Defence`s Feeds

Turkey has begun work on its first long-range regional air and missile defence system, named Siper (bulwark or shield), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on 31 October. The project involves the state-owned Turkish Scientific and Technical Research Board (Tübitak) Defence

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said on 1 November that Turkish and US troops had begun combined patrols around the northern Syrian city of Manbij. Meanwhile, the Turkish military shelled positions of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a US-allied force, further to the east in

I have a new article examining the impact of the Trident Juncture NATO exercise currently ongoing in Norway, published by the Kennedy School’s Russia Matters project.

This week, NATO forces are engaged in the largest military exercise the alliance has organized since the end of the Cold War and the first major Western exercise in decades to take place in the Arctic region. To be held in Norway through Nov. 23, the Trident Juncture exercise is designed to improve NATO’s ability to defend member states and to strengthen the alliance’s credibility as a deterrent force against potential aggression. While the scenario does not mention any particular adversaries, the exercise is clearly aimed at bolstering NATO defenses against Russia in the Nordic region. While the political impact will be minor by comparison to any potential permanent troop deployments, the military lessons gleaned by the exercise’s participants promise to be significant.

The exercise marks NATO’s third time holding the biennial Trident Juncture and differs from the previous two iterations in both size and focus. To begin with, it involves personnel from all 29 NATO members—a first—plus close partners Finland and Sweden. This in itself is significant: While the two Nordic states have regularly participated in NATO exercises in recent years and have invited NATO forces to take part in exercises on their soil, their participation in as large and politically prominent an Article 5 exercise as Trident Juncture highlights how far both have gone since their political decisions to enhance defense cooperation with NATO. The 2018 exercise is not only much bigger than the 2014 and 2016 iterations, which also focused on preparing NATO’s rapid reaction forces to counter Russian aggression, but differs significantly in its primary focus on field exercises instead of command post exercises.

There are 50,000 total participants, including 20,000 from the ground forces, 24,000 from naval and marine infantry forces, 3,000 from air forces, 1000 logistics specialists and 1300 command personnel.  The United States has provided the largest contingent, including the Harry Truman Carrier Strike Group, the Iwo Jima Marine Expeditionary Strike Group and over 18,000 troops. Preparations, including deployment of forces to the exercise area, began in August. The active phase of the field exercise began on Oct. 25 and will continue through Nov. 7, to be followed by a command post exercise in mid-November.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Americas

South Korea is equipping three of its guided missile destroyers with a new Aegis combat system. The foreign military sales contract between Lockheed Martin and South Korea is priced at $365.7 million. Lockheed Martin will provide the Republic of Korea Navy with development and integration of the weapon system in its Baseline K2 configuration. The Aegis Combat System manages all combat essential elements on Arleigh-Burke and Ticonderoga-class ships and ensures that the missile launching element, the computer programs, the radar and the displays are fully integrated to work together. The contract covers services such as combat system installation, including staging and integrated logistics support required for the installation; program management, system engineering and computer program development; ship integration and testing; technical manuals and planned maintenance system documentation. Work will be performed at multiple national and international locations, including Moorestown, New Jersey and Ulsan, South Korea. Work on all three vessels is expected to be completed by July 2026.

Boeing is being contracted to supply multiple US foreign military sales customers with anti-ship missiles. The $244.7 million not-to-exceed, firm-fixed-price contract enables the company to procure long lead material for the Harpoon full-rate production Lot 91. The Harpoon Block II is an over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile capable of performing land-strike and anti-ship missions. The missile leverages progress on several other weapons to reduce its cost. The Harpoon’s GPS/INS guidance system is taken from Boeing’s JDAM program, and its GPS antennae and software are found on Boeing’s SLAM. The missile’s 500 pound blast warhead can deliver lethal firepower against targets like coastal missile batteries and ships in port. Work will be performed at multiple locations including – but not limited to – St. Charles, Missouri, Galena, Kansas and Elkton, Maryland.

The Air Force is upgrading the refuelling system for its C-17 Globemaster III short field, heavy-lift transport jets. Bodell Construction will construct the refueling hydrants and ramp expansion at a cost of $20.3 million. A hydrant system is a loop of pipeline located under the aircraft parking ramp that delivers fuel straight from the hydrant fuel tanks to the aircraft. A mobile pantograph allows for continuous fuel delivery to aircraft within 135 feet of a hydrant pit. With the hydrant system about 420 gallons a minute can be transferred to the C-17, which reduces the overall refueling time by half, compared to the current truck refueling method. Work will be performed in Charlotte, North Carolina and is expected to be completed by December 2020.

Middle East & Africa

Israel’s defense industry can expect a major influx of Boeing investments. The aerospace giant signed a “reciprocal procurement” agreement on Tuesday, that calls for Boeing to collaborate with Israeli industry to the value of at least 35% of all government deals exceeding $1 million. As Israel is expecting to award Boeing with contracts totalling at $10 billion over the next decade, the agreement could possibly add $3.5 billion in new business to Israel’s economy. “A reciprocal purchase agreement on such a scale is a significant achievement which will lead to the growth of many companies in the domestic market, and to expand their activities and success in international markets,” said Economy Minister Eli Cohen. Boeing is currently competing for a number of Israeli defense procurement contracts, including new F-15 fighter aircraft, aerial tankers and a squadron of transport helicopters.

Europe

The German air force will soon test a new passive radar system in the country’s southern province of Bavaria. During the week-long test German electronics specialist Hensoldt will deploy three of its newly developed TwInvis systems in the Munich area and one roughly 70 miles west, near the city of Ulm. The TwInvis system uses the signal echoes of existing third-party transmitters to detect and track aircraft. According to the company the one radar unit can monitor up to 200 aircraft in 3D within a radius of 250 kilometers. Passive radars have the advantage that they cannot be located by the enemy and are very hard to jam, however to properly function the radars are dependent on a sufficiently strong commercial broadcast activity in the targeted area. The company first unveiled the TwInvis passive radar system at the Berlin Air Show in April, where it was rumored as a technology with the potential to detect stealthy aircraft like the F-35.

Asia-Pacific

India’s Coast Guard (ICG) is upgrading its fleet of maritime reconnaissance aircraft (MRA). The upcoming mid-life upgrade of the 17 licence-built Dornier Do-228s is expected to cost about $129 million. The aircraft will help the ICG to monitor the country’s 3,370 mile long coastline and over 77,000+ square miles of India’s Exclusive Economic Zone. According to the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) the aircraft will be fitted with “state-of-the-art technology” and Pollution Surveillance Systems. Primary contractor will be India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) which acquired the production licence of Do-228s in 1986.

KBRwyle Technology Solutions is being contracted to support the US Army’s Prepositioned Stock Four (APS-4) located in South Korea. The $14.8 million contract modification covers the provision of logistics support services until November 2019. APS-4 is located in Japan and South Korea and supports the Pacific theatre with two armored battalions and one mechanized infantry battalion. The Army maintains a strategic inventory of sustainment supplies as part of Army Pre-positioned Stocks (APS). These stocks sustain forward-deployed and initial follow-on ground forces, and include major end items such as engines, repair parts, medical supplies, packaged petroleum products, barrier/construction materials, operations rations, and clothing required to sustain combat operations. The APS-4 is located at Camp Caroll near Waegwan, about 132 miles southeast of Seoul.

Today’s Video

Watch: NATO stages biggest military exercise since end of Cold War

The assassination of Kandahar’s police chief and strongman of southern Afghanistan Abdul Razeq in Kandahar on 18 October, along with the province’s NDS chief, and more members of the provincial leadership wounded soon overshadowed the killing of parliamentary candidate Abdul Jabbar Qahraman in neighbouring Helmand by a bomb one day earlier. Qahraman means “hero”, a title he had earned as a militia leader under former president Najibullah. His siding with the Watan Party government did not make him everybody’s hero in Afghanistan and former mujahedin declined to honour Qahraman alongside Razeq. President Ashraf Ghani paid a visit to Qahraman’s family on 28 October 2018. An obituary by guest author Michael Semple*.

