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US-Taleban Agreement Still in the Air: Disputes about a ‘ceasefire’ versus ‘reduction of violence’

The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) - Thu, 30/01/2020 - 02:55

Over the past few weeks, the Taleban first stoked expectations that an agreement with the United States was imminent, and then expressed frustration that it was not yet signed. They had appeared to be trying to edge forward to an agreement by offering to “scale down military operations” against both US and Afghan troops – and portraying this as a major breakthrough. The US has not reacted to Taleban statements at all. Even so, it seems US Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been focussing on this question in his talks with the Taleban. Meanwhile, the Afghan government continues to call for a full-scale ceasefire ahead of intra-Afghan negotiations, which the US-Taleban deal is supposed to open the way for. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig investigates what a ‘ceasefire’ versus a ‘reduction of violence’ might mean, lays out what we know about the recent US-Taleban talks and the possible pending agreement, and what it all might mean for levels of violence in the country.

The resumption of US-Taleban talks

US President Donald Trump’s declaration on 8 September 2019 that the US-Taleban negotiations were “dead” did not hold for long. Negotiations had almost led to the signing of a bilateral agreement, but he vetoed it after the Taleban declined to go to the United States for a signing ceremony and one of their attacks killed a member of the US military (read AAN reporting here). Two and a half months later, on 28 November, while on his first visit to Afghanistan in office, he appeared to give the green light to further talks by claiming, “The Taliban wants to make a deal and we’re meeting with them and we’re saying it has to be a cease-fire and they didn’t want to do a cease-fire and now they do want to do a cease-fire.” The Taleban responded by saying they wanted “to resume the talks from where it was suspended.”

However, even earlier, in the first days of October 2019, US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad had visited Pakistan in attempt to find out how to revive the talks with the Taleban. Then, in mid-November, a prisoner/hostage swap took place. The Afghan government released three prisoners, including Anas Haqqani, a leading member of the Taleban’s Haqqani network, after which the Taleban let go two professors of the American University in Kabul, an American and an Australian, who had been kidnapped in the Afghan capital in August 2016 (a media report here). It was a confidence-building measure and one to which the Afghan government contributed, even though Kabul had never been part of the negotiations. (The government apparently also issued Afghan passports to some Taleban negotiators, see here.) The prisoner releases took place in the face of widespread protests among the Afghan public; Haqqani had been sentenced to death, and given that the network is usually blamed for Taleban suicide attacks causing mass casualties in the capital, there were demands to execute him. The release of the two professors seems to have fulfilled the expectation of many analysts (see for example here) that such a visible Taleban concession would be needed to get Trump to agree to allow a restart of the negotiations over the agreement.

In early December, the State Department let it be known that Khalilzad would “rejoin talks with the Taliban” in Doha. The term used, ‘talks’, indicated that the US did not yet consider the current contacts with the Taleban in the Qatari capital of Doha to be formal negotiations again. Indeed, in early January 2020, the Taleban confirmed  that formal negotiations had not started again, as Khalilzad had told them he had not yet received their response to his calls for a “reduction in violence, a brief ceasefire before signing of the peace agreement.” (Until then, it had been unclear whether he would even keep his position as the president’s Special Envoy on Afghanistan. Some diplomatic sources believed he had submitted his resignation after the breakdown of the earlier talks.)

Meanwhile, there was a brief hiccup on 13 December when Khalilzad announced another pause in the talks after a Taleban attack on Bagram, the US’s main base in the country, two days earlier. During the attack, at least two Afghan civilians were killed and 70 more wounded, as were five NATO soldiers from Georgia; the US said it had no casualties (media reports here).

On 30 December, the Associated Press quoted  “Taleban officials” as saying that the organisation’s Leadership Council had agreed “to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, providing a window in which a peace agreement with the United States can be signed” and that it would cover both the US and Afghan government forces.

The Taleban immediately issued a “clarification”, describing the news reports as “false and baseless” and “propaganda” that was trying to suggest a “schism” in the movement. They laid out their position with regard to a ceasefire:

The reality of the situation is that the Islamic Emirate has no intention of declaring a ceasefire. The United States has asked for a reduction in the scale and intensity of violence and discussions being held by the Islamic Emirate are revolving solely around this specific issue.

Then on 16 January, chief spokesman for the Taleban negotiating delegation in the Qatari capital Doha, Sohail Shahin, surprised everyone with a series of tweets in Pashto in which he said that US-Taleban negotiations had been resumed and that “the signing of the agreement and related ceremonies” had been discussed, seeming to indicate that the Taleban considered the text of the agreement was ready, while his comments that “this round of talks” would continue for “a few days” suggested they thought it could be signed soon (see here and here).

Shahin spoke in more detail to the Pakistani daily newspaper Dawn on 18 January 2020. Again, he said the draft agreement was ready and the only issue that still needed to be sorted out was the date of the signing. He said it was “now a matter of days” and they were optimistic they might be able to sign the agreement at the “latest by this month’s [January 2020] end.” The remaining talks, according to Shahin, would be led by the head of the Doha office, Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai, rather than the movement’s Deputy Leader for Political Affairs, Abdul Ghani (better known as Mullah Baradar). This seemed to indicate that the talks were moving into procedural matters and the content had indeed been finalised. 

On 22 January 2020, the Taleban tone shifted from optimism to frustration. In an unattributed article on their website, “Peace talks and more excuses…!?“ and a photo of US chief negotiator Khalilzad, they wrote that “the American side wants to waste even more time on the definition of the term ‘reduction of the violence’” and was doing so on behalf of what they derisively called a “small number of people in the shaky administration of Kabul.” This article followed President Ashraf Ghani, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), accusing the Taleban leaders of being involved in “drug running operations,” “getting their fifth or fourth wife” and “enjoying themselves.”

The US, meanwhile, has made no official response to any of the Taleban statements, interviews and comments. Indeed, it has not even publicly announced that negotiations, rather than just ‘talks’ are on again.

Back to square one, or to 8 September 2019?

The text of the draft agreement from September 2019, that both sides had reportedly already initialled paragraph by paragraph – a sign that only the official final signature was missing – has never been published. Even so, leaks and hints from both sides have led to a rather consistent image of it. It was to have dealt mainly with two issues: the withdrawal of all US and, in consequence, all allied foreign troops from the country in exchange for Taleban guarantees not to allow globally active jihadist groups – such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (Daesh) – to operate from Taleban-controlled Afghan territory (the details in this AAN backgrounder) and this December 2019 Pentagon report (p14). Under this agreement, the US withdrawal was to have been gradual, probably over 16 months, with the US pulling 5,400 troops out of Afghanistan and closing five bases within the first 135 days after the agreement was signed, while reserving the right to assist Afghan forces if they were attacked by the Taleban during the withdrawal period (see media report here).

Furthermore, the agreement would have stipulated that intra-Afghan peace negotiations should start soon after the signing. In September, it was understood that this would have happened within ten days, in the Norwegian capital Oslo.

This agreement was far less than originally envisaged by Khalilzad. As AAN has reported, he had originally insisted that four points should be covered – US troop withdrawal, Taleban guarantees on al-Qaeda and other international jihadists, “a comprehensive & permanent ceasefire” and the inclusion of the Afghan government in the talks – and insisting that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” The Taleban, however, never subscribed to this formula (see AAN analysis here) and during the negotiations, Khalilzad apparently bowed to their insistence that intra-Afghan negotiations and discussion of the ceasefire would be relegated to a second phase of the ‘peace process’.

Thus, the negotiations were in practice split into two phases: the first one between the US and the Taleban only (discussing withdrawal and guarantees) and the second phase, the intra-Afghan negotiations, then including the Afghan government among other Afghan actors, but without US participation (discussing the ceasefire and likely the country’s future political system). This sequence of negotiations, as intended by Khalilzad, was confirmed by a 4 December statement by the US State Department that negotiations with the Taleban “could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire.”

During the most recent round of US-Taleban talks, there was no indication that the features of the agreement had dramatically changed. (1) The Taleban had declared early on after Trump’s stopping of the deal that they wanted “to resume the talks from where it was suspended.” US officials also told The New York Times in September 2019, after Trump had stopped the agreement, “that the peace drive was not over and the deal had been neither rejected nor accepted.” This also implied that there was at least an option to stick to the agreed text. (2)

The ‘ceasefire’ versus ‘reduction of violence’ controversy

Khalilzad had come under criticism not only by the Afghan government and sections of the Afghan public, but also by members of the US Congress in September 2019, that he had given away too much to the Taleban, agreeing to remove their main enemy from the battlefield without even insisting on any form of ceasefire (see for example here, here and here). Khalilzad reintroduced the ceasefire/reduction of violence issue in the latest Doha talks, apparently without insisting on using this term, though. This was indirectly confirmed in a posting on the Taleban website saying, “In parallel with the resumption of negotiations, the American side came up with a new demand to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – namely the reduction of violence across Afghanistan. This demand was also accepted by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” It has not become clear, however, whether Khalilzad envisaged that this issue be laid out as part of the US-Taleban agreement itself, or appear in an annex or separate supplementary agreement (most likely the latter, according to diplomatic sources).

During early US-Taleban contacts, which began in Doha more than a year ago, in October 2018, Khalilzad had pressed for a six-months’ ceasefire in order to get negotiations re-started. Taleban sources confirmed this, in December 2018, although apparently they rejected his demand. Saudi and Emirati mediators, who were trying to take over Qatar’s role and had invited Khalilzad and Taleban representatives to Abu Dhabi, then suggested a three-months’ ceasefire. Khalilzad confirmed the latter in an interview with Afghan Ariana TV on 20 December 2018. “We talked about a ceasefire,” which, he said was aimed at providing “an opportunity so that all issues could be addressed through joint intra-Afghans dialogue.” However, the Saudi and Emirati efforts led to nothing, and the talks moved back to Doha.

By May 2019, with the talks in full swing, Khalilzad had apparently already dropped the idea of a formal, extensive ceasefire. Instead, he began speaking about a US “proposal for all sides to reduce violence.“ However, at that time, this issue did not receive much attention as it was overshadowed by Khalilzad’s attempts to get the Afghan presidential election postponed – originally scheduled for 20 April, but postponed to 20 July 2019 and then to 28 September – in favour of a peace deal and interim government which would have included the Taleban. This was all against President Ghani’s heavy resistance. This plan became obsolete when Ghani did not budge and pushed ahead with the election.

