Defence`s Feeds

Five EDA Member States operating C-27J Spartan military aircraft (Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania) participate in the 4th edition of the European Spartan exercise which started today (13 May) at Otopeni airbase in Romania. Observers from other C-27J user countries, such as Greece and even the United States and Australia, also attend the event which runs until 24 May. The aim of the exercise is to increase interoperability among European C27J Spartan operators. It is one of the outcomes of the European Air Transport Fleet (EATF) partnership signed in 2011 by 20 EDA Member States.

Designed by EDA and hosted by the Romanian Air Force, the event aims at promoting aircraft user type approaches to harmonise tactics, techniques and procedures as well as to develop more cost-effective solutions to operate and sustain the C27J. The objective is to provide air crews with both academic and flight training as well as to have ground crews developing harmonised procedures to eventually allowing them to perform cross maintenance on each other’s aircraft.  The C-27J Spartan aircraft can perform tactical missions in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, providing direct air transport to the theatre, day and night.

This flying event was developed in the framework of the C27J cooperation concept launched in 2015 by EDA. This concept is looking at developing a far-reaching level of interoperability amongst European C27J operators through a variety of projects in the areas of operations & training, logistics, airworthiness, common procurement and SESAR. The main advantages of EDA’s user groups – that are working in full transparency and cooperate with all other existing user groups led by other organisations, industry and/or service providers – is to group medium and small national fleets to take advantage of economies of scale, to exchange best practices and to be more cost-efficient in operating and sustaining the aircraft.
 

Media & VIP Days

On 22 May, a dedicated Media Day will take place offering journalists the possibility to attend a flying exercise at Boboc Airbase will include the landing of C-27J Spartan aircraft on soil and short-distance tracks, parachuting personnel and materials, cooperation with combat aircraft, airline coordination with land forces and medical evacuation. Media representatives who want to participate are requested to send their personal data (name, surname, ID number, name/address of media they represent) to proff@roaf.ro (deadline: Friday 17 May, 2pm).

The following day, on 23 May, there will also be a Distinguished Visitors’ Day attended by Romanian Defence Minister Gabriel-Beniamin Leş and EDA Deputy Chief Executive Olli Ruutu. Media representatives who want to attend the Distinguished Visitors’ Day are requested to send their personal data (name, surname, ID number, name/address of media they represent) to proff@roaf.ro (deadline: Wednesday 22 May, 2pm).
 

Background information

The European Air Transport Fleet (EATF) partnership, launched in 2011 and now gathering 20 Member States (AT, BE, BG, CZ, DE, EL, ES, FI, FR, IT, LT, LU, NL, PL, PT, RO, SK, SE, NO and HU), aims at increasing the airlift provision in the EU, developing concrete solutions to increase the efficiency of existing and future fleets and to optimise the use of air transport organisations and structures. Other activities undertaken as part of EATF include the C-27 J Spartan Cooperation CAT B Programme, the Transport Plot Training Capacity AHWG, the Diplomatic Clearance Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) and the Operations and Training AHWG.
 

European 2019 Spartan: List of participating air forces and aircraft

• Romania:  1 C-27 J, (plus 1 C130, 1 Helicopter, 1 C 27 J for logistic support)
• Bulgaria: 1 C-27 J
• Italy: 1 C-27 J
• Lithuania: 1 C-27 J
• Slovakia: Maintenance personnel only
• Observer nations: Greece, United States, Australia
   

Background

Beside  the Spartan Exercise, the C27-J Spartan Cooperation is developing a common type training for aircrews, using the already existing facilities placed in Romania and Italy; a common training for maintenance under the new European standards, a common logistic support and a common avionics upgrade programme to benefit of economies of scale.
 

More information:

• EDA factsheet European Spartan 2019

 

Last April, the OMBT-Leo 2 programme entered a new phase with the publication of a call to European industry to participate in a Preliminary Market Consultation (PMC). Industry is invited to respond to the PMC not later than 18 July 2019.

On this matter, EDA encourages EU defence industry to establish European multinational cross-border industrial partnerships as the preferred mechanism to exploit this opportunity. Additionally, EDA considers the OMBT-Leo2 programme as a suitable vehicle for enhanced access for sid-caps/small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to the European cross-border supply chains.

In order to support the PMC, EDA organised today (13 May) a business-to-business (B2B) workshop to encourage industry to consider the establishment of business relationships between potential future prime contractors and sub-contractors and / or the formation of related consortia (national or multinational) that will provide the basis for the delivery of a full capability for the OMBT-Leo2 Programme, covering MBT, derivatives, as well as the rest of the Programme aspects (e.g. Integrated Logistics Support, simulation, training, …).

EDA’s B2B workshop attracted wide participation: a substantial number of industrial entities (31 in total) covering a wide size range, from major industries down to SMEs, and Leo2 MBT capacities at system and sub-system level, attended the workshop. The B2B workshop proceedings provided a solid opportunity for industries to meet, get known to each other, present their requirements/capabilities, identify potential business opportunities and find the right partners, in view of best preparing for the future implementation of the OMBT-Leo2 Programme.

In conclusion, EDA’s B2B workshop successfully fulfilled its mission to promote industrial cross-border cooperation within the EU, especially in view of future enhanced Mid-caps/SMEs’ access to defence contracts and to supply chains of the industrial entities that may be awarded in the future contracts for the implementation of the OMBT-Leo2 Programme.
 

Background

• EDA seeks European defence industry’s input on Main Battle Tank optimization – 22 September 2017
• Wanted: Industry solutions for optimisation of MBT capabilities – 2 April 2019

DARK BLADE 2019, the 13th helicopter exercise organised under the umbrella of the European Defence Agency’s Helicopter Exercise Programme (HEP), takes place as of today (13 May) at Náměšť airbase in Czech Republic, until 1 June 2019.

A total of 29 air assets (25 helicopters + 4 fixed wing) and some 600 military personnel from six countries - Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, - will participate in this exercise hosted by the Czech Air Force. DARK BLADE 2019 will allow crews to practice operations in various environment replicating the challenging conditions that participant forces are expected to encounter when deploying to a theatre of operation.

The exercise’s main focus will be on enhancing interoperability at the tactical level between helicopter units by using the Composite Air Operations (COMAO) concept in a combined, joint, realistic and challenging environment.

Its main objectives are to:

• enhance tactical interoperability between helicopter units from the participating countries by using the COMAO concept in a combined, joint, realistic and challenging environment and to operate using standard helicopter Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs). The focus will be on Composite Air Operations (COMAO) with live firing and trooping;
• train and practise TTPs with/against fighter jets and electronic warfare means on the ground;
• improve interoperability in training and operational tasks with Ground Forces involvement (NVG operations, low level flying, formation flights, FARP training, gunnery, etc.) in a full spectrum environment.
   

Programme

Participating crews will fly diverse day and night COMAO missions and execute Air Assault (AA), Air Interdiction (AI), Air Transport (AT), Close Air Support (CAS), Personnel Recovery (PR) missions, night flights (with/without NVG) and other missions at tactical level.

They will also train special procedures like marshalling, fast rope and abseiling techniques, Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction (SPIE), pick-up and drop off procedures, air-to-surface live firing (helicopter door gunnery and sniper training).

In addition, DARK BLADE 2019 will provide multiple opportunities to practice multinational training with the Special Operation Forces (e.g. infiltration and exfiltration) and will enhance crews’ skills in using the HEP Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and COMAO planning procedures in the conduct of tactical missions.

Six instructors from Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom trained in EDA’s Helicopter Tactics Instructors Course (HTIC) accompanied with some Instructors from the Netherlands trained on the Dutch Helicopter Weapon Instructor (HWI) course will jointly form the DARK BLADE 2019 Mentor Team, ready to support the multinational crews during the preparation and execution of the COMAO missions. The EDA’s Chief Instructor (CI) Team will manage and supervise the Mentor Team to ensure consistency and the best possible uptake of lessons learned coming from EDA helicopter activities (HTC, HTIC, COMAO planning and the EW Course) and operational experience.
 

Distinguished Visitors Day

A Distinguished Visitors Day (DVD) is planned for 28 May 2019 when representatives from all EDA Member States and representatives of Switzerland, Norway and the Republic of Serbia will have the opportunity to attend and observe various live training sessions.
 

Background

The annual Blade exercise is part of EDA’s wider Helicopter Portfolio aimed at providing Member States with a joint European framework to develop, consolidate and share best practices in order to meet the challenges of flying helicopters in a modern operational environment. Other components of this Portfolio are the annual HEP Symposium, the Helicopter Tactics Courses (HTC), the Helicopter Tactics Instructor Courses (HTIC), and the COMAO Planning and Electronic Warfare (EW) Courses.
 

More information:

• DARK BLADE factsheet
• Helicopter Initiatives (EDA project page)
• HOT BLADE 2018 improved joint and combined helicopter training (EDA news)

 

 

Take a look at how the Super Hornet’s flight control surfaces move during approach. Earlier this month, our friend Ben Ramsay (UK Aviation Movies) visited Meiringen Air Base, in Switzerland, during the Super Hornet demonstration [...]

Weddings in Afghanistan are often an expensive and ‘back-breaking’ affair. A government law to change the expensive wedding culture remains largely unimplemented and there seems to be little will to enforce it. The Taleban have also imposed an assortment of rules for controlling wedding costs in areas under their command, which vary depending on the area and commander. In practice, their edicts have had limited impact. This is particularly the case in the Turkic dominated provinces of the northwest, where bride prices and wedding ceremony costs are often driven up by a bride’s carpet-weaving skills. In this dispatch, AAN’s Obaid Ali looks at the social culture of weddings among the Turkic community and finds that in spite of government laws, Taleban pressure and local initiatives, the culture of holding expensive weddings remains firmly in place.

A wedding in Afghanistan tends to be an expensive affair. There have been several attempts by the Afghan government, social activists and community elders, as well as by the Taleban, to change this culture. While their attempts have had some impact in certain local communities, they have not led to a larger cultural shift.

Practices with regard to bride price and wedding expenses are different for different ethnic groups, communities, and regions (see also AAN’s previous report here). The ‘bride price’ in the northwest, for instance, is not a mahr (dowry), a sum of cash that should be given to a bride by her groom as a financial pledge and which remains the property of the bride. Rather, in Turkic communities where women are often employed as professional rug makers, the bride price is known as qaleen.

Bride prices and wedding expenses in northwestern Turkic communities (including provinces like Faryab, Jawzjan, Sar-e Pul, and Balkh) tend to be high, largely due to the fact that a woman’s skill makes her a high earner. Moreover, in the Turkic community (e.g. among Uzbeks and Turkmen), an expensive wedding party is considered an honour for both the groom and bride’s families.

Weddings in Turkic communities

The qaleen for a rug-weaving bride in the provinces of Faryab, Jawzjan, and Balkh tends to range from 15,000 USD to 25,000 USD. The price variation is often affected by the reputation of the family and the skills of the woman. Skilled women weavers from these provinces are famous for their ability to produce some of the most sought-after and hard to find rugs in the country (listen, for instance, to this famous Afghan song about rug weaving in Jawzjan province). The skill involved in producing such rugs means that they are often sold even before they are completed or on the market. The high prices of such carpets means that a prospective groom can expect a relatively prosperous life. Therefore, the bride price a groom has to pay is considered to be not only for the girl herself but also for the income her unique skill will provide for the rest of their lives as husband and wife. Because of the extra high costs of the qaleen and wedding party for skilled brides, it is actually very difficult to find a rug-weaving woman to marry.

When a groom’s family initiates a marriage proposal for a rug-weaving woman they face huge expenses. Although the high asking price is often an indirect way for the bride’s family to deter unsuitable marriage proposals, in many cases this does not prevent the groom’s family from persisting. The groom’s side will often try to negotiate the cost down to a manageable amount. However, high interest in a particular bride and her skills means that her family can insist on the price and even add additional wedding costs. These include the costs of the marriage and wedding parties, as well as items that the groom’s family must provide.

A list of items

In many northern provinces, the bride’s family submits a long list of items that the groom must purchase. The list often includes jewellery for the bride, clothes and gifts for the bride and her close relatives, food for the guests, other expenses of the bride until she leaves her parent’s home and a guarantee that the groom will provide two fully-furnished rooms for his bride. The groom’s family is then left with two options: to accept the conditions or to step away from the negotiations.

Haji Khalilullah Azizi, a former speaker for Sar-e Pul’s provincial council, described weddings among the Turkic community as kamarshekan (‘back-breaking’). He told AAN that an ordinary wedding for a woman without carpet weaving skills, including the qaleen price, averages a total of at least 1,500,000 Afs (19,000 USD).Qubuddin Kohe, a local journalist and a civil society activist from Faryab province, said that the qaleen in Maimana city, Faryab’s provincial centre, normally exceeds 800,000 Afs (nearly 10,000 USD). He added that the groom must submit the money in a number of instalments before he gets married. He told AAN that there had been several attempts by social workers, the educated generation, and community elders – both at the local and national levels – to advocate for reduced wedding expenses. Their efforts, however, had only had a limited impact.

Durtaj, the district governor for Khan Charbagh district in Faryab, said the high qaleen prices have compelled some girls to flee. Speaking to AAN, she said that since her appointment in mid-2017 more than ten cases of girls who had fled their home “largely due to their parents’ unwillingness to marry them for a lower qaleen” had been registered. She told AAN that most of these girls ran away with their partners of choice to a hiding place. Community elders then had to mediate between both families, often convincing the girl’s family to allow her to marry the boy after all. In other cases, girls fled to local government-run women’s shelters, refusing to return to their families unless their parents guaranteed their safety and security. In the worst case, she said the girls could face death if captured by their parents, because of harsh traditions and the perceived damage to their family’s reputation.

