State, although the exact locations were unclear. Furthermore, it contained material showing an ISKP commander in Nangrahar appealing to IS fighters in Syria and Iraq to join the Afghan ISKP. This was – according to AAN’s knowledge – the first video featuring both ISKP fighters in Jawzjan and Nangrahar provinces.

The pro-ISKP network in Jawzjan does not have its own media wing to release its videos or statements. In most cases, material is distributed through individual Facebook accounts belonging to sympathisers.

Conclusion

Looking at the current dynamics within the ISKP militancy in Darzab and Qush Tepa, its fighters have remained unified and resilient enough to survive the death of their local supreme leader. The late Hekmat’s investment in these isolated and mountainous areas, building on his decade of military experience with the Taleban and his knowledge of the local dynamics, has ensured a strong and resilient pro-ISKP foothold in the southeast of Jawzjan. This is not to say that the killing of Qari Hekmat will not affect the group’s continued military success or its current hold over the two districts over time, particularly as Mawlawi Habib Rahman needs to show whether he can fully replace Hekmat and operate as successfully as he did. But so far there are – despite some losses – no significant signs of disunity or fragmentation within the pro-ISKP fighters in Jawzjan, and their territorial grip remains unchallenged and unchanged.

 Edited by Sari Kouvo and Thomas Ruttig

 

UNAMA and Human Rights Watch have each released blistering reports on the killing and wounding of civilians in the Afghan conflict. UNAMA presents the results of its investigation into the Afghan Air Force’s bombing of an open-air graduation ceremony at a madrassa in Dasht-e Archi in Kunduz province in April. It concludes that, even if the air force had a military target, no care was taken to spare the many civilians present, including the dozens of children who were killed or injured. It is the voices of the civilian victims and survivors of insurgent attacks in urban areas, which are at the heart of the Human Rights Watch publication. Both reports, says AAN’s Kate Clark, make important reading.

UNAMA ‘Special Report Airstrikes in Dasht-e-Archi district, Kunduz Province, 2 April 2018.’

In Laghmani village, Dasht-e Archi district of Kunduz province at about 12.30 on 2 April 2018, Afghan Air Force helicopters fired multiple rockets and heavy machine guns during an open-air ‘dastar bandi’  (turban-tying, ie a graduation) ceremony next to a madrassa where hundreds of men and boys had gathered.

The government said the attack had targeted senior Taleban leaders, including members of the Quetta Shura, foreign commanders and members of Taleban ‘special forces’, the Red Unit, whom it said had gathered to plan a military campaign to attack Kunduz city. It had had the area under surveillance, it said, for a week.

UNAMA said it could not verify the civilian status of each person killed or injured, but found that the crowd gathered for the ceremony “was primarily civilian.” Among them was a large number of children, “many under the age of ten.” UNAMA notes that people had come to attend a ceremony that was “religious in nature” and which had been “widely advertised.” The attack was launched when lunch was about to be served. The crowd, it said, “included members of the community, including children,” who had come to observe the ceremony or eat the meal.

UNAMA’s methodology requires three independent sources to confirm civilian status. It said it had verified 107 civilian casualties (36 killed and 71 injured). They included 81 children (30 killed and 51 injured). The civilian status of a further 15 casualties (2 killed and 13 injured, including six children) was partially verified, ie by two independent sources. (In total, it received more than 200 allegations of civilian casualties.) UNAMA acknowledges that the figures presented in its report may “not be exhaustive” be because of “these stringent verification standards and the challenges of obtaining information.”

UNAMA said it is not in a position to judge whether Taleban were present or not (some locals reported to it that there had been unarmed Taleban in the crowd and a number of armed Taleban taking care of security). However, it said that even if the government had a legitimate military target, “[t]he high numbers of child casualties resulting from this attack, which took place in a civilian area during a religious ceremony, combined with the use of imprecise weapons in this context, raise questions as to the respect by the government of the rules of precaution and proportionality.” It was “reasonably foreseeable” UNAMA said, that “an attack against this area, using imprecise weapons, during a religious ceremony would have caused a large number of civilian casualties, with lethal indiscriminate effects.”

Reading UNAMA’s account, it is hard to see how, at the very least, the Afghan Air Force pilots could have failed to see the many children present, sitting separately at the rear of the ceremony. It seems they must have seen them, but gone ahead with the attack anyway. Indeed, according to the victims and witnesses interviewed by UNAMA, the helicopters struck the children first.

Local residents told UNAMA they believed the government authorities “viewed civilian populations in areas under Taliban control, such as Dasht-e-Archi, with suspicion. They expressed concern that this may be resulting in their differential treatment.”

Despite UNAMA’s use of careful, sober language, the gravity of what it is saying is clear. The Afghan Air Force did not protect, or even mitigate the harm it did to civilians. It failed to discriminate between civilians and combatants. Finally, the suspicion from the population is that the government considers anyone who lives in a Taleban-controlled area as an enemy. UNAMA reminds the government that civilians remain civilians wherever they live and must be spared.

Human Rights Watch report ‘“No Safe Place”: Insurgent Attacks on Civilians in Afghanistan.’

Human Rights Watch’s report on the experiences of civilians killed and wounded by Taleban and the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) is excoriating. Here, it is the stories of survivors and relatives of victims told in their own words that are so compelling. HRW has heard from people in Kabul, Jalalabad and Herat who were “walking down the street, working in a shop, preparing food at home, or worshipping in a mosque” when they experienced “sudden and terrifying violence.” They were victims of attacks which intentionally targeted civilians – in mosques, schools and hospitals – or failed to discriminate between civilians and combatants or to mitigate the harm done while attacking a military target, causing disproportionate harm.

Civilian casualties often end up as statistics: the numbers are important, but so are the individuals. To take just one example from the many victims featured in HRW’s report, M Ahmadi, a property dealer, was in his shop on 24 July 2017 when the Taleban carried out a suicide bombing against a staff shuttle bus from the Ministry of Mines. The Taleban claimed they had hit an NDS bus. Even if that had been true, the attack in a busy area of Kabul was bound to kill and injure civilians like M Ahmadi. 38 civilians were killed in the attack and he was among the dozens injured.

I was in my shop…. I heard a very loud sound and I did not know what happened…. I was not hearing well, and somebody pushed me and said, “Get out!” The staff shuttle bus for the Ministry of Mines that had been bombed had crashed into my shop. I walked out with bare feet and the broken glass cut into my feet. My shop was on fire. There were fires on both sides of the street.

Out on the street a car stopped in front of him and the driver told him to get in: He took me to Mawla Hospital and he called my family to let them know. Then my sons brought me to Emergency Hospital. I do not remember how long I was there. My head, my belly, and my arm were injured—there are still shell fragments in my arm…. During the night I scream in my sleep. The doctors told me I need to see a psychiatrist. But I cannot because of the money.

 My family asks me not to go to work, but what can I do? This shop is mine, and I had to borrow a lot of money to repair it. I am the only breadwinner in the family. Due to our financial problems, my children can’t go to school now. Why doesn’t the government give some money to help the injured people in this area? Aren’t we from this land, from this country?

M Ahmadi’s account is typical in many ways, describing how the consequences of an attack are not just immediate and physical, but also psychological, financial and long-lasting, with the devastation rippling through many lives. Some of the victims telling their stories have been left with permanent disabilities or are the orphans or widows of those killed.

Human Rights Watch says that, although no statistics are available, its research suggests “a large proportion of those killed and injured have been the very poor.” That poor people may be more at risk from attacks could be anticipated. The very rich use armoured cars and live behind concrete walls. Even the somewhat well off may be able to afford the choice of not working in or near places of high risk, although they may still be caught up in attacks as passers-by. Who, but the poorest with no economic alternative would spend large amounts of their working days near a high-risk location like the old Ministry of Interior? It was attacked by the Taleban with an ambulance rigged with explosives on 27 January 2017. More than 100 people were killed and 200 injured, including, said HRW, street children, peddlers and kiosk vendors. HRW makes the point that such victims and their families are also the least able to cope with the severe financial hardship of losing a breadwinner, or permanent disability or of losing what little in the way of the tools of their trade they might have had.

The government has a laudable policy of providing assistance to victims of the conflict regardless of who the perpetrator was. The sums are small, but many victims told HRW help had not been forthcoming. Others described the process for obtaining the assistance as “prohibitively onerous, or was tainted by corruption, with some receiving assistance and others not.” There is rarely the necessary assistance for complex medical needs and scarcely any provision for psycho-social support.Nongovernmental services, HRW said, were overwhelmed. “Whatever animosity they felt toward those who had carried out the attack,” HRW said, victims also described “feeling abandoned by the government and the international community.” Every person interviewed for the report, it said, described “living with fear that other loved ones would die or be injured in the next catastrophic attack.”

Conclusion

 In 2017, one third of the civilians killed and injured by insurgents were victims of suicide attacks. Such attacks in urban areas, which inevitably or intentionally cause mass civilian casualties, have been have part of the Taleban’s ‘portfolio of operations’ since the mid-2000s. Last year saw a dramatic increase in the number and magnitude of such attacks, as ISKP has increasingly and intentionally targeted civilian city dwellers, particularly Shia Muslims.

This trend has come “in tandem,” HRW said, with “increased military operations by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and United States forces in provinces where the Taliban have made significant territorial gains.” That increase has included air attacks – the subject of Human Rights Watch’s next report. While still only causing six per cent of overall civilian casualties, the total number of civilians killed and injured in air strikes is rising, with 2017 the worst year since UNAMA systematically started compiling statistics in 2009. (1)

In October 2017, we wrote that every single previous Afghan government or armed group with access to airpower since 1978 had deliberately targeted civilians. What makes the Dasht-e Archi bombing so disturbing is the possibility that the current Afghan Air Force may have crossed that line. When and if any Afghan party to the conflict ceases to see all Afghan civilians as ‘their people’, whether that is city-dwellers for the Taleban or those living in rural Taleban-controlled areas for government forces, the door is opened to indiscriminate violence.

 

 

 

(1) Conclusions on the impact of air strikes are complex. The increased United States and Afghan government air cover may be one reason why civilians casualties from insurgent ground offensives fell last year, pushing an overall slight fall in numbers: the risk of air strikes made it riskier for the Taleban to gather in large numbers to launch offensives. (For numbers, see UNAMA’s 2017 Protection of Civilians report, with AAN analysis here.

Increased air operations also resulted in a record number of civilians killed and injured in air strikes in 2017. However, the increase in sorties flown and weapons dropped in 2017 was far higher than the increase in civilian casualties, indicating that the quality of safeguards was not falling. As UNAMA put it, “the reduced harm ratio suggests improvements in targeting and civilian protection procedures.” Even so, it also said:

…as civilian casualties from aerial operations reached record high levels in 2017, UNAMA once again recommends that both the Afghan Air Force and international military forces review targeting criteria and pre-engagement precautionary measures, including considering the high likelihood of civilian presence in populated areas and starting from a position of considering all persons to be civilians unless determined otherwise.  

 

 

 

The role of political parties in Afghanistan’s highly centralised presidential system, with only limited parliamentary checks and balances, is an important yardstick by which to measure how the country has fared in its attempts to democratise in the post-Taleban era. This new AAN thematic report, in cooperation with the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), looks at the complex issue of political party development over the period of 2001 to 2016, following up on a first paper published in 2006 and the parties’ impact on the nominally democratic system. AAN co-director Thomas Ruttig, who has been researching Afghan political party history for over 35 years, concludes that the parties have remained peripheral to the political system and that this is one key reason why the system is not progressing toward a more democratic political practice. In this introductory dispatch, which also serves as a short overview over developments not covered in the paper, he adds that this has not changed in the run-up to the upcoming parliamentary elections where parties, once again, will not play a major role.

The paper draws on and provides an update of the author’s 2006 paper on the same subject, published by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS). It is based on research conducted during extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2016. It draws on a large number of interviews with political party leaders, activists and analysts, the many Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) publications on the Afghan political party scene since 2009 and other available literature. (You can find the list of AAN publications as an annex to the paper and as a separate dossier, here: add link).

