Defence`s Feeds

Andar district in southern Ghazni province, which has had a shadow Taleban administration since 2007, has been under virtually complete Taleban control since October 2018. The Afghan government continues to provide education and health services despite the fact that all of Andar’s government offices have relocated to Ghazni city, while the Taleban supervise their work. AAN researcher Fazal Muzhary offers an in-depth account of how the two parallel forms of government have operated over the years, how this has affected the lives of ordinary people and how, in the main, they are reasonably happy with the arrangement.

Service Delivery in Insurgent-Affected Areas is a joint research project by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Previous publications in the series are: an introduction with literature review and methodology, “One Land, Two Rules (1): Service delivery in insurgent-affected areas, an introduction” by Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark; four district case studies: on Obeh district of Herat province by Said Reza Kazemi; Dasht-e Archi district in Kunduz province by Obaid Ali; Achin district in Nangrahar province by Said Reza Kazemi and Rohullah Sorush and Nad Ali district by Ali Mohammad Sabawoon; and a case study on polio vaccinations by Jelena Bjelica.

Andar district: the context

• The district centre, Mirai, lies about 28 kilometres to the south of Ghazni city, the provincial capital. It is linked to the city by three roads, including two asphalted highways. The first also connects Paktika province with Ghazni city through the eastern villages of the district and the second is the Kabul-Kandahar Highway, better known as Highway One, which passes through the western part of Andar district. The third, un-asphalted road leads through rural areas in the centre of the district.
• According to the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG)’s 2017 district profile, the population of Andar is around 580,000. The 2018 data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), however, estimates its population to be around 131,524 people (see the data here).
• Andar district is almost entirely inhabited by Pashtuns, mainly belonging to the Andar tribe. There are also five villages inhabited by ethnic Tajiks: Nani, Tela Qala, Haji Qala, Mirai (the district centre), and Sarda. In the village of Sarda, there are about 200 Tajiks families, while the other villages have between ten and 15. In Nani and Tela Qala, some people speak Dari, but elsewhere residents only speak Pashto.
• The Taleban began their guerrilla activities in the district against the Afghan government around 2003. Since then, Andar has experienced a great deal of fighting, resulting in the complete fall of the district to the Taleban in October 2018.
• Presently, the Taleban control the entire district with the exception of six government security posts. Before and after October 2018, the district centre witnessed massive attacks both from the Taleban and Afghan government security forces. For example, the Taleban besieged the district centre for three days in October 2017. On the government side, the latest attack was carried out in December 2018 with both Afghan and US air forces bombing the district governor’s compound, completely demolishing it.

Andar district: service delivery

• Education: Andar district has 42 schools. All are serviced by the government but controlled by the Taleban. One school was closed for a month between late March and late April 2019 after shelling from a nearby government military base killed pupils and a teacher. On paper, one girls’ school is operational. However, due to ongoing fighting, it has not been active for well over a decade, since around 2004. The Taleban have complete control over schools, teachers, pupils and all education-related activities. Both the Afghan government and the Taleban supervise education in Andar. The Taleban allow government supervisors to live in Andar and observe all schools.
• Health: There are 11 healthcare centres in Andar district, all of which are serviced by NGOs, who implement the government’s health programme, and controlled by the Taleban. There is one 30-bed district hospital located in the district centre. The other facilities are located outside the centre and include four Basic Health Centres (BHC), three sub-centres and two community health centres (CHC). All services are provided (indirectly) by the government, implemented by NGOs and monitored by government, NGOs and the Taleban.
• Electricity: Andar district is not connected to the state-owned electricity grid. People use solar panels and generators to light their houses.
• Telephone coverage: The five main telephone companies (Salaam, AWCC, Etisalat, MTN and Roshan) operate in Andar district. However, their services are only available for two hours a day in more central parts of the district and in other areas, such as those that are either close to Ghazni city or to neighbouring Paktika province, during daylight hours.
• Other services: There are no on-going development projects in Andar district and no other services are available. There were projects in the past, some of which were implemented; others were never completed due to insecurity. Locals used to be able to obtain national ID cards from the district centre until October 2017, but thereafter, all local government representatives have operated from Ghazni city.

Introducing Andar district

‘Andar’, the name for the district found in official documents is more commonly known by locals, including Taleban, as ‘Shelgar’. The name ‘Andar’ derives from the dominance of the Andar tribe who are indigenous to the district. It has three main subtribes: Bazidkhel, Jalalzai and Lakandkhel. Other tribes residing in the district include the Tarakai, Daftani, Niazai and Alizai. There are 472 villages in Andar according to an IDLG district profile. The district is mainly flatland, but with mountainous areas in the east, where the district borders Paktika.

Happier times: young men dance the attan (national dance) to celebrate Eid in Mirai town, Andar’s district centre, in October 2012. The town had been closed to most of the reset of the district since the 2009 presidential election. (Photo Fazal Muzhary)

To the north, Andar borders Ghazni city and is one of its gateways. To the south, are Qarabagh and Giro districts, to the west, Waghaz district and to the east, Deh Yak district and Paktika province. Andar has two rivers, locally known as jelgas. The first jelga has its source in Band-e Sultan in Jaghatu district in neighbouring Maidan Wardak province, to the north of Ghazni city. The second jelga, also known as Loya Jelga (Big Jelga), has its source in the Band-e Sarda dam, which straddles Andar and Paktika’s Mata Khan district. The confluence of these two jelgas lies near the villages of Manar and Rustam of Andar and Giro districts, after which the water flows first to Paktika and then into the Ab-e Estada (Stagnant Water) Lake in Ghazni’s Nawa district.

Andar district is connected to the rest of Ghazni by three main roads: the asphalted Kabul-Kandahar and Paktika-Ghazni highways, and a separate, unpaved road that passes through the rural parts of the centre of the district. Although the Afghan National Army (ANA) still has bases along the two highways, the Taleban can exert considerable control on them. For example, sources told AAN that the Taleban can divert traffic whenever and at whichever section of the highway they want. One source said that, while in the past, the government had control over parts of the Ghazni-Paktika highway, the Taleban have been blocking this road now since 2 May 2018, diverting all traffic to an unpaved road through the Sultanbagh area to villages northeast of Andar’s district centre, so that all trucks must now drive through these villages. At the same time, the Taleban have been trying to divert traffic from the main Kabul-Kandahar highway (for more details see AAN dispatches here and here). They collect taxes from both side roads and highways.

Andar district is home to the renowned and prestigious madrassa Nur ul-Madares al-Faruqi (read previous AAN dispatch for the background here). Several religious figures have either taught or studied Islam there. One of the most well-known teachers was Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi, the leader of the mujahedin faction popular with Sunni clerics (many of whose members went on to join the Taleban), Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami-e Afghanistan, the Islamic Revolution Movement of Afghanistan, known as Harakat. (1) Another renowned figure who taught here was the Emirate-era deputy minister of Justice, Mawlawi Abdul Sattar Seddiqi. (2)

As recently as 14 May 2019, the madrassa was officially closed due to night raids by Afghan and foreign forces (read the announcement here). Afghan forces have occasionally made mass arrests of pupils and teachers from this madrassa. One of these major raids took place on 25 July 2018, when the 01 Unit of the NDS Special Forces raided the madrassa and arrested 45 pupils. They were released after a week.

Andar district has also been home to a number of historically prominent political leaders, including Mullah Mushk-e Alam and Ghulam Muhammad Niazai. Mushk-e Alam was one of the key figures who opposed the British during the second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880. He originated from Gandaher of Andar district. His great-grandsons still live in this village. Mullah Mushk-e Alam is buried in his village graveyard (read this AAN dispatch about Mullah Mushk-e Alam here). Ghulam Muhammad Niazai, born in 1932 in Rahimkhel village of Andar district, was one of the founders of Afghanistan’s Muslim Brotherhood branch, known as Jawanan-e Muslimin (Muslim Youth, see this AAN paper). He was killed in jail in 1979. (3)

Andar district is also where the mass abduction of 23 Korean missionaries by the Taleban took place in mid-July 2007, while they were travelling by bus from Kandahar to Kabul (see reports here and here) and was also made famous by the ‘Andar uprising’, when some fighters of Hezb-e Islami origin rebelled against their fellow Taleban in May 2012; the counter-insurgency was swiftly co-opted by local politicians and resulted in extreme violence between local men fighting on both sides (read previous AAN dispatches about the uprising and the troubles created by the uprising here, here, here and here).

Conflict and Security

Andar district has been a centre of fighting since the jihad against the communist regime started in the 1980s, and the Nur ul-Madares played an important role in contributing to the jihad. One of the main anti-government commanders at this time was Abdul Wakil, also known as ‘Qari Taj Muhammad’ and ‘Qari Baba’. (4) The latter name is mostly used, both in Andar as well as in academic literature and media reports. In the early years of the jihad, Qari Baba joined Harakat because he was inspired by its leader Muhammad Nabi. Qari Baba started his fight from Alizai village, but spent a lot of time in Tangi, where he used to hide from airstrikes in a shrine known as ‘Saheb Baba’. Qari Baba is remembered still in in Andar for his brutality and having been responsible for killing and slaughtering many people on charges that they worked for the communist government, or that they were pro-government. As a member of Harakat, Baba had widespread support from local mullahs. Local people said he carried out executions based on fatwas approving the executions or assassinations of suspects. One of his victims was a local comedian known as Walu, whose relatives say that Baba’s fighters slaughtered him because he had made a pro-government poem. (5)

In Andar district, five jihadi parties were active during the war against the communist regime in the 1980s: Harakat, Hezb-e Islami, Mahaz-e Milli, Ettehad-e Islami and Jamiat-e Islami. The most active were Harakat and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami. Harakat controlled most of Andar district while Hezb influence was limited to a few villages. At that time, there was no fighting between Harakat, Mahaz, Ettehad or Jamiat, but Harakat and Hezb clashed in certain areas.

Harakat’s dominance in Andar gave Qari Baba the upper hand and he ruled most of the district. According to local sources, he paid special attention to the ulema and financially supported pupils of religious studies. One tribal elder told AAN: “Baba’s attention to the religious pupils was more than the modern [state] schools received. In schools, teachers only received salaries, but in the mosques, imams received salaries and pupils received food, as well as utensils.”

When the Taleban movement emerged in the mid-1990s, Muhammadi dissolved his party and urged all members to join the Taleban (see thisAAN dispatch). Most Harakat members, including Qari Baba’s commanders, such as former Ghazni MP Khyal Muhammad Hussaini, did so. This resulted in the peaceful handover of the whole of Ghazni province to the Taleban in 1995. Qari Baba, however, refused to join their movement. (6)

When the Taleban regime collapsed in 2001 due to military intervention by the US government, most local Taleban fighters in Andar district returned to common life; they continued their studies, decided to work as labourers or started their own businesses. In around 2003, some new Taleban fighters who had mostly been students during the Taleban regime, started organising a resistance movement against the Afghan government. The Taleban slowly but steadily received growing local support because of the mistreatment of the population by Afghan security forces. For instance, Afghan security forces would arrest civilians after a roadside bomb went off and beat them without evidence that they had been linked to the bomb or to the Taleban. In late 2004, Taleban fighters started spreading night letters in which they told local residents to urge their relatives to stop working with the Afghan government; otherwise, the Taleban would target and kill them. The Taleban did indeed kill people who worked with the government; they included Mullah Basir from Begikhel who had worked as a driver for Andar district’s former governor, Allahdad. The Taleban, led by Qari Na’im from Begikhel, also killed Dr. Wafadar from Aman Chardiwal village, one of Qari Baba’s former close aides.

The Taleban carried out a number of roadside attacks during the 2004 presidential and 2005 parliamentary elections, though without causing major casualties. In 2006, they expanded their hit-and-run operations in the district, targeting significant figures, including Muhammad Ali Jalali (known as ‘Madali’), the governor of neighbouring Paktika province, a jihad-era Harakat commander, on the Ghazni-Paktika highway in May 2006. Qari Baba himself was killed along with his son-in-law and four security guards in Bata village in September 2006, while he was driving on the unpaved road connecting Andar district with Ghazni city.

Most Taleban fighters currently active in Andar are originally from the district, with very few outsiders, according to respondents. Though some Kandahari Taleban fighters in Andar were seen during the summer of 2018, locals said they were the special guards of then-Taleban shadow governor for Ghazni province, Muhammad Yusif Wafa, a Kandahari (who, according to locals, was appointed as supervisor of the governors of 18 provinces in the spring of 2019). According to local sources, the Taleban appointed a new governor for Ghazni province in the spring of 2019, also a Kandahari. They did not yet know his actual name, but locally he is known as Abu Muhammad.

Any Taleban governor appointed to Ghazni has to rely on two important Andar commanders, who each control different parts of this district. The first is Mullah Edris (who changes his name from time to time, so only people in his group know his current name) from Liwan village who controls most of western Andar. The other is Mullah Ismail from Sher Khan village who controls the eastern part. Edris is the more active of the two. For example, he has been involved in several major attacks on government institutions in different parts of Ghazni province, particularly in Andar. He planned and supervised two major attacks on the district centre, Mirai, in October 2017 and 2018. As a result of the last attack, the Taleban took complete control of the district in October 2018. Edris also led a jailbreak operation in September 2015, as a result of which 355 prisoners were set free (see this AAN report here).

Mullah Ismail is currently the Taleban shadow governor for Khost province but his group still controls eastern Andar. In 2012, the media wrongly reported that he had been killed by members of the Quetta Shura in the Kachlagh area of Balochistan (for wanting to take part in peace talks); the media also claimed he had been arrested for corruption (see media reports here, and here).

Andar district was a key location for the former mujahedin, as well as for the Taleban, as it was a command centre for attacks on different parts of the province. As recently as November 2018, as many as 30 fighters of the special unit known as Sra Qita (Red Unit) went from Andar to Jaghori district of Ghazni, where they were involved in a high-profile Taleban operation (AAN reporting), according to local sources. The Taleban also used Andar district as their operational headquarters during the five-day attack on Ghazni city in August 2018 (read previous AAN dispatch here). It was back to Andar, also, that they brought most of the weapons they had seized from government forces. They also moved their dead and wounded to Andar for burying or for medical treatment following this attack. Although the Taleban have their own medical facilities in Ghazni’s Nawa district, they still use government health posts for treating local Taleban fighters. A large number of Taleban from Andar district also played a significant role in the attack on Ghazni’s Khwaja Omari district in April 2018.

Following the capture of Andar by the Taleban in October 2018, the district has experienced a considerable increase in night raids, drone activity, airstrikes, search operations and ground fighting between militants and US special forces-backed Afghan forces. These have resulted in the killing of both civilians and Taleban fighters, as well as the destruction of the district governor’s compound. Civilians have also been detained and beaten again. (7)

Governance and security provisions

After the fall of the Taleban regime in 2001, Andar district was initially governed mainly by former jihadi commanders connected to Qari Baba. This was similar to other provinces such as Wardak, Paktia, Paktika, Logar and Khost (see here), where councils of former jihadi leaders took control of key administrative posts in districts and provinces. Sources told AAN that one of the jihadi commanders that governed Andar district early on was Lahur Khan from Harakat, who was later replaced by an officially-introduced governor, Muhebullah Samim in 2002. Since then, Andar has had seven governors.

As early as 2002, the government education and health departments, as well as the police and the prosecutor’s office, started operating. One source told AAN that the education and health departments started constructing new buildings for schools and health centres. In the health sector, the main facility in Andar in 2003 was the district hospital. According to local officials, both the education and health sectors have since had active supervisors.

When the former mujahedin commanders took control of the district, they initially appointed loyalists to the police force. These policemen had no uniforms, but would start searching the houses of former Taleban fighters for weapons in various villages. Some Taleban responded with sporadic hit-and-run attacks. When the Taleban increased their attacks in 2003, these irregular policemen were replaced with police introduced by the Ghazni governor. The newly-deployed forces also included army troops, who were sent to Andar to fight the re-emerging Taleban. However, these new troops were largely comprised of former Tajik militias, who started creating trouble for locals, for instance, by sawing down their grapevines during military operations. (8)

The prosecutor’s office began its operations in Andar district in around 2002. The district had an active judge and people would use the prosecutor’s office to try to solve land disputes. However, this office could not carry out its work beyond 2007 due to the widespread presence of the Taleban. (9) As the Taleban expanded their area of control and increased their attacks, they also targeted government judges and prosecutors. One of these judges was Qazi Abdul Rahman from Saheb Khan village. Though some argue that Rahman was killed because of his Hezb-e Islami links, one former Hezb member told AAN that Rahman was killed because he had previously worked at the prosecutor’s office. The work of the prosecutor’s office was later taken over by the Taleban’s mobile courts.