If a groom’s family cannot provide enough cash for a qaleen, they can offer livestock and other goods during the engagement period instead, particularly in rural areas where goods are acceptable currency in the marriage market. The rest of the wedding expenses, such as jewellery for the bride, clothes for her and her close relatives, as well as food for guests should still be paid for and prepared by the groom’s family.

According to Haji Khodai Dad, a local elder from Faryab who has mediated several negotiations between brides and grooms’ families, as soon as the bride’s family accepts a groom’s family proposal and has fixed the price of the qaleen, any goods the groom sends to the bride’s family counts as cash. The price for these items is calculated based on their local market value. This is not, however, without occasional trouble. Haji Khodai Dad said that a quarrel erupted recently between two families over a dairy cow that was sent to the bride’s family, which stopped producing milk after a couple of weeks. The issue was taken to village elders for a resolution. They decided that the cow should be sold and the groom’s family should add money so that the bride’s family could buy another cow that could produce milk.

In most of the Turkic-dominated provinces of the northwest, the bride’s family agrees to arrange the nikah (a legal contract between man and woman to marry) during the engagement party. After the nikah, the groom becomes a mahram (the male companion for his bride) and he can meet and sometimes stay at his bride’s home. According to Durtaj, during the engagement period, which can last several years, the bride may already become a mother of two or three children. This pushes the groom to work even harder, as he now not only has to earn the qaleen, but also has to provide food and clothes for both his wife and children while they are still in his father-in-law’s home. Some of the grooms who take a long time to submit the qaleen not only bring a bride back to their family’s home, but also an already established family.

There seems to be a general reluctance to give up on expensive wedding parties. For the Turkic community, expensive weddings are not only a social demand but also an opportunity: for the groom to make a name within the community by holding a remarkable wedding, and for the bride’s family to increase their reputation by having secured an expensive wedding for their daughter. This has spread an ideology among villagers that, for the last few decades, has compelled them to invest in enormous weddings and high qaleen prices. But these expensive weddings also mean that grooms have to start a long and difficult journey to earn money. They often leave the country for Iran or Turkey, where they spend years working to save money, which can delay a wedding ceremony for years.

The government law on wedding ceremonies  

The Afghan government published a wedding ceremony law in the official state gazette in December 2017. The law includes clauses on the bride price and ceremony expenses. According to article six, the bride’s family and relatives cannot force the groom to pay a bride price as a condition for getting married. The law also limits the number of guests at a wedding party: article ten says the groom and bride’s families may hold the wedding party in a wedding hall or a restaurant, but should not invite more than 500 people (full text in Dari and Pashtu here).

According to Azizi, Sar-e Pul’s former provincial council speaker, the local government is not seriously committed to enforcing this law in the Uzbek dominated provinces of the northwest. He told AAN there were no outreach teams or public awareness programmes to inform people about the new rules. To enforce this wedding law, the Afghan government would probably face serious problems as it would see itself confronted with the expectations of guests and the interests of the prosperous wedding hall industry. (1)

There have been some local initiatives in Faryab, Sar-e Pul and Jawzjan provinces to reform the costly wedding culture, which have seen limited results. In some parts of Faryab’s provincial centre, Maimana, local elders say they have achieved a minor shift in that the qaleen. Here, wedding expenses are said to have been reduced from an average of 800,000 Afs (nearly 10,000 USD) to around 400,000 Afs (around 5,000 USD). Similar efforts have taken place in some parts of Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul provinces. According to Durtaj, the local government has held several gatherings and carried out campaigns to reduce wedding expenses in local districts. She told AAN, however, that because of the insecurity, these efforts had only affected district centres and nearby villages. (2)

 Taleban restrictions and rules on wedding ceremonies

In some areas, according to local sources, Taleban rules and restrictions were being enforced instead of the government’s law. These Taleban rules on wedding ceremonies are largely enforced by their local vice and virtue committee, known as the religious police, tasked with enforcing Sharia law. The rules themselves seem to vary in different parts of the country, as does their enforcement. There seems to be no general or national Taleban regulation with regard to wedding ceremonies.

When it comes to public awareness of these disparate rules on weddings, the Taleban use local mosques and public gatherings to inform people and announce new restrictions, as well as the consequences for those who violate them. Taleban regulations that have been announced in parts of Faryab, Jawzjan, and Sar-e Pul provinces include that:

• The bride price should not be more than 200,000 Afs (2,650 USD);
• Men and women should be segregated and/or attend wedding parties at different times;
• Playing music and recording videos is prohibited;
• The bride and groom should receive only three suits of clothes each (normally the bride’s family asks for up to 20 suits of clothes for the bride and, in return, prepares five to ten suits of clothes for the groom).
• The wedding ceremony should take place in the groom or bride’s family home;
• The number of guests should be low (there is, however, no requirement to actively reduce the number of invitees, since it is understood that villagers will often attend the party without official invitation);
• The food for guests should be simple food, common among villagers: palao (rice with meat).

In practice, in the Taleban-controlled areas of Faryab, Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul provinces, locals often obey the Taleban’s rules in public but ignore them in private. For example, in Taleban-controlled areas, though the qaleen is presented as low in public, both families will often negotiate a confidential deal with a higher qaleen.

Even in the government controlled areas of Faryab and Sar-e Pul the local Taleban has tried to prevent people from holding parties in wedding halls. In July 2017, for instance, the Taleban issued warnings against wedding halls in the provincial centres of Sar-e Pul and Faryab. Speaking to AAN, Mahsuma Ramazan, a female provincial council member for Sar-e Pul, said that because of these warnings, the wedding halls in her province remained closed for a couple of months (see this media article). She said it was a clear indication of the Taleban’s influence on people’s social lives even in government-controlled areas. Eventually, the wedding halls reopened. It was unclear whether this was due to a deal between the Taleban and owners of the wedding halls, or whether pressure had simply subsided. (3)

Given that in Turkic communities wedding ceremonies usually take place in the bride and groom’s houses anyway, without much pressure to hold the party in a wedding hall, the impact of this specific restriction is limited. But other aspects of the wedding ceremony that the Taleban try to regulate are a common practice among locals, including the qaleen negotiation and payment, live music during the party, and the video recording of the wedding ceremony. The Taleban rules, if enforced, would thus surely impact the ways the Turkic communities marry in the northwest.

According to Sayed Fazel Agha, a former member of the Sar-e Pul provincial high peace council, neither the government law on wedding ceremonies nor the Taleban’s regulations were being obeyed by the population, at least not in his province. Wedding expenses, he said, thus remained a serious issue within the local community.

Conclusion: The cost of high expenses

Despite the government law on weddings, Taleban pressure and local initiatives to change the expensive wedding culture, the phenomenon of expensive parties and high qaleen prices remains firmly entrenched within the Turkic community. This comes at a high cost, in particular for the next generation. The need to meet qaleen prices has prevented many young men from studying, as they need to work and save money to get married. The high qaleen expenses also narrow the bride’s options for what she can do with her life, as she is under pressure to continue rug making instead of pursuing other possible futures. Even though she may have entered into marriage with seemingly high status, in reality, her marriage merely moves her as a worker from one rug making factory to another for the remainder of her life. So far, neither the government law on weddings nor the Taleban rules have solved this problem. Both laws and regulations are largely ignored: at best observed in public and ignored behind closed doors; at worst, openly flouted.

 

(1) The wedding halls in Kabul, for instance, located only a few kilometres away from the Ministry of Justice, host thousands of people every night in luxury wedding parties with expensive food. According to a wedding hall manager from Kabul, the prices for the wedding party’s menus ranged from 400 Afs (5 USD) to 1200 Afs (16 USD) per head. He said they would not host parties with fewer than 500 guests, since preparing food for fewer people wouldn’t allow them to make a profit (see for instance these pages for wedding halls in Kabul here and here which show a clear lack of awareness of, or refusal, to obey articles 17 and 18 of the law that limit the wedding menu price to 300 Afs (4 USD) and the number of guests to 500).

(2) At the national level there are ongoing efforts to reduce wedding expenses by holding mass wedding ceremonies, for instance in Kabul, Herat, Balk and Bamyan provinces. These ceremonies, organised by charity foundations and local businessmen, are aimed at shifting away from the expensive wedding culture (see a media report here, here, here, here and here. But there is little sign of such initiatives in the Turkic communities of the northwest.

(3) During the Taleban regime (1994-2001), holding a wedding party in a hall was prohibited. Wedding ceremonies in wedding halls, however, have a long history in Kabul and other big cities. After the Taleban’s government collapsed, weddings were again held in halls, and the number of wedding venues in Kabul alone now stands at over 200.

 

The unit, inactivated in September 2014 due to budget constraints imposed by sequestration, is going to “resurrect” and fly the 5th generation aircraft. On May 9, the U.S. Air Force announced the plan to reactivate [...]

The U.S. Air Force is positioning four B-52s to Qatar. And, for the very first time, at least one of the Stratofortress bombers could be tracked online as it deployed from Barksdale Air Force Base [...]

EDA has issued a call for applications from parties interested in participating in the third edition of the ‘EDA Defence Innovation Prize’ contest rewarding companies and research entities who come up with innovative and ground-breaking technologies, products, processes or services applicable in the defence domain.

The area that has been selected for this year innovation prize is “AI applications for defence” and will include:

• Supporting decision-making tools in command and control
• Improve intelligence gathering and processing of information to improve the common operational picture
• Supporting the autonomy of unmanned systems
• Demonstrating the efficient use of AI in combination with 5G and Internet of Things

 
The winning idea/concept will be worth 30,000€

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is recognised as a disruptive technology with potentially revolutionary effects already in the short term. 

Even though civil applications and commercial producers are the main drivers behind the Artificial Intelligence evolution, Ministries of Defence and armed forces do not ignore the potential benefits of using these technologies to improve European defence capabilities.

Against this backdrop, contesters for this EDA Defence Innovation Prize are expected to propose ideas or concepts which, if implemented between now and 2035, would help improve and enhance specific EU defence capabilities.

No specific defence background is required to participate in the contest which is open to innovators from ALL types of industries and research institutions in Europe: defence & civil/commercial producers, large companies & SMEs, defence-related & civil research communities. Applications from dual-use and civil/commercial innovators and researchers are even particularly encouraged.

The rules of the contest and the criteria for participation are available here. 

Deadline for submissions: 30 August 2019 (5pm Brussels time).

Information on how to apply can be found in the contest documentation under the link above.

The prize winners will be notified not later than October 2019. An EDA Defence Innovation Prize award ceremony is scheduled to take place at the 2019 EDA Annual Conference in Brussels.

 

Status of the 2nd edition of the EDA innovation

The selection committee of the 2nd EDA Innovation prize, after a thorough evaluation of the submitted project ideas, decided not to award the prize to any of the participating project ideas. The reasoning behind this decision of the selection committee wasn’t because of the quality or merit of the submitted ideas but due to the fact that none of them could demonstrate a clear contribution of the project idea to a defence problem.
 

More information:

• Call for applications
• EDA Defence Innovation Prize webpage

 

The 19th edition of the Joint Personnel Recovery Staff Course, which ended today in Veszprem (Hungary), was also the last one of its kind: after six years, EDA’s Personnel Recovery Controller and Planner Course (PRCPC) project came to a successful conclusion. The last JPRSC was organized by the Hungarian Defence Forces’ Air Command and Control Centre with the support of the European Personnel Recovery Centre (EPRC), a close partner of EDA. 

Launched in May 2013 as an EDA ‘Cat B’ project initially supported by Sweden (lead), Austria, Germany and The Netherlands, the PRCPC grew over time to count today eight participating Member States (Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary and Italy joined later). During the six years, the project allowed participating Member States to train more than 500 staff who are now able to perform specific Personnel Recovery Planning tasks during military operations.
 

Follow-up project underway

Based on the project’s success, a follow-up collaborative initiative is already under preparation within the Agency, as a ‘Cat B’ project called ‘Joint Personnel Recovery Education and Training Courses’. Its objective will be to organise multinational Joint Personnel Recovery (JPR) training events under EDA’s umbrella.  Moreover, new courses will be developed and organised such as specific ‘JPR Leadership Courses’ and ‘JPR operational Planner Courses’.
 

Background

In 2011, EDA’s Project Team Personnel Recovery identified the lack of well-trained PR staff in military operations as an important operational shortfall, as well as a training gap. Accordingly, it initiated a series of four pilot courses for PR controller and planners to assess the need for conducting multinational PR courses at EU level. The four pilots were hosted by Sweden (March 2011), the Netherlands (November 2011) and Germany (March & November 2012).  Based on their success, four PT PR participating Member States (AT, DE, NL, SE) decided to join their forces under EDA’s umbrella for organizing multinational PRCPC events. The Cat B project PRCPC was established, initially for just two years but later extended twice for two years respectively, until 30 May 2019. In the meantime, four additional Member States (BE, CY, HU, IT) had joined.

In November 2018, the PRCPC contributing Member States decided to make the course documentation available to all EDA Member States, at no cost, in order to support them overcome the existent shortfall on well-trained PR staff. For this purpose, a dedicated workspace will be created under EDA’s Collaboration Platform.
 

More information

For more details regarding PRCPC/JPRSC documentation and related PR training tools (SERE e-learning and PR FAS ATD) please contact EDA at CAP@eda.europa.eu.

While researching the delivery of health, education and other services in districts affected by the insurgency, we found that three of our featured districts, in Helmand, Nangrahar and Kunduz provinces, had seen cases of polio leading to paralysis in the last five years. There is no cure for polio, but there is an effective vaccination, so why, more than forty years since polio vaccination began in Afghanistan, are some children still not being protected? AAN’s Jelena Bjelica (with input from the AAN team*) finds some answers in the impact of the conflict, a mobile population, patchy and scarce health care, women being unable to take decisions on health care, and vaccination strategies that might need to be re-thought.

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 include 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; and three case studies: on Obeh district of Herat province by Said Reza Kazemi; Dasht-e Archi district in Kunduz province by Obaid Ali; and Achin district in Nangrahar province by Said Reza Kazemi and Rohullah Sorush.