The years since 2001 constitute the longest period in Afghanistan’s history during which political parties have been able to operate openly. For the first time parties are fully legal. Despite many shortcomings, they have become a reality within the polity of present-day Afghanistan. In reference to the democratic periods of 1947-52 and 1963-73, the post-2001 periofd could be dubbed Afghanistan’s “third democratic period.” But much of the democratic potential, particularly embodied in the political parties as a reflection of the country’s political diversity, has remained unused or even blocked. This is another similarity with both the 1947-52 and 1963-73 periods.

Notably, the three ideologically different historical political currents (Islamists, leftists and ethno-nationalists) have proven relatively stable since 2006, although to differing degrees. This cannot be said (yet) for the two new currents, the new democratic parties that openly emerged immediately after 2001 and the neo-Islamist groups that later became more prominent – and not for most existing political parties. The void in the centre of the political spectrum – ie the lack of a moderate, pro-government or pro-reform party – remains glaringly unoccupied.

A high degree of fragmentation and a personality-oriented character complicates the landscape for Afghanistan’s political parties.

Afghanistan’s laws regarding political parties and their participation in elections are highly ambivalent. As a result, while Afghanistan’s political parties are a political and legal reality today (as well as historically, with the first parties having emerged in the late 1940s) and while this system is constitutionally designed as a multi-party democracy, the parties cannot openly compete for power.

This is particularly the case in the parliamentary elections, where candidates are free to identify themselves as members of a certain party (although many do not), parties as such are unable to play an official role. Most significantly, in the current electoral system, which is individual-based, parties cannot field lists of their candidates, there are no parliamentary seats reserved for political parties, as in other countries, and parties are not allowed to establish factions in parliament. The latter provisions, even more paradoxically, have never been laid down in any legislation, yet they are still adhered to.

This situation also limits the necessity for inter-party competition and for the individual parties to tie members, sympathisers and potential voters closer to them. The level of political maturity, organisational stability and the internal democratic nature of Afghanistan’s political parties, remains low.

Legally, the parties are inherent to the political system, but in practice they remain outside it, or at least relegated to the sidelines. Their strength has never been measured by full and unhindered participation in elections. This has prevented any ‘natural selection’ based on voter mobilisation or the number of votes received, that usually curbs the number of political parties – which is seen as excessive by many in Afghanistan. This is what the author calls a “paradoxical system.”

More paradoxically, while parties as such have no place in the system as a result of an election, some of their leaders hold a very prominent place, as individuals, in the parallel political system built during the Karzai years. (This might by less so the case under the current government.) This has relegated the parties – ie their members and sympathisers – to a position where they mainly serve as voter mobilisation machines during times of election, while, in between elections, they drift back into insignificance and hold no influence on their leaders’ politics. Additionally, this has led to the emergence of a two-class party system, with some parties (or rather their leaders) within this parallel system and all other parties outside of it.

Optimistically put, Afghanistan’s political party system is still a system in the making.

Thomas Ruttig, AAN co-director and senior analyst, at KAS Kabul on 6 May 2018, presenting his new AAN paper about political parties development in Afghanistan (2001-16). Photo: AAN

Some post-2016 developments

The upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled now for 20 October 2018 (AAN analysis here), are already casting a shadow. Political parties’ positioning, alliance building and re-aligning has already started (see for example AAN’s analysis here, here and here).

Electoral reform, however, including the envisioned strengthening of the role of political parties, has not happened (AAN analysis here). A last ditch effort by a broad coalition of parties, including some usually close to President Ashraf Ghani (see AAN’s analysis here) has apparently been warded off. This was not too difficult, as the proposal came late and was contradictory, as it would have required a lengthy legislative procedure which, in turn, would have jeopardised the 20 October election date – that parties simultaneously insisted must be respected at all costs.

After the 2016 peace deal with the government, Hezb-e Islami and its leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to the country. Various wings and factions reunited, although one of them – that of former minister Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal – challenged that Hekmatyar could claim the party’s official registration (AAN analysis here) that was done under his name, leading to Arghandiwal’s expulsion by Hekmatyar (media reporting here).

After internal power struggles in the government, Jamiat-e Islami and Jombesh-e Melli Islami set up an opposition coalition, dubbed the ‘Ankara coalition’ by the public – while many of their leading figures still occupied government positions (AAN analysis here). Jombesh itself has been challenged by the launch of a New Jombesh (AAN analysis here). In Jamiat, a struggle is underway about who should be the permanent replacement for its assassinated leader Ustad Borhanuddin Rabbani (AAN analysis here).

Supporters of former President Hamed Karzai, who continues to harbour ambitions of a political comeback, formed a new political grouping but then distanced themselves somewhat from him again, following a series of controversial political statements (AAN analysis here). Afghan Mellat, one of the country’s oldest parties, split (media report here). Its long-term leader, former minister Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, joined hands with the former mujahedin party of Harakat-e Enqilab-e Eslami-e Afghanistan (Islamic Revolution Movement of Afghanistan) (AAN analysis here), in a New National Front (media report here). This alliance has come out as the most vocal group demanding an end to the NUG and a political system re-launch by a Loya Jirga.

On the left side of the spectrum, some politicians re-launched the Hezb-e Watan (Fatherland Party) (AAN analysis here). A party under the same name wasthe successorof the Soviet-backed Hezb-e Dimukratik-e Khalq-e Afghanistan (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, PDPA), which ruled the country following a coup in 1978 and during the Soviet occupation (1979-89) and was revamped by President Najibullah in 1990 when he tried to shed its communist past (an AAN dossier here).

The on-going rift within the National Unity Government, embodied by the opposing positions of the president and Chief Executive Abdullah, over the implementation of the roll-out of an electronic ID card (AAN analysis here) that would double as a voter card has pushed Abdullah’s party, Jamiat, deeper into opposition.

Finally, President Ghani offered the Taleban a chance to participate in the upcoming elections as a political party (AAN analysis here) – which was promptly declined by the insurgents.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), unlike in 2009 and 2013/14, has refrained from unleashing another ‘re-registration’ exercise again, although there were hints it might do so in 2015 (media report here). But pressure on the parties has been kept up, particularly on the political party law’s stipulation that each party must have a clearly visible, separate office in at least 24 provinces (and not only a rented backroom). This keeps a Sword of Damocles hanging over them, as almost none of them – not even the more affluent ones – has the financial or organisational capacity to adhere to this stipulation.

Afghanistan’s political parties will once again remain peripheral to the upcoming parliamentary elections. Although their number, ie those registered with the MoJ, has risen again to 74 (from 57 in mid-2016), there will be no seats reserved for parties in the lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, no political party lists of candidates and no party-based parliamentary groups or factions.

 

Publication date: 06 May 2018

The full report can be downloaded here.

This report is simultaneously published in German at the KAS’s Kabul office website, here.

There also will be an AAN dossier on Afghanistan’s political parties up here soon.

 

Opening of the presentation by Matthias Riesenhuber, head of the KAS country office in Kabul, and project manager Khalid Gharanai. Photo: KAS Kabul.

 

 

After the leftists of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in the Saur Revolution of April 1978, the Soviet Union became Kabul’s key backer, to the extent of invading the country in 1979 to prevent local insurgencies and military rebellions toppling its new ally. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig here explores the relationship between the Soviet Union and the successive PDPA governments and armed forces that it backed, in an attempt to clarify how the chain of command worked. This is important because a person in authority who orders a war crime or fails to stop it being committed is considered guilty of that crime. The issue here is: who was actually in command in the PDPA governments and armed forces.

This is the fourth part of a mini-series looking at the Saur Revolution and its consequences. Part 1 looked at what happened and why there was a coup. In Part 2, we presented the stories of eight Afghans who were alive at the time, their memories of the day itself and the impact the coup had on their lives. Part 3 looked at the war crimes of the pre-Soviet invasion PDPA regimes.

The paper published below was originally commissioned by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission’s (AIHRC) for its ‘conflict mapping report’. The AIHRC report detailed the war crimes during all the various phases of the Afghan war from the Saur Revolution to the fall of the Taleban. It brought together both published sources and fresh investigations into the war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in each of Afghanistan’s provinces. Thomas Ruttig’s analysis of the PDPA and Soviet relationship was part of a chapter which detailed the command structures of the various parties to the conflict between 1978 and 2001. Who gives the orders and who actually has the authority to ensure they are implemented are critical issues when trying to determine responsibility for war crimes – hence the Commission’s interest in mapping this out.

Unfortunately, his chapter like the rest of the AIHRC conflict mapping report has never been published. An earlier ‘mapping report’ by the United Nations, which was published briefly in 2004 and then taken down from the UN website (it was cached, however, and can be read here). The report took more than six years to research and write, starting from 2005.

However, the Commission leadership felt that, in the absence of support from then President Hamed Karzai, in the last years of its presidency, the threats its staff faced from politicians who assumed they appeared in the report were too great. They also felt that for such a report to be beneficial, it should not just be dumped on the internet, but be part of a process of national reconciliation and truth-telling where Afghans could find out about what happened in parts of the county and eras they had no personal experience of. Commission staff, an internal survey found, were predominantly in favour of publishing, partly because they felt a duty to the witnesses and survivors they had interviewed. Then, in December 2011, Karzai dismissed two key members of the commission and left the body in limbo, appointing new members only 19 months later. The report was quietly put aside.

President Ashraf Ghani, speaking ahead of the 2014 election, told AAN he would publish the report if elected, “I don’t have any problem with publishing. What I want is a genuine Afghan reconciliation process. We’re tired of blood. We need to reach closure.”Chief Executive Abdullah was more hesitant; he did not know about the report, but when told about it was worried that it might refresh the “wounds of the past,” rather than curing them.(1) The National Unity Government has not published it.

Who gave the orders during the PDPA era, as during all the other phases of the conflict, is significant. All the PDPA administrations committed major war crimes. The first two governments under Presidents Nur Muhammad Tarakay and Hafizullah Amin (1978-1979) disappeared tens of thousands of citizens, carried out torture and massacres of civilians (read more about them in the third part of AAN’s series on the Saur revolution, by AAN guest author, Patricia Gossman). Under the presidencies of Babrak Karmal (1979 to 1986) and Najibullah (1986 to 1992), after the Soviet invasion, torture became more systemic under the newly created KhAD intelligence service, modeled on the KGB, and sham trials with many executions. Both Soviet and Afghan government forces carried out indiscriminate bombing of the countryside which resulted in mass casualties and the forced displacement of five million Afghans to Iran and Pakistan. (For more detail, read the report “Casting Shadows” by the Afghanistan Justice Project here.)

Here we publish Thomas Ruttig’s chapter on command and control in the PDPA administrations, as it was prepared ready for the AIHRC mapping report.

 

The Evolution of the PDPA and its Relations with the Soviet Union

The beginnings: In the underground

The Hezb-e Demokratik-e Khalq-e Afghanistan, or the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was founded on 1 January 1965 in Kabul. Most of its 27 founding members belonged to Marxist study circles that had sprung up in the early 1960s, some with a more social democratic outlook. The earliest one reportedly goes back to 1956 even.[1]

A number of these circles “avowed themselves to Marxism-Leninism and referred to themselves as communists”; some had military officers amongst its members.[2] The participants of the PDPA founding congress elected Nur Muhammad Tarakay[3], a teacher, and Babrak Karmal, a former students’ leader, as head of its Central Committee and his deputy. Both became heads of state later under the Soviet-backed regime.

