The Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN)

Achin district in the south of Afghanistan’s key eastern province of Nangrahar has been heavily fought over by the Taleban, ISKP and government and United States forces. The delivery of public services has been hampered, helped or abolished depending on who has been in charge at any given time; ISKP banned almost all public services and the Taleban allowed most, supervising and monitoring them, although they were funded and administered by the Afghan state. Now, with the bulk of the district back under government control, public services have begun getting back to normal. However, with many schools and clinics destroyed, professionals scarce and services never that good in the first place, many residents, especially women and girls, still struggle to access public services. In this, the third of a series of case studies looking at the delivery of services in districts over which insurgents have control or influence, AAN researchers Said Reza Kazemi and Rohullah Sorush look at governance and security, education, health, electricity and telecommunications, and development projects in this insecure and often neglected district.

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 two case studies, on Obeh district of Herat province by Said Reza Kazemi and Dasht-e Archi district in Kunduz province by Obaid Ali.

Achin district: context

• Approximately 50 km south of Jalalabad city, linked by partially unpaved roads to the main Kabul-Jalalabad-Torkham road; mountainous; bordering Pakistan’s tribal areas to the south;
• Population estimated at between 104,000 and 322,000 (data below), Pashtuns of the Shinwari tribe;
• Long-embattled district with complicated conflicts. As of early 2019, most of Achin under government control. 2015-18, theIslamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Islamic State’s Afghan-Pakistani franchise, also known as Daesh– controlled most of Achin; it continues to operate from mountain strongholds in the southern parts of the district. 2009-15, the Taleban were in control of much of Achin, but are not now actively contesting it. These power shifts, messy and often brutal, have resulted in at least three conflicts: (1) between Afghan and United States government forces and ISKP; (2) between Afghan government forces and other insurgent groups, mainly the Taleban; and (3) among the Taleban, ISKP and local militias.

Achin district: service delivery

• Education: ISKP closed public schools in 2015-18 and many schools were burned, seriously damaged and/or closed due to fighting. As of early 2019 and since the recapture of most territory by government and US forces, some boys’ schools, including high schools, have reopened. In some of these reopened schools situated mostly in and around the district centre, girls are also allowed to take part, but with no women teachers, they are taught by elderly men. ISKP currently administers teaching in areas under its control; this is mainly of religious subjects, including on jihad. In 2009-15, when in control, the Taleban strictly supervised staffing, the curriculum, day-to-day school management and girls’ education; now they play no role in education services.
• Health: Most health facilities have been damaged in the fighting. As of early 2019, health service delivery has been unhindered except in ISKP-ruled areas. There are no female doctors in Achin. ISKP closed public health facilities and banned vaccination campaigns when they were in charge (2015-18); presently, they allow some private health facilities in their areas of control. The Taleban made no direct interference in the period 2009-15, but benefited from public health services for their wounded and sick members.
• Electricity, media and telecommunications: There is no public electricity supply and some telecommunication infrastructure has been destroyed during clashes. As of early 2019, there has been almost 24/7 mobile phone coverage, including in ISKP-held territory. Radio is a coveted and contested field between the Taleban and ISKP, as both operate radio channels of their own in Achin. TV and social networking is popular among the population for those with access to electricity and smartphones. Insurgent role: there is no mobile phone company presence in ISKP areas but these areas receive telecommunication signals and ISKP makes use of these services. The Taleban enforced a shutdown of mobile phone coverage at night and taxed mobile phone companies in 2009-15; now they exert almost no influence.
• Other services: Some rural development work is carried out by both the government and NGOs and some justice services have been offered by both insurgent actors. ISKP (2015-now) ban public development projects and run their own courts and prisons. The Taleban (2009-15) authorised and ‘taxed’ development projects and themselves implemented some development work (eg road-building in fear of ISKP advances). They also ran their own justice system.

Introducing Achin district

Achin is a mountainous district in the south of Afghanistan’s key eastern province, Nangrahar. (1) With a relatively small area of about 465 km², much of the district lies within the Spin Ghar mountain range. (2) The mountainous landscape makes Achin, especially its southern portions, difficult to access. Situated about 50 kilometres south of the provincial capital, Jalalabad, Achin borders Deh Bala (aka Haska Mena) district to the west, Kot district to the north-west, Bati Kot and Shinwar (aka Ghanikhel) districts to the north, Naziyan district to the east and Khyber Agency in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Agencies (FATA) to the south (for maps of Achin district and its neighbourhood, see the map above (and pages 2-3 of this atlas). The roads into Achin (one through Rodat and Kot districts and the other through Shinwar), both of which connect to the main Jalalabad-Torkham road, are partially paved.

Map credit: Roger Helms for AAN.

 

Most of the population is clustered within various valleys. Two of the major inhabited valleys are Mamand in central Achin and Pekha further to the east, located respectively to the southwest and south of the district centre, Kahi. The further away people live from the valleys, the harder it is for them to access water. The valleys support some degree of subsistence agriculture with crops such as wheat, maize, rice, various vegetables, pomegranates, mulberries, apricots and pine nuts. Many people also rely on livestock to support their livelihoods.

More importantly, the entire province of Nangrahar is known for poppy cultivation. Despite Nangrahar achieving poppy-free status in 2008, a key, albeit temporary, achievement of then Governor Gul Agha Sherzai, poppy cultivation in the province has been increasing since 2010 from 698 hectares in 2016to 1,364 hectares in 2017and 1,692 ha in 2018 (see page 70 of this survey). The increase in poppy cultivation in Achin from 2017 to 2018 is notable because over the same period of time, overall cultivation in Nangrahar province declined, from 18,976 hectares in 2017 to 17,177 hectares in 2018 (see page 66 of this survey and AAN reporting here). There are also some heroin refineries in Achin (see page 162 of this publication). This makes opium a mainstay for many families across the district. Cannabis is also extensively grown in Achin, as well as in the rest of Nangrahar province (read AAN’s recent research on the cultural history in Afghanistan of cannabis cultivation and hashish production here and of hashish consumption here).

In addition, Achin district has other significant natural resources. Firstly, the Spin Ghar range, both in its foothills and higher elevations, is heavily wooded with pine (nashtar in Pashto), oak (tserai) and deodar cedar (archa), providing the district with resources in terms of fodder, wood for fuel and timber. Secondly, the district has some mineral deposits particularly talc (shawkanai in Pashto) and chromite (sangina) (see pages 16-18 of this paper). It also has some magnesite mineral deposits (see page 14 of this report).

Population numbers are always difficult in Afghanistan, but this is especially the case in a district like Achin given the continual movement of people to and from neighbouring Pakistan and major displacements and returns caused by fighting between, variously, the Afghan government, the Taleban and ISKP. Three sources of data on Achin’s population are given below; it seems the third is likely to reflect current figures because of its data triangulation:

1. Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) profile of Achin district as of Sunbula 1396/September 2017: 322,000 people (121,000 men and 201,000 women);

• US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reporting information provided by NATO Resolute Support mission in October 2018: 128,557 people– not disaggregated by sex (see page 225 here); and

• United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) dataset for 2016/17: 104,042 people (52,936 men and 51,106 women).

Based on the third source, Achin is the fourth most-populated district in Nangrahar province after Behsud (117,946 people), Surkhrod (Srerod in Pashto) (125,021) and Khugiani (135,522) districts (Jalalabad city has 232,901). However, because of the very high density of population in and around the provincial capital – Behsud, Surkhrod and Khogiani are all near Jalalabad – the population of Achin lags behind and comprises just 6.73 per cent of Nangrahar province’s total population of about 1,547,000 people. The population of Achin might alternately be estimated at 13,512 households, based on Afghanistan’s national average household size of 7.7 persons (see page 22 of this survey). The residents of Achin live in about 140 villages, mostly in the main valleys.

In terms of ethnicity, Pashtuns of the Shinwari tribe constitute the overwhelming majority of the population. (3) There are four major subtribes among the Shinwari: the Sepai, the Alisherkhel, the Mandozai and the Sangukhel. Achin is mostly inhabited by the Sepai and the Alisherkhel. The subtribes are further divided on a patrilineal basis. For instance, there are two subdivisions among the Sepai in Achin: the Rahimdadkhel and the Haidarkhel. The tribal system, led by qawmi meshran (tribal elders), is still largely intact. Given the absence of a functioning Afghan state authority or administration in the district, it effectively provides the only rule-based system of governance. While this tribal system has maintained a level of cooperation between the different groups of people in Achin, there have been instances of tribal conflict and fighting between these subtribes and subdivisions within those subtribes. One well-known area of friction between the Sepai and Alisherkhel subtribes in Achin has been a longstanding unresolved land conflict that violently spiralled out of control in 2011 after external actors (government, US military and insurgents) got involved (previous AAN analysis here).

All of these factors – the rugged and difficult terrain, soaring poppy cultivation and abundant natural resources, internal fault lines within tribal relations and adjacency to Pakistan’s often troubled tribal areas – have contributed to Achin being a district that is extremely complicated and highly vulnerable to insecurity. Rivalry for control over it and its routes into Pakistan has played out variously between Afghan government forces, including allied militias, the Taleban and ISKP, all of whom have competed for resources and overall territory. They have inflicted heavy costs on one another and the civilian population and severely damaged and obstructed the delivery of public services.

Conflict and security

Conflict is not new to Achin. Given its location in strategic Nangrahar – between Afghanistan and Pakistan – it has been a key transit point, with Nangrahar as a whole functioning as what this AREU paper calls a “staging ground” for power struggles nationally. Nangrahari leaders have frequently played a strong role in influencing, if not capturing, power in the Afghan capital Kabul, acting as king-makers or spoilers to successive regimes (see pages 51-55 of this RAND publication). This has meant that throughout history, Nangrahar has frequently been embroiled in national conflicts and Achin, lying on the border, has often played a part in these conflicts. As detailed in previous AAN reporting, poor governance after 2001 and a breakdown of social structures led to inter-tribal fighting and have also been contributors to conflict in the district. Also significant have been struggles over control of resources such as minerals, narcotics and smuggling routes. Many of the conflict actors have interacted successively, with the same figures and long-standing issues re-surfacing in later conflict cycles.

During the 1980s, Nangrahar was one of the most significant provinces for the mujahedin (see pages 11-12 of a paper by Ashley Jackson), with Achin, in particular, acting as a conduit for weapons and fighters. In addition, specific figures from or closely connected to subtribes in Achin rose among the various mujahedin factions and would play a significant role in Achin and wider Nangrahar province.

After the Afghan communist regime fell in 1992 and the country collapsed into “warring fiefdoms” controlled by competing mujahedin factions, Achin and its surrounding areas fell into the eastern region that was controlled by the so-called Mashreqi Shura (Eastern Council), aka the Nangrahar or Jalalabad Shura. The council was a mercurial coalition of mujahedin commanders led by Haji Abdul Qadir of Hezb-e Islami Khales, became governor of Nangrahar in 1992.

A US Army Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) team returns down through the river-bed in the Takhto Valley in Nangrahar province’s Achin district during the return journey of a mission. Photo: Andrew Quilty/2018

 

A confusing plethora of local mujahedin commanders has risen to influence in Achin and its neighbouring areas especially from the late 1970s onwards. These commanders were loosely and opportunistically aligned with various rival factions in the Mashreqi Shura and other mujahedin factions in Kabul, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami, Yunus Khales’s Hezb-e Islami, Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi’s Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf’s Ittihad-e Islami and Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-e Islami. (4) Some of these local mujahedin commanders were killed (eg Qari Samad) or died (eg Saif ul-Rahman, Hafiz ul-Haq) , but others continue to be active in Achin and its neighbourhood (eg Qari Salam, currently a commander of a National Directorate of Security (NDS)-funded ‘public uprising’ group in neighbouring Shinwar district). Some operate from the Pakistani side of the border (eg Qari Mujahed, Mia Saheb Juma Khan, Qari Tayyeb and Mawlawi Sawab Gul).

While the Mashreqi Shura kept a relative degree of control in Jalalabad city itself, the outlying areas were almost anarchic. Jackson has described the area that would be the gateway into Achin district: “At one point, the roughly 80 km road from Jalalabad to the Torkham border crossing into Pakistan was controlled by five different commanders, each demanding their own taxes and occasionally going to war with one another” (page 13 here). Local commanders often changed sides or alliances and fought each other. They treated rural people poorly, forcing them to feed their fighters without compensation, using their position to grab land illegally and to set up checkpoints along roads where they extorted money from passers-by and engaged in other forms of harassment. This internal bickering and abusive behaviour made the period of mujahedin rule turbulent in Achin, as in much of the rest of Afghanistan.

This chaotic environment made it easy for the Taleban to initially rise to power in Nangrahar, including in Achin district, which the Taleban seized in a largely bloodless takeover in 1996. (5) A local elder told AAN:

When the Taleban came, no one resisted against them and they easily captured Achin. Haji Qadir and his Mashreqi Shura commanders had already fled to Pakistan. The Taleban only collected weapons from the local people by searching houses, detained some people for a while, but released them afterwards and introduced their district officials. They did not mistreat the people.

The approximately five-year Taleban rule in Nangrahar came to an abrupt end in late 2001. Most of the Taleban who were in Achin escaped to the other side of the border and took refuge in Pakistan. In Achin, a local elder told AAN, “Nothing happened to the Taleban because people had generally been happy with them and they left the area with the people’s help.” Achin and the surrounding areas were also an escape route into Pakistan for Taleban fleeing from other areas.

The Taleban were never totally gone from Achin, however, and began returning to seriously influence and control much of the district from around 2009 onwards, including by setting up temporary and sometimes permanent checkpoints in different areas and along the roads where they controlled the movement of people and goods and taxed trade. One reason for their resurgence was the increased corruption and rivalry among provincial élites affiliated with the Afghan government. From 2005 to 2013, then provincial Governor Gul Agha Sherzai leveraged massive US and international military and civilian support (high because US priorities to counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency) to make and keep political allies. He effectively revamped the political order in the province. Awarding development and, in particular, construction funds to friends and allies became a regular part of his control strategy. Safe in the cronyistic regime Sherzai had created, many members of the élite engaged in land grabs, gobbling up state-owned lands and some of Nangrahar’s most valuable agricultural tracts for questionable housing and development projects (see this previous AAN dispatch and this research article). In addition, Sherzai’s cronyist rule ensured that most of the development projects and aid were focused in and around the provincial capital. Outside of that, most areas of Nangrahar, especially southern districts such as Achin, received little support despite the overall high amounts of aid going to Nangrahar.

Such a strategy created many political enemies and also only worked as long as the aid continued. As time went by, Sherzai faced growing protests, often led by those who had, to some extent, been politically marginalised. Among them, in particular, were two sons of the late Haji Qadir: (1) Haji Zaher Qadir, a parliamentarian who leads a political organisation called De Sole Karwan (Peace Caravan) which has followers including in Achin and (2) Haji Jamal Qadir, a provincial council member (see previous AAN reporting here).

Additionally, many people in Nangrahar, especially in southern districts such as Achin, were increasingly dissatisfied with opium eradication – a priority of the US-led international community, but one which targeted one of their few sources of livelihood (see this SIGAR report on failed poppy eradication and counter-narcotics efforts). Opium cultivation thus resumed, reversing the province’s poppy-free status in 2008. It started in southern districts such as Achin. Local people were also furious at civilian casualties caused by Afghan government and American operations against the Taleban; a local elder told AAN at least some of those carrying out the attacks had been “deliberately misinformed [about what they were targeting].”

Nonetheless, the resurgent Taleban were fractured as well, and lacked control over their forces. Senior provincial Taleban commanders such as Mawlawi Kabir and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed competed for power and sub-commanders constantly struggled to control their fighters’ behaviour. In such a broken, messy insurgency, with poor command and control, fighters could engage in criminal activities, including “widespread cases of unexplained killings of ordinary individuals, assassination of influential local elders and ransom-driven kidnappings in the southern districts of Nangarhar from 2013 to late 2014” (previous AAN reporting).

At the same time, in the run-up to ISKP’s takeover of the district in 2015, the Afghan state was also becoming “increasingly irrelevant” in Achin and other districts in Nangrahar (page 6 of this AREU paper). Government control was largely restricted to district centres, with security forces rarely leaving their bases, and opium poppy cultivated near district centres and Afghan government security bases.

It was in such a context in early 2015 that ISKP captured Achin, especially the Mamand valley, making it their headquarters. ISKP’s strength in the district was due to a range of factors, including some pre-existing local support, the defensibility of Achin’s mountainous terrain and its porous border with Pakistan. Pre-existing as well as recently coming Pakistani Taleban (TTP), local militias such as Lashkar-e Islam’s men led by Manghal Bagh and some local Afghan Taleban groups and fighters who changed their leanings laid the foundations of ISKP (previous AAN analysis here). (6) ISKP quickly expanded into several southern districts in Nangrahar before they were gradually pushed back by Taleban, Afghan government and US forces and militias belonging to various strongmen.

Of these, the militia forces Zaher Qadir cobbled together to fight ISKP since late 2015 stand out in Achin (previous AAN analysis here). One key motivation for Haji Qadir reportedly was, as one interviewee said, “to keep his labs for processing drugs.” The desire to regain control over poppy production and heroin processing, not just by local militias but also the Taleban, has been one major motivation for fighting ISKP and trying to regain territory. These militias initially bypassed Afghan government security institutions, but were allied with some local tribal elders. They later apparently developed a multi-pronged command and control structure possibly to obtain as many resources as possible. (7)

The fighting in Achin between 2015 and 2018 has frequently been chaotic, brutal and violent to a degree not seen before in the district, or elsewhere in the country. Frontlines shifted frequently as conflict was played out variously between: (1) Afghan government and US forces and ISKP; (2) Afghan government forces and other insurgent groups, mainly Taleban; and (3) Taleban, ISKP and local militias. In addition to a high number of fatalities among combatants on all sides, many civilians have been killed, injured, kidnapped for ransom, dispossessed of their property or displaced. Some unmarried women were also forcibly married mostly to ISKP fighters. During the period 2015-18, much of whatever rudimentary infrastructure that had existed in Achin (eg schools, clinics, homes) was destroyed.

ISKP momentum has been reversed, though, and many of their leaders and men killed (see this previous AAN dispatch). At one point in April 2017, the US air force dropped an 11-ton Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon in America’s arsenal, on the ISKP complex of tunnels and caves in Achin’s Mamand valley (previous AAN analysis here and here).

Although ISKP was pushed back in Achin as of early 2019 and the Taleban have not re-emerged, the district continues to witness sporadic clashes between the Afghan government and US forces and ISKP (for recent clashes in late 2018 and early 2019, see media reports here and here). Nonetheless, at present the Afghan government has returned to being the dominant governance actor, with ISKP retreating to their mountain sanctuaries and the Taleban largely driven out and not actively contesting the district. The profound weakening of ISKP is the consequence of a series of large-scale mopping-up operations carried out by Afghan government-affiliated military and paramilitary forces with US support building on earlier attacks by the Taleban.

Governance and security provision

The vast majority of respondents said the Afghan government is currently in control of most inhabited areas, particularly in central and eastern Achin, as well as the two main roads to Jalalabad and other subsidiary roads in the district. They report that security has largely improved in the district and life is returning to normal for many residents.

Residents of Shadal Bazar village like others in Achin district have returned after US and government forces pushed back ISKP out of most of the district. Farmers have returned to their fields, but public services remain poor. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2017.

This correlates with the NATO Resolute Support assessment of Achin district as being “under government influence” (reported in page 225 of this October 2018 report by SIGAR) and a guest author’s eye-witness account from last year. (8) However, distinguishing Achin from most other areas of Afghanistan (see, for instance, AAN’s case studies of Obeh district in western Herat province and of Dasht-e Archi district in northern Kunduz province) is the fact that the Taleban are not the secondary governance actors. Instead, according to our respondents, ISKP are the second players here, although primarily in faraway, mountainous and scarcely-habited sections of the district. The Taleban, meanwhile, have been hit the hardest and driven out of the district almost entirely. One interviewee, summarising this overall state of governance, reflected the views of the overwhelming majority of respondents:

The government [now] controls most of the territory [in Achin]. It controls 80 per cent and the insurgents [mostly ISKP] control the remaining 20 per cent. Taleban were controlling some areas and then came Daesh. After that, the government carried out operations, so now it controls most of the district.