Khalilzad then continued to pursue his two-stage approach, the two-issues bilateral US-Taleban agreement first, to be followed by intra-Afghan negotiations afterwards. In an interview with Radio Azadi, the Afghan branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on 3 September 2019, he stated that the US-Taleban agreement would not be one about the “final end of the war, but about a reduction of violence.” It never became clear, though, whether this reduction was supposed to happen during US-Taleban negotiations, around or after the signing of the agreement and/or during US troop withdrawal, nor what it would entail exactly.

The already quoted 4 December statement by the State Department confirmed this approach (and also that it was not only Khalilzad’s personal plan, as some observers had suspected) which said that the bilateral negotiations with the Taleban “could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire.” US Ambassador John Bass, who ended his Afghan posting in early January, speaking to the Afghan audience on 1 January via a Tolonews interview, also said that the US were “not insisting at this point that that there has to be a nationwide ceasefire before anything can happen.”

Issues of terminology

The problem with Khalilzad’s shift of nuance was that not everybody understood it. Media reports and, what was more important, President Trump used both terms – ‘ceasefire’ and ‘reduction of violence’ – as if they were interchangeable. This was the case when Trump cancelled the US-Taleban deal in September 2019, citing the Taleban’s inability to “agree to a cease-fire during these very important peace talks,” something that he said the US was insisting on, and then during his Thanksgiving visit to Afghanistan when he claimed that the Taleban were ready for a “ceasefire” now. In Kabul and elsewhere, Trump’s choice of words during his Thanksgiving trip was noticed and welcomed as an important policy shift (see for example here and here). These hopes, however, were dashed again when, following a Trump-Ghani meeting in Davos on 22 January, the White House issued a readout, saying (quoted here):

 “Trump reiterated the need for a significant and lasting reduction in violence [emphasis added] by the Taliban that would facilitate meaningful negotiations on Afghanistan’s future.”

Other parties, however, have been very scrupulous with their language. (3) The Taleban, in their rejection of the 30 December 2019 AP report that the organisation’s Leadership Council had agreed “to a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan, providing a window in which a peace agreement with the United States can be signed,” said they had “no intention of declaring a ceasefire” and that the US had (only) asked “for a reduction in the scale and intensity of violence.”Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi also did not use the term ‘ceasefire’ when, speaking on 16 January 2020, ahead of a meeting with his US counterpart in Washington (and before the Taleban had said something). He stated that progress had been made and the Taleban were ready to “reduce the violence.”

Taleban spokesman Shahin made their stance absolutely clear in his 18 January Dawn interview. He said the Taleban had agreed, after a month of consultations among their leaders, field commanders and religious scholars (also mentioned in this media report), “to scale down military operations in days leading up to the signing of the peace agreement with the United States. The purpose is to provide safe environment to foreign forces to withdraw from Afghanistan.” He added, however, that “there is no agreement on ceasefire.” He said there would rather be “a reduction in our military operations” and that “the scaling down will be blanket and shall include all forces, including state [ie Afghan government] forces.”

In his Dawn interview, Shahin apparently tried to sweeten the ‘deal’ for the Afghan government audience by saying that its signing would lead to the commencement of an intra-Afghan dialogue, that would include the Ghani-led Kabul administration (the Taleban have thus far refused to speak to the government at all and to officials only in their private capacity) and negotiations for a nationwide ceasefire. (4) In the already-quoted 22 January article on the Taleban website, the author called the Taleban’s offer “unprecedented… in the history of Islamic Emirate,” while warning at the same time that they might drop it again if their “flexibility” was rejected. Another article on that website, however, published on 20 January, called the government in Kabul “an insignificant party.” This will not help to bolster trust that the Taleban’s offers will be kept in the end. The Taleban also already seem to be trying to encourage the US to agree to the deal, by – it seems – having reduced the number of their large-scale attacks in Afghanistan’s big cities since September 2019 (data from a list of large civilian casualty incidents compiled in this December 2019 UNHRC report. (5)

Again, there has been silence on all of this on the usual US communication channels, the Kabul Embassy, chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad and the State Department. This could simply mean that the US has not made up its mind whether it wants this agreement – troop withdrawal in exchange for Taleban guarantees on terrorist jihadist groups, accompanied by a short, temporary truce.

What might a ‘reduction of violence’ look like in Taleban’s eyes?

There have been no official Taleban statements on what the Taleban mean by ‘reduction in violence’, and un-named Taleban leaders quoted in media reports have diverged on some of the detail provided in the few public statements by their officials, such as Shahin’s Dawn interview. For example, some of them have not even stuck to the official line that there is no agreement to a ceasefire. Two Pakistani newspapers, The Daily Times and The News International quoted, respectively, an un-named “Taliban leader” and un-named “senior members of the Afghan Taliban” both reportedly saying a ‘ceasefire’ was on offer. The News International also quoted a “top Taliban leader” and member of the Leadership Council as saying that “our leadership has decided to reduce attacks or whatever you call it.” This could indicate that senior Taleban are either uninformed about the terminology reflecting the current official political line, do not understand it or are ignoring it. Or the confusion is deliberately created from the Taleban’s top, as the “top Taleban leader” was also quoted as saying, “We may not announce the ceasefire publicly but would make sure our military commanders [would] implement it wholeheartedly in the areas under their control.” In any case, such statements have further muddied the waters.

These sources largely appear to agree that a short ‘ceasefire’ or ‘reduction of violence’ would be announced, would last for a week or “between seven and 10 days” and would kick in either after an agreement was reached or as a prerequisite for it. The “Taliban leader” quoted by The Daily Times said the agreement would be signed “during this period [of what he called reduced attacks].” The News International’s Taleban sources were quoted as saying that “all sides would start acting on the ceasefire from the day when Taliban and US sign a peace accord in Doha.”

The “Taliban leader” quoted by The News International also said that the movement would “not carry out any type of attack during the proposed ceasefire period. There would be no suicide attacks, IEDs, target killing anywhere in Afghanistan from our side when the ceasefire is implemented.” Afghan media outlet Tolonews quoted “sources familiar with the process on condition of anonymity” that Taleban leader Hebatullah Akhunzada had agreed that a reduction of violence in Afghanistan’s major cities would be implemented once the US signs the peace deal. A reduction of violence, according to these sources, would consist of the Taleban not attacking cities, not launching suicide attacks and not blocking major highways. The US would likely have to reciprocate, they said, with a stop to their drone attacks and their participation in Afghan forces’ night raids (see an example reported by AAN here).

The News International’s source was also quoted as saying that “our leadership has decided to reduce attacks… for the Afghan government and its armed forces.” He said that Taleban fighters would not go to areas with US and Afghan military bases and other installations, explaining, “We would not even use the road where the Afghan forces had set up checkpoints to avoid any confrontation. And would expect a similar response to the ceasefire plan.” He even claimed that it had been agreed “that neither US nor Afghan force[s] will enter [areas under the control of the other party to the conflict] or conduct any type of operation in those areas after the ceasefire is announced.” The latter stipulation – if true – would be quite far-reaching and would require the consent and cooperation of the Afghan government.

Another part of Shahin’s Dawn interview made clear that, for the Taleban, it seems to be more important to be able to remain flexible in their operations against the Afghan government forces then what terminology will be used: “It is our prerogative to see how, when and where to scale down our military operations.” If this was accepted, it would allow the Taleban to pick the area and time where they would hold fire, and where not. It is also very practical from the Taleban’s point of view: Afghan forces would probably be mainly covered by this reduction only where they use the same bases and roads as US forces. Seen from this angle, the Taleban would thus be trying to avoid harming US soldiers, so as not to risk another breakdown of the bilateral negotiations, while keeping the option open of attacking Afghan forces.

It is difficult to gauge how reliable these quoted statements are. Many come from Pakistani media outlets where reports about Afghanistan tend to be closely monitored and sometimes shaped by the country’s main intelligence service. It cannot be ruled out that these reports are designed to suggest significant concessions have been made to the US, to make a deal more palatable.

It can be said with some certainty, though, that a short ceasefire or reduction of violence is unlikely to satisfy the US. At the very least, it can be assumed that it wants assurances for the safety of its troops for the whole, lengthy withdrawal period. This is referred to in a Tolonews report quoting “sources familiar with the matter” as saying that the US had asked the Taleban for a “long-term reduction of violence.” A cryptic paragraph (6) in the Shahin seems to refer to this issue. The Dawn reported:

Asked whether the reduction in attack would continue after the signing of the peace [sic] agreement, the Afghan Taliban spokesman said the day the agreement was signed other clauses contained in the document would come into force. He did not elaborate on what those clauses would be.

This seems to indicate that, as the Taleban are trying to portray it, the new agreement might include additional stipulations on the issue of a ceasefire or ‘reduction of violence’ that were not part of the September 2019 draft.

With no comments yet from the US, we do not know whether the US is likely to swallow all of this. It is difficult to imagine Washington either leaving the matter of the terms and duration of a reduction of violence or scaling down of operations or any form of ceasefire unclear.

The Afghan government’s position

As Mujib Mashal wrote in The New York Times after Trump’s stop to the talks in 2019, the Afghan government had then hoped for a “complete reset,” with a ceasefire as a clear precondition for any resumption of talks. It had also hoped that the US would revise its position and press again for Kabul’s involvement as a third party in this phase of the negotiations, rather than it having to wait to be handed the baton after the Taleban had received what it wanted most, the assurance of US troop withdrawal and the partial start of that. This did not happen and that has obviously angered the government.

Trump’s surprise halt to the almost-deal between the US and the Taleban in September 2019, and his use of the ‘ceasefire’ word, had already convinced the Afghan government that it also could harden its public position. In October 2019, it withdrew an 2018 offer, made in the context of its Kabul Process plan (AAN reporting here and here), of unconditional negotiations with the Taleban. It stated that it now wanted a one-month ceasefire before the intra-Afghan peace talks with the Taleban could even start. This has been the official line ever since.