The PDPA was one of the political groups that took advantage of the political opening that followed the adoption of the 1964 constitution. The new constitution had turned Afghanistan from an absolute into a constitutional monarchy that included elements of parliamentarianism. It allowed the formation of political parties for the first time in Afghanistan’s history. The envisaged law on political parties that was passed by the parliament, however, was never signed by King Muhammad Zaher Shah. Subsequently, the emerging parties remained in a legal limbo. The PDPA, officially respecting the legal situation, continued to work but did not call itself a “party” publicly, but Jerian-e Demokratik-e Khalq, “People’s Democratic current”, instead. While the moderate groups discontinued their activities, the more radical groups on the left (the two main Marxists currents) and the right (different Islamist groups) went underground and started to infiltrate the armed forces. The blockade of emerging party pluralism led the way to use of violent means to obtain political power.

In 1973, military officers linked to the Parcham faction supported the coup d’état of Sardar (Prince) Muhammad Daud. A number of Parcham members joined the government as ministers but the group was sidelined by Daud from 1975 onwards, under the influence of his beginning tilt towards the Shah’s Iran. Afghan history started repeating itself when military officers close to Khalq and Parcham – urged by Moscow and the Communist Party of India, both factions had re-united in 1977 – toppled Daud and killed him as well as most members of his family on 27 April 1978. This event, technically a military putsch, was labeled the ‘Saur revolution’ by the party.

From its beginnings, the PDPA faced internal factionalism. The party already split in 1967 into Khalq and Parcham, both named after the party’s early periodicals. While Khalq members mainly were Pashtuns, Parcham was predominantly considered to be non-Pashtun although its most prominent leaders – Khaibar, Karmal and late president Dr. Najibullah – actually also were Pashtuns (Karmal a detribalized one, he mainly spoke Dari.) In August 1968, North-based Settam-e Melli, or ‘[Against] National Oppression’, led by Central Committee member Taher Badakhshi, broke away because, in contrast to the two main factions, it considered the ‘national question’ more important than the ‘class question’.

While the PDPA, between its establishment and April 1978, was one amongst various political groups in Afghanistan, it turned into the ruling party when two days after the 27 April coup Tarakay took over as head of a mainly civilian Revolutionary Council from the initial Revolutionary Military Council. This signified the political takeover of the party from the military.

Despite its rhetorical commitment to a ‘broad front of all progressive forces’, the PDPA immediately established a one-party system in Afghanistan, imitating the countries of the Soviet bloc. The Khalq-Parcham split re-emerged and the ruling Khalqis officially declared five groups their enemies: Parchami, the Islamists, the Maoists, the Settamis and the Pashtun nationalist of Afghan Mellat, along with independent intellectuals. Many people that belonged to those categories – or were perceived to do so – were arrested, killed or ‘disappeared’, sometimes with their whole families. The Khalqis’ internal purges of the party were reciprocated by the Parchamisafter they came to power in the wake of the Soviet invasion over Christmas 1979. That perpetuated the split between the two factions, actually up to today.

How ‘communist’ was the PDPA?

In his inaugural speech [at the PDPA founding congress] in 1965, Tarakay used terminology like ‘class struggle’, eulogised the Russian October Revolution of 1917 and called the PDPA “the party of workers and peasants”. He said that “it is obvious to you all that our party is the party of the working class” and that it “struggles in conformance with the epoch-making ideology of the workers.”[4] The initial party program of 1966, however, avoided openly characterising the party as a ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’. As its aim, it defined the “establishment of a national democratic government” composed “from the national progressive democratic and patriotic forces, ie the working class, the peasants and the national bourgeoisie.”[5] This terminology conformed with the ‘stage theory’ of revolutionary change that was a central part of Marxism-Leninism, the ideological basis of the Soviet-led communist bloc. The PDPA wanted to qualify as one of those ‘brotherly parties’. This terminology was maintained in the unity document of 1977 when Khalq and Parcham merged again.

Encouraged by it successful and initially not strongly opposed takeover in 1978, the party began to use Marxist terminology more openly. At Kabul International Airport, a signboard greeted visitors with the slogan “Welcome in the country of the second model revolution” (after the Lenin’s October Revolution in Russia), proclaiming the PDPA regime nothing less than the model for revolutionary change in the Third World. Later in the same year, Hafizullah Amin stated that the aim of his party was to “establish a society free of exploitation”[6], ie socialism/communism. In a bold step, the party changed the traditional national flag to its own red one. Still, terms like ‘Marxism’, ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ were not used to publicly describe the party and its program.

This was done by Parcham in the wake of the Soviet military intervention, although it is usually considered more moderate than Khalq. In 1985, in a speech on the occasion of the PDPA’s 20th anniversary, Karmal went as far as calling the PDPA “the new typus party[7] of the proletariat and all working people of the country” the aim of which was to build “the Afghan society on the basis of socialism.”[8] This was an attempt to put the PDPA on par with the ruling parties of the USSR and its closest allies.

The state-party relationship: ‘Sovietisation’?

Contemporary Western authors broadly agree that the USSR – after its military invasion in late 1979 – intended to ‘sovietise’ the Afghan regime and incorporate it into its system. According to Hammond, ‘sovietisation’ consisted of two main elements: (1) the fact that Soviet advisors run many government offices (this included the military and security apparatus] and took the important decisions; (2) government, the party, mass organisations, the educational system and the economy were “all remodeled to imitate the Soviet pattern.”[9] Arnold even saw that “by the close of 1979, the PDPA no longer ruled Afghanistan; the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] did.”[10] Indeed, the Soviet party leadership had established a powerful Afghan task force on the level of its Polit Bureau in October 1979. The number of military and civilian advisors increased drastically. After the invasion, “almost all affairs (…) were handled by {KGB chief] V.A. Kryuchkov’s men, and by him personally.”[11]

Virtual Soviet control and ‘sovietisation’ might be two different things. Bodansky sees a shifting Soviet perception of the PDPA regime early on: Soon after the invasion it realised “that the country was not a ‘socially developed’ state ripe for Socialism”, after it had initially accepted Afghanistan as a ‘socialist’ state in the making when the Saur revolution occurred. In contrast, Dorronsoro says that Soviet attempt to turn Afghanistan into another “Central Asian Republic” lasted till 1986, when “the failure of their project drove them to prepare the ground for withdrawal and to push for the ‘policy of national reconciliation’.”[12]

Initially, the Soviets had assumed that their intervention would be short-termed. In the country, the Soviet leadership soon found out that the Afghan government was already in crisis and saw itself forced to concentrate on stabilising it. This included the dispatch of massive numbers of advisors on all levels and in all spheres, in the party and its ‘mass organisations’ [ie youth, women’s organisations and trade unions], the government and the armed forces, from the national level at least to the provinces.[13]

While the USSR already had advisors and some military personnel in the country under Daud, this further increased after the Saur revolution to between 3000 and 4000 civilian advisors in late autumn 1979. This number more than doubled after the military invasion, “easily surpassing total PDPA membership.”[14] The largest group worked in the party structures; 80 advisors and 50 translators in the PDPA Central Committee alone and 50 in the PDPA youth organisation in 1983.[15] In 1987, there were 9000 advisors in the civilian bureaucracy. A CPSU Polit Bureau meeting designed “several points on which the Afghan leadership could be allowed to make its own decisions (…). PDPA documents were freely changed by Soviet advisors before being circulated, (…) foreign policy statements were written by them.” Amongst advisors, “KBG personnel were dominant.”[16] According to Michail Vorontsov, the last pre-withdrawal Soviet ambassador to Kabul (in the rank of a Deputy Foreign Minister), “we were always doing things for them our way, expecting them just to stand by and watch.”

Parallels were drawn to the successful integration of the Russian areas in Central Asia into the Soviet Union that had been equally backward in their social and infrastructural development in the 1920s as Afghanistan was then. Witnessing the shortcomings of the Afghan regime to safeguard its power, it substituted local decision-making perceived as ineffective by taking it over – a Soviet form of mission creep.

Constant references to Lenin’s writings in which he had warned against spreading communism in Afghanistan in official Soviet and other Eastern bloc media, however, bear witness to the fact that the USSR did not believe in Afghanistan’s development towards socialism anymore. As a former UN envoy for Afghanistan confirms, “Moscow made its first serious attempt to find a way out of the Afghan quagmire during the fifteen-month tenure of Yuri Andropov, from November 1982 until his death in February 1984.”[17] Restructuring all Afghan institutions according to the Soviet model was the only way the Soviet advisors knew how to organise a country.[18]

It seems that it was the PDPA, not the Soviets, who tried to copy the Soviet model for Afghanistan. First, it already had structured its internal party set-up according to the Soviet model, with a Central Committee (CC) as its leadership, before the takeover of 1978. Nevertheless, PDPA representatives were never invited to gatherings of the CPSU-led communist world movement before 1978. Soon after, facing growing resistance throughout the country, it had become clear to the PDPA leaders by then that its survival was dependent on Soviet support and even a Soviet military presence. The request to send Soviet troops had already been issued under Tarakay and Amin.

So, they went along with more ‘sovietisation’. In the party, now a Polit Bureau, a CC Secretariat, a countrywide structure with party organisations at the province, district and village level, in enterprises and in the armed forces were established. From 1978 onwards, “all party and governmental matters were carried out by the [PDPA] Polit Bureau.”[19] The cabinet became a Council of Ministers and the Revolutionary Council was subordinated to the PDPA, with the party’s chairman automatically its head. This was “the leading role of the party’ over the state and the whole society, another key element of Marxist-Leninist doctrine, codified in the “Basic Principles of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan,” the provisional constitution that was in force from April 1980 until the adoption of the constitution of Najibullah’s ‘reformed’ Republic of Afghanistan in 1987. Its article 4 stipulated that the PDPA “will be the leading and mobilizing force of the society and the state,” ie the party dominated the state and not vice versa.

The party and the armed forces

Facing increasing resistance by the mujahedin, the PDPA from the beginning attempted to strengthen its political control over and coordination of the armed forces. In June 1979, the PDPA sent 1500 political instructors into the armed forces. Party decisions on a better organization of conscription (1982) and on the ‘patriotic education of the youth’ – to mobilise recruits – were taken. 86 per cent of all army units had a party organisation and the Social Science Institute had begun training cadres for army. In 1985, it appointed a special Central Committee secretary for this task.[20] An East German source assessed, however, that the “ideologisation” of the Afghan armed forces still was a “major task“ at this time.

The officer corps still lacked discipline and was influenced by ‘tribal’ conflicts.[21]

By December 1979, 30 per cent of all PDPA members served in the armed forces. In 1983, 19,320 of the army personnel (including the border troops) were PDPA members or candidates – roughly 40 per cent of the really existing personnel. On the other hand, 60 per cent or more of all PDPA members served in the army. But the party lost experienced cadres both due to internal purges, defections and in the fight against the mujahedin. “Young and inexperienced officers“ took their place and the party’s influence decreased.[22]

Particular attention was given to the intelligence service. The old one, the notorious, 7000-strong KAM with its Khalqi dominance, was completely abolished after Amin was toppled and the Soviet KGB assisted in building up the Parcham-dominated KhAD from 1980 onwards. Its personnel rose from 5,100 (1980) to 90,000 (1990), the budget increasing 300fold. 75 per cent of regional police commanders and 85 per cent of the political officers in the police still were Khalqi.[23]

When the Soviets stepped in, a ‘Soviet’ framework already existed and they were almost forced to follow its logic. Cordovez and Harrison describe KGB chief Kryuchkov’s 1978 Kabul mission when he found that key decisions about government structures were already taken by Tarakay and Amin.[24] They also could not get out of the self-set ideological trap that Afghanistan’s revolution – as the ones in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and elsewhere – must be protected because the ever-growing ‘expansion of the socialist world system’ was ‘irreversible’. Everything else would be a loss of prestige a super power could not accept.