Nevertheless, as another interviewee said, district control remains precarious and unstable:

Sometimes the government forces operate in an area and defeat Daesh, but they do not stay there. When they leave the area, Daesh comes back and brings the area under its control again.

On the side of the Afghan government, according to several respondents, key district officials are either directly or indirectly connected, through client-patron ties, to Zaher Qadir. He campaigned for Ashraf Ghani during the 2014 presidential elections and his influence resurged in Achin through the militias he brought together to push back ISKP, as described above. Other Nangrahari strongmen such as current senate speaker, Fazl Hadi Muslimyar, and sitting parliamentarians Hazrat Ali, Mirwais Yasini and Fraidun Mohmand reportedly have little influence in the district. For a list of government authorities, ISKP and the Taleban, historically (when they held much of the district in the period 2009-15) in Achin, see footnote 9.

According to a commander of ‘public uprising’ forces who spoke to AAN, Afghan government forces numbering about 1,140 are stationed in the district, most of them Ministry of the Interior’s Afghan Border Police (ABP) and Afghan Local Police (ALP) and NDS-financed ‘public uprising’ forces:

• A company of Afghan National Army (ANA): 120
• Afghan National Police (ANP): 90
• ALP: 280
• ‘Public uprising’ forces: 300
• A battalion of ABP: 350

However, according to all respondents, ISKP are far from gone. (10) It maintains a foothold and operates mainly in mountainous parts of the district and further down along the Spin Ghar range, including in parts of the Mamand and Pekha valleys. In more closely-held areas, such as in Mamand valley, ISKP runs its own prisons and courts. Most ISKP fighters, both currently and previously, are not local. They mainly came from the Pakistani tribal agencies of Khyber, Bajaur and Orakzai or from the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Laghman that border Nangrahar to the north. ISKP in Achin have connections to ISKP affiliates in neighbouring districts of Naziyan and Deh Bala, as well as Sherzad district in western Nangrahar.

The insurgents, both currently and in the past, have drawn their finances from diverse sources, according to respondents and existing studies. While the Taleban permitted, encouraged and benefited from drug cultivation in Achin, ISKP has officially banned it (see, for example, footnote 35 in this AREU paper and footnote 56 in this Global Witness report). ISKP has also criticised the Taleban for their laxity on drug cultivation, portraying them as “drug smugglers who disrespected Shari’a [Islamic law]” in the words of Antonio Giustozzi (page 162 here). According to an interviewee, “Taleban had [heroin] processing labs and relied on drug money a lot… got tax from drug trafficking… [and] got Afs 100,000-500,000 [about USD 1,430-7,140] per truckload of drugs.” In Achin, opium production has returned to production levels last seen in 2017. One reason for this might be the fact that ISKP are restricted to the mountainous parts of the district, leaving residents and remaining actors, including forces affiliated to the Afghan government, free to get back to or turn a blind eye to full-scale opium cultivation and processing.

A potentially more important source of financing for ISKP has been taxing and even directly extracting mineral resources, talc in particular, given the existence of an estimated 1.25 million tons of this mineral in Achin (for details, see pages 11, 16-27 and 34 of this Global Witness report). The Taleban were in control of mineral resources in sites such as Nargesai and Ai Tang in Achin until 2015 when they fled in the face of ISKP, which took them over. ISKP reportedly engaged in a more intense exploitation “both in terms of investment in machinery and expertise, and of the degree of security and control the [sic] exercise over the sites” (page 18 here). As of early 2019, ISKP’s exploitation of Achin’s minerals has been restricted to some sections of the Mamand valley, according to some respondents.

There have also been other funding sources for the insurgents in Achin. There is illegal logging and its taxation; at least ISKP and other militants affiliated to Manghal Bagh’s Lashkar-e Islam have been involved in this. At some point in April 2018, they reportedly clashed over illegal logging and its proceeds in Achin. When they were fighting ISKP, the Taleban also collected a ‘frontline tax’ for a while from the population (see page 10 of this AREU paper). Some respondents said the insurgents had also received some economic support from their sympathisers – in Pakistan in the case of the Taleban and ISIS ‘central’ in the case of ISKP, with ISKP reportedly receiving much greater outside economic support. The Taleban also raised various religious taxes, including ushr, the ten per cent tax on a range of revenue-generating sources, particularly productive land, and zakat, a payment obligatory for Muslims to give, either as alms to the poor and needy or as a tax collected by a Muslim state (the Taleban take this second option). The Taleban collected and cashed animal hides during Eid al-Adha, a key Islamic festival during which practicing Muslims slaughter animals as sacrifices to Allah (see p 10-11 of this AREU paper). (Religious ‘taxes’ may also have been collected by ISKP, but we did not get details of this.) Finally, both the Taleban and ISKP have boosted their finances with donations from rich supporters, through extorting money from those accused of siding with ‘the enemy’ including the government, and ransom-driven abductions.

Education

The September 2017 IDLG profile of Achin states that the district has 46 schools: 25 primary (grades 1-6), six intermediate (grades 7-9) and 15 high schools (grades 10-12). Of these schools, however, the profile added that, at that time, only 16 were functioning; ten had been set ablaze or destroyed in other ways in the fighting and 20 were closed due to insecurity, either real or perceived. In response to the fighting, the education authorities have shifted some schools from insecure to safer areas such as the district centre. The profile also says there were 438 teachers – all male – in Achin. The profile does not state how many pupils there were, only that 410 pupils – again all male – finished high school in 2017. A district education activist who spoke to AAN said that more pupils are attending schools that have reopened after the recent fighting came almost to an end.

A badly-damaged school building in Shadal Bazar about a mile from the entrance to the Mamand Valley in Achin district, Nangrahar. After government and US forces pushed ISKP out of most of the district in 2018, residents returned to find most schools destroyed or damaged. All, anyway, were boys schools. There are no girls schools in the district. Photo: Andrew Quilty, 2017 

In addition, there are many madrassas (religious schools) in Achin, with around one-third under the purview of the government’s Ministry of Education. Many madrassas do not have compounds of their own, but instead form part of local mosques and are supported by local communities. There are 50 mosques (15 official, ie registered with the government, and 35 unofficial) across Achin, based on the IDLG profile. One famous unofficial madrassa is Talim ul-Quran wa al-Sunna, considered a Salafi religious school, which, according to a local religious activist who spoke to AAN, has preached the ISKP cause and recruited for it in villages across the district. Another unofficial madrassa is Abdul Rahman Madrassa, which focuses on the teaching of Hanafi Sunni Islam, the school to which the vast majority of Afghan Sunnis belong and which Salafis regard as a rival. The insurgents in Achin, both ISKP and the Taleban, have tended to prefer madrassas over what they see as the ‘secular’ schools run by the Ministry of Education.

The delivery of education services occurs predominantly in the areas under government control, particularly the district centre and its surrounding villages. Services cease to exist as we move away towards ISKP-controlled territory. The wealthier and more open-minded a family is, the greater the likelihood that they send their children, both boys and girls, out of the district for education – to Jalalabad city, Kabul or even abroad, especially neighbouring Pakistan. Most often, those who can afford it and find it culturally acceptable send their children to study in Jalalabad city to better prepare them for the nationwide university entrance test known as kankur. Nangrahar University in Jalalabad city tends to be the preferred higher education option for many locals who succeed in the exam.

As discussed earlier, much local educational infrastructure was either destroyed or damaged in the fighting. Most schools across Achin including in the district centre have been affected. As one respondent said, “Daesh virtually destroyed the building of Achin High School. Its roofs are almost falling down, so pupils study in the courtyard.” Where school compounds remain intact, textbooks, teaching materials, chairs, tables, potable water taps and toilets are all lacking. Moreover, there is a scarcity of good teachers throughout Achin, as in many other places around the country. Most current teachers are themselves only high school graduates.

Girls’ education – already a challenge – now faces even more hurdles. The vast majority of girls in Achin have been deprived of an education, as families have been reluctant to allow their daughters to attend even those schools that are functioning, because of real or perceived security risks. According to several respondents, there have never been any separate schools for girls. As a result, a few dozen girls attend girls-only classes in the boys’ schools in the district centre; these are morning classes, with boys going later in the day.

As girls move from primary to intermediate schools, their numbers ineluctably decrease. Few girls make it through to high school in Achin. Insecurity has exacerbated pre-existing cultural taboos against girls’ education. Those living within tightly-knit Pashtun tribal communities tend to be conservative and prefer not to have their girls study higher than the primary level. More conservative families tend not to send their girls to school at all – education in a nearby mosque or madrassa (ie learning the Quran and basic literacy) may be the only education these girls receive. Not unrelated is the fact that there are no female teachers in the district. The local community does not allow girls to be taught by young men in the absence of female teachers, so any female pupils are taught by “white-bearded [ie old] men,” in the words of one respondent. Even if there were women in the district qualified to be teachers, their families would likely not allow them to work, again because of conservative social mores.

The situation has prompted a number of parents to send their daughters to school in other parts of Nangrahar. One respondent said, “In Achin, those who want their daughters to go to school move to Jalalabad.” While girls are normally allowed to study up to around the sixth grade in Achin, some of them are encouraged by their families to progress into intermediate and high school studies in neighbouring districts such as Shinwar and even to university studies in Jalalabad and elsewhere. “Some Shinwari people are realising that knowledge is a good thing for their children,” observed one interviewee. Another said, “Some boys and girls from Achin who have studied outside the district, for example in Jalalabad and Kabul, encourage their peers in the district to continue their studies.”

Provincial and district education authorities monitor education in Achin to some extent, according to most interviewees. Their priorities are getting schools open, encouraging attendance by both pupils and school staff and implementing the Ministry of Education-developed school curriculum.

To eliminate potential abuse in the tahwildar or ‘cashier’ (also called the motamed or ‘trusted person’) procedure, whereby agents receive teacher salaries in Jalalabad and distribute them to teachers in the district, (11) the education authorities have recently replaced it with mobile money services offered by the Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), a private Afghan telecommunication company. According to several respondents, the education authorities have so far biometrically registered about half of all teachers in the district and they receive notice of payment of their salaries via mobile phone. They must then go to Jalalabad to collect their money from AWCC agents, who receive the salaries from the provincial Directorate of Education. Although the mobile money mechanism helps eradicate corruption in the education sector, it takes both time (one day or even more depending on the conditions) and money. A local teacher told AAN, it cost some 500 afghanis – about seven dollars – for a round trip by car for teachers to travel to and from Jalalabad to collect their monthly pay of 6,000-8,000 afghanis – between 86 and 114 dollars, in other words, six to eight per cent of each month’s pay packet now goes on actually getting it.

The insurgent groups have differed in their approaches to education services in the district. All interviewees said ISKP opposed any education offered by the Afghan government, so there has been no such education in areas under their control. According to most respondents, ISKP has destroyed, closed or even converted public schools into checkpoints and fortifications for their military use. ISKP run madrassas only for children living in their areas. The bulk of the education provided is religious, such as memorising the Quran, learning selected hadith and tafsir (exegesis) and teaching jihad to the children. Some teaching of arithmetic (ie the four basic mathematical operations) is also allowed, according to an interviewee. In general, ISKP tends to allow more boys than girls to study and reportedly, education for girls comes to an end when they reach the age of nine.

The Taleban have not run or had a significant influence on education provision since they were last largely in control of the district between 2009 and 2015. However, it is worth reviewing how they managed education when they were in power here given that the fortunes of war fluctuate and current peace talks might also lead to the Taleban having more power locally or nationally. In contrast to ISKP, the Taleban had what could be called an education policy, and a parallel administration to enforce that policy. A primary concern for them was being able to influence or control school staff. The Taleban monitored the behaviour and teaching of school staff and pushed for the employment of some of their members, particularly to teach religious subjects. In areas under their rule, they scrutinised recruits employed to work in schools and even, as one respondent put it, “[had] them [school recruits] commit not to be in touch with [Afghan government] security forces and intelligence.” Recruits from outside the district were monitored more closely than those from inside, according to another respondent.

A second Taleban concern was the school curriculum. Although they were generally fine with the Ministry of Education-prepared curriculum, they placed greater emphasis on religious subjects, such as the teaching of the Quran, than subjects they regarded as ‘secular’, such as science. In Achin they particularly objected to the teaching of art and drawing. They sometimes banned ‘secular’ subjects altogether and replaced them with new religious subjects, such as Islamic education, known as talim ul-islam (Arabic) or islami showena (Pashto) and aqayed (Arabic for belief system). The religious subjects kept changing, respondents said. They made sure that these subjects were taught at school every day. In one case, they also demanded that the interpretation of the Quran be taught by their ulama (religious scholars) rather than those hired by the Ministry of Education. At the peak of their power in Achin, one interviewee said the Taleban had been about to introduce their own school curriculum, but failed to do so as ISKP had emerged.

Third, the Taleban concerned themselves with the day-to-day running of schools. They checked the attendance of both school staff and pupils. They cut the salaries of teachers for days absent. The daily administration of schools also extended to controlling the behaviour of school staff. For instance, they checked appearance: teachers were told not to shave and both male teachers and pupils were told to wear the traditional perahan tomban (shalwar kameez) and kola-ye safid (white cap). It also meant that, to keep schools open and education services running, there were some ties and coordination – however informal – between the Taleban and Afghan government education officials. Although the government funded and supplied the education service, schools were supervised and monitored by the Taleban, who checked attendance by both school staff and pupils and distributed teacher salaries through tahwildars/motameds.

A fourth education-related concern for the Taleban was schooling for girls. Basically, the Taleban shared community preferences on girls’ education, that girls could study up to sixth grade (primary school), they should be modestly clothed (the norm anyway) and, in the absence of female teachers, girls should be taught by old men.

Health

At present, the Afghan government operates six health facilities in Achin through a non-governmental organisation, the Dutch NGO, Health Works (previously known as HealthNet TPO). Health Works has been contracted by the Ministry of Public Health to provide health services throughout Nangrahar. According to a doctor from Achin who has worked in the district for the past nine years, there is a Comprehensive Health Centre (CHC) in Achin district centre, four Basic Health Centres (BHCs) in Mamand, Shadal, Pekha and Abdulkhel villages and a Sub-Health Centre (SHC) that has moved from Bandar to Deh Sarak (for details on Afghanistan’s district-level health system, see here). (12) In addition, there are some private health facilities (ie private doctors’ offices and pharmacies) in the district.

As with education, health services diminish as one goes farther away from the district centre. Health service delivery also suffers from other serious shortcomings. Most healthcare personnel based in the district are not well-trained. Health facilities run by government-contracted NGOs are not adequately supplied with medicine and equipment. Many respondents referred to the lack of ambulance services in the four Basic Health Centres as a pressing medical issue in Achin (only the Comprehensive Health Centre in the district centre has an ambulance for emergency patient transfer). Moreover, most health facilities are based in rented houses and do not have specific compounds of their own; according to the doctor quoted above, only the Comprehensive Health Centre in the district centre and the Basic Health Centre in Mamand have their own compounds. As for available private health services, they are better but more expensive and thus usually inaccessible for poorer residents.

As a consequence, Achin residents with serious conditions have to go to the Comprehensive Health Centres in the district centre or neighbouring Shinwar district or to public or private hospitals in Jalalabad, Kabul or even abroad, especially to Peshawar in neighbouring Pakistan if the medical condition is severe and they can afford it. Several respondents said most patients are taken to Jalalabad for treatment.

Fighting in the period 2015-18 undermined what was already a barely functioning health service in Achin. Like schools, most health facilities have been destroyed, either totally or partially. According to one respondent, only two damaged health facilities have been “somewhat reconstructed by the local people themselves.” According to the doctor quoted above, some health facilities have had to shift to rented houses so they could carry on with their work. Intense fighting also caused large numbers of casualties, placing an even greater burden on health facilities, especially the more advanced treatment centres. The same doctor told AAN:

People injured in the war kept coming to our and other clinics in the district. We had no ambulance to transfer the more serious patients to the Comprehensive Health Centres in the district centre, Shinwar or other districts and the regional hospital in Jalalabad. I was myself sent to serve in the Comprehensive Health Centre in Achin district centre and several others were dispatched to the Comprehensive Health Centre in Ghanikhel because of the pressure on these Centres.

Insecurity has harmed the provision of female healthcare in particular. Currently, there is no female doctor in the whole of the district. One respondent highlighted the challenges this presents for women needing treatment: “There are a lot of problems for women. It is because there is no female doctor for the special problems of women. When women get sick, they are taken 50 to 60 kilometres away for treatment.” Although the health department has tried to address this by recruiting more female doctors, those based in other districts and Jalalabad are not interested in going to work in Achin. One respondent put it bluntly, “There is no female doctor. The health department [in Jalalabad] said there would be a double salary and other bonuses for any female doctor who would work in Achin, but no one wants to go and work there.” 

Given Achin’s conservative mores limiting the education of most girls, it is also difficult for the district to generate its own ‘home grown’ female health workers, not only doctors, but also the more basically-qualified. Indeed, there are only a handful of female nurses and midwives in Achin. The IDLG profile noted five female health workers, compared to 42 male. According to another doctor in Achin, there are two midwives and one female nurse in the Comprehensive Health Centre in the district centre and one midwife in each of the Basic Health Centres and the Sub-Health Centre, which would bring the total number of female health workers to eight. Mostly based in and around the district centre, these female health workers are largely inaccessible for women who might need their services in areas far from the district centre. In general, respondents said these female workers are either unwilling or not allowed (by male family members) to go and work in areas under insurgent control or influence. The lack of female health workers in addition to the fact that it is difficult to get around due to the conflict leads to a significant disparity in men and women’s access to health services in Achin. Summarising the consequences for women in the district, one respondent said:

 Women just die when they fall ill. Most of those who die die during childbirth. At times, when for example some fighting is going on, it is difficult for families to take their sick women, say, to [neighbouring] Ghanikhel [district] or Jalalabad for treatment.

As with education, the insurgents have differed in their approaches to health services in Achin. ISKP takes the hardest line with regard to government-contracted health services: it opposes the running of any such health service, as well as the administration of any vaccination campaign in areas under its rule. Although the NGO providing government-supported medical services has maintained its impartiality in the ongoing conflict, the ISKP’s ban on public health services is clear; hence, local health providers dare not operate in their areas.

According to some respondents, ISKP, however, supports some health services of its own. One respondent who had seen an ‘ISKP clinic’ after the Afghan government forces recaptured an area described it as “well-equipped,” an observation based on the “kind of medicine and medical equipment they had in their clinic.” ISKP also permits the operation of some private doctors’ offices and pharmacies, all exclusively staffed by male health workers. Presumably, a complete ban on health care would hurt the group, given it wants its own fighters to be treated if sick or hurt. Respondents said the private health personnel cannot say no to ISKP requests for treating their sick and wounded. In one case, one interviewee said ISKP had severely beaten a doctor who had refused to examine and treat an injured ISKP fighter. They also seem to be generally fine with women accessing the existing health services, provided they are accompanied by a male relative or an elderly female relative. As for the treatment of their ‘more important’ sick or injured members, some respondents said ISKP usually takes them to Pakistan’s tribal agencies or elsewhere in Pakistan for treatment.

Similar to the discussion on their education services, the Taleban are no longer providing health services, but had some specific approaches to health in the past when they were largely in control of the district until 2015. In general, they did not directly prevent or interfere in the delivery of health services in Achin, even those funded by the Afghan government. According to several respondents, one reason was that they too needed the services; the Taleban had to get their sick and injured members treated. However, according to one respondent, they made sure that “medical personnel were not in contact with security forces and the intelligence [of the Afghan government],” a similar rule to that established for those working in the district’s education sector. They also appeared to have followed through on these rules, monitoring health personnel for such contacts. The Taleban took their members with more serious injuries or illnesses to Jalalabad or to Pakistan (mainly Peshawar) for treatment.