In this dispatch, the author first looks at what polio is and how efforts to eradicate it began, in the United States in the 1950s and globally, including Afghanistan in the late 1970s. She plots how polio has declined since then, before looking at why it continues to circulate here. She assesses current strategies for reaching newborns and under-fives. She then looks at three case studies, districts where polio has resulted in paralysis in recent years: Achin district in Nangrahar province, Nad-e Ali in Helmand province and Dasht-e Archi in Kunduz province.

What is polio?

Polio, short for poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease that is caused and transmitted by the poliovirus. The name ‘poliomyelitis’ is derived from the Greek for grey (polios) marrow (myelon) and refers to the tissue inside the spinal cord.

There are three types of poliovirus, all members of the enterovirus genus. (1) Poliovirus only infects humans. It is very contagious and spreads through person-to-person contact. The virus is most often spread by the faecal-oral route, ie it enters through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. Infected individuals shed poliovirus into the environment for several weeks, where it can spread rapidly through a community, especially in areas of poor sanitation.

One of the severe symptoms of polio in childhood is paralysis, and the disease is therefore also known as ‘infantile paralysis’. Polio can interact with its host in two ways: as an infection that does not affect the central nervous system and only causes a minor illness with mild symptoms; or, as an infection affecting the central nervous system when it may cause paralysis and in some cases even result in death. In about 98 per cent of cases, polio is a mild illness, with no or only flu-like symptoms. In paralytic polio, the virus leaves the digestive tract, enters the bloodstream, and then attacks nerve cells. Fewer than two per cent of people who contract polio become paralysed, but they are disabled for life.

Global eradication

In the early 20th century, polio was one of the most feared diseases. In 1916, for example, New York experienced its first large epidemic, with more than 9,000 cases and 2,343 deaths. Nationwide in 1917 in America, there were 27,000 cases and 6,000 deaths. Polio struck in the warm summer months, sweeping through towns in successive epidemics every few years.

It was only in the mid-1950s that a preventive vaccine was found and tested. In 1952, Dr Jonas Salk began to develop the first effective vaccine against polio. Mass public vaccination programmes followed and had an immediate effect; in the US, cases fell from 35,000 in 1953 to 5,300 in 1957. In 1961, Albert Sabin pioneered the more easily administered oral polio vaccine (OPV). (See this BBC timeline on the history of polio and this timeline on the history of polio vaccine).

It took somewhat longer for polio to be dealt with as a major problem in developing countries. It was only in the 1970s that routine immunisation was introduced worldwide as part of national programmes. By 1988, polio had been eliminated from the US, UK, Australia and much of Europe, but remained prevalent in more than 125 countries. The same year, the World Health Organisation adopted a resolution to eradicate the disease completely by the year 2000. Since then, through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, more than 2.5 billion children have been immunised against polio.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) certified the Americas as a polio-free region in 1994 and the European region in 2002. India reported the last positive case in January 2011 and was certified polio-free in 2014; China was certified polio-free in 2013. Since 2012, polio has remained officially endemic in only three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Although the global incidence of polio has decreased by 99 per cent since the start of the global vaccination campaign, tackling the last one per cent of polio cases has proved difficult, as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative reported on its website:

Conflict, political instability, hard-to-reach populations, and poor infrastructure continue to pose challenges to eradicating the disease. Each country offers a unique set of challenges which require local solutions.

In Afghanistan, between January 2001 and March 2019, there were 414 cases of individuals contracting polio and becoming paralysed.

Positive polio cases in Afghanistan: 1980 to 2018   

Despite the ongoing conflict, the number of paralytic polio cases in Afghanistan has decreased over the last 40 years. The publicly available historical data on positive paralytic polio cases in Afghanistan that can be found on the website ‘Our World in Data’ by Oxford University, shows that the number of positive polio cases dropped from almost 2,000 in the mid-1980s to four in the early 2000s. (See graph 1 below for an overview of positive cases between 1980 and 1990 and graph 2 for 2001 to 2018). Although the numbers fluctuate, positive polio cases in Afghanistan in the 2000s and 2010s have been as low, annually, as in the dozens and even fewer than ten. This compares positively to the number of cases in the 1980s, which ranged from several hundred to often more than a thousand, indicating a relatively effective immunisation campaign (more on this below).

Graph 1: Positive polio cases in Afghanistan in the period 1980 – 1990. WHO data cited on the Oxford University’s website, ‘Our World in Data’. Graph by AAN, 2019.

Graph 2: Positive polio cases in Afghanistan in the period 2001 – 2018. WHO dataset of positive polio cases in Afghanistan, which AAN received from the organisation, segregated by province, district and date. Graph by AAN, 2019.

Data on positive polio cases in Afghanistan for the first half of the 1990s is almost non-existent. There is only a figure for 1991 when two cases were documented. It is nevertheless interesting to note that an almost complete dataset exists for the period of Taleban rule. According to the WHO, 19 cases were documented in 1997; 59 in 1998; 150 in 1999, and 120 in 2000. The data for 1996 is missing; that year saw the increased conflict as the Taleban moved to consolidate their power. How reliable these datasets are, given the WHO’s limited access during the civil war and subsequent Taleban rule is another question. The presumption that the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan during the 1980s had accurately reported the health situation in the country is also suspect. As usual, caution is needed when using historical datasets for Afghanistan.

An analysis of the WHO dataset of positive polio cases in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2018 segregated by province, district and date, which AAN received from the organisation, shows that the poliovirus has most often been detected in the eastern and especially the southern regions in Afghanistan. (See graph 2 for an overall number of positive polio cases between 2001 and 2018.)  In the south, they were mainly in Kandahar province, with spill-over transmission observed into other southern provinces, mainly Helmand and Uruzgan. In the eastern region, the epidemic is part of what is called the northern corridor transmission zone extending from Nangrahar, Kunar and Nuristan into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas in Pakistan. There was also a smaller number of positive polio cases during this period further north, for example, in Kunduz and Balkh, as well as one case in Kapisa, the easternmost province of the central region. Herat province in the west of the country also had positive polio cases, as did Farah, which neighbours both Herat and Helmand.

Taking 2018 as an example, 21 children were paralysed by the poliovirus in Afghanistan. Despite this high number of cases, the transmission was geographically limited to the southern and eastern regions and reported from only six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. 15 of the cases were in the southern region – nine in Kandahar province and with spill-over transmission to Helmand and Uruzgan. In the southern region, a major issue is lack of access: more than 840,000 children have missed out on the vaccination since May 2018. Inaccessibility coupled with some communities refusing to allow vaccination (more on this below), particularly in and around Kandahar, is a major obstacle for polio eradication in the country. It also makes responding to detected polio transmission difficult. The six cases in the eastern region are in the northern corridor transmission zone.

What causes the poliovirus to spread?

The vital question for those trying to protect children against the poliovirus is what drives it to spread in Afghanistan? According to experts, it boils down to two factors: lack of access for vaccinators and a highly mobile population. The 2017 report of the Afghanistan Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on polio eradication, looking at the epidemiological evidence, said it showed that “the vulnerability of pockets of unreached children” and “the role of population movement” are the key factors for poliovirus transmission across Afghanistan. The number of positive polio cases in Pakistan plays an important role in the virus spread through population movement across the border. In 2017, this number declined to only eight, from 306 cases registered during 2014, 54 in 2015 and 20 in 2016.

Afghanistan and Pakistan’s eradication efforts are interlinked and the two countries are dependent on each other’s success in eliminating polio – or held back by the other’s failings. This is why the two countries established a daily communication channel on polio in 2016 (see here) and why Afghanistan established compulsory vaccination at border crossings with Pakistan for children under five years of age. However, poor access to health services at the sub-national level, a lack of professional health staff and in particular limited access for women to health services play an equally important role in the spread of the virus in Afghanistan.

Immunisation in Afghanistan

Routine immunisation against polio, launched under the name of ‘Mass Immunisation Programme through the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), has been mandatory since 1978 in Afghanistan. This followed the global trend of mandatory immunisation against polio introduced in the 1970s. This so-called ‘routine immunisation’ against polio means that every newborn child should be given his or her first oral polio vaccine within their first 14 days of life, with four more vaccines to follow in the sixth, tenth and fourteenth weeks and a final one at nine months. However, the reach of mandatory routine immunisation, despite improvement over the years, has remained limited – because of the conflict and lack of access to health services.

According to publicly available WHO data, immunisation coverage among Afghan one-year-olds rose from three per cent in 1981 to 33 per cent in 1989. (A word of caution here: all percentages are estimates rather than hard statistics.) During the 1990s, it dropped back to an annual average of 25 per cent. The first supplemental immunisation activity, ie national immunisation days or polio vaccination campaigns aimed at children under the age of five, was launched in 1997. These campaigns, that usually last several days, have been conducted on a yearly basis since 1999. Their aim is to reach as large a population as possible and create an immunological barrier against the spread of wild poliovirus and risk of outbreaks. During these designated days, tens of thousands of polio workers go from door to door, making sure that every child under five, “including new-borns, sleeping, sick, and visiting children,” receives the polio vaccine. However, this approach has often been met with resistance and scepticism by local communities, especially since 2001, as will be explained in more detail in the following sections.

Nevertheless, the coverage of immunised children has increased over the years, from 24 per cent of one-year-olds in 2000 to 66 per cent in 2010. It rose further in 2011 and 2012, reaching 68 and 67 per cent, respectively. Progress was halted in 2014, the year when most foreign troops left Afghanistan and a presidential election was held, both events which lead to a general deterioration of security and consequently less access for vaccinators. The number of children immunised dropped to 50 per cent in 2014. In 2015, it increased again, to 60 per cent, and remained stable during both 2016 and 2017 (the latest available figures). This, however, is still too low: Afghanistan’s aim is to reach and immunise up to 80 per cent of newborns every year; this is the universally-accepted threshold for full immunisation.

Health sector shortfalls and some cultural considerations

Low routine immunisation coverage is one of the reasons the poliovirus continues to circulate in the country, said a 2011 UNAMA report. Even so, routine immunisation of all newborns, infants and pregnant mothers is only one of the strategies for polio eradication. Other strategies include: supplementary immunisation activities, surveillance, ‘mop-up’ campaigns, ie door-to-door immunisations that are carried out in specific areas where the virus is known or suspected to still be circulating and care for post-polio paralysis – part of the strategy because an infected person can spread the virus. Afghanistan’s health sector, however, is still not at the required level to systematically deliver basic routine immunisation.

Health expenditure in Afghanistan, although pretty high – 9.5 per cent of GDP according to the country’s Central Statistics Office (2) – is heavily dependent on donors, with around 75 per cent financed by foreign aid (see page 10 of this report). It is thus mainly driven by donors’ policies. For example, programmatic decisions as for major on-budget aid investment, such as the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF,  through which the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) (see also endnote 7) is entirely funded, although it is a fully ‘on-budget’ programme,  are still made by the World Bank (see this AAN analysis on aid and poverty in Afghanistan).

The number of health workers is also too low. Nationwide, there are 2.3 physicians and five nurses and midwives per 10,000 people, 2011 WHO study found. The global average is 13 physicians and more than 20 nurses and midwives per 10,000 people. (3)

A minimum of 23 health workers per 10,000 people, according to 2006 WHO report, is required to achieve “80 per cent skilled coverage of births, one of the interventions considered by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).” In Afghanistan, only 50.5 per cent of births are attended by a skilled health worker, as the latest available WHO estimate for 2015 shows. This is important for two reasons: it is one factor behind the still-high maternal mortality rate, which was at 396 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2015, (4) and the high mortality rate of children under 5 years of age, which was 91 per 1000 live births in 2017 and; secondly, the presence of skilled personnel at birth means mothers can be informed in a timely manner about vaccination. The first polio vaccine can also be administered by health personnel. This may be why only 15 per cent of surveyed mothers that had newborns in 2015, a year when the first ever Afghanistan Demographic and Health Survey was carried out, reported that their children had been vaccinated against polio at birth. (5)

A journal article on routine immunisation coverage in Afghanistan, published in 2017 in BMC Public Health, an open access, peer-reviewed journal that focusses on the epidemiology of disease and the understanding of all aspects of public health found that, nationally, only 51 per cent of children participating in the survey had received all the vaccines included in Afghanistan’s routine immunisation schedule. (6) The survey found that 31 per cent of surveyed children had only been partially vaccinated and for the following reasons: the place to vaccinate child was too far (23 per cent), mother was not aware of the need to vaccinate (17 per cent), mother had no faith in vaccination (16 per cent), mother was too busy (15 per cent) and had fear of side effects (11 per cent). The remaining 18 per cent of mothers in the survey sample had never had their children vaccinated, mainly for the following reasons: place for vaccination being too far (40 per cent), no faith in immunisation (34 per cent), unaware of the need for vaccination (33 per cent), concerns about conflict-related security (21 per cent) and not being allowed to go to a clinic without a male family member (or mahrahm) (21 per cent).

Women’s lack of access and lack of power to make health-related decisions are detrimental to their own health and make significant obstacles for them to get their children vaccinated. 2013 WHO study on gender-sensitive health service delivery said that:

For health-related decision-making, the findings were unanimous that women cannot take independent decisions on their own health and often need accompaniment for seeking health services. The heads of households (i.e. husband, father or brothers) are the ones who make those decisions for the women and this inhibits their timely access to health care services.