Kalinovsky even argues that calling this process a ‘sovietisation’ goes too far and that Soviet advisors tried to caution the Afghan party leaders in their revolutionary enthusiasm. He argues that this Soviet exercise in nation-building “had little to do with the desire to spread communism [but r]ather (…) were motivated by a desire to stop the deteriorating situation” in Afghanistan and prevent it from turning towards the US. It was “composed of ‘off the shelf’ components, not a master plan […], founded on [Soviet/Marxist] ideas but improvised in practice.”[25]

Conclusion

In summary, the PDPA can be described as a wannabe communist party that from its establishment – not very openly, but clearly enough – declared its ambition to be part of the Soviet-led ‘socialist world system’. Before 1978, however, it was ideologically kept at arm’s length by the USSR and its allies. When it became a ruling party in that year, it followed an ‘embracing strategy’ that forced the USSR, bound to its ‘Breshnev doctrine’ that revolutionary change must be ‘irreversible’, to support its regime. First request to send Soviet troops to Afghanistan were already issues by Tarakay and Amin.

The 1979 intervention had two contrary effects on the relationship between the PDPA and the CPSU: The PDPA followed a strategy of further expanding its copycat Soviet model to present itself as an indispensable ally while the Soviets, realising that the social and political situation in Afghanistan was not ripe for a socialist development, cautioned the PDPA in its ‘revolutionary’ development and, under Gorbachov, concentrated on withdrawal, ready to sacrifice its erstwhile ally. But the fate of both was already inseparably linked to each other.

In reality and despite its rhetoric, the PDPA was far from being a wholesale ‘communist’ party. Many PDPA members were primarily driven by progressive ideas of a secular, anti-Islamist and not necessarily Marxist colour. In the framework of the East-West polarisation, the party could either link up with Washington or Moscow. How thin the communist furnish of the PDPA was, became apparent after the Soviet military occupation. It considerably raised anti-Soviet feelings that had not existed amongst most Afghans before 1978, due to rather successful Soviet economic assistance. Now, many in the ranks of the party and in particular most members of the Khalq faction that had been toppled developed anti-Soviet feelings. The same happened with the pro-Babrak Karmal sub-faction of Parcham after he was replaced by Najibullah and even stronger after the Soviet Union had made public its withdrawal decision. Then, the Karmalists accused the USSR of ‘selling out the Afghan revolution’.

The 1978-89 period is described as one of “constant disputes between Soviet and Afghan officials,” and of persistent obstruction, overt and covert, by the latter of the policies that Moscow was advocating. The story of Afghan-Soviet relations throughout this period is therefore one of the “inability of the Soviet leadership, despite Kabul’s reliance on its economic and military support, successfully to impress its policies on the PDPA leadership.”[26] In general, there was a deep gap between official proclamations and what even party leaders and members really thought and did. Many party and military cadres secretly supported the mujahedin.

In the result, although party and governmental institutions were shaped according to the Soviet model during most of the 1980s, ‘sovietisation’ had remained superficial. Most of what achieved here was rolled back after President Najibullah, from its official announcement in January 1987, had started his siasat-e ashti-ye melli, or national reconciliation policy. Its aim was to stabilise the regime by de-ideologicising it and broadening its base. This new course was encouraged, if not designed by the new Soviet leadership under Michail Gorbachov who had decided to end the occupation and strengthen Najibullah’s regime so that it could stand on its own feet both militarily and economically. This process culminated in July 1990 when, at its first – and last – congress since 1965, the PDPA was renamed Hezb-e Watan, Fatherland Party. Najibullah stated that it had been “a historic mistake” to have come under “a specific ideology.” In its new program, Hezb-e Watan committed itself to a “democracy based on a multi-party system.” The party – at least nominally – gave up its monopoly over state power and allowed other political parties to organise, offering that opportunity also to the mujahedin. However, almost the complete PDPA leadership was transferred to the new party and it tried to get away with a ‘leading role’ in disguise. For example, during the 1988 parliamentary elections it secured the majority of seats through a rather thinly camouflaged system of allocating seats to its mass organisations and allied leftist parties.

Despite the ideological disarmament, the institutions and the internal chain of control-and-command remained comparatively strong and centralised. Reporting was systematic and leadership centralised in the person of Dr Najibullah as chief of the state and the party. What was reported, however, often had not much to do with reality. There were large gaps in the system and factionalism that was never overcome undermined effective control.

Despite the omnipresence of Soviet advisors – many of them badly prepared to work in Afghanistan and to understand Afghans[27] –, Afghan leaders were able to maintain space for independent manoeuvering and decision-making. The room for this was provided by the notoriously segmented Afghan structures, factionalism and political power games as well as the institutional and personal rivalries amongst the different groups of Soviet advisor. In effect, the decision-making on the ground and subsequently the political responsibility was shared between Afghans and Soviets. There was no almighty Soviet domination.

 

[1] For more details on the PDPA’s early years and political parties in Afghanistan in general see: Thomas Ruttig, Islamists, Leftists – and a Void in the Center. Afghanistan’s Political Parties and where they come from (1902-2006), Kabul : Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 2006.

[2] There were at least two left-wing underground officer groups that prepared for a coup d’etat: the Revolutionary Army Organisation headed by A.S. Angar and ideologically led by Parcham’s chief ideologue Mir Akbar Khaibar, who untiringly tried to unite the party’s main factions until his killing in 1978. This group was founded in 1964, had 60 officers as members and later joined Parcham. The second group was the United Front of Afghanistan’s Communists headed by later Minister of Defense Abdul Qader. It was founded in 1974, had 600 members and 2000 sympathisers. Joachim Ludwig, Einige Probleme der Strategie und Politik der Demokratischen Volkspartei Afghanistans (DVPA) in der nationaldemokratischen Revolution in Afghanistan (1978 bis 1985), Dissertation, Berlin: Akademie für Gesellschaftwissenschaften beim ZK der SED, 1986, p. 32, 43, using ‘internal information from the PDPA‘.

[3] Usually, his name is written as ‘Taraki’, but Tarakay is the original Pashto form.

[4] Quoted from a German translation in: Wolfram Brönner, Afghanistan: Revolution und Konterrevolution, Frankfurt 1980, pp. 165-172.

[5] Khalq’s party program of 1966, German translation in: Karl-Heinrich Rudersdorf, Afghanistan – eine Sowjetrepublik?, Reinbek 1980, pp. 142-149.

[6] Quoted in: Neues Deutschland, Berlin (East), 6 Nov. 1978, p. 6.

[7] This term coined by Lenin was reserved by the ruling parties of the eastern bloc for themselves.

[8] See: Die DVPA – Triebkraft und Organisator des Kampfes des afghanischen Volkes für nationalen und sozialen Fortschritt, speech by Babrak Karmal, unofficial translation, GDR Embassy, Kabul, p. 1.

[9] Thomas T. Hammond, Red Flag over Afghanistan, Boulder 1984, pp. 151-152

[10] Anthony Arnold, Afghanistan’s Two-Party Communism: Parcham and Khalq, Stanford 1983, p. 99.

[11] Henry S. Bradsher, Afghan Communism and Soviet Intervention, Oxford 1999, p. 123.

[12] Yossef Bodansky, ‘Soviet Military Operations in Afghanistan’, in: Rosanne Klass (ed.), Afghanistan – The Great Game Revisited, New York 1987 (pp. 229-286), p. 237-238; Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending, London 2005, p. 173.

[13] See: Artemy Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind: Soviet Advisors, Counter-Insurgency and Nation-Building in Afghanistan, Cold War International History Project, Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Working Paper No. 60, January 2010.

[14] Arnold, Afghanistan’s Two-Party Communism…[see footnote 10], p. 99.

[15] Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind… [see footnote 13], p. 7.

[16] Bradsher, Afghan Communism… [see footnote 11], pp. 122-123.

[17] Cordovez/Harrison, Out of Afghanistan, New York and Oxford 1995, p. 91.

[18] See also: Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind… [see footnote 13], p. 3.

[19] Ludwig, Einige Probleme… [see footnote 2], p. 88

[20] Ludwig, Einige Probleme… [see footnote 2], pp. 87-88; Babrak Karmal, ‘Support of all people should be attracted’, Kabul New Times, 25-26.11. 1985.

[21] Prof. Dr. H[ans] Pogodda, Die Bedingungen und Voraussetzungen zur Verwirklichung der Novemberthesen des Revolutionsrates der DR Afghanistan, paper of the GDR group of higher education experts at Kabul University, Kabul 1986, pp. 83-84.

[22] Ludwig, Einige Probleme… [see footnote 2], p.74, 110; Antonio Giustozzi, War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992, London 2000, p.251. The theoretical strength of the army and the border troops was 115,000 men.

[23] Giustozzi, War, Politics and Society… [see footnote 22], pp. 98, 266; Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind… [see footnote 13], p. 14.

[24] Cordovez/Harrison, Out of Afghanistan [see footnote 17], p. 28.

[25] Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind… [see footnote 13], p. 29.

[26] Fred Halliday and Zahir Tanin, ‘The Communist Regime in Afghanistan 1978-1992: Institutions and Conflicts’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 50, No. 8 (Dec 1998), p. 5.

[27] Kalinovsky, The Blind Leading the Blind… [see footnote 13], pp. 4-9.

 

(1) In 2014, AAN asked both of the runner off candidates whether they would publish the AIHRC’s Conflict Mapping Report.

This is what Ghani said (here the full interview):

 

I don’t have any problem with publishing. What I want is a genuine Afghan reconciliation process. We’re tired of blood. We need to reach closure.

Q: And you mean reconciliation both for pre-2001 and after?

Yes. The social fabric needs nurturing. It’s not going to be done with cheap slogans. I reached out to General Dostum and he to me, as a sign that we want genuine reconciliation. That we accept each other. The politics of exclusion has not worked. We have tried this and it failed. 1978 [the year of the Saur Revolution], there were not more than a 1000 leftists in this country. Within three months, there was not a male member of my family who was not in prison. Then 1992 [when Kabul fell to the mujahedin], what hopes did we not have? And within weeks, people were resorting to tanks and guns. It was as though children had suddenly acquired toys…

We are wounded… We need to weave back this body politic, to make it whole. Everyone understands that we are necessary for each other and that is what is going to bring genuine peace. If you exclude everybody who’s been in conflict, who remains? The next generation will move on. But political power is in the hands of people who have engaged in conflict and war. I will play the role of critical mediator whose hands are free of both blood and corruption.

 

Abdullah did not know about the report and was much more hesitant about publishing it (here his full interview):

One has to see it. The important thing about human rights issues is, if it’s from one angle and politically oriented against one or two groups, that will add to the problems rather than addressing them. But as long as it addresses the problem and helps the foundation for the future. [This would be the] principle [for deciding], but I haven’t seen it.

Q You won’t have seen it… but it’s a massive piece of research…

The research might be important. At the same time, the AIHRC has a lot of duties to carry out and so has our justice system to deal with the atrocities being carried out today… So I think this is the priority for the people of Afghanistan, I have no doubt in my mind.

Q Do you think it’s dangerous to start talking about the past. General Dostum did raise it in this election – he apologised for the suffering in the war.

If that was all that needed was to call a few people and say, apologise, apologise, apologise and then carry on with this mess today, I don’t think that serves the purpose. Issues of human rights and women’s rights are serious issues in this country. It has to take us forward, move us forward, rather than dig us further in the past. That is something of a principle to be used.

Q: South Africa, Northern Ireland, Argentina, they’ve all recognised that, in order to go forward, you have to at least look at what’s happened.

I agree, but at the same time, it has to help cure those wounds of the past, rather than freshening them. That is something one has to balance it against.

 

 

The coup d’etat that brought the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was a watershed for Afghanistan, driving it into a conflict from which it has yet to recover and ushering in a whole new level of violence by the state against its citizens. Forced disappearances, the routine use of torture for punishment as well as to gain confessions, and massacres of civilians all marked the bloody period from 27 April 1978 until 24 December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded. The veteran Human Rights Watch Afghanistan expert, Patricia Gossman*, here looks at those crimes and their legacy.

This is the third part of a mini-series looking at the Saur Revolution and its consequences. Part 1 looked at what happened and why there was a coup. In Part 2, we presented the stories of eight Afghans who were alive at the time, their memories of the day itself and the impact the coup had on their lives. Part 4 will examine the relationship between the PDPA and the Soviets after the Soviet invasion of December 1979.