Consequently, the Afghan government has rejected the current Taleban offer as a mere reduction of violence instead of a full-scale, publicly-announced ceasefire. On 19 January, presidential spokesman Sediq Sediqi reiterated this position: “[A]ll allies” of the Afghan government as well as the “people of Afghanistan” were “insisting on a ceasefire.“ Earlier he wrote on Twitter that there was no exact military and legal definition for ‘reducing violence’; it was “not practical” and the government wanted a ceasefire similar to the one during the Islamic Eid festival in June 2018. That had been officially, albeit separately, announced by both sides; the Taleban observed a three-day ceasefire, while the government’s lasted seven days (find AAN reporting here). Sediqi’s position was echoed, among others, by Amrullah Saleh, former head of the Afghan intelligence service and running mate of President Ashraf Ghani in the still-inconclusive 2019 presidential election.

Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Moheb had also insisted at a multilateral conference in India two days earlier that a ceasefire was “necessary to create a conducive environment for [intra-Afghan] talks.” It would prove, he said, that “our enemies are not only serious about peace, but that it is within their control to maintain their part of a future deal.” With this comment, he referenced existing questions within the US and Afghanistan as to whether the Taleban leadership would have actual control over all their field commanders in the case of a prolonged ceasefire.

To project the government’s readiness for negotiations, Ghani decreed the formation of a “senior coordination committee on peace” led by the relatively new Ministry of Peace Affairs, headed by his former chief-of staff, Abdul Salam Rahimi. (7)

The US, meanwhile, has tried to dilute Afghans’ worries that if the US agreed to the Taleban’s offer, this might not substantially change the level of violence seen by civilians. Alice Wells, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South And Central Asian Affairs, said in a press briefing in Washington on 24 January after a return from a visit to three South Asian countries that there would be a “focus on the reduction in violence that the Afghan people can see and feel and appreciate.” Reports that General Scott Miller, US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, was attending the Doha meetings were also a sign that military details were being discussed.

Barnett Rubin, who was involved in attempts to find a negotiated end to the Afghan war under previous US administrations, told media he was convinced that “[t]he inter-relationships among the parts of the [negotiations] process are structured in such a way as to provide safeguards.” He argued that if Washington believed the Taleban were not fulfilling their obligations under the agreement, it could pause its troop withdrawal and demand further negotiations.

Conclusion

While it was US chief negotiator Khalilzad in 2019 who pushed for a quick US-Taleban deal, aiming at getting it signed before the US entered presidential election year, possibly in fear that President Trump might just order a troop withdrawal without an agreement and risk a breakdown of Afghanistan’s post-Taleban system, it is now the Taleban who seem to be in a hurry. They can be sure that the almost-signed September 2019 agreement was the best they could achieve, and that any continuation of negotiations would increase the pressure on them to make further concessions.

They are particularly hesitant to heed demands to agree to any ceasefire longer than the seven to ten days mentioned above under that name. This is because this would mean, as many analysts agree, them giving away their major bargaining chip before intra-Afghan peace negotiations started, namely recourse to violence. It has been widely argued that the Taleban might have difficulties remobilising their fighters after any long, full-scale ceasefire if negotiations – which could be expected to be difficult and long-winding – broke down. This is not the only reason, though. They also do not want to give in to a demand that is mainly held up now by the Afghan government, an entity they do not recognise and have so far rejected as a negotiating partner. This is particularly the case given that the US demands have been much more modest.

Much remains uncertain when it comes to the allegedly once-again finalised US-Taleban agreement and whether it is ready or not for signing. What seems clear is that the Khalilzad and the Taleban are continuing to bilaterally work toward a shared priority (although for different reasons): the removal of US troops from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the third – although not militarily self-reliant – party to the conflict, the Afghan government, is still being kept out of the negotiations.

The deal as it currently appears would not be a peace agreement, even though it is often called that (Shahin used the term twice in his 18 January interview, and many in the media have been talking about ‘peace talks’ for a very long time). In an optimistic interpretation, the deal would open the door for a second phase: intra-Afghan peace negotiations. Such a two-part process could be the only way to get such peace negotiations underway in the foreseeable future. However, there is no guarantee that intra-Afghan talks would indeed lead to a peace agreement and sustainable peace, for example if the US decided to complete their military withdrawal before an all-Afghan peace agreement was signed.

Indeed, whether the ‘intra-Afghan’ phase would happen at all would depend to a large extent on whether the Taleban stuck to their promise to talk to Kabul – and to do so seriously, not just as a cover for an attempted military takeover against a weakened Afghan government. It would also depend on whether the US and its allies kept up a credible deterrence against such a Taleban takeover, despite the troop reductions. The Afghan government side would also have to nominate a negotiating team that was credible, politically inclusive and widely accepted by other political forces and civil society in the country. (8)

A great deal stands in the way of any successful phase two, not least the multitude of problems that have combined to form the 40 years-old Afghan crisis and which need to be addressed when the diverse Afghan parties come to meet – undoubtedly in an atmosphere of deep mutual mistrust – to hammer out what the country’s future political system should look like and who would hold power and how that would be determined.

Meanwhile, the wrangling over the semantics of ‘ceasefire’ and ‘reduction of violence’ signifies a struggle over who shapes the discourse. The paradigm of ‘Afghan-led, Afghan owned’ talks is long dead, and has weakened the position of the third party to the conflict, the Afghan government. (The phrase never actually stipulated that the government alone should lead and own the talks, but that is how the government wanted to read it.) The weakness of the government’s position was exacerbated by the fact that various international actors (Russia, China, Qatar, Germany) brought other Afghan players, largely instead of the administration, into the game through the various intra-Afghan dialogue meetings (‘dialogue’ in contrast to ‘negotiations’; see AAN analysis here and here) and that the US accepted this, leading to Khalilzad’s invention of an “inclusive and effective national team” for the future intra-Afghan negotiations (quoted here) that would not only include representatives of the government but also of various political forces and civil society. (This could be considered either a clever means found by Khalilzad to outflank the Taleban’s refusal to speak directly with the government or a bowing to their demands.)

That the teams chosen to speak to the Taleban have been so heavily weighted against the government, in turn, heated up Afghanistan’s domestic political competition before the 28 September 2019 presidential election. This has strengthened the hands of Ghani’s domestic political opponents, such as his former partners in the now virtually defunct National Unity Government, the so-called ‘Abdullah camp’, and the ‘camp’ of former President Hamed Karzai. They used the debate between Khalilzad and Ghani about whether elections should be held before or after the conclusion of a peace agreement, and currently about whether the Taleban offer of a reduction of violence should be accepted or not (they are in favour, see a media report here) as presenting themselves as the real ‘pro-peace’ party. This is not fully unselfish as their priority seems to be to get rid of Ghani and take over again themselves. Such infighting plays into the Taleban’s hands who can afford to wait and harvest the political fallout, particularly so as there is no end yet in sight of the 28 September 2019 election. (A second round cannot be excluded, and after that, the potentially months-long process of complaints and adjudication would start anew.)

There is one large gap in the current debate about the US-Taleban deal. It seems that both sides, the Taleban and the US, are only thinking about how to reduce violence between their forces. There is no indication so far that they are discussing how this could also be achieved for the civilian population that continues to suffers record casualty levels. A halt to fighting between the US and Taleban forces in certain areas would likely reduce the immediate number of deaths and injuries to civilians as they are often hurt in airstrikes and suicide attacks on US facilities and transport. However, as we read what has apparently been discussed so far, a ‘reduction in violence’ could leave Taleban and Afghan government forces to continue to fight more or less unabatedly in areas without any US or other foreign troops’ presence (ie most of the country) until a full-scale ceasefire was reached. As a result, the population in the countryside and many small towns would likely not experience, against all assurances, the sort of reduction of violence they could “see and feel” which Alice Wells has described.

For the Afghan government, the dilemma is, again, how to respond to a possible US-Taleban agreement. If an agreement is reached over its head and it withholds its support, or protests too strongly, it may again be labelled a stumbling block to peace (as in early 2019; see AAN background here) and find its position in possible future negotiations weakened. Also, practically-speaking, it has no leverage over a US-Taleban agreement or US troop withdrawal, if the White House decides to have them. As bitter as it is, in the current diplomatic constellation, a full end of the war cannot realistically be achieved before an intra-Afghan solution, but a full end of the US involvement in the war could be. This, in turn, could result in a new and even escalated round of internal war.

The US-Taleban agreement appears to be the only visible option to get the Taleban to agree that Afghans can start to negotiate peace among themselves. However, it is a risky prospect; whether the US, particularly in a possible second Trump term, have the patience to keep sufficient troops in the country to prevent a Taleban takeover while negotiations (and possibly fighting) were still ongoing – which is what many Afghans believe is their plan once US troops are out of the way – is a wide open question.

Here, again, the question of some sort of a ceasefire would become crucial. It is difficult to imagine intra-Afghan peace negotiations without all parties finding a way to hold fire when they commence. It is also difficult to believe that the Afghan government would go into such peace talks, and the overwhelming majority of Afghans would support them, while the fighting and dying continues.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert and Kate Clark

 

(1) There were some speculations that the venue might move to Germany, but this seems to be a mix-up with the intra-Afghan dialogue meetings that would move there from Qatar, as this tweet by the German Embassy in Kabul indicated. This offer was now officially made to President Ghani by German chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting on 23 January 2020 in Davos (see here). (Read AAN analysis about the dialogue here.)

(2) In September 2019, it was also understood that the agreement would be announced in the presence of international ‘guarantors’. A Taleban spokesman was quoted at the time as saying they wanted to include the United Nations, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Russia, China and possibly other neighbouring countries (media report here). Russia, China and the European Union have expressed their readiness to do so. NATO (which has troops from a number of countries in Afghanistan, and its own bilateral security agreement with Kabul) and the Afghan government were also expected to welcome and support the agreement when it was announced – with the caveat that the Afghan government would require assurances from the Taleban and the US that intra-Afghan negotiations would commence swiftly.