In terms of presence and parallel structures, the Taleban gradually expanded their control and started governing Andar more actively from 2006 onwards. The first district governor, appointed in 2005, was Mullah Muhammad Hakim from Mechankhel village. Since then there have been four shadow district governors. The current Taleban district governor is Mullah Waliullah, also from Andar.

The Taleban established their education commission in Andar in 2006. The first director of education was Mullah Muhammad Alem from Begikhel. Before 2006, the Taleban had closed schools from time to time and abducted teachers, principals and pupils, for various reasons such as alleged spying for the government. From 2006 onwards, the Taleban started closely observing schools, banning civil education subjects and forcing government officials to hire pro-Taleban staff or former Taleban fighters as teachers. This helped the Taleban to more easily collect intelligence on teachers, new projects and the distribution of new books by the government. The Taleban would first censor the books and then allow education department officials to distribute them. The same happened in the health sector. When the Taleban established a health commission in 2007, they employed new guards for the health centres. They were pro-Taleban and passed on intelligence.

Beyond the education and health sectors, the Taleban have been active in providing judicial services in Andar since around 2004. In the early years, the Taleban identified influential religious figures to resolve local disputes. For example, if a person had a land dispute, he would first ask the Taleban for help. The Taleban would then tell him to take his case to one of the influential persons they had appointed. This religious figure would take a decision about the dispute and the Taleban would then implement the verdict. Earlier, when a dispute could not be resolved locally, the Taleban would refer the case to the leadership council in Quetta. From 2009 onwards, the Taleban developed a pool of active judges and mobile courts able to resolve most disputes at the local level. This also reduced the dependence of the Taleban on local religious figures in regards to the court system. Now only rare cases are referred to Quetta.

The Taleban have also expanded their structure of governance in Andar district. From 2013 onwards, the Taleban established a local finance commission, responsible for tax collection, a commission for civilian casualties, a commission for prisoners, a commission for inviting government forces to surrender, a commission for cultural affairs and a commission for dealing with international NGOs. This structure reflects the way the Taleban organises its administration nationally. It coexisted with the official local government structure until October 2018, when the Taleban took complete control of the district.

The Taleban in Andar actively collects taxes from almost all local businesses as well as any landowners who earn an income from their land. The demands are sometimes communicated in writing and sometimes face-to-face. There seem to be fixed rates for shops (1,000 Pakistani rupees, roughly 6.60 USD, per year) and land. Tax on land seems to increase when the owner installs irrigation pumps (diesel or solar powered (3,000 rupees). However, these amounts can be negotiated. The Taleban hand out receipts for paid taxes.

According to several sources recently interviewed by AAN, including tribal elders, teachers and doctors, the only interaction people still have with the government is related to obtaining national ID cards. Since all government offices for Andar district currently operate from Ghazni city, people have to travel there to get their IDs.

According to a district profile carried out by the IDLG in June 2017, Andar district was supposed to have 807 security personnel, although only 700 were then present. They included ANA soldiers, Afghan National Police (ANP), ALP and uprising forces. However, Muhammad Qasim Desiwal told AAN in October 2017 that only 60 security forces existed and were present when the Taleban attacked Andar district (see AAN reporting here). AAN observed at that time that there were only a few ALP members from Shinwari district in Nangrahar province controlling a few security posts on the Andar-Paktika highway (for details read AAN’s dispatch here).

What is left of Andar’s district centre compound. Constructed in 2004 with US money, Afghan and US forces bombarded it after a night raid on Mirai, the district centre, in December 2018. The Taleban had taken control of the district centre in October 2018. (Photo Fazal Muzhary)

Since October 2018, when the Taleban took over the district, the Afghan government forces’ presence has been limited to six ANA bases, where the soldiers do little other than protect themselves. These bases are in Chahardiwal, Mullah Nuh Baba, Nani, Sarda, Sinai and Sultanbagh villages. The ANA has trouble accessing Sinai and Chahardiwal bases by land, so most of the time they supply the bases by helicopter. The bases in Sultanbagh and Sarda receive supplies by road from neighbouring Paktika as access is easier. The other two bases are located on the Kabul-Kandahar highway and can also be supplied by road. Still, Taleban insurgents continue to harass the supply operations.

Beyond these ANA bases, there is no government presence in Andar. However, as will be explained below, the government still plays a fundamental role in ensuring citizens get health and education services in the district.

Service Delivery

AAN conducted ten in-depth interviews with key informants in Andar district, based on a semi-structured questionnaire developed following a review of the relevant literature. They included tribal elders, district and provincial officials, respected individuals in the district, teachers from Taleban-controlled areas, a school principal, a local doctor from a Taleban-controlled area and local journalists. They were asked a series of questions about their experiences and perceptions of education, health, telecommunications and electricity, and other services available in their district. For more details about our research methodology, see this dispatch here. A summary and analysis of their answers in triangulation with the background information is presented below.

The initial data for this research was collected in August 2018 and has since been checked and updated through additional research.

Education Services

Education in Andar district covers classes from first grade until grade 12, however, school attendance is low, under ten per cent officially. According to education department officials, out of about 300,000 eligible girls and boys, only 28,000 – all boys – actually attend school. The figure still includes pupils that have registered but do not actually attend; if the absentees were deducted, the official number of pupils would be even lower.

The 2017 IDLG district profile counted 49 schools in Andar: 32 primary schools, eight secondary and nine high schools. However, interviews with education department officials and other local sources in August 2018 indicated that there are actually 42 schools in Andar district: eight high schools and the rest primary and secondary schools. All 42 schools remained open after the Taleban took complete control of the district in October 2018, although one, Mullah Nuh Baba school, was later closed on 31 March 2019 and reopened in late April due to shelling by ANA soldiers. In addition to these schools, there is one madrassa, which is located in Mirai, the district capital, and which the Taleban have closed because they do not want it to be financially supported by the government.

Andar district does not have a history of designated girls’ schools. A report by the Norwegian Afghanistan Committee (NAC) for the period 1987-93 says there were then 16 schools in Andar district, all boys schools. The same report found that commander Qari Baba had tried to force residents to send their daughters to school, but very few people had listened to him; only very few girls were attending Zakuri, Mangur (not in Andar) and Kundi schools at that time (see the NAC report here). Education department officials told AAN that there had been one primary school for girls in Karezgi village, which was established around 2004, but that school is currently closed. According to local sources it was open for one or two years, but then closed due to the escalating conflict. Currently, a community health centre (CHC) is located in the building. Officials said they have tried to reopen the school, but in the current situation, they are unlikely to succeed. This leaves Andar’s girls completely excluded from schooling, except for private madrassas or if families provide home schooling. The madrassas, however, only teach Islamic subjects for girls up to ten years of age.

The Taleban restrict pupils’ movements into government-controlled areas. To this end, the Taleban education department head does not allow pupils to take documents from their school so they could, for example, continue studying at other schools in Ghazni city or elsewhere, unless there is a good reason, such as when the student’s entire family is moving out of Andar. He only allows pupils to move from one school to another within Andar district. One reason is to prevent pupils from joining the Afghan security forces or the Afghan Local Police (ALP) while studying in government-controlled areas.

There do not seem to be any restrictions for high school graduates, on the other hand. Andar graduates are allowed to continue their higher education in universities in Ghazni or other provinces. However, most pupils who complete grade 12 do not take part in the university entry test, known as the kankur. Officials told AAN that poverty is the main reason for that. In fact, many high school graduates go to foreign countries such as Pakistan, Iran or the Gulf or to other provinces in order to find work (read a previous dispatch by this author about the economic problems facing the young here).

While the Afghan government provides teachers’ salaries, stationery and school buildings, schools, themselves, are monitored and controlled by both the government and the Taleban. In August 2018, before the fall of the entire district, government department of education head Amir Khan told AAN that the government had three active monitors who lived in Andar and who monitored the schools throughout the district, although he did say that monitoring had been hampered by persistent fighting between government forces and the Taleban, which also affected the learning level of pupils, and that three monitors were not enough to cover all the schools.

The government monitors check teacher and student attendance, teaching methods and what pupils are learning, for example, asking questions from textbooks to check they understand them. Monitors also observe the interaction between teachers and pupils, check the buildings and ask teachers if they have any problems or requests from the government.

The Taleban have their own monitor, the shadow education director for Andar, who began monitoring in Andar after the establishment of the Taleban’s education commission in 2006. Officials and local sources said that the Taleban’s monitoring was more active than that of government observers, partly because they enlist the help of teachers who accompany the director as he goes from school to school. There are therefore no teachers specifically appointed by the Taleban for supervision. Sources told AAN that if a teacher is continuously absent, the Taleban deny him his salary.

The fact that the Taleban check the attendance of teachers and pupils, schoolbooks and any problems in the school gives them the chance to interfere in the education sector, for instance in the hiring of teachers, the decisions of principals, the physical appearance of teachers and pupils, the implementation of reconstruction projects and the distribution of school textbooks.

Government education department officials told AAN, “When the government approves a new teacher, the Taleban will give him a second test. If they believe he is not qualified, they will not allow him to take up his job.” One official told AAN the Taleban give these second tests because they insist that professional teachers must be hired and want to prevent teachers being hired because of their connections with certain officials, rather than because they wanted to introduce their own teachers. The official said this meant the Taleban were not interfering, but were helping. However, other respondents told AAN that the fact that the Taleban had to approve all teachers meant they could refuse anyone they did not like. For example, a Kabul-based journalist from Andar district told AAN that someone from his village had applied for the position of the school principal, but although he had passed the test, the Taleban barred him from taking up his job without providing a reason. A teacher from Andar said the Taleban sometimes introduced pro-Taleban people as teachers (although this happened before a government’s new recruitment system was introduced in 2017, which involved a test in Kabul). He himself also had to be approved by the Taleban. “I passed the test in Kabul and I was recruited, but I could not take up my job until I received an approval letter from the Taleban director of education, Abdul Aziz,” he told AAN.

The Taleban have also changed the curriculum, adding more religious subjects, in additionto what is already in the curriculum, and banning civil subjects, such as the subject of social studies, which covers a variety of topics, such as the need for education, the significance of currency and so on. They instruct teachers to teach Quran recitation or other Islamic subjects in the hours that were previously allocated for civil studies.

Pupils are told to wear turbans, but are not punished if they wear a prayer cap, as they did when the Taleban were in government (1996-2001) and teachers are not allowed to shave. If they disobey this order, they are punished. For example, in 2017 the Taleban punished a teacher from Yaqub school who had shaved his beard, by banning him from teaching at Narmi school for several months. School principals also have to inform the Taleban of new projects and decisions. For instance, if a principal wants to ask the education department in Ghazni city for a laboratory or a new building, he should first discuss this with the Taleban. Once the Taleban approve it, the principal can go to Ghazni and share his demand with the education department.

At the same time, the Taleban have managed to combat corruption in the education sector. Respondents told AAN that the Taleban scrutinised all school documents and removed all ghost teachers from the lists. These included, for instance, teachers who lived (and sometimes studied) in Ghazni city, but still received their salary as a teacher in one of Andar’s schools. They were mostly people who had connections with government officials and provincial council members. Respondents could not give specific examples, but said there had been many such ghost teachers before the Taleban actively started checking. In the autumn of 2017, the Taleban also found out that some teachers at the Yaqub school had received salaries for overtime that they had not done. They were forced to give the money back.

The complete fall of Andar to the Taleban has brought few changes to the situation facing teachers and pupils. The three government monitors continue to monitor schools in consultation with the Taleban. Teachers continue to teach and receive their salaries via bank accounts in Ghazni city (there are no bank branches in Andar). Since the takeover, the Taleban have additionally allowed a construction company to implement a project by the education department to renovate school buildings that were identified by the government’s education observers. The schools, which had been (partially) destroyed by rain or fighting, were repainted or repaired and broken windows were replaced. In 2017, the Taleban had allowed the same company to renovate only five schools: Ibrahimkhel, Aklu Baba, Mullah Nuh Baba, Nazar Khan and Nanai schools.

Another visible development in the education sector has been the hiring of 180 new teachers, many of them either pro-Taleban or are former Taleban fighters, on temporary contracts. They were hired after they passed a general test at the education department in the district capital around 15 March 2019. This was an initiative by the government’s education department in Ghazni. Moreover, the test was given by government representatives and jointly observed by both Taleban and government representatives. The teachers, who will be paid by the government, will not receive their salaries through bank accounts. Instead, a cashier from the education department will distribute salaries in cash. One respondent told AAN that this method would enable former Taleban fighters as well as known Taleban supporters to avoid being arrested by the government, if they were going to get their salaries from the bank in Ghazni city. The last change in this sector was the closure of Mullah Nuh Baba high school by the Taleban due to security concerns after shelling from a nearby ANA base killed four pupils and a teacher and wounded 15 others, including a teacher, on 31 March 2019. The shelling happened after Taleban fighters fired a rocket at a base located on Highway One. Teachers told AAN that the Taleban fired rockets about two kilometres away from the school, but the ANA soldiers still “fired rockets at the school.”

Health Services

According to local sources and the health department head, Dr Zaher Shah, there are 11 health centres in Andar district: one district hospital, four Basic Health Centres (BHC), one emergency clinic, funded by the Italian NGO, Emergency, three sub-centres, which were inaugurated in 2018, and two community health centres (CHC). The district hospital in Mirai town has 30 beds. The emergency clinic is for war victims only. (10) There are ten midwives and seven female nurses in the district, but no female doctor. According to Zaher Shah, this problem is not unique to Andar district, as there are no female doctors in other districts either. He said there was no lack of midwives or female nurses.

The government provides health services in Andar district through the Agency for Assistance and Development of Afghanistan (AADA), an NGO responsible for the payment of salaries, procurement and supply of medicines and all other activities related to the health sector, including the monitoring of all health-related activities in the district. This means that AADA implements all health-related projects with the health department only remotely observing their implementation. The NGO also provides transport for female nurses and midwives who live in remote areas, according to Zaher Shah.

All respondents, including the government’s health department head, said the Taleban did not cause problems with the implementation of health-related projects. The NGO is able to work unhindered and there are no problems with the monitoring of health-related activities, whether the observers belong to an NGO or to the health department. Alocal doctor, however, did say that the Taleban allowed only low-level officials from the health department and NGOs to monitor healthcare centres. Senior officials from the health ministry were not able to go to Andar district.

The Taleban are said to actively monitor the health centres themselves. Officials say they are sometimes even helpful in resolving problems. If a doctor is consistently absent, for example, or nurses ask patients to pay illegal fees, the Taleban make enquiries and tell them to change their behaviour. Interviewees considered this a positive point. Similarly, health officials are unable to travel to some of the more remote areas for observation, whereas Taleban supervisors can.

The health department head said that the Taleban had not ordered doctors to close their clinics or to pay their salaries to the Taleban. Neither had he received reports of Taleban interference from his local staff in Taleban-controlled areas. He thought that if the Taleban were to create problems in the health sector, the people would probably oppose this, which could result in the Taleban’s loss of local support. Therefore, the Taleban got involved in positive ways, he said.

Local interviewees said that the Taleban visit the reconstruction site of a healthcare centre in Ibrahimkhel village every week to check on the process. They would tell the workers to use quality materials. Health department officials said that, in other cases, when NGOs were sending medicine to local healthcare centres, the Taleban were called on to help ensure that the medicine arrived safely and was distributed equally among the health centres. The Taleban also checked the presence of doctors and other staff at healthcare centres. Local sources said this has paved the way for a more equal provision of health services in Andar district.

Ghazni health director, Zaher Shah, told AAN that the three new sub-centres inaugurated in 2018 in Sarda and Surki villages had increased women’s access to health facilities. He said that if a woman had to walk for two hours to reach a clinic, or if the clinic was ten kilometres from her residence, it would in practice mean the woman had no (or only emergency) access to health facilities. He said they had identified the gaps in Andar district based on this definition and had established the three new clinics to fill these gaps. Still, he said, there were cultural problems that prevented women from having better access. Some parents-in-law did not allow women to go to a health centre for treatment and would send a male member of the family to obtain medicine instead. He said they were working to resolve these kinds of problems. According to a local doctor, women in Andar clearly did not have equal access to health services and what was available was only basic health care because of the lack of qualified personnel and sufficient health facilities. If female patients suffered from complicated problems doctors at the hospital or other clinics would refer them to Ghazni. “This leads to deaths,” he told AAN, “if patients suffering severe problems cannot reach Ghazni city on time. Moreover, we’ve had some reports of patients with complicated problems who died on the way to Ghazni city due to the bad roads or fighting on the way.” So long as there is no education of girls in the district, it seems unlikely that the authorities could improve provision for female patients substantially.