Abdul Jabbar Qahraman was a larger than life figure who was directly involved in many of the momentous developments of the past forty turbulent years in Afghanistan.  He died in action, in the sense that he was campaigning for the election in Helmand, when an unseen assassin detonated a bomb under his sofa. Jabbar became the tenth candidate to make the ultimate sacrifice for daring to stand for parliament.

Jabbar knew the risks. Indeed, one of the first things that he noted about the Taleban, when the movement emerged in 1994, was their decapitation strategy. He reckoned that the Taleban wanted to impose their authority by eliminating all prominent figures who did not submit to them – an echo of earlier strategies employed by the regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), later Fatherland (Watan) Party (1978-92) and the mujahedin who fought it, who both eliminated or exiled the old elites. Jabbar was killed not because he was a candidate, but because he was a famous candidate and, as they highlighted in their statement, a “prominent communist commander.”

Jabbar was the son of a shopkeeper, a member of the Nurzai tribe from Spin Boldak. The family owned some land in the district but Jabbar considered them poor and reckoned that none of relatives had ever held a prominent position. The start of Jabbar’s career is an example of the Afghan military’s old meritocracy. He studied to ninth class in the Ghazi Abdullah Khan Lycee in Kandahar. Then in 1976, during the rule of republican president Muhammad Daud, the national military commission talent-spotted him and had him shifted to Kabul to join the military high school.

Jabbar was still a boy, in the military high school, when revolution came to Afghanistan. Some of his friends concluded that this was a struggle between Islam and the infidels and so Jabbar ended up dropping out and heading to Quetta, to join Hezb-e Islami. Some of his batch mates, such as Zabet Jalal, went on to become famous Hezb commanders. Jabbar spent a year and a half doing organisational work for Hezb-e Islami, before having a change of heart. “My brain began to work” is how be put it. Jabbar later claimed that he concluded that Hezb-e Islami, backed by Pakistan, could not be trusted to stand up for the Afghan national interest. He also ran into tribal problems. The main Hezb commander in Quetta, Mullah Samad, was an Achakzai. There was a long rivalry between the Nurzais and Achakzais of Spin Boldak. “I decided that I must do what was best for my country which meant going back”, is how he put it.

When Jabbar crossed back to Kandahar, he relied on friends in the Ministry of Interior and the intelligence, KhAD, to ensure a good reception. Eventually, he was given a command in Khad, sent to Tashkent for a three month training course, and then deployed to Spin Boldak. From there, Jabbar’s career took off. He recruited a group of twenty-five men and then got transferred to Maiwand, where he built up another group and was so successful that he soon found himself commanding a militia battalion of five hundred men, that was uniformed, within the MoD command structures and deployable outside its home province but still known as militia. Eventually, around 1984, the Ministry of Defence spotted him and had him transferred out of KhAD. They realised that Jabbar had the potential to mobilise men and build up militias of the sort they required to hold the line against the mujahedin. Although he retained his base in Maiwand, Jabbar ended up in command of an independent brigade group in 1988, reporting directly to the Chief of Army Staff and with forces deployed in Kandahar, Helmand, Paktia, and protecting the Kandahar-Kabul highway. He was on first name terms with President Najibullah, Defence Minister Muhammad Rafi and the key figures of both the Parcham and Khalq factions of the government.

Jabbar proudly claimed to have made it from lieutenant to major-general in six years. But he stressed that he relied on his wits and networking skills to maintain security, rather than brute force. He reckoned that, during the battle for control of Kandahar and the highway during the 1990’s, the key to his success was the hospitality he offered in his guest room. At night, Jabbar sat with people, cultivating allies in the tribes and commander networks. The achievement he was most proud of was the relief of a beleaguered garrison in Panjwai. Hundreds of government soldiers died trying to break the siege. Jabbar eventually extricated the garrison with the help of mujahedin collaborators, without a shot fired. Jabbar became famous as a militia commander, on a par with General Dostum and was given the epithet Qahraman, or hero. But he always claimed that he barely fired a shot in anger.

Jabbar was in the thick of things in April 1992, that pivotal time when the failure of Benon Sevan’s UN transition plan led inexorably to Najibullah’s lynching and the squandering of one of Afghanistan’s best chances for peace. In the run up to Najibullah’s anticipated departure, Jabbar deployed troops on the outskirts of Kabul in Deh Sabz. He claimed that he was part of the plan by the government security chiefs to secure the way for Benon Sevan to bring the transitional government from Peshawar. But Dostum and Massud pre-empted the plan, taking over Mazar-e Sharif and then deploying troops to Kabul airport. This was a time when everyone had to pick a new side. Jabbar talked directly with Hekmatyar and threw in his lot with Hezb-e Islami again. Jabbar helped bring Hezb forces into the capital, to counter the northern militias. The stage was set for an Afghan civil war.

Jabbar’s 1992 alliance with Hekmatyar did not last long and he withdrew his men to Helmand. In one of the forgotten episodes of the conflict, Jabbar teamed up with fellow militia commanders Khano and Allah Nur – nominally linked to Jamiat-e Islami – to maintain security in central Helmand. For over a year after the collapse of the Najibullah government, the militias maintained the status quo in Lashkargah, Gereshk, Nad Ali and Nawa. They nominally affiliated with new president Rabbani, but focused on protecting Helmand from the chaos of feuding mujahedin commanders, as witnessed in neighbouring Kandahar and the capital. Eventually Jabbar concluded that their secular enclave was unsustainable. He persuaded General Dostum to organise a nocturnal aerial evacuation to northern Afghanistan, for the Helmand militia leaders. This marked what Jabbar considered the beginning of his “life of wandering”. He divided his time between stints in Quetta under the protection of veteran nationalist politician Mahmood Khan Achakzai, Mazar under protection of Dostum and Moscow, where he started an export-import business. Jabbar offered advice but was never again a major conflict actor.

After the collapse of the Taleban government, Jabbar returned to Afghanistan. His first initiative was a tuition centre in Lashkargah. As if trying to recreate the spirit of the Helmand republic of 1992-1993, the centre boasted a tranquil flower garden, and classes in advanced mathematics, computing, language and science.

But in spirit, Jabbar was still an inveterate political networker, who believed that the links he had cultivated during his time as a militia commander could help end the war. He was elected to the 2010 parliament, which sometimes looked like a reintegration programme for the commanders who faced each other across the frontlines in the 80’s and 90’s. Jabbar’s confidence, intelligence and occasional bombast guaranteed that he would get noticed in parliament. President Ghani was persuaded by Jabbar to appoint him as special representative for security in Helmand. The experience was both frustrating and educative, regarding the difference between Afghanistan of the 1990’s and Afghanistan after 2001. Jabbar found the administration in Helmand more factionalised and resistant to efforts at coordination than when, in the late 1980s, he and General Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi – then in similar role for southern Afghanistan for the PDPA/Watan regime as General Razeq until recently – had contended with Khalq-Parcham rivalries, while trying to co-opt the mujahedin and stabilise Kandahar. Even with the President’s backing, Jabbar could not stamp his authority on the different bits of the security apparatus in contemporary Helmand, and he stepped down from his position in Helmand. However, undaunted, he re-launched the defunct and officially banned Hezb-e Watan in July 2017 (AAN background here) and, when the 2018 parliamentary poll was called, was determined to stand for re-election.

Killing off famous Afghans like Jabbar Qahraman is one of the most sinister aspects of the current Taleban campaign. The assassinations hint at a broader authoritarian project of social control, which involves stripping society of its cultural and historical focal points. The Taleban keep their top leaders cloistered and often obscure the identity of their field commanders and officials. Scholars have documented the ambiguity of the relationship between the Taleban, the tribes and Afghan culture. The Taleban have their roots in the tribes and have repeatedly instrumentalised tribal networks. But the movement has also suppressed traditional tribal authority. The Taleban movement cultivates an image of anonymity and potency.