In order to use the health services, the Taleban were in contact with health workers. In some cases, they would tell the health workers to come to them, bringing with them any available relevant medicine and equipment. In other cases, Taleban members would approach one of the health facilities in person, asking for treatment for their sick and wounded. According to some respondents, such Taleban requests were generally adhered to, given the principles of neutral and impartial healthcare for all. The Taleban were generally respectful of medical personnel. One respondent also said that “priority was given to injured people from Taleban.”

The Taleban also generally allowed women’s use of health services in Achin, provided that patients were accompanied by a male relative or elderly female relative. They were even fine with women being examined by male physicians, given the lack of female doctors in the district.

Similarly, most Taleban insurgents did not prohibit vaccination campaigns in Achin. However, this had to be coordinated in advance with their leaders through the ‘health shuras’ (made up of health workers and local elders). In some areas, though, they created problems for vaccination campaigns even to the extent of banning them altogether. For instance, one respondent said, “When the Taleban were [in our area] three years ago, they blocked polio vaccination and even threatened the vaccinators with death.” Currently, most respondents said vaccination campaigns are carried out normally throughout Achin, apart from in ISKP-held territory.

Electricity, media and telecommunications

Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), the country’s power utility, has so far only supplied electricity in Nangrahar to Jalalabad and its adjacent districts such as Surkhrod and Behsud. Most of this electricity comes from the Naghlu hydropower dam built over the Kabul River upstream in Sarobi. Some also originates from a hydropower dam in Darunta, a village about seven km west of Jalalabad. The supply of electricity, however, has been unstable mainly due to the conflict. Taleban insurgents have targeted transmission towers located between Kabul and Nangrahar through Laghman (for an instance in September 2018, see here).

With the existing electricity grid limited to the provincial centre and its surrounding districts, more remote districts such as Achin are left with no public power supply. Many people have therefore bought solar devices to at least light their homes at night, charge batteries and mobile phones, watch television and listen to the radio. Some wealthier people own and use diesel generators. In some villages, as one respondent said, “People [village residents] get electricity for the entire village from a private [diesel] generator.” In many other villages far from the district centre, much of the population cannot afford to install or maintain either solar or diesel power and so lack regular, stable access to electricity.

In areas under government control and where access to electricity is more common, it is fairly typical for people to have TVs at home. Although there are no local TV stations in Achin, residents told AAN they follow a diverse range of domestic and foreign TV channels because many have both satellite dishes and simple antennas. Popular among male viewers, in general, are Tolo and Ariana TV news programmes including both Afghan and global current affairs as well as Islamic programmes. Young people, both male and female, also watch movies including Bollywood and Hollywood films and follow music and sports programmes, cricket in particular.

Radio is very popular and has become a source of competition between parties to the conflict. As in many other rural areas in Afghanistan, Achin has a high rate of illiteracy, which, together with a scarcity of electricity, makes radio the preferred means of mass communication. The two major insurgent groups have run their own separate, conflicting radio channels (previous AAN analysis here). When they were largely in control of district – before 2015, the Taleban used their De Shariat Ghag (Voice of Sharia) Radio to broadcast articles posted on their website, amongst other programmes. ISKP, however, “outmatched” them through their Khelafat Ghag (Voice of the Caliphate) Radio, an FM radio frequency they captured when they rose to power in Achin in early 2015. Far more professional and sophisticated and far more active, ISKP used their radio station to try to motivate people, especially the youth, to join their jihad. They portrayed their cause as the only legitimate jihad, tried to show their struggle as a global one and tarnished the image of rival jihadi and religious groups, the Taleban in particular. An air raid by Afghan government forces reportedly killed the head of ISKP’s radio service, Sultan Aziz Uzam, and three of his associates in neighbouring Deh Bala district in late December 2018 (as seen on Shamshad TV, Kabul, 27 December 2018, no URL). Both the Taleban and ISKP radio channels, nonetheless, continue to be aired and listened to in Achin, according to some respondents.

According to the respondents, many people also listen to different domestic radio channels based in Jalalabad and Kabul as well as to different foreign radio channels such as the American Radio Azadi (the Afghan branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, RFE/RL) and the British BBC. It seems many people in Achin have followed different radio channels to keep abreast of swiftly evolving political and military developments.

Many people have continued to access TV, radio and social media in areas or periods of both Taleban and ISKP control. In fact, many insurgents themselves watch TV, listen to the radio and use social media. However, they have told local people not to watch certain TV programmes such as Indian and American movies, which they regard as not in keeping with ‘authentic’ Afghan (in the Taleban’s view) or caliphate (from ISKP’s perspective) culture. In some areas or some times during the period 2009-15, the Taleban banned music, movies and smartphones. However, these orders were difficult to enforce as people continued listening to music, watching movies and using smartphones at home. One respondent said, “People secretly listened to music on their mobile phones when Taleban were in control of some areas in Achin.”

This brings us to a discussion of the state of telecommunications in Achin. As of early 2019, there were four active mobile network operators in the district – Roshan, AWCC, Etisalat and MTN. The publicly-run Salaam Network does not operate in the district. One respondent said, “The government did not want to bring Salam in the area and the people did not request [it] either.” The mobile phone companies have hired private guards to ensure the safety of their personnel, antennas and stations. At present, telecommunication services have largely returned to normal. One respondent described the current state of telecommunications in Achin:

We can access mobile networks all the time during the day and the night, but in some areas where antenna towers are far, the signal is weak. There is no restriction for mobile networks and the providers do not switch off the network during the night.

Many Achin inhabitants, particularly the youth, have smartphones, through which they connect to the internet services provided by the above-mentioned four mobile network operators. Some old men continue using basic mobile phones because, as one local elder said, “people of [his] age use simple phones that are easy [for them].” Although internet connectivity is slow and weak across the district, a large number of people, particularly the youth, are constantly communicating and sharing news, information, opinions and pictures on social networking sites, primarily Facebook. The IDLG profile of Achin estimated that 60 per cent of district residents had access to the internet. Inhabitants who have family members and friends in neighbouring Pakistan and further afield – for example, in the Gulf countries, Turkey and even the west – need to be connected to the internet. They keep in contact with their family and friends abroad through a variety of applications including, but not limited to, Viber, Imo, WhatsApp and Facebook.

Nevertheless, recent fighting among the government, ISKP and the Taleban has led to Achin’s inhabitants being without telecommunication services for unspecified periods of time throughout 2015 to 2018. In particular, some telecommunication antennas reportedly belonging to Roshan and AWCC were destroyed in clashes among the warring sides. These antennas have been repaired or replaced, however, and services have largely resumed. It is not clear which party or parties to the conflict were responsible for the destruction of the antennas and other types of infrastructure (eg clinics, schools) in Achin, but the IDLG profile of Achin put the blame on the two insurgent groups. In general, telecommunications are frequently targeted first by warring parties, both government and insurgent groups, because of their power to disseminate propaganda and influence public opinion or forces’ behaviour on the battlefield. However, respondents offered no confirmation on whether the damage in Achin was deliberate or just one more aspect of the general destruction wrought by the fighting.

When the Taleban were the dominant force, Achin residents had to live without mobile phone coverage during the night from about 6 pm to around 6 am the following day in much of the district. According to the IDLG profile of Achin, the Taleban ordered the telecommunication companies to cut phone service during these periods so that “no one [reported] their activity to the government through the mobile phone.” Another respondent said it was not clear whether it was the government or the insurgents who had ordered that telecommunication services be cut off. The telecommunication companies strictly complied with this and other edicts. In one case, one respondent said, “Once a mobile phone company did not pay taxes to Taleban, they destroyed its antenna.”

The Taleban also taxed mobile network operators in Achin. None of the respondents knew by how much. However, all agreed that both the companies and the Taleban negotiated bilaterally for the security and continuation of telecommunication services. The Taleban did not tax the local population for telecommunication services – for example, when buying top-up cards – at least according to those who had experienced the period of Taleban control in the district.

As for the ISKP, it banned mobile phone coverage throughout the day and night for about half a year in 2015 when it came to power in the district, according to some respondents. Currently, while no mobile phone company operates in areas under ISKP control, those areas do receive telecommunication signals. ISKP members as well as others thus have access to services including the internet, which is provided by mobile phone operators. This is seen in the use ISKP makes of telecommunication services. Furthermore, ISKP members are equipped with walkie-talkies for their internal communication.

Other services available

Although Achin is largely neglected compared to the districts around the provincial centre, some development services have been provided by the government’s National Solidarity Programme, non-government organisations (NGOs) and even the Taleban.

Both government and NGO-provided development services tend to involve small-scale rural development, including improving water supplies, providing rudimentary infrastructure and improving local agriculture. Agriculture has been a particular focus of development funds. Both the government and NGOs have assisted some local residents with access to better seeds, greenhouses and cold storage facilities to enhance their agricultural productivity. A major goal has been to support alternative livelihoods to encourage farmers to abandon poppy production. This has largely been in vain, as opium cultivation has resumed its full speed and scale, as explained above. One respondent described the development services offered by the government and NGOs in Achin:

There have been other [development] services such as digging water wells, building minor roads and bridges and agricultural services. Some alternative livelihood and livestock support such as giving dairy cows to widows have also been provided.

Several respondents complained that these small-scale government and NGO development activities had been monopolised by district and village élites who were connected to provincial élites. They were subsequently directed to the benefit of their kinsfolk and local allies. Despite this dissatisfaction, there have been many requests for more development projects. Many respondents said the district was in particular need of development, given the recent, intense fighting. As one respondent said, “Our schools do not have buildings; we want our schools to be reconstructed. Our clinics have been damaged during the fighting; we want them to be reconstructed as well.”

According to most respondents, development services offered by the government and NGOs had to be coordinated with and authorised by the Taleban during its period of control from 2009 to 2015. The Taleban scrutinised those working in the development sector and also taxed these services by demanding and taking what several respondents say the Taleban considered to be ‘their share’. In addition, Taleban insurgents themselves also engaged in and contracted some development work – mostly road-building – in Achin and other districts of Nangrahar. In Khogiani district, for instance, the Taleban built minor roads connecting several villages, although these road improvements were more motivated by tactical requirements for repelling ISKP advances than facilitating rural life (see page 7 of this AREU paper). A similar thing happened in Achin where, according to some interviewees, the Taleban engaged in road-building, in addition to repairing damaged health facilities or improving local irrigation canals. Like road-building, the health facilities were used by the Taleban’s sick and wounded, and the irrigation canals boosted poppy production, which significantly contributed to insurgent finances.

As for ISKP, it has banned any development services offered by the Afghan state or NGOs. Respondents did not know whether ISKP run development services of their own, similar to their health services. It is plausible there are no such services in ISKP-controlled parts of Achin.

Lastly, all parties have engaged in providing rule of law or justice services to some extent. According to some respondents, the three major parties to the conflict have run their own justice systems in the district at different (and sometimes overlapping) periods of time. These respondents said the residents approached a given justice system depending on who ruled the area at the time as this was their only option available, but the general trend was a preference for dealing with local disputes through traditional jirgas (tribal justice system).

According to some respondents, the justice systems of all the three parties to the conflict each had particular problems. The government’s justice system was corrupt, as elsewhere around the country. The Taleban’s justice system was strict and, in the words of one respondent, “forced its decisions on the litigants.” ISKP’s justice system was even stricter and its key feature was, as one respondent said, “to detain and torture people, especially those accused of espionage, in its prisons.” In the midst of the fighting, however, these justice systems were entirely bypassed, evidenced by the many and inherently vindictive summary and extrajudicial killings.

Conclusion

The two insurgent groups – ISKP and the Taleban – have differed in their treatment of public service delivery that is financed and administered by the Afghan government. ISKP has opposed and banned almost all public services, replacing some with services of their own. For instance, while government-run education and health services have been prohibited, ISKP has authorised some private health clinics and madrassas. The only type of service delivery that ISKP has tolerated is the continued operation of mobile phone companies, primarily because they too benefit from these services. They are particularly reliant on the internet and smartphones for recruitment campaigns and propaganda. They have also been running a radio channel of their own. They ban development work carried out by NGOs or the government.

The Taleban clearly differ from ISKP in that, when in charge of Achin, they directly engaged in most service sectors. In education, they played a monitoring role, supervising and controlling school staffing, the school curriculum, day-to-day school management and girls’ education – their four major education-related concerns. In the health sector, although they did not directly interfere, they benefited from government-financed health services for their sick and wounded members. As for telecommunication and development services, the Taleban dictated their terms by enforcing a shutdown of telecommunications at night and by ‘taxing’ mobile phone companies and development projects financed and administered by the Afghan government and NGOs. Like ISKP, the Taleban have been running their own radio channel.

For Achin residents, navigating between the government and Taleban insurgents was far easier than between the government and ISKP rebels. Government and Taleban officials cooperated on many issues in education, health, telecommunications and other areas, albeit more out of necessity than preference. Contact between the government and ISKP, on the other hand, is nearly non-existent in all areas, including over keeping public services running. When all three held significant parts of Achin in the period 2015-18, the result was a weak and scattered form of public service governance with interconnected government and Taleban-controlled public service delivery and an ISKP island with far more limited services.

At present, the Afghan government has returned to being the dominant governance actor with ISKP limited to its mountainous sanctuaries and the Taleban not currently contesting the district in an active way. However, as the history of long-embattled Achin reveals, control of the ‘battlefield’ might well change again and local government with it, leaving the local population with no alternative but to try to adapt to any new holder of power.

Edited by Jelena Bjelica, Erica Gaston, Sari Kouvo and Kate Clark

 

(1) For the purposes of this dispatch, Achin includes both Achin district and Spin Ghar district that some say has been separated from Achin. This is because it seems few people, including government officials, are concerned about this split and use Achin to refer to both parts (see also page 7 of this report).

(2) A Pashto term meaning ‘white mountain,’ the Spin Ghar is part of the Hindu Kush range, which is in turn part of the bigger Himalaya mountain system.

(3) The Shinwari also form most of the population in Achin’s neighbouring districts of Deh Bala (aka Haska Mena), Kot, Shinwar (aka Ghanikhel) and Naziyan, further to the east in Dur Baba district, as well as some areas way up north in Kunar province, especially Shigal district.

(4) According to three local elders who spoke to AAN, major mujahedin figures and factions in the district in the 1990s included (in no specific order):

• Qari Mujahed, Qari Tayyeb and Mamur Muhammad Isa, affiliated with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami (Hekmatyar, a major mujahedin leader, continues to be active in national politics, having recently nominated himself for the upcoming 20 July 2019 presidential elections; previous AAN analysis on him here.)
• Two brothers, Qari Samad and Qari Salam, Haji Abdul Kabir and Mawlawi Sawab Gul, affiliated with Yunus Khales’s Hezb-e Islami (Khales was from Khogiani district in Nangrahar province and broke away from Hekmatyar to form his own tanzim (political-military organisation). He died in 2006 and has been replaced by his son Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed, who later broke away from the Taleban and currently leads his own insurgent group against the Afghan state.)
• Mia Sahbi Juma Khan and Hafiz ul-Haq, affiliated with Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi’s Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami (Muhammadi was another major mujahedin leader who died in 2002.)
• Sahar Nur Kuchi, affiliated with Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf’s Ittihad-e Islami (Sayyaf continues to be active in national politics.)
• Naim Jan and Saif ul-Rahman, affiliated with the late Burhanuddin Rabbani’s Jamiat-e Islami (Rabbani was the president of the mujahedin government in Kabul, and was assassinated in September 2011.)

(5) According to the same three local elders, the Taleban district governors for Achin in the period 1996-2001 were: Mawlawi Ghulam Nabi Hashemi from Sorubi district in Kabul province; Mullah Rafiq, from Ghazni province; Akakhel, a Sufi pir (leader) from Sorubi; and Gul Wali, a kuchi (nomad).

(6) For an interesting discussion on the switch in ideology by some local Taleban from that of their previous, nationally-oriented organisations to the global jihadist vision of the ISKP franchise, see Niamatullah Ibrahimi and Shahram Akbarzadeh (2019) “Intra-Jihadist Conflict and Cooperation: Islamic State – Khorasan Province and the Taliban in Afghanistan,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1-22, pages 9-11.

(7) At present, some of Zaher Qadir’s militias have reportedly fallen within the Ministry of the Interior’s Afghan Local Police (ALP) and some within ‘public uprising’ forces funded by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the country’s intelligence agency. Yet some others might act simply as a wealthy strongman’s private army. In addition to official government resources, some respondents alleged these militias were involved in opium production, processing and trafficking on a massive scale. The behaviour of the militias in general has proved problematic in Achin. An infamous case has been that of Belal Pacha, an ALP commander in Achin, and his men, who were accused of committing a series of crimes such as killing, kidnapping, torturing, beating and dispossessing local residents of their property; Belal was subsequently arrested and jailed (recent AAN reporting here).

(8) The NATO Resolute Support categorises each district into one of five categories: under insurgent control, under insurgent influence, neutral/at risk, under government influence and under government control. The categorisation is based on assessing such issues as who governs, who collects taxes, who controls infrastructure and who controls ‘messaging’ in a district (for further explanation, see page 5 of this report).

(9) According to the respondents, the following are/have been the key governance figures in Achin district. It is not intended to be exhaustive and given frequent fluctuations in political and security dynamics, it may not be current:

Afghan government

• District governor: Ashequllah/Shukrullah Safi, from Kunar province; or Mashuq Sadat, from Kunar province (so no clear district governor)
• District police chief: Haji Nader, Mohmand tribe, from Lal Pur district in Nangrahar province
• District mayor: Nawidullah Shinwar, Alisherkhel subtribe, from Shinwar district in Nangrahar province
• District education director: Haji Taj Muhammad, Alisherkhel subtribe, from Pekha Valley in Achin
• District public health director: Abdul Wahid, from Shinwar district in Nangrahar province, assisted by Aman Gul, head of clinics; or Ezzat Shah Samim (so no clear district public health director)
• ‘Public uprising’ commanders: Haji Muawen, Malek Ehsan, Haji Qalam and Malek Qais

ISKP

• District governor: Abu Khaled, from Achin
• Military commander: Qari Babrak, from Nangrahar, previously a local Taleban commander
• Other major district-level figures: Mufti Abdullah, from Pakistan’s Orakzai Agency; Mullah Lal Muhammad, aka Osama, from Mamand Valley in Achin, who belongs to the Haidarkhel subdivision in the Sepai subtribe

Taleban (before ISKP took control of most of Achin in 2015, district Taleban figures reportedly kept changing and had no clear hierarchy)

• District governors: Mawlawi Aminullah, from Khugiani district in Nangrahar province, followed by Gul Basar who is reportedly currently a local mosque leader in Achin
• Military commander or police chief: Mullah Tor, from Kot district in Nangrahar province
• Education director: Mawlawi Liaqat, from Shinwar district

(10) This clearly contradicts President Ghani’s recent declaration of victory against ISKP in a visit to neighbouring Shinwar district in mid-February 2019. As part of reactions to Ghani’s statement, the daily newspaper Etilaat Roz (11 February 2019), for instance, called it “premature” and “false.”

(11) To make sure the money was not lost in the process, education authorities required the tahwildars/motameds to deposit a guarantee such as their qabalas (land titles) worth more than the value of the total salaries of school staff. To make it worthwhile for the tahwildars/motameds, they were paid a certain interest for their deposit and work (about Afs 30-40 [approximately USD 0.40-0.60] per school staff salary). Nevertheless, this payment mechanism has been fraught with abuse, particularly given the existence of ghost teachers and schools in the district, as elsewhere across the country.

(12) It has only been a couple of years that Achin has had a Comprehensive Health Centre after its foundations were laid down in October 2016 as part of a larger USD 7.5 million package of health projects for Nangrahar province.

AAN wishes a happy new year and joyful Nawruz to all its readers. Afghans and many others across the region will be celebrating the first day of 1398, also the first day of spring, with family visits, special food and picnics. In Kabul, some will go to the Sakhi Shrine, while many others will congregate in Mazar-e Sharif at the shrine there. In both places, there is a Jahenda Bala (Raising of the Banner) ceremony on Nawruz when a banner attributed to Hazrat Ali is raised. In Mazar also, there is the special 40-day Mela-ye Gul-e Surkh (Red Flower Feast) celebration of wild tulips. Here, at AAN, we have been thinking about our best and worst experiences of Nawruz. Here, we share some stories from colleagues and friends; mainly, people remembered the good years.