The health department director told AAN that Andar district has a health support council that was established by the government, made up tribal elders, imams, teachers and influential figures, that supports the health sector in the area. He said the council members met once a month to discuss health-related issues, checked the attendance and behaviour of doctors (making sure they were not asking patients for bribes or mistreating them) and help doctors if they have security concerns. For example, if the Taleban attacked a government post near a clinic, the council members would intervene and ask the Taleban to stop. If there was a lack of medicine in a health centre, council members would go to Ghazni city to ask the health department for medicine.

One respondent said that when fighting between Taleban and government forces around the district centre intensified in September 2018, members of the council told doctors to move the district hospital to Zakuri, an area under Taleban control where there was no fighting. The council members moved the hospital back to Mirai when the Taleban took complete control of the district in October 2018. The health director said that, although council members were unable, on occasion, to hold meetings due to poor security, they could be called upon whenever they were needed for advice and consultation.

Health director Zaher Shah said that all health centres in Andar were monitored by health department officials, the implementing NGO and the Taleban. He said, the Taleban would supervise the activities of all the centres in remote areas under their control, where neither government nor NGO observers have access. When asked about a particular example, he referred to the renovation of the Ibrahimkhel clinic in 2018 that the Taleban regularly have monitored.

With regard to the Taleban’s monitoring of healthcare centres, one respondent explained that the head of the Taleban’s health commission, Haqqani, who was killed in a drone strike on 25 May 2019 in Andar district, would visit all clinics, where he checked the nurses and doctors, the medicine depot and laboratory, hygiene, patient complaints, staff attendance and medicine expiry dates – just like the government monitor would.

Some respondents said that the Taleban did interferein the recruitment process of new doctors. One interviewee recalled the case of a university medicine graduate who had applied for a job at one of the healthcare centres in Andar, which he did not get as he did not have a relative among the Taleban. Instead, another person who had not studied but did have connections, was offered the job (and then, the interviewee claimed, started studying at the medical faculty of a private university in Ghazni city). A doctor told AAN that compared to the past, the Taleban’s interference was less than it had been previously. He said that, for example, in the past Taleban fighters forced doctors to burn contraceptives, but they had not done this recently. Now, doctors could prescribe or hand out contraceptives to couples that requested them.

The Taleban also get involved in the polio vaccination campaign. For example, they banned the campaign entirely for about two and a half months from 4 November 2018. The Taleban then told vaccinators they were not allowed to go house-to-house to vaccinate children, but could vaccinate children in the village mosque. The last polio campaign was implemented around mid-March 2019. In a Whatsapp interview with AAN, the Taleban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said ‘the enemy’ (by which he meant the government) was misusing the polio drive in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, Uruzgan and other places where fighting was intense and the Taleban had arrested several people who had entered Taleban-controlled areas as vaccinators. “Such people were appointed,” he claimed, “to identify the houses of Taleban commanders and leaders. They would leave chips in the houses, so that the enemy could identify that house and locate it as a target.” (See also this AAN dispatch on polio vaccination here). The last time Andar saw a full anti-polio drive was in July 2018.

Media, telephone coverage & electricity

In Andar, five main telephone companies are able to operate: Roshan, Mobile Telephone Network (MTN), Etisalat, Afghan Wireless Cooperation Company (AWCC) and Salaam. Among them, the most commonly used are Roshan and MTN, and in some areas, the Salaam network. In the past, their services worked between 7 am to 7 pm, but for the last nine months or so, they have been active for only two hours in the morning, between 9 and 11. When asked why this was, all respondents said the Taleban have forced telephone companies to stop operating beyond this limited time. If network operators did not heed the Taleban’s demands, they would destroy their telecom towers. Respondents said the Taleban took this decision because they believed the companies were being used by the US military to locate their fighters. When the Taleban stopped the companies from operating, people installed additional antennas on their rooftops to boost coverage. Salaam (a government network) is the only network that occasionally operates beyond the two-hour limitation.

Additionally, the Taleban have banned the people in Andar from using Salaam SIM cards, since it is a state-owned network. They warned people that if they were caught with a Salaam SIM card, they would break the card and beat the holder. People might be able to use Salaam SIM cards at home, but it is risky for them to carry them outside. Many residents, particularly the educated youth and those who have relatives abroad, use smartphones (which are not banned in Andar) to have online conversations, for instance with their relatives who are working in the Gulf or other countries. Most people get in touch with their relatives via Whatsapp or Facebook.

Andar district has no access to government-provided electricity, but almost everyone has access to basic power through the use of solar energy: people have installed solar panels on their rooftops with which they charge batteries. Some people use electricity to watch television at home, although many fear to do this. Respondents told AAN that although the Taleban had not banned watching TV (as they did so when in government and in some of the districts surveyed for this series on service delivery), people are still wary of them discovering their TV sets, so whoever watches television does so secretly. People watch with the help of dish antennas, which is the only possible option for Andar residents. One respondent said: “It is easy for us to hide the dish antenna from the sight of the Taleban. We take it outside when we are watching TV at night and hide it in a room during the day. If, by chance, Taleban come to our house, they cannot see that we are watching TV.” It is hard to say what percentage of residents might be watching television. Assessingone village of 80 houses, one respondent said that probably around 30 home owners had a television at home.

Respondents said that every house in their village had a radio. They said most people listen to the news, sports and music. Andar district does not currently have a local radio station. One set up by a US forces base stopped working in 2015, a year after the forces left. It mainly broadcast music. Currently, most residents listen to Azadi or BBC Pashto, as well as Kilid, Talwasa, Ghaznavian, Sa’adat and others. People sometimes also listen to Shariat Ghazh (Voice of Shariat), the Taleban radio station, but since it broadcasts from a moving station, people cannot catch it on a regular basis. The last time the author managed to listen to the Taleban’s radio station, on 19 April 2019, it was playing Taleban anthems.

Other available services

There have been no major development projects in recent years in Andar, largely because the Taleban oppose projects implemented by the Afghan government, except in the health and education sectors. In 2005, when the government and US military started work to asphalt the Ghazni-Paktika highway, the Taleban stopped the work by carrying out numerous attacks on construction workers and security guards. The project was eventually completed when the government finally accepted the demand of a local Taleban commander, Mullah Faruq, that the government did not post security forces, in exchange for the Taleban not attacking civilian workers (10). The government also started construction work on the road connecting Andar to Ghazni city in 2005, which it was also unable to complete due to Taleban attacks. Such attacks also prevented the asphalting of a road connecting southern Giro district with Ghazni city, which passes through the eastern part of Andar district, connecting up with the Ghazni-Paktika highway.

However, when the government had control over some villages in 2014, it did manage to complete another road that goes through southern Andar that connects Giro district to Andar’s district capital. At the time, the government-controlled most of the southern villages through active Afghan Local Police (ALP) security posts. Therefore, the Taleban could not halt this project (see a photo of the project here). In addition, the government was also able to build some community halls in villages where ALP forces were deployed.

An old warehouse built to store wheat collected from landowners during the rule of Zahir Shah and Daud Khan in Mirai Bazaar destroyed by the Taleban in November 2018 after rumours that Afghan Special Forces were going to set up a military post there. (Photo Fazal Muzhary)

Meanwhile, the Taleban have also allowed the levelling off of a road which passes through villages in southern and western Andar, as well as the construction of a bridge across the river near Mirai. According to respondents in 2017, when the project was allocated to the district, the owners of the private construction company that received the contract had obtained consent from one group of Taleban fighters to start the work. However, another group did not allow the work. Various respondents said there were some differences between the Taleban groups, but they could not provide details. Ultimately, the second group attacked the company’s workers and one person was killed. As a result, the project remains incomplete.

Beyond this, the Taleban have prevented the government from implementing reconstruction and development projects, although they sometimes encourage local residents to pave small roads between the different villagesor repair those destroyed by rain and snow over winter. They go from village to village and tell community elders to bring the villagers out for work. Residents who have a tractor will bring it. The author has seen and driven over many roads that have recently been levelled on the Taleban’s orders with the help of local villagers. The Taleban also call in local elders to discuss the expansion of routes or to help them resolve problems when, for example, local people construct compound walls encroaching on roads.

Conclusion

Andar is a district where the government forces’ presence is limited to military bases. Beyond a handful of bases, the government has no presence in the district beyond a few monitors. The civilian district administration gradually relocated to Ghazni city over time, with the last offices moving in late 2018 when the Taleban captured the district centre. The absence of the government in Andar district means that the Taleban have complete control over the district and its public services, although – apart from the justice sector – they do not provide any services of their own.

The only sectors in which they allow some government activity and presence (through government-chosen and paid staff and monitors) are education and health. Government health services are provided through NGOs. There has also one government-contracted road construction project, which was contracted out to a private company that first had to obtain the Taleban’s consent. Still, this project had not been successfully implemented.

The Taleban play a key role in the monitoring of schools and healthcare centres, much of which is perceived as positive by the local population. That monitoring, in turn, provides the Taleban with the opportunity to influence staffing and curricula and to insert supporters into jobs in those sectors. They also try to control the movement of pupils out of the area under their control, including to schools in government-controlled areas. The Taleban dominate the justice sector through their courts and enforce strict rules on telecommunication services, but have become less strict on people watching TV or listening to the radio.

Although the government can also monitor services, at least in the fields of health and education, it is limited in its reach and influence. Meanwhile, the Taleban’s shadow government system is currently perceived to be much stronger than the government’s, not least through its tax collection system. Without Taleban blessing, the delivery of public services would be severely hampered. Without government funding and administration, they would be much reduced or non-existent.

The local government in Ghazni is not capable of lobbying for construction or development projects to bring in income and generate work opportunities. For the local population, living in insecurity and largely ruled by the Taleban, and with the local government largely absent, there is a limit to how much NGOs, government or companies want to work in their area. Despite this, respondents intimated that the population largely seem happy with the Taleban.

All respondents said that the Taleban’s dominance and then, since October 2018, full control of Andar had provided good security. Crime was at low levels and, within the district, there was freedom of movement again. They said they preferred the justice services delivered by the Taleban, and appreciated that the Taleban take measures against corruption in the local administration. There were no objections to the hybrid character of service provision, with government funding and some government supervision, and stricter supervision by the Taleban. Rather, Taleban rule, including their dominant role in the delivery of ‘public services’ seems to have gained a large degree of acceptance in Andar district.

 

Edited by Jelena Bjelica, Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig.

 

(1) There is another Harakat party (Harakat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan, the Islamic Movement of Afghanistan), but in contrast to Muhammadi’s Harakat, which is predominantly Pashtun, it is dominated by Shia Sayyeds.

(2) Besides being a teacher, Seddiqi was also a writer and a poet. He worked as the editor in chief of Neda-e Haq magazine in 1978, as secretary of Khuddam ul-Furqan (see here for AAN background on this political movement), deputy of Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami-e Afghanistan and respectively deputy of the Supreme Court and deputy minister of justice during the Taleban regime. Seddiqi died on 21 February 2017 at the age of 75 (read an announcement about his funeral ceremony here). Another graduate of the madrassa was Nasrullah Mansur, a deputy of Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi who later became the leader of a break-away faction of Harakat in the 1980s. He named his party Harakat-e Nawin-e Inqilab-e Islami (New Islamic Revolution Movement) (read more about the background and the party in these AAN dispatches here and here).

(3) After completing primary education in Andar, Niazai (in English-language sources often ‘Niazi’) went to Kabul, where he graduated from Abu Hanifa religious madrassa, according to his biography, written by former Afghan President Borhanuddin Rabbani (see here). After graduating from the madrassa, he went to Egypt where he studied at Al-Azhar university, from where he graduated with a Master’s degree. While there, he was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Upon returning to Afghanistan he taught sharia at Kabul university and began preaching clandestinely to recruit pupils for what the Islamists after him called the ‘Islamic awakening’. When the government under President Muhammad Daud Khan learned about Niazai’s clandestine political activities, he was arrested on 4 May 1974. According to Rabbani, Niazai was killed in the spring of 1979 at Pul-e Charkhi jail, along with 135 or 180 people (read the full biography in Dari here and another biography here).

(4) The son of Mawlawi Abdul Wakil, Qari Baba is originally from Sarda village but lived most of his life in Aman Chardiwal and later moved to Mirai. According to Qari Baba’s villagers, he is a Hazara from the Qurbankhel tribe. However, respondents told AAN that Qari Baba was a Hazara, but not a Shiite. Baba studied religious subjects at Nur ul-Madares. According to Norwegian scholar Kristian Berg Harpvikin (2010, p12), Baba was good at handwriting and prose and therefore worked as a scribe in Andar district in the 1970s. There he would write petitions and letters to the governor on behalf of the common people.

(5) The author found part of a poem that Walu recited in a celebratory gathering in Mirai, the district town:

Ze yem de fulani zi pe asal de tangi

Pe Sarda ki watan ghwarem

Hukm wu-kawa auchat raghelai jamhuriat

I am from a certain place, originally from Tangi

I want land in Sarda

Please make a high order because it is a republic (government)

Harpviken (p13) wrote that “reportedly it would suffice to be a teacher, to wear pants or to carry a moustache but no beard [the khalqi style]” for Qari Baba to kill someone during the fight against the communist government. There is also a locally famous poem-like aphorism, which people would recite and that locals considered a “warrant of death” by Baba’s men who would take the victim to an old citadel (Zara Qala).

I’m a mujahed from Tangi

I’ve been sent by Qari (Baba)

Bend your hands to your back (surrender yourself)

Let’s go to Zara Qala

Give me your watch (before you are beheaded).

The poem is taken from this AAN dispatch here.

(6) According to a local source who knew Baba well and was from his original village of Sarda, and who participated in a meeting before the Taleban arrived in Ghazni, Qari Baba disagreed with Hussaini over the handover of Ghazni to the Taleban. The source told AAN: “Baba told Hussaini that we should fight against the Taleban because they want to kill the jihadi commanders and disarm them. Ultimately, Hussaini handed over the military installations to the Taleban in Ghazni without Baba’s permission. Qari Baba later went to the Hazarajat with the help of his military commander Adam Khan. From there, he went to Jabul us-Saraj, where he joined Ahmad Shah Massud.”

(7) On another recent night raid in Sarda village on 14 May 2019, local sources told AAN that two groups of Taleban had come together to a house. When the NDS 01 Unit, supported by US special forces, raided the house, one group of Taleban survived because it had left the area as soon as the raid started. The second group was caught in the raid and resisted the attack. As a result, local residents said, four Taleban fighters under the command of Qari Khaled, a sub-commander of Mullah Ismail, were killed. Khaled survived the raid. However, the government forces claim the Afghan forces killed 42 Taleban fighters, who included 33 Pakistani nationals (see the government claim here and here). One local source said the Afghan forces had also killed two civilians, a man and his nephew, who were irrigating their wheat fields during the raid.

In another night raid, joint forces killed eight civilians in Niaz Qala village on 3 May 2019. Witnesses claimed when talking to AAN that no Taleban fighters had been killed in that raid. One witness said: “The soldiers took people out of his room and killed him on the spot.” During the raid, the Afghan forces also beat women. For example, the Afghan forces “severely beat” women in the house of Syed Karim, when they struggled to rescue him from the Afghan forces. The Afghan forces killed Syed Karim, after they separated him from the women, in a different room, where his body was hidden under a pile of Karim’s home belongingness. After the raid, the joint forces took three civilians, a private Toyota car and, said locals, “160,000 Pakistani rupees from the house of Matiullah Akhundzada, a local mullah.” On the second day after the raid, elders from the village brought the bodies of the victims to Ghazni city in protest, to show the government that civilians had indeed been killed. Deputy Ghazni governor, Muhammad Amin Mubalegh, in a meeting with the elders, promised an investigation, but no reports have yet been published (see the report about the meeting here). These two cases have not been the only recent night raids in the district.