Jabbar the Hero in 2018 was not a military threat. Rather, Jabbar was someone everyone knew and who could mobilise Afghans through appeals to tribal bonds, or an heroic past or an envisioned future. He was an obstacle to the Taleban’s imposition of the hegemony of their anonymous cadres. He will not be the last Afghan to be killed for being famous. But there are many more Afghans who share his core optimism that the country will survive and emerge from this painful conflict

 

* Michael Semple is a Professor at the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast. He previously served as a Political Officer with the United Nations and Deputy to the European Union Special Representative in Afghanistan. Michael sought advice from Jabbar Qahraman during his work on reconciliation and interviewed him for an oral history project.

Chinese SH-11 Self-Propelled Howitzer

The standardisation of armaments has been a long-standing focus of EU efforts to enhance the Union’s military effectiveness, to improve capability development and to support the competitiveness of the European defence industry. Armaments standardisation is a process that can lead to cost savings for defence spending by injecting added-value in defence production processes and the avoidance of capability and equipment duplication. Standardisation is a method of improving interoperability within and between European armed forces and a process that can enhance the operational effectiveness of Europe’s militaries. Both the EU and NATO have taken measures over many years and decades to enhance armaments standardisation in Europe. Yet the nature of the contemporary global defence market is that many more technologies and components integrated into military systems are sourced and/or produced in the civilian sector. The line drawn between defence equipment and capabilities on the one hand, and civilian products and technologies on the other, is increasingly blurred. In this context, and in relation to recent developments on EU defence cooperation, this study analyses the standardisation approaches taken by the EU in relation to maritime information sharing and remotely piloted aircraft systems. It makes recommendations on how EU approaches to armaments standardisation can be expanded and enhanced.
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

On 30 October, upon invitation by the Danish authorities, EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq paid a visit to Denmark where he met with the Minister of Defence, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, Thomas Ditmer, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ulrik Vestergaars Knudsen, as well as other government officials and industry representatives.

The discussions centred on the interaction between Denmark and EDA. 

“I really appreciate Danish involvement in the Agency’s activities in areas such as Energy and Single European Sky. Though Denmark is not a member of EDA and while fully respecting its opt-out from the defence aspects of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, I strongly believe that a certain level of interaction in the Agency’s work directly related to wider EU policies and regulations, as well as activities that benefit from EU funding, can provide for mutual benefits", Mr Domecq commented.

Zurmat district in Paktia province is almost completely under Taleban control. The parliamentary elections were held there only on a tiny island of government control. Turnout was very low on the first election day and limited to the district centre – another example of Afghanistan’s emerging rural-urban voting divide. On day two, attempts of ballot stuffing were observed, when the election commission had allowed to open polling centres that were closed or opened very late on the first election day. Guest author Pakteen Khan*, who spent both election days (20 and 21 October 2018) in Zurmat, tells us what he saw (with input from Thomas Ruttig).

The security situation in Zurmat

Zurmat district is the southwestern most district of Paktia, bordering Paktika in the south, Ghazni in the west and located direct to the southwest of the provincial capital Gardez. The district is the Taleban’s main regional stronghold and the most war-affected district of the province. Tamir, the district centre, is the only area in the district where there is still some government presence. There is a local Afghan National Army (ANA) base, some Afghan National Police (ANP) and some fighters left from a dissolved local Afghan Local Police unit. (The ALP unit was dissolved earlier this year at the request of the local community after some of its members attacked a school girl and robbed the house of a teacher, killing him in the event.) The local government officials live closely together in one particular area of town, called Khwajagan village, near the ANA base, in order to be able to defend themselves.

Zurmat’s security was reinforced in late August 2018 by a “strike unit” (quwa-ye zarbati) that, local sources say, works closely “with the Americans” (possibly the CIA-led Khost Protection Force). The new unit’s main focus is to secure the road between Gardez and Zurmat, where it has taken over the existing ANP check posts. The unit seems to operate out of Khost, and has no base in Tamir.

The areas outside Tamir are under firm Taleban control. A second ANA base in Sahak is encircled and does not carry out any operations. The road leading there from Tamir is heavily mined and unusable for civilian traffic.

For historical reasons, Zurmat is sometimes called Little Kandahar, as a number of prominent Taleban leaders came from the area. For Greater Paktia – the three provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Khost – Zurmat was as important for the insurgents, as Kandahar was for southern Afghanistan (see this background paper).

Two different networks of the Taleban are active in the area: the Haqqani network, led by Qari Shams, and the Mansur network, locally called the ‘Mansurian’ – led by Abdul Latif Mansur, a member of the Taleban leadership and relative of the network’s founder, the late Nasrullah Mansur (for more background, see this AAN paper). They are rivals and keep separate structures, sometimes clashing among themselves, at other times carrying out joint operations. Both were unanimous in their rejection of the elections. They forced local teachers, who were being mobilised all over the country as the principal elections workers, to hand over their tazkeras – both to prevent them from voting and to scare them away from working with the government. The teachers were told they would get their documents back after the elections. (Outside Tamir, the Taleban also keep track of teachers’ school attendance and fine them for absences, in an effort to take control of the local education system.) The teachers, apart from some areas closer to the Gardez-Zurmat road, could do little about it and complied. As a result, very few teachers worked in the few polling centres that did open in Zurmat.

The run-up to the election in Zurmat: Registration, campaigning and threats

Zurmat’s population is estimated at 95,000 by Afghanistan’s Central Statistics Office (see here, p18), not counting the 22,000 people in Rohani Baba district that was recently separated from Zurmat. According to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), over one third – 33,320 people – registered as voters between May and July 2018; 28,408 of them men, 4,031 women and another 881 Kuchis (who were not specified with regard to gender). The IEC claims that all 22 voter registration centres in Zurmat district – that were supposed to double as polling sites on 20 October – were open during the voter registration period. Local observers told AAN, however, this was not the case; the commission’s claims also sound implausible given the almost total Taleban control outside the district centre.

In the run-up to the elections, there were constant warnings by the insurgents not to participate in the polls. Leaflets – so called shabnama(night letters) – were posted in the schools and mosques of Tamir and other villages. Outside Tamir, the Taleban directly addressed mosque congregations and spread their message over mosque loudspeakers. Ahead of election day, no election staff or electoral material was transferred to any of the 19 polling centres outside Tamir, for security reasons. As a result, many people in Zurmat did not expect that the elections would be held in their area.

This was cause for concern, as many people were already unhappy that Zurmat did not have a representative in the previous parliament. This meant that they had no one to raise their problems with in Kabul. These problems ranged from the long-pending, still-unpaved Gardez-Zurmat road, to the provincial and district administration officials who were keeping them waiting with false promises, and, further, the prisoner issues that plague many inhabitants in the district (as a result of Zurmat’s strong insurgency, many local people have relatives who have been – rightly or wrongfully – detained; it is often very difficult to find out where they are without someone speaking for them in the county’s capital).

The election-related awareness campaign was relatively weak and late. People in Zurmat were reached mainly through the airwaves. With mobile phones and radios widely available, the Taleban was unable to control radio broadcasting and people were able to hear some election-related information. There was also some limited campaigning by candidates, including campaign posters, in the district’s centre of Tamir. Some candidates had used the June ceasefire which overlapped the voter registration campaign – long before the official start of the campaign – to gather people in the district governor’s compound and the new hospital that was inaugurated in during Ramazan in May-June. Young voters, in particular, seemed eager to register to vote at that time.

Several candidates were said to have distributed cash money, including US dollars, during the campaign, according to AAN sources with families in the area. Others “bought up” tazkeras, to be used for potential ballot stuffing or proxy voting, and/or to prevent people from promising and casting their vote for rival candidates. (In some cases, copies of tazkeras were taken or names and ID numbers were noted; in other cases, candidates kept the original tazkeras.) Village elders would often organise the “selling” of the tazkeras and send these people to certain candidates. The price was reportedly 2,000 Pakistani rupees (around 15 US dollars) per document.

Zurmat has a number of local candidates on the ballot, vying to represent the district in Kabul. The most prominent ones are Dr Usman, a medical doctor from Zurmat who lives in Kabul, and Sharifa Zurmati, a female candidate. She was a member of the first post-Taleban parliament in 2005, became an advisor to both presidents Hamed Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, and was also an IEC commissioner in the 2014 presidential election.

Election poster of local candidate Dr Usman Zurmati. Photo: AAN.