It is not only cultural norms that prevent women from accessing health services. The way health services are provided in the health sub-centres in villages is equally limiting. A 2017 study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases found that, although the average availability of essential vaccines, such as OPV (Oral polio vaccine), BCG (Bacillus Calmette–Guérin, against tuberculosis) and measles vaccines were generally high (above 90 per cent) at the various types of health facilities, in the health sub-centres (HSCs), it was typically below 80 per cent. (7) The study said:

Compared with other facility types, HSCs were less likely to have adequate stock of vaccines, essential cold-chain equipment, or proper documentation of vaccination activities […] Staffing inadequacies at the HSC level, which averaged 1 vaccinator compared with 2 for other types of facilities, may hamper the ability to deliver RI [routine immunization] services. Furthermore, unlike other facility types which had an average of 1 trained female vaccinator, most HSCs had none. This could hinder compliance with immunization, especially among women of childbearing age, given cultural sensitivities.

In 2018, as a result of all of these factors, according to UNICEF, only one in three children less than a year old received a vaccine through routine immunisation.

Door-to-door campaigns

Supplementary immunisation activities, commonly known as ‘door-to-door campaigns’ have intensified over the years in the form of national and subnational immunisation days, ie short and intensive campaigns. Usually, there is more than one campaign a year (see, for example, details about the national immunisation campaign from July 2018 here; from August 2018 here: and from November 2018 here). These campaigns are intensive, massive and sometimes geographically defined, ie vaccinations are targeted at particular provinces or districts. They also come with pre-defined targets. In July 2018, for example, the target was 6.4 million children under five; in August 2018 it was 9.9 million and; in November 2018, 5.3 million.

An Afghan health worker administers the polio vaccine to a child during a vaccination campaign on the outskirts of Jalalabad in November 2018. Supplementary immunisation activities, commonly known as door-to-door campaigns have intensified since 2001 in the form of national and subnational immunisation days. Photo: NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP

However, this ‘targeted outcome’ approach also has a downside. In the past, it repeatedly resulted in dishonest services, as AAN heard from two different sources in international organisations involved in the vaccination campaign. In some instances, the vaccinators simply dumped vaccines in the garbage, but counted them as administered, in order to reach their quota. In another case, according to the sources, the vaccinators took responsibility for areas they felt were too dangerous to work in, but did not report this lack of coverage back. This was also possible because there were no means to verify the number of vaccinated children. According to the director of the National Emergency Operation Center, Dr Maiwand Ahmadzai, they managed to overcome these limitations on monitoring in 2016. Through a presidential decree, a call centre was established which used GPS tracking of phone calls. Through this call centre, Dr Ahmadzai said, almost 95 per cent of physically-inaccessible areas could be communicated with and monitored. This, however, happened without sufficient consideration that the tracking method might amount to a violation of privacy or safeguards for the data collected not being used for other purposes.

The campaigns also often cause political tensions. Although organisers regularly highlight their neutrality, see for example in the 2019 National Emergency Action Plan for Polio Eradication, which says that the goal is to “maintain dialogue with AGEs [anti-government elements, ie the insurgents] at local, provincial and higher level on programme neutrality for polio and supporting activities” (see here), this is often disputed by the Taleban. Their spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, told AAN via WhatsApp that the polio vaccination had most recently been misused in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, Uruzgan and all other areas where fighting was intense. “The enemy was misusing vaccinators for collecting intelligence data,” he said, adding that:

Several people were arrested, who had entered Taleban-controlled areas, calling themselves vaccinators, but actually collecting intelligence data.  Such had been appointed to identify the houses [and] residential areas of Taleban commanders and leaders. The vaccinators would leave chips [GPS tracking devices] in houses, so that the government would identify that house and locate it for targeting. This clearly shows that the enemy was seriously misusing the polio vaccination drive.

The director of the National Emergency Operation Center, Dr Maiwand Ahmadzai, said it was not easy for them to deal with these issues:

I have only a few people that I can send to these [contested or controlled] areas and who are technically able and trustworthy to us and to the Taleban […] and there are more than 50 districts that are in need of these kinds of people.

Mistrust has led to low levels of immunisation acceptance in some communities, (8) although acceptance has improved over time. The government’s National Emergency Action Plan 2019, for example, foresees a publication of the qualitative analysis aimed at understanding why people might refuse the vaccine. The government also plans to engage with media and social media to address rumours undermining the drive to vaccinate.

Nevertheless, the political tensions surrounding vaccinations still most often result in bans, which can be imposed by a local insurgency commander or at the regional level, as was the case in 2018 in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni and Uruzgan provinces (more on this below).

Three district case studies

1. Achin, Nangrahar province

Achin is a long-embattled district with complicated conflicts (see this AAN report). As of early 2019, most of the district was under government control. But, before that, in the 2015-18 period, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Islamic State’s Afghan-Pakistani franchise, also known as Daesh – controlled most of it. The ISKP still continues to operate from mountain strongholds in the southern parts of the district. Before ISKP, between 2009 and 2015, the Taleban were in control of much of Achin. These power shifts, messy and often brutal, have resulted in the frequent internal displacement of people (see here and here) and a lack of access to health providers. Additionally, most health facilities have been damaged in the fighting. Even though, as of early 2019, health service delivery had only been hindered in ISKP-ruled areas, there are more general problems. For example, there are no female doctors in the district.

According to the WHO database on polio cases in Afghanistan, six positive polio cases were recorded in Achin between January 2001 and March 2019: one in 2012, one in 2014 and four in 2015, ie two were during Taleban rule and four during the shift in power in 2015 when ISKP captured Achin and turned the Mamand Valley into their local headquarters. It was also in 2015 that the Taleban banned vaccinations in areas still under their control in Nangrahar province. That ban included Achin, Dehbala and Rodat districts (see here). Both of these security-related factors were probably behind difficulties in vaccinating and the four positive polio cases, as this report) also found. Dr Sebghatullah, in charge of polio vaccination in Achin at the time, told AAN that he remembers that two of four children infected in 2015 were from Taleban families.

It is interesting, however, that there were no positive polio cases in Achin during most of the ISKP rule over the district, despite their strict ban on the government provided public health services. AAN research on service delivery in Achin found that the ISKP opposes both the running of health services, as well as the administration of any vaccination campaign in areas under its rule. The significant factor here may be something different, however, a doctor from Achin, Ezzat Shah Samim, told AAN that between 2016 and 2018, there had not been any positive polio cases in Achin because most of the people had fled areas under ISKP rule.

The history of positive polio cases in Achin shows the impact that lack of access for vaccinators, either because of bans or insecurity, can have on community health.

2. Nad-e Ali, Helmand province

The ethnographic make-up of Nad-e Ali district is somewhat different from Achin’s, although the communities in both districts are largely monoethnic, predominantly Pashtun. Achin is traditionally inhabited by members of the Shinwari tribe and as such is a homogenous community, albeit with significant sub-tribal conflict (see this AAN report). Nad-e Ali has a diffuse tribal structure as a result of large-scale government-led irrigation and settlement schemes that began in the 1950s. According to David Mansfield in his 2016 book A State Built on Sand (p 247), the mixing of new settlers with the original population resulted in a rural élite that is “fragmented, competitive and limited in its geographic sphere of influence.”

Nad-e-Ali communities are extremely dependent on opium cultivation. The district frequently featured as either the top or second place opium poppy-cultivating district during the mid and late 1990s. During the 2000s, opium poppy cultivation decreased, and the Helmand Food Zone project that began in 2008 aimed to replace illicit crop with licit ones. This led to the loss of income for many farming families and lowered health expenditure. By, 2018 Nad-e Ali was yet again the top opium cultivator in the county with 21,396 of a total countrywide estimated 263,000 hectares.

According to the data received from WHO, the district has had at least one positive polio case on an almost annual basis during the past 14 years, apart from a four-year break between 2014 and 2017. The number of cases was respectively: one in 2005; three in 2006; two in 2007 and 2008; four in 2009; three in 2010; up to a maximum of eight in 2011; and down again to two in 2012 and one in 2013, followed by four years without any recorded cases. A new case was registered in 2018. The increase in positive polio cases between 2009 and 2011 may have been indicative of lower incomes for most of the farming communities in the district.

There are other theories, too, as to why polio has persisted in Nad-e Ali. UNICEF’s communication specialist for polio eradication, Sayed Kamal Shah, told AAN that, of the 80 positive polio cases in Afghanistan in 2011, 11 in Helmand were transmitted by people who often go to Pakistan. According to this theory, cross-border transmission played a key role in spreading the virus. Helmand’s provincial WHO coordinator, Tahsil Khan, offered a more comprehensive explanation. He told AAN that the reasons for the 2011 polio cases were the bad quality of the vaccination campaign, the lack of cooperation from communities, fighting and the negligence of polio vaccinators and supervisors.

Cultural considerations also play a role, according to one of the interviewees from the province consulted as part of AAN’s service delivery in insurgent-affected areas research:

Because of traditional restrictions, families do not want their women going out of their homes. The people are poor, and the male members of the families are busy in daily labouring or working their lands. Therefore, a number of children have been deprived of immunisation. It is why we have polio positive cases in Helmand province.

According to the national eradication programme, Nad-e Ali’s poor immunisation record is mainly due to persistent access problems caused by insecurity. Added to this, the illicit nature of most of Nad-e Ali’s agriculture also ensures farmers and their families stay away from government-provided health services.

At the same time, the Taleban, who have controlled most of the district since 2016, do not generally oppose polio vaccinations. On the contrary, according to the respondents in AAN’s research, they recommended their own people for hire by the health department. Despite this, the Taleban have imposed occasional bans on immunisation, the most recent one, between May and December 2018, covered four provinces – Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni and Uruzgan. According to Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed, the decision to ban vaccinators was made by the movement’s health commission and approved by the Emirate’s leadership and was motivated solely by security. He repeated the Taleban’s allegation that immunisation staff doubled as ‘spies’:

The enemy was misusing the polio vaccination process in Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, Uruzgan and all other areas where the fighting was intense. The enemy was misusing vaccinators for collecting intelligence data. […] We have witnessed some night raids and bombings in some areas where the enemy had collected intelligence information via the polio vaccination process. In such raids, commanders of the Islamic Emirate were targeted and their houses identified.

Yet, Mujahed also underlined the general need for vaccination:

At the same time, there is a serious need for people to vaccinate their children. Therefore, the [Taleban] Health Commission worked on another solution. They decided that, as every village has a mosque and a malek, so the children should be vaccinated either in the house of the malek or in the mosque of the village. This way, the vaccinators will go to the mosque or the malek’s house where people will bring their children to vaccinate them. The commission also told the people that when vaccinators come to a village, a public announcement should be made via the mosque loudspeakers. […] When it was decided, mujahiden [sic] go from village to village and inform the villagers about the new procedure for vaccinating children.

However, he said the ‘intelligence collecting’ had not been witnessed in other parts of the country in 2018, so in other provinces, health staff were allowed to go door-to-door to vaccinate children. (9)

Public health officials and other stakeholders AAN spoke to in Nad-e Ali said the Taleban plan was inadequate. They said that most people, especially women, cannot bring their children to the mosque. Because of the difficulty of getting to a central location, all parties agreed to open polio vaccination centres in each village on 25 February 2019, when the last polio campaign resumed in Nad-e Ali.

Nad-e Ali district is an example of how polio-related politics in Afghanistan work and the array of actors involved. It is also interesting that the Taleban sometimes take a regional approach in their health-related decision-making and that bans are not left only to the will of the local commander, as was the case in Dasht-e Archi in Kunduz province in 2017 (more on which below). It also shows that polio policies have consequences. The form of polio vaccination favoured and supported by the Taleban was implemented too late for one three-year-old from Nad-e-Ali, who became the latest positive case from the district and who will remain permanently paralysed. 

3. Dasht-e Archi, Kunduz province

Dasht-e Archi, a district in the northeastern corner of Kunduz province, is almost entirely controlled by the Taleban (see this AAN report). They have established shadow sub-national governance structures, while most Afghan government officials are absent and work remotely from the provincial capital. Although the Taleban do not provide any services themselves, they have co-opted many governmental and non-governmental organisation (NGO) services in the district and these continue to run.

According to the WHO database, Dasht-e Archi had one positive polio case in February 2017. This happened after a local Taleban Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue introduced a district ban on Kunduz’s door-to-door campaign between March 2016 and February 2017. There were two reasons for this ban, according to AAN sources in the district. First, the local Taleban representatives had argued that the polio vaccination was “harmful” for children and the vaccine “useless.” The second reason was security-related – the Taleban said the vaccinators took photos of their location and shared it with the government. According to WHO estimates, because of this ban, 176,000 children were unable to access the vaccination programme in 2016 and 2017. As seen in the 2016 UNAMA Civilian Casualties report, during the November 2016 vaccination campaign “50 per cent of children missed vaccination due to active fighting while the remaining half missed it due to a ban on the house to house polio vaccinations imposed by Anti-Government Elements.”

The ban was lifted after the intervention of local elders who put pressure on the Taleban, locally, to allow vaccinators to carry on with their campaign. The solution at the local level ie, between community elders, provincial government officials and Taleban shadow provincial government officials, shows how powerful and successful communities can be, if united on an issue of concern. It was essentially local elders who stood firm for vaccinations to be carried out, in opposition to the Taleban committee’s decision.

Conclusion

The three case studies show that local security and political context plays an important role in any successful immunisation campaign. In Achin district in Nangrahar, a complicated and often brutal conflict between three warring parties has been the main obstacle for the delivery of health services, and, in particular, the timely immunisation of children. In Nad-e Ali and Dasht-e Archi, which are also sites of armed conflict (although only between two parties) and political tensions, a combination of fighting and bans have been the main obstacles. Bans may be imposed locally (and may be resolved at a local level) or regionally, covering several provinces.