AAN has not been able to collect a full list of recent air strikes. There are, however, reports from local sources that a few of them have resulted in the killing of civilians and Taleban fighters. One (see here) killed six civilians who were ordinary labourers in Dalil village just as they were finishing zuhur, the pre-dawn meal in Ramadan. Local residents said the workers included three brothers, Abdul Matin, Abdul Haq and Muhammad Daud, the sons of Abdul Manan from Shamsi village. Another drone strike took place in Lewan village of Andar on 12 March 2019, where a civilian minivan was targeted. In this attack, 14 civilians en route to Ghazni city were killed and another four were wounded, according to survivor Abdul Qadir, who spoke to AAN on 17 March 2019 in Kabul (see Pajhwok report here). When government officials said that the attack had killed Taleban fighters and their commander Sarhadi, local residents brought the victims’ bodies to Ghazni city in protest. The second day, on 13 March 2019, governor Wahidullah Kalimzai met with the protestors and promised an investigation into the incident, but no findings have yet been published (see a report about the meeting here). In another drone strike on 6 May, only Taleban fighters were killed when the US forces targeted a madrassa (see a government report here). Local residents also confirmed this attack and said that three Taleban fighters had been killed but no civilians.

(8) Antonio Giustozzi (2012), Decoding the new Taliban: insights from the Afghan field, London, Hurst, p.106.

(9) The 2017 IDLG profile found that there were no prosecutors or judges present in the district at the time due to the lack of offices for them there. Instead, they were operating from within Ghazni city. However, AAN’s findings show that Andar’s prosecution sector had been active earlier, but became inactive from 2007 onwards due to the widespread Taleban presence.

(10) According to the 2017 IDLG district profile, Andar district supposedly has two hospitals and 10 other health facilities (six clinics and four health posts), with nine doctors (six men, three women) working in the two hospitals and six doctors (four men, two women) working in the other health facilities. In addition to the government hospitals, the IDLG report found that there were two private hospitals and two private clinics, with respectively nine (six men, three women) and six doctors (four men, two women). This was not corroborated by the interviews.

(11) Antonio Giustozzi (2012), Decoding the new Taliban: insights from the Afghan field. London, Hurst, page 106-7.

(12) Kristian Berg Harpviken (2010), Understanding Warlordism: three biographies from Afghanistan’s Southeastern Areas. Oslo, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), pp12-3.

 

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Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive and Dominique Ristori, European Commission Director-General for Energy announced today in the presence of Mr Gabriel-Beniamin Leș, Minister of National Defence of Romania the initiation of the Third Phase of the Consultation Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector (CF SEDSS III).

The announcement was made in the margins of the 4th CF SEDSS II Conference which is held under the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and hosted by the Romanian Ministry of National Defence. 

The EDA Chief Executive emphasised that “the Agency’s interest in energy has been increasing in the last years, primarily because the Ministries of Defence have identified the importance of this topic, and because of how energy affects and will change our life in the future”. As he pointed out, “disruptive technologies and new business models are reshaping the energy ecosystem and the defence sector needs to be part of this”. New trends such as digitalisation, electrification, innovative energy technologies in battery storage, smart buildings, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, integrated energy management systems as well as unknown malicious and hybrid threats require the defence sector not only to adapt to the fast-paced changing security environment but also to be able to recover when compromised.

Mr Ristori remarked that “all strands of the EU’s energy policy -energy efficiency, renewables, security of supply, interconnections- have an impact on our common European defence. That is why I believe the start of Phase III is an important step forward which reaffirms the Commission’s strong commitment to address our common energy challenges in close cooperation with the European Defence Agency”. He also said that “by improving the way the defence and security sector uses energy, new real economic opportunities can arise, creating jobs and growth for all Europeans”.

Phase III will continue pursuing the implementation of the EU legal framework on energy and will reaffirm the Consultation Forum as the appropriate vehicle to share best practice, information and experiences among the EU Ministries of Defence. With the support of the European Commission the Forum will bring closer the defence and energy communities with a view to improving energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy sources, and the protection of defence energy-related critical infrastructures.

Building on the know-how of the previous Phases and with the aim of adapting to future energy dynamics, Phase III will foresee the creation of a new ad-hoc transversal working group, which will cover the thematic activities on energy management and finance as well as a novel category on state-of-the-art technologies affecting the energy-defence dimension.

Phase III is expected to enable economic, operational and strategic results within the context of project ideas, guidelines, and action plans that can assist Ministries of Defence to apply more affordable, resilient, and sustainable energy models at the national level. To address such objectives, the Agency will implement several multi-dimensional activities ranging from high-level conferences and thematic workshops to table-top exercises.

Phase III will also be underpinned by the organisation of Energy Technology Solutions events engaging the civil sector, the industry and academia to ensure that the Forum keeps pace with the leading-edge developments in energy.

With the support of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy and the collaboration of the members of the Forum, the Agency will focus its work on how to better support Ministries of Defence to enhance strategic autonomy and resilience through a diversity of options within the nexus of the European Energy eco-system including the European defence dimension.
 

More information:

• About CF SEDSS II 
• Defence Energy Data 2016 & 2017 (EDA factsheet)
  
  

Over 130 experts from 27 European countries and more than 20 different institutions and organisations participate in the 4th Conference of the Second Phase of the Consultation Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector (CF SEDSS II) in Bucharest. The Conference, which is held under the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and hosted by the Romanian Ministry of National Defence, marks the successful completion of the Second Phase of the CF SEDSS II initiated in October 2017.

Today’s conference was officially opened by Mr Gabriel-Beniamin Leș, Minister of National Defence of Romania, Mr Dominique Ristori, European Commission Director-General for Energy and Mr Jorge Domecq, Chief Executive of the European Defence Agency (EDA).

Mr Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive, emphasised in his speech that the “Bucharest conference marks the successful completion of a project which proved that sustainable energy matters for defence and that greener defence energy matters for the European Union”. The Chief Executive expressed his satisfaction “as the Consultation Forum has enabled directly or indirectly several Ministries of Defence to develop national defence energy strategies, implement Energy Management Systems, launch projects related to energy performance and consider initiating joint collaborative projects to address common energy challenges”. 

European Commission’s Directorate General for Energy (DG ENER) and the Executive Agency for SMEs (EASME) contributed to the work of the Forum by providing an EU long-term perspective on EU energy legislation, policy and action plans. With the support of the European Commission, the defence sector has come closer to the wider energy community and joined the Union’s efforts to transit to an Energy Union. Mr Dominique Ristori, European Commission Director-General for Energy acknowledged in his introductory speech, “the substantial work of the Ministries of Defence to apply sustainable energy in the defence sector and to pursue the implementation of the EU legal framework on energy”. 

The second Phase of the Forum developed a more practical defence-centric approach and focused on a range of activities such as improving energy management and energy efficiency of military building stock and fixed infrastructure, the integration of energy sources in defence infrastructure and the protection of defence-related critical energy infrastructure against hybrid threats.

During Phase II the working groups collected more than 30 project ideas, of which 18 were elaborated to comprehensive project proposals. To support their realisation, the Agency applied an internal methodology called “IdentiFunding for Energy”, which matched these ideas with more than 30 eligible funding opportunities, enhancing the probability of their implementation. As a first step, the Agency is currently supporting Ministries of Defence to prepare three (3) applications for funding.

Mr Domecq announced that “EDA is ready to allocate additional budget to support at least five (5) other applications demonstrating the commitment of the Agency to meet the expectation of the Ministries of Defence in producing tangible results”.
 

Next Conference

The Bucharest Conference marked the finalisation of the Second Phase of the Consultation Forum. Currently, EDA and DG ENER are preparing Phase III. It is expected that the first Conference of Phase III will take place during the first quarter of 2020. In the meantime, EDA and DG ENER are also organising a Joint Defence Energy Conference to be held at the end of 2019 in Brussels in preparation of phase III. More information will be uploaded on the EDA’s dedicated website “European Defence Energy Network (EDEN)”
 

About the CF SEDSS II

The Consultation Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector (CF SEDSS) is a European Commission initiative managed by EDA. It aims at bringing together experts from the defence and energy sectors to share information and best practices on improving energy management, energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy as well increasing the protection and resilience of defence energy-related critical infrastructures. On 20 October 2017, the second phase of the Consultation Forum (CF SEDSS II) was launched. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and the agreement is between the EASME executive agency and the EDA. The contract was signed on 16 October 2017 for 22 months, expiring in August 2019. 

Based on the foundations laid during the first phase of the Consultation Forum (2015-2017), the second phase has been further expanded to cover the following interrelated subjects through three main working groups (including sub-working groups): WG 1: Energy Management including Energy Efficiency (Sub-WG1: Energy Management and Sub-WG2: Energy Efficiency; WG 2: Renewable Energy Sources and Technologies; WG 3: Protection of Critical Energy Infrastructure and one cross-cutting theme: Finance.
 

More information:

• Full speech of EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq

• Defence Energy Data 2016 & 2017 (EDA factsheet)

• About CF SEDSS II

• Moving towards defence sustainable energy models
• European Funding Gateway for Energy in Defence
• Legislation and Policy

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) has published a statement about the loss of a F-35A. According to the report, the pilot likely suffered spatial disorientation before he crashed. Would Auto-GCAS have helped? On Jun. [...]

U.S. Marine Corps and Hellenic Air Force aircraft have joined Italian Air Force F-35, T-346, Typhoon, CAEW and many other Italian assets involved in Joint Stars 2019. From May 13 to 31, 2019, dozens of [...]

Americas

Northrop Grumman Systems won a $958 million firm-fixed-price contract to deliver 30 full-rate production Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar systems for the US Marine Corps. The deal includes spares parts and retrofit kits. The AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR system provides multi-faceted detection and tracking capabilities to support engagement of a wide range of hostile threats, and offers robust air traffic control capabilities to ensure the safety of Marines worldwide. The G/ATOR comes in two distinct software variants: Block I conducts air defense and surveillance missions for aviation command and control squadrons, and Block II targets the source of incoming artillery and other ground-based fires. The radar is able to detect low-observable targets with low radar cross sections such as rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles and drones. Northrop will perform work within the US and is expected to be finished by January 13, 2025.

The US Navy contracted Bath Iron Works with a $61.7 million modification in support of the DDG 51 Class destroyers. The deal is for lead years services, which is a broad category encompassing necessary engineering support and configuration, baseline upgrades and new technology support, data and logistics management, analysis, acceptance trials, post-delivery test and trials and other elements of supporting construction of DDG 51 Class destroyers. DDG 51 Arleigh Burke destroyers are warships that provide multi-mission offensive and defensive capabilities. Destroyers can operate independently or as part of carrier strike groups, surface action groups, amphibious ready groups, and underway replenishment groups. The ships use the Aegis Combat System and the SPY-1D multifunction radar array. The ships were designed to use Tomahawk and other surface-to-air missiles and engage in antisubmarine warfare. Majority of the work under the contract modification will take place in Maine and is scheduled to be completed by June next year-

Middle East & Africa

Iran unveiled a new defense system called the „Khordad 15th“. The weapons system was displayed in a ceremony attended by Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami in Tehran, during which he said that it could detect targets as far away as 150 kilometers and hit several targets with the indigenous “Sayyad-3” missiles. According to reports, the missile system is a high-precision weapon capable of flying at low altitudes and able to carry a significant payload. Iran has worked in recent years to build its own weapons locally, rather than relying on foreign actors. Iran’s missile program was among the reasons cited by US President Donald Trump for leaving the 2015 nuclear deal last year and reimposing crippling sanctions. Recently Trump said he would be willing to reopen talks as long as Iran agreed to give up nuclear weapons.

Europe

China turns to the Ukraine to upgrade its military, the Washington Post reports. Chinese investors are reportedly asking staff at a Ukrainian aircraft engine factory about record-keeping and planning, the setup of production lines and the interplay between workshops. China is looking to upgrade its military and has found a willing partner in Motor Sich, because it can supply warplane engines as well as the know-how to possibly make a Chinese-built version in the future. Motor Sich has lost its biggest market, specifically supplying engines for military helicopters and other aircraft, after the Eastern Ukrainian War broke out in 2014.

Asia-Pacific

According to local reports, Kazan will be finishing up the upgrades of the Ansat helicopter next year. Ansat is a light twin-engine gas turbine multi-purpose helicopter with 7-9 seats. The fuselage has a pair of doors in pilot’s cab, and a pair of upwards and downwards opening side doors in transport compartment. After the seats have been removed, it can take 1000 kg of cargo inside. On external hook, it can take 1300 kg of load. The Kazan Helicopter Plant is upgrading the Ansat light multipurpose helicopter at the moment. Work is carried out in two stages: the first block of modernization was completed in 2018, the second will be finished next year. The company also continues work on starting a serial production of the modernized Ansat.

After the sudden crash of a Japanese F-35 into the Pacific Ocean in April, reports now saw this was caused by „spatial disorientation“ of its pilot. The Japan Air Self-Defense Force jet disappeared from radar while on a training mission with three other F-35s off northern Japan on April 9. There was no indication from the jet’s pilot, Maj. Akinori Hosomi, of any problems with the aircraft before contact was lost. The Ministry of Defense said Monday that Hosomi, a 41-year-old with 3,200 hours of flight experience, essentially flew the stealth fighter straight into the ocean during the night training mission. About 15 seconds lapsed between the pilot’s last communication and loss of contact with the plane. “We believe it highly likely the pilot was suffering from vertigo or spatial disorientation and wasn’t aware of his condition”, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said in a briefing.

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After a Ramadan stained with violence, peace seems remote. Both sides have intensified the tempo of the conflict, with civilians paying a heavy price. While the Taleban appear to be exercising more care with some tactics that protect civilians, they continue to unlawfully target civilians with others, as recent attacks demonstrate. The US and Afghan forces have increased their military pressure on the Taleban to try to force them to the negotiation table, but, as a consequence, civilian casualties from airstrikes and search operations have soared. Pro-government forces are now responsible for more civilian harm than the Taleban and other non-state groups. The latest data may also point to fewer measures to protect civilians under the Trump administration.  AAN’s Rachel Reid and Jelena Bjelica look at the changing dynamics of the Afghan war through the lens of the SIGAR’s regular quarterly report and UNAMA’s first quarterly civilian casualties report for 2019 and ask what it might mean for ongoing peace negotiations.

A bloody Ramadan

This Ramadan was a time of mourning for too many families, with the Eid ceasefire of a year ago a distant memory. Over 100 civilians were killed in Kabul over Ramadan, according to UNAMA’s latest numbers. Nationwide there were almost 200 civilians killed, according to the Turkish news outlet, Anadolu Agency. On the Monday before Eid, a bus carrying staff to the Civil Service Commission was blown up in an attack claimed by Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP -Daesh), killing five and injuring ten others. This followed four bombings on Sunday, including one attack targeting a bus carrying students, which was again claimed by ISKP, killing one and wounding ten. This followed suicide attacks on May 30 and 31 aimed at military targets, both of which killed civilians. UNAMA is investigating another recent attack during Friday prayers at a mosque in Kabul on May 24, where explosives were reportedly planted in the microphone used by the prayer leader, Mawlawi Samiullah Raihan, who was killed by the explosion (here and here).

A decrease in Taleban-caused civilian casualties

These attacks cut against a more positive trend. This was evident in the latest United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) quarterly report. It reported that the overall number of civilians killed by Taleban forces had dropped in the first quarter of the year. This was associated with a reduction in killings from suicide improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by 76 per cent. UNAMA noted a long, cold winter could have been a factor in this drop, but refrained from crediting improved protection measures. However, some observers have noted a multi-year trend towards greater mitigation efforts by the Taleban. That is certainly the claim from the Taleban, who said in a statement released on 22 May 2019:

as the Islamic Emirate considers this country its own homeland and these people its own nation, it continually takes all necessary steps for drastically reducing civilian losses and continues to reevaluate and improve these measures put into practice.

If we glance over the years of our current Jihad, a lot of tactics that have proven effective against enemy forces but also had a high chance of inflicting civilian losses have been abandoned by the Mujahideen.

However, this claim – to be taking “all necessary steps” to reduce civilian casualties – is directly contradicted by the increase by 21 per cent in targeted killings by anti-government elements; figures also shown in the UNAMA quarterly report. While some of these attacks have been claimed by ISKP, it is not clear-cut whether such claims always reflect reality. The Taleban did claim responsibility for the attack on 8 May 2019 on the Kabul office of a non-governmental organisation, Counterpart International, in which six civilians were killed and a further 28 injured. So, while the trend away from using suicide bombers is welcome, nevertheless, the deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taleban and other groups continues and this is a potential war crime.