Shopping for new clothes ahead of Nawruz, Kot-e Sangi, Kabul (Photo: Ali Sina Sorush, 19 March 2019)

Shazia

The best Nawruz in my life was the one when I was ten years old. It was the first time my father took me and my brother to the Sakhi Shrine in Kart-e Sakhi, Kabul. I saw many small girls and boys who were riding on wooden horses and a Ferris wheel. My father bought me a tambourine and I was so happy. I played my tambourine from Kart-e Sakhi all the way home. I had a lot of fun. Nawruz Mubarak.

Kate 

It wasn’t my best or my worst Nawruz, but the New Year of 1380 (2001) was revelatory. I had been expelled from Kabul by the Taleban, but was still working as the BBC’s Afghanistan correspondent out of Islamabad. By chance, I encountered a host of Afghan families celebrating Nawruz in one of the public parks. My goodness, I thought, so this is what ‘normal’ Afghan culture can be like without all the Taleban restrictions and bans: families picnicking, enjoying the sun and the flowers, men and women sitting together, children playing, lots of food, all relaxed and, most amazingly for me, having fun. Nawruz Mubarak.

Najib

As far as I know, every Nawruz has been the best for me because it’s one of the times in the year when all family members, my brothers and sisters and their children, come to my home. That’s even though I’m not the oldest child. It’s because my parents live with me. We all sit in one room, having our lunch and dinner together. So Nawruz is a time of getting together, having fun and enjoying life all together. Nawruz Mubarak.

Nahid

I have one experience of Nawruz that was mixed. It was 2002 and I had gone to Sakhi Shrine to celebrate Nawruz. I saw a man selling balloons of all colours and thought that all his wealth was invested in those balloons, which he was hoping to sell. He was standing a little far from me, but to my surprise no one was buying from him. And then suddenly, some of his balloonsjust flew up high into the air and he only had a few left. That man was so sad and looked so disappointed. So, in order to make him a bit happier, I bought the rest of his balloons for my nephews. That year, Nawruz was a very good time for me as security was really good compared to previous years when the Taleban were in power and we could not celebrate the festival. Happy New Year!

Zia 

My best Nawruz was in 2003 (1382) when I’d just come from Iran and wasn’t very aware of the traditions in Afghanistan. A few days before, I was happily receiving good wishes from many people and getting ready for the new year. But every day, I saw propaganda against Nawruz in social media and  heard the same from the loudspeakers in the mosques. They were saying that celebrating Nawruz – haft mewa (seven fruits) and wearing new clothes, as well as visiting family and relatives, was haram (unlawful). It was very painful for me because I’d never encountered or faced such issues before. But now I don’t care. I just celebrate Nawruz with my family, friends and relatives. Nawruz Mubarak!

Reza 

Nawruz in 1393 (2014) was for me initially horrible but turned to joy. I’d left my family in Herat to go to Kabul and then on to Mazar, in both places trying to get a Tajikistan visa. Disappointingly, I didn’t get one in either city! I’d planned to attend a research exchange meeting in Khujand University in Tajikistan, as well as get a feel of Nawruz there. However, I was stuck in Mazar. But that didn’t turn out to be too badly. I soon discovered a huge crowd of relatives and some friends, chatting, having fun and eating, especially haft miwa, and exploring, for the first time, that celebratory city and its impressive mila-ye gul-e surkh when tulip flowers, especially the red ones, grow in the plains and over the hills around the city. Wishing you a happy Nawruz!

Muzhary

We can’t yet say how the new year will start, but I hope 1398 will be recorded as the year of enduring peace in Afghanistan. In my area, there has been less fighting recently – apart from night raids by government and United States forces. I think this shows that peace is coming to Afghanistan after four decades of war. Leaders meeting to discuss peace also gives me hope that we’ll have a happier year in 1398. I hope we see a peaceful Afghanistan that will allow all Afghans to live without war and threats, when we receive no news about attacks to spoil our joy, happiness and brotherhood. 

AAN dispatches about Nawruz from earlier years include our look at the special New Year foods, at poetry, celebrating Nawruz and springtime and the debate among religious conservatives over whether Muslims should celebrate this holiday.

With Muhammad Sharif Fayez, another member of the first post-Taleban Afghan cabinet has passed away. In this cabinet, Fayez served as Minister of Higher Education from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, he became the founding president of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), which he chaired until 2006. As president emeritus until his passing, he continued trying to influence higher education policies while improving the security and autonomy of the AUAF. Professor emeritus Michael Daxner (*), who worked as an adviser to Minister Fayez, looks back at his life, notably at his efforts to create a new higher education system in Afghanistan.

Muhammad Sharif Fayez, who passed away on 8 February 2019, was a ‘Petersberg Minister’: at the 2001 Afghanistan conference on the Petersberg near Bonn, he was nominated as a member of the first Afghan cabinet following the Taleban’s rule, in then-chairman Hamed Karzai’s Interim Administration. He was subsequently appointed Minister of Higher Education, a post he held until 2004. 

Fayez was also a poet and a professor of literature, focusing on comparative literature. He held a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Colorado and a PhD from the University of Arizona in American Literature. But it was Persian poetry that he knew better than almost anyone. Before returning to his country in early 2002, he was a refugee in the United States, where his family still lives. Fayez acquired US citizenship and did not give it up, which led to his dismissal in 2004. Born in Herat in 1946, he was a political intellectual and a public figure. To me, he was a friend. As a Herati, he was as connected as any repatriate from exile could be. Among his friends were many professors from the University of Herat, as well as judges, intellectuals, and also Ismail Khan, then an influential person in the erstwhile unstable system of what would become the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Later on, Fayez became distantly related to Khan by marriage.

I first met Fayez upon my return from a UN assignment in Kosovo, having taken up another international position in higher education in a conflict-torn country. He was leading a delegation of heads of Afghan universities who had come to Germany in 2003 by invitation of the German Academic Exchange Service. They asked me to accompany the group, which led to my next engagement, in Afghanistan. At the time of our encounter, the future of higher education in Afghanistan, as well as the public’s trust in President Karzai and hope in general for the country opening up were still so strong, that he easily convinced me and many of his university colleagues to immediately start collaborating and planning for the reconstruction of Afghan academia. 

 Rebuilding a higher education system

As minister, Fayez had to start everything at the same time. His ministry initially had a ridiculously low budget of 28 million USD, 67 per cent of which was earmarked for maintaining student dormitories. Some universities not deserving of the title were only established in an attempt to build up their region’s reputation. (The faculty of Medicine at Gulbahar University, in Parwan province, for example, consisted of one and a half rooms and only ‘imported’ staff. Twice a week, docents arrived  — mainly from Kabul — to hold lectures.) Each and every decision affecting universities’ internal procedures had to be decided by the ministry, and politics permeated each attempt to change or reform an issue within its authority. A student’s certificate had to get through 27 in-house procedures before being signed by the minister himself (not even by one of his deputies). The kankur, the centralised entry examination, consumed much energy and opened many doors to corruption, parent interventions and the incorrect allocation of students to the various faculties (more on this by AAN here).

It took a few months before I found myself in the room next to Minister Fayez’s office in Kabul. As his international advisor, a period of intense collaboration began. We rarely left the office and there were 25 hours in each day. Each visit to a campus was an event, not only for the students and faculty, but for Fayez himself: during the ‘golden hour’ immediately after the overthrow of the Taleban, almost no other place in Afghanistan longed so much for innovation and opening. When the Afghan delegation led by Fayez visited Germany, no one sensed that this golden hour might one day end, sooner than even experts would have expected. (This short period will still need a thorough historical and political review).

Much of what Fayez initiated was supposed to widen the horizons for education reforms and effective changes in the university system. However, these have sadly never been implemented. They included quick impact rebuilding of academic hardware, such as buildings, campuses, lecture rooms and basic equipment. This was a daily battle for resources: higher education was not a priority for either the US or EU governments. We tried to reduce the social paternalistic impact of supporting students from the upper and upper-middle classes and to oppose interventions by ‘well-meaning’ parents to place their kin in the right campus and to survive the kankur. At the time, the system favoured those students, to Fayez’s dismay.

There was a dire need for legislation and a demand for democracy and autonomy within academia. This included representative participation (particularly by students) within academic bodies, such as the universities’ senate and other committees, transparent hiring procedures for staff and a stronger position for chancellors and academic committees. Meanwhile, the government’s direct influence, especially that of the MoHE, was to be reduced mainly to financial and procedural affairs. There was a need for de-bureaucratisation of the internal procedures at universities and a correction of their public image. Children belonging to former élites, including among refugees, were studying in better universities in Iran or in the West, sometimes in Pakistan and India (and in the Soviet Union before that, although those that did often came from different social backgrounds). After 2001, this needed to change. The idea was that a domestic degree would increase a graduate’s chances of finding work within Afghanistan – although this labour market was also being subjected to heavy restructuring. The notion that a degree in Engineering, Medicine or Law would secure their child a job in the public service ceased to be reliable. Decades of war had also destroyed a homogeneous reproduction of disciplinary professionals – singular exceptions were returnees from academic exile (but they did not have trained, loyal, goodassistants or associated professors).

Another bone of contention was teacher training. The responsibility for this was divided between Fayez’s ministry and the Ministry of Education (MoE), leading to turf wars.School teachers and teacher trainers form one of the most numerous segments of the workforce, with a high share in the national budget and a substantial impact on the power of the minister (Yunus Qanuni at the time). The Ministry of Education also received a lot of funding for new schools at that time. The Ministry of Higher Education tried to secure a stronger hold on this workforce by aiming to give trainers a university training and higher degrees, while the MoE insisted on the establishment of training institutions under its supervision: Teacher Training Centres (dar ul-ma’alemin). Fayez started to develop a plan for an integrated teacher training concept, which would settle the conflict nationwide, but did not succeed. 

Most universities were in very bad shape. Campus buildings and installations were in a terrible state and things did not improve until 2004. Only ‘islands’ in the university landscape that received private investment, such as the economic sciences at Kabul University and its former medical faculty, now independent as the Kabul Medical University under Cheragh Ali Cheragh, were exceptions. Generally, most campus facilities were below standard, except for the offices of higher-ranking professors and administrators (which are non-functional structures and which Ashraf Ghani, as Chancellor of Kabul University, tried in vain to reform). Generally, the old universities that had previously been under Soviet influence, such as Mazar-e Sharif, Kabul’s Polytechnic Institute and Herat University were in relatively better shape. 

While Fayez was minister, he did not support the new private higher education institutions that started competing with the national state universities, mainly because he thought their academic level and performance were lower than those in public universities. There were only two private universities then meeting the requirement set by the MoHE, but many more were accredited through political pressure from interested groups, mainly investors. The deeper reason for him was a rather simple one: private universities host inexpensive disciplines such as Law and MBAs, while expensive subjects like Physics, Biology and Medicine remain with the state. 

Fayez regarded the US system as a model but was more inclined towards the Bologna process in Europe, a transnational restructuring of the basic curricula towards Bachelors and Masters degrees. Later, at AUAF, he ‘Americanised’, focusing on tuition fees-based BA training, although general education was to be attained at classical universities through MAs and doctorates. As for state-run universities, he was against tuition fees in education, as was the majority in the Wolesi Jirga, although there were also a few pro-tuition advocates. Fayez wanted many more students to be recruited from poor families. 

Given resistance from various sides, together we started a number of reforms that would fly under the radar. New legislation and the hope for international recognition required a Rectors’ Conference and a team of experienced advisors. Membership in rectors’ associations and access to their related networks would open doors to regional politics. Fayez advocated for the Afghan Rectors’ Conference, and it was established. The text of the new higher education law – written by a team of Afghan and German advisers – was translated by Fayez himself, only to be turned down by Karzai. The president was afraid it might hamper his electoral campaign. He was also afraid of parliamentary opposition against cuts in the social support of privileged male students, many of whom came from the constituencies of his adversaries in parliament; of the autonomy of the universities and of democratic participation of non-professors in their administration. This, was the fear, would weaken the central government’s authority and might lead to a form of “federalism” that would diversify a ‘united national system.’ 

Fayez was not a man of big gestures. He did not talk much about his ability to act emphatically, about his resilience under duress, about his enemies. But one could read from his posture and his eyes what his concerns were. He saved the faculty from being either dismissed or replaced by those favoured by patronage. His was a permanent battle against two adversaries: those who wanted to retain their corrupt and incompetent academic staff and the pressure from Ghani – then finance minister; and others attempting to radically reduce the personnel in higher education. Fayez was in favour of slow changes rather than creating more unemployment. At the same time, he was adamant about firing staff unable to perform their academic duties, such as English teachers with no English proficiency or biologists with textbooks from the 1960s. 

Forced resignation and change to AUAF

In 2004 the higher education law was still pending, but the pressure on Fayez to step down was mounting, his double citizenship being cited as a political pretext, which he did not want to give up. Fayez was denounced as being too ‘secular’. At this point, he lost confidence in the ability of the Afghan state to reform its higher education system under the prevailing circumstances. After Fayez’s forced resignation, the new minister, Amir Shah Hasanyar, demolished almost everything that Fayez had initiated. The roll-back had begun…

Fayez then became the founding president of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). What then had been a barren piece of land near the Darulaman ‘palace’ is today a modern campus, something between a good community college and a prestigious college of applied sciences. It has all the prospects of becoming a full university one day. AUAF initially became a symbol of what you can successfully do in Afghanistan, no matter how many obstacles. It was typical of Fayez’ ambiguity that he was grateful to receive seed money from the US Congress, while increasingly orienting the new university towards Europe and the Bologna-Process. On the other hand, he realized quite early on that he would need far more money, beyond the donations to the AUAF, in order to hire adequate faculty staff and modernise the campus. This could be only done through tuition fees. Thus, he attracted the children of the emerging middle classes and some from the upper classes. In order to fulfil his wish to support less affluent students, AUAF developed a remarkable system of grants and stipends, though they were still too small to meet his aspirations.

Until 2015, I visited Fayez and his campus regularly. I was impressed by the progress his college made, and I understood his impatience regarding the pace of progress and the impediments imposed by the government. And, of course, he was aware of the tensions between wanting to give students from disadvantaged families access to higher education and the need for AUAF’s tuition fees. 

Beyond campus

Back in 2004 and 2005 I got to know another side of Fayez, who was both diligent and shy when it came to his scholarship, his readings, his philosophy and his political ideas. At home, he was not a member of the cabinet. On occasional visits from Maryland in the US, he and his wife were splendid hosts, and his capacity for irony was as remarkable as his taste. When he was alone, as he was most of the time, he was also a good host but then his sense of irony gave way to a sarcastic realism. Once, he said that he had either come too late or too early. When he was no longer in the ministry, he introduced me to the structures and mysteries of Persian poetry, his analyses of the ruling élites, of patronage in power and subtexts of the political discourse, all of which were elements for an advanced primer for understanding this country. His judgment of politicians and prominent protagonists of governance in transition resonates even today. I never met a person who was as close to my professional life in a foreign country and who provided me with such an in-depth understanding of Afghanistan.

Fayez was also well read on the Western reception of Persian literature. When he received his honorary doctorate from Oldenburg University in 2006, he cited the poet and scholar Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866), translator and editor of Farsi poetry and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as an expert on oriental culture, as well as the more contemporary Annemarie Schimmel, in his acceptance speech. He referred to Goethe, Hegel and Hermann Hesse as mystical minds of the West.This demonstrated another side of this political person who, in his heart, was a teacher. Even in this speech he could not contain himself from tutoring the audience – which was well received. 

In the same speech, no longer as a high representative of a state willing to reform its structures, he showed himself still full of structural optimism. But his was a programme for a higher education system in a civilised and developing society that would need an educated class instead of having to create one. 

Had he come too early or too late? Fayez was an ambiguous personality: on the one hand, he was a traditional, if democratic, representative of the humanities in the classical university; on the other, he was a “Western” higher education reformer. As a minister, Sharif Fayez tried to get it all done at once, and he would have succeeded had the ruling élites allowed it. As founder of the AUAF, he created a remarkable institution of higher education. And he succeeded in slowly mixing faculties imported from other countries with Afghan lecturers. As a political peer, he was the strongest advocate for academic freedom and democratic infra-structure of higher education. His plans for community colleges were exceptional, but he had neither sufficient time nor opportunities to establish such institutions. Beyond all other merits, he was a humanist and a person for whom politics were inseparably linked to culture. 

I shall miss him, we will miss him. I know that many well-educated Afghans miss him, among them many former students under his tutelage. The vigor of his tenure has gone. For now.   

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

(*) Michael Daxner is a retired university chancellor and professor of sociology and conflict research in Germany. He worked in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 as an International Advisor for Minister Fayez, and afterwards as a conflict researcher and consultant for the development and civil society until 2015. During this time he cooperated with the MoHE and, among others, with UNAMA, UNHCR and UNICEF. He is also a researcher of the Afghan diaspora communities in Western European countries and North America.

With the Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue, a new museum dedicated to the victims of the Afghan wars of the last four decades and their families has opened in Kabul in February this year. It was initially supposed to be housed in the capital’s landmark Behzad cinema but now is confined to a provisional venue. In a follow-up to AAN’s first report on the museum (“Peace in The Air, But Where Is Justice? Efforts to get transitional justice on the table”) that looked at the absence of the subject of justice from the current effort to find a peace deal for Afghanistan, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks at how internal politicking and lack of international support had the museum ending up in a basement in this reportage. (*)

“This is my father. I was about six months old when they took him away.” Abbas Ahmadzai is a bulky Pashtun of forty years from Logar province with a short stubbly beard. He points to an old portrait photograph that is printed on a board in Kabul’s museum for the victims of Afghanistan’s wars over the past forty years, which opened on 14 February this year. 

Ahmadzai does not know why the intelligence service of the communist regime (1) that had come to power about a year earlier, in April 1978, decided to arrest not only his father Zarkhan but also his uncle Gulab. Did they speak derisively about the new regime, or had they been too religious for the fiercely atheist regime? There were many reasons at that time for the regime to declare someone enemy of the state, as it soon provoked armed, though initially mostly spontaneous, resistance and saw enemies everywhere.

“My father was a nurse, my uncle a simple farmer. And of my uncle there is even not a photo anymore,” he says and starts crying. “For a long time, we did not know what happened to them. Only after 35 years we learned they were killed.”

The memory box for Zarkhan and Gulab Ahmadzai at the AHRDO war victims museum in Kabul. Photo: Hadi Morawej (AHRDO).

Both names were on a list the general prosecutor of the Netherlands had received during the course of an investigation against an Afghan man who had received asylum there; later, other Afghans recognised him as the head of the intelligence service’s interrogation department (AAN reporting here). (The man died two weeks before his planned arrest.) The list had the names of 4,758 people arrested in 1978 and 1979. Next to the names were their professions, places of birth and the “crimes” the government accused them of. All were enemies of the state, divided into categories: “rebel,” “Muslim Brother,” “Maoist,” “Royalist,” follower of deposed and killed President Daud or of Sufi leader Sebghatullah Mujaddedi (AAN obituary here), who had just declared jihad against the government, or “counter revolutionary,” for members of a rival faction of the ruling party, the radical leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The list confirmed the deaths of the people mentioned on it. Now it has been turned into a frieze that snakes along the walls of the museum, and Abbas Ahmadzai was one of the dependents of the war victims who had been invited to its opening. 