Polling in the first day of the election (20 October 2018)

Election Day in Paktia province started with some small arms fire in areas near Gardez, the provincial capital, presumably to scare off possible voters. Still, people in the city turned out in large numbers, as well as in parts of some districts. On the road to Zurmat’s district centre, Tamir, this scenery already changed just a few kilometres outside the city. The town is only some 40 minutes from Gardez by car. The road leading there is asphalted but in disrepair, due to years of insecurity. In Ibrahimkhel, for instance, a village with one polling centre that administratively still belongs to the provincial capital, there was sporadic firing all day. The polling centre in the village’s school was kept open during the day, but very few people came, mainly from nearby houses.

In Zurmat, 19 of the 22 scheduled polling centres remained closed. The only three polling centres that were open were in Tamir: two high schools directly in the bazaar, Habibullah Lycee and Bator Lycee, and a centre in Muqarabkhel, a short distance outside town on the road to Ibrahimkhel and Gardez. The Taleban had mined several other access roads to Tamir, and did not even allow the bazaar’s shopkeepers who live outside of town to enter. Taliban fighters were sitting in the poplar trees along the roads leading to Tamir, occasionally firing at the city. The Afghan army occasionally fired back. There seem to have been no casualties.

Voting in Tamir’s three open polling centres started around 9:30am, with only a few people coming out at first. People were wary of the security situation and wanted to see if others would be able to come out and vote without trouble. Meanwhile, the Taleban fired missiles at the district centre throughout the day (according to ocal election observers possibly as many as 50 or 60). They hit three shops, wounding one person, as well as several civilian houses, killing two children. There were also some gunshots fired in the air – but some local people thought this was the district police chief’s work, saying he was trying to scare away voters, so that only the supporters of the candidate he was rumoured to support would be able to cast their votes.

The rocket fire died down at around 2pm, so in the afternoon, more people dared to come out and vote, even from nearby villages. The three polling stations were kept open one hour longer than planned, till 5pm, and then counting started.

There were no observers from independent organisations present at the Zurmat polls, but a few dozen candidates’ agents, mainly representing candidates who expected a significant number of votes from that polling centre. During the day, there were scuffles between them. The district police chief also had some candidate agents thrown out of a polling station, reportedly because he opposed their candidates. Some candidate agents alleged that the Paktia IEC team was not neutral and that IEC members had told certain candidates that they did not have enough votes. Presumably, the candidate agents thought this indicated the IEC member’s readiness to accept money to manipulate the vote in their favour.

Although, there had been some problems with the biometric verification in Gardez – the IEC staff had not been well trained and only two devices had been used all day in the city’s main polling centre, the Gardezi high school – the devices were apparently used all day in Zurmat without major problems. As in other places, some voters in Zurmat could not find their names on the voter lists. Polling staff then opened provisional lists.

Overall turnout in Zurmat was low because of fighting and security threats. Based on observations, the author estimates that a total of around 500 votes were cast in the three polling centres in Zurmat. (1). The voters who came appeared to mainly be locally deployed soldiers, police and arbaki, the district’s administrative staff, and shopkeepers from the nearby bazaar as well as staff from the district hospital. No women were seen to vote in Zurmat. How could they – it was difficult even for men to vote.

At the end of the day, the ballot boxes and other electoral material were transported to Gardez. Although the Taleban fired at the returning convoy, they did not attack it directly and the boxes reached the IEC’s provincial office unharmed. However, before that happened, candidate agents told AAN they believed ballot stuffing took place in Tamir’s Habibullah high school, after the official closure at 5pm (till about 9pm). At the end of the day, around 2,000 votes were sent to the provincial capital from this centre. If this did occur, it should be easy to track, as, reportedly, biometric voter verification had been used there during the day.

Rohani Baba, a district on paper

Rohani Baba was formerly a part of Zurmat and is one of several new “temporary” (ie not yet fully functional) districts that have been established countrywide. It has a district governor – Abdul Rahman Solamal, who previously had the same position in Janikhel – but no official district administrative centre (DAC) yet. He is from Zurmat centre and resides there. The establishment of the district centre has been complicated by tribal disputes, mainly between the local Sahak and Mamozai tribes, regarding where the DAC should be located. (The contest over who might ‘win’ the DAC indicates that local tribes might welcome some more government presence in their area, which so far has been Taleban-controlled.) Property prices in the area have already gone up in anticipation of the changes, but so far little has happened. The district, for now, only exists on paper.

During the voter registration campaign, inhabitants from Rohani Baba came to Tamir in Zurmat to register – but under the name of the new temporary district, as the voter list published by the IEC shows. A total of 11,237 voters from Rohani Baba registered, 1844 of them were women. Local sources told AAN that there had been irregularities. Village elders reportedly came with hundreds of tazkeras that were registered and given stickers, even though their owners were not present.

The IEC had listed nine polling centres for Rohani Baba, but none of them opened. It was even unclear whether they ever really existed.

Election posters in Zurmat. Photo: AAN.

 Polling in the second day of the election (21 October 2018)

On 20 October 2018, the (IEC) announced that the polling centres in Zurmat and neighbouring Rohani Baba districts which had remained closed that day, would be opened the next day – as part of a countrywide extra day of voting for polling centres that had opened late or did not open at all (see AAN reporting). An IEC list, seen by AAN, of the 410 polling stations countrywide that were supposed to open on the second day of voting, contained all 19 polling centres from Zurmat that had remained closed on 20 October but only six (out of nine) in Rohani Baba. Three sites in Rohani Baba – two in a mosque and one in a madrassa – were missing. (AAN has reported earlier that the IEC figures and lists have often been inconsistent.)

Fears of ballot-stuffing on day two

People in Zurmat wondered how the security forces had suddenly became capable of securing these polling centres outside Tamir in one day, even though they had been unable to secure the vote in Ibrahimkhel, which was much closer to the provincial capital.

They were concerned that claims of polling sites opening in such remote unsecured areas might be used for electoral fraud, mainly for ballot stuffing, as during previous elections (AAN reports from Paktia’s 2010 elections here and here). Local election observerstold AAN that some local candidates had indeed persuaded the local IEC administration to – on paper – open between three and five centres in Zurmat, outside Tamir, (reports on numbers differed) and at least one in Rohani Baba, in Neknam village. According to the various observers AAN spoke to, there had been no actual voting at all at these sites but there was ballot stuffing on-going in private houses. It was not clear how the electoral material had reached there.  Observers told AAN that the IEC has quarantined the boxes from Neknam village with circa 400 votes, but it was not clear whether boxes including the additional votes from Zurmat have also been quarantined.

Conclusion: Only islands of voting

The general trend of an emerging rural-urban divide in voting turnout, which AAN reported after election day one on 20 October, has been confirmed in both Zurmat district and the neighbouring, Rohani Baba district. Zurmat – a district where the centre is under government control and was accessible for election workers and materiel as well as for observers – while the countryside is controlled by the Taleban with no access for voters is further proof that this divide exists not only on the provincial, but also on the district level.

The insular government presence in Zurmat centre allowed some voting, but the Taleban’s intimidation potential led to a very low level of turnout even there. It represents less than two per cent of the number of voters the IEC said had registered. Registration figures might have been doctored, but also many voters who might have genuinely registered in spring may not have gone out once the Taleban renewed their call for an election boycott on 8 October, after attempts to arrange a ceasefire covering the elections failed.

Difficult or impossible access to Zurmat and Rohani Baba also made attempts of ballot stuffing possible in rural polling centres that were on the IEC list but never opened in reality (very likely also not during voter registration), as observers’ reports showed. These reports also showed that some of those fake votes were detected and quarantined, but it is doubtful that all those ballots will be identified and cancelled – particularly as it seems that genuine ballots cast in polling centres in Zurmat’s district capital might have been topped up with night-time ballot stuffing. In this, the lack of independent observers in contested areas is a major downside.

* Pakteen Khan is a pseudonym, chosen for security reasons. The author frequently travels to Zurmat district.

 

(1) Official turnout figures or results for the districts have not been announced yet. AAN has only been able to obtain the tallies from two polling stations in Tamir’s largest polling centre, Habibullah Lycee, where 81 and 125 votes (all male) were cast, indicating that the author’ estimate is in a realistic range.