In 1978, there was no Twitter or Facebook to spread the news. Reporting from India a day after the events, the New York Times described the coup as “bloody and violent”, but information on the atrocities that unfolded over subsequent months trickled out very slowly. There were few journalists and no human rights groups on the ground to document what happened. This may be one reason why, even today, it comes as a surprise to many people to discover that serious war crimes in Afghanistan did not begin with the Soviet invasion of December 1979, but 20 months earlier.

While neither the Daud regime, nor the government under Zaher Shah were noteworthy for respecting human rights, growing demands for greater political openness had produced a number of reforms. They were limited and often short-lived, but there was some measure of free speech and freedom of assembly. In April 1978, the PDPA party leadership under Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin killed President Daud Khan and most of his family and then embarked on an ambitious, but ill-planned effort to transform Afghanistan virtually overnight into a modern socialist state. The violence perpetrated by the state was extreme, indiscriminate and widespread

(For a detailed account of the political dynamics in the years leading up to the coup, see AAN’s earlier dispatch.)

Unprecedented Violence: Secret Executions and Forced Disappearances

Taraki launched the coup as what he called a short cut to “the destiny of the people of Afghanistan.” (1) The fact that the Khalqis had virtually no support base outside their immediate membership partially explains the extreme violence of the months following the coup. Amin (who had studied at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University in the 1960s where he was exposed to leftist student politics) was the driving force of the campaign. Taraki, his mentor, called the Khalqis “the children of history,” which according to scholar, Anthony Hyman, illustrated “the almost messianic faith shared by many Khalqis that they had a special role to play as agents of modernisation in Afghanistan.” (2) It was clear that Amin saw himself in that role.

To carry out this sweeping transformation, the Khalq leaders set about eliminating all political rivals and those they considered to be obstacles to their efforts to transform the Afghan state, including anyone who had served in the governments of Zaher Shah and Daud, mullahs, pirs and other religious elites, tribal leaders, Maoists and other leftists outside the PDPA, professionals of every kind and other members of the educated class other than those who had joined the Khalq party and the leaders of various ethnic communities. Abandoning the brief rapprochement with Parcham, the other faction of the PDPA, Taraki and Amin purged the party of leading Parcham members, executing at least hundreds, imprisoning others and exiling some as ambassadors abroad.

American scholar Louis Dupree, who was living in Kabul at the time of the 1978 coup, spoke of “thousands” being arrested from all targeted groups in Kabul alone in the months after the coup, (3) the vast majority of whom were secretly killed. In most cases, the families never received the bodies for burial or any official acknowledgement of their deaths. Many were killed inside Pul-e Charkhi prison and buried in mass graves there. General Nabi Azimi, a Parchami who would become deputy defense minister and commander of the Kabul garrison under Najibullah, wrote that the regime “arrested too many ordinary people, clergymen, intellectuals … and put them in Pul-e Charkhi prison or executed them … without trial on dark nights and threw them into holes already prepared.” (4) Amnesty International reported in 1979 that it had “received a substantial number of allegations that political prisoners [were] … subjected to torture. … some prisoners [were] paralyzed and that others died as a result of torture.” (5) The prison was vastly overcrowded with some 12,000 prisoners in 1979. (6) Many died from disease from poor food and sanitation.

In 1986, scholar Olivier Roy suggested that throughout the country in those 20 months, between 50,000 and 100,000 people were forcibly disappeared, saying then that “the story of this wave of repression has yet to be written.” (7) It remains a largely untold story, although the few available accounts give a sense of the scale of killing. Dr Sima Samar, chair of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said of the time: “Any Khalqi could kill anybody.” (8) Some accounts of people whose relatives remain disappeared and mourned to this day can be found in AAN’s oral history of the ‘Saur Revolution’, here.

A UN report mapping the major patterns of human rights violations from the war’s beginning was meant to be published in January 2005, but was deemed too sensitive for official release (see AAN analysis here). It included this description:

[T]he regime … tortured captives not solely as an interrogation tactic, but to humiliate, punish, and annihilate them … The tortures and executions in Pul-i Charkhi prison became part of the legends of this time, which form part of the Afghan national memory.

The new intelligence agency Taraki had created, De Afghanistan Gato Satunki Edara (AGSA) (in Pashto, the Administration for the Protection of the Interests of Afghanistan) was principally responsible for carrying out the arrests and executions. It was headed by Assadullah Sarwary. President Taraki set the tone for its operations, announcing in March 1979, “Those who plot against us in the dark will disappear in the dark.”(9) Sarwary remains the only former PDPA official from this period to ever face trial in Afghanistan. Taken into custody by Shura-ye Nazar forces when they entered Kabul in April 1992, Sarwary was detained in Panjshir until he was brought to Kabul in 2005. In February 2006, he was tried in a rushed proceeding, found guilty of conspiracy against the state and mass killings and sentenced to death. An appeals court reduced the sentence to 20 years. Sarwary was released in January 2017. (See AAN reporting here)

Resistance and Repression in the Provinces

The tactics used by the Taraki-Amin government to crush any opposition sparked resistance throughout the country. The Herat uprising was the largest such challenge to the regime at the time, demonstrating the extent of popular resistance even in the cities. In March 1979, military commanders, including Ismael Khan, mutinied and began providing arms to resistance fighters in Herat city. They held the city for a week before the government, with the support of Soviet bombers, crushed the rebellion, killing possibly several thousand people. According to the Afghanistan Justice Project, the dead were buried in mass graves between Takht Saffar and Bagh-e Millat, an area locals thereafter called the area “the place of obscure martyrs.” (10)

The Khalq government also relied on violence to impose its reform agenda outside the cities. In an incident described in the 2005 Afghanistan Justice Project report, local authorities called the men of a Kandahar village in Dand district to come to the village school, and then asked the assembled villagers to identify the local landlords and any others resisting land reform measures. Those so identified were taken away. One witness described the scene:

Then they asked, “who has said women should wear the chador?” Again, some admitted saying it, and others were accused of doing so by some in the crowd. They were taken away too. Then those who had been accused were put into three big trucks and taken to the governor’s office. The relatives came there searching for their men. In the evening 29 of them were killed. Some were released, and others remained there. My brother was held there, and for a time we could bring him food. When Amin came to power [in September 1979], the prisoners were taken away and we never saw them again. (11)

The regime undertook military operations—which involved mass arrests and summary executions—in areas where resistance was strongest. Kunar was one such area. In early 1979, organized resistance to the PDPA had gained considerable ground throughout the province. By March the mujahedin had captured all the district centres, and were launching sustained attacks on the provincial capital, Assadabad. The besieged provincial personnel requested military assistance from Kabul, which deployed the 444 Commando Force commanded by Sadeq Alamyar. (12) His forces trapped some of the retreating mujahedin within Assadabad’s outskirts, in particular the village of Kerala, and moved in for a clean-up operation that included reprisals against the local population. The troops summoned all the men and older boys to an area of open ground on the river bank, next to the bridge which links Kerala to Assadabad. They then opened fire, and afterwards used a bulldozer to dig a trench to bury the bodies. The main mass grave is still visible in this location. (13)

In October 2015, the Netherlands police arrested Alamyar in Rotterdam, where he had been living since the early 1990s, as a suspect in the mass killing of men and boys in Kerala on 20 April 1979. According to the official statement, Dutch police made the arrest on the basis of a criminal complaint by relatives of those killed. The statement alleged that Alamyar had been head of a commando unit that had “dragged large numbers of men and boys from their homes and … killed them.” (See AAN reporting on the announcement here) The statement included a call for:

[P]ersons who were present in or around Kerala, Dam Kelai or Assadabad on or around 20 April 1979 and who are witnesses of events relating to the investigation to contact the Netherlands National Police. Persons who were present at the time as government troops or government officials may have information that is especially important for the Dutch investigation. These categories of persons are therefore urged to provide such information to the Dutch Police.

Alamyar was released from custody, although the investigation remains open, pending any additional information coming to light.

The Kerala massacre was the largest mass killing of the early years of the war. Indeed, that record would remain until the late 1990s when Jombesh and Hezb-e Wahdat forces in and around Mazar-e Sharif and Dasht-e Laili killed over 3000 Taliban prisoners in May-June 1997 and then, a year later, when the Taleban killed thousands of civilians, mainly Hazaras, after they captured Mazar in August 1998.

The Legacy: Cycles of Violence

After the Soviet invasion in December 1979, the new regime attempted to count the missing, but gave up as the numbers climbed over 25,000. (14) Five years ago, the Dutch government published an official list of 5000 names it had obtained in the course of an investigation into a war crimes suspect—a ‘death list’ of those detained and marked for execution at the time (see AAN reporting here). It was the only official acknowledgement any families ever received, but it represented a small fraction of those who were killed. I recently discussed this period with an Afghan journalist who grew up listening to stories about his grandfather, who was detained and tortured after the coup, and others who were among the disappeared. He lamented how few of his peers in Afghanistan know the history of those early years, though they live with its legacy in a conflict that continues to this day.

The PDPA’s reforms and the brutal way it imposed them launched a resistance movement that included people from a wide spectrum of Afghan society. As widespread repression prompted mutinies in army garrisons across the country, the imminent disintegration of the armed forces ultimately prompted the Soviet Union to invade to prevent the pro-Soviet state from collapsing.

Millions of Afghans were then displaced inside the country and millions more fled to Iran and Pakistan as refugees, a pattern of forced migration echoed many times over the next few decades as war washed over lands, villages and cities. The forced mass migration in the early 1980s fractured social ties which had already been weakened by the PDPA’s killing of many traditional leaders. As armed resistance mounted, authority increasingly belonging to commanders, those who could win the loyalty of armed fighters. Their power and influence has remained to this day: because of war, they emerged as military and political leaders.

In every part of Afghanistan, powerhas changed hands multiple times in the last four decades of war, pitting different alliances of armies and militia forces against each other and leaving Afghanistan open to manipulation from outside as the various forces sought foreign backing. The cycles of violence and retribution triggered by the bloody violence of the Saur revolutionaries, in hindsight, can be seen to have set Afghanistan on a course of seemingly endless war. That conflict has now consumed generations.

 

(1) Edwards, citing Taraki’s statement in the Kabul Times, August 16, 1978.

(2) Anthony Hyman, Afghanistan under Soviet Domination, 1964–91(New York: St. Martin’s   Press), p92.

(3) Louis Dupree, “Red Flag over the Hindu Kush,” American Universities Field Staff Reports (1980).

(4) Nabi Azimi, “Ordu wa Siyasat Dar Seh Daha-ye Akhir-e Afghanistan” (“Army and Politics in the Last Three Decades in Afghanistan”) (Peshawar: Marka-e Nashrati Maiwand, 1998), p167. Cited in Afghanistan Justice Project, Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: 1978-2001, p12.

(5) Amnesty International, Afghanistan: Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, pp15-16.

(6) Amnesty International, p9.

(7) Olivier Roy, Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan (Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp95,

(8) Barnett Rubin interview with Sima Samar, 2004, cited in the UN Mapping Report, p12.

(9) Hyman, p108, citing TheKabul TimesMay 3, 1979. After Amin overthrew and assassinated Taraki in September 1979, he renamed AGSA the Kargari Istikhbarati Muassisaas (KAM), the Workers Intelligence Agency.

(10) Afghanistan Justice Project, p21.

(11) Afghanistan Justice Project, pp17-19.

(12) Afghanistan Justice Project, pp17-19

(13) Afghanistan Justice Project, p19.

(14) UN Mapping Report, p24, citing the UN report on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, E/CN.4/1986/24.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is forty years, today, since the coup d’etat which brought the leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to power. That event has had far-reaching consequences, plunging the country into a conflict from which it has yet to emerge and changing the course of almost every Afghan’s life. AAN has been speaking to a range of people about their memories of that day and how the coup affected them personally. They include students and workers, PDPA cadre and those who went on to become mujahedin or refugees, those who rejoiced at news of the coup and those whose close family members were subsequently disappeared (interviews by the AAN team, compiled by Kate Clark).