In front of the tableaus summarising the stories of victims and their surviving family members, Nik Mohammed Sharif is sitting at a rough wooden table. There are rusty chains used in Kabul’s notorious Pul-e Charkhi prison. Sharif who is from Khewa in eastern Afghanistan and is called “Doctor” by everyone because he had initially studied medicine before becoming a human rights activists, is reading aloud the narrative of his incarceration and first interrogation from a few handwritten pages. “First they took my oldest brother Dawood. Then me and the other brothers. First they beat me with a cable.” Suddenly, Nik Mohammad Sharif jump up, grabs a piece of cable that is thicker than a finger,  and hits the table with it. The smash makes people standing around cringe. Some audibly moan. “‘Tell us names!’ I did not say anything. Then they fixed electrodes on me. The torture went on for hours…” They were twelve brothers, Nik Mohammed Sharif says, enough for a football team, which they indeed were. A display cases shows a blurred coloured photo from 1977: some of the Baradaran, “the brothers,” as the team was known, in their green-white striped jerseys, all with big jet-black hair and most of them with moustaches. “Six of us did not survive,” says Sharif.

Behind a divider, the exhibition turns to the time of the mujahedin rule and their factional wars, between 1992 and 1996. During that time, Afghanistan’s cities were destroyed, those that had survived the Soviet occupation relatively unharmed. This was particularly the case in Kabul. Of the part of the city in which the museum now found its domicile, Karta-ye Chahar, only ruins were left when the Taleban took over in 1996. The streets were lined with charred and chopped off tree trunks, dirty children were playing on the rubble, and those families that had not fled were living in basements.

In the third part of the exhibition, reflecting the time of the Taleban regime (1996–2001 in Kabul, though differing in other parts of the country) and the period after its demise, there is a large glass vitrine filled with colourful but torn and charred clothes and shoes. They belonged to the victims of the 23 July 2016 terrorist attack against a mainly Hazara demonstration for better electricity supply to their area of origin, the Hazarajat in central Afghanistan. It reminds one vividly of an installation in Berlin’s Jewish Museum, a memorial for the holocaust of the European Jews: a pile of shoes of Jewish children sent into the gas chambers in the Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

The July 2016 attack occurred not far from where the museum now is; 80 people died and more than 200 were in the first big attack the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (Daesh) took responsibility for. When everyone had taken seats in the museum’s conference room after the opening tour of the exhibits, a young man got up and told about his fiancée, Nafisa Bahar, who was killed that day. He only was able to identify her by the engagement ring he had given her six months earlier. It was found on her hand that had been severed from her body by the explosion.

Hadi Marifat was also among the demonstrators that day but remained unharmed physically. The sympathetic man with his wavy long black hair is one of the creators of the museum. Still a teenager when the Taleban were toppled, he engaged in activities for human rights and democracy in Afghanistan. This is also the name of his organisation: Afghanistan Organisation for Human Rights and Democracy (AHRDO). Marifat and his AHRDO colleagues had worked on the museum project, officially the Afghanistan Centre for Memory and Dialogue (ACMD), for eight years. Financed by the Open Society Foundation and the German Bosch Foundation, the team interviewed hundreds of family members of victims of the atrocities committed under the PDPA, mujahedin and Taleban regimes and of the on-going post-2001 war. Then family members were asked to donate something the killed had owned or would have loved. These were stored in so-called memory boxes. Over 300 items were donated over the years. Abbas Ahmadsai had brought a simple brown shalwar kamis his father once had worn. 

Outwardly, this Kabul venue of memory for Afghan war victims cannot compete with the large, architectonically superb museum in Berlin. In addition, it is located in the basement of a two-story building in Kabul’s west. No signboard points it out, and before entering one is searched by an armed guard. Furthermore, the museum is a provisional arrangement in a rented house. As a matter of fact, a permanent building for the museum, and an outstanding one, had already been designated: the former Behzad cinema in Chendawol in the centre of Old Kabul. Inactive and dilapidated as a result of the wars, and later a victim of the influx of mobile phones, laptops and other film-viewing gadgets, it was not only a key cultural centre of pre-war Kabul but was also architectonically rare, one of once four building countrywide in what Mustafa Nouri of Aga Khan Development Network in Kabul calls the “Italian modernist style.”

Kabul’s shahrwali – the mayor’s office – had already assigned the building for the project, Marifat told AAN. Only the signature of then President Hamed Karzai was missing, and he refused it. Karzai did not want to enrage the warlords associated with his government, who were imposed on him by the US government in the first years after its military anti-Taleban intervention in which those strongmen had been the local allies. They refuse to this day to admit that they also committed human rights abuses and war crimes during their fight against the Soviet occupation and during the subsequent factional wars and do not allow any grain of dust to smudge the self-styled immaculate picture of their resistance struggle. Ismail Khan, the former regional strongman of Herat, had told him personally that he had urged Karzai not to allow the museum to be established, Marifat says. 

That it was not beyond use was shown in 2012 when the cinema became the venue for a performance that was part of a worldwide leading art exhibition, the Kassel (Germany) Documenta 13, which included art projects featuring Afghanistan (see AAN guest dispatch here; and a photo here). 

Despite these odds, the exhibits in the provisional Kabul museums and dialogue centre emanate the same strong message as the museum in Berlin or Tuol Sleng, the memorial for the millions slain by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

A jihad and a war victims museum in Herat

AHRDO’s museum in Kabul is neither the only nor the first of its kind, aiming at memorialising the loss of life and destruction over four decades of war. A stark contrast, both aesthetically and conceptionally, is the Manzar-e Jihad in Herat, sponsored by Ismail Khan, provincial governor of Herat (1992–95 and 2001–04). Located in Bagh-e Mellat (Garden of the Nation), it was erected on a site where, according to the Afghanistan Justice Project, a mass grave from the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan’s regime’s first period (1978-79) has been found.

Another form of public memorialisation: picture of late Ahmad Shah Massud on a rickshaw in Herat (2019). Photos: Thomas Ruttig

Overlooking the city from a hill, the museum is a polygonal structure; its outer marble walls are adorned with thousands of names of commanders, mujahedin and civilians killed in the jihad – the fight against the Soviets between 1979 and 1989. It resembles a place of worship, and indeed visitors must wear plastic covers over their shoes, almost as in a mosque.

The names are not only from Herat or wider western Afghanistan, of which the city is the regional centre the guide – a serene young man with sharp facial features and a neatly trimmed short beard wearing camouflage uniform – explains. During the whole tour, he does not smile once or lay down his Kalashnikov rifle. “No, I was not in the jihad,” he says. “I was young then.”

The memorial is embedded in a park with almond trees and rose bushes; on this grey February afternoon, it is too early to for them to bloom. There, a colleague of the guide, in the same style of outfit and armed as well, is clipping the roses for their spring growth. Between the greenery, weapons are on display, from old-fashioned heavy machine guns and recoilless guns to a Soviet attack helicopter complete with large-calibre rotating machine cannons under its wings and a whole MIG fighter plane. The only civilian visible is the ticket seller, an old man in a skull cap who slowly shuffles to his booth upon our arrival.

The military outlook of the place continues inside. There, a large collection of weapons, grenades and mines used both by the attackers and the attacked (and somewhat unrelated, some from earlier wars, against the British) fill vitrine after vitrine. Then, the exhibition turns into a large gallery of honour for those who sacrificed their lives to drive out the Soviet occupiers. The largest portraits, all painted, are of famous commanders, from Ustad Zabihullah, a former school teacher who was Atta Muhammad’s predecessor as head Jamiat leader in Balkh province, to Abdul Haq who, a few months before 9/11 and the US-led intervention, went into Taleban-ruled Afghanistan to incite an uprising and was caught and hanged. Also, portraits of ex-President Hamed Karzai’s father Abdul Ahad, assassinated by the Taleban in Pakistan in 1999, and Ismail Khan’s son Mir Wais Sediq are on display, the latter although he was killed only in 2004 in fighting between Ismail Khan loyalists and pro-Karzai groups after his father’s removal from Herat. These are followed by a large collection of photos of different shapes and sizes of foot soldiers and civilians. They are not called victims but shahidan (martyrs).

Finally, a spiral staircase leads to the highlight of the show, a diorama depicting scenes from the war of resistance and atrocities committed by the Soviets and the Khalqis. In one scene what the museum’s organisers have called “enlightened Muslims” are massacred on a site named Bagh-e Faramuz Khan. and thrown in a mass grave. Translating as Faramuz Khan’s Garden, the original site at the western edges of Herat city had been added to a military installation by an earlier government and turned by the Khalqi regime into a notorious interrogation centre. “From there, many people did not return” according to Abdul Qader Rahimi, regional director for western Afghanistan of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Other scenes show the March 1979 Herat uprising against the Khalqi government, rural women helping the fighters with hiding weapons and, finally, a withdrawing column of the Soviet army. No word can be found about the factional wars that followed the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the Najibullah government three days later in which the mujahedin, in the eyes of many Afghans, lost their resistance aura.

The exhibition has a strong taste of personality cult. It is not only sponsored by but is also centred around the person of Ismail Khan, who styled himself as the amir – resistance leader – of western Afghanistan during and after the jihad. He also claims to have led the 1979 Herat uprising during which, being a captain in the government army (hence his original title Turan Ismail), he switched to the mujahedin. Research shows, however, that most of the uprising was spontaneous and there was not a single supreme leader. A large installation of wax figures in the museum shows him standing up alone among the other mujahedin leaders cowering next to him and receiving his guidance. 

Ismail Khan’s jihad museum is part of the officially permitted memorialisation of the jihad. Others memorials include the tombs of Ahmad Shah Massud in his native Panjshir Valley or the central chowks (junctions) in Kabul named after him, that of Abdul Haq (who also has a memorial in Logar where he was captured) and of Abdul Ali Mazari. In Kabul, there is a large mine and weapons museum established by mine-clearing NGOs. Smaller memorials dot the countryside all over Afghanistan, such as the simple metal plaques for Mawlawi Nasrullah Mansur in Paktia (allegedly killed by Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami) or the many destroyed Soviet tanks along rural roadsides, now turned into children’s playgrounds or sometimes used more practically. For many years, an entire pile of tanks and armoured personnel carriers served as a bridgehead for a destroyed river crossing in Jabl al-Seraj, north of Kabul.

Memorial for mujahedin leaders Mawlawi Nasrullah Mansur in Paktia, assassinated in Zurmat (Paktia) in inter-factional fighting in 1993. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

Those memorials that do not glorify just one party – and ignore their victims – have it much more difficult. Hence the long struggle to establish the Kabul ACMD which, almost symbolically, is housed hidden in a basement. Or Herat’s second memorial, a little museum in the lobby of the city’s Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission office. It also has a photo gallery and exhibits, like a Soviet field telephone used by the Khalqi intelligence to torture prisoners, as AIHRC regional director Abdul Qader Rahimi explains. It also contains a large collection of often-unique printed material, from Soviet propaganda posters to mujahedin publications that still await systematic scrutiny. In any country, it would attract researchers but, as Rahimi says, his organisation lacks funding to support this or a better display. This should have been part of the Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan Action Plan, a three-year action plan focused on transitional justice that expired before most of its actions could be implemented, another failure of the ruling elites and donor countries to honour all victims of Afghanistan’s wars of the last five decades.

The international community’s absence

At the opening of AHRDO’s war victims museum in Kabul. Photo: Hadi Morawej (AHRDO).

Apart from the UN, no diplomats attended the museum’s opening. “We invited all the European embassies and those of Japan and South Korea,” Marifat said with a little smile. “Only the Danes and the British apologised.” The museum might be outside the limited sphere in which diplomats are allowed to travel in Kabul. But their absence also reflects that, despite some support particularly immediately after the Taleban regime had been ousted, transitional justice was too often too easily pushed into the background by political considerations. Many Afghans still remember UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s dictum that one could either have peace or justice, and diplomats’ warnings to “not rock the boat” in which Karzai and the warlords sat in a less-than-stable coalition. This allowed members of the Afghan parliament – from the few former leftists to the many Islamic conservatives and Islamists – to award themselves an amnesty for war crimes and human rights violation in 2008. The National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law – better known as the ‘amnesty law’ – came into force two years later(AAN analysis here). As a result, after a vehement start, with the 2005 “A Call for Justice” report of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in which thousands of Afghan respondents rejected blanket impunity, the ambitious Transitional Justice Action Plan faded into oblivion and remained largely unimplemented. Even now, it is difficult to publicly commemorate war victims who were not killed by Afghan and Soviet communists. AIHRC head Sima Samar, who is attending the opening and has supported the project, fears that, again, human rights might be relegated to backstage during the on-going US-Taleban talks to end the Afghan war.

When UNAMA’s human rights chief Richard Bennett, a New Zealander, remarks during his speech, which so far has sounded a bit too official, that there is an empty display box at the end of the tour through the museum, Samar smiles. “Someone noticed,” she seems to think. Bennett comments that he hopes the box will remain empty. But the changes his wish may come true are small: Outside the memorial the war is ongoing. It is now creating more victims – civilians and military – than any other war worldwide.

Edited by Ehsan Qaane, Kate Clark and Sari Kouvo.

(*) This reportage appeared first in German in Tageszeitung (Berlin) on 25 February 2019 under the title “Kriegsmuseum in Afghanistan eröffnet: Die Vitrinen von Kabul,” link here. This version has been slightly edited and the part about Herat been added.

(1) Abbas Ahmadzai called the intelligence service “KhAD” (Khedamat-e Ettela’at-e Daulati, State Information Service), a name that has become generic for the intelligence services of subsequent Afghan governments. Even currently, the post-2001 National Directorate for Security (NDS) is often referred to colloquially as “KhAD.” Actually, the intelligence service at the time of his father’s and uncle’s ‘disappearing’ was called AGSA (De Afghanistan de Gato Satunki Edara, the Administration for the Protection of the Interests of Afghanistan).

Across Afghanistan, women are not addressed or referred to by their names in public. Even on wedding invitations and tombstones, they are typically referred to as the daughter, wife or mother of their father, husband or eldest son. Many Afghans believe naming a woman in public dishonours her. Others are arguing that a tradition that denies women their individual identity is an anachronism. To mark International Women’s Day, AAN’s Rohullah Sorush (with input from Sari Kouvo, Kate Clark and Said Reza Kazemi) has taken a look at the ways in which girls and women are referred to in Afghanistan, the more respectful, and more derogatory ways that they go unnamed and asks why women’s names are still such a sensitive issue and how that may be changing. 

In 2017, Dokhtaran-e Rabia, Daughters of Rabia, a collective of women activists and writers named as followers of Afghanistan’s most famous female poet (1) – ran a hashtag #WhereIsMyName campaign on social media. They wanted to provoke and encourage girls and women to fight for their individual identities and their right to be named in public. Bahar Sohaili, a young women’s rights activist, who contributed to the campaign, told 1TV’s Gulbang programme, “Addressing women with terms such as ‘siyasar’ [literally ‘black head’, a term used to refer to women, similar to rish-safid or ‘white beard’ for elderly men], ‘mother of so-and-so’ or ‘daughter of so-and-so’ is a superstitious tradition left over from the past.” (see here)

Many women, as well as some men, in places like Kabul, Herat, Balkh joined the campaign. They wanted women and girls to claim their names and break the deep-rooted taboo that means men shy away from mentioning their female relatives’ names in public (see a media report here).

Not everyone supported the campaign. A woman quoted by Afghan Women News Agency (AWNA), giving her name only as Miss Mirzayee (declining to reveal her first name), said, “I am never ready to tell my name to anyone because, in our society, it is not necessary for everyone to know a woman’s name.” Another person, who shared his disapproval of the campaign on Facebook, Hanif Mubashir, asserted that a woman naming herself would go on to unveil: “Today, with the campaign #Whereismyname,” he wrote, “they want their names to be mentioned everywhere. In the future, they will have another campaign, #Whereismybeauty, and ask why should we hide our bodies and beauty from you? We do not care if you men become sinful.” Mubashir’s contention that women are responsible for men’s behaviour and his assumption that publicly naming a woman would open the door to adultery and fornication is a theme that will be returned to when we look at why this taboo is still so strong in modern-day Afghanistan. First, we look at why language is important and then at the ways women in Afghanistan are referred to and addressed without naming them. 

Language and society

A shared language allows us not only to interact with others, but also shapes our understanding of ourselves, others and the world. That includes shaping our ideas about gender, that is, ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman in a certain society. A shared language can also shape ideas, values and norms within a nation, ethnic or language group, as the American poet TS Elliot said, “Because speaking the same language means thinking, and feeling, and having emotions, rather differently from people who use a different language.” (TS Eliot, “Notes Towards the Definition of Culture”, London: Faber & Faber, 1948). Language also changes over time, not only reflecting changes in the way we see each other and the wider world but also helping shape those changes. 

That interaction between language and social and cultural norms has been studied extensively by sociolinguistics and in cross-disciplinary gender studies. There are several academic journals focussing solely on these issues, including Sociolinguistics Studies, the Journal of Language and Sociocultural Theory, Gender and Language and the Journal of Language and Discrimination (see here). Browsing the table of contents of these journals shows that there is a fair bit of research on how language about women and men, including what women and men are called, affects individual and collective ideas about them. There is also research on how changes in language and naming practices can change norms and society (see for example Ann Coady’s study on the French language and how it produces and reproduces ideas about women and men; Ann Coady (2018) The Origins of Sexism in Language, Gender and Language, vol 12:3, pp. 271-293) or Jennifer Anne Sloan Rainbows’ analysis about President Donald Trump’s sexist remarks and how they can fuel hatred). 

While most of the research focuses on Europe and America, there is also a fair bit of research that looks at language and gender throughout history and across continents. However, the authors were able to find no academic research that focused specifically on Afghanistan or on traditions of naming and the consequences of not being named. The articles that came closest to dealing with these issues were: Hassan R. S. Abd-el-Jawad’s article published in 1989 that focused on ‘women’s place’ and Arabic language (Hassan R. S. Abd-el-Jawad (1989) Language and Women’s Place with Special Reference to Arabic. Language Sciences vol 11, no. 3, pp. 305-324). He sought to show how language used to designate women or women’s places in different Arabic countries were seldom neutral, but expressed values and that these values could change over time. Some extreme examples of this from Hassan’s Jordanian case study is choosing forenames for girls that clearly express that parents do not want more girl (‘enough’, ‘conclusion’ or ‘the end’), while choosing boys forenames that show that they are viewed as a gift from God (‘gift from God’ or ‘begged from God’). He also shows how some of the commonly-used expressions for women and men are carriers of ideas about women as weak and dependent and men as strong and independent. Qaisar Khan’s article (Khan, Qaisar (2017) Understanding Gender in Pak-Afghan Pashtun Society: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Folk Stories. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry Vol 15:1, pp. 108-129) deals with issues relating to gender and language in Afghanistan’s region. Khan notes that “Language serves as a main vehicle of transmitting culture over generations. It transforms our cultural values, norms and expectations into a comprehensible form which then permeates into the society. As a primary carrier, language preserves, propagates and reinforces culture. On the other hand, culture is dependent in large on language for its existence and survival.” However, his study does not focus on naming practices, but on folk stories handed down over generations.

Although these authors could not find any relevant research about the consequences of not being addressed in public by their names, much has been written about the importance of individually and collectively being able to choose how one is addressed and referred to, as well as the often fierce political responses to efforts to change naming practices. This includes debates around women’s right to keep their own surnames after marriage – in many European countries and in North America, women traditionally take their husband’s names when they marry (see for example, Masumi Archi, “Is it radical? women’s right to keep their own surnames after marriage”, Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 22, Issue 4, Pages 411-415) or the more recent debates about gender-neutral and inclusive language (see for example the European Parliament’s 2008 study on the issue). 

The issue of naming or not naming Afghan women in public appears to be a fresh topic. As a starting point, we wanted to look at how women and girls are referred to and addressed in the various regions of the country. In the following section, the author discusses the terms most commonly used in urban and rural areas primarily from six provinces (Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Bamyan, Nangrahar and Balkh) in both public and private sittings. This is followed by an analysis of the patterns and trends.

Addressing girls and women in the family: the special case of older sister

There is no problem addressing girls by their given names when they are small. This can be at home among family members, by strangers and also in public. When they are grown-up, within their birth family, they are addressed by their given names. The one exception is older sister whom siblings often address with specific terms. The same words may also be used more widely to respectfully address other girls and young women (not relatives). The actual term varies across the country:

Kabul: dada (an older sister, possibly related to terms on the Sub-Continent) (2) used not only by original Kabulis, but also by some others originally from Maidan Wardak and Ghazni provinces. 