The drop in suicide bombings belies an overall uptick in the operational tempo of non-state groups. The Resolute Support “enemy-initiated attacks” count shows that the number of attacks rose considerably, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported. (1) The impact of this increase has been born by the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF), which continue to suffer catastrophic losses. Between December 2018 and February 2019, the number of ANDSF casualties was approximately 31 per cent higher than the same period one year prior, according to SIGAR:

The number of casualties incurred from defensive operations has increased by 45 per cent while ANDSF casualties from offensive operations have increased by 21 per cent. USFOR-A also added that almost half of the ANDSF casualties this reporting period occurred during checkpoint security operations.

Although the exact number of the ANDSF casualties remains classified, according to a report by the Afghanistan Times from 2 June 2019, around 50 government armed forces were estimated killed every day. This is higher than a previously reported estimate of around 25 a day as calculated by the New York Times in November 2018. (2)

Increase in the US and Afghan forces caused civilian harm

UNAMA’s reporting had a particularly damning finding for US and Afghan forces: “civilian deaths attributed to Pro-Government Forces surpassed those attributed to Anti-Government Elements during the first quarter of 2019.” This significant increase in casualties was driven by airstrikes and search operations. On 23 May, UNAMA tweeted that the “civilian casualty toll from airstrikes in Afghanistan continues to rise” after releasing preliminary findings about two air attacks that killed 14 civilians, including five women and seven children in incidents in Gereshk district, Helmand, on 20 May; and Chawki district, Kunar province on 22 May. Air operations “were the leading cause of civilian deaths” in the first quarter of 2019, the vast majority of which were carried out by the US. The quarterly report said:

Pro-Government Forces carried out 43 aerial operations in the first quarter of 2019 that resulted in 228 civilian casualties (145 deaths, 83 injured), with international military forces responsible for 39 of these operations resulting in 219 civilian casualties (140 deaths, 79 injured).

This was the highest number of civilian casualties from airstrikes in the first quarter of any year since the UNAMA began systematically documenting civilian casualties in 2009 and is a continuation of the trend in 2018. In 2018, as UNAMA reported (AAN analysis here) 1,015 civilians were killed (536) or injured (479) in aerial operations; mostly by international military forces (632 civilian casualties – 393 deaths and 239 injured). (2) This represented a 61 per cent increase in casualties from this type of operation. US Central Command also confirmed that 2018 was a record for US aerial attacks, with more airstrikes than the previous three years combined, according to the US Air Force’s airpower statistics summary. In 2018, the US used 70 per cent more air ordnance than in 2017 (7,362 compared to 4,361; itself a significant increase on the 1,337 in 2016). In the first three months of 2019, the US Air Force reported that they released 1,463 ordnances in air operations (as opposed to 1,186 in the first quarter of 2018 and 457 in 2017).

An American reversal on civilian protection?

It is significant that the US and Afghan forces are killing more civilians than the Taleban and ISKP. In asymmetric warfare between non-state groups and states, insurgent groups are often responsible for more civilian harm, since they typically do not have precision weapons, and usually are less concerned with observing international law.  The US, in particular, prides itself on its commitment to avoiding civilian harm, as it states in its Annual Report on Civilian Casualties in Connection With United States Military Operations: 

the protection of civilians is fundamentally consistent with the effective, efficient, and decisive use of force in pursuit of U.S. national interests… U.S. forces also protect civilians because it is the moral and ethical thing to do. Although civilian casualties are a tragic and unavoidable part of the war, no force in history has been more committed to limiting harm to civilians than the U.S. military [emphasis added]. 

The last time international forces were responsible for such high civilian casualties, relative to the Taleban, was in 2008 when civilian harm caused by US and ISAF airstrikes and search operations (including “night raids”) was 40 per cent of the civilian harm delivered by all perpetrators. This killed 828 civilians, with 64 per cent that resulted from airstrikes.

The commander of US and ISAF forces at the time, General Stanley McChrystal, responded robustly to the mounting critiques about civilian casualties by strengthening civilian protection with a host of measures. This included restricting air strikes on residential homes and encouraging commanders to delay strikes with a likelihood of civilian harm, in favour of the next opportunity. From 2008 to 2013, these changes contributed to a significant reduction in civilian harm leading to, roughly, a 60 per cent decrease in civilian casualties attributable to the US and other pro-government forces, despite a “surge” in US troops and operations (see here). This emphasis on civilian protection received support from the highest levels of the US government. It culminates in an Executive Order on civilian protection from President Barack Obama. The reforms were driven primarily by a belief that civilian harm was undermining the strategic interests of the United States, rather than concerns about the moral or legal impact of the strikes. As General McChrystal wrote in his book My Share of the Task: A Memoir (2013): “We’re going to lose this fucking war if we don’t stop killing civilians.” This policy was continued by subsequent US commanders, including David Petraeus, John R Allen and Joseph F Dunford. While General Petraeus is remembered by some for emphasising the right of US personnel to act in self-defence, he also strengthened civilian protection measures by requiring verification of “no civilians present” prior to approving strikes.

The most significant learning of this period is that the US demonstrated an ability to decrease civilian harm, while simultaneously increasing the operational tempo. At the peak of the “surge”, in 2011, there were 187 civilian deaths in the whole year from airstrikes. Today, with 140 civilian deaths from airstrikes already recorded from just the first three months of this year, the 2019 death toll from US air strikes seems bound to exceed that.

Under President Donald Trump, some of this protective pre- and post-strike commitments have been relaxed. He has declared “total authorization” for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in spring 2017. Former Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, unpacked this in October 2017, by announcing that two key Obama-era restrictions on airpower that were designed to protect civilians had been removed. First, the ‘proximity requirement’ that restricted strikes to situations where Afghan or the US supported Special Forces were at immediate (proximity-based) threat from the Taleban or other armed groups, thus widening targeting opportunities. Second, it paved the way to put more American advisors at the brigade or battalion level with Afghan units – it is the commanders on the ground who call in the strikes.

The impact of these changes is visible from UNAMA’s data and local media reports on civilian casualties. In January 2019, for example, Pajhwok reported that at least six bird hunters were killed and one wounded in a US forces airstrike in Jalrez district of central Maidan Wardak province. In one incident on 23 March in Kunduz city, international military forces conducted an airstrike in support of Afghan forces on the ground, killing 13 civilians, including ten children and two women, and injured three more civilians, including one child and one woman. In March 2019, Azadi radio reported as many as six civilians were killed in an air operation in Sayedabad district of Maidan Wardak province. This incident led to an anti-government protest demonstration by locals who temporarily blocked the Kabul-Kandahar highway. (Another protest against civilian casualties caused in the area had taken part only a month before in front of the local office of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.)

Search operations by Afghan forces

During the first quarter of 2019, civilian casualties caused by pro-government search operations (often known as night raids) increased by 85 per cent. UNAMA points the finger squarely at the National Directorate of Security and the Khost Protection Force who were involved in 80 per cent of search operations which resulted in civilian harm. The Khost Protection Force is an irregular militia supported by the CIA, which AAN reported on in January of this year.

UNAMA reiterates its concern that these forces appear to act with impunity, outside of the governmental chain of command. UNAMA continues to call for more transparency and accountability for these operations, and for the Government of Afghanistan to either disband the Khost Protection Force or formally incorporate members into its armed forces, following a robust vetting procedure.

The New York Times (NYT) recently published an investigation into CIA-backed forces. This focused on the Khost Protection Force and 02 strike force in Nangrahar; both of which operate with very little oversight by the Afghan government. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism also reported on civilian harm and the impunity of these two forces with a special report into two incidents resulting in multiple civilian casualties in September and October 2018.

A recent search operation in Khogyani district in Nangahar resulted in a family being shot to death in their car as they tried to leave the area, as they were apparently mistaken for Taleban. The family included a woman and two children. The incident, which took place on May 24, triggered a protest march carrying with the bodies of the dead to Jalalabad.

In March, also in Nangrahar, a local BBC journalist reported on his Facebook page that the special forces conducted an operation in Hesarak district and killed 12 members of a family, including women and children. The NYT reported local officials saying 13 civilians were killed, quoting US officials blaming civilian shielding. The use of civilian shields, if true, contravenes International Humanitarian Law, but does not negate other obligations of proportionality, distinction and military necessity (NYT report summarised in BIJ database).

By the end of March 2019, civilian harm was triggering so much public outrage that president Ghani announced on Twitter: “I have ordered ANDSF to either abort or to wait-out a potential target even if a single civilian is present” (see here). His remarks followed a meeting with his senior security officials and NATO’s Resolute Support mission.

This could be an important shift. It is reminiscent of the spirit of the McChrystal era commitment to exercise “strategic patience” in order to protect civilian life. However, it will be important to see if it is operationalised with new rules of engagement for the ministries of defence and interior as well as the National Directorate of Security.

Conclusion

Operational tempo and civilian harm caused by Afghan and US forces have ebbed and flowed over the last 18 years. (Civilian casualty figures in general have risen almost every year, and the number of civilians killed reached a new record high in 2018.) However, what is significant in the current period is that pro-government forces speak openly about a desire to hit the Taleban hard in order to force their hand in the negotiations, despite the cost in civilian life that this currently entails. The current negotiations are looking far less promising than some had hoped at the start of the year. There has been little to show from the recent meetings in Moscow or Doha (see here and here). It remains to be seen if reduced optimism about negotiations, combined with the higher civilian cost, will give the US and Afghan commanders good cause to rethink their strategic assumption and the current operational intensity.

While the Taleban do seem to have reduced the use of direct attacks on civilians through suicide IEDs, they continue to intentionally kill civilians; an egregious crime under international law. The problem on the US and Afghan government side is a dramatic increase in tactics that result in unintended loss of civilian life – airstrikes and search operations. But, even if not intended, civilian harm can often be anticipated and can be avoided. The announcement by President Ghani to prioritise civilian protection is a crucial statement, but it is too soon to detect any change in the behaviour of Afghan forces. As noted above, if part of the problem involves the CIA and covert Afghan forces, this could be a real test of the president’s authority.

 

(1) According to the SIGAR quarterly report, Afghanistan experienced heightened insecurity over the winter months. This, SIGAR said, was based on “the few remaining publicly available measures of the security situation in Afghanistan,” adding that “the Resolute Support formally notified SIGAR that it is no longer producing its district-level stability assessment of Afghan government and insurgent control and influence, expressed in a count of the districts, the total estimated population of the district, and the total estimated area of the districts.”

(2) The New York Times (NYT) drew on admission from President Ghani in November 2018 that more than 28,000 Afghan police officers and soldiers have been killed since 2015, and previously released government data that confirmed 5,000 deaths in 2015 and nearly 7,000 in 2016 (while the data were still public and not classified). This means that 16,529 casualties occurred between January 2017 and November 2018. This brought the NYT to the figure of “25 a day or 175 a week — far more than Afghan government officials are usually willing to confirm.”

 

A grant agreement worth of €1.88 million was signed on 25 May 2019 for the Strategic Technology Foresight action called SOLOMON to be carried out under the EU Preparatory Action in the field of defence research. The grant agreement was signed between the European Defence Agency (EDA) and the winning consortium led by Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. (The other members of the consortium can be found in the SOLOMON project page)

The Strategic Technology Foresight action called SOLOMON (Strategy-Oriented anaLysis Of the Market fOrces in EU defeNce) was selected following an EU-wide call for proposals organised by EDA closing on 28 June 2018. The action aims to provide an effective way for tackling the issue of critical defence technological dependencies for the EU regarding current and future systems and capabilities. The winning consortium encompasses a total of 18 participants from 10 countries. The project will be complementary to the PYTHIA project, which was selected following the Preparatory Action Call on Strategic Technology Foresight 2017.

The SOLOMON project is part of the Preparatory Action, aimed at testing the mechanisms that can prepare, organise and deliver a variety of EU-funded cooperative defence research and technology development (R&T) activities to improve the competitiveness and innovation in the European defence industry and to stimulate cooperation amongst R&T actors in the EU Member States.

The signature of this grant agreement continues the path towards EU defence integration and paves the way for developing a future European Defence Fund, especially its research dimension, as part of the EU’s next Multiannual Financial Framework (2021-2027). The next step in 2019 will be the signatures of the grant agreements related to the calls on electronic design technologies for defence application and effects.

The PADR implementation is run by the European Defence Agency (EDA) following the mandate of a Delegation Agreement between the Commission and EDA signed on 31st May 2017. By this agreement the Commission entrusts EDA with the management and implementation of the research projects to be launched within the PADR.

The PADR implementation is run by the European Defence Agency (EDA) following the mandate of a Delegation Agreement between the Commission and EDA signed on 31st May 2017. By this agreement the Commission entrusts EDA with the management and implementation of the research projects to be launched within the PADR.
 

More information:

• Financial decision
• 2018 calls for proposals published for PA on Defence Research (EDA webnews, 15 March 2018)
• Factsheet ‘Preparatory Action for CSDP-related research’
• Preparatory Action for Defence Research (EDA project page)
• PADR SOLOMON project page

Dark Blade 2019, already the 13th multinational training organised under EDA’s Helicopter Exercise Programme (HEP), was successfully completed last week at Náměšť airbase in the Czech Republic.

A total of 29 air assets from Belgium (3 A-109 and 3 NH-90), Czech Republic (5 Mi-24, 6 Mi-171 and 4 L-159 “Alca”), Germany (3 CH-53), Hungary (3 Mi-24 and 2 Mi-27), Slovenia (1 AS-532) and Poland (1 W-3A) were involved in the exercise, as well as around 1,200 military staff. Observers from Serbia, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Joint Air Power Competence Centre (JAPCC) also attended. Furthermore, a multinational Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC) team and an Electronic Warfare (EW) emulator system were also involved. A mentor team encompassing helicopter tactics instructors from Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK supported the academic part of the exercise and provided mentoring and standardisation during the planning and execution phases of all Composite Air Operations (COMAO) missions.

The main objective of DB19 was the performance of 8 day/night COMAO missions in a realistic, harsh and complex environment, as well as to carry out specific training as evasion training, live firing, formation flights, paratrooper and scuba jumps, rappelling and fast roping. In total, some 290 flights were performed amounting to around 500 flight hours. 

A Distinguished Visitors Day was organized on 28 May, attended by Czech Defence Minister Lubomir Metnar, the President of the Czech Senate, Jaroslav Kubera, as well as other military and civilian authorities.

During the closing ceremony on 30 May, EDA’s Project Officer Rotary Wing, José Pablo Romera, thanked the Czech Air Force, and in particular 22nd HAB Náměšť Airbase Commander, Col Miroslav Svoboda and all his team, for the outstanding organisation and execution of the exercise. A special thanks also went to all the participants for their proactive involvement and cooperative mindset which resulted in the achievement of the expected training objectives.

The next EDA helicopter exercise, ‘Swift Blade 2020’, will take place in April 2020 and will be jointly hosted by The Netherlands and Belgium, with Gilze-Rijen Air Base as the main location.
 

Background

A decade ago, the multinational helicopter training cooperation started in EDA with the aim of improving the European helicopter operational capability for crisis management operations and prepare helicopter crews for deployments by providing them advanced helicopter tactics training. Over time, requirements related to interoperability and training standardisation have been added to ensure that training does not only improve national readiness, but also supports multinational cooperation.

Since 2009, 13 Blade exercises held in eight different European countries (France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Finland, Hungary and Czech Republic), 9 helicopter tactics symposiums, 63 Helicopter Tactics Courses, 6 Helicopter Tactics Instructors Courses and several other training activities, as COMAO planning courses and the EW courses have been carried out under EDA management and involving 15 EDA Member States.

The outcome of all those trainings is a high level of operational interoperability and helicopter cooperation among a large number of EDA member states. The next important step will be the transfer of all those activities and programmes (HEP, HTC and HTIC) to a future Multinational Helicopter Training Centre (MHTC) by end of 2021.
 

More information

• DARK BLADE factsheet
• DARK BLADE kicks off in the Czech Republic (EDA webnews)
• Helicopter Initiatives (EDA project page)
• HOT BLADE 2018 improved joint and combined helicopter training (EDA news)

 

Americas

General Dynamics won a $25.6 million firm-fixed-price contract to produce MK 46 Modification 2 Gun Weapon Systems for use on modern Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and Landing Platform Dock (LPD) ships. MK46 30mm all-weather, day/night, fully stabilized weapon system is a remotely operated system that uses a high-velocity cannon for shipboard self-defense against small, high-speed surface targets. It is the main deck gun for LPD-17 ships and is the secondary gun battery for LCS, and Zumwalt Class ships. The contract is for the procurement of two 30mm MK 46 MOD 2 GWSs for the LCS Surface Warfare Mission module, two 30mm MK 46 MOD 2 GWSs for the LPD-29, two 30mm MK 46 MOD 2 GWSs for the LPD-30, and associated spare parts. General Dynamics will perform work within the US and is expected to be finished by September 2021.