(3) Not so the AP or Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov. On 15 January, he was quoted by Afghan Tolonews as saying that the Taleban had “in principle agreed for (sic) preliminary ceasefire even with the government… after signing [the agreement with the US]” and that this would “create [the] environment for intra-Afghan talks.” Tolonews did not give a source for Kabulov’s alleged statement and AAN was unable find a Russian source for this. On 16 January, AP again quoted “Taliban officials familiar with the negotiations” as saying that the insurgents had given Khalilzad an “offer for a temporary cease-fire in Afghanistan that would last between seven and 10 days” the day before during a meeting in Doha (it was not clear whether this was the agency’s language or that of the Taleban – given the Taleban’s earlier statements, it was likely the agency’s.)

(4) This part of his remarks was not directly quoted. It is thus not clear whether the use of the terms ‘dialogue’ and ‘negotiations’ was deliberate or not. They may have become muddled in the translation or summary of his remarks, or he may have used them interchangeably. If done deliberately, it would suggest that he is sidestepping a commitment to enter into negotiations with the Afghan government, by relegating the government to the intra-Afghan dialogue (which is generally understood to refer to the ongoing Qatari-German process).

(5) This also included the 28 September election day. As AAN reported here, although it was “the second-most violent election day the country has ever experienced, (…) the day remained calmer than many feared, without the massive terror attacks threatened by the Taleban.” This does not mean, however, that there has been no violence. The increased use of assassinations, often using magnetic mines, against government officials or members of the armed forces and smaller scale attacks, many of which can be attributed to the Taleban, also continued after September 2019. (A few examples here, here and here).

(6) This part of his remarks was also not directly quoted.

(7) The Ministry of Peace was formed in July 2019 and took over the functions of the practically-defunct High Peace Council (HPC). The HPC had formally been the Afghan government’s channel for all ‘reconciliation’ issues, but had never played much of a role in actual negotiations. While not formally dissolved, the council had stopped receiving funding in most of the second half of 2019, although it continued issuing statements).

(8) In order to achieve this, Khalilzad invented the term of an “inclusive and effective national team” in early 2019 by Khalilzad (quoted here) that would include, alongside Ghani’s own team, also members from the Abdullah camp in the current government, the political opposition and civil society representatives. The suggestion was made partly in response to accusations by chief executive Abdullah that President Ghani was trying to ‘monopolise’ the negotiations (here a recent media report). It is not clear whether Ghani responded to Khalilzad’s demands. The government has announced in July 2019 already that a 15-member negotiating team had been formed (media report here), but said it will announce its composition only after the conclusion of the US-Taleban agreement (media report here).

 

 

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Su-25KM Scorpion

Military-Today.com - Wed, 29/01/2020 - 22:40

Georgian Su-25KM Scorpion Ground Attack Aircraft
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Here’s An Update On The Military Aviation Mishaps In The Last Few Days

The Aviationist Blog - Wed, 29/01/2020 - 20:24
Other incidents were reported on the same day the E-11A BACN crashed in Afghanistan. On Jan. 27, 2020 three different military aviation mishaps were reported in a 12 hours timeframe: an E-11A BACN in Afghanistan, [...]
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Hearings - Public Hearing on Nuclear arms control regimes and security implications for the EU - 18-02-2020 - Subcommittee on Security and Defence

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The future of nuclear arms control regimes and the security implications for the EU' on Tuesday 18 February 2020 from 09.00 to 10.30hrs in room SPINELLI 1G3, with external experts.
Further information
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Highlights - Public Hearing on Nuclear arms control regimes and security implications for the EU - Subcommittee on Security and Defence

SEDE organises a public hearing on 'The future of nuclear arms control regimes and the security implications for the EU' on Tuesday 18 February 2020 from 09.00 to 10.30hrs in room SPINELLI 1G3, with external experts.
Further information
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

National Technologies Associates Tapped For Presidential Helicopter Support | Croatian OH-58D Crashed | Japan To Launch Space Defense Unit

Defense Industry Daily - Wed, 29/01/2020 - 05:00
Americas

National Technologies Associates won a $104.9 million deal in support of the Presidential Helicopters Program Office, Helicopter Marine Squadron One (HMX-1), and Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Twenty-One (HX-21). The contract is specifically for contractor logistics; research, development, test and evaluation; limited engineering and aircraft maintenance support on designated aircraft. The Presidential Helicopters Program Office has the responsibility of providing current and future (VXX) safe and timely helicopter transportation for the President and Vice President of the United States, heads of state and other official parties. Work will take place in Maryland and Virginia and is expected to be complete in February 2025.

The US Army awarded Boeing a $54.4 contract modification for retrofit kits and software development for the Apache Attack Helicopter. The Apache is a twin-engined army attack helicopter. It entered service with the US Army in 1984 and has been exported to Egypt, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the UK. The US Army has more than 800 Apaches in service. The US military first used the Apache in combat back in 1989 in Panama. It was also used in Operation Desert Storm and has supported low intensity and peacekeeping operations worldwide including Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo. Boeing will perform work under the modification in Mesa, Arizona. Estimated completion date is November 30, 2021.

Middle East & Africa

The US Air Force has confirmed that one of its Bombardier E-11A aircraft was lost in Afghanistan. The aircraft went down in Taliban-controlled territory in eastern Afghanistan on January 27. The service has four of these aircraft carrying the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node. It is unclear how many people were on board. Taliban social media accounts have posted unverified footage showing a burnt-out plane with US Air Force markings. The E-11A is an electronics surveillance aircraft used to bridge communications on the battlefield. Given the mountainous and rugged terrain in Afghanistan, the E-11A is essential for transmitting communications between ground units, commanders as well as other assets in the region. The aircraft is assigned to the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.

Europe

Lockheed Martin started building the first F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter for Denmark. Production began at its Fort Worth production facility in Texas. According to the company, the forward fuselage of aircraft L-001, the first of 27 F-35As destined for the Royal Danish Air Force entered production the week prior. Completion of this aircraft is scheduled for late 2020. Having selected the F-35A to replace its Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons in 2016, Denmark decided in 2018 to hedge payments of $3.7 billion so that the country’s department of defense could acquire the aircraft at a fixed price in its local currency, the Krone.

Croatia has lost a OH-58D on January 27 when the helicopter crashed off the country’s coast during a training flight. One pilot has been confirmed killed, while search is underway for the second crew member. The military helicopter crashed into the Adriatic Sea during a training flight. Reportedly the helicopter crashed between the island of Zlarin and the coastal town of Zablace near Sibenik. Croatia reportedly obtained 16 Kiowa Warrior helicopters, made between 2010 and 2012, as a donation from the United States in 2016.

Asia-Pacific

The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday his country will form a space defense unit to protect itself from potential threats as rivals develop missiles and other technology, noting that the new unit will work closely with its American counterpart recently launched by President Donald Trump. The Space Domain Mission Unit will start in April as part of Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force, Abe said in a policy speech marking the start of the year’s parliamentary session. He also said that Japan must defend itself from threats in cyberspace and from electromagnetic interference against Japanese satellites. Concerns are growing that China and Russia are seeking ways to interfere, disable or destroy satellites.

Today’s Video

Watch: WHY U.S NAVY’s CAPABILITIES ARE UNMATCHED ? DEFENSE UPDATES

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The Oldest F-4EJ Phantom In Japan Is Now Flying With A Dust Collection Pod Used To Detect Radioactive Particles

The Aviationist Blog - Wed, 29/01/2020 - 00:50
This Phantom has been in service with the Japan Air Self Defense Force since it was imported from the United States in 1971. Now, it is flying a pretty unusual mission. Phantom #301, assigned to [...]
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Heckler and Koch HK69A1

Military-Today.com - Tue, 28/01/2020 - 23:40

German Heckler and Koch HK69A1 Grenade Launcher
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U.S. F-16s From Aviano Take Part In Exercise “Agile Buzzard”

The Aviationist Blog - Tue, 28/01/2020 - 14:22
U.S. Air Force F-16s belonging to the 31st Fighter Wing rapidly deployed to Decimomannu Air Base, Italy as part of an exercise incorporating elements from the developing operational concept known as Agile Combat Employment. Several [...]
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Latest news - Next SEDE meeting - Subcommittee on Security and Defence

The next meeting of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Monday 17 February 2020 from 15:00 - 18:30 and Tuesday 18 February 2020 from 9:00 - 12:30 from 14:30 - 18:30 in Brussels (room SPINELLI 1G3).

You are welcome to follow us on the EP Multimedia Centre.


Recent press releases:

- MEPs exchange views with UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations - 21 November 2019
- Subcommittee for Security and Defence visit to the European Defence Agency - 18 November 2019
- Militarisation of space and race for resources: What can EU do about it? - 12 November 2019
- Children of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq: MEPs to assess the situation - 6 November 2019
- AFET/DROI/SEDE meet with UN Secretary General in New York and hold consultations with the US Congress in Washington, DC - 1st November 2019
- Parliament delegation to visit the United Nations General Assembly and US Congress - 25 October 2019
...


Further information
EP Mulitmedia Centre
Press release: MEPs exchange views with UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations - 21 November 2019
Press release: Subcommittee for Security and Defence visit to the European Defence Agency - 18 November 2019
Press release: Militarisation of space and race for resources: What can EU do about it? - 12 November 2019
Press release: Children of foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq: MEPs to assess the situation - 6 November 2019
Press release: AFET/DROI/SEDE meet with UN Secretary General in New York and hold consultations with the US Congress in Washington, DC - 1st November 2019
Press release: Parliament delegation to visit the United Nations General Assembly and US Congress - 25 October 2019
Press release: MEPs call for sanctions against Turkey over military operation in Syria - 24 October 2019
Press release: NATO Parliamentary Assembly in London: “Unilateral military operation in north east Syria is a security risk to us all” - 15 October 2019
Press release: Russian actions prompt NATO and EU to improve military mobility in Europe - 8 October 2019
Press release: End of INF Treaty: Is arms control out of fashion? - 26 September 2019
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

The Gates of Friendship: How Afghans cross the Afghan-Pakistani border

The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) - Tue, 28/01/2020 - 03:16

There are three official crossings on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a boundary also known as the Durand Line. Two of these crossings are well-known: Torkham in the east and Spin Boldak in the south of Afghanistan. The gates that separate the two countries in the south read “the Gates of Friendship” in Pashto: “De dosti darwaza.” To cross this border in the past, all people usually did not need international legal documents such as a visa or even a passport. This has changed. At Torkham, people are no longer allowed to cross the border without legal documents. At Spin Boldak, a verbal agreement with the Pakistani border authorities still allows people to cross the border without a passport, but they often do so with difficulty. AAN’s Ali Mohammad Sabawoon looks at how the people of these two countries cross these “Gates of Friendship” and how this friendship is really considered.