It may be that in the country’s south (Uruzgan, Helmand, Kandahar and Ghazni), bans are mainly imposed by Taleban central command, based on a strategic approach to safeguarding territorial gains and not allowing any suspected intrusion of the government’s security apparatus. The 2018 ban in four provinces for a particular method of immunisation indicates that the Taleban there may be ready to propose and accommodate different solutions to the problem of getting children immunised during the conflict, ie immunisation in mosques or maleks’ homes, rather than the more intrusive, as they see it, door-to-door campaigns. That the Taleban should want to try to accommodate polio vaccinations should not come as a surprise, as the historical records on polio immunisation in Afghanistan show that the first national supplementary campaigns were carried out during their rule in the late 1990s, when the south was firmly under Taleban control. As the door-to-door campaign has become a cause of tensions since 2001, this approach probably requires some rethinking. While such campaigns would ideally guarantee that the majority of children are immunised, they may ultimately fail if both insurgents and communities perceive them as intrusive and harmful.

Fundamental for carrying out a successful door-to-door campaign would seem to be focused interaction between government and Taleban stakeholders on the timing and planning of the campaigns to build up trust and ensure better information. The examples of the past indicate that solutions were generally found, but post-facto, rather than in a pre-emptive fashion. Even if the Taleban are not part of the discussion on the timing of national immunisation days, health providers could consider including them at the planning phase and seek their consent and get guarantees of support for the campaigns.

The eradication of the poliovirus in Afghanistan will remain a top health priority in years to come. A reduction in violence, or indeed an end to the conflict, would be the single most useful factor for ensuring success in immunising Afghan children. However, regardless of how well or badly the current talks on a political settlement go, there are still changes that could be made to how immunisation is carried out to make better coverage more likely.

The AAN series on service delivery in insurgent-affected areas found that in most districts, health services at the local level are sub-standard. Health facilities lack the basics, from a scarcity of female health workers to a scarcity of electricity for the refrigerators used to store vaccines. In some districts, health facilities have been destroyed by fighting or temporarily occupied by parties to the conflict. Especially in remote villages, health facilities may not be available at all.

Afghan women, who are the primary target group for the timely vaccination of their children, face an additional obstacle: they lack the power to make health-related decisions due to ‘traditional’ cultural norms which mean men are responsible for the decisions affecting the health of their women and children. If more women had access to skilled health personnel during child delivery then compulsory vaccination at birth could easily be achieved. However, given that education of girls is often poor in these districts as well – often because of conflict and the same conservative norms – there are not the educated young local women coming through who could become midwives, nurses or doctors. Meanwhile, women from outside the districts do not want to work there.

The reasons for the persistence of polio in Afghanistan are many, but basically boil down to several difficult-to-tackle issues – conflict, poverty and lack of women’s rights – and the geographical fact that Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to provide a reservoir of the poliovirus for the other.

Maybe it is time in Afghanistan to rethink the delivery of health services in general and consequently to mend the health of the nation, which is still characterised by one of the highest rates of maternal mortality at birth and children’s mortality in the first five years. Empowering women and educating both men and women on health-related issues through all available channels, such as through radio, television and mosques, could also be used in a bottom-up approach to achieve a society that is more gender equal and thus more equitable

* Rohullah Sorush and Said Reza Kazemi reported on service delivery in Achin district in Nangrahar province, Obaid Ali reported on Dasht-e Archi in Kunduz province, Ali Mohammad Sabawoon who will be publishing on Nad-e Ali in Helmand province, and Fazal Muzhary helped with additional research.

 

Edited by Christian Bleuer and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) Enteroviruses belong to a group of ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses which typically occur in the gastrointestinal tract and sometimes spread to other parts of the body, including the central nervous. They also include Hepatitis A (see here).

(2) This is not a low percentage. By way of comparison, in high-income countries, the average health expenditure is just above 12 per cent of GDP.

(3) Life expectancy in Afghanistan remains low, for women it is 63.2 years and for men a little higher, at 63.6 years. Interestingly, while in most countries, female life expectancy is higher, in Afghanistan, it is men who tend to live a little longer.

(4) According to The Guardian report from 2017, the real number of maternal deaths at birth could be much higher. The newspaper quoted an unpublished report which said that the Afghan government found an average level of maternal deaths between 800 and 1,200 for every 100,000 live births.

(5) For the 2015 Afghanistan Demographic and Health Survey, 24,395 households were interviewed, including individual interviews with 29,461 married women age 15-49.

(6) The routine immunisation schedule in Afghanistan includes: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) against tuberculosis; a pentavalent or five individual vaccines given in one go, intended to protect against Haemophilus influenza type B (bacteria causing meningitis, pneumonia and otitis), whooping cough (or pertussis), tetanus, hepatitis B and diphtheria; oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV); and the first dose of the measles vaccine.

The interviews for the study published in the BMC Public Health journal were conducted in 34 Afghan provinces with 6,125 caregivers of children aged 12–23 months at the time of the survey who were identified as eligible.

(7) In 2003, the government of Afghanistan introduced the Basic Package of Health Services (BPHS) programme. BPHS was established to improve access to healthcare services in rural areas, which account for more than 70 per cent of Afghanistan’s population. BPHS comprises several key elements, including maternal and newborn care, child health and immunisation, and communicable disease control. These services are provided through different tiers of the primary health sector, ranging from small health posts catering to approximately 100–150 families to district hospitals, which serve populations of tens of thousands of people. Health services administered through BPHS are provided on a graduated scale, with the higher tiers of health facilities providing a more comprehensive package of services compared with smaller health facilities. The tiers of BPHS facilities include: health sub-centres (HSCs) that represent the smallest and lowest levels of service delivery, with higher levels of services offered by basic health centres (BHCs) and comprehensive health centres (CHCs). District hospitals (DHs) represent the highest level of service delivery. All tiers provide immunisation services.

(8) In an attempt to confirm their suspicions that al-Qaeda’s leader was living in a compound in Pakistan, the US launched an immunisation scheme in 2011 with the objective of obtaining DNA from a resident in the property that would confirm any family link (see here and here). This event fuelled conspiracy theories about vaccines in Pakistan and Afghanistan (see here), and communities sometimes refuse vaccinations on the grounds that the government is collecting biodata.

(9) On 11 April 2019 the Taleban said that it has temporarily stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) from carrying out relief work in the areas it controls in Afghanistan and it has revoked security guarantees for their staff. The Taleban said in a statement that they have found WHO staff involved in “some suspicious activities” during vaccination campaigns and that the ICRC failed to practically implement pledges given to the Taleban. (see more here).

 

 

 

 

 

Wires represent a serious hazard to both helicopters and airplanes flying at low altitude. The following footage was filmed on Apr. 3, 2019 near Fond Bellemare, west of Fort-de-France, Martinique, an insular region of France [...]

The European Defence Agency (EDA) currently has several job openings in different Directorates: 8 Seconded National Experts (SNE), 3 Temporary Agents, 2 Contract Agents and 10 Trainees (1 year duration). The profiles we’re looking for include head of unit, project officer, assistant and trainee positions across all EDA Directorates. Candidates must apply via the EDA website. 

Among the vacancies, you will find the position of Deputy Director/Head of Unit (Air Domain), Head of Unit Operations Support, Education, Training and Exercise, Project Officer SES Policy, Project Officer Land Programmes, Project Officer REACH, Project Officer Counter-IED, Project Officer Cyber Defence Technology, Project Officer Engage, Project Officer CDP & CODABA, Project Officer Air Systems Technologies and many more. Starting dates vary between September 2019 - September 2020. 

Through the EDA Traineeship Programme we offer 10 trainee posts of 1 year duration in different domains, starting September 2019. Deadline for applications: 31 May 2019.

Do not miss this chance and consult the EDA job portal for an overview of all open posts!

The Agency is an “outward-facing” organisation, constantly interacting with its shareholders, the participating Member States, as well as with a wide range of stakeholders. It works in an integrated way, with multi-disciplinary teams representing all of the Agency’s functional areas, to realise its objectives. Its business processes are flexible and oriented towards achieving results. Staff at all levels need to demonstrate the corresponding qualities of commitment, flexibility, innovation, and team-working; to work effectively with shareholders and stakeholder groups, formal and informal; and to operate without the need for detailed direction.

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Confusing New Teamwork PSA May Send Wrong Message About Joint Strike Fighter Program. An official U.S. Air Force video that, “Communicates information about the agencies available on base that are provided to help Airmen with [...]

Graphic footage shows the massive ramp strike of a Tomcat in 1993. The footage below was filmed by the Pilot’s Landing Aid Television (PLAT) camera aboard Nimitz-class USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), in the eastern Indian [...]

Representatives of all EU and NATO Member States as well as the NATO International Staff were invited to the EDA premises today for an informal briefing on the revised Capability Development Plan (CDP) approved in June 2018 and on its ongoing implementation process. The event was held at the initiative of the EDA Steering Board as part of the renewed EU-NATO cooperation under the Warsaw and Brussels Joint Declarations which call for more transparency and coherence of output between the EU and NATO defence planning processes. 22 EU Member States are also NATO Allies.

Jorge Domecq, the EDA Chief Executive, and Martin Konertz, the Capability, Armament & Planning Director, provided participants with an detailed overview on the general CDP process, on last year’s revision and the 11 new EU Capability Development Priorities, as well as on their implementation through the development of individual Strategic Context Cases (SCCS) which will serve as launching pads for potential future collaborative projects. They also explained the crucial role the CDP plays as a key reference for Member States’ and EU's capability development, and how it guides and informs the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), and the European Defence Fund (EDF). 

Participants were also briefed about how EDA ensures coherence with NATO, thus mitigating the risk of unnecessary duplication.  The Agency will continue to pursue coherence of output and timelines between the EU and NATO Defence Planning Processes in full transparency with the Member States.

“The meeting aimed at further enhancing transparency and visibility on the overall process and main elements of the revised CDP priorities, and at elaborating on the ways EU and NATO pursue coherence of output as well as the associated benefits, considering that Member States/Allies have a single set of forces and capabilities”, Mr Domecq commented. “I am confident that the meeting was particularly beneficial to those Allies which are not involved in the CDP process”. 
 

More information

• 2018 European Capability Development Priorities (EDA brochure)

 

The Consultative Peace Loya Jirga has ended in Kabul with reports back from the fifty committees of delegates, a speech from President Ghani and a communiqué which he said is now the government’s ‘roadmap’. Key points emerging from the jirga were calls for an ‘intra-Afghan’ dialogue with the Afghan government in charge, for a ceasefire and protection of women’s and other rights. Kate Clark, Ehsan Qaane and Ali Yawar Adili (with input from the rest of the AAN team), report on the jirga’s conclusions and ask whether it will strengthen the government’s hands vis-à-vis the Taleban.

The Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, described by the head of the organising commission of the jirga, Omar Daudzai, in his opening speech to the 3,200 delegates as “an opportunity for representatives from provinces and districts to share their views and thoughts on peace and stability in Afghanistan,” has wrapped up. It was a day later than planned – it had taken longer than expected to elect the various jirga officials which meant the main ‘meat’ of the jirga, the delegates’ discussions, only began on day 3, rather than day 2 as planned.

The delegates

The jirga’s organisers said the delegates were representative of the nation; along with MPs and provincial council members, there were also delegates selected at the district level; how free and fair those selections were is not clear or how much influence the Palace had. There should have been at least some type of voting, but reports varied on how this was carried out (see this AAN backgrounder).

30 per cent of the delegates were women. They also featured reasonably well in the line-up of jirga officials (this after a delegation of women, Killid editor and delegate Najiba Ayubi told AAN, met Sayyaf to demand 50 per cent of the jirga officials). At the end (and after elections) four out of the ten members administrative board of the jirga were women, as were 13 heads and 28 secretaries of the fifty committees (see this favourable comment by women’s activist Mary Akrami here).

As in previous jirgas, the delegates were split into committees, fifty in this jirga, and asked to consider four questions:

1. How can we convince the Taleban to participate in [an intra-Afghan] negotiation? What has not been done so far that should be done?

2. What are the values and achievements that the Afghan government should not compromise on? Why they are important?

3. What are your views on the make-up of the Afghan delegation for peace? What should be the characteristics of the delegates?

4. How should the Afghan government deal with the neighbouring countries, especially the country which is financially supporting the Taleban and providing them weapons [a reference to Pakistan]? Generally, what is your expectation from countries who are involved in Afghanistan?

The committees’ proposals

These committees then reported back at the end of day four. The AAN team monitored their conclusions as broadcast on Radio Television Afghanistan. We only managed to get three of the fifty committees’ conclusions in written form (they have not been published yet), so we could only make a ‘rough and ready’ assessment of what we thought were their main proposals:

1. Almost every committee stressed the crucial need for a ceasefire, at least during Ramadan (which begins on 5 or 6 May).

2. Almost every committee demanded intra-Afghan talks, ie the Taleban talking not just to the United States, but to other Afghans.

3. Almost all of the committees stressed that representatives of women, civil society, youth, religious scholars and academics should be part of any delegation that negotiated with the Taleban. Some also said representatives of war victims and political parties should also be included.

4. Almost all committees said that women’s rights and the last 18 years of ‘achievements’ should not be negotiated away.

5. Some committees stressed the desirability for a slow and pre-scheduled withdrawal of international troops, which should not take place before direct negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taleban began.

6. Some committees suggested that the United Nations should supervise talks between the government and the Taleban.

7. Some committees said the provisions of the constitution, but not the constitution as a whole, could be amended if the Taleban asked for this, but it had to be according to the procedures laid out in the constitution (i.e. through a Constitutional Loya Jirga – information on this in our backgrounder).

8. Some of the committees said a regional consensus was essential and the countries supporting the Taleban should stop doing so. Almost no committee was specific on this issue.

9. A few committees asked the government to open a political office for the Taleban in Afghanistan and demanded an end to talks behind closed doors (whether this pointed to talks between the Taleban and the US was not clear, but implied).

Today, on the final day of the jirga (3 May 2019), President Ghani delivered a speech (read it here in Pashto) saying he endorsed the committees’ recommendations and said they would form the government’s ‘roadmap’ for peace.