 

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The Taleban have confirmed to various media that Pakistan has released the most senior member of their movement in detention, Mullah Abdul Ghani, better known as Mullah Baradar (brother). He was arrested in 2010 and held ever since, apparently incommunicado and without charge or trial. Baradar was a founding member of the Taleban and a noted battlefield commander. At the time of his arrest, he was the effective number two in the movement and the de facto operational chief of the insurgency. News of Baradar’s release has been reported before, but this time is looking certain. There is talk that he has been freed in order to help in ‘the peace process’ and, even after eight years in incarceration, AAN Co-Director Kate Clark says, he may have much to offer.

What has changed since Baradar’s arrest?

Depending on how much news Mullah Baradar has had of the outside world in the last eight years, the many changes between 2010 and 2018 may or may not come as a surprise. The Pakistani state, presumably, its intelligence service, the ISI, detained him in February 2010. This was during the US ‘surge’, when President Barack Obama was increasing US troops to over 100,000 in an effort to turn the tide of the war. The surge did result in the US and its allies taking back territory from the Taleban, but those gains have long since been lost. Most of the international troops stationed in Afghanistan have since left, and, apart from an (unknown) portion of the – according to Pentagon figures – around 14,000 United States soldiers (and a few thousands from other nations) deployed in Afghanistan who still have a combat mission, most are involved in the NATO mission to train, assist and advise. (1) As ISAF became Resolute Support and Enduring Freedom Freedom’s Sentinel, the conflict was also transformed. It is now overwhelmingly fought out between Afghans – Taleban on one side and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) on the other and civilians suffering from all sides. These days, few Talebab even see foreign soldiers, let alone manage to attack them. In the White House, a (relatively) new president continues to back Kabul, despite tweeting before he came to power that the US should pull out of a country where the people ‘hate us’ (for AAN analysis, see here).

Baradar will find a country where the Taleban have steadily gained ground since 2014 and where they threaten even some provincial centres (see our reporting from June here). They also tax people and ‘run services’ such as education and health – while the government continues to pay the salaries of teachers and medical staff working in areas under their control (possibly half the country – estimates vary as do methods of working out territorial control (see estimates by the BBC, the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction, SIGAR, and AAN’s). The possibility of an end to the conflict was also made more real earlier this year in June when an unprecedented ceasefire over Eid ul-Fitr meant government, Taleban and US forces stopped fighting for three days. Spontaneous and potentially revolutionary fraternisation by all sides took place as Taleban came into the cities and security personnel and government officials visited villages (AAN reporting here and here).

Instead of Hamed Karzai – a co-tribal Popalzai – in power in the Arg, there is technocrat Ashraf Ghani – also Pashtun, but an Ahmadzai. Despite that, the elites in Kabul look remarkably similar. Masum Stanekzai has gone from head of the High Peace Council Secretariat to the National Directorate of Security (NDS) boss, Karim Khalili from former Vice President to head of the High Peace Council, Wais Barmak just nominated to be Minister of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in February 2010 (he gained the post two years later) is now at Interior, Dr Abdullah has become Chief Executive (a new post) and General Abdul Rashid Dostum Vice President.

On his own side, the movement’s founder Mullah Muhammad Omar is gone, as is Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, his predecessor. Four key Taleban leaders who were in Guantanamo are out and living in Qatar (see AAN analysis here). The Taleban’s Political Commission was also moved to Qatar, in June 2013 – and operates as a place where diplomats and humanitarians can talk to the Taleban. The real power, however, remains with the military men of the movement.

A more unexpected development was the emergence of a rival, laying claim to be fighting the ‘real jihad’, the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). It established itself in copy-cat fashion to ISIS in Iraq and Syria; it controls little territory and has little support from Afghans, but it has proved deadly as an urban terrorist outfit, deliberately killing civilians and trying to provoke sectarian conflict by targeting Afghanistan’s Shia Muslims in mass attacks (AAN dossier here). Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami that fought its own insurgency until 2016 is also back in Kabul (AAN background here and here).

Pakistan still backs the Taleban, but it remains an uneasy relationship. Without the safe havens across the Durand Line, the insurgency would struggle to continue, but the ‘marriage’ is not without its cost, as Baradar himself knows.

One thing that will be familiar is that talk of a ‘peace process’ is again in the air. In 2010, when Baradar was detained, as we reported, the idea of talking to the Taleban was being “much-discussed… pushed to the forefront by President Karzai” with his “‘Policy for National Reconciliation and Reintegration of Armed Opposition Groups’ presented at the London conference” in January 2010 and discussed at a ‘Peace Jirga’ in April (part 1 of an AAN series about it here). The timing of Baradar’s arrest raised  questions. Not the least, as Baradar had been residing in Pakistan for most of the previous nine years. At the time, we wrote that “what has become the most common explanation was that the Pakistani ISI was unhappy with contacts he had had with the Karzai government, reportedly with Karzai’s late half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, who before his death was the most powerful man in the Afghan south (see here).”

This time, his release is reported to have been made at the request of the new US special envoy, Zalmai Khalilzad (see AFP and Reuters). Khalilzad made his first trip to the region in September.

The question now is whether the release of Baradar could have any positive repercussions.

Who is Baradar?

If this and the next section look familiar, that is because they are largely taken from a dispatch written in September 2013 after the Pakistan Foreign Ministry made an announcement that Baradar was to be freed.

Baradar was one of the most experienced Taleban commanders, at the heart of the movement since its earliest days in Kandahar through the insurgency and up until his detention in 2010. [… H]e is from Dehrawod in Uruzgan (born 1968), but grew up in Kandahar in a madrassa and fought in that province, mainly in the Panjwayi area, against the Soviet army in the 1980s. He and Omar were in the same fighting group and, according to Dutch journalist Bette Dam, were friends from these days.

Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn reported that Baradar was a founding member of the Taleban movement from 1994. (2)As the Taleban expanded through the country during the mid-1990s, Baradar took on a succession of posts, almost all military: he was head of the south-western military zone, (possibly briefly) governor of Herat (1998), head of the Central Army Corps in Kabul and Deputy Chief of Staff in 1999. He also used to occasionally deputise for Mullah Obaidullah as minister for defence. He was certainly actively involved in the war at the various fronts during those years. The Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP) reports him as having been in Kunduz, the Taleban’s early northern stronghold, in 1997 when Taleban forces attacked, captured and then lost Mazar-e Sharif and as leading a major force into Balkhab, Sar-e Pul – one of the remaining Northern Alliance enclaves – in 1999. The same report provides testimony that, as deputy chief of staff, on the ground during the Taleban offensive on the Shomali in 1999, “he personally order[ed] and over-[saw] one of the massacres, the summary execution of the eleven air base personnel at Dasht-e Chirchirik on August 3.” (3)

After the US intervention of 2001, Baradar was involved in the most significant attempt at Taleban surrender. As Michael Semple and Anand Gopal have reported, Baradar – along with Taleban defence minister, Mullah Obaidullah, aide to Mullah Omar and now head of the Qatar political office, Tayyeb Agha, Minister of Interior, Abdul Razaq, and other senior Taleban – appointed Obaidullah to deliver a letter, purportedly with Mullah Omar’s permission, to Hamed Karzai. Karzai had just been selected as Afghanistan’s new interim leader at the Bonn Conference and was travelling from Uruzgan to Kandahar. The letter, according to Gopal, acknowledged that the Islamic Emirate had no chance of surviving and stated their willingness to accept Karzai’s leadership. The Taleban’s main request was “to be given immunity from arrest in exchange for agreeing to abstain from political life.” Like other attempts at reconciliation, this one fell on stony ground, although whether it was because of Karzai or Rumsfeld has never been clear (see reporting here). Baradar went on to become one of the key commanders of the insurgency.

In the early years after the Taleban lost power, when Mullah Omar was in hiding and largely incommunicado, Mullah Obaidullah was number two in the hierarchy and Baradar number three. After Obaidullah was arrested in Pakistan in early 2007, Baradar took over his role, as the effective operational boss of the movement and head of the Leadership Shura (the Quetta Shura). (Obaidullah died in Pakistani custody in 2010, something that was confirmed by the Taleban in 2012.)