Sikorsky has flown its Optionally Piloted Vehicle (OPV) technology aboard a UH-60A Black Hawk testbed helicopter for the first time. The company said in a press release that the flight took place on May 29 and it marked the official start to the flight test program for the soon-to-be optionally piloted aircraft. “This is the first full authority fly-by-wire retrofit kit developed by Sikorsky that has completely removed mechanical flight controls from the aircraft,” Lockheed Martin said. The OPV trials are part of a wider effort led by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to demonstrate unmanned helicopter operations under its Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System program. Follow-on flight testing aims to include envelope expansion throughout the summer leading to flights without any pilots in 2020.

Middle East & Africa

Five Rafales for the Qatari Amiri Air Force arrived at Dukhan Air Base on June 5. Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was on hand to welcome the pilots and the jets home. Qatar inked a number of major arms deals after Riyadh and its allies the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain announced a total economic boycott of Doha in June 2017. Qatar ordered 24 of the Rafales from France in 2015, adding 12 more last year. It also has an option to buy 36 more. In February, France formally handed the first of the aircraft over to Qatar in a ceremony in Merignac, southwestern France, where the planes are built. Qatar has separately inked deals with France for 50 Airbus A321 passenger planes as well as a deal with Britain to buy Typhoon fighters.

Europe

Aero Vodochody delivered three new L-159T2 light attack/trainer aircraft to the Czech Republic. The new T2 twin seat aircraft, which made its maiden flight in 2018, has a newly built central and forward fuselage, and is fully NVG compatible. The L-159 aircraft is operated by Czech Air Force, Iraqi Air Force and US company Draken International. According to reports, the cockpit has a multi-function display and upgraded version of the VS-20 ejection seat, while the aircraft offers single-point pressure refueling capability and carries self-protection systems in the form of countermeasures and a radar warning receiver. This makes the trainer perfect to train for the fleet of Gripens that student pilots move onto.

Finnish defense and aerospace group Patria has acquired Belgian aircraft propulsion maintenance operation Belgium Engine Center (BEC) from AIM Norway, said an official press release from Patria. BEC is a military jet engine maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) center that services the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine which powers F-15 and F-16 aircraft around the globe. The center also provides material management services for those engines. BEC has its operating base in Herstal in Belgium, and has about 90 employees. AIM Norway acquired BEC in 2016. The acquisition comes after Patria acquired Norwegian aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul specialist AIM Norway in partnership with Kongsberg of Norway in December 2018.

Asia-Pacific

The Japanese defense ministry plans to deploy a radar-equipped Aegis Ashore unit in the Ground Self-Defense Force’s Araya training area in Akita, the capital of the prefecture. However, officials found several mistakes in the survey documents that supported the need to deploy missile interceptors in Akita, local news reported Thursday. The defense ministry said on May 27 that 19 other candidate sites were “unfit” for Aegis Ashore deployment, Jiji Press reported. The government survey in question included errors for terrain data on nine other areas that provided comparisons to the designated site. The US State Department approved the Aegis Ashore systems purchase to Japan in January. Total cost of the system is estimated at more than $2 billion.

Today’s Video

Watch: China’s first sea launch: Long March-11 launches from a ship at sea

Eid al-Fitr Mubarak!

The AAN team would like to wish a happy and peaceful Eid al-Fitr to friends and readers, to all Muslims around the world and particularly the people of Afghanistan. We hope the coming days of Eid bring happiness and joy to all. AAN hopes Afghans can celebrate this Eid as peacefully as they did last year when the Taleban and Afghan government officially announced a three-day ceasefire (read AAN’s report here).

Eid Mubarak!

 

New clothes for Eid al-Fit Photo: Obaid Ali 2019

 

Dari

عید سعید فطر مبارک!

 

شبکه تحلیلگران افغانستان عید خوش و سرشار از صلح و آرامش را برای دوستان، خوانندگان، تمام مسلمانان جهان به خصوص مردم افغانستان آرزو میکند. امیدواریم که روزهای عید برای شما خوشی و شادی را به ارمغان بیاورد. شبکه تحلیلگران افغانستان امیدوار است افغان ها این عید را مانند عید فطر گذشته که طالبان در آن آتش بس اعلان کردند، به آرامی تجلیل کنند. (گزارش قبلی ما را اینجا بخوانید.)

عید مبارک

 

Buying cake in Kabul in the last days of Ramadan 2019 Photo: Obaid Ali

Pashto

اختر مو مبارک شه!

د افغانستان تحلیلګرانو شبکه ملګریو، لوستونکو، د نړۍ ټولو مسلمانانو په ځانګړي ډول افغانانو ته د یوه سولییز اختر مبارکي وايي. موږ هیله لرو چې د اختر ورځې به ټولو ته خوښي او سوکالي ور په برخه کړي. د افغانستان تحلیلګرانو شبکه هیله لري چې افغانان به د تېر کوچني اختر په څېر چې طالبانو او افغان حکومت په رسمي ډول د دریو ورځو اوربند اعلان پکې کړی و، دا اختر هم په    سوله کې تېر کړي.( د افغانستان تحلیلګرانو شبکې راپور دلته ولولئ).

اختر مو بختور شه !

In opium-rich Nad Ali district, public service provision is poor. The district is roughly divided between the government and the Taleban and they continue to clash over control of population, territory and roads. Although only the government and NGOs fund public services, the Taleban exert considerable control over what is delivered in their areas, determining what is taught in schools, prioritising Taleban patients in health facilities, banning mobile phone companies and collecting taxes from development projects. Local residents, as disaffected from the government as they are from the Taleban, have no choice but to learn to navigate this dual rule, cooperating with or tolerating whoever has power. In this case study, AAN researcher Ali Mohammad Sabawoon (with input from Said Reza Kazemi and Christian Bleuer) unpacks the provision of governance and security, education, health, electricity, telecommunications and development projects in Nad Ali.

Service Delivery in Insurgent-Affected Areas is a joint research project by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Previous publications in this series are: methodology and literature review; a case study on Obeh district in western Herat province; a case study on Dasht-e Archi district in northern Kunduz province; a case study on Achin district in eastern Nangarhar province; and a case study on polio vaccination.

Nad Ali district: context

• About 17 km to the west of Lashkargah city, to which it is connected by an asphalt road; mainly agricultural land watered by the Boghra Canal from the Helmand River; one of the top opium poppy-cultivating districts in the country;
• Credible population estimates range between 95,000 and 180,000 (with an outlier of 450,000; sources below); 95 per cent Pashtun from various tribal groups and the remaining five per cent Baloch, Uzbeks and Hazaras, as estimated by key informants;
• After suffering predatory rule by the US and Kabul-backed local commanders after 2001, the insurgency swiftly gained ground from 2006 onwards. The district remains unstable, currently roughly divided between the government and Taleban-held areas, with continuing sporadic clashes over control of territory, population and roads.

Nad Ali district: service delivery

• Education: schools, including high schools, open (except in frontline areas); girls traditionally study only until grade 6, the end of primary education, and the Taleban accept this; Taleban control school staffing, curriculum and day-to-day management in areas under their rule; Taleban and government coordinate to keep education going;
• Health: health services are available but are substandard and inadequate; there are no female doctors or nurses in the district and only a few midwives; Taleban interfere in the staffing of health services, and currently allow vaccination campaigns to be administered only from mosques, ie not door-to-door; they demand priority treatment for their own sick and wounded in areas under their control;
• Electricity, media and telecommunications: no public electricity, but solar power is widely used; diverse media followed on TV, radio and smartphones by those who can afford it and secretly in Taleban-ruled areas; the Taleban’s total ban on mobile phone operators has been evaded by a public telecommunication company that operates from inside the compound of the district government and a private company that operates from the vicinity of a major military base in neighbouring Washir district;
• Other services: some water supply and road-building projects; development projects, particularly those in or crossing Taleban territory need to be authorised and are ‘taxed’

Introducing Nad Ali district

Nad Ali district owes its origins to the agricultural and settlement development projects in Helmand Valley that began in the first decade of the twentieth century. Launched around 1910 and lasting for about seven decades until the Soviet invasion in 1979, the Helmand Valley Development Project was a massive and complex effort to control and utilise water resources from the Helmand River for irrigation and settlement purposes. Successive Afghan governments pursued the project in collaboration with, first, the Germans and Japanese, and after World War 2, the Americans (partly to balance Soviet development assistance delivered elsewhere in the country). (1) Nad Ali, along with Nawa Barakzai and Nahr-e Seraj districts, received a large share of United States’ financial aid in the 1950s and 1960s. (2)

The area now known as Nad Ali district was the first to receive settled nomads in 1951. The Helmand Valley project led to the creation of Helmand province with Lashkargah as its capital in 1964 (initially the newly-established province was called Gereshk after it had been divided from Farah province in 1960). (3) Despite serious technical flaws (eg the deterioration of agricultural lands due to waterlogging and soil salinization), the Boghra Canal did gradually transform desert into fertile land; “establishing irrigation works, giving land and assistance to settle [mostly Pashtun] nomads, and creating ‘villages’” led to the creation of Nad Ali as a district (page 10 of this 1983 report). The Boghra Canal remains the largest-capacity canal in the Helmand River basin and irrigates the largest area of land. (4)

The main intention of the then-Afghan government was to settle and govern ‘unruly’ Pashtun Kuchis (nomads), who, in its view, had created problems for the country’s various governments (for example, by participating in the overthrow of King Amanullah in 1929). However, members of several other ethnic groups also settled in Nad Ali, turning it into a socially-heterogeneous area (page 8 of this 1980 paper). Despite initial challenges (including the difficulty of changing the nomadic Kuchi lifestyle to a settled, agriculturalist one) and the poor quality of the land, which had initially driven many settlers out of the area, Nad Ali emerged, by the mid-1960s, as an agrarian district with rudimentary community-based health and education facilities. (5)

Nad Ali covers an area of 3,168 km2and is located nearly 17 km to the west of Lashkargah city to which it is connected by an asphalt road (for a map of Helmand province, see page 2 of this atlas). It borders Washir district to the north, Kajaki to the northeast, Lashkargah and Nawa Barakzai to the east, Marja to the south and Khashrod district of Nimruz province to the west (for a map of Nad Ali district, see page 9 of this atlas). According to the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) 2017 district profile of Nad Ali, it has 240 villages, many of which are situated in central Nad Ali, with the district government compound right in the middle. (6) The greenness of this central area is represented in the names of some of the villages; in Pashto, shin and zarghun are different shades of green, kalay is village and simi is area, so here we find the villages of Shin Kalay to the west of the district government compound and Zarghun Kalay in the northeast, while the whole area is called Shnai Simi. The other part of the district is called Dashti Simi, Pashto for ‘desert area’ – although since the recent advent of tube wells and solar panels, much of this rocky, barren area has also been ‘greened’ and is now under cultivation (see below).

Opium

Opium poppy cultivation dominates agriculture in Helmand. Other crops, such as wheat and maize, are negligible. Those districts of Helmand with a warm climate, such as Nad Ali, are perfect for growing poppy as it can be cultivated there in all four seasons. The most fruitful harvesting season is between April and May. Around mid-April, seasonal workers from other provinces like Ghazni, Zabul, Wardak, Paktia and Paktika come to Helmand for the harvest. This author has observed Afghan refugees and even Pakistanis coming to Helmand, including Nad Ali, in this particular period to labour in the poppy fields.

During the mid to late 1990s, Nad Ali district frequently ranked as either the top or second highest opium poppy cultivating district in the country. During the 2000s, poppy cultivation decreased. The Helmand Food Zone project, that began in 2008, aimed to replace poppy with licit crops. The programme’s incentives were primarily the provision of wheat seed and fertiliser, given in return for a farmer’s commitment not to grow opium poppy; there was also the disincentive of the threat of eradication. (7) This project initially contributed to a dramatic fall in opium poppy cultivation in Helmand from 2008 to 2011 (details here), although, as pointed out by opium expert David Mansfield, soaring wheat prices and declining opium prices at the time played a strong role in farmers’ decisions to make what turned out to be a temporary switch away from opium poppy. (8) Moreover, opium cultivation in the province began to soar again in about 2013, partly driven by new cultivation north of the Boghra Canal, facilitated by ‘new technology’ – tube wells and solar panels – and as an unintended consequence of the Helmand Food Zone Project which had driven tenant and sharecropping farmers hit by the poppy ban north to cultivate the desert. Cultivation hit a historic high in 2017 with 144,018 hectares of land under cultivation (details here). This increase was, in the words of Mansfield “truly unprecedented”. Although there was a slight decrease of 7,220 hectares (5 per cent) in 2018, Helmand overall remains Afghanistan’s leading opium poppy cultivating province, accounting for 52 per cent of the total area under such cultivation in the country (page 17 of this survey). In 2018, Nad Ali was again the top opium-cultivating district in the county with 21,396 of a total countrywide estimated 263,000 hectares.

Opium poppy provides the main income for large numbers of families and individuals in Nad Ali. This has also made them vulnerable to the adverse consequences of government-led eradication efforts and happy with the fact that the Taleban have opposed such efforts. At the same time, opium poppy cultivation has been a fundamental driver of the protracted conflict in the district and wider province. The rivalry over this crop has fractured district and provincial élites as they have clashed over who controls its production, processing and trafficking. Various actors in the conflict have used opium to make money or build prestige and patronage and it has contributed to rampant corruption in the government.

Population

There is no reliable data on the population of Nad Ali district – as is the case elsewhere around the country. IDLG in a district profile of Nad Ali dated 28 July 2017 estimated a population of 450,000 people (250,000 men, 200,000 women). This is, however, far higher than all other sources, including:

1. Central Statistics Office (CSO) population estimates for the solar year 1397 (2018/19): 180,535 people (93,116 men, 87,419 women) (page 36 here);

2. US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), reporting based on information provided by NATO Resolute Support mission in October 2018: 71,271 people –not disaggregated by sex (page 222 here); and

3. United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) dataset for 2016/17: 94,649 people (48,422 men, 46,227 women).

The UNOCHA dataset is possibly considered the most accurate because of its data triangulation with various government sources, but it does not include Kuchi populations (as there have been no updated statistics on this since 1979). According to the UNOCHA figures, Nad Ali is the fourth most-populated district in Helmand following Nahr-e Seraj (122,067), Lashkargah (108,174) and Nawa Barakzai (96,479 people). All are located in or around the provincial centre, an area densely-populated (for visual representation, see page 67 of the Afghanistan Provincial Profile 2018 ). According to INOCHA figures, Nad Ali comprises 10.58 per cent of Helmand’s overall population of 894,805 people (the CSO puts Nad Ali as the second most-populated district, comprising around 13% of the overall population). Drawing on Helmand’s average household size of 10.7 (page 68 of Afghanistan Provincial Profile 2018), the UNOCHA figures suggest there are about 8,846 households in Nad Ali.

In terms of ethnicity, key informants estimated that 95 per cent of Nad Ali’s inhabitants are Pashtuns. According to the respondents, the remaining five per cent of residents include members of other ethnicities such as the Baloch, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Hazaras mostly live in a village by the name of Sayed Abad. The most politically-relevant diversity is, however, within the Pashtun community. They belong to various tribes such as the Kharoti, Sulaimankhel, Nasar, Daftani, Laghmani, Barakzai and Andar. In addition, there are Pashtun Kuchis from the Nurzai and Alizai tribes. The various government settlement programmes in the 1950s to 1970s gave this district a diverse population, with families originally hailing from a variety of regions and tribal groups and a divided leadership. Central Helmand’s social fragmentation has been greatly exacerbated by 40 years of war, resulting, in Mansfield’s words, “in a rural elite that is fragmented, competitive and limited in its geographical sphere of influence.” Along with the opium poppy driven rivalry, this has complicated efforts – by the Afghan government, the Taleban, the US government and international forces – to secure local agreements without angering one group or another. (9)

Conflict and security

Given Helmand’s adjacency to Kandahar where the Taleban first emerged as a movement in the 1990s, it is not surprising that the Taleban took power in Helmand early on; their presence goes back to at least December 1994/January 1995. They did this by successfully infiltrating the provincial political scene after splitting the already factionalised and warring mujahedin commanders through forming alliances with some against others. (10) Their success came about also because they managed to put an end to the mujahedin anarchy.