The final communiqué

The final communiqué was released as the jirga ended. It was composed in suspiciously well-written language for a document compiled from fifty other different documents at speed  (see the Annex for AAN’s translation of the original Dari). It does contain many of the committees’ reported recommendations, but not all, and also features items not prominent in the reports back. Delegates that AAN spoke to (perhaps a dozen out of the 3,200, so a limited sample) said they generally thought it reflected the views they had heard.

The communiqué does not challenge the Palace view of what is needed from negotiations with the Taleban. In particular, it puts the government at the centre of any talks. It also excludes by omission the idea of an interim government taking over when the president’s constitutional mandate ends on 22 May. This idea is still on the table, despite the Supreme Court ruling, two weeks ago, that Ghani’s term can be legally extended until the results of the much-delayed presidential election are eventually in. The court’s ruling is not without controversy or opposition; as we reported, most of the other presidential candidates had already called on Ghani to stand down. One delegate told the media (see here) that his committee had reached a consensus on the need for an interim government, but this had not been reported to the hall. There is no way of checking this or whether other committees may also have reached this conclusion.

The placing of the government at the heart of any negotiations with the Taleban is also a ‘Palace-friendly’ answer to the Taleban’s dismissal of Kabul as a ‘puppet government’ that is not worth talking to and to the US acceptance of the Taleban demand that it speaks directly to the US and, at least initially, without the government being present.

Some items in the communiqué were equally prominent in our assessment of the committees’ reporting back. They include the urgent need for a ceasefire, the need for an end to interference by (unspecified) neighbours and the prospect of the withdrawal of foreign troops. Common items also included the value put on protecting the rights of women and the other ‘achievements’ of the post-2001 polity, and of having a representative negotiating team. However, here, the communiqué puts the need for “jihadi personalities” at the top of the list of necessary participants in any delegation – not mentioned much, we thought, in the committees’ reporting back – and then, as an apparently separate (mutually exclusive?) category, those who value human rights, have good reputations and are expert. Women, young people, those with disabilities, academics and ulema were also necessary members.

Both committees and the communiqué thought the constitution could be amended, if the Taleban wished it, but only according to the constitution, ie through a constitutional loya jirga. The communiqué said this could only happen “after a peace agreement” (emphasis added).

Other issues mentioned by the committees did not appear in the final communiqué, for example, some committees called for the United Nations to ‘supervise’ talks. Other proposals in the communiqué were not, we thought, mentioned much by the committees; for example, the idea (made by Chairperson Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf in his opening and closing speeches) that the dispute with the Taleban lay in ‘different interpretations’ of Islam. Also not featuring prominently, we thought, in the committees’ reporting was the release of Taleban prisoners; the communiqué says the “exchange of captives and release of prisoners” could build confidence between the two parties. Ashraf Ghani, in his speech, said the government was already identifying 175 Taleban prisoners it would free as a gesture of goodwill. He also said they were ready to discuss the technicalities of a ceasefire, although it would have to be bilateral.  The Taleban, reported the BBC, have already rejected this.

Two side issues can be mentioned here, to do with provisions in the 2008 Amnesty Law, usually cited for its controversial blanket immunity for those who perpetrated war crimes before 2001 and any current or future war criminals who reconcile with the government. It specifies that parliament must choose any delegation that negotiates with insurgents (art 5). It also says that the release of detainees and persons convicted of crimes related to the conflict is only possible if proposed by the now defunct Commission for Consolidation of Peace (kamisyun-e tahkim-e suh) (art 5). (For more details about the Amnesty Law, read AAN’s analysis here.)

Conclusion

Depending on what the actual aim of the jirga was, it could be viewed as a success or a failure. If the jirga was aimed at projecting a united front and forging a common negotiating position with the Taleban, among those Afghans broadly supportive of the post-2001 polity (the authors were not sure how to refer to this ‘side’), then it was a failure as soon as it was boycotted by major opposition figures, including other presidential candidates, Chief Executive Abdullah, the chairperson of the High Peace Council, Abdul Karim Khalili and eleven political parties. (1)

Opposition figures and parties have said, all along, that the jirga was “a political trick” and “election campaign” (see here), aimed at strengthening the Palace position that there is no need or obligation to have an interim authority. If this was the jirga’s real aim, to project Ashraf Ghani’s legitimacy as continuing president, then it could be seen as a reasonably successful, if minor, propaganda victory.

All that having been said, however, much of the substance of the communiqué and the committees’ conclusions were not controversial. Many, from all sides – Palace, opposition and civil society including women’s groups – have been united in calling for the protection of ‘post-2001’ rights and for those representing non-Taleban Afghans in any negotiations to be representative of the country at large. As former governor of Balkh province Atta Nur Muhammad, who has shared the communiqué on his Facebook page said, there was nothing in it that has not been discussed before). Atta also thanked the participants for not allowing the government to ‘deviate’ the jirga from its course. (As of yet, there has been no official opposition reaction to the jirga).

If this jirga had been convened last summer after the Eid ceasefire put peace on the agenda, before election campaign season and before the US’s decision to talk to the Taleban, it could have been a much stronger vehicle for creating consensus. Instead, with the opposition angry and suspicious and with the Taleban already speaking to those it considers the ‘real’ power facing it in Afghanistan, the United States, the point of this jirga was diminished.

As it is, this gathering of more than 3,000 Afghans has come as US Special Envoy Zalmai Khalilzad and the Taleban were beginning their sixth round of talks in Doha (it began on 1 May 2019) and after the failure of an attempt at intra-Afghan dialogue, also scheduled to be held in Doha, on 19–21 April. The Doha talks were cancelled after either the hosts or the Taleban (it was never clear) became unhappy at the size and unwieldiness of the ‘Kabul delegation’ – 250 people who would supposedly talk to 25 Taleban representatives. Referring to this in his speech today, Ghani said that, “Mandated and inspired by the resolution of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, I will assign a negotiating team, not an army of negotiators.” However, if the Palace again tries to organise the non-Taleban side of the dialogue, the team might – if Taleban sentiments remain consistent – still be rejected.

This is not to say that the Taleban should have a veto on which Afghans they talk to, or that the US should ‘exclude’ the government from talks with the Taleban (as Ghani and many other Afghans believe it is doing). However, despite the strong intent of the final communiqué, it is difficult to see how this jirga will strengthen the hand of the Palace vis-à-vis the United States or of Afghans supporting the 2001 settlement against the insurgents.

 

Edited by Rachel Reid

 

Resolution of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga

 9-13 Saur 1398 (29 April-3 May 2019)

Taking inspiration from the holy verse (wa amruhum shura bainahum) and pursuant to decree number 162, dated 20/12/1397 (11 March 2019), of the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, we, the 3,200 members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, including women and men, elected representatives of the nation in the two houses of the National Assembly, ulema [religious scholars], rohaniyun [clerics  and influential and tribal elders, members of the provincial councils, members of the High Peace Council, representatives of civic and social organisations, women representatives, representatives of the private sector, academic institutions, writers and poets, artists, national and civil organisations, young people, media, associations of lawyers and association of defence lawyers, registered political parties, athletes, people with disabilities of [caused by] war, families of victims from the security and defence forces, families of victims of war, representatives of  the Popular Helmand Peace Movement, representatives of refugees residing in Iran and Pakistan, representatives of Afghan experts residing abroad, Kuchis, Hindus and Sikhs, and other influential and expert groups of the society, came together for five days from 9 to 13 Saur 1397 [29 April to 3 May 2019] to present our advice on the definition of peace and setting the parameters and framework for peace negotiations with the Taleban Movement for the parties involved in the Afghan peace process.

We, the members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, representing the noble and proud nation of Afghanistan, having endured long years of war and bloodshed, poverty, deprivation, migration and displacement; realising our religious and national obligations, the vital need of the people of Afghanistan for peace, and that honourable and durable peace does not mean only an end to fighting [but also] requires the protection of national interests, economic and social development, the elimination of poverty, bringing about political stability and regional and international consensus; also recognising the determination, forbearance, patience and sacrifices of the great nation of Afghanistan, especially of the security and defence forces of the country for achieving a durable peace and general prosperity [;recognising] the initiative of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to seek advice from the nation to end the war and bloodshed and to achieve durable peace, and the efforts of the international community in ensuring peace in Afghanistan; and reiterating [the need to] preserve Islamic principles and national values and jihad and resistance, and preserve the national sovereignty and territorial integrity, have gathered to convey peace-loving messages to the different parties involved in the Afghan peace process.

We, the members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, in accordance with the agenda of the meetings of the 50 working committees and the plenary session, conducted comprehensive discussions and agreed on the following articles:

Annex: The Final Communiqué of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga (29 April – 4 May) (AAN translation from the original Dari)

1. We, the participants in this Jirga, are determined and committed to bring durable peace to the country.

2. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the Taleban Movement to, given the unpleasant consequences of war and bloodshed, listen to the voice of this great mass of people who represent every corner of Afghanistan and denounce animosity and participate in the building up and prosperity of their homeland. War does not have a winner and peace does not have a loser.

3. One of the big factors of war in Afghanistan is different perceptions and interpretations of the religion of Islam. Members of the Consultative Peace Jirga suggest to the government, the Taleban and religious scholars to unify their perspective on the interpretation of Islam and pave the way for national unity and accord.

4. The government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taleban Movement should accept the voice of the absolute majority of Afghans and declare an immediate and permanent ceasefire from the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan of this year and implement it across the country in order to respect the will of the people, honour the holy month of Ramadan, end violence, build confidence between the two parties, and put an end to the negative propaganda.

5. The Islamic Republic system is the great achievement of the people of Afghanistan and is the outcome of years of sacrifices and endeavours. Establishment and consolidation of peace in Afghanistan should be achieved by protecting the type of the system (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) and through a direct negotiation channel.

6. The current constitution of Afghanistan is a national and invaluable document for the people of Afghanistan which should be preserved; but if needed, an amendment to some of its articles through principled and favourite mechanisms [envisaged] in this law is possible, after a peace agreement.

7. The fundamental rights of the citizens, enshrined in the constitution of Afghanistan, including the rights of women and children, political and civil right to participation, the right to freedom of expression, the right to education and labour, the right to access public services as well as the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, people with disability, heirs of martyrs, as the fundamental pillars of consolidation of peace, should be preserved and strengthened in the peace process

8. The security and defence forces are the pride of the country. Consolidation and continuation of durable peace require strong national security and defence forces. Therefore, the people of Afghanistan, through this Jirga, emphasise on protection and strengthening of these institutions.

9. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga request the warring parties and the countries involved in the Afghan peace process to, through understanding and collaboration, paving the way for opening the political office of the Taleban in Afghanistan.

10. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the government of Afghanistan to, in close coordination with the international community and after understanding among all factions (parties) involved in the peace process, and to preserve the values and achievements of close to two decades, prepare a feasible timetable for responsible exit of foreign forces from Afghanistan

11. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the government of Afghanistan, all political parties and currents and effective national personalities to use the currently available opportunities to build a domestic national and political consensus at this historical and critical situation to advance the peace process and enter into peace negotiations from a single and Afghanistan-wide address.

12. All the involved parties should avoid preconditions that restrict the ground for the beginning of direct negotiations.

13. All parties involved should treat the captives and prisoners of the other in an Islamic spirit and with good behaviour and take actions, using constructive and flexible methods, [aiming at] the exchange of captives and release of prisoners for the purpose of further building confidence and goodwill between the two parties.

14. In order to achieve durable peace, regional and international consensus is imperative and vital. Therefore, members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the regional and trans-regional countries and the international community to coordinate their efforts to establish peace in Afghanistan with the government and put the role of the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan at the centre of their initiatives and efforts.

15. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the government to emphasise, in all negotiations and talks, a policy of good neighbourliness with the countries of the region and the neighbours. If there is continued interference by the regional countries or some of the neighbours in the affairs of Afghanistan, [the government should] formally lodge the complaint of the people of Afghanistan with the UN Security Council.

16. The government should, in consultation with influential national, political and social ‘addresses’ [influential people or groups], develop and enforce a comprehensive and all-inclusive plan for accelerating the peace process and beginning direct negotiations with the Taleban Movement, in considering of the advice of this jirga.

17. Realising the urgent need for an impartial body to facilitate the peace process, members of this Jirga recognise that, for the purpose of making the High Peace Council transparent and effective, fundamental reforms to the structure, organisation and performance of this Council should be carried out.

18. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, considering the past experiences, advise that the negotiating team be formed of jihadi personalities and [those who are] national, expert, experienced, have good reputations, are committed to human rights values and are peace-loving, with a manageable composition (maximum 50 people); [it should be formed] considering the ethnic balance and the presence of learned ulema, tribal elders, women, young people, the families of victims, people with disabilities, minorities, representatives of civil society, refugees, the media, Kuchis and of different classes and strata of the society, including some of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga members.

19. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga ask the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to, for the purpose of facilitating and accelerating the peace process, identify the legitimate and reasonable wants and demands of the Taleban and take necessary actions vis-à-vis them for further confidence building

20. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga commit to convey this jirga’s message of peace to their people upon return to their areas and localities as messengers of peace and to start a comprehensive effort in cooperation with local administrations, ulema, tribal elders, young people and women, so that we can play our religious and national part in the ensuring peace.

21. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga call on the government to maintain its relations with members of this jirga and with the influential institutions and constantly keep members of the jirga posted on the implementation of the jirga’s advice and the progress of peace talks and negotiations

22. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, emphasising the articles of this resolution, address the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the Islamic Movement of the Taleban, the International community, regional countries and other factions (parties) involved to respect the rightful wants and demands of the people of Afghanistan and the advice of this historic loya jirga and seriously and honestly make efforts and take practical steps to establish and consolidate a durable peace and prevent the continuation and intensification of the war and [continuing] casualties among ordinary people.

23. Members of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga, due to the significance of this historic loya jirga, want the president and administrative board of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga to print and publish all the views, opinions and recommendations of the 50 committees in a formal document.