This is the second in a special series looking at the Saur Revolution and its consequences. Part 1 describes the events, causes and consequences of the coup – An April Day That Changed Afghanistan: Four decades after the leftist takeover. Part 3 will look at the war crimes of the pre-Soviet invasion PDPA regimes and Part 4 will look at the relationship between the PDPA and the Soviets.

Also today, AAN is publishing its 18th Thematic Dossier “The PDPA and the Soviet Intervention” which brings together our writing on the coup, the Soviet intervention, the war crimes of that era, and the PDPA and its leftist descendants.

AAN team members interviewed eight Afghans, three men and five women, who remember the Saur revolution, asking them the same set of questions. Not all of the interviewees answered every question.

Do you remember the spring of 1978? How old were you and where were you? What were you doing at that time?

1 Schoolboy, Takhar

I was 15 years old and in 11thclass in Rustaq district, Takhar province. My brother (who is now in Canada) and I used to cycle to school every day (a half hour bike ride, saving us a two hour walk).

2 University student, Kabul

I was around 20-21 years old, a student, newly admitted to Kabul university

3 Schoolgirl, Kabul 1

I was 11 years old, in 5thgrade at Malalai School which is opposite the old Ministry of Interior in Kabul.

4 Islamic Activist from Kabul, in Tehran

I was around 20 and in Tehran in Iran. I’d finished school and done the university exam and was waiting to study sociology there, but that never happened. I was also already an activist and associated with an underground Muslim organisation in Kabul.

5 Carpet seller, Kunduz

I had my own business, selling rugs, at that time.

6 Surveyor, Helmand

I was in Gereshk district in Helmand province. I was 23 years old and an employee of a survey group in the Kajaki Dam project.

7 Civil servant and PDPA activist, Kabul

I was about 22, working at the National Academy of Science in Kabul and responsible for maintenance and procurement.

8 Schoolgirl, Kabul II

I was 14 years old, in class seven.

When did you realise/first hear that the Saur coup had taken place? Did you, personally, see or hear anything, either on the day or immediately before or just after? Did you do anything? What did you think about the coup at the time? 

1 Schoolboy, Takhar

Each morning, at 8 o’ clock, the school took an attendance register. We’d sing the National Anthem and then go into class. On 7thof Saur 1357 (27 April 1978), we all stood in line as usual, but neither national anthem was sung, or register taken. Instead, the school principle, Abdul Hadi Khan, (1) and the other teachers stood in front of us, delivering propaganda: “Today is the revolution,” he said, “The dictatorial regime of Daud Khan had been overthrown.”

We could hear Radio Afghanistan from a window in the school playing revolutionary songs and a repeated statement from Aslam Watanjar [the army general whose troops took control of Kabul and who announced the revolution]: “The Revolution of 7thSaur has been victorious and the armed forces of the country are in control. We congratulate the people of Afghanistan.” The teachers told us to clap and then go into class. We didn’t learn anything that day. After only a few hours, we went home. My father asked why I’d come home early and I explained it all to him. “God bless us,” he said. “The future is not good.”

2 University student, Kabul

I heard about the coup on the radio. When it happened, I was happy, but things didn’t turn out the way we expected. We had felt suffocated during Daud Khan’s rule, even before [Mir Akbar] Khyber [editor of the Parcham newspaper, he was assassinated on 17 April] was imprisoned (see footnote 2 and part 1 of this series of dispatches. People felt there was a spy in every family. Their voices were strangled in their throats. When the Saur coup d’etat happened, we were happy. We thought it would bring about social change in favour of the poor strata of society – Afghanistan had farmers, but not a working class in the sense that Khalq and Parcham conceived of them. [There were fewer than 100,000 industrial workers in the country at the time.] But the country was occupied by the Soviets and in Kabul, we had a puppet regime. I became a member of the Students Association, which was an anti-Soviet movement and included students from different tendencies (both Ikhwani and leftist).

3 Schoolgirl, Kabul I

Classes were dismissed a little earlier, I think, but I cannot remember all the details.

When I got home, our main worry was my father because both of my brothers and I were already home from school. My father was an army officer, the head of the logistics department of the Ministry of Interior and my mother was very worried until he came home – very late. I suppose that, being kids, we didn’t understand the details until later.

In the following two days, things became clearer and our parents, especially my father explained the situation. We understood that President Daud whom we liked and loved (because my Dad used to talk well of him all the time) had been killed savagely, along with his family. The entire family was basically slaughtered by ‘the atheists’, we learned – those who didn’t like Islam and were against all Muslims was what we were talking about at school. None of my friends at school spoke well of them.

Since President Daud was well-liked by us all, we hated what was happening and also scared for our lives. President Daud had been famous for his achievements during the five years of his presidency. And on the other side, President Taraki, a man from rural Ghazni, was going to reside in the Presidential Palace. How sad.

Islamic 4 Islamic Activist from Kabul, in Tehran

As usual, I’d gone to buy a newspaper. [The coup] was headline news and Afghanistan was on everyone’s lips. [That day] some were worried, some interested and some were looking happy. I bought a couple of papers and returned to my room and turned on my radio.

In a strange way, I was not unhappy at all. Afghanistan had been suffering from one-family rule for so long. Politically speaking, in those days, everyone was thinking of and waiting for fundamental social change. Constitutional monarchy had failed and the first republic had done no better as Daud was an infamous dictator. Economically and politically, Afghanistan was in a bad shape. People hated Daud, but no-one new how to get rid of him or how the change might take place. 

5 Carpet seller, Kunduz

Before I left the house for work, my father told me he’d heard that the Khalq Party had overthrown Daud Khan. I immediately went back to my room and switched on the radio. Radio Afghanistan was broadcasting unusual programmes. All my family gathered together to listen. We found out that Daud Khan was no longer in power. When I went out, I saw groups of people around our area, all talking about the revolution and how Nur Muhammad Taraki had come to power.

6 Surveyor, Helmand

I found out about the Saur coup that same day in the afternoon. There were many anthems on Kabul radio. I went with one of my friends to the district centre to find out what had happened. When we got there, people told us there’d been a coup and President Daud Khan had been martyred. Maalim Zaher, a Khalqi, had been appointed as district governor. The Khalqiswere happy. They were dancing. Me and all my friends were very sad, though, and thought, “The country is gone.”

7 Civil servant and PDPA activist, Kabul

I well remember the day of the Saur Revolution. I wrote two poems, one for the republican flag and this one, for Republican Day:

These are republican days, full of happiness

I cannot sleep because of happiness and delight

Everywhere, there is dance and music

What beautiful nights they are when you see others free

Young people are making efforts for the wellbeing of the country

They are dancing and laughing, delighting in their happiness

Wake up [the poet tells himself, mentioning his own name] and burn down the house of ignorance

See! Every youth competes with the other 

8 Schoolgirl, Kabul II

I was going to go to school in the morning with my four sisters when our neighbours’ daughters told us they were staying at home. Their father had told them to – giving no reason – and told them to tell us to stay at home too. He was working in the government and after the Saur Revolution, he got a big position in the government, which means he was pro-revolution, but we didn’t know if he was Khalqi or Parchami. My mother hesitated, but kept us at home.

At the end of that day, about 4 o’ clock, jets flew very fast and violently over our house – we were living in Tapa-ye Bibi Mahru. It was the first time I’d seen such fast aircraft. They made a terrific noise. We all went up onto the roof to see what was happening. The jets disappeared and then, after a few minutes returned, both times flying over the Presidential Palace, the Arg. The third time they flew over the Arg, there was a big boom. It shook our houses as well as the nearby areas, but we didn’t know they were targeting the palace. Then, things became calm again. When my older brother got home that day, at the same time, Kabul Radio stopped broadcasting. This left us in confusion. No-one had known anything beforehand and nor did we understand what was happening, but it was actually the start of the coup.

Had you been aware of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan PDPA (or Khalq) before the coup?

1 Schoolboy, Takhar

In school, over the previous few years, there’d been four parties recruiting among the students: (PDPA) which included Parcham and Khalq, Shola-ye Jawed Party (Eternal Flame – the Maoists), Settam-e Melli Party (Against]National Oppression Party, which was pro the rights of non-Pashtuns) and Ikhwan ul-Muslimin (Muslim Brothers – a colloquial name for Jawanan-e Muslimin, later Jamiat-e Islami). Settam was particular active.

I wasn’t a member of any political party, although I was interested in the Islamic party because one of my teachers, Sayed Abdullah who taught physics and maths, was Ikhwani and he was very intelligent and had high morals. He was later arrested by the Khalq and executed in Pul-e Charkhi. All of our teachers were members of one the other parties, but they didn’t have good morals. They insulted God in public and said he didn’t exist. They insulted our fathers, ancestors, elders and scholars. They had no respect for Afghan culture.

I didn’t go to listen to Sayed Abdullah’s lessons about the Muslim Brothers because my father was against political parties. He thought that both the Islamists and the leftists were harmful and would ruin Afghanistan; they didn’t know how to govern the country, he said, and they were cruel, the mercenaries of foreigners. He’d gone to Kabul several times because his nephew was an army officer and he’d had friends high-up in the Zaher Khan and Daud Khan governments, including the ministers of education and defence. My father knew them and had a clear view of politics. I acted on my father’s advice and right up to the end, I did not become a formal member of any political party.

Some months before the coup, my father had come from Kabul, saying his nephew said the Khalqis had decided to mount a coup. He was worried about the future and that his nephew would be killed.

2 University student, Kabul

Yes, I was aware of the PDPA before the coup. I had studied in Aysha Durani High School and that area, Pul-e Bagh-e Umumi, was the epicentre of demonstrations waged by different political parties such as Khalq and Parcham and Islamic groups. I came to know about the PDPA through their demonstrations.

4 Islamic Activist from Kabul, in Tehran

Of course I was. From very early on, probably from when I was 14 or 15 years old, I had been associated with an underground Muslim organisation in Kabul, the Sazman-e Mujahedin-e Melli (National Mujahedin Organization) (3). It was not as famous as the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan ul-Muslimin). People like Qasim Akhgar [a writer, political and civil society activist and a freelance journalist from Wazirabad in Kabul] was also a member. Our house in Kabul was one of the few centres of political activities. Perhaps, it was the first of its kind as my father was also involved in politics and had experienced Deh Mazang prison in Kabul. You could meet many famous figures of the day in my home such as Allama Sayed Ismail Balkhi, a religious scholar, poet and revolutionary theorist from Balkhab district of Sar-e Pul province, who’d begun his activity against Zahir Shah in 1935 (1314).

Of course, we knew a lot of PDPA people and [had seen] its two branches fighting each other in the streets of Kabul. Years before the coup, we’d heard rumours and predictions that some kind of change was in the air. As Muslim activists, we were concerned that the possibility of a communist coup was much greater because the PDPA had cooperated with Daud in his ‘White Coup’ of 1973. Because of all this, I was not surprised at all when the coup happened, but still it was hard to digest. I thought the Soviet Union had interfered.

6 Surveyor, Helmand

I was well aware of the PDPA. We had been discussing materialism and idealism every day in school and even in the classroom. There were rightest and leftists both among teachers and students.

7 Civil servant and PDPA activist

I knew various people who later became incredible members of the revolution and part of the government. I had close links with the Central Committee of the revolutionaries and was part of the group around the committee, although I held no position. The people I knew would later get leading roles. They included Anahita Ratebzad, Babrak Karmal, Suleiman Laeq, Muhammaddin Zhwak, Barak Shafeyi, Nur Ahmad Nur, Zahor Ufoq and Saleh Muhammad Zeray.