Border history

Disagreement over the status of the border has been a recurring problem in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations, one on which neither side wants to compromise. The de facto border that divides Afghanistan and Pakistan – the Durand Line – was drawn based on an agreement signed in 1893 between Abdul Rahman Khan, the emir of Afghanistan and Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat representing British India. Based on this agreement, Afghanistan’s territorial claims on the area from Chitral to the present-day area of Balochistan were ceded to British India.

In 1947 when the British left the subcontinent and Pakistan came into being, Khyber Pashtunkhwa (also sometimes spelt as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and the current Balochistan province were given to Pakistan. The government of Afghanistan at that time did not recognise the new state of Pakistan and Shah Mahmud Khan, the prime minister of Afghanistan, voted against the admission of Pakistan to the United Nations. The government of Afghanistan continued to claim Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as its own territory. Government officials argued that since the 1893 agreement had been with the British, who had now left the area, it was no longer in force. (Later Afghan governments have argued that the Durand Line agreement was entered into for a period of one hundred years only; and on 26 July 1949, a Loya Jirga declared all previous agreements regarding the Durand Line void.)

Since then, none of the Afghan governments has recognised the Durand Line as an official international border, nor has the Pashtun and Baloch ethnic groups living on either side of the Durand. Two well-known Pashtun leaders – Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan (1890–1988), who is also known as Bacha Khan and Fakhr-e Afghan (Afghans’ pride), and the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ in the West, due to his non-violent struggle against British colonialism as the head of the Khudai Khedmatgaran (God’s Servants) movement that was allied with Gandhi’s Congress Party, and Khan Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai (1907–73), also a Khudai Khedmatgaran leader, who is also known as Khan Shahid – led the struggle to create a united country. They considered Khyber Pashtunkhwa and Balochistan as Afghan soil. The government of Pakistan, for its part, considers the Durand Line the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Neither side has been willing to compromise on the issue. Even the government of the Taleban, which Pakistan had officially recognised and which was considered very close to the Pakistan government, did not accept the Durand Line as an official border. (1)

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border regime

The Durand Line is almost 2,400 kilometres long and borders one-third of the provinces of Afghanistan. It has three official border crossings that have all the border crossing essentials, such as immigration, customs and security checkpoints: Torkham, Spin Boldak and Ghulam Khan. The Spin Boldak border crossing in the south connects the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan with Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, via the Khojak pass. The Torkham border crossing links Jalalabad city, the capital of the eastern Nangrahar province, with Peshawar through Momand Dara district and the Khyber Pass. The Ghulam Khan border crossing connects Gurbaz district of the eastern Khost province to Meranshah city, the capital of North Waziristan.

Additionally, there are 18 unofficial motorable crossings and around 235 crossings that are navigable only on foot or by animal, some only with difficulty (see our analysis here). Motor crossings include Nawapas in Sarkani district of Kunar province, Angur Ada in Barmal district of Paktika province, Barikot in Narai and Khash pass in Marawara districts of Kunur province, Jaji Maidan in Jaji Maidan district of Khost province and Zanzir in Shumulzai district of Zabul province.

The Durand Line cuts through two large ethnic groups – the Pashtuns and the Baloch – that have always sought to maintain their cross-border links and have argued their right to free travel. Afghan citizens in general travel in large numbers to Pakistan. According to Afghan officials in Spin Boldak, tens of thousands of people commute through the southern border crossing on a daily basis. A survey report published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in 2017 gave 20,000 per day for Torkham and 25,000 to 30,000 for Spin Boldak. Many Afghans cross for work or business. Others go to see their relatives, as millions of Afghan refugees still live in Pakistan, or travel to Pakistan for medical treatment or education. In addition, Pakistani businessmen and daily workers commute to Afghanistan on a daily basis, as thousands of Pakistani residents from Chaman district, located near the border, have shops and other businesses in Spin Boldak. Those who cross sometimes do not even carry identification. “Tens of thousands of people from every province of the country cross the Spin Boldak border on a daily basis without legal documents and 500 to 600 people cross this border with visa and passport,” Muhammad Sharif Gharzai, a border commissary in Spin Boldak, told AAN on 7 January 2020.

The Pakistani government has over the past years sought to strengthen its control over the border. It has, at different times, either closed the border or tightened the border crossing rules for Afghans, especially after major security incidents in Pakistan or whenever Pakistan is politically pressured by Afghanistan or the United States over its interference in Afghanistan’s affairs or for giving refuge to terrorist-designated groups. Rules for Afghans crossing the border, for instance, became very strict after the Tehrik-e Taleban-e Pakistan (TTP) attacked a cadet school in Peshawar in late 2014 in which nearly 141 cadets were killed (see media report here). After this incident, the government of Pakistan gradually tightened border security and did not allow people to cross the Torkham border without legal documents. Before this, people were crossing the border to Pakistan and back to Afghanistan without identification. The Pakistani government also closed one of the official border crossings – Ghulam Khan – during its June 2014 Zarb-e Azb military operation in North Waziristan. The operation was launched in the wake of an attack on Jinnah International Airport in Karachi that was claimed by TTP and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). (The route through Ghulam Khan remained closed for four years. In 2018 it was reopened for limited trade, and on 19 August 2019 this port was officially reopened for all trade, as well as for personal crossings. See this report)

In early 2017, Pakistan started fencing the border with barbed wire along the Durand Line, stating that this tactic was aimed at stopping cross-border terrorists entering into Pakistan. Both the Afghan government and the Pashtun and Baloch ethnic groups strongly opposed the move. (2) Before this, Pakistan had already started to plant landmines along the Durand Line, which Pakistan said was to stop terrorists from coming to that country to carry out attacks. The United Nations and the Afghan government both strongly opposed the deployment of landmines. Pakistan has also dug trenches that are three metres deep, three to four metres wide and topped by barbed wire (see Dawn’s reporting here).

The fencing construction by the Pakistanis along the Durand Line has several times led to clashes between Afghan border police and Pakistani troops. Despite the controversy, the government of Pakistan said in January 2019 that 900 kilometres of barbed wire had been extended so far. In early November 2019, the Pakistani government said that it expected the fencing and trenches to be completed by the end of 2020.

Clashes have, in turn, regularly resulted in border closures. This was for instance the case in March 2017, when Afghan border police stopped Pakistani officials who were conducting a (Pakistani) population registration survey on Afghan territory, in the Jangir and Loqman villages of Spin Boldak district. After this turned into an armed clash, inflicting casualties on both sides, the Spin Boldak and Torkham borders were closed for nearly 23 days (see media report here). Similarly, on 14 October 2018, when Afghan security forces stopped Pakistani forces from extending the barbed wire fence into the Sro Sahanoarea of Shorabak district, clashes ensued. In response, Pakistani officials closed the Spin Boldak border, even though Shorabak district is nearly 50 kilometres from the Spin Boldak crossing. The border remained closed for two days (see media report here). (See also this 2013 AAN report about Afghan-Pakistani tensions over the border in Nangrahar province.)

The installation of the fence has blocked all motorable unofficial border crossings. The Pakistani government has repeatedly said that it will install alternative crossings. Local residents have confirmed that the Pakistani government has indeed installed alternative gates, for example in Nawapas and Zanzirs, but they say it is not yet permitting people to cross – with the exception, allegedly, of the Taleban. A local journalist in Nangrahar province, who did not want to be named, told AAN in December 2019 that the Pakistani militia does open the gates for the Taleban when they need to cross the border. All indications are that this is part of an official policy of the Pakistani government to facilitate the movement of the Taleban, who have sanctuaries in Pakistan as well as rented hospitals for their wounded fighters in some major cities of Pakistan, for example in Quetta and Karachi. (3)

How do the people commute?

In June 2016, the Pakistani government started enacting stricter border control efforts in both Spin Boldak and Torkham (Ghulam Khan was closed at the time). In Torkham, travellers without a visa were no longer allowed to cross the border in either direction. In Spin Boldak, legal documents were still not necessary, but border crossing rules were tightened. For example, no Afghans were allowed to cross the border without an Afghan national ID. According to a 2017 IOM survey report, the Pakistani actions reduced the traffic through the Torkham border crossing from 20,000 on a daily basis to a mere 2,000 to 2,500 persons. The IOM report also stated that at Spin Boldak, border rules were more flexible and around 25,000 to 30,000 individuals still crossed this border on daily basis. (See IOM’s report here.)

At the Ghulam Khan border point, now that it is open again, only people from the three southeastern provinces – Paktia, Paktika and Khost – are allowed to cross with their tazkeras (national ID card),provided they have relatives living across the Durand Line. They must give the names and places of residency of their relatives, after which the Pakistani border authorities register the names and allow them to cross.

Some people of Chaman district (Pakistan) and Spin Boldak district (Afghanistan) are provided with a simple document by the Pakistani government called a “border pass.” These passes are issued at the border. Travellers do not need to apply; they merely show their national IDs to the Pakistani border police and are provided with these passes. However, sometimes when travellers do not possess a border pass they are allowed to cross without them. The pass is valid for three months and renewable.

According to Afghan officials, as well as travellers who have gone to Quetta and returned, Pakistani officials in Spin Boldak nowadays only accept a certain type of original Afghan identification card (the most recent tazkera in A-4 size) or a passport. They do not allow people to pass with other kind of ID cards. However, Afghans without the required ID are still sometimes allowed to pass after they pay a bribe.

On 27 December 2018, a journalist who worked for a local radio station in Kandahar province told AAN, on the condition of anonymity, “Nearly ten years ago, I was working with an international media NGO. My office had issued me an ID card, which read PRESS at the top. I had that card with me for nearly two years. When I had to go to Quetta, I took that card with me. By showing that card to the Pakistani police, I was able to cross the border.” But now, he said, he needs to show his Afghan national ID card. Once when he was going to Quetta, he only had a copy of his national identity card with him and the Pakistani police told him to turn back. Some young men standing close to the border crossing called him over. “They asked me to give them 1,000 rupees [around seven US dollars]),” the journalist said. “I was sure those young men were linked to the police, as I was already aware of this, as the people who had crossed this border had already told me about them. I gave them the money and they told the police, ‘he is sick, let him pass’, and then they let me cross through the gate.” This man said at many other places he had also paid money to the police to be allowed to cross.