Baradar is a highly experienced military commander and keen political strategist and  played a major role in organising the insurgency in its formative years. Newsweek, in 2009, described him as able, cunning and responsible for the spike in Coalition casualties that year. Yet, as Gopal reported, his thinking went beyond the military. He was, said Gopal, behind the original drawing up of a Taleban code of conduct, the Layha, (see AAN reporting here):

He understood that [this conflict] is about hearts and minds. He’s been a major push behind a lot of the insurgency’s efforts to clean up its act. He helped institute the complaints commissions, for instance and was also instrumental in streamlining and making more efficient the military structure. 

Will Baradar be important to a peace process?

News of Baradar’s release came first from Pakistani sources, initially it seems in The News (22 October) and later in other outlets, including AP and later Taleban sources confirming the release, for example on the BBC on 24 October, and later other outlets including Tolo. The sources informing about his release have been unnamed. However, speaking to International Crisis Group’s (and former-AAN colleague) Borhan Osman, the release does look to be definite. Osman told AAN he has spoken to senior Taleban and family members of Baradar who told him Baradar was freed in Islamabad late on Wednesday morning and had joined his family in Karachi on Wednesday night “apparently unaccompanied and unmonitored by Pakistani government agents.”

The last time Baradar’s was supposed to be about to be released, in September 2013, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ made a very terse and, it turned out, premature announcement. At that time, AAN looked at what implications his release might have for a peace process. Our analysis then – three years after his detention – still stands eight years after:

“It is as yet unclear why Pakistan has decided to release Baradar now,” we wrote, “and whether he will be useful or even available for possible negotiations.” We continued:

After… years in the possibly not so gentle hands of the ISI, it is unclear who he will listen to or who he will represent and, indeed, what his position might still be within the movement. On the face of it, Pakistan has given the Afghan government what it has long asked for, but their release of Baradar could just as well be an attempt to regain control and reinsert Pakistan into the heart of any negotiations. Islamabad might see Baradar as a trump card who could be used to subvert any ‘peace process’, rather than kick start it. The unknowns about Baradar are so many – even as to whether his release is about reconciliation at all – that predictions of what might happen next are not yet possible.

Where Baradar ends up is important. It is difficult to see him enjoying any sort of independent position, needed if he was to take part in negotiations, if he was in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Actually keeping tabs on where he is may be impossible for the outside world – but not, presumably, for the ISI – as it has been for the last tranche of reportedly released Taleban; they are now said to be “reunited with their families”, although to all intents and purposes, they have disappeared.

Baradar certainly has the potential to still be highly influential. Much will depend on his health and vigour and whether he was tortured in custody or otherwise mistreated. In late 2013, at a reported meeting with a High Peace Council delegation, he was reported to have been ‘sedated’, and unable to speak. If Baradar was able and willing to play a role, there is still the question of a role in what. As yet, nothing solid in the way of US-Taleban or Kabul-Taleban talks has emerged.

More biographical details in this AAN piece and this Newsweek article.

Note: None of the photos purportedly showing Mullah Baradar are genuine, for example here, here or here.

Edited by Sari Kouvo, Thomas Ruttig and Jelena Bjelica

 

(1) The NATO mission has a deployment of 16,000. However, it is not clear when it comes to the US soldiers, how many are part of the non-combat NATO Resolute Support mission (with officially 8,745 US soldiers) and how many are in the ‘can-be-combat’ US military Freedom’s Sentinel mission. The ‘hats’ of service personnel can change, even within a day, for example, pilots flying different mission.

(2) In their book, “An Enemy We Created: TheMyth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970–2010”, Hurst, London, 2011.

(3) The Afghanistan Justice Project reported:

On August 3, 1999, a group of Taliban, acting under direct instructions from a senior commander [elsewhere named as Baradar], summarily executed a group of eleven captured personnel of the Bagram Airbase, at Bareek Ab in the Dasht Chirchirik plain. Victims had their hands tied and were under armed guard at the time of their execution. On the same day, also in the Bagram sector, Taliban troops also summarily executed two local barbers close to the airbase, and nine other prisoners, in the Dasht Chirchirik.

 

The “Bone” at the Midland International Air & Space Port since May 1 was flown from Midland to Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma today. On Three Engines. The B-1B Lancer that performed an emergency landing last May, was tranferred to Tinker AFB on Oct. 26, 2018. The heavy bomber was on a training mission on […]

I have an explainer article about Russian perceptions of U.S. plans to withdraw from the INF Treaty on the Washington Post Monkey Cage blog today. Here’s a sampler…

Despite Russian urgings, national security adviser John Bolton is insisting that the United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The treaty prohibits all short-range and intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, both nuclear and conventional, as well as systems that can be used to launch such missiles. As a result of the treaty, neither Russia nor the United States can deploy missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, or 310 to 3,420 miles. Since this is a bilateral treaty, other countries are not bound by these constraints.

Since the U.S. government announced its withdrawal plans, Russian officials and experts have weighed in on what this means for Russia and how to respond. Here are five things to know.

1. Russians see the INF treaty as giving unfair advantages to the U.S.

Russian experts and officials have long argued that the treaty that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev signed with President Ronald Reagan in 1987 was disadvantageous — first to the Soviet Union and then to Russia. Russia gave up its ground-launched intermediate-range ballistic and cruise missiles without extracting any restrictions on U.S. sea- and air-launched missiles. That’s significant, because the vast majority of Russia’s nuclear weapons are land-based, whereas the U.S. bases much of its nuclear force on submarines. The Kremlin believes this has allowed the U.S. to dominate the world’s oceans with its Tomahawk cruise missiles, and has left Russia vulnerable to a U.S. sea-launched attack.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Unsurprisingly, Belgium has announced that it has chosen the American F-35 fighter.Unsurprisingly, Belgium has announced that it has chosen the American F-35 fighter. Second betrayal of partners by Belgium, "heart of the European Union" since the 1970s. After 48 years, new proof to what extent Belgium's policy is influenced by the Americans, which was also the case in 1970. New proof to what extent European integration can be considered serious. Quo vadis European integration?

Why has Belgium once again turned its back on the European preference?

Thanks to two defining criteria that were insinuated in the specifications for the replacement of the F-16: the ability to carry a US-made nuclear bomb and stealth. Two crucial criteria for the success of the F-35. Belgium has been carrying out the nuclear mission on behalf of NATO for decades. The F-16s stationed at Kleine-Brogel (F-16A) are capable of carrying and dropping an American B-61 nuclear bomb. In any case, Brussels who wishes to keep it, had made it known.

This skewed the competition and favored the American F-35 against its four competitors: F / A-18E / F Super Hornet, Rafale F3R, JAS-39E / F Gripen and Eurofighter Typhoon. Only the F-35 will be able to carry out the mission of nuclear attack by carrying a B-61 American gravitational bomb. It is designed as dual capacity (conventional and nuclear) and should be able to carry a bomb B-61 in a later phase (!) of its development, probably from 2022 (!).

What is not the case for other contenders to Belgian market, with the exception of the Rafale, which already carries a nuclear weapon. However, Germany has also made a formal request to the United States to integrate the B-61 under the Eurofighter. In theory, this ability could also be certified on the European fighter. Not sure if Washington shares with anyone the firing and releasing codes of the B-61s.

"Within the Alliance, Belgium has accepted, five decades ago, that its fighter jets have both conventional and nuclear capabilities, taking into account a joint analysis of the global threat. NATO is asking us to continue to maintain our combat aircraft available for any such missions, and we look forward to meeting all our obligations in this regard, " said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders.

In addition, the Belgian Air Force is close to that of the Netherlands, which without hesitation bought eight F-35s in March 2015 on a target of 37 aircraft.

Despite the fact that about 38,000 signatures were collected against the idea of ​​equipping the Belgian air force with F-35 stealth fighter jets, the finance committee of the House of Representatives refused to hear the arguments opponents of this project.