Balkh: a variety of words are used depending on ethnicity, as Nuria Neda, head of the Passon Legal Organisation (which deals with women’s and youth issues) and executive director of Radio Neda in Balkh, explained: “Tajiks in Balkh address their eldest sister as dada, but Uzbeks call them aapa while Turkmen say dada. Hazaras who have been to Iran call their sisters, not only the eldest, but also others, aabji.”

Hazaras in Kabul and other provinces, but particularly in Jaghori, Malestan and Qarabagh districts of Ghazni province: aghai. 

Hazaras in some districts of Ghazni province, and Dari speaking people in Logar and Kandahar use baji, originally a Turkish word, which means sister and also female servant. 

A few areas in Ghazni province: koko

Pashtuns in Kabul, Balkh, Herat, Kandahar and Nangrahar: khorai

Dari-speaking people in Herat use the word aabji (sister and also female servant). This word is used in Iran and has influenced neighbouring Herat. 

Dari-speaking people in Jalalabad city in Nangrahar province: aapa, sometimes pronounced as aapai. This is also used by Uzbeks across Afghanistan. 

Uzbek girls who are relatives address each other as dogana which means friend.

Special terms to address an older sister are used in both urban and rural areas across the country. They are the equivalent of lala, used by both Dari and Pashtun speakers to address older brothers and as a friendly term of affection between friends. Sometimes, the word jaan (soul) is added at the end of all the words used for the oldest sister and the older brother to show more respect and love. 

Sometimes, men in the family tell their children to address their oldest sister using such words not only at home, but also in public. This is because men think it is a dishonour to them if strangers know their daughters’ or sisters’ names (see also this media report here), a theme that will be returned to. In the urban areas, some changes have taken place with boys and girls addressing even their older sisters by their given names plus ‘jaan’, or simply call them ‘sister’. 

The terms used to address eldest sisters indicate respect and love. They are also an acknowledgement of the greater responsibility and authority eldest sisters often fulfil within the family. These girls are seen as ‘second mothers’ expected to care for their families and homes, doing everything from household chores to being involved in the marriages of siblings, to providing other forms of care, like looking after brothers and sisters in the absence of mothers,in the family. Part of their authority is sometimes also that they manage family finances, saving money and spending it when necessary.

Nicknames for women at home – giving brides a new name

In most provinces, but especially in Kabul and Balkh, when girls get married, their in-laws give them brand new names or nicknames. Examples of the nicknames are: bibi gul, shirin gul, koko gul, zia gul, qand-e gul, gul jan and mah jan. Shirin gul and qand-e gul both mean something like ‘sweet flower’, bibi is an affectionate term for an older woman, zia means light, mah means moon (in Persian poetry, women’s faces are often likened to the beauty of the moon), and koko is just pleasant-sounding. Muhammad Amin, a resident of Kabul, told AAN, “My grandmother’s name was Rahima, but my grandfather called her koko gul.” However, Muhammad Amin’s father called his mother by her given name as he also does his wife. Abdul Latif Rohani, a resident of Khost and member of the secretariat of the central High Peace Council (HPC), told AAN that it is a shame to refer to women by their names at home, so they have nicknames for their wives.

Addressing and referring to wives and mothers – at home and in public

There are a number of terms used to address women at home and refer to female relations. Again, the words vary across the different provinces, but the inference is the same. Unlike the oldest sister, they do not always signal respect.

Zanaka, meaning ‘little woman’, is the diminutive form of zan. Used extensively in the past, it is now rarely heard. According to Persian dictionaries, it is a humiliating and insulting term, but users say it can be affectionate. For example, Shahrbanoo Muradi, the financial manager at a construction company, said, “My father always refers to my mother as zanaka and my mother does not mind.” The equivalent for a man is martika or mardika, which means ‘little man’ is always humiliating and insulting.

Zaifa, meaning ‘weak [woman]’ used both at home and in public. Educated women hate this term.

Ajeza, meaning helpless, is not used anymore. 

Both zaifa and ajeza, equivalent to the English, ‘the weaker sex’, are the most derogatory, non-swear words used to refer to women. 

Madar-e plus the son’s name which means mother of so-and-so and dokhtar-e plus the father’s name which means daughter of so-and-so in Dari are also used to address women in most areas of Afghanistan. In Kandahar, Nangarhar and other Pashtun-dominated provinces, the equivalent Pashto terms are used (de … mor and de … lur).

There are also men who address and refer to their female relatives by their given names. For example, in the relatively open-minded provincial centre of Bamyan, a Hazara-dominated province, most men call their wives by their names not only at home, but also in public. Marzia Hussaini, head of Partaw, an NGO in Bamyan, told AAN this is a relatively new cultural change, a result of women struggling for their rights. “In the past, in Bamyan city, men used to refer to their wives as ‘mother of so and so’ or ‘daughter of so and so’. For instance, they would say madar-e Aref which means ‘mother of Aref’ or dokhtar-e Ewaz meaning ‘daughter of Ewaz’. Now… they call their wives by their names. They call them Fatima, Salima or Fahima.” In the rural areas, however, she said the old naming tradition persists.  

Addressing non-related girls and women in public

There are a whole host of terms used to address or refer to girls and women in public, some of them more respectful than others.

Siyasar (Dari), tor sára (Pashto) made up of siya/tor, which means black, and sar/sari which means head, in other words ‘black-headed’. These terms are used across Afghanistan to address any woman in public. For instance, when you get on a bus, the conductor says, “Brothers, please leave the front seats for the siyasars.” It would be equivalent of an elderly man getting on the bus and the conductor might say, “Give your seat up for the rish-safid (white beard).” Siyasar gets controversial for some women when other women address them with it. Various educated women told us they found it demeaning.

Men and women may refer to older women as madar or móre (Dari/Pashto) ‘mother’ or khala ‘maternal aunt’ and those of similar age as khwahar or khóre (Dari/Pashto), both meaning sister, (3) as does hamshira although its literal meaning is milk-sharer (possibly referring to Islamic law which considers those who have been breast-fed by the same woman as siblings and therefore forbidden from marrying). Dokhtar-e khala meaning ‘aunt’s daughter’ is used to address girls, particularly in Kabul, Herat and Bamyan. Bibi hajji or hajanai (Dari/Pashto), meaning a woman who has made the Hajj pilgrimage, are also commonly used to address especially older women in public. All these terms are respectful, with madar ‘outranking’ khala (which can also be used to address and refer to a servant). Generally, they are not controversial. There are also exact male equivalents, for example, older men may be called kaka, meaning paternal uncle and men, in general, could be addressed as ‘brother’. Terms which address strangers as relatives are respectful and friendly. They may also, where necessary, create a linguistic ‘safeguard’ between unrelated men and women in public with their unconscious meaning of ‘I view you as my sister. I can’t marry you. You are safe in my presence.’ They are also very common across the region and further afield.

In many countries and language communities, there are such culturally accepted and validated terms for women, men and children used in public situation (on the bus, in the shop, etc), in which unknown people encounter each other and, for whatever reason, need to have a verbal exchange. “In Serbia,” writes one female AAN colleague, “I would be addressed in these situations as ‘aunty’ by a younger person and with the equivalent of jan (‘dear’) by an older woman.” In Britain, says another colleague, such familial terms for addressing non-relatives have almost fallen into disuse, but were much more common in the past and litter older literature. Indeed, she said, how to address women in Britain in public situations is an issue of contention with women’s rights activists who object to the frequently sexist terms some men deploy. (4)

Referring to wives in public

Afghan men also use many other terms to refer to their wives in public – and may also use them at home. 

Ayal literally means wife and children, but men use it to refer to their wives. 

Ushtok-ha (Dari) meaning ‘children’, but again, men in Kabul and Logar provinces use it to refer to their wives in front of strangers. They, for example, say “Ushtok-ha khana nist,” meaning ‘The wife is not home’.

Korwadana (Pashto) meaning ‘house-builder’, used mostly by men in Nangrahar and korwala (Pashto), meaning ‘house owner’, are terms of honour. They show appreciation for women’s crucial role in creating and maintaining a family. Yet, they also limit a woman’s life to the four walls of the house. 

Madar-e awladha, de mashumano mor and de kuchniyano mor (Dari/ Pashto) meaning the mother of the children. A similar term, de haiwanano mor (Pashto), meaning ‘mother of the animals’, is also used by some men to refer to their wives.

Koch (Dari), which literally means ‘household’ and can mean also ‘migration’ can be used to refer to someone’s wife, as can kada (Pashto), meaning ‘wife’. 

Khanum, ‘lady’ (a Turkish-origin word, originally the feminine of ‘khan’) is the most polite word which men use it to address their wives, not only in public, but also at home.

Official documents and memorials

Birth Certificates

Generally, in Afghanistan when a child is born in a hospital, a birth certificate, on which the child’s name plus his/her father’s name is written, is issued. The mother’s name is not mentioned. This is changing in some places, however. In Kabul and Bamyan, for example, a child’s mother’s name is now written on the birth certificate. 

It appears that including the mother’s name is now officially an option, but still only an option and not compulsory. The Afghan government’s policy, as per the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) plan for 2016-2020 (seen by the author) has as its second goal: “Births registered with an official birth certificate that includes, as a minimum, the individual’s name, sex, date and place of birth, and name of parent(s).” 

Shab-e Shash party (sixth night party)

This is a party held to celebrate the birth of a son – and, more rarely a daughter – and to announce their names when they are six days old. Even at this young age, the name of a boy is a public affair, while the name of a girl rarely is.

Marriage

Come to the wedding of Sayyed Edris ‘Abedi’ and Miss ‘Alizada’ (first name not given)

Marriage in Islamic culture is a holy relationship between a man and a woman that brings peace to their lives. Yet across Afghanistan, on this important day, the bride usually goes unnamed. On wedding invitation cards, Dari-speaking people write doshiza and Pashtu-speaking people peghla, both meaning Miss, plus the women’s family name. Some people, specifically Pashtuns, are very strict about not writing the bride’s name at all, not her own given name or her family’s, but just write ‘daughter of so and so’.

Financial manager Shahrbanoo Muradi told AAN a story about her uncle’s wedding. “The men in our family are very sensitive about women’s names, even on wedding invitation cards, or tombstones. When my uncle got married, the bride’s full name was actually written on the invitation card: ‘Razia Sultani’. Then, our family, particularly my maternal uncle, quarrelled a lot and called her a ‘shameless lady’.”

Funeral announcements, fateha invitation cards and gravestones

An invitation to a mourning ceremony – fateha – for walida Dagarwal Muhammad Yasin Bayat, the ‘mother of Colonel Muhammad Yasin Bayat’.

Afghan women often even go to their graves unnamed. Across Afghanistan, when a family announces a funeral and sends invitation cards for the fateha (a ceremony held either at home or in a mosque where relatives and friends go to offer condolences to the bereaved), they simply announce that the mother, daughter or wife of someone has passed away. Gravestones are engraved in the same way. Exceptions are rare. Indeed, an Afghan woman has to be very famous to be named on her gravestone – Rabia Balkhi, the Persian poet who lived over a thousand years ago and is buried and memorialised in Balkh town, for example, and Malalai Maiwandi aka Malalai Ana (ana being grandmother in Pashto), who mobilised Afghan men to fight against the British troops in 1880in Kandahar.

The last resting place of “the late Haji Kazim’s mother.” Even in death, the taboo on Afghan men revealing their womenfolk’s names in public remains strong. (Rohullah Sorush, Kart-e Sakhi cemetery, Kabul 2018)

A doctor’s prescription

Men in Herat do not allow their female relatives’ names to be written on doctors’ prescriptions. In Kabul, the author has also seen doctors who did not even ask the name of the sick woman for the prescription; instead, the doctor just writes ‘respected sister’. In Balkh and Kandahar, it is different as men in these provinces allow women’s names to be written on doctors’ prescriptions.

National ID Card

In Afghanistan, mothers’ names are not written on national ID cards while fathers’ names are. In 2015, there was a call by some Afghan women activists to have their mothers’ names written on their national ID, particularly, on the electronic ones. They ran a hashtag #Whereismymother’s name? (nam-e madaram kojast). They said, “Nam-e madaram ra dar shenas nama am darj koned” meaning ‘Include my mother’s name on my national ID card’. 

However, it seems that the call was not supported, so mothers’ names are still not written on the national ID cards. However, colleagues recently applying for an ID reported that a form that needs to be filled when applying for one does have a space for the mother’s name. Rohullah Ahmadzai, spokesperson for the Afghanistan Civil Registration Authority (ACRA), told AAN there is nothing mentioned in Afghan law about recording the mother’s name on the national ID card and there is no policy about it either. He said ACRA staff discussed this issue among themselves and finally decided it should be in the databases and in the form for applying for the new electronic ID.

Views on naming

Speaking to people in six provinces and from both rural and urban areas, AAN encountered a range of likes and dislikes from women when it comes to how they are referred to and addressed. 

Many told us they prefer being addressed by their own names, for example, Lala Habibi, a woman from Ghazni, “I do not like nicknames and other words that men use to address women,” she told AAN. “I want everyone to call me by my first name.” Shahrbanoo Muradi concurred, “I hate being called siyasar. It’s nonsense. Addressing women as siyasar means they have no personality.” Even, she said, she calls her uncle’s wife by her name, something very untraditional. “To refer to a woman as mother, sister or wife of so and so, does not have anything to do with respect,” she said. “We need to work on our culture and develop it so that no woman is called siyasar or referred to by a male relative’s name.” Zarafshan, who spoke to the Afghan Women News Association (AWNA), said the words “Siyasar, madar-e awlad[h]a, koch, ayal and so on have been imposed on Afghan women… When I hear words such as zaifa I feel very bad and think that I am not a living creature and men think of me as a thing or an item.” (see here.)

Others, like Nuria Neda say they want at least some parts of the culture to be continued. Neda singled out the terms used for the eldest sister, “Words such as daada, aabji, aaghai, aapa and so on. I don’t see any problem with that. It shows respect, order and discipline among family members.” Fatema Alavi, a housewife living in Iran, told AAN, “Do not call me by my given name. I am not a child anymore. Call me by my eldest child’s name.” Another housewife, Maryam Sarwari, who lives in Kabul said, “When I got married, my in-laws gave me the nickname ‘mah jan’. I have no problem with this. I feel respected.”

Some of our interviewees pointed to men’s honour as being at the root of the taboo on naming women in public. Najla Habibi, a member of the Bar Association in Mazar-e Sharif and a candidate in the recent Wolesi Jirga election, said, “Men are ashamed to address their wives by their names. And if a man’s best friend knows his wife’s name, he and that friend should stop being friends anymore.” A female staff of an NGO in Kabul described to AAN how she had asked one of her colleagues what his wife’s name was. Her colleague answered, “Why do you want to know my wife’s name? If I tell you her name, other colleagues will know it and that is not good for my honour.” That sense of honour and fear of shame can start at a very young age. For example, one AAN colleague recently stopped two small boys fighting, “I asked them why they fought,” he said. “One said that he did not want to tell the second boy his mother’s name, so he was trying to beat him.” 

Conclusion

There are many ways of referring to women and addressing them in Afghanistan without using their given names. Although the terms vary across the regions, there are patterns. Using familial terms for unrelated women can indicate respect and affection. There are also exact male equivalents. These terms are less likely to cause offense. Referring to women as weak, helpless or little is considered by many women to be humiliating, though. Giving brides new names or nicknames when they join their new family symbolises their new life; it might feel affectionate or the abrupt removal of an identity. In general, it would seem that the taboo on referring to a women by name in public is an extension of notions of purdah/hijab, that is, a woman should not have a public ‘face’ and, if she does, it is a dishonour to her and her family. For women who do have a public face, not addressing them by their name is as ridiculous and oppressive as having to go outside with faces covered with a chadori. At the same time, other Afghan women think going unnamed and with faces covered is normal and a mark of honour.

Believing it is a shame to name women publicly is surely tradition-based, given that Maryam (the Virgin Mary), mother of Jesus, is directly mentioned in the Holy Quran more than thirty times and has a chapter of the Quran named after her. Besides, the Prophet Muhammad’s wives and the other women of his family are all known, named and honoured. 

Referring to women at marriage and in the grave not by their own names, but via their male relations is part of the general taboo, but also suggests they only have an identity through their male relations, ie, they are identified by their role and relationships to others, not by who they are as individuals. 

The ways in which a husband refers to his wife using terms related only to her role as mother or home-makers, or euphemistically as ‘the children’ or ‘the household’ is also part of the taboo on addressing women by their names in public. Some of the terms used are respectful and appreciative. They may be used affectionately, but all symbolically limit women to the private realm. Even the nicest of these terms highlight the intricate ways Afghan society distinguishes between the two sexes and defines gender relationships, linguistically reinforcing the idea of women as private individuals concerned only with home and family. 

Calling women by names that are not their own can be both a sign of respect, or an insult. It can be an expression of love and a way of signalling, for example, appreciation for an older sister’s responsibilities in a family, but it can also be a way to discriminate and signal women’s subordination. It also matters how women themselves want to be addressed. When writing this dispatch, the author met women who vocally defended their right to be addressed by their real names and women who just as vocally defended the tradition of not using women’s given names. While many women’s rights activists and educated women argue that calling them by their names strips them of their identity, others say that being referred to by nicknames or via their children’s names gives them prestige and honour. It also matters what tone men refer to their wives or other women – with disrespect or respect. 

Edited by Kate Clark

(1) This is Rabea Quzdari, better known as Rabea Balkhi whose undated tomb is located near the famous Khwaja Abu Nasr Parsa shrine in the city of Balkh. It is unclear when she lived – and even whether. Jan Rypka, author of one of the most authoritative histories of Persian literature, puts her “approximately at the end of the Samanid era.” The Samanid empire existed from 819 to 999 AD and had its capital in Bukhara; Balkh belonged to its territory. Swedish literature historian Gunilla Lindberg-Wada calls Rabea “semi-legendary” in her Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective (2006). According to tradition, Rabea committed suicide after her love affair with a Turkic slave named Baktash was uncovered by her brother; she allegedly wrote her last poem with her own blood (see the Persian Qajar poet Reza Quli Khan Ḥedayat’s Baktashnama).

Tomb of Rabea Balkhi (Quzdari) in Balkh, erected in 1345 (1966/67). Photo: Thomas Ruttig (2005)

(2) In India, the term didi, with the same meaning, is used in both Hindi and English. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “an older sister or older female cousin (often as a proper name or form of address)” and “a respectful form of address to any older woman familiar to the speaker.” The origin of the word is probably Bengali via Hindi.

(3) Móre and khóre (in Pashto): the word for mother is mor, for sister khor. The unemphasised suffix -e is the feminine form of a special case used in Pashto when addressing someone (the vocativ). Vocativ masculine would end on -a, for example “Wahída” when calling someone with the name Wahid (or plára, for plar, “father”).

(4) There is a lot of regional variation in how women may be addressed in Britain, in shops or other interactions, and by both men and women. They include: dear, hen, duck, queen, pet and darling. These might be used in a friendly manner, or not. Such terms would rarely be used to address a man. It is worth mentioning too that, while there are many words for ‘man’ in British English – bloke, guy, fellow, chap, geezer, to name just a few – most words referring to women and girls are sexualised, sexist or have changed their meaning to become demeaning over time. They include – both historical and slang – wench, bint, bird, chick, quean, madam, mistress and girl (for women of any age). ‘Lady’ is a polite exception for a woman, but has to reach into notions of class to be so.

President Ashraf Ghani has appointed new commissioners and heads of secretariats for both electoral commissions, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Election Complaints Commission (ECC). This follows a busy few weeks in which the election law was amended, all the old electoral commissioners were dismissed and new electoral officers voted in by the presidential candidates. The commissioners’ first job will be trying to sort out parliamentary election results for the 15 provinces which are still pending. They also have to prepare for the all-important presidential poll. AAN’s researcher Ali Yawar Adili has been scrutinising the selection of the new commissioners and amendments to the Electoral Law, asking if the changes will help Afghans get a fair presidential election in July. 