Muhammad Hashem, a traveller from Kandahar, told AAN, “When I went to Quetta to see my relatives, I had my original ID card (A-4 size) with me. When the police asked me for the tazkera, I showed that and the police allowed me to pass the border.” Two of the men who were with him in the vehicle from Kandahar told him, after they met again inside the terminal, that they had needed to give money to the police. He said one of the two passengers had a passport and another had a tazkera, but it had been issued during President Daud Khan’s era (1973–78).

Nur Khan, another Afghan, told AAN in October 2018 that when he went to Pakistan to see his relatives, he had crossed the border easily, as he had his tazkera with him. However, when he came back with his sister and her children, he realised he had forgotten his tazkera in Pakistan. The policeman told him to return. Nur Khan said, “I asked him what alternatives there were to cross the border. I meant for them to ask for money, so I could pay them, but he told me to be careful, as cameras were fixed nearby. After about 15 minutes, he let me go. I think it was because of the children, otherwise I would probably not have been able to come back.” Many other people told AAN that the Pakistani police in practice allow people to cross the border without documents, or without the proper documents, after they pay a bribe.

Apart from the gate at the border, checkpoints mark the road from Chaman to Quetta in as many as six different places where police take money from Afghans travelling to Quetta. Often even visa and passport holders who travel through the Spin Boldak border are compelled to give money to the Pakistani police on the road from the Spin Boldak border into Quetta city.

Different forms of national identity cards

The different forms of national Afghan identity card are a source of confusion and hassle. Afghans can have one of the more than five different identity cards that have been issued in the different eras. ID cards issued during the rule of King Muhammad Zaher Shah and Prime Minister (and later President) Muhammad Daud are passport sized and read “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” next to a logo. This ID comprises 14 pages. The IDs issued during pre-Najibullah PDPA era (1979-87) are also passport sized but with red colour (for communism) and read at the top “Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.” The ID issued in the era of the mujahedin government (1992–96) was also passport sized, again reading “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.” During the Taleban regime, there were two kinds of tazkeras: one in passport size and the second on A-4 sized paper. The second one was issued right up until the Taleban’s collapse. The Taleban tazkera reads “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” The current government also gave out A-4 sized ID documents. The most recent kind of ID card is an electronic version that the current government started issuing to residents of Kabul in May 2018 in a process that continues (see earlier AAN reporting here).

Pakistani border police take advantage of this situation. Sharif Gharzai, the border commissary mentioned above, told AAN in October 2018 that Pakistani officials pretend they accept only one tazkera. In response, in October 2018, a high-ranking Pakistani official in the embassy of Pakistan in Kabul, told AAN, on the condition of anonymity, “Pakistan is a different country and Afghanistan is a different country; the people who cross the border should have legal documents.” He added that as there was a concern about the different types of identity card. Afghan officials should give samples of all valid identity cards to the Pakistani border police. The official said, “At the Torkham border, we do not let Afghans cross the border without passport. In Spin Boldak, we have given this [that they are allowed to cross with only an ID card] as a special concession to the Afghans so that they can cross the border. We will soon implement the visa rules and regulations in Spin Boldak as well.” Well over a year later, this has still not been implemented.

In August 2019, Afghan border official Gharzai told AAN that a few months earlier the Pakistani authorities had said that only the people of the four southern provinces (Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Urozgan) would be allowed to cross the border without documents, and that by August they were saying that only people from Kandahar province and Spin Boldak district would be permitted to pass – this despite the fact that people from other parts of Afghanistan (such as Herat, Farah and Nimroz in the west, and Ghazni and Wardak in central Afghanistan) also go through this border. But for now, he said on 7 January 2020, “Pakistani officials have been allowing Afghans to cross the border with any kind of tazkera ID card for the last three months.” He said that tens of thousands of people still cross the border on a daily basis and that around 500 to 600 individuals cross the border per day with legal documents. According to him, “the Pakistani border police sometimes bother the visa holders as well and take money from them. When we [Afghan officials] hear about this, or when travellers complain that the Pakistanis have taken money, we talk to Pakistani officials and take the money back.” Gharzai said that although Pakistani officials still take money from those who do not have tazkeras, he thought it happened less now compared to the past. He did not say why the Pakistani government had eased the way for travellers to cross the border.

In January 2020, AAN approached travellers who had recently crossed the border, as well as residents of Kandahar province, for an update on the situation. One traveller, Asadullah Khan, told AAN that when he recently returned from Quetta to Kandahar, he did not have his tazkera with him. A Pakistani police officer did not let him cross the border and Asadullah said he quarrelled with the officer, asking him why he did not let him return to his own country. Asadullah said the police officer beat him and searched him. He had 40,000 rupees (around 300 US dollars) with him and when the police officer saw the money in his pocket, “he told me to go with him to a nearby container. When I went with him, he told me that I should give him 10,000 Rupees [around 65 US dollars] or he would put me in prison. I was very afraid so I gave him the money.” Asadullah said that when he crossed the border, he told the story to the Afghan police standing near the gate. He said, “The Afghan police told me to wait for one hour and that they would take the money back from the Pakistanis, but I didn’t want to wait.”

Muhammad Ebrahim Taj, a civil society activist in Spin Boldak district confirmed to AAN that the Pakistani border officials had somewhat eased the border crossing for travellers, but he said that the police still took money from travellers. He thought there were two reasons for Pakistani officials easing the crossings: First, Pakistani shopkeepers with shops in Spin Boldak had staged protests in Chaman district, demanding that their government facilitate the border crossings. Apparently, the Afghan government had also pressured these shopkeepers to seek redress from Pakistani officials. Second, the Afghan government had expelled many Pakistanis (mostly Punjabis) who had come to Kandahar city and Spin Boldak district, with legal documents, to work there – in the construction business but also as barbers, shopkeepers or businessmen, sharing shops with Afghans or Pashtun residents from the Pakistani side of the Durand Line. He said these two pressure tools may have made the Pakistanis ease the border crossings to some extent.

Temporary verbal agreements 

The border crossing issues along the Durand Line are the kind that would be best addressed with a permanent, bilateral agreement. The freedom to travel between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a social and economic necessity. People of these two countries are ethnically, religiously and historically interlinked. An additional consideration, at a lower economic level, is the importance of border crossings for the poor and vulnerable (eg, for shuttle trading, visiting relatives or medical treatment). At the Torkham crossing, the legal document requirements now result in weeks-long travel delays, as Afghans have to wait for their visas. If this visa system is implemented at the Spin Boldak border crossing as well, this will require a huge increase in the number of Pakistani consular employees to deal with the demand. Travellers would need to wait for weeks in front of the Pakistani consulate in Kandahar, just as they are now waiting in front of the Pakistani embassy in Kabul.

An additional complication arises for women and children, as the majority of them do not possess identity cards, due to some Afghan families traditionally not allowing pictures of women taken (keeping their faces from being exposed to strangers). Also, these men might not have considered the need for identification cards for the entire family.

Neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan wants the border to be sealed permanently; nor do they want the crossings to become practically impassable. Both sides have an obvious incentive to meet and find a permanent solution to this issue. And yet, neither government has been able to find such a solution.

In practice, the agreements tend to be verbal and made on an ad hoc basis. Sharif Gharzai, for instance, told AAN that border officials of both sides had made a verbal – but not written – agreement in July 2018 that all Afghans and Pakistanis can cross the Spin Boldak border with just their national identity cards. He said that these kinds of meeting take place whenever it is necessary. Gharzai said the Afghan central government does not allow him to make written agreements about the border crossings with Pakistani officials. Although he did not say why he was not allowed to do this, an Afghan government official in the Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs, who did want his name published, explained. He told AAN that the government of Afghanistan is wary that Pakistan might treat any signed agreement related to the border or border crossings as an Afghan recognition of the Durand Line as an official border. All in all, there appears to be no clear roadmap to a settlement on the various issues that restrict cross-border journeys for Afghans.

Edited by Christian Bleuer, Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan was the grandfather of currently active Pakistani Pashtun politician Asfandyar Wali Khan of Awami National Party, while Khan Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai was the father of Mahmood Khan Achakzai, who leads the Pakhtunkhwa Melli Awami Party. For example, AsfandyarWali, the leader of the Awami National Party (ANP), the biggest Pashtun political party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told an interviewer that Parvez Musharraf, the then president of Pakistan told him that if he could convince Afghanistan’s president at the time, Hamed Karzai, to recognise the Durand Line, the war in Afghanistan would end. Asfandyar replied that if Musharraf recognised the Line of Control with India in Kashmir, Hamid Karzai would recognise the Durand Line. Musharraf then told him that his nation would not accept this and that he was told Karzai’s nation would also not accept the Durand Line. Asfandyar also relayed how when Pakistan’s Interior Minister Nasirullah Babar had asked Mullah Omar, when the leader of the Taleban still governed Afghanistan, to recognise the Durand Line, Mullah Omar had told him, “Get the hell out of here, you treacherous man.”(See Asfandyar’s video here.)

(2) Mahmood Khan Achakzai  also strongly criticised the spread of barbed wire along the Durand Line (see here), as didAsfandyar Wali Khan (for both politicians, see footnote 1). Asfandyar, for instance, welcomed the opening of the road to Kartarpur between India and Pakistan in November 2019 – which allows the Sikh community of India to visit the tomb of Guru Nanak (who died in 1538) in that city without visa and passport – and urged Pakistan to remove the barbed wire from the Durand Line as soon as possible (see here). See also this video of a Pakistani mullah who belongs to the Jamaat-e Ulama-e Islam Fazl Rahman group (JUI-F) from Chaman district of Balochistan province, in which he condemns the fencing and the visa system.