Boys cool off in the canal running through Nad Ali district centre: from mid-2015 to 2017, it marked an impassable frontline. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2018.

To avoid being captured by the Taleban, some mujahedin commanders fled Helmand to join Ismail Khan in Herat, and, when they were unable to regain Helmand or even keep Herat from Taleban advances, fled to Iran. Others left for Pakistan. However, many among the mujahedin rank and file stayed and were disarmed by the Taleban or joined the new group, which enjoyed some among parts of the population in Helmand in the 1990s. Many young men joined the Taleban as fighters during their rule (1995-2001), some voluntarily, others forcibly.

The Taleban had several district governors in Nad Ali district during this period, the last being Mullah Saifullah. As former member of the British-led PRT Mike Martin has described, (11) the district was used as a resting place for Taleban members returning from the fight against the Northern Alliance (formed of some mujahedin and other groups which banded together to fight the Taleban after 1996 and officially known as the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan). The Taleban military conscripted young local men to boost their fighting force, using the mirabs (water distribution managers) to facilitate conscription, although many evaded being enlisted by escaping from the area or buying their way out. One man from Nad Ali, now a tribal elder, whom AAN interviewed for this study, recollected the situation in the 1990s:

After the Taleban came to Nad Ali for the first time, the mirab of our village came to me and told me that the Taleban had called me to go to Gereshk district the following day. I didn’t sleep that night because I knew they wanted to send me to fight against other Afghans in Kunduz. The Taleban were forcefully collecting people from the community to fight for them. The following day I approached my nephew who was a commander in Kandahar. He gave me a letter and then the Taleban didn’t send me to Kunduz for fighting.

As elsewhere around the country, the Taleban enforced their rule across Helmand from 1995 to 2001 and delegated de facto responsibility for public service delivery to NGOs. The Taleban constructed no schools or clinics, but built and ran many madrassas where thousands of talebs (religious pupils) studied. They checked people’s appearance to make sure it conformed to their Taleban’s standards and ensured people did not have televisions or listened to music. They severely punished people for offences such as theft and not saying namaz (daily prayer). However, it was their “detailed knowledge of the local political context,” said Martin, which “enabled the Taleban” to calm the area initially, providing some degree of stability, after their disarmament of the feuding mujahedin commanders, and then “to exert social control.” (12) This short era was arguably the only multi-year period of stability in Nad Ali and the greater Helmand province during the forty years of war from 1978 to this very day.

The US-led military intervention abruptly terminated Taleban rule in Nad Ali and in Helmand in late 2001. Realising they could not resist for long, many Taleban members, especially senior officials and commanders, fled to Pakistan, giving space to the mujahedin commanders to return to power. (13) Those returning seized the various offices of state, with the backing of the then leader of the interim administration, Hamed Karzai. The main new commanders-turned-provincial officials were: Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, provincial governor; Abdul Rahman Jan, provincial police chief; Dad Muhammad Khan, provincial National Directorate of Security (NDS) head and; Mualem Mir Wali, commander of the 93rd Army Division. They gained access to power and money through their positions and massive US funds and were able to reactivate and greatly expand their patronage networks by distributing civilian and military government positions to loyalists and allies. They created the post-2001 political order in Helmand and its districts – and also paved the way for the return of the Taleban. As elsewhere, it was the abusive rule of these local élites that drove rebellion, insurgency and the Taleban’s re-emergence (see the detailing of this in Helmand as a whole by Theo Farrell and Antonio Giustozzi).

In Nad Ali, police chief Abdul Rahman Jan (2001 to 2005) had appointed district governors and formed the district police force out of local militiamen loyal to himself. (14) Like the three other key strongmen in the province, he grabbed government land, purportedly 20,000 jeribs (4,000 hectares), not just in Nad Ali but also elsewhere, including Marjah and Nawzad districts. (15) He then settled members of his clan on this land, where they grew opium poppy, ran heroin-processing labs and controlled opium transport, all under the control and protection of his police.

Foreign troops, US Special Forces, in particular, were implicated in the establishment of this rule. (16) Generally lacking an understanding of the local environment, (17) in the early years after 2001, the US military and the CIA offered rewards for ‘intelligence’ on Taleban and especially al-Qaeda members. Informants reported others as ‘Taleban’ or ‘al-Qaeda’, either for money or to manipulate the US military into taking action against their rivals, with considerable success. Helmand’s post-2001 élites targeted not only individuals, but whole communities, either by exploiting ill-informed foreign forces or directly ordering militias under their command to do so.

They also competed among themselves for power and the control of lucrative smuggling routes, including in Nad Ali, resulting in clashes between their militias. In some cases, their struggle for control over drug routes almost turned into all-out war, as was the case with a gun battle between Sher Muhammad Akhundzada and Abdul Rahman Jan’s militias over the transport of a drug convoy in 2005. (18) Drug eradication efforts were also, in many cases, manipulated to target the opium poppy cultivation of rivals or non-aligned, unconnected farmers (see, for example, this article). Coupled with an abusive rule, the inter-élite rivalry over power contributed to the loss of legitimacy of the post-2001 US-backed Afghan government in the eyes of large parts of the local population in Helmand. The misrule and impunity of the 2001-2006 period, in practice, facilitated the Taleban’s early resurgence. In Nad Ali, for instance, they reactivated their networks and attracted to their ranks those who had been harmed by or were disgruntled with the post-2001 abusive, corrupt and exclusionary governance.

The British, who arrived to set up a PRT in Helmand in early 2006, recognised that as this RUSI article says, the campaign in Helmand needed to focus on “security first, governance foremost” and that it would only be won through better governance and development. They insisted Karzai’s ally, provincial governor Sher Muhammad Akhundzada (who had been found with nine tons of opium in his compound in 2005), should go. Yet, Helmand was already lost. The British and their allies poured military and civilian resources into the province, including into  Nad Ali, especially after 2008, as Mansfield has described (see this AREU 2018 paper):

Between 2008 and 2012, Helmand province was a focal point for just such a population-centred counterinsurgency effort. It was estimated that between 2009 and 2011, more than US$648 million was spent in the province in tandem with an inflow of over 20,000 US Marines, as well as UK, Danish, and Afghan military forces. As early as late 2009, the district of Nawa Barakzai, just south of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, became an emblem of counter-insurgency efforts and cited as an exemplar of the merits of “putting the population first.” The approach was then replicated in the neighbouring districts of Nad e Ali and Marjah when over 3,000 US Marines, 1,200 soldiers from the UK and 4,400 Afghan forces deployed under Operation Moshtarak in February 2010, while millions of dollars were spent on physical and social infrastructure.

This did not have the hoped-for effect and soon after the withdrawal of foreign troops in 2014, there was a resurgence of Taleban in the province (see AAN’s detailed reporting on this from March 2016 here and here). By 2016, the Taleban had captured and were in control of large swathes of territory in Helmand, including most of Nad Ali. In that year, the Taleban blocked the Helmand-Kandahar road for almost two months. They also closed roads leading from the districts to Lashkargah city.

In 2016, the Taleban captured all of Nad Ali district except for the district centre and a small area around. The Taleban warned government employees, particularly those working in security departments, to leave their jobs. They told policemen and soldiers that if they abandoned their duties they would not be killed, harmed or imprisoned. Key informants told AAN that some of the militaries quit, while others left the district and continued their jobs elsewhere in the province. Those who obeyed Taleban orders were not harmed, according to these informants. The Taleban thus showed greater leniency towards those affiliated with the government than they had when they were fighting when they often killed or imprisoned government officials. However, those who had left their jobs were not allowed to go to the provincial capital unless with written permission from the Taleban. The Taleban feared they might join the government again and work in other parts of the province.

The central government responded to the Taleban’s expansion by sending troops from Kandahar and Zabul provinces. They managed to reopen the Helmand-Kandahar road. In early 2017, the Taleban briefly blocked the road again but ceased their blockade soon afterwards. The government then tried to regain control of Nad Ali in April 2017. According to Mansfield, fighting was so intense that many farmers abandoned their crops:

That winter cropping season, more land was abandoned following government incursions into Nad e Ali in April 2017 and an attempt to wrest back control of the area around the district centre. The fighting was such that farmers around the military base in Shawqat near Luy Bagh left over 400 hectares of poppy crop unharvested rather than risk going to the field.

Fighting continued throughout 2017, characterised, according to Mansfield, by allegiances that were fluid and pragmatic. “There is no difference to me,” one farmer told him, “between the Taleban and the government. But if we have just one of them in the area it is better; if we have both, there is fighting.

The April 2017 government offensive failed to take back any significant territory from the Taleban in the district. In the run-up to the Wolesi Jirga elections in 2018, the government still controlled only a very limited area around the district centre. In a bid to get votes cast, the government carried out operations during the election campaign, carrying on their efforts after the poll. They did manage to push the Taleban out of most of the Shnai Simi area and from some areas of Dashti Simi. This has resulted in an ‘active stalemate’, in which the government still struggles to clear the Taleban from the district and the Taleban continues to occasionally attack government forces, which continues to this day.

Contrary to elsewhere around the country, the Taleban did not leave space in Helmand for other militant groups such as the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) to operate. Their shadow provincial governor, Mullah Abdul Rahim, also known as Mullah Manan (killed by the US in 2018), stood against ISKP activity in Helmand province.

Governance and security provision

Nad Ali district is separated into two halves by the Boghra Canal, which, according to key informants, also roughly delineates the current power division between the Taleban and government: areas located towards the district centre and to the south of the Boghra are largely with the government, while areas located to the north of the Boghra are largely under the control of the Taleban. This translates into most of Dashti Simi (the previously completely desert area) being under the control of the Taleban and most of the Shnai Simi area (the central, green area) being under the control of the government.

The district governor of Nad Ali, Muhammad Gul Hashemi, claimed to AAN that the government-controlled 80 per cent of the district’s territory. Shnai Simi, however, makes up about half of the area of Nad Ali district. Interviewees said that Zarghun Kalay, Shin Kalay, Naqil Abad, Sayed Abad and Khushal Kalay of the Shnai Simi were under the control of the government, but also that some villages in Shnai Simi, for example, Abadallah Qulf, as well as three out of 13 villages in the 31 Gharbi area, are controlled by the Taleban. This suggests, contrary to the claim of the district governor, that the area under government control is about 45 per cent of Nad Ali’s territory. The government is currently largely in control of the roads, particularly the road leading from Lashkargah to Nad Ali’s district centre. However, the Taleban continue to attack government officials that travel on the roads. There was, for instance, a Taleban ambush on a government convoy on the Chanjir road that interlinks Lashkargah and Gereshk through Nad Ali, in May 2019.

The majority of low-level Taleban in Nad Ali are from the district, although insurgents from other districts of Helmand as well as from other provinces and even from among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan are also present among them. The Taleban commanders tend to be from other provinces, such as Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan. Commanders are often transferred from one district to another. The reason for that, one key informant told AAN, was that the Taleban do not want their commanders to be too familiar to the local community. Because commanders are often transferred after spending only a short period of time in a specific area, the key informants said they often do not know them by name. In terms of the government’s security presence, district governor Hashemi told AAN there was a battalion of 900 Afghan National Army soldiers, 450 Afghan National Police and 300 Afghan Local Police present in the district. On the other side, a respondent told AAN the Taleban might number 250-300 in the district.

The very many Nad Ali farmers who rely on opium poppy as their main source of income see little difference between the Taleban and the government, reports Mansfield:

Farmers recognize the relationships between the insurgency and opium in much the same way they see the government’s involvement with the drugs trade. The rural population of Helmand has direct experience with the taxes that they are expected to pay on the opium crop to the local Taleban commanders, but it is nothing like the figures cited by officials or in the media. They are also aware of taxes on the transit of opium through the area and on heroin production, but the rates are broadly in line with those that are also imposed on wheat production and diesel fuel, at around 1 per cent of value. Farmers are also accustomed to the Afghan local police taxing opium when they hold sway over an area. For example, after Koshal Kalay and Shin Kalay fell to the government following its operation in the first few months of 2018, farmers paid around a tax of Pakistani Rs 2,000 per jerib(the equivalent of US$16) of opium to the police, a rate commensurate with what the Taleban charged.

The Taleban, in order to sustain their control economically, collect taxes from residents in areas under their control, as they do in other parts of the country. They call this tax ushr, an Arabic word used in Islamic jurisprudence, meaning ‘one-tenth’ which refers to the one-tenth of all crops that are grown in the fields and watered by running water (natural sources) that should be given to the poor and needy. The first Islamic government collected this as a tax, as do the Taleban now in areas under their rule although they rarely, if ever, pass it on to the poor. One-twentieth of the harvest is taken from fields for which the water has to be purchased or money spent on fuel, electricity or other mechanical irrigation. Some key informants said that the Taleban also collect taxes from shops and tube-wells, which are dug for irrigating the fields, and from development projects.

Education

According to Daud Shah Safari, head of the Department of Education in Helmand province, there are27 schools in Nad Ali district: 13 primary schools for boys (grades 1-6), one primary school for girls, six intermediate schools (grades 6-9) and seven high schools (grades 10-12). Safari said that there are 11,135 boys and 1,424 girls attending school in the district, taught by 153 male and four female teachers. ‌Safari said that after Nad Ali district fell to the Taleban, the Ministry of Education shifted its tashkil of female teacher positions to other provinces, mostly to the north of the country. Those women teachers still working in Nad Ali are all on short-term contracts (ajir).

Boys at the government school in Shin Kalay village. Younger girls also attend the school, but not beyond primary classes. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2018.

Our key informants said girls are traditionally allowed to study to grade 6, the end of primary level education, in Nad Ali. The district’s one girl’s primary school is located in the largely Hazara Sayed Abad village near the district centre. Some girls also attend boys’ schools, although only up to grade four, five or six, after which their parents prefer to keep them at home. There are also some adolescent girls are studying in Muhammad Khan Kharoti High School in Shin Kalay in separate classrooms. For higher education, male pupils go to universities in the provincial capital or to Kandahar province.

There are a variety of problems facing pupils and teachers in Nad Ali. For example, all respondents said there is a shortage of textbooks, particularly from grades one to eight. Each set of classroom textbooks only lasts three years. Those pupils who can afford books buy them in the local market, although they tend to be low-quality copies. The head of the Department of Education in Helmand told AAN they lack 30 to 35 per cent of books required for pupils. He also said the department faces a shortage of permanent teachers which they are filling with temporarily-contracted teachers, who are given a contract for one educational year (nine months).

As for corruption, the same respondent said there were no ‘ghost schools’ in the district, ie schools which appears on the tashkil and are allocated resources, but in practice, the school is dysfunctional or non-existent, leaving the allocated funds to be pocketed by corrupt officials. He did say ‘ghost teachers’ were a problem, but also that if this phenomenon did not exist, the principals benefitting would probably leave their jobs, as theirs was a highly risky duty. “The ghost teachers,” he said, “are either the relatives or close family members of the principals.” According to another interviewee, the Taleban have diverted at least some educational resources, such as WFP-provided food aid, away from schools to madrassas. Both interviewees said the Taleban also benefit from ghost teacher salaries, with one saying school principles give them a ‘share’.

Security is a serious problem for both teachers and pupils. All respondents said the areas on the frontlines were dangerous for both teachers and pupils. In these areas, teachers do not attempt to teach and parents dare not send their children to school. The number of closed schools changes from one week to the next as frontlines shift, so respondents were unable to provide AAN with definite figures, but one respondent, a high school teacher in the district, said:

Sometimes the teachers are threatened by the Taleban. The Taleban arrested me when they first came to Nad Ali district in 2016. Although they did not beat me, they did threaten me. The Taleban were deducting 500 hundred afghanis from each teacher as their tax. The teachers who had to attend training in Lashkargah also had to pay some money because the Taleban knew they were compensated for transportation and other costs.

Both education department officials and the district governor admitted these problems had existed from 2016 to the beginning of 2017, but that after that, they had received no complaints. A key informant said that the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), a global fund dedicated to education in developing countries including Afghanistan since 2011, had helped coordinate a meeting between the Taleban and the education department, in a Taleban-controlled area. He said they had come to an agreement that education department employees would not be harmed in Taleban-controlled areas while they monitored schools, provided they coordinated with and secured the approval of the Taleban first. He also said the agreement also included the provision that the Taleban would help the education department monitoring when required and that teachers would not be taxed from their salaries. Since then, the interviewee said, this agreement has largely been kept.