Afghanistan has a brand new set of election officials. On 4 March, seven new IEC commissioners and five EEC commissioners, plus new heads for the IEC and EEC secretariats were sworn in at the presidential palace. The ceremony, attended by the president, Chief Executive Abdullah and a several other senior officials, came after separate presidential decrees were issued on 3 March appointing the new IEC commissioners, the head of the IEC secretariat, the EEC commissioners and the head of the EEC secretariat. 

This completely new set of Afghanistan’s most senior election officials came after growing calls by elections observers and political parties for the commissioners in charge of the 2018 parliamentary elections to be dismissed and replaced. They were accused of misconduct and mismanagement and of being unfit to be in charge of the upcoming presidential elections. This, in turn, raised questions about how to replace the commissioners as they had not completed their terms of either three or five years. Nevertheless, there was a strong precedent to do this; electoral commissioners have seen their appointments terminated after every election by amendments to the law (for example, the commissioners overseeing the 2014 presidential elections were prematurely discharged). The same precedent has been followed this time. 

This dispatch first gives a timetable about how the voting was pushed through, detailing various controversies that arose along the way. It then gives the results with some detail about the new electoral officials (full biographies will be given in a future dispatch). It then makes a brief side move to look at the unhappiness of the dismissed commissioners before scrutinising the amendments to the electoral law. A conclusion examines what the consequences of all these changes might be. 

A voter in the 2018 parliamentary elections in Daikundi province – one of the 17 where results have been announced. (Photo: Ehsan Qaane/2018)

The timetable of electoral law changes and the selection of new commissioners

11 February 2019 Vice-President Sarwar Danesh announced that the government, political party representatives, presidential candidates and civil society organisations had agreed on draft amendments to the 2016 Electoral Law, including the dismissal of all the old electoral commissioners. This followed four consecutive days of meetings. The consultation had not gone entirely smoothly, but change had been agreed. (1)

12 February 2019 The cabinet approved the amendments. They were endorsed by the president through a legislative decree and sent for publication in the official gazette. The new electoral law has not yet been officially published, but Second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh posted a copy of the amendments on his Facebook page on 12 February. (2)  

Also on 12 February 2019, President Ghani dismissed all 12 electoral commissioners (seven IEC and five ECC members) in a decree which said that the heads and members of the IEC and ECC were “considered dismissed” and, in order to prevent any disruption to the execution of affairs, the heads of the two commission secretariats would temporarily assume the positions of acting heads of the commissions. Following their sacking, the Attorney General’s Office banned all 12 electoral commissioners from travelling out of the country. Its statement said the AGO was investigating accusations that they had abused their authority.

The same 12 February 2019 decree also called on the 72 political parties registered with the Ministry of Justice and election-related civil society organisations to present eligible candidate for the commissions to the president within seven days of 17 February 2019 (article 12 of the amended electoral law). This call was repeated by the president’s chief of staff office on 14 February 2019. The office asked parties to put forward one candidate each and civil society organisations 15 candidates in total, at least five of whom should be women. With the names should be presented to the Government Information and Media Centre full biographies of the candidates, copies of education documents, tazkeras (IDs), details of work experience, three new photos and a confirmation from the Ministry of Justice that they are not members of a political party. (3)

21 February 2019 The civil society organisations introduced 15 candidates, including five women. (4) From the political parties, 69 candidates were submitted, including nine women, meaning that most, but not all parties made use of the invitation. This brought the total of candidates to 84, according to presidential spokesman Harun Chakhansuri, quoted in the Afghan media. Later, the list numbered 81 candidates; it is not clear when and why this decrease happened or whether the original figure was wrong.

26 February 2019 The president’s office announced that the vote would take place the following day. 

Later on 26 February 2019 the president’s office announced a delay in the vote. Some of the candidates were travelling, it said, and others needed more time to prepare. The delay was forced by threats of a boycott by the other presidential candidates. Their Council for the Collaboration of Presidential Candidates  cited three reasons why the vote had to be postponed: 

• Paragraph two of article 13 of the amended law provides that all presidential candidates should be present to complete the quorum for voting, but the list of candidates published by the president’s office showed that four out of the 18 presidential candidates (AAN background about them and their running-mates here) would be absent: two were travelling (Muhammad Hanif Atmar to the United Arab Emirates and Abdul Latif Pedram to Tajikistan); one would not participate (Sayyed Nurullah, no reason cited by the president’s office); and one (Haji Muhammad Ibrahim Alekozai) had not responded when called;
• The procedure for voting should be approved by all the presidential candidates. However, they had learned that the Palace had approved the procedure without consulting them and been informed that the vote would take place in the palace the following day; 
• They had unsuccessfully tried for several consecutive days to get the names and biographies of the 81 candidates. 

1 March 2019 17 out of the 18 presidential candidates gathered to vote, after first hearing the 81 candidates give three-minute presentations. Proceedings were broadcast live. The 18thpresidential candidate, Sayyed Nurullah Jalili, was not present. His supporters’ Facebook page explained on 4 March that his team was against the dismissal of the electoral commissioners without nullifying the parliamentary election results and also that the voting for the new commissioners should have taken place in the IEC offices, not the presidential palace.  

The forced delay, but only by one day and despite not all presidential candidates being present, indicates how it may have been the presidential palace pushing the process of getting new electoral officers forward. This was achieved despite lingering unhappiness from other candidates who believe there should have been prior consultations and approval of how the vote was to be carried out. 

3 March 2019 President Ghani officially appointed 14 people from among the most popular candidates. 

4 March 2019 The chief justice swore the new commissioners and heads of secretariats in. The IEC and ECC should now elect their administrative board (chair, deputy chair and secretary), which, a deputy spokesman for the IEC, Zabihullah Sadat told AAN, will happen today, Tuesday 5 March 2019. 

The tables below show the new IEC and EEC commissioners and heads of the two secretariats, using information drawn from the president’s decrees, the list of political parties on the Ministry of Justice’s website, the list of nominees and the election results.

New IEC members and head of secretariat:

NoNameIntroduced byEthnicityEducation ProvinceVotesTerm1.Sayyed Esmatullah MallHezb-e Ejma-ye Roshangaran-e Milli Afghanistan led by Muhammad Sabur FormuliPashtun SadatBachelor’s in EngineeringBalkh9Five years2. Mawlana Muhammad AbdullahElection-related CSOsTajikBachelor’s in LawPanjshir93.Owrang ZibHezb-e Wahdat-e Milli Afghanistan-led by Engineer Abdul Rahim SalarzaiPashtunBachelor’s in AgriculturePaktia84. Muhammad Hanif DaneshyarHezb-e Ensejam-e Melli Afghanistan led by Dr Sadeq ModabberHazaraBachelor’s in philosophy and sociologyGhazni 5.Musafer QoqandiHezb-e Etidal-e Melli led by Muhammad JamilUzbekBachelor’s in social scienceFaryab8Three years6.Hawa Alam NuristaniJabha-e Nejat-e Melli Afghanistan led by Sebghatullah MujaddediPashtunBachelor’s in LawNuristan87.Rahima ZarifiElection-related civil society organizationsTajikBachelor’s in Bussiness AdministrationBalkh Head of IEC secretariat8 Habibull Rahman NangElection-related Civil Scoiety OrganizationsPashtunMedical doctorLaghman8 

ECC members and head of secretariat 

NoNameIntroduced byEthnicityEducation ProvinceVotesTerm 1.Muhammad Qasem ElyasiHezb-e Harakat-e Islami Mutahed Afghanistan led by Abul Hassuin YaserHazaraPhD in Philosophy Ghazni8Five years2.Zohra Bayan ShinwariHezb-e Solh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan led by ShahPashtunBachelor’s in lawParwan73.Mowlawi Din Muhammad AzemiJamiat-e Islami Afghanistan led by Salahuddin RabbaniTajikMaster’s in Criminal LawGhor74.Muhammad Yunes TughraJombesh-e Melli Islami Afghanistan led by General Abdul Rashid DostumUzbekMaster’s in administrationFaryab8Three years 5Sayyed Qutbuddin RoydarHezb-e Harakat-e Mardomi Afghanistan led by Sediqullah FahimPashtunBachelor’s in ShariaKapisa7ECC secretariat 6.Chaman Shah EtemadiHezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-e Afghanistan led by Muhammad Karim KhaliliHazaraBachelor’s in Religious EducationGhazni8 

It can be seen that the new commissioners comprise six Pashtuns, three Tajiks, three Hazaras and two Uzbeks, and that of the twelve, three are women – the minimum needed to fulfil the requirements of the newly-amended electoral law. A separate piece will detail the background of the new commissioners.

There were two other nominees among the most popular 14 candidates who did not find a place on the commissions: 1) Giti (only one name given), a Tajik from Kapisa province with a bachelor degree in law, who had been introduced by the National Congress Party of Afghanistan led by Abdul Latif Pedram and; 2) Muhammad Zaker Zaki, a Hazara from Samangan province with a master’s degree in agriculture who had been introduced by Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-e Mardom Afghanistan led by Muhammad Mohaqeq. Both obtained seven votes. Latif Pedram wrote on his Facebook that he had learned from ‘sources’ that Giti had not been appointed because of her age. He said she would have completed 35 years of age in the next 15 days. The other candidate with seven votes, Zaki, might have been dropped in favour of Mawlawi Din Muhammad Azemi to ensure ethnic balance in the commissions. 

Controversies around the dismissal of the commissioners

The old IEC and ECC commissioners issued a joint statement on 12 February criticising their sacking by presidential decree as “a political, not legal, decision.” They added that “by this action, the government seeks to postpone the presidential elections – which the Afghan public want to be held on schedule – and cling on to power.” They predicted that, under these circumstances, “the presidential elections will not be held on 20 July 2019.” The old commissioners also accused the government of wanting to put “their specific people” in the commissions and “engineer the upcoming elections and the announcement of the results of the Wolesi Jirga elections in the remaining constituencies.” (The final results for 15 of the 34 provinces have not been published yet.) They also said they were ready to clarify these things in a media debate with the leaders of the National Unity Government.

A day before their dismissal, on 11 February, the old IEC members had objected also to the amending of the electoral law. They issued a statement saying that the commissioners had only been informed about the government’s plans through the media. Given that the president and chief executive are among the candidates, they said that amendments to the electoral law by the government amounted to nothing more than “the manipulation of the upcoming election process” which, they said, would “move the country into crisis.” The old IEC said it had already referred the issue of how to amend the electoral law to the legal institutions, including the Supreme Court and the Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution, so they could share their legal opinions with the IEC and other bodies seeking to amend the electoral law at that juncture (see AAN’s previous report). 

The two acting heads of the commissions,– Ahmad Shah Zamanzai at the IEC and Muhammad Ali Setegh at the EEC – issued a joint statement two days later, on 13 February, insisting that “the operations of the commissions will continue normally” and announcing that they would be finalising the remaining results of the October 2018 parliamentary elections and addressing any complaints. These two men had been the heads of their respective secretariats and were moved by the president to temporarily lead their organisations when he sacked the old commissioners. The move was criticised by election observers such as Habibullah Shinwari, programme manager of the Election and Transparency Watch Organisation of Afghanistan (ETWA). He told the media that the same number of accusations against the IEC and ECC commissioners were levelled against those two officials. “We call on the Attorney General’s Office,” he said, “to prosecute [them].” 

Earlier, on 6 December 2018, the ECC in its decision to nullify the Kabul vote had also called for the dismissal of the head of the IEC secretariat Ahmad Shah Zamanzai, along with his deputy, Abdul Aziz Samim, the former head of the IEC’s Kabul office, Awwal ul-Rahman Rudwal, the head of IEC field operations, Zmarai Qalamyar, and the head of the IEC IT department, Sayyed Ibrahim Sadat for “mismanagement, violation of laws, regulations and procedures of the electoral commissions and failure to exercise legal authorities and obligations on a timely basis, which led to widespread electoral violations and crimes” (see AAN’s previous reporting here).

A detailed look at the amendments to the Electoral Law

The following subsections deal with some of the major changes to the Electoral Law, as well as briefly mentioning the smaller ones: 

a) The selection mechanism

There is a major change to the mechanism for the appointment of the electoral commissioners and heads of the IEC and ECC secretariats. The amended 2016 electoral law (see AAN background here and here) provided for a selection committee comprising five people.Such a committee was first introduced in 2013, ahead of the 2014 presidential elections, as a way to limit the influence of the president on the appointment of commissioners. The committee was tasked with calling for applications, vetting and selecting qualified candidates based on criteria specified in the law, and presenting shortlists of candidates for the IEC and the ECC to the president for his final selection.This selection committee has now been removed. 

Instead, the new law (article 13) gives registered political parties and election-related civil society organisations a role in introducing candidates in a first round of nominations (as described above). The nominee should not be a member of any party, and the Ministry of Justice has the authority to verify this. Among the 15 civil society nominees, there must be at least five women; there is no women’s quota for the party nominees. 

In the second round, the president appoints members of the IEC and ECC and the heads of the secretariats from among those nominees unless he or she is also a presidential candidate. In that case, all the presidential candidates vote on the nominees. Each has 14 votes, equivalent to the total seats in the IEC and EEC plus the two heads of secretariat. The president then appoints the seven most-voted for candidates as members of the IEC, taking into account the ethnic and gender composition – there must be at least two women (Art. 13:5). He also appoints the five most-voted for people with higher education in the law and jurisprudence to the ECC, again taking into consideration the gender and ethnic balance – there should be at least one woman among them. The president also appoints the heads of the IEC (article 22.2) and ECC (article 32.2) secretariats. This puts them on a par with the IEC and ECC members. (4) 

If the 14 people voted for by the candidates do not reflect an ethnic and gender balance, the president should compensate for this from among the most-voted for people. If there are equal votes between two or more people, the nominee the president has voted for should be appointed.

Another noteworthy change is that the government, in an understanding with the United Nations, can appoint two international election specialists as non-voting members of the IEC for the purpose of “further transparency in the election process.” There was a similar provision for this for the ECC in the 2016 electoral law, which has been retained, and now expanded to cover the IEC also. In practice, the government did not appoint any international members to the ECC for the 2018 elections. It is not clear if it will do it this time for either commission. 

b) Use of technology

Four paragraphs (two, three, four and five) have been added to article 19 of the 2016 electoral law specifying the duties and authorities of the IEC. Paragraph two says: the IEC is duty-bound to take measures so that all the election phases, including voter registration and verification, are conducted using electronic systems and biometric technology in a safe way, in order to “accelerate the election process and ensure transparency.” 

Paragraph three says that the [feasibility of the] system should be technically assessed by credible national and international authorities before implementation. Paragraphs four calls on the relevant ministries, government agencies and non-government organisations to comprehensively cooperate with the IEC regarding the use of electronic systems and biometric technology. Paragraph five foresees the possibility of Memorandums of Understanding between the IEC and ministries, government agencies and non-government organisations on this issue.

There have been several rounds of efforts pushing for the introduction of advanced technology in elections in Afghanistan. For the 2018 parliamentary elections, the IEC failed to procure such technology and thus the IEC was forced to stick with manual voter registration. (See AAN analysis here). Biometric devices for voter verification on election day were introduced at the last minute, but failed to ensure the safety of voter lists and were one factor excluding some registered voters trying to exercise their franchise (see AAN’s analysis here). 

The current amendments seem to have been made as a result of a new push by the political parties in particular to have fresh voter registration based on biometric fingerprints (all ten fingers) ahead of the presidential elections (see AAN reporting here). This use of advanced technology has now been incorporated into the law, but its feasibility in all phases in the run-up to and during the 20 July 2019 election is far from certain; for one thing, time is pressing. 

c) Lowering educational requirements for district and village council election nominees

For candidates for district councils, education requirements have been lowered. According to article 40 of the 2016 electoral law, they had to have had at least 12thgrade education, but now need to be able “at least to read and write.” For the village councils, literacy was already required in the 2016 law. 

Civil servants running for elected seats, who had been required to resign before registering as candidates at any level, are now exempted from doing so when competing in district and village council elections (article 44.7). They must now resign only if they are elected. However, they need to take leave for the time of their election campaign. 

The 2016 electoral law stipulated that at least 25 per cent of the seats of each district and village council should be allocated to female candidates. A stipulation has now been added that if there is not a sufficient number of female candidates to fill the seats allocated to women, these seats should remain vacant and the IEC should hold new elections in that constituency as soon as possible to fill the vacant seats. (6)

In a separate step, the cabinet’s law committee headed by Second Vice-President Danesh approved amendments to the law governing all local councils, provincial and, for the first time, district and village. This was announced by Danesh’ office on 24 February 2019. These particular new amendments, which still need to be approved by the cabinet, specify the duties and authorities of the lower-level local councils which, so far, have never been elected. (An attempt to hold district council elections simultaneously with the October 2018 parliamentary elections failed and had to be postponed. The reason was a lack of candidates in 337 out of Afghanistan’s 387 districts (see AAN’s previous analysis here). 

d) Special court

These amendments abolished the ECC’s final say in two specific situations: 1) when the ECC removes a candidate from the candidates list, ie before the election and 2) when the ECC nullifies the votes of a particular polling centre or a constituency. The amendments say that if the IEC rejects an ECC decision in the above-mentioned cases, a joint commission comprising an equal number of members from both commissions should be formed to resolve the disagreement. Its decision will be final. If the joint commission fails to resolve the dispute, the case will be referred to the Supreme Court, which should form a special court in Kabul or the province concerned for this purpose as soon as possible, within the framework of the electoral calendar. Then, its decision will be final. The IEC and ECC are required to cooperate with the court. 

It seems that the two exceptions have been made based on experiences in the October 2018 parliamentary elections. The ECC disqualified 35 candidates (AAN analysis here) and also nullified the Kabul vote. The nullification of the Kabul vote was rejected by the IEC (see AAN reporting here). The new amendment seems to ensure that the ECC alone does not have the final say in decisions which have far-reaching consequences.  

Paragraphs four and five of article 94 of the 2016 law stipulated that if the number of votes cast in a polling centre is higher than the number of voters on the voter list, all votes should be invalidated and the IEC should hold new elections. The new law expands this to also include polling stations and gives a deadline; the new elections must be held within seven days. Similarly, paragraph five of the article now says that if the principles of fair, secret and direct elections in a constituency are jeopardised, the ECC may invalidate the votes and the IEC must hold new elections there within 15 days (it was seven days in the previous law). When the ECC nullified the 2018 Kabul vote, many considered it impossible to hold a new election in Kabul within seven days. 

e) Change of Electoral system

The amendments make no mention of Afghanistan’s very controversial electoral system, the Single-Non-Transferable Vote (SNTV) – in SNTV, voters select a candidate rather than a party and do so in provincial-wide constituencies. However, article two of the legislative decree that endorsed the amendments does say: 

The next elections shall be held based on the Multi-Dimensional Representation (MDR) electoral system; the IEC, in cooperation with the political parties registered with the Ministry of Justice, and election-related civil society organisations, shall adopt necessary measures and present a proposal, including amendments to the electoral law, within one month of the IEC beginning its work, to the cabinet for its approval.

Multi-Dimensional Representation is a type of proportional system applied in a multi-member constituency (mainly provinces) which mainly favours list-based candidatesover individual candidates. The inclusion of MDR into the decree seems to be a result of the campaign by the political parties, which have been calling for getting rid of SNTV since February 2018. It an old demand; the registered political parties in 2005 had also wanted to have a proportional system before the parliamentary elections that year – see background). The demand to strengthen the role of political parties in the electoral system is based on a proposal by the Special Electoral Reform Commission (SERC) that was established by the government in 2015 to come up with proposals for electoral reform. In December 2015, the SERC mainly suggested shifting from SNTV to MDR (see AAN reporting here). If the system is changed before the 20 July elections, the provincial and district council elections would use MDR. However, this would not affect the presidential elections, where the country, as a whole, is one constituency. 

f) Miscellaneous changes and additions: 

* IEC members now only require work experience of five (previously ten, seven and five years respectively for those with bachelor’s and master’s degrees and PhDs) years in a managerial position (article 12). Specifically-required fields of studies (law, sharia, political sciences, management, sociology, economy or other related fields) have been removed. An addition is that candidates without multiple citizenships and with election-related experience will be preferred.