 

[1] A day before the Jirga, on 28 April 2019, 12 presidential hopefuls issued (available in Dari here) a statement announcing their boycott of the Consultative Peace Loya Jirga. They said (AAN’s translation of the original Dari):

We, the 12 presidential candidates’ election tickets of 2019 and a number of political parties of the country, believe that the consultative loya jirga which has been called by the president is untimely, unnecessary and a waste of state resources. In the current situation in which almost all international partners and Afghan politicians have intensified their efforts to ensure durable peace, the government of Afghanistan wants to consult with the people now.

We believe that this jirga is untimely and in contradiction with the peace-seeking efforts.

Ambiguity in the agenda, on one hand, and non-inclusiveness of the members of this Jirga, on the other, calls to question the effort to ensure peace as being national.

We believe that any initiative at the national level in the run-up to the presidential elections is an abuse of state resources for election campaigning in favour of a particular person.

Moreover, the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which according to the constitution has the duty to only compare the ordinary laws with the constitution, under the influence of the government and contrary to its authorities, has recently extended the term of the president until the elections are held.

This action is against the constitution and political consensus on one hand and a serious obstacle to bringing peace and holding transparent elections on the other.

The government had better spend the financial resources used for the jirga for the victims of the recent national disasters and fighting [and] for improving the lives of our people, around 52 per cent of whom are under the poverty line.

Therefore, we, 12 presidential candidates and our political partners, will boycott this jirga and will not participate in it.

Nur ul-Rahman Liwal

Enayatullah Hafez

Muhammad Ibrahim Alekozai

Muhammad Hakim Tursan

Ghulam Faruq Nejrabi

Faramarz Tammana

Sheida Muhammad Abdali

Ahmad Wali Massud

Nur ul-Haq Olomi

Rahmatullah Nabil

Muhammad Hanif Atmar

Muhammad Shahab Hakimi

The spokesman for Chief Executive Abdullah also announced his boycott, saying the jirga was unnecessary, not necessarily legitimate and would have no result. The party of Second Chief Executive Muhammad Mohaqeq, Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-e Mardom declaring its boycott said no one “will participate in this cosmetic Jirga on behalf of the party and those who will participate in the Jirga want to counter the deceits and khaima shab bazi (marionettes, puppet shows) advanced by the government as the agenda of the Jirga.” Boycotts were also announced by former president Karzai (available in Dari here) and Herati strongman, Ismael Khan.

 

 

Night Vision Goggles

Jean-François Ripoche joined the European Defence Agency (EDA) on 1 May 2019 as the Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) Director. He previously held the position of Research and Technology Director at the Strategy Directorate of DGA (Direction générale de l'armement), the French Ministry of Defence Procurement Agency.

Mr Ripoche graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique (X90) and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Techniques Avancées in Paris, and holds a PhD in laser Physics. 

With his engineering background, Jean-François Ripoche brings to EDA years of experience in Research and Technology in the military field. He started his career in 1998 at the DGA and worked across various domains such as UAVs, Landsystems, Space and Cybersecurity. 

Holding the position of Deputy Director for Industrial Affairs in charge of the electronics, land systems and naval systems industries from 2008 to 2012, he developed a sound experience of relations with industry.

“l look forward to joining the European Defence Agency during this very challenging period. Research, technology and innovation are key areas that will contribute to effectively deliver European defence capabilities. I am committed to continuing the work initiated at EDA to streamline Member States’ and European defence R&T priorities and to promote cooperation opportunities, using adequate funding instruments”, Mr Ripoche said upon taking up his duties.

As Research, Technology and Innovation Director, Jean-François Ripoche will lead a key Directorate of the Agency which fosters and supports defence research at EU level. Based on the Overarching Strategic Research Agenda (OSRA), developed together with the Member States, the Directorate coordinates and plans joint research activities and the study of technical solutions to meet future operational needs. The Directorate provides support to Member States and to the European Commission for the Preparatory Action on defence research, including its implementation, and the research dimension of the European Defence Fund. The Directorate also ensures the promotion of innovation in defence and the exploitation of synergies at EU level with civil research in dual-use technology.
 

More information:

• Jean-Francois Ripoche CV

The Supreme Court has ruled that President Muhammad Ashraf Ghani and his vice-presidents shall continue to serve until the election of a new president. This ruling comes in the wake of mounting pressure by a number of presidential candidates and their political backers, who have called on the government leaders to step down after 22 May, when their constitutional term ends. The ruling also comes after the Independent Election Commission (IEC) announced yet another delay in the holding of the presidential elections. These are now scheduled for 28 September 2019, more than four months after the president’s five-year constitutional term ends on 22 May, sparking political debate over whether the current president should remain in office thereafter. AAN’s researcher Ali Yawar Adili looks at the continuing constitutional crisis. He notes that while delays in elections and the extension of the presidential tenure beyond its constitutional timeframe are nothing new, there are differences this time that could lead to political deadlock.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the presidential tenure

The repeated delays to the 2019 presidential elections have sparked a debate as to who should run Afghanistan after the end of the presidential term on the first of Jawza of the fifth year (22 May 2019). The new IEC made an announcement on 20 March, the eve of Nawruz (the Afghan New Year), that the presidential elections would be delayed. The IEC said that elections could not be held as planned on 20 July 2019, which was already two months after the constitutional end of the president’s term in office. The reasons provided by the IEC were that the amended electoral law contained new obligations that could not be met in time, most notably the use of technology in all phases of the elections (see AAN’s previous reporting about the amendments here). The IEC also noted that it needed time to address some of the challenges and problems of the 2018 Wolesi Jirga elections and that reforms should be carried out before the next elections. The IEC also said that there had been general delays in the preparations for the elections that necessitated rescheduling them. The IEC announced 6 Mizan 1398 (28 September 2019) as the new date for the presidential elections, provincial elections, Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni.

The constitution is clear that the elections should be held 30 to 60 days before the end of the presidential term, but omits to mention what should happen if elections are not held. That is, the constitution does not mention whether the sitting president’s term should be extended until elections are held or whether transitional governance arrangements should be put in place for the interim period. While President Ghani and the National Unity Government are keen to hold onto power during the interim period, other presidential candidates have been calling on the leaders of the National Unity Government to step down after 22 May. However, they have also been struggling to come to an agreement about an alternative that could be both constitutional and acceptable to the people and supported by Afghanistan’s international partners. Therefore, if they continue to put pressure on the government to step down, a deadlock might ensue given the lack of any clear constitutional alternative.

Due to mounting pressure from presidential candidates and their backers, the deputy for policy, monitoring and review in the presidential palace’s legal department sent a letter earlier this month (1) to the Supreme Court (letter number 529 dated 28/1/1398 (17 April 2019), informing the court that the IEC had postponed the presidential elections until 28 September 2019. The letter stated that this had resulted in a gap of more than four months between the end of the president’s term on 22 May and the new elections (the gap would be even more until the completion of elections, especially if they go to a second round or results drag on). The president’s office asked the Supreme Court to review article 61 of the constitution and provide its legal opinion on governance arrangements between the end of the president’s constitutional term and the conclusion of the elections. Article 61 refers to the election of the president and his/her term. It says that the presidential term expires on the first of Jawza (22 May 2019 in the case of the current president) of the fifth year following elections and that elections for a new president should be held within 30 to 60 days prior to the end of the presidential term.

In response to the letter sent by the president’s office, the Supreme Court issued (media reports here and here) a ruling on 20 April 2019 extending the president and vice-presidents’ terms until a new president is elected. The High Council of the Supreme Court in its approval (decision) number 100 dated 31/01/1398 (20 April 2019) cited the full text of a similar ruling issued by the High Council of the Supreme Court in 2009. The 2009 ruling concerned who should govern the country after the end of the presidential term, as the elections had not been held well in advance. The Supreme Court ruled that the then-president should continue to serve until the election of a new president.

The 2009 ruling, as cited by the Supreme Court in its 20 April 2019 approval, was based on two arguments:

• Indivisibility of the different provisions in the article of the constitution that deals with the election and term of the president. The Supreme Court had argued that paragraphs two and three of article 61 of the constitution stating that “the presidential term shall expire on 1st of Jawza of the fifth year after elections” and that “elections for the new President shall be held within thirty to sixty days prior to the end of the presidential term” were complementary. Therefore, because the elections had been postponed, so the whole provision should be delayed. This, in practice, meant that the presidential term, which, according to the second paragraph, would have ended on 22 May (2009) had elections been held 30 to 60 days before that, would be extended. (2)
• Qa’ida-e fiqhi (jurisprudential rule, an Islamic Fiqh/jurisprudence term) is baqa ma kana ala ma kana (continuing the status quo ante), ie continuing previously existing affairs means that the term of the president and his vice-presidents as the status quo ante should continue until the elections.

After citing this 2009 ruling, the Supreme Court in its 20 April 2019 ruling, concluded that since the queries made by the president’s office in 2009 and in 2019 had been the same, the Supreme Court’s decision would also be the same. (3) This, in practice, means that the incumbent president and his vice-presidents should continue to rule the country until the election of a new president.

Earlier precedents of extensions to the presidential term 

This is not the first time that the presidential term in Afghanistan has been extended. As noted above, the presidential term expires on first of Jawza of the fifth year after his/her election (22 May 2019 in the case of the current president), and elections for the new president should be held within 30 to 60 days prior to that. However, to date, no elections have adhered to this rule as they have either been delayed or dragged on beyond this timeframe and consequently the presidential term has always been extended beyond the 1stof Jawza.

The 2009 presidential elections were held on 20 August 2009, almost three months after the end of the president’s constitutional term. Some candidates, including the current president, Ashraf Ghani, called for the end of Karzai’s term after 22 May 2009. Karzai’s office sought a ruling from the Supreme Court, which (as described above) said that the continuation of his term was in the interests of the country (see AAN’s previous reporting here and here).

The first round of the 2014 presidential elections was held on 5 April 2014 within the constitutional timeframe (30-60 days before the end of the presidential term, ie 22 May 2014). However, the tabulation and announcement of results took more time. Moreover, the elections went to a second round, which, however, was not held within the legal timeframe, ie within two weeks after the announcement of the results of the first round. Therefore, former President Karzai’s office of administrative affairs and the secretariat of the Council of Ministers had asked, in letter number 1186 dated 22/2/1393 (12 May 2014), that the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC) provide legal advice on paragraph two of article 61 of the constitution, which stipulated that his term would end on 22 May. (4) It is unclear why the former president’s office, unlike in 2009, sought a ruling from the ICOIC in 2014. There has also been some debate as to whether the Supreme Court or ICOIC should be the authority to interpret the constitution (see AAN’s previous reporting here and here).

Abdullah Shafayi, a member of the ICOIC, told AAN on 25 April 2019 that the government would usually seek a ruling from an authority (such as the Supreme Court or the ICOIC) that was more “aligned” with the government. He claimed that the government had rarely referred constitutional issues to the ICOIC since the president (Ghani) had opposed its members’ decision to dismiss the chairman of the commission in 2017 (see AAN’s background here).

The ICOIC’s decision (made on 28/2/1393 (18 May 2014)) in response to the presidential palace’s 12 May 2014 request to interpret article 61 of the constitution was in line with the Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling in that it approved the continuation of the presidential term after 22 May 2014. The ICOIC’s decision ( available here in Dari) contained two parts:  First, the ICOIC noted that the IEC needed to provide an explanation to the ICOIC as to why the results of the first round and the whole of the second round of the elections had been delayed.  Requesting the IEC to explain the delays was most likely the ICOIC’s way of ensuring that it could check whether the delays were constitutionally justifiable. Second, the ICOIC said that if the first of Jawza (22 May 2014) fell while the final results of the runoff had not yet been announced due to justified reasons compatible with the principles of the constitution, the continuation of the president and his vice-presidents after the first Jawza until the announcement of the final results within the period specified by the IEC would not be considered as being in breach of the constitution. (5)

Delays to the 2019 presidential elections

The date for the upcoming presidential elections was announced by the IEC on 1 August 2018 as being scheduled for 20 April 2019 (see AAN’s previous reporting here and here). Since then, the elections have been delayed twice, both times being pushed back beyond the president’s constitutional term.

On 30 December 2018 the former members of the IEC, after weeks of speculation, formally delayed the presidential elections until 20 July 2019. Reasons for the delay included: the need for reform, especially after the mismanagement of the 2018 parliamentary elections; winter weather conditions; and possible pressure due to peace talks, or even a negotiated agreement before the polls (see AAN’s report here).

On 20 March, on the eve of Nawruz, the Afghan New Year, the new members of the IEC said in a statement that it would not be possible to hold the elections on the specified date of20 July 2019 and instead announced 28 September as the new date. The IEC still left a caveat – that the elections could be held on the above-mentioned date, 28 September, only if relevant stakeholders, especially the government and the international community, were able to provide the required budget to the IEC and fulfil their obligations. In its operational plan, the IEC has an estimated budget of 207 million dollars for holding three sets of elections: presidential, provincial council and Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni (see media report here). It has dropped the district council elections once again.

Mounting pressure for a new arrangement after 22 May

The first delay (moving the election date from 20 April to 20 July) had already provoked a debate in political circles concerning the end of the presidential term. For instance, former national security adviser and presidential candidate, Hanif Atmar, called on the leadership of the current government to step down after their legal term had expired. At the time, Nur Rahman Akhlaqi of Jamiat-e Islami told AAN that since the constitution did not specify whether the current government could continue after 22 May, it only stipulated that the government would no longer be legitimate, they would call for a grand political national consensus among political parties and civil society, supported by the international community, to decide on an alternative. According to him, this could be: 1) a continuation of the government but with a reduction in the president’s authorities; 2) an interim government; or, 3) the president stepping down and, as an example, the chief justice taking over the affairs of the state (see here).