The F-35 project is the most expensive project ever seen. The aircraft had several hundred defeats (hardver + software) his "brother" the F-22 Raptor, after it was put in place with the US Army, was less effective in the fight against the Eurofighter and the former F-16 is stealth is also highly doubtful.

According to a leaked test in 2015 also the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s demonstrated performance is inferior to the current fighters it is designed to replace. Specifically, the report marked for official use only (FOUO) finds that, in a series of 17 dogfights, the F-35 was consistently outmatched by an aging F-16 :

"One of the significant new issues raised by the report was the F-35’s difficulty in sustaining energy in close-in maneuvering combat—that is, the energy needed to turn and accelerate. The test pilot found this to be “substantially inferior” to older planes like F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. In the tests, the F-35’s maneuverability against the F-16 was so limited that it could only point quickly enough to achieve a missile shot by executing one specific maneuver. But this move consumed so much energy that if the shot failed the F-35 would “ultimately end up defensive again”—which is to say, at the mercy of any opponent.

The report also homed in on flight control problems in the 20 to 26 degrees angle of attack zone, crucial for hard maneuvering. The pilot described the F-35’s computer-controlled flying qualities as “sluggish” for evasive maneuvering and “not intuitive or favorable.” This echoes information in a recent report from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) that described severe flying quality problems in this high angle of attack region—including uncontrollable wing drop and heavy buffeting (shaking) “that degraded the flight control system (two of three flight control channels become disabled), requiring a flight abort.”

Tag: BelgiumF-35RafaleEurofighter

Tomorrow, on 27 October 2018, Kandahar will vote in the country’s parliamentary election – a week later than the rest of the country. The delay comes after the assassination of, among others, the province’s police chief and strongman Abdul Razeq on 18 October 2018. The IEC has tried to remedy the problems that plagued the rest of the country last week, through additional training. This may not be enough to maintain the integrity of their new anti-fraud measures: voter lists and biometric verification – particularly since Kandahar has a history of mass fraud. AAN’s Martine van Bijlert, with input from Ali Adili and Ali Mohammad Sabawoon, takes a closer look at what we might be able to expect on Afghanistan’s third day of voting.

What can we expect on Afghanistan’s third election day?

Kandahar’s Provincial Electoral Officer Neamatullah Wardag told AAN that the IEC intends to open 173 polling centres on 27 October 2018, with a total of 1,113 polling stations. This is, on average, a little over six polling stations per centre but the variation in size will be wide. Some centres registered only few voters and will have one or two stations only, while other will have to have at least 15 or more. (1)

Some polling centres, particularly in Kandahar city, would be very crowded if all voters did indeed turn up (which is unlikely, even in the city). Nahiya nine in Kandahar, for instance has almost 29,000 voters registered in three polling centres, while three other urban districts have around registered 45,000 voters for six polling centres. Of course there will be many polling stations, but the crowds could still be large. Alternatively, if the centres are captured by strongmen or partisan security forces, as has happened in the past, the opportunity for fraud in these places would be significant.

So far, there have been no signs of a breakdown in the security situation or in discipline in the security forces, since Abdul Razeq’s death (AAN background here). Security in Kandahar city has been tight and there has been a steady stream of high profile visitors who have come to pay their respects, including President Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah, former president Karzai and several Jamiat leaders.

It is difficult to predict the overall turnout, other than that it will be very low in the remote districts, where Taliban threats warning people not to take part in the election are expected to keep people away from the vote. In Kandahar city, Abdul Razeq’s supporters believe turnout might be buoyed by the wish to honour his memory. They emphasised that he had been killed only minutes after a meeting that focused on election security and had called on the people of Kandahar to come out and vote.

The death of Police Chief Abdul Razeq has the potential to rearrange Kandahar’s political scene. Different groups, both from Kandahar (such as the Karzai and Gul Agha families) and outside (President Ghani and others) may see new opportunities to try to get their own affiliates elected. His absence will also be felt during this vote, even though so far there seems to have been no security vacuum. But he was a looming figure in the elections, controlling security and, sometimes, the vote.

Unpacking Kandahar’s election numbers

There are a total of 112 candidates (13 are women, more by AAN here) competing for Kandahar’s eleven seats, of which three are reserved for women. Five have registered a political party affiliation; the remaining 107 have registered as independents. 99 of the candidates are men, 13 are women (full candidate list here). According to the 2018 population estimate by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Kandahar has a total population of around 1,3 million.

According to the IEC’s voter lists Kandahar registered a total of 522,984 voters in this year’s new voter registration: 442,512 men and 67,276 women for the vote in the provincial constituency, and 13,196 Kuchis (gender not specified) for the nationwide election of kuchi representatives.(2)

The rate of registration varied greatly across the province. The district with the most registered voters was Spin Boldak, the birthplace and main power base of General Abdul Razeq. In Spin Boldak 86,082 voters registered to vote in 26 polling centres (11,801 of them were women; 2,015 were Kuchis), representing 15 per cent of the province’s total number of votes.

Four urban districts in Kandahar city (nahiya one, two, four and ten) each registered between 45,000 and 55,000 voters, representing a little less than 10 per cent of the total vote each. Three other urban districts registered a fair number of voters, (almost 29,000 in nahiya nine, and around 13,000 in nahiyas seven and eight). The five rural districts closest to the city – Zherai, Panjway, Dand, Arghandab and Daman – each registered around 20,000 to 30,000 voters in 16 or 17 polling centres each.

After that, it starts petering out: Mianeshin (909 voters), Ghorak (564 voters), Khakrez (409 voters), Shorabak (203 voters) and Reg (161 voters) all registered voters in single polling centres – with no women, except a handful in Khakrez. There was no voter registration in two rural districts – Nesh and Maruf – which also means there will be no vote. There are also four urban districts where no voter registration took place (nahiyas 11, 12, 14 and 15), which include the prosperous, largely-gated community of Aino Mina, Kandahar’s most densely-populated neighbourhood of Loya Wala are located and an insecure area bordering on Dand district. (3) Residents of Kandahar city, however, said that voters from these two areas would have easily been able to register in other neighbourhoods close by. [Update 27 October: According to the IEC there is voting in all nahiyasof Kandahar. They said the centres in question may have been listed under other areas.]

Normally, an election would most probably be won or lost in the areas where most votes are cast (in this case likely to be Spin Boldak and areas of Kandahar city). However, in an election like this, with many candidates and relatively small margins, seemingly insignificant areas can swing a vote, particularly if the votes are concentrated on a certain candidate. This is further compounded by the fact that the final results have so far been largely determined afterelection day, when the IEC had to decide which votes could be counted and which must be invalidated. For this reason, candidates and supporters are often incentivised to try to manipulate the vote wherever they can, in the hope that some of it will slip through.

What was the vote like in Kandahar in previous elections?

In the 2009 presidential election, Kandahar became famous for its “industrial scale” ballot stuffing (for an AAN report that raised the issue of mass fraud days after the election, see here). The fraud was particularly concentrated in the border provinces, where the late Abdul Razeq was then Border Police Chief at the time. Out of the around 250,000 votes that were cast that year, around 180,000 were disqualified in the ECC-led sampled audit, leaving only a little over 70,000 votes to be counted (see details here).

In the 2010 parliamentary elections, every single polling station in the province had reported open on election day, despite serious security challenges. 30 per cent of all polling stations were disqualified in full. After the IEC and ECC disqualifications, there were around 75,000 votes left (see here for more details).

The 2014 presidential election saw 270,000 votes counted in the preliminary count. In the various audits (the results of which were never made public) the province appears to have lost around 50,000 votes (see here). In the 2014 provincial council vote, which took place at the same time and was audited by the IECC rather than the IEC, Kandahar lost around 11 per cent of its votes, including all the votes of its top candidate. (4)

Will the new anti-fraud measures work?

In the past, when voters could cast their vote wherever they wanted, Kandahar provided ample opportunity for unmonitored and/or unopposed ballot stuffing that could be explained away with claims of suddenly improved security or surprise high turnouts. This was particularly the case in the province’s remote districts and in the districts that were under the firm control of local strongmen.