(3) Despite the difficulties, many routes are still open for the Taleban. For example, the Taleban usually cross the border in the Zanzir area of the Shumulzai district of Zabul province or in the Bahramcha area of Dishu district of the southern Helmand province. The Taleban can even move injured fighters to their hospitals in Quetta for treatment. In 2015, when Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur had to take over the leadership of the Taleban, up to two thousand local commanders passed through these illicit border crossings (Bahramcha of Helmand and Zanzir of Zabul province) to participate in the selection of their new leaders. See AAN’s dispatches here and here. In the east and southeast, residents have told AAN that the Taleban are allowed to cross the motorable unofficial crossings whenever they want.

 

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QLG-10

Military-Today.com - Tue, 28/01/2020 - 00:15

Chinese QLG-10 Underbarrel Grenade Launcher
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Video of a committee meeting - Monday, 27 January 2020 - 16:05 - Subcommittee on Security and Defence

Length of video : 83'
You may manually download this video in WMV (864Mb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

U.S. Air Force E-11A BACN (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node) Aircraft Has Crashed in Afghanistan

The Aviationist Blog - Mon, 27/01/2020 - 15:02
Images coming from Ghazni clearly show the remains of a USAF E-11A BACN aircraft. A U.S. Air Force’s E-11A BACN (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node) crashed during the morning on Jan. 27, 2020 in Afghanistan. The [...]
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Mitsubishi 8x8 Special Wheeled Chassis

Military-Today.com - Mon, 27/01/2020 - 00:00

Japanese Mitsubishi 8x8 Special Wheeled Chassis
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Dramatic Rescue as U.S. Navy MH-60S Helicopter Crashes in Philippine Sea Off Okinawa; 5 Rescued.

The Aviationist Blog - Sat, 25/01/2020 - 23:36
Joint Japanese/U.S. Rescue Saves Crew, Multiple Ships Involved in Search and Rescue. A dramatic multinational rescue took place in the Philippine Sea off the island of Okinawa on Saturday when a U.S. Navy MH-60S with [...]
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Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (28): ECC starts final, decisive phase of complaints procedure

The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) - Sat, 25/01/2020 - 02:33

The process to determine the outcome of Afghanistan’s 2019 presidential election has moved into its last phase. The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has started to deal with the 6,292 appeals filed against the decisions made by its provincial offices. The ECC has 15 working days to adjudicate the appeals, but it may need more time, given that the most complicated questions have been deferred to this last phase. Moreover, the ECC decisions are likely to result in renewed recounts, which could lead to even further delays. The process is carefully scrutinised, in particular by the teams of the two runners-up, as even relatively small changes in the number and distribution of the votes could change the outcome of the election. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili answers the main questions surrounding the conclusion of the complaints process.

1. How did the first phase of the complaints procedure – complaints registration – go?

Article 91 of the electoral law provides the following timeframe for complaints regarding the preliminary results:

  • three working days for candidates or their agents to file any complaints or objections they may have;
  • 15 working days for the provincial ECCs to finalise and publish the results of their adjudications of these complaints;
  • three working days for the candidates or their agents to lodge their appeals with the central ECC, if they are not happy with the adjudications by the provincial ECCs; and
  • 15 working days for the central ECC to adjudicate the appeals, if any.

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced the preliminary results of the 28 September 2019 presidential election on 22 December 2019, almost three months after the vote took place. On the same day the ECC announced in a press conference that it was ready to receive complaints: the complaints process would start the following day, on 23 December, and continue for three days (AAN’s report here). After this three day period, ECC chair Zohra Bayan Shinwari told a press conference on 26 December that the ECC had registered around 16,500 complaints. Around 14,000 of these complaints were about 33 provinces, and around 2,300 complaints were about Kabul. She said that around 8,000 complaints had been lodged by the Stability and Integration team led by Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, 4,400 by Peace and Islamic Justice led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, more than 3,000 by the Stable Builder team led by President Ashraf Ghani and 15 by the Security and Justice team of Rahmatullah Nabil (AAN’s background on these teams here).

Table 1: Categorisation of complaints by electoral team

No Number of complaints Electoral team 1 8,000 Stability and Integration 2 4,400 Peace and Islamic Justice 3 3,000 State Builder 4 15 Security and Justice

Source: Table by AAN using data from ECC’s 26 December press conference

ECC commissioner Qutubddin Roydar told the same press conference that “around 84 per cent of the complaints and objections” had been registered directly with the central ECC. ECC secretary and spokesman Muhammad Qasem Elyasi said that the large volume of complaints registered with the central ECC in Kabul (instead of the respective provincial ECCs) had been beyond their expectation. He said it would be time-consuming to send these complaints to the respective provincial ECCs for adjudication.

2. How did the second phase of the complaints procedure – adjudication by the provincial offices – go?

After the registration of the complaints, the ECC first divided them into 16 categories. The ECC in its bulletin number 23 said that complaints and objections could be classified based on province, subject, nature, priorities and electoral tickets. On 5 January 2020, ECC chair Shinwari provided the details (see Table 2) about how complaints were categorised.

Table 2: Division of 16,545 complaints into 16 categories

No Number of complaints Subject of complaints 1 6,881 complaints regarding the discrepancy between biometric votes and the result forms 2 119 complaints regarding increasing of votes in favour of a candidate 3 552 complaints about decreasing of votes to the disadvantage of a candidate 4 4 complaints about counting of votes of one candidate for another candidate 5 282 complaints regarding the casting of votes before the specified time 6 381 complaints about the casting of votes after the specified time 7 657 complaints about votes without biometric data 8 2,140 complaints concerning invalidation of [votes from] polling stations without any reason 9 39 complaints about missing result forms 10 36 complaints about changes to the result forms after the recount 11 1,338 complaints about suspicious votes 12 29 complaints about biometric devices 13 1,380 unjustified complaints 14 4 complaints regarding partiality of IEC staff in the recount process 15 3 Complaints about vote count in absence of agents 16 1,209 Other complaints

Source: Table by AAN using data from ECC’s bulletin 23

The ECC also categorised the complaints in terms of their nature into three sets: electoral negligence, electoral violations and electoral crimes (See Table 3).

Table 3: Categorisation of complaints in terms of their nature

No Number of complaints Type of complaints 1 1,371 Electoral malpractices 2 4,303 Electoral violations 3 3,272 Electoral crimes

Source: Table by AAN using data from ECC’s 5 January press conference

A third categorisation was based on the priority in terms of their impact on the election results (see Table 4). It is assumed that category A is the highest priority and has the largest potential impact on the election results, followed by B, C and D respectively.

Table 4: Categorisation of complaints in terms of their impact on the election results

No Number of complaints Priority 1 8,794 A 2 1,318 B 3 2,677 C 4 100 D

Source: Table by AAN using data from ECC’s 5 January press conference

This bulletin also provided a map showing the number of complaints in each province. As shown in Table 5, the provinces with the highest number of complaints were Nangahar (2,283), Kandahar (1,924), Khost (1,587), Helmand (1,439), Kabul (1,400), Paktia (1,283) and Paktika (997). Jawzjan had the lowest number of complaints (4), followed by Samangan (17).

Table 5: Provincial breakdown of complaints related to preliminary results

No Province Number of complaints 1 Nangrahar 2,283 2 Kandahar 1,924 3 Khost 1,587 4 Helmand 1,439 5 Kabul 1,400 6 Paktia 1,283 7 Paktika 997 8 Baghlan 553 9 Kunar 503 10 Ghazni 466 11 Logar 360 12 Laghman 335 13 Ghor 297 14 Herat 270 15 Nimruz 265 16 Zabul 243 17 Farah 215 18 Wardak 207 19 Kapisa 186 20 Takhar 162 21 Balkh 158 22 Nuristan 103 23 Parwan 92 24 Faryab 76 25 Badakhshan 64 26 Kunduz 63 27 Daikundi 55 28 Urozgan 49 29 Bamyan 36 30 Badghis 25 31 Panjshir 22 32 Sar-e Pul 21 33 Samangan 17 34 Jawzjan 4

Source: Table by AAN using data from ECC’s bulletin 23

3. What was the outcome of the adjudications by the provincial ECCs?

The adjudication of the complaints by the provincial ECCs was completed on 13 January 2020, within the specified timeline and despite considerable difficulties. (1) This was announced by the ECC at a press conference on 14 January, where ECC chair Shinwari said that the provincial ECCs made the following decisions:

  • 9,866 out of 16,545 registered complaints were rejected due to lack of evidence;
  • 18 complaints resulted in corrective actions;
  • 5,316 polling stations in 21 provinces were referred for recount;
  • 109 polling stations were invalidated;
  • 75 individuals were given a cash fine;
  • 71 individuals were relieved from their duties;
  • 3 complaints were introduced to judicial agencies; and
  • 111 complaints were considered exceptional cases (ie, cases the provincial ECCs were unable to adjudicate and had referred to the central ECC).

On 17 January, deputy head of the ECC secretariat, Yasin Hamraz, told AAN that the number of polling stations invalidated was actually 47, not 109. He said that 62 polling stations from Badakhshan, which had been referred for recount, had mistakenly been included in the list of invalidated polling stations. The number of polling stations referred for recount was thus 5,378, not 5,316. The ECC has not provided any details as to how many votes were invalidated from the 47 polling stations or which candidate these favoured most. The recounts, as will be discussed below, have also not yet commenced, so it is too early to predict how the election results might be affected.

Table 6 (see here for the higher resolution) shows the overview of the decisions by province (with the corrected details as provided by Hamraz).

Table 6: Adjudications by provincial ECCs of 16,545 complaints. Source: election stakeholders

The 111 exceptional cases, the ECC said, are the complaints which the provincial ECCs did or could not adjudicate and referred to the central ECC. They include four important areas of complaints that concern large numbers of votes: the 102,012 votes cast outside polling hours, the 137,630 votes that have been deemed suspicious, an unknown number of votes that are affected by discrepancies between the biometric votes and result forms, and the votes of 2,423 stations whose biometric data are missing (media reports here and here).

The IEC has included these sets of votes in the preliminary results, including votes from 298 out of 2,423 polling stations with missing biometric devices/memory cards and biometric data. On 7 November 2019, through decision number 105, the IEC ordered the audit and recount of votes from 2,423 polling stations where biometric devices or memory cards, and thus biometric data, were missing (see AAN’s reporting here). After the recount and audit, the IEC, decided that the result forms of 298 of these 2,423 polling stations should be processed, ie included in the count, because respectively the audit and recount report showed that the ballots of these polling stations had biometric confirmation stickers, no complaints had been registered against them, and the biometric devices of 82 of these stations had been checked and fount to show 1,746 sets of biometric data (they did not explain how and where they had found the biometric devices; see decision number 116, dated 21 December 2019, in Dari here). Two IEC commissioners, Mawlana Muhammad Abdullah and Mosafer Qoqandi, refused to sign this verdict.