However, following the second delay and as 22 May approached, 11 out of 18 presidential tickets (read AAN’s previous report about these 18 presidential tickets here) coalesced around a call for the government to be dissolved after 22 May. These candidates included Ahmad Wali Massud, Rahmatullah Nabil, Enayatullah Hafiz, Ghulam Faruq Najrabi, Faramarz Tamana, Muhammad Ibrahim Alekozai, Muhammad Hakim Tursan, Muhammad Hanif Atmar, Muhmmad Shahab Hakimi, Nur Rahman Liwal and Nurul Haq Olomi. They issued a statement on 26 Hamal 1398 (15 April 2019) saying “We categorically announce that the term of the government ends on 1st Jawza 1398 (22 May 2019), [and] consider use of any political trick for continuation as unjustified and in conflict with the national stability of the country.” They also said they would finalise an alternative plan for the government in light of the laws and in accordance with lawyers, politicians, civil society and other segments of society at the very earliest possibility, which, they said, would be announced in a press conference.

Perhaps in an attempt to head off the Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of the continuation of the presidential term, on 20 April 2019 they issued a second statement saying that “the leaders of the national unity government are duty bound to hand over the government after 1st Jawza (22 May).” They claimed that, based on the information and documents that they had received, the presidential palace was trying to put pressure on the Supreme Court to issue an interpretation in favour of a continuation of the presidential term until elections were held. They said this was an “obvious violation and harming the reputation and independence of the judiciary.” The Supreme Court did issue its ruling in favour of the continuation of the current president until the election of a new president, which is an unspecified timeframe, given that elections could be delayed again or might go to a second round, or the tabulation and announcement of the results might drag on.

Conclusion: reactions and scenarios

The 11 presidential candidates mentioned above (see here) issued a joint statement on 21 April in reaction to the ruling by the Supreme Court. They argued that the Supreme Court did not, following the adoption of the law on the establishment and authority of the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC), have the authority to interpret the constitution given that the authority tasked with interpreting the constitution had been shifted from the Supreme Court to the ICOIC. (At the time, the Supreme Court had commented that this law had introduced a conflict between its mandate and that of the ICOIC. When the ICOIC’s law was finally published in the official gazette in July 2009, it appeared together with the Supreme Court’s opinion without clarification as to what this opinion meant for the interpretation of the law – see AAN’s background here).

Neither did the 11 presidential candidates agree that the extension approved by the Supreme Court in 2009 was comparable to the one they approved in 2019. They questioned the Supreme Court’s reference that in 2009 the political elites had agreed to the extension, saying that, even if such an agreement had existed in 2009, currently both political parties and élites agreed that the presidential term should end. Whether such a consensus does exist is debatable. Some of the presidential candidates have issued separate statements damning the court’s decision. For instance, the Security and Justice team led by former NDS chief Rahmatullah Nabil said in a statement on 22 April that the Supreme Court’s interpretation of article 61 of the constitution in favour of the continuation of the government after 22 May was in conflict with this important article within the law. It said that no interpretation of the constitution could push back the end of the presidential term to an unknown time, that is to say, until presidential elections are held, the date of which is not yet clear (this is perhaps doubting that elections can even be held on 28 September, and even if they are held on schedule, it is unclear when they might be concluded). Nabil’s Security and Justice team said that it considered it its duty and responsibility to put an end to this illegal issue after 22 May by using all legal channels and civil protests. The National Accord team led by Ahmad Wali Massud called the Supreme Court’s ruling “made to order” and the extension “illegal.”

The government has not officially commented on the Supreme Court’s ruling. President Ashraf Ghani, in an introductory meeting with MPs on 23 April 2019, said (here and here) :

“Our objective is stability, not the stability that comes from the bayonet of a gun, force or gold (money), [but] stability that is the result of the implementation of the constitution. Whatever puts aside the constitution is, in fact, a coup d’état, and this nation does not accept coups d’ états. We want implementation.”  He repeated this statement in his address at the inauguration of the new MPs on 26 April, saying that “those who seek to undermine the national document, namely the constitution, by spreading ambiguity, doubt and distrust are close to coup plotters, I tell them that the age of the coup d’états is over.” He said, “I am the president until completion of transparent and general elections in the country.” During the ceremony commemorating 8 Saur on 28 April 2019, Ghani’s second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh added that “the proposals such as a caretaker or interim government do not have any legal reason and basis and, therefore, the Supreme Court, as the authority for interpreting the constitution, has endorsed this view.”

Meanwhile, while the Supreme Court’s ruling makes no mention of the National Unity Government or the Chief Executive’s office, the Chief Executive’s office has welcomed the ruling, saying that the National Unity Government would continue to serve until the election of a new president (media report here). (6)

In both 2009 and 2014, the president served beyond the constitutional expiry date, either because of the postponement of the elections (2009) or the drawn-out election process (2014). The then-president’s office sought a ruling from the Supreme Court in 2009 and from the ICOIC in 2014 for a continuation, both times arguing that the continuation of the incumbent president and government was more compatible with the spirit of the constitution.

In practical terms, however, there are some differences to the current situation: 1) there is a longer delay in the elections this time around and there may even be further delays given that certain basic but important issues, such as the use of technology and the budget have not yet been resolved. 2) There has been a serious debate both among national and international circles about the sequencing of elections and a peace process (see AAN’s reports here and here). Any significant progress in the ongoing peace talks and efforts might delay the elections. 3) The current government is a national unity government based on a political deal (see this AAN’s previous report “Elections 2014 (51): Finally, a deal, but not yet democracy” here), an improvised solution after a contentious presidential election, the mandate of which has been a topic for discussion before, see AAN’s previous report “When The Political Agreement Runs Out: On the future of Afghanistan’s National Unity Government” here). Whether or not the Supreme Court’s ruling will withstand the political pressure if maintained, or which of the scenarios will prevail, remains to be seen in the weeks and months ahead.

Edited by Sari Kouvo

(1) The full text of the 17 April letter by the legal department of the presidential palace (AAN has not seen a copy of it but it is cited in the Supreme Court’s ruling, see below AAN’s working translation of it):

Earlier in 1388 (2009), based on the request of the office of the administrative affairs and the secretariat of the Council of the Ministers, the high council of the Supreme Court, through approval number (169)dated 18/1/1388, provided its legal opinion about the term of the president due to the postponement of the elections.

Now also the Independent Elections Commission has postponed the presidential elections till 6 Mizan 1398 (28 September 2019) for better implementation of the provisions of the electoral law, especially provisions of article 19 of the amendment to the electoral law, ensuring transparency and implementing voter registration and identification in a safe way, while the term of the president, according to article 61 of the constitution, ends on the 1st Jawza of the fifth year after elections and elections for a new president should be held 30 to 60 days before the end of the term of the president. But the decision of the Independent Election Commission leads to more than four months of gap between the end of the president’s term and the new elections.

Therefore, considering the political and security situation and the decision of the Election Commission and in order to prevent power vacuum, disruption in government’s duties and carrying out the affairs of the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, it requires that the Supreme Court of I.R.A once again review the implementation of article 61 of the constitution and provide its legal opinion [so it can] be shared with the president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

(2) Article 61 of the constitution reads:

The President shall be elected by receiving more than fifty percent of votes cast by voters through free, general, secret and direct voting.

The presidential term shall expire on 1st of Jawza of the fifth year after elections.

 Elections for the new President shall be held within thirty to sixty days prior to the end of the presidential term.

 If in the first round none of the candidates gets more than fifty percent of the votes, elections for the second round shall be held within two weeks from the date election results are proclaimed, and, in this round, only two candidates who have received the highest number of votes in the first round shall participate.

 In case one of the presidential candidates dies during the first or second round of voting or after elections, but prior to the declaration of results, re-election shall be held according to provisions of the law.

(3) The full text of the Supreme Court’s 20 April 2019 response to the 17 April 2019 letter by the legal department of the presidential palaces published by Ariana News (An AAN working translation):

The high council of the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, after a comprehensive review of the text of the letter by the office of deputy for policy, monitoring and review of the legal department of the presidential palace, opines as follow:

The current issue has a precedent, as in the previous elections, when the Election Commission announced the date for the 2009 elections with some months of delay, due to technical reasons, the then-government requested the Supreme Court for a legal explanation for the issue whereupon the high council of the Supreme Court, at the time, about the delay in the election date, had opined as below in view of the provisions of the law:”

1. The Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as an independent and impartial institution, like the two other branches of the state, considers the postponement of the elections as against the provision of article 61 of the constitution
2. The Supreme Court understands the problems and challenges with all their dimensions that the Independent Election Commission faces in financial, security and logistical areas.
3. The Supreme Court is also aware of and respects the viewpoint of a group of commentators and presidential candidates who have recognised the postponement of sound, democratic, general and fair election process as justified.
4. Therefore, the Supreme Court in view of the above issues, reviewed and analysed the query as referred from the text and spirit of article 61 of the constitution and presents its opinion as bellow considering the objective situation and the supreme interests of the country and in light of legal muyyeds:

As it is clear, paragraph two of article 61 of the constitution stipulates the end of presidential term on first Jawza of the fifth year after the elections but meanwhile the constitution ties the above paragraph to the next paragraphs which says: “elections to determine a new president shall be held 30 to 60 days before the end of the presidential term.”

As we see, both in terms of the spirit and logic of the law and in terms of the phrasing, these two paragraphs are complimentary to each other which means that after the end of the presidential elections [to be held] within 30 to 60 days to the first Jawza of the fifth year, the president term ends and this clearly indicates that before the end of the presidential term, the presidential elections should have been conducted and completed and the person to whom the presidency should be handed as a result of the elections should have been elected, while the current [2009] situation is against it. So the only scientific and logical solution, [which is] in consonance with the supreme interests of the country and based on a jurisprudential rule (baqa ma kana ala ma kana, observing the status quo ante), is the continuation of the term of the president and his vice-presidents till elections, because with the postponement of the elections in fact the provision of article 61 of the constitution has been delayed as a whole, because the provision for an issue in one article of the law cannot be divisible, in a way [to say that] delay is allowed in one paragraph [in elections] but not in another paragraph [end of the presidential term] despite the fact that they are complimentary to each other. This analysis in addition to the fact that it is compatible with the wording of the constitution as well as with its spirit and logic and with jurisprudential rule can contribute to ensuring national unity, stability in the country. Therefore, the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan expresses its views in this regard:

1. Observing the text and spirit of the constitution mentioned above
2. Realising the problems and excuses that the Election Commission faces
3. In order to further ensure stability and protect the supreme interests of the country
4. And respecting the expectations and wishes of the noble and Muslim people of Afghanistan in paving the ground for holding general, fair, sound and democratic election

Considers the continuation of the term of the president and his vice-presidents until the election of a new president in the interests of the people and the system and in accordance with the spirit and analysis of the constitution and expresses its legal and positive opinion while approving and supporting it.”

Now considering that the current president’s query is the same query made by the then-president to the Supreme Court in the 2009 presidential elections. Since the issue in question has legal and executive precedent and this ruling has been acted upon, the legal opinion of the Supreme Court in view of the provisions of the law and given the excuses that the Election Commission of Afghanistan face is the same opinion that had been provided by the high council of the then-Supreme Court as a legal principle in 2009. Therefore, the previous opinion of the high council of the Supreme Court about the issue, [and] considering the provision of paragraph six of article 104 of the electoral law published in the official gazette 1226 dated 4/7/1395 (25 September 2016), was exactly approved by the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

(4) The office of the administrative affairs under former President Karzai had written that (as cited by the ICOIC in its 18 May 2014 (available here in Dari) that (AAN’s working translation):

Paragraph two of article 61 says that the presidential term ends on the first Jawza of the fifth year. As it is clear, the results of the 1393 (2014) elections have not been clarified yet and, on the other hand, a few days are left to the first Jawza of the fifth year after the elections as enshrined in article 61 of the constitution. On the other hand, if the elections go to a second round, more time will be needed to hold the runoff and until the announcement of the results and election of a new president. So in order to prevent the violation of the constitution and find a reasonable solution to the issue, the issue is referred to you so you review it and provide legal advice to the president.

(5) The OICIC provided the following reasons for its decision: First, the continuation of the then-incumbent president’s term prevents a power vacuum. Second, there is no better alternative to the continuation of the then-president’s term within the constitutional framework. Third, because continuation of the then-incumbent president’s term is the continuation of an elected power, which is more democratic than any other method (that might have been adopted to replace it); fourth, this (the delay in completing the elections within the constitutional timeframe) is the closest to a state of emergency in terms of similarity, during which elections are delayed and the presidential term is extended (this is perhaps referring to article 147, which sets forth that if the presidential or parliamentary term expires during the state of emergency, new general elections shall be postponed and  their terms will be extended for up to four months. However, the state of emergency, according to article 143 and declared by the president, should be endorsed by the National Assembly).

Article 147 of the constitution reads:

If the presidential term or the legislative term of the National Assembly expires during the state of emergency, the new general elections shall be postponed, and the presidential, as well as parliamentary terms, shall extend up to 4 months.

If the state of emergency continues for more than four months, the President shall call the Loya Jirga.

Within 2 months after the termination of the state of emergency, elections shall be held.

(6) This led to speculation on the social media that the Supreme Court might have intentionally omitted to make any mention of the office of the chief executive to allow the president to dissolve it(see for example, Abdul Ali Muhammadi, a former legal adviser to President Ghani, commenting that “with the approval of the high council of the Supreme Court, the office of the chief executive will be closed after 22 May”). A day after the Supreme Court’s ruling was published by the media, on 22 April, a fake decree (as though issued by President Ghani) as though leaked to the Pajhwok News Agency was circulated on social media indicating that the office of the chief executive had been dissolved by the president and a team had been appointed to transfer its properties to the presidential palace. The office of second Vice-President Danesh wrote: “Today the text of a presidential decree about dissolution of the office of the chief executive of the National Unity Government, citing some news agency, was published on the social media and caused a concern for the public opinion. This news is totally fake and baseless and denied.”