* The IEC will have only one deputy and one secretary (article 14.1) in future. This seems to aim at curtailing the commissioners’ interference in the operations of the secretariat. 

* IEC authorities (article 19): the IEC can no longer amend relevant regulations and procedures after the publication of the electoral calendar.

* The IEC chair’s duties and authorities (21) no longer include supervising the implementation of the IEC budget and supervising and evaluating the activities of the secretariat.

* The new law specifies a two-year term for the ECC chair and a one year-term for the deputy and secretary, who should be elected by the ECC members in “a free, secret and direct vote” within two days of his or her appointment (article 29). 

* Objections to the preliminary list of the candidates should be filed with the ECC within three working days (previously, two weeks) of the publication of the list (article 74.2)

* The rights of observers and agents have been more clearly specified and a new stipulation says that if agents and observers are not present during the count, the polling centre manager should proceed with it, and record the agents and observers’ absence in the journal. In this case, the votes of that polling station will be valid only if there are no complaints. 

* The polling centre manager should prepare at least ten (previously, five) copies of the results sheets. The extra five copies are to be given to representatives of the election observers and media organisations (article 85.3). 

* Accountability of the IEC: the IEC should report on all the ‘electoral processes’ to the public through the mass media before and after the elections, and before and after the announcement of the preliminary and final election results (article 89.2). (Electoral processes’ now also include the IEC budget). Newly-added paragraph two stipulates that the IEC should submit its annual report to the joint session of the administrative boards of the two houses of the parliament, attended by the president, vice-presidents, head and members of the Supreme Court, the attorney general, head of the Independent Human Rights Commission and the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution.

* There is a new deadline for the establishment of Provincial Complaints Commissions, namely one month before voter registration (new) and candidate registration (article 31.1). 

* Recruitment to the IEC and ECC: the procedure for recruiting permanent staff to both the IEC and ECC (articles 23: 1 and 33.1) should be jointly organised by the IEC and the Civil Service Commission and recruitment and should be conducted through open competition. This brings the recruitment to the IEC and ECC under overall civil service regulations. The stipulation to recruit temporary staff for the IEC and ECC (articles 23.2 and article 33.2) from among existing civil servants has been removed. This was done previously in order to cut costs. The amendments increase the IEC’s control over its staff. 

* Security of election material: paragraph three of article seven adds the responsibility for security forces assigned to secure the transportation of electoral material to the IEC offices and polling centres.

* Cooperation between the IEC and government and non-government organisations: paragraph three of article nine says that the IEC and ECC are duty-bound to cooperate with and coordinate between relevant institutions for the purpose of holding transparent and fair elections.

* Emphasis on the independence of the IEC members: the newly-added paragraph three of article 18 requires IEC members to perform their duties independent of any outside influence. 

* Challenges to preliminary results: the newly-added paragraph seven of article 91 says that candidate or their representative can file objections or complaints with the ECC and this must be done within seven days of the announcement of the preliminary results. This provision is specific to objections to the preliminary results and the timeframe is, in general, longer than elsewhere, eg objections to the preliminary list of candidates must be made within two days of its publication (paragraph one of the same article). 

Kabuli voters queuing to cast their votes in the 2018 parliamentary elections. The EEC annulled the vote, citing corruption and mismanagement. The IEC refused its decision. That impasse lies behind some of the changes to the Electoral Law. Results in Kabul province, four months on, are still pending. (Photo: Ali Yawar Adili/2018)

Conclusion: Further uncertainties 

The changes outlined above amended the 2016 electoral law, which itself was passed through a legislative decree following amendments to the 2013 law which had governed the 2014 presidential election. It has now become common practice that an electoral law is not valid for more than one election cycle. The constant need for changes and amendments indicate that previous legislation was far from perfect. Often, crucial issues were left unaddressed because of controversies over the content or disputes between presidency and parliament over procedure (earlier AAN analysis here). Amendments have also often been triggered by the mismanagement of earlier elections and to allow a change of faces in the election management bodies – without tackling the underlying legal problems. This approach to electoral reform has not been effective in the past and it is not clear it will work this time. 

The amendments to the electoral law and appointment of the new commissioners were carried out relatively quickly compared with the spun-out process after the 2014 presidential elections. This might be because of the high stakes tied to the presidential elections and that no one wanted to be blamed for any delay. 

The IEC and EEC will now need to start wrapping up the October 2018 parliamentary elections. It is worth mentioning that three of the ECC members will adjudicate the results of elections in which they were candidates. As to the coming presidential elections, the changes to the commissioners and the amendments to the law have already affected preparations. According to the electoral calendar (see it annexed to AAN’s previous reporting here), a voter registration update should be conducted from 1 to 20 March (and in Ghazni province from 1 to 31 March; see AAN’s previous reports here and here); voters list should be displayed publicly for review and correction from 1 to 31 March; candidate nomination for provincial and district councils as well as for Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni should be carried out from 1 to 15 March and; presidential candidates should be vetted from 5 February to 22 March. All these activities will not be conducted within their respective timeframe and will have to be rescheduled.

Meanwhile, the new commissioners will need to clarify two major issues: first, whether or not they will apply the MDR system – referred to in the presidential decree – in the upcoming provincial and district council elections (if they are held together with the presidential elections on 20 July, as previously announced). Second, the IEC should arrange for a technical assessment on how advanced and hopefully fraud-mitigating technology could be used in the coming elections and decide whether or not a full use of such technology is feasible within the given timeframe. Both of these provisions – concerning the MDR system and use of technology – are too complicated to implement in the less than five months remaining to elections day. Even so, the political parties have already said, in a statement on 14 February 2019, that a change from SNTV into the ‘agreed-upon’ MDR was their “uncompromisable demand,” and that the provincial and district council elections had to be conducted using MDR. On the other hand, Vice-President Danesh, just yesterday (4 March) raised what he called “the problems related to the use of technology in all phases of the elections as stipulated in the amendments to the electoral law… and applying MDR” in a meeting with the special representative of UN Secretary, General Tadamichi Yamamoto. 

The call for a technical assessment of any new technology seems to be a loophole intentional embedded into the law, ie if the assessment fails, it will not need to be used. However, failure to implement ‘advanced technology’ in the upcoming elections might well provoke the political parties to complain again. 

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Kate Clark

(1) There were, in fact, disagreements between the government and political parties over the amendments. For instance, on 9 February, a joint committee of representatives of all presidential tickets except President Ghani’s declared in a statement that the Council for the Collaboration of Presidential Candidates had rejected draft amendments presented to them by the Palace on 8 February. The Council proposed its own set of amendments. They included retaining the selection committee for shortlisting applicants for the position of electoral commissioners but changing its members.

The initial amendments by the government had abolished the selection committee for electoral commissioners and instead asked registered political parties and election-related civil society organisations to introduce 15 candidates each for the two electoral commissions. From this list, the president – in consultation with the chief justice, speakers of the two houses of the parliament, attorney general, heads of the commission for overseeing the implementation of the constitution and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, as well as the heads of political parties and civil society organisations – would appoint seven of them as IEC members and five ECC members). 

The committee’s proposals also included: cancelling the existing voter list and preparing a new one using biometric technology only and; using technology in the presidential elections (without specifying whether this means they want electronic voting) (see here). 

(2) Article four [of the amendments] says: 

This amendment, addition and removal shall be effective from the date of endorsement and published in the official gazette. 

(3) The elections-related civil society organisations issued a notice on 14 February asking applicants to send their documents to their email before noon of 17 February 2019. It said that the application and documents sent after the specified date and time would not be accepted. 

(4) The civil society organisations list includes:

1. Pohanwal Ustad Nazari
2. Sughra Sadat
3. Zabih Barakzai
4. Mawlana Muhammad Abdullah
5. Muqadasa Attalwala
6. Habib ul-Rahman Nang
7. Basir Adel
8. Din Muhammad Shekib
9. Gul Ahmad Madadzai
10. Pallosha Fazli
11. Muhammad Shoib Shahir
12. Abdullah Ahmadi
13. Khaled Orya
14. Farida Nekzad
15. Rahima Zarifi

The members of the Selection Commission are: Khalil Raufi, Roshan Sirran, Mubinullah Aimaq, Habibullah Shinwari and Munizha Ramuzi 

(The list of political party nominees has not yet been published officially, but obtained from observers informally, so there is, as yet no URL)

(5) The duties of the two secretariats have been more clearly defined: 

Duties of the IEC secretariat: previous law (article 22.4) read that the secretariat should carry out its duties in accordance with the provisions of the law and the procedures adopted by the commissioners and shall report to the commissioners. These duties have now been fleshed out as below: Preparing plans, regulations and procedures  and presenting them to the commission for approval; preparing the electoral calendar and presenting it to the commission for approval; prepare candidate’s list in relevant elections and voter list and presenting them to the commission for certification; determining voter registration, polling and vote counting centres and presenting them to the IEC for certification; planning civic education and public outreach campaigns at the country level; training and building the capacity of permanent and temporary polling staff regarding the use of information technology and biometrics; Implement operational, administered, budgetary and managerial plans of elections; impartial, lawful, professional and timely oversight of provincial offices and reporting it to the commission; Submit report to the commission regarding implementation of phases of electoral calendar and publishing it through media after approval by the commission; performing other duties in accordance with the provisions of this law, relevant laws and procedures; reporting to the commission. 

Duties of the ECC secretariat: it carries out its duties according to provisions of this law, other relevant laws and procedures (article 32.3) (previous law said in accordance to a procedure approved by the commissioners).

(6) The constitution stipulates that, on average, at least two women from each province should be elected to the Wolesi Jirga; that is, at least 64 out 249 seats, which is a little over 25 per cent (art 83.6). Electoral laws also allocated seats for women in the provincial councils: in the 2013 electoral law this was “at least 20 per cent.” The 2016 law increased the provincial council allocation to “at least 25 per cent” (art 58.2), as it had been in an earlier version of the law, and also expanded this 25 per cent quota to district councils (art 61.2) and village councils (art 64.2). (See AAN reporting here.) 

A new museum, commemorating war crimes and their victims, has opened in Kabul. The Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue is dedicated to collecting the stories of survivors and the families of victims of war crimes. Their voices have rarely been heard in recent decades, partly because dealing with the legacy of violations in the conflict – what is known as ‘transitional justice’ – has received only limited government and international support. Transitional justice is again at risk of being marginalised in the current effort to find a peace deal, say AAN’s Ehsan Qaane and Sari Kouvo. Nevertheless, against the odds, there are some efforts, mainly by activists, to promote transitional justice; these efforts could, in an ideal world, be built on. 

This research was supported by the Embassy of Canada in Kabul through its Canada Fund for Local Initiative (CFLI) Programme.

Dr Nik Muhammad Sharif, a survivor of torture, who lost six brothers after the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in the 1978 military coup was one of those speaking at the opening of Kabul’s newest museum. Dr Sharif’s story was riveting. Almost everyone at the inauguration of the Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue on 14 February 2019 had tears in their eyes. Sharif described his 11 brothers and how they had been enough to form their own football team. They were Kabul champions in 1977. One year later, the PDPA coup took place. In the purges that followed, six of his brothers were killed. Six survived. After the opening ceremony, he described to AAN how he had been forced to witness the torture of one of his brothers, who had been only 17 years old at the time, “This was more painful to me,” he said, “even than my own experiences of torture.” 

The Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue is the fourth war crimes memorial or museum to be opened in Afghanistan since 2001, but is, in two ways, a first. It is the first to be established by a civil society organisation, the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (AHRDO). (1) It is also the first to emerge through efforts to try to help war crime survivors and the families of victims who did not survive heal from the trauma of their experiences. AHRDO has encouraged survivors and relatives to speak, write and paint about their losses and the pains they have suffered. They then constructed metal or wooden boxes, collected personal objects and deposited these and the stories of the war crimes in the boxes, which were called ‘Memory Boxes’. At the inauguration, AHRDO’s Hussain Saramad, described how this ‘memorialization work’ had, “over the course of eight years, during which hundreds of survivors took part, led to the construction of hundreds of Memory Boxes…” It is these boxes and their contents that are the exhibited of the museum. 

For Hadi Marifat, chairperson of AHRDO, the museum has several aims. At the least, they want to try to ensure “the painful history” is not forgotten. They want also to boost the public and the government’s understanding of the necessity of respecting victims’ memories. One aspect of this, said Marifat, was that the government should not deal with the Taleban – in any future negotiations or talks – behind the back of survivors and victims’ families. (2) In this, he said, the museum was important; in their own small way, they believe it is part of helping find a just and durable peace for Afghanistan. 

Visitors at Kabul’s new war crimes museum. Past peace deals in Afghanistan have always ignored the voices of victims, yet consultations encounter realistic ideas on how to deal with the past (Photo Hadi Morawej 2019)

The museum is one example of how activists are getting on with transitional justice. (For further information about ACDM, see Thomas Ruttig’s reportage in Tageszeitung (Berlin) on 25 February 2019 under the title “Kriegsmuseum in Afghanistan eröffnet: Die Vitrinen von Kabul”, link here. The reportage will be translated into English and republished by AAN.) By ‘transitional justice’, we mean the various mechanisms and processes aimed at getting accountability and justice for war crimes and conflict-related human rights violations, documenting war crimes and survivors’ stories, truth-telling, reparations and the recognition of victims suffering. 

In this dispatch, we look at how, as the various parties to the Afghan conflict slowly nudge their way towards formal peace negotiations (see AAN’s analysis here, here and here), the issue of how to deal with the legacy of past war crimes barely features in the discussions. Marifat and other activists assert that this issue has to be part of any peace settlement. We also look at the few transitional justice initiatives that are emerging and at what they tell us about how transitional justice could feature in a future negotiated settlement with the Taleban.

The absence of transitional justice in previous deals and attempts to effect it, anyway

From the Geneva Accords between President Najibullah’s government and Pakistan (backers of the Sunni factions of the mujahedin) in 1988, which paved the way for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, to the United Nations-sponsored Bonn Agreement that established the post-Taleban Afghan interim authority in 2001 (see here), to the Afghan national unity government peace deal with Hezb-e Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in 2016, transitional justice has been absent. Indeed, the amnesties provided in past peace deals and power-sharing agreements led the RAND Corporation to suggest in a recent draft report about what a possible peace deal with the Taleban could look like to say that a “broad amnesty, consistent with Afghan precedent, balanced with creating a process for promoting reconciliation” is likely to be part of the deal (authors’ emphasis). This is despite, as a footnote to the report noted, that “…broad amnesties do not comport with best international practice.” (For further discussion about the draft report, see here.) (3)

The 2001 Bonn Agreement, not a peace deal but a power-sharing agreement, followed the ‘Afghan precedent’. Many Afghans still remember UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s dictum from the early phases of the Bonn process that one could either have peace or justice, and diplomats’ warnings to ‘not rock the boat’ in which Karzai and the warlords sat in an instable coalition. However, the 2001 Bonn Agreement did mandate the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commissions (AIHRC) to investigate human rights violations, and the Commission used this mandate to start looking at past violations. It consulted Afghans on how they wanted to deal with the legacies of past war crimes, using this to help draft the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan. The Commission also carried out the most in-depth, countrywide documentation of human rights violations and war crimes during earlier phases of the conflict (1978-2001) ever undertaken. It also investigated ongoing violations. 

However, the Karzai government gave, at best, only lukewarm support to the Commission’s efforts and in 2007 parliament put a complete stop to the government’s reluctant engagement in transitional justice. MPs – many of them suspected of war crimes themselves – passed the National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law (known as the Amnesty Law) and the law was gazetted in 2008. (4). Without government support, the Commission also felt unable to publish its documentation of war crimes 1978-2001, known as the Conflict-Mapping Report. It had hoped to use this report start a nationwide dialogue, which could help Afghans to learn about what had happened to compatriots in different parts of the country and in different eras.The Commission and its chairwoman, Sima Samar, continue to emphasise the importance of a peace process that provides space to victims and a recognition of their experiences. On 5 December 2018, she said that a durable peace would be possible only if it addressed the legacy of the past, “We are not proponents of violations and revenge, but at least the pain of victims should be acknowledged and the perpetrators must apologise for their crimes” (see here for the full report).

After 2001, then, although transitional justice went unmentioned in the Bonn Agreement, activists and advocates have tried – but largely failed – to introduce it into the mainstream of Afghan politics and discourse. Since 2008, as will be seen below, it is only the International Criminal Court (ICC) through its preliminary examination (AAN’s Q&A about the ICC) of possible war crimes since May 2003 (when its jurisdiction began), and some Afghan and international civil society organisations which have continued to engage on transitional justice in Afghanistan (for AAN reporting on these issues, see here).

The demands of international law

International law requires that international crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide – are investigated and perpetrators held to account. International law also includes legal obligations relevant to the right to remedy and the right to truth and a host of guidance and international best practice relevant to victims’ rights (for international instruments relating to the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence see here). 

The prevalence of international norms does not ensure their implementation, however. Raising issues of transitional justice during a peace process is often seen as risk it failing. This may be particularly true in the case of Afghanistan, where previous peace deals have included amnesties. Also, all of the parties to the current conflict may have an interest in not drawing attention to conflict-related violations and the ongoing conflict and level of violence makes it difficult for victims to share their concerns. Nevertheless, comparative lessons suggests that a balance between peace and justice (see here) is necessary. This is also a clear lesson from the Bonn process; choosing peace or rather stability instead of justice failed to ensure sustainable peace in Afghanistan. Analysis based on peace agreements data collected by the Political Settlements Research Program suggests that about half of the post-1990s peace agreements have included some level of amnesty and that amnesty provisions can be conducive to a sustainable peace. However, the devil is always in the detail: who introduces an amnesty, when it is introduced, for what crimes and under what conditions. All of these questions matter. The Political Settlements Research Program has also shown that victims, as well as broader transitional justice considerations, need to be part of peace processes. The voices of victims are relevant to getting peace and making it sustainable. That is, for peace to be sustainable, the need to end violence and get a swift peace deal need to be carefully balanced against the need for accountability, being truthful about the past, and making reparations. Such balancing, as was noted above, has never been done in earlier Afghan peace deals and power-sharing agreements. Rather, the pain of the past has been ignored. 

Steps being taken towards transitional justice 

Even though Afghanistan has been a tough environment for advocates of transitional justice, some steps – albeit few in number – have been taken to try to revive the focus on accountability and, more broadly, transitional justice in Afghanistan. These include (1) a possible investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the inclusion of ICC crimes in the Afghan penal code; (2) the planned establishment of a committee for war victims as part of President Ghani’s Peace Advisory Council; (3) the AIHRC’s preparation for a possible national consultation about how Afghans want to deal with past violations; (4) documentation of human rights violations; and (5) a reinvigoration of civil society engagement in promoting transitional justice. 

(1) Accountability for international crimes with amnesty

Since 2017, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been pondering whether it should open a full investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity occurring on Afghan soil since 2003 (see AAN’s previous reporting here). The ICC prosecutor showed in her application, submitted to the Pre-Trial Chamber in November 2017, that crimes reaching the ICC threshold had been committed and the fact that Afghanistan has a blanket amnesty law was evidence that the Afghan government was unwilling or unable to investigate these crimes. The resounding support by Afghan victims for an ICC investigation, given in an ICC consultation in January 2018, also suggested to the Court that an investigation would be in ‘the interest of justice’, one of the conditions for the Court to act. Since then, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber has been deciding whether or not to authorise an investigation. Its extreme slowness is most likely caused by considerable pressure from the United States not to start an investigation that would involve investigating crimes allegedly committed by the US military and CIA in Afghanistan, and more broadly not to start an investigation just as a peace process may be on its way. The Afghan government has also been consistently trying to convince the Court that it is willing and able to investigate the ICC crimes – despite the Amnesty Law (read more details in AAN’s previous writings here). 

One concrete step taken by the Afghan government in response to the ICC’s preliminary examination has been the criminalisation of the four Rome Statute crimes