The provincial ECCs have, in turn, ordered almost 5,400 polling stations to be recounted. ECC secretary and spokesman Elyasi said during the 14 January press conference that the plan for the recount would be shared with the IEC within two days. Now, more than a week later, the recount has still not started (more on this below).

4. How did the third phase of the complaints procedure – registration of appeals against ECC decisions – go?

According to the electoral law, complainants can register their appeals with the ECC within the three working days following the announcement of the decisions. In the end, the appeals period continued until 20 January. According to a deputy spokesperson, Zarmina Kakar, the adjudications in three provinces – Kabul, Khost and Paktika – were communicated to the parties only on 15 January. Therefore the period was extended in order not to waste the electoral campaigns’ right to appeal (media report here). (2)

ECC chair Shinwari told a press conference (see video here) on 21 January that 6,292 appeals had been made. The highest number of appeals were registered in Kandahar (1,573), Paktia (853), Nagrahar (818),Khost (772), Kabul (505) and Paktika (485). No appeals were lodged in the five provinces of Parwan, Maidan Wardak, Takhar, Jawzjan and Badghis.

Table 7 (see here for higher resolution) shows the result of the adjudication of the 16,545 registered complaints per province that may affect the outcome of the election, as well as the number of appeals. The final adjudication was as follows: 9,864 complaints rejected, 5,378 polling stations ordered to be recounted, 47 polling stations invalidated, and 111 exceptional cases referred to the centre.

Table 7: Provincial breakdown of complaints, adjudications by PECCs and appeals. Source: election stakeholders

Shinwari said that the central ECC had started addressing these appeals by going through the following procedure: categorisation, examination, analysis, scrutiny, decision, communication and implementation of decisions. Shinwari also said that the central ECC had not yet made any decisions about the decisions by the provincial ECCs.

ECC commissioner Sayed Qutbuddin Roydar said that all appeals had been registered by the three major electoral tickets – Stability and Integration led by Chief Executive Abdullah, State Builder led by President Ghani, and Peace and Islamic Justice led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – but did not provide details on how many appeals had been made by each ticket.

The two main teams, however, did release numbers. On 19 January, a member of Abdullah’s Stability and Integration team, Nur Rahman Akhlaqi, wrote in a Facebook post that Abdullah’s team had completed its process and had filed 4,370 appeals with the central ECC. A spokesman for President Ghani’s State Builder team, Ahmad Folad Hamdard, told the daily Hasht-e Sobh that their team had lodged 1,164 appeals with the ECC. If correct, this indicates that a total of 5,534 appeals could have been registered by the campaigns of the two main contenders, and a total of 758 appeals by Hekmatyar’s ticket.

ECC secretary and spokesman Elyasi said that the appeals revolved around the following issues: the discrepancy between the biometric data and the votes recorded on the result sheets, votes cast outside the polling hours, non-biometric votes, suspicious votes, and a relatively small discrepancies of votes (between one and five).

While at the 14 January press conference, ECC commissioner Elyasi said that the ECC would share the recount plan with the IEC within two days; at the 21 January press conference he said that they were still debating whether the polling stations referred by the provincial ECCs for recount should be recounted immediately, or only after the central ECC had addressed the appeals against the decisions ordering the recount. He said that the ECC had not made any decision yet, but that after categorisation of the appeals they might be able to develop a better understanding as to how many polling stations needed to be recounted and when.

He also said that different provincial ECCs had dealt with the same type of complaints in different ways. For example, in the case of complaints against votes cast outside polling hours, in some provinces the ECC had treated these complaints as exceptional cases that needed to be referred to Kabul, some offices had rejected them, some had confirmed them and some had referred the polling stations for recount. According to him, if they did the recount now, they would be implementing only one type of decision in this category of complaints. Therefore, he said, the ECC needed to first unify the decisions. (3) The unification of different decisions within the same category of complaints implies that the number of polling stations referred for recount could still significantly go up, as well as down.

Speaking to AAN on 22 January, the executive director of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), Yusuf Rashid, criticised the central ECC for not having communicated a guiding, principled stance to the provincial ECCs on how to deal with the major types of disputed votes. He said that if the ECC had taken a clearer position on those votes, the provincial ECCs would have taken unified decisions. Rashid believed that different decisions about the same complaints might have also been made in the complaints process of the parliamentary elections, but since the constituency for the presidential election is the entire country, it was now easier for the different electoral tickets to recognise that this had been the case, since they were following and cross-checking the procedure in all provinces.

5. What happens now?

Officially, the central ECC now has 15 working days, starting from 21 January, to adjudicate the 6,292 appeals made by three electoral tickets in 29 provinces. If all goes to plan, the outcome of the adjudications could be expected by 8 February.

However, several challenges lie ahead of the central ECC. First, it needs to categorise and map the apparent mess created by the varying adjudications by its own provincial offices. As mentioned above, the provincial ECCs made four different types of decisions about complaints regarding votes cast outside polling hours alone.

Second, the central ECC needs to make the tough decisions about certain major blocks of votes that have been disputed by many electoral tickets, in particular by Chief Executive Abdullah. These include the 102,012 votes cast outside polling hours, the 137,630 ‘suspicious’ votes, and the votes from the 298 polling stations. Some provincial ECCs might have rejected complaints about these votes or about some of them, some might have referred them for recounts, some might have invalidated them and some might have referred them to the centre. There are probably appeals against all these different decisions by the different electoral tickets, which the ECC may decide on individually, but the ECC could also decide to deal with all similar cases in one go (which could involve block invalidation or validation, either with or without recounts).

Third, the ECC needs to come up with the final list of the polling stations that need to be recounted as soon as possible. Currently, the provincial ECCs have referred 5,378 polling stations for recount. There seems to be some appeals against these decisions. The central ECC now needs to decide whether it confirms the existing list of polling stations or adds to it or decreases it. Once the ECC is clear about the number of polling stations to be recounted, the recount still needs to take place, which may take more time.

So although in terms of procedures, the process is approaching its end, many of the most complicated questions on how to deal with relatively large numbers of suspicious, disputed or irregularly cast votes will only now be faced. The confusions and ambiguities surrounding the complaint process, and the unresolved question of how the ECC may deal with these thorny issues, make it difficult to predict whether we might still be facing a first-round winner or whether we will need to prepare for a runoff. Given the very small margin that put President Ghani above the 50 per cent threshold in the preliminary results (less than 12,000 votes; see AAN analysis here), invalidation of any of the disputed blocks of votes – or even less far-reaching decisions – could easily push Ghani’s share under the threshold.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) In the process of addressing the complaints, ECC officials had criticised the IEC for not cooperating. For instance, on 6 January 2020, head of the ECC secretariat Chaman Shah Etemadi accused the IEC of procrastinating in providing the necessary user account and password details to the provincial ECCs, which, he said, would prevent them from addressing “complaints emanating from the difference between the biometric and non-biometric votes.” The IEC responded by saying that they had already acted according to the memorandum of understanding between the IEC, the political parties and Dermalog (the provider of the biometric technology) by giving each candidate a user account and giving the ECC two accounts. Etemadi, however, said that the two user accounts were being used by the central ECC and were not available to the provincial offices (see here). This resulted in what Muhammad Reza Fayaz, deputy spokesman for the ECC, called the “wastage of the candidates’ right to appeal” since the adjudication of complaints regarding the difference between biometric voter data and the result forms now had to be referred to the central ECC, where the decision will be final.

(2) The period for appeals seems to have started in each province as soon as the adjudication of complaints was finished. For example, on 12 January 2020, Muhammad Reza Fayyaz, deputy spokesman for the ECC, told Hasht-e Sobh that a number of campaigns had filed a total of 39 appeals in five provinces against the decisions communicated by the respective provincial offices. These included 28 appeals in Zabul, two in Urozgan, three in Sar-e Pul, three in Badakhshan and three others in Panjshir. Explaining the procedure to AAN on 13 January, Fayyaz told AAN that whenever a provincial office makes a decision about the complaints, one copy is provided to the complainant, one to the person implicated in the complaint , one to the relevant provincial IEC and one to the observers.

(3) The different and conflicting decisions by the provincial ECCs seem to have been one of the main reasons for the registration of a high number of appeals. According to a member of Abdullah’s Stability and Integration team, Nur Rahman Akhlaqi, in a Facebook post on 19 January, the central ECC now faces the following list of challenges:

  • The provincial ECCs had made different decisions about the same complaints, which the ECC has to unify in accordance with the electoral law, and relevant regulations and procedures.
  • Provincial ECCs rejected many “valid and documented complaints” which the ECC has to carefully clear and ensure their transparency.
  • The previous recount (by the IEC, see AAN’s reporting here) has in many cases led to “double fraud” about which complaints have been filed and although the IEC opposes the [renewed] recount out of fear of legal consequences, the ECC should give preference to the law over “any illegal and treacherous pressures.”
  • The separation of fraudulent and non-fraudulent votes needs to be done through a QR code reader that needs to be updated based on new decisions; otherwise, they may bring back fraudulent votes which had been separated before.
  • A clear decision is needed about the votes without biometric data and the votes that were cast outside the polling hours.
  • The ECC needs to seriously deal with perpetrators of electoral violations.
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Top 10 Anti-Tank Rocket Launchers

Military-Today.com - Sat, 25/01/2020 - 00:20

Top 10 Anti-Tank Rocket Launchers in the World
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U.S. Air Force Uses Russian Mi-24 Hind Gunships in Training at Davis-Monthan AFB.

The Aviationist Blog - Fri, 24/01/2020 - 15:56
First Time Actual Adversary Training Aircraft Disclosed in Use at Tucson Base. Russian-built Mi-24 ‘Hind’ attack helicopters are no strangers to U.S. airshow venues like Nellis AFB for previous editions of Aviation Nation, but official [...]
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