I also remember the murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, whom we called Ustad (teacher) whose death played an important role in igniting the revolution against Daud Khan. [He describes finding Khyber’s body and helping carry it to his home in Microrayan, taking part in the funeral despite government threats. For more detail, see footnote 2.]

What did you do subsequently? 

1 Schoolboy, Takhar

After the coup, at school, we were only taught for maybe about five hours a week. The rest was all marching and shouting slogans. Experienced teachers were sent to jail and less experienced ones appointed, non-professionals, party cadres – some were illiterate. Anyone who joined the PDPA youth organisation could pass the exams. No merit was needed, only youth organisation membership. The level of education deteriorated to a very low level. The enthusiasm and passion of the pupils for education gradually faded away, and in the end, completely disappeared.

There were also weekly and monthly dances with school boys and girls and teachers; many people gathered to watch. The boys had to wear trousers. It’s a very traditional rural area, but there were five girls from Kabul who danced and also some of the local girls. I didn’t dance. I was too shy.

Land reform began, and people’s private property was given away and distributed. Dissatisfaction increased day by day. Teachers and students, scholars, elders and landlords were arrested and taken to prison. My father was scared of imprisonment. This didn’t happen, but they stole our property and gave it to others. He sold his animals and flocks at cheap prices and hid the money because he was afraid his animals and flocks would be confiscated and given away. At night, my father cut down his trees and sold the timber at cheap prices because he was afraid the government would take it too. People who got land were more pro-government.

There was no radio in our village or the neighbouring village. One and half hour’s away, my mother’s cousin had a Japanese radio. We went there two or three times a week to hear the news, listening to it at night to get information about the political situation: news from Kabul, but more often BBC news and sometimes news from Iran and Pakistan. Later, listening to the BBC and other non-state radio was made a crime you could get imprisoned for. That is why we listened to my mother’s cousin’s radio at night and with the volume turned low.

The PDPA government set up committees in the villages, a peasants’ committee and a party committee, which had a secretary and three members. They acted as spies and people were very much afraid of them and hid their secrets. The atmosphere was suffocating.

The three main officials in Rustaq district after the coup were Abdul Majid Eshchi, secretary of the Khalq Party (most powerful), Muhammad Jan from Logar, the chief of police, and Abdullah Basharyar, the district governor. In late 1357 (winter of 1978/9), they tried to rouse the people by saying the Shia in Hazarajat and some of the border areas, in Pul-e Khumri, Dara-ye Suf and some parts of Kunar, had been incited to rebellion by Iran. We call on you, they said, the Muslims, to help the national army fight these rebels. 3000-5000 people were gathered in the district centre, including us school children. We stood there for two to three hours – we’d been forced to go by the principle to swell the crowd.

A great number of people decided to go and took up arms against the Shia. I saw four of the big trucks used for carrying stones, each full of people – 40 or 50 each – leave Rustaq. Bandits and criminals had believed the government officials’ message: the Shia are kufar [unbelievers] and it is valid for you to take their property, but their heads should be brought to the government.

In late 1358 (1979/80), it was also reported that the people in the districts of Ragh and Shahr-e Bozorg in Badakhshan were rising up and killing the Khalqi people. Muslims had freed these districts. Our district neighboured them and, in turn, Rustaq was freed in one night. The district governor, police chief, a number of soldiers and a girl who was an active member of the PDPA were all killed. And the people set fire to the district headquarters. The number of insurgents reached about 1000 people that night.

My father and I were with the insurgents, but we were not involved in the night attack because the battle had ended by the time we got to the district centre. When I arrived, I saw the flames coming out of the government offices. Party secretary Eshchi and Police Chief Muhammad Jan had been killed. District Governor Basharyar had escaped. His house was far from district centre. Someone said he’s at his home, so they went  – about 3000-4000 people – and got into his house. He was hiding in a barn, but they killed his son, who was still a boy and couldn’t speak. I saw the people with axes, pickaxes and spades kill him. I had a sword from the English times – Dad had three along with an antique rifle, but I didn’t use it.

Then, in three days’ time, they organised the uprisers into six groups of several hundred each and they went to Chah Ab, Yang-e Qala, Dasht-e Qala and Khwaja Ghar districts. I didn’t go because my father didn’t let me, but some of my classmates went and told me what happened, how one after another, those districts fell and then even the provincial centre. The uprising reached Kunduz province, but at that time the Russians had flown into Afghanistan and also brought tanks through Tajikistan to the Amu Darya river and Sher Khan Bandar – but nobody knew. It was winter.

One of my classmates, Mumin, who was later killed, saw the Russian tanks hidden under rice straw and branches near the Amu Darya. When the insurgents approached them, they were massacred. It was in the area of Qatar Balagh in Emam Saheb district. 360 people only from my district were killed, along with a large numbers of others, including from Badakhshan. They are still buried in the area.

Within a week, the Russians, in collaboration with PDPA’s Khalq and Parcham had taken the areas lost to the insurgents. The people fled to mountains. Armed war began. I had stayed on at school for almost two years after the Saur Coup, but when the Russians came to our country on 6 Jadi (27 December 1979), I went to war against them. I was a commander. I never had a membership of any faction. I was just a military commander of the jihadist parties.

 2 University student, Kabul

We were living in Khair Khana in northern Kabul at that time and I remember that, one day, around one year [sic] after the coup when the Soviets invaded the country, I was going to Kabul University and saw the Soviet tanks, in the Juy-e Shir area. I was a fearless and intrepid girl and hurled stones at the tanks. We waged a lot of demonstrations. [This apparently refers to the 3 Hut (22 February 1980) uprising in Kabul – see this AAN dispatch.]

Five people, including my fiancé and brothers, were imprisoned in raids on our home. My little brother was beaten and released after just a week because he was so young. My older brother was released only after a year.

3 Schoolgirl, Kabul I

We were more careful in how we talked at school because we knew the new regime and the political party in power were already listening and trying to identify their enemies and punishing them very quickly. The prisons were full of people, families, children – mainly the elite of Kabul. But, together with thousands of other school pupils, I became active in joining and at times helping the demonstrations against the government and holding strikes inside school.

My father was suspended from work, so he was at home for a few years until he asked for early retirement. The government had asked him to work for them, but he didn’t want to be part of such a government.

Some of my relatives and a few close friends of my dad were arrested and disappeared. A few years later (under Babrak Karmal when Dr Najib was in charge of the Afghan intelligence agency, the KhAD, from 1980 to 1985), my older brother, who was 17 years old, was imprisoned. He was a member of Jamiat-e Islami, studying in the Amani school. He was leading a group of 24 other students. For that, he was given six years in prison, but since he was a minor, they reduced it to three. He wasn’t a real mujahed. They were just kids meeting and talking against the government.

For the first time in my life I saw my father crying, seeing his young son in the prison he’d built. (He’d earlier been the commander of the Public Works Department of the Ministry of Defence which had built famous dams of the country and any other large government structures, including the Pul-e Charkhi prison.)

When they imprisoned my 17 year old brother, he denied membership of any political party, but they used horrible types of physical torture on him, some of which he told us about later. He was told that if he didn’t confess, they would come and rape his sister – me – and then kill all of his family. He is still suffering from that trauma. He lives in [names country] now and has never visited Afghanistan again and never will do.

Women that were imprisoned were tortured, raped and then either killed or released. Some of them talked about it and some we would heard from other people. The staff of the KhAD prisons were also bragging about it in public. Quite a lot of those women either died as a result of torture or later killed themselves.  A young woman I became friends with at university, much later, when Dr Najib was president, told me a little. She would go quiet and start weeping quietly every time she touched on her time in prison. She never told me the details, but one day she didn’t come to university and her relative told me she’d killed herself. The family didn’t even hold a large and proper funeral for her. They buried her quietly. She was very strong when she spoke to me. She was trying to recruit me to their political party because she had seen me talking in public and arguing with the KhAD people at university. I was threatened a few times and then I was afraid, so I knew how far I could go – only as far as they would not imprison me.

5 Carpet seller, Kunduz

Khalq Party supporters started to promote the red flag and deliver speeches in schools and in pro-Khalq gatherings in the city. Shortly after, red flags were put in government offices. It was calm, but everyone was worried about insecurity. Some people in our area (east of Kunduz city) didn’t allow their kids to go outside or even go to school for some days. After a few weeks, Khalq members, together with the police, started to search particular houses. I remember a few influential people from our area were arrested and accused of opposing the revolution. After that, the house searches, arrests and detentions continued until the end of Babrak Karmal’s regime.

6 Surveyor, Helmand

A week after the coup, they started arresting people. Senator Habibullah Khan from Helmand, along with 12 other khans(tribal elders), was arrested and taken to Kabul by plane. They never arrived. Instead, they were thrown from the plane and were killed. The Khalqis immediately started distributing peoples’ lands, especially those of the khans. Farmers, who were organised Khalqis, got six acres of cultivable land. The same month, Mawlawi Khateb captured Musa Qala district and killed many Khalqis. Later, Kajaki district also became restive.

One of my old classmates who was a Khalqi, Hassan Folad, – we were calling him “Tor” (black in Pashto) – became the manager of Customs and Revenues. He married a girl by force. One day I went to his office and called him “Tor,”to his face and he got very angry with me, “You do not understand humanity,” he said “You think you’re a Sardar(a khan) but you’re perfidious.” I told him “You deceive yourself. You think this Khalqi government will prevail. There is still a long way for you to reach your goals.”

The next day, a friend who was working for AGSA [the name of the Khalqi intelligence agency] told me to disappear or I would be arrested. I went to Kabul, but was so bored I came back to Helmand after a month. I told my father I should become a soldier in the government because there was no other alternative – my father was a khanand we were being targeted.

I became a soldier in Paktia province. There, I spoke against President Hafizullah Amin [Taraki’s deputy, who seized power on 14 September 1979]and was put in prison. They sentenced me to death and I was waiting for my turn. One day, a person, a telephone operator, came and told me that someone was on the line for me I thought it was the end of my life but when I held the telephone, the other person said “Salaam.” It was good news. I was to be released. I was in shock. Still to this day, I do not know who that man was. I was released the next day.

7 Civil Servant and PDPA activist

I remember that when [President] Taraki went missing, people complained about why he had disappeared. They wanted to know the hospital where he was supposedly under treatment. People said that it was when Amin and his government came under pressure from the people that they killed Taraki.

After this, different news spread from person to person: some said Taraki had been killed in an underground room of the presidential palace; some said Amin supporters had put a pillow over his mouth and he suffocated – all sorts of different stories.

I remember that, after his death, the government people brought his body at night and buried it in an area called Qul-e Abchakan in Kabul. I went there myself and saw a place where people had been doing some work. I saw a newly dug grave. Later, the rumours were that Taraki’s body had been moved to Ghazni [his home province: he was from Nawa district]. But no-one knows clearly whether his body was moved or not. From then onward, Amin did a lot of brutal things to local people including with the help of the then chief of intelligence, Assadullah Sarwari. (4)

Later, when Hafizullah Amin got into power, the Russians suspected him of having relations with the Americans. That was the reason they brought Babrak Karmal back from Russia and made him president. I remember that day. There was a lot of Russian firing and shelling in Kabul. I was in the Pul-e Kheshti area and the Russians fired several rockets at the city. When Karmal got power, my friends and I went to the presidential palace to congratulate him on his new position. His supporters had him on their shoulders, most of them Parchamis, and very happy. When they got the power, they started arresting Khalqis. In Karmal’s government, Suleman Laeq was appointed head of the central bureau and I went to work there with him.

8 Schoolgirl, Kabul II

After the coup, the communists named the Arg ‘Khana-ye-Khalq’ (the House of the People) and opened it up for visits. Daud Khan’s family and many others had been killed there during the coup, but it was like a park at that time and anyone could go and look around. After a couple of weeks, I went, along with my sisters and other relatives. We didn’t see any dead bodies, but we could see signs of blood in various places. The trunks of trees were tainted with blood. Daud Khan’s bathroom was also badly destroyed, maybe with rockets. On most of the walls, I could see bullet holes. There were crowds of people and most of those I saw were very sad about the situation, seeing the bullet holes and other signs of destruction.