With the new registration system, voters have to cast their vote in the centre where they registered. The last-minute addition of biometric verification aims to weed out multiple registrations, multiple votes and the use of fake documents. If implemented properly, it has now become much more difficult to engage in multiple voting, mass proxy voting, ballot stuffing and manipulation of the count and data entry. But only if procedures are actually followed. The scope for (mass) fraud, and the difficulties the IEC will have to deal with this, will therefore depend on how messy the election becomes.

So far, the IEC in its public statements has downplayed the messiness, saying that only in a minority of the polling centres procedures were not followed and that the main problem had been teachers and other staff turning up late. The IEC also said it hope the vote in Kandahar would be an improvement, compared to last week’s two election days (see here and here and here for observation reports). Provincial IEC head, Wardag, told AAN that atechnical team, dispatched from IEC headquarters, trained the district electoral officers (DEOs) and polling centre managers, who in turn trained the polling station staff. The focus was mainly on the use of the new biometric machines.

The IEC initially made it clear it would invalidate all votes that were not cast using both the voter lists and biometric verification, but it has already been wavering. From what happened on 20 and 21 October 2018, it appears that there will be considerable leeway to get votes counted that were not without properly cast. (5)

This could provide an incentive for all forms of fraud, including the very blatant, in the hope that the results will slip through the cracks. Things to watch will thus include implausible high turnouts in both secure and insecure areas, significant numbers of voters turning up without having registered, and the mass malfunction or loss of biometric devices and voter lists.

Edited by Sari Kouvo and Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) According to the IEC’s lists voter registration earlier this year took place in 172 polling centres. Wardag could not explain why the number of polling centres had now risen from 172 to 173. He thought it might simply be a repetition on the list somewhere.

(2) The English-language summary, which can be found here has slightly different figures for Kandahar’s registration totals: 567,608 registered all together, with 557,344 registered for the vote in the provincial constituency – 483,749 men and 73,595 women (a little over 13 per cent) and – and 10,262 as part of the nationwide kuchi constituency.

The total number of registered kuchi voters nationwide is 168,015. Kandahar, according to this list, comes in fifth and is dwarfed, by far, by Kabul’s largely settled kuchi constituency (71,506 registered kuchi voters, or 43 per cent of the total). The other provinces with significant Kuchi registration have numbers comparable to Kandahar: Kapisa (13,651 or 8 per cent of the total), Nangarhar (11,535 or 7 per cent of the total), Logar (10,298 or 6 per cent of the total).

(3) Voters registered per rural and urban district, as provided by the IEC:

Kandahar’s rural districts

1. Arghestan: 12 polling centres registered 9,231 voters (9,904 male, 106 female and 31 Kuchis)
2. Arghandab: 16 polling centres registered 24,570 voters (23,097 male, 1,013 female and 460 Kuchi)
3. Panjwayi: 16 polling centres registered 25,728 voters (24,624 male, 769 female and 335 Kuchis)
4. Takhta Pul: seven polling centres registered 11,374 voters (9,336 male and 1,767 female and 271 Kuchis)
5. Khakrez: two polling centres registered 409 (377 male and 32 female) (Khakrez Kalai Clinic registered only 4 male voters)
6. Daman: 17 polling centres registered 18,992 voters (15,613 male, 2,024 female and 1,355 Kuchis)
7. Dand: ten polling centres registered 25,233 voters (21,875 male and 2,131 female and 1,227 Kuchis)
8. Reg: one (Shir Shah school) polling centre registered 161 (148 male and 13 Kuchis)
9. Zherai: 16 polling centres registered 30,491 voters (29,193 male, 380 female and 918 Kuchis)
10. Spin Boldak: 26 polling centres registered 86,082 voters (72,266 male,11,801 female and 2,015 Kuchis)
11. Shah Wali Kot: three polling centres registered 3,902 voters (3,475 male, 63 female and 364 Kuchis)
12. Shurabak: one polling centre (Da Wali Muhammad Khan Kor) registered 203 voters (199 male, zero female and four Kuchis)
13. Ghorak district: one polling centre (Pir Khadem Mosque) registered 564 voters (563 male, zero female and one Kuchi)
14. Mianeshin: One polling centre (Ghalinag Mosque) registered 909 voters (908 male, zero female and one Kuchi)
15. Maiwand: three polling centres registered 8,099 voters (7,865 male, 159 female and 75 Kuchi)

A total of 132 polling centres in rural districts registered voters. Mianeshin, Shorabak and Reg were among 32 districts that could not be accessed due to security problems at the time of the polling centre assessment in the second half of 2017. These three districts, as well as Ghorak, ended up with just one polling centre. Maruf and Nesh have no polling centres at all, even though are not mentioned in the list of 11 districts countrywide which, according to the Afghan Ministry of Interior, are fully under Taleban control.

Kandahar’s urban districts (with a brief description of the nahiyas):

1. Nahiya one (army corps and part of Herat bazar; secure): nine polling centres registered 52,469 voters (38,655 male, 13,456 and 358 Kuchis)
2. Nahiya two (Jamai-e Umer mosque and part of of Herat Bazar; secure): six polling centres registered 48,093 voters (38,596 male, 8,241 female and 1,256 Kuchis)
3. Nahiya three (Abdul Rab Akhondzada Masjid and the southern bypass; secure): One (Shin Ghazai Baba) polling centre registered 7,431 voters (5,295 male, 1,909 female and 227 Kuchis)
4. Nahiya four (Karwan, Daikhowja and Baro Darwaza; secure): six polling centres registered 46,826 voters (40,920 male, 5,383 female and 523 Kuchis)
5. Nahiya five (Haji Aziz, Kandahar Radio television and Vehicle bargain markets; secure): one (Da Haji Nika School) polling centre registered 6,522 voters (4,834 male, 751 female and 937 Kuchis)
6. Nahiya six (Sayed Mrach Agah’s tomb, Jandarmar): Two polling centres registered 8,016 voters (6,911 male, 1,058 female and 47 Kuchis)
7. Nahiya seven (Mirbazar, Sof road, Chilzino park; to an extent secure): two polling centres registered 13,645 voters (10,403 male, 3,063 female and 179 Kuchis)
8. Nahiya eight (Bagh-e pol park, the Fruit Market up to Dand Chowk; suffers from some insecurity incidents): Two polling centres registered 13,027 voters (11,443 male, 1,123 female and 461 Kuchis)
9. Nahiya nine (Kandahar university, Tarinkot Ada, Siman bridge and Kotal Morcha, borders Arghandab and Shahwali Kot, is a little insecure): Three polling centres registered 28,776 voters (24,985 male, 3,591 female and 200 Kuchis)
10. Nahiya ten (Karta-ye Malimin and the old police headquarter; secure): Six polling centres registered 46,271 voters (36,503 male, 7,885 female and 1,883 Kuchis)
11. Nahiya thirteen (the old army corps, Mirza Mohammad Khan Kalach and from Baba Sahib’s tomb until Kotal-e Morcha; insecure): Two polling centre registered 5,960 polling centres (5,334 male, 571 female and 55 Kuchis)

A total of 40 polling centres in urban districts registered voters. The districts that are not on the list are:

11. Nahiya eleven: Aino Maina, a wealthy residential area where rich people, NGO staff and government official live, very secure
12. Nahiya twelve: Hakim Ada, Simano brige rasta, near Loya Wala, famous for criminality and Taleban influence, most populated area in Kandahar city
13. Nahiya fourteen: Khojak Baba, Majid Akhondzada and Ahmad Wali Khan Karzai Chowk, a secure area
14. Nahiya fifteen: borders Dand district, insecure

(4) In a letter to the IEC, the IECC said it decided to disqualify the candidate after an audit of over 600 polling stations in Kandahar, when they found that “all his votes had problems.” Such problems included ballots not being removed from their stubs, large numbers of ballots with similar tick marks, made with the same markers, which led them to the conclude that there had been systematic fraud.

(5) As reported here, the IEC will need to deal with three types of election results: a) votes from polling stations that used both the voter lists and the biometric verification, b) votes from polling stations that used only the voter lists, without capturing the biometric verification data, and c) votes from polling stations that used neither of the two systems and made new on-the-spot, handwritten voter lists. (see here for background).

 

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