Nearly all the key informants said government monitoring of schools started in the first term of the Karzai government but had increased in the Ashraf Ghani era. In Nad Ali, the education department has its own monitoring officers based in the district. According to many respondents, the education department has a plan for monitoring schools but does not monitor regularly. When they do monitor, they usually check the attendance of teachers and students. They meet the local people and ask them about the conditions of schools and the attendance of teachers. They ask community elders for any complaints. They sometimes put questions to the students regarding their lessons.

After the Taleban captured Nad Ali district in 2016, they did not close the schools, but instead, according to nearly all key informants, imposed their own strict conditions. They told male teachers to grow their beards and wear turbans. The Taleban instructed the boys to wear white prayer hats and not to grow their hair long. Furthermore, the Taleban hired teachers mostly from among their own members for religious education classes that the education department paid for. The pupils had to come an hour early and arrive carrying the Taleban white flag. The new teachers instructed them on Islamic education using a Taleban-approved curriculum for an hour prior to the start of regular school. As for girls’ education, the Taleban have followed local traditions by letting girls study up to grades 4, 5, or 6, depending on the area.

The Taleban banned some subjects, such as social studies, life skills and culture, but have not pushed any particular curriculum, neither for girls or boys. Rather, they teach books that are commonly taught in mosques and madrassas. (19) Taleban teachers also preach to boys in high schools and intermediate schools, encouraging them to take a role in the ‘jihad’ against foreign troops and the ‘puppet’ government; one key informant who is a teacher in Nad Ali district said that some of his former pupils had joined the Taleban and some had risen to become commanders. In areas under Taleban rule in Nad Ali, teachers can only take the national holidays the Taleban agree with, such as the Eids and Independence Day. They cannot start exams early or delay them based on announcements by the government, such as for elections or voter registration. The situation in schools in areas recaptured by the government in 2018 changed back to how it had been previously, but in areas still under Taleban control, it remains the same.

The Taleban monitor the schools under their control and much more strictly than the government’s monitoring. Taleban members dedicated to the supervision of schools or who are hired as teachers are paid by the Department of Education. Eight out of ten key informants additionally said that the Education Department government monitors can monitor schools in areas under Taleban control as long as they coordinate their visits with the Taleban. There is thus a pragmatic relationship between the government and the Taleban in the education sector in Nad Ali.

Health

Nad Ali residents have five health facilities: one Comprehensive Health Centre (CHC), three Basic Health Centres (BHCs) and one Sub-Health Centre (SHC). The BHCs are located in the villages of Zarghun Kalay, Naqil Abad and Chanjir, the SHC is located in Khushal Kalay and the CHC provides services in Nad Ali district centre. A non-governmental organisation, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), under contract to the Ministry of Public Health, provides health services in the district, including running all five health facilities. They are all located in government-controlled areas. Additionally, there are many private clinics, both in Taleban and government-held areas in the district. They are not registered with the Public Health Department of Helmand province, according to the provincial public health director who spoke to AAN.

The provincial Public Health Department said the five health centres employ 43 staff, a quarter of whom are guards. The professional staff comprise, on the female side, six midwives and on the male, two doctors, four community health supervisors, eight nurses, nine vaccinators, one laboratory worker and one pharmacist. (There is also one administrative officer and 11 guards.) The lack of female medical staff limits the care of female patients in the district can expect. However, given most parents’ desires to limit their daughters’ education to the primary, the paucity of professional female medical staff is unsurprising. Key informants also said that most district health personnel were not professionals and lacked professional training. They said the five health centres are poorly equipped and lack medicine and ambulances.

The insurgents are generally more lenient towards health personnel who travel into areas under their control than towards other people. Many of the key informants said the Taleban do not control health workers’ appearance; for example, they do not punish doctors for shaving their beards or growing their hair in the way they do the teachers and pupils. According to one key informant, the main reason for this is that the Taleban need them for the treatment of their wounded or sick fighters. This is the case, in particular in Dashti Simi, where mobile medical teams go to Taleban-controlled areas to see patients. This sometimes causes problems for others, if they need urgent care, but doctors have to prioritise Taleban patients. Given the Taleban’s track record of harsh behaviour against government employees and NGO workers, it is quite difficult for doctors and other medical personnel to stand up to the Taleban demanding priority or preferential treatment.

The Public Health Department of Helmand province monitors the health facilities in Nad Ali district and they are managed by BRAC. Some of the key informants said the Taleban receive a percentage of funds from BRAC, just as they get from NGOs in other sectors, and from development projects. None of the interviewees knew the exact percentage of the Taleban’s tax in this regard. Some of the key informants also stated that BRAC, in order to carry out its activities, sometimes hires staff that have been introduced and recommended by the Taleban, for example, this person said:

As the health facilities are implemented by the NGO [sic], the NGO gives salaries to the staff […] The NGO wants their projects to be successfully implemented. So they listen to the Taleban – there is a Taleban health officer in the district. The Taleban interfere in health facilities. They recommend staff [health workers] to the NGOs and the NGOs recruit staff according to the will of the Taleban. Health facilities are useful for the community, but when there’s fighting, the health facilities mostly focus on dealing with the wounded fighters of the Taleban.

Child vaccination programmes have been implemented with mixed results in the Taleban-controlled areas of the district. The latest polio campaign in Nad Ali was carried out in December 2018, after the Taleban finally lifted a ban following negotiations with locals and the government, and allowed vaccinations to be administered in mosques, rather than, as previously, people’s homes. This resulted in lower coverage (for details, see AAN’s polio vaccination case study). For the vaccination drive, too, the Taleban recommended some of their members as vaccinators, who were then hired by the Public Health Department.

Electricity, media and telecommunications

At the moment, Nad Ali is not connected to any national electricity grid. According to some key informants, during the reign of King Muhammad Zahir Shah, the Chanjir area of Nad Ali district received electricity from the Kajaki dam, which is located to the north-east in neighbouring Kajaki district. The Kajaki dam has the potential to generate 54 megawatts of electricity, but for the time being it generates only 34 megawatts, providing electricity solely to Lashkargah city. Previously, people on the Boghra Canal generated hydroelectricity privately for nearly 150 families, enabling them to light their homes.

Many residents of both parts of the district – Shnai Simi and Dashti Simi – now have access to power through private solar panels. Many residents of Shnai Simi use this power to light their houses, watch TV, listen to the radio and charge their batteries and mobile phones. They do not need to use this power to irrigate their crops. As the residents of Dashti Simi do not have access to the Boghra Canal’s irrigation water, many of them use solar power to irrigate their agricultural fields from tube-wells.

In the areas under Taleban control, watching TV and listening to music is banned. People are also not allowed to have smartphones (to prevent them from watching films or listening to music). However, people find ways, despite the ban. For example, in Dashti Simi, which is largely under Taleban control, people still secretly watch TV and listen to the radio. As Nad Ali district is not far from the provincial capital, Lashkargah, and there are no barriers that interfere with transmission, people can watch TV easily with a simple antenna. The district does not have its own TV channel or radio station, but in the provincial centre, there are five or six private TV stations and the same number of radio stations. People usually watch the news, Turkish and other soap operas, cricket and some religious programmes. They watch Shamshad TV, Zwandun TV, Lemar TV and their provincial TV channels. As for mobile phones, parts of the population, young people, in particular, use smartphones to receive whatever telecommunication services are locally available, which in Nad Ali is limited.

A key informant working as a security manager for Roshan, a private mobile phone company, told AAN that the Taleban started restricting mobile phone companies in order to extract money from them from 2011 onwards. This meant the Taleban enforced shutdown of telecommunication services between 4 pm and 7 am. If the companies did not obey their orders, the Taleban would destroy their antennas. Then in mid-2016 when the Taleban captured most of Nad Ali district, they imposed a full ban on all mobile phone networks. At the time, five mobile networks (AWCC, Roshan, Etisalat, MTN and Salaam) were operating in the district. This full ban was enforced because the Taleban were afraid the government and foreign troops had spies in the community who would pass on information about their presence and activities via mobile phone, thereby exposing them to attacks, aerial bombings in particular.

Since then, although the government has retaken around half of the territory of Nad Ali district, mostly in and around the district centre, none of the private mobile phone companies has resumed their operations due to uncertainty about the political and security situation. The only network that has resumed its activities in the district is Salaam, a company partly owned by the government. It is based in and operates from right inside the heavily-guarded district government compound. Its operation is thus protected by the government against attacks, as this would, in fact, be an attack on the heart of the district administration. However, the Salaam network’s coverage is limited to a radius of only about five kilometres and is weak because of heavy usage.

Many residents in the Dashti Simi area of the district additionally have access to the AWCC network that operates from the vicinity of the strategically-important Shurab base (also known as the Shurabak base, formerly known as Camp Bastion) in neighbouring Washir district. An AWCC antenna continues to work near the base.

Other services available 

There are some non-governmental organisations and United Nations agencies that deliver services in Nad Ali. These include the National Solidarity Programme (NSP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and certain NGOs. They have built water gates and culverts, dug wells and distributed water pumps that can be installed on wells to access clean drinking water. According to some key informants, the most useful development projects include the 17-kilometre asphalt road from Lashkargah city to Nad Ali district centre and the road which leads from Lashkargah to Gereshk through the Chanjir area (known as the Chanjir road). The road between Nad Ali district and Lashkargah was completed in 2011, but work on the Chanjir road, which was worth USD 33 million, has occasionally had to be halted because of fighting in the district. Approximately 13 kilometres of this road has been asphalted and its construction is ongoing. When the Taleban controlled Nad Ali district, the construction of the Chanjir road was still underway. The contractor had to give the Taleban, who monitored the road’s construction, a negotiated share of the funding. The Taleban also take taxes from various other development projects. Normally, they and the contractors meet to negotiate the Taleban’s share.

Mending the asphalted road in Nad Ali. Development projects in Taleban-controlled areas have to get permission and pay a ‘tax’. Photo: Engineer Nisar Ahmad Nasrat, May 2019

Some of the respondents stated that the Taleban allowed the delivery of basic services and development projects because they did not want to alienate the population. Others reasoned that the Taleban allowed these projects so that they could make money from the taxes they levy.

Currently, the Citizens’ Charter programme, which replaced the NSP, is active in the district. It has constructed water gates and culverts in most parts of the Shnai Simi area, as well as digging wells and installing water pumps. It is reactivating the former shuras that were established by the NSP and other NGOs, and according to the respondents, is working with tribal elders and shuras to prioritise projects based on the needs of the residents. It is also working with people to generate micro-hydropower. The micro-hydropower generators will be installed along with different parts of the Boghra Canal and will generate electricity for local residents.

The only service the Taleban provide is some judiciary work for the people of Dashti Simi and in certain parts of Shnai Simi. They have a mobile judiciary service that hears cases and dispenses verdicts, but it is not operating prominently and is not very well-known or easily accessible, as the Taleban fear being attacked or bombed by the government or foreign forces.

Conclusion

The government and NGOs fund and operate most services in Nad Ali district, sometimes with a relatively high degree of freedom from Taleban interference. The government can supervise and monitor education and health facilities in the areas under its control with few problems. The government’s role in Taleban-controlled areas, however, is more akin to a service provider with limited control over its operations. In this system, the Taleban, in their territory, monitor and restrict what schools are allowed to teach while leaving the responsibility of school funding and teacher salaries to the government. On girls’ education in the areas under their rule, the Taleban have followed the local practice that let girls study up to grades 4, 5 or 6 depending on the area. In practice, girls’ education – if it takes place at all – comes to an end at the end of primary school, both in Taleban and government-held areas, with the exception of some girls attending a boys’ high school in separate classes in central Nad Ali.

Similarly, health facilities in Taleban-ruled areas are funded and supported by the government and NGOs, but must obey the Taleban when it comes to how and when to treat their patients. Aside from insisting that health staff must obey the Taleban’s military command, the Taleban leadership does not interfere much in health facility operations. Two exceptions here were some Taleban interference in the staffing of health facilities in their territory and their insistence that the polio vaccination campaign only takes place at mosques, as opposed to door-to-door as was done previously. The result has been a less effective campaign against polio, as not everybody, especially women, can easily leave their homes to go to a mosque.

The government can monitor its health and education facilities outside of government-controlled areas, but must first seek permission from, and coordinate with, the Taleban. In this, it monitors, but it cannot control. The Taleban make decisions on what can be taught and who can do the teaching in these areas of the district. They have banned some school subjects and introduced some of their own, including subjects that are taught in madrassas and mosques.

There is no state-provided electricity in Nad Ali district. Unconnected to any national electricity grid, people have installed private solar power panels or small hydropower systems to meet some of their needs. The Taleban have banned private telecommunication companies from operating phone or mobile internet networks for fear of being exposed to attacks through their presence being reported via mobile phones. The public Salaam network is the only telecommunication company active in the district. It has been able to continue operations because it is based in the district government compound and thus enjoys its protection. Its network, however, covers just a radius of some five kilometres around the district centre. Many residents in the Dashti Simi area, which is largely under Taleban control, have access to the private AWCC network because an AWCC antenna continues to operate from the vicinity of the government’s Shurab base in neighbouring Washir district.

The Taleban collect taxes from residents while providing no funding for public services. They collect religious taxes such as ushr. They also tax development projects – this is not a fixed sum but based on the deals and agreements that the Taleban and the development project contractors negotiate. Without Taleban permission, no development projects can be implemented in the areas under their control.

The current arrangement has left the district with a dual system of governance where the population, generally fed up with both the government and the Taleban, has to navigate between them.

While the legitimacy of the Afghan government in the eyes of the local population may be weak, there has been, according to Mansfield, a “fundamental change” in how people in central Helmand see their interactions with the government, the wider economic system and public services. (20)  As this dispatch has shown, even though public service provision may be poor and inadequate, people have got used to having them. The demand for and expectation of these services has increased and in part, is now filled by private education and health initiatives. Whoever rules the district in the future will need to take into account the people’s expectations for continued services, whether public, private or both.

 

Edited by Christian Bleuer, Jelena Bjelica, Said Reza Kazemi and Martine van Bijlert

 

(1) See, for example: Elke Beyer (2012), “Competitive Coexistence: Soviet Town Planning and Housing Projects in Afghanistan in the 1960s,” The Journal of Architecture17(3): 309-332.

(2) David Mansfield (2016), A State Built on Sand: How Opium Undermined Afghanistan, New York: Oxford University Press, page 220.

(3) Mike Martin (2014), An Intimate War: An Oral History of the Helmand Conflict 1978-2012, New York: Oxford University Press, page 31.

(4) BJM Goes et al. (2015), “Integrated water resources management in an insecure river basin: a case study of Helmand River Basin, Afghanistan,” International Journal of Water Resources Development32(1): 3-25, page 5.

(5) Muhammad Ibrahim Attaee (1344 [1966]), Helmand da kultur pa saha ki(On the culture of Helmand), Kabul: Ministry of Information and Culture.

(6) For a map of central Nad Ali, see: Martin, An Intimate War, page xxviii.

(7) Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, page 211.

(8) Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, pages 211-212.

(9) Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, page 247.

(10) Martin, An Intimate War, pages 96-108.

(11) Martin, An Intimate War, pages 99-100. Martin says that Nad Ali was also seen by the Taleban as a place where they could raise funds by addressing local, mostly land, conflicts:

The district was also seen as a position in which they [Taleban] could make money due to the fact that there were, by now, interminable land disputes in Nad-e Ali, and the social heterogeneity meant that the need for an ‘impartial’ figure was greater than in areas where there was a unified tribal leadership.

(12) Martin, An Intimate War, page 5.

(13) Martin, An Intimate War, pages 111-125.

(14) Martin, An Intimate War, pages 117, 120.

(15) Martin, An Intimate War, page 122.

(16) From September 2004 to December 2013, ISAF had a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Helmand that was supported by the US, UK, Danish and Estonian governments.

(17) Martin, An Intimate War, pages 125-132.

(18) Martin, An Intimate War, page 133.

(19) Examples of mosque and madrassa books include: Qoduri, Kanz ul-Daqayeq, Nur-e Zalam and Abul Montaha. The first two are about fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and the last two about aqayed (the Islamic belief system). Written in Arabic, they are centuries-old.

(20) Mansfield, A State Built on Sand, page 261.

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