There was a smell in the Arg, a smell of blood or… I cannot name it specifically. The atmosphere was silent and everyone was terrified. Some people were crying. I was scared because I’d never witnessed such destruction in my life before.

Some months after the coup, things calmed down and everyone was going to school again and the government officials were back at work. The communists had announced their new cabinet and system of government. But slowly, the situation became terrifying because people were being hunted down and suppressed. Government people were following people, scrutinizing who was with the government and who against. Most of the investigations were taking place in schools, universities, government offices, mosques and madrasas. They had spies everywhere.

One of my two brothers, Ibrahim, was in fifth class at Kabul Polytechnic and in the students’ union. He was engaged to a girl, but not yet marred. He was young, about 28-29 years old and emotional and hot-blooded. After the coup, he took part in the protests against the government. The government people identified him and started following him. My oldest brother told him to be careful because the communists were ideologically committed and expert in pursuing people. He told Ibrahim, “Don’t speak everywhere and in front of everybody. Don’t put yourself in a position where you’ll be targeted.”

Ibrahim was not alone – there were other students who shared his thinking. He would stay for longer on Thursday evenings at the university cafeteria. One day, about five months after the Saur Revolution, he left home a bit late and asked my mother for some money. He said as it was a Thursday, he might return a bit late. My mother asked him to come and do some work at home and Ibrahim said that he would do it on Friday. She gave him 100 Afghanis. He said goodbye to her. And that was his last goodbye. That evening, we waited for him till late. He always came home, or if he was going to stay with friends, he’d let us know beforehand. That Thursday, we waited for him till late in the night, but he didn’t show up.

The next day, a neighbour knocked at our gate and came in. As soon as she entered, she said her husband Anwar, who worked in the government, had also not returned the previous night. My mother said, “You’re worried about Anwar and we are waiting for Ibrahim.”

My elder brother and other relatives went several time to different prisons of Afghanistan, but our efforts were in vain. We failed to find any clue about my brother.

We never saw Ibrahim again.

It was not only him. About six families in our neighbourhood lost family members and they are still missing. They included Anwar, our neighbour, who left behind his wife and their children.

Two months after that, so seven months after the coup, my uncle, my mother’s brother, in Kunduz also went missing. He was also an activist. We also lost a cousin on my father’s side – he was in an officer in the Afghan government and the brother-in-law of my elder sister. In total, four members of our family went missing and never returned. We call them the unknown martyrs.

After some time, I don’t remember when, the communists declared a general amnesty and some prisoners were released from Pul-e Charkhi jail. [There were two amnesties and mass releases of prisoners, in September 1979, after Amin took power, and after the Soviet invasion, in early January 1980.] Thousands of people went hoping to find their relatives, including my sisters and I. Mostly it was people like tailors and bakers who were freed. My brother was not among them, nor our other kin.

I think the communists had taken my brother and my other relatives to the Polygon and killed them en masse with other prisoners. These were the toughest conditions we lived under. We were so sad.

Meanwhile, I started studying at Aryana High School and would see girls who were members of different communist party groups, such as the Organisation of Modern Youth and the Pioneers(Pesh Ahang,in Dari). They went from school to school, recruiting anyone who showed interest or had talent. I had no interest in joining them and my family wouldn’t have allowed me to join if I had. Some classmates did though.

Four of my classmates also had missing brothers. One day, one of them stood up in class and started shouting at these girls who were recruiting new members. “You are promoting music and dance and concerts,” she said, “but other people are suffering from grief and sadness because their beloved ones are missing.”

The daughter of Hafizullah Amin was also studying in our school. Her name was Malalai and every morning when school started, she’d give speeches. She’d say that we have come into the power and we will bring a lot of changes and the country will go to a prosperous future.

Did the coup change your life – if so, in what way?

 1 Schoolboy, Takhar

I had been the number one pupil in my school. Under Daud Khan, the education system was really good – the university students were better even then now. When the Khalqis came to power, it all went downhill, as I explained earlier. My father had been an orphan and was not able to study, so he really wanted us to be educated. He had a vision for us. He’d gone to Kabul, a year before the coup, and got advice about my future from two friends. One, the defence minister, said I should become an officer, but the education minister said I should study medicine or economics or agriculture and he would help get me a scholarship in a foreign country. My father returned happy. He’d been deprived of his education, but we would not be. But my future was very different: I fought the Soviets.

I lost people in the jihad – two cousins and two uncles were martyred. All three of us brothers were imprisoned and two of us sentenced to death, but we all managed to escape. My father was arrested and beaten (in Karmal’s time) and was left injured. He could not be treated and he died after a long illness.

2 University student, Kabul

It changed my life in good and bad ways: the negative side was that it led to war, insecurity and a period of strangulation. But it awakened the people, including myself to knowledge about different regimes. This influenced me. I completed my university studies and stayed in Kabul until the Taleban took over.

Like any other revolution and changes that have their slogans, the Khalq and Parcham slogan “Kar, dodey, kali”(‘house, bread and clothes’) didn’t come good. They were problems with how they wanted to implement that slogan. The Khalq and Parcham waged a revolt, but didn’t understand the society well and failed to move slowly and gradually. Since then, the mujahedin and Taleban have said Islam is their motto and justice is central – but justice didn’t prevail.

3 Schoolgirl, Kabul I

The coup made me grow up, as I learned about the political situation and how oppressed we became and how evil the communist regime was. It affected my life directly and I can never forget that. I see the entire problem of this country due to the events of those days. It changed the course of the history of this country in a very bad way.

After describing the torture suffered by her brother and the sexual abuse suffered by female detainees – see earlier section – she added:

This is the reason I am so against most of the leftists, especially the Parchamis and Khalqis, because I probably know more details about what happened than people who are younger than me. Many people have only seen what the Taleban or the mujahedin did and they put up pictures of Dr Najib in the city, disrespecting the people of this country who suffered under him when he was head of KhAD. I have not heard of anyone worse than him in running KhAD in the history of the country. He had no mercy.

Remembering what this country has been through and is still going through is hard to bear. There is not a single family that has not been affected in some way.

4 Islamic activist, in Tehran

The coup not only changed my life, but the lives of the whole population, both the winners and the losers in the game. I was forced to surrender to my fate as a refugee, which took the best part of my life forever. I could not see my family. Some I never saw again. I was not able to see my dear friends again. As one of the Palestinian poets says: “I lost the face of the sun.”

 6 Surveyor, Helmand

The coup changed my life from very good to the very worst. Still, my life is not good.

7 Civil Servant, PDPA activist

There have been different effects of the revolution on my life and my family. When the Khalqis were in power, they arrested me because I was with Suleiman Laeq. I was sentenced to one year in jail, but Laeq freed me when the Parchamis got into power. I didn’t do anything against the government, but since I was not Khalqi, they arrested me and sent me to prison.

As a result of the revolution, I also lost one of my cousins, Khyal Muhammad, who was a Khalqi, with Aslam Watanjar. He’d been the driver of the first tank to attack the Arg. The guards fired back and killed him, in front of the presidential palace. The communists named him as the first martyr of the revolution. I found his grave only six months later. It’s in Tapa-ye Maranjan, where King Zahir Shah and his father are buried. But when I found the grave, the police were not allowing anyone to see any of the graves of the martyrs [because they were worried opponents would cause trouble]. I was deeply disturbed by this.

It was not a good revolution, I think, because it resulted in a lot of differences between Khalqis and Parchamis. Supporters of both parties killed, not only [non-PDPA] people, but also each other when they got into power and arrested each other.

In the early days of the revolution, it had a good effect on my life. I had a coupon card and the government provided me with all the daily necessities of life – rice, sugar and all the other stuff I needed. We were not supposed to buy anything because the coupon card was everything for us. Like everyone else who worked in government, whether they were low or high level officials, they benefited from the coupons a lot. But this good effect and good situation was only for short time.

8 Schoolgirl, Kabul II

Obviously, we all feel so much sorrow, still about my missing family members…

We also became refugees. My elder brother decided we should go to Pakistan four years after the coup. He said he couldn’t take care of his sisters and protect them in Kabul, because the situation was bad and anything could happen. There had been some protests and arrests and there were also restrictions imposed on the citizens and then some security forces broke into a neighbour’s house – although they had already fled. He also thought the government would force us his sisters to wear miniskirts and ban them wearing headscarves.

We went to Peshawar, then Rawalpindi. One of my sisters became a teacher at an Afghan school there. I started working at a tailoring factory and then at a clinic for Afghan refugees. Life was cheap in Pakistan and we could feed ourselves, but we missed our country.

I got married in Pakistan to a man I didn’t see before the wedding. It was a very small ceremony and we only invited a few relatives who were living in Peshawar. There was no music or gifts exchanged in the way you see now in Kabul. We missed my brother too much to enjoy a wedding. If Ibrahim had been alive, it would have been the happiest of weddings. Now, my children ask me, “Why do you have no pictures of your wedding?”

 

Interviews conducted by Fazal Muzhary, Rohullah Sarush, Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, Kate Clark, Jelena Bjelica, Ali Yawar Adili, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali.

 

 

(1)The interviewee said that, despite being a Parchami, Abdul Hadi Khan prospered, becoming the governor of Badakhshan and later Takhar when he is alleged to have killed many people. The interviewee said he is still alive and living in the Netherlands.

 (2) Khyber was the editor of the Parcham newspaper, from which his faction of the PDPA got its name. After his burial on 19 April 1978, an estimated 15,000 PDPA sympathisers demonstrated in Kabul. Daud ordered a crackdown of the PDPA leadership which may have prompted it to launch the military coup.

The PDPA activist was an eye-witness to some of these events:

Khyber had an office in Zarlasht Market in front of Kabul municipality. I used to go to him there and take secret documents from our office, hiding them in newspapers. It was one of the meeting places for all the leading leftists.

 One day I took a book to the Afghan State Printing House, in the Shashdarak area of Kabul when a friend Assadullah Ludin came and told us that a dead body was lying in the ground nearby. Ludin and I were the first people who saw the dead body. It was Khyber.

 The government spread warnings, banning anyone from taking part in the condolence ceremony of Khyber. But on the second day after the death of Khyber, other leftists swore to each other that we would take revenge. Leftists took his body to Microryan. I was with those carrying the body. Others were Ratebzad, Karmal, Barak Shafeyi and Suleiman Laeq. The central committee people didn’t allow anyone else to get closer to Khyber’s body.

 They said all his followers should come the next day for the burial and bring flowers. Despite the government ban, I went. One of his relatives said he wanted to bury the body in Logar that was where he was from, but others told him that he was Ustad of us all and should be buried in Kabul.

(3) My group was initially (late 1960s to 1973 called Pasdaran-e Islami-e Afghanistan(the Afghanistan Islamic Guard), but after 1973, it developed into a more disciplined, underground organisation and changed its name to Sazman-e Mujahedin-e Melli (National Mujahedin Organisation). After the coup d’etat, it again changed its name to Sazman-e Mujahedin-e Mustaz’afin-e Afghanistan (Organisation of the Mujahedin of the Disenfranchised of Afghanistan). After 1992, it merged with Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami. I was a member up to 1978. Then I left it for good as I no longer believed in the armed struggle.

(4) The Taraki-era Afghan intelligence service was called AGSA (De Afghanistan de Gato Satelo Edara, in Pashto, the Bureau for the Protection of Afghanistan’s Interests) and headed by Sarwari. Under Amin, it was renamed KAM (De Kargarano Ettela’ati Muasesa, in Pashto, the Workers’ Intelligence Organisation). A close relative, Assadullah Amin, was its head. After the Soviet invasion, the agency was renamed KhAD (Khedmat-e Ettela’at-e Daulati, in Dari, the State Intelligence Service)

For more on Sarwari, see  this AAN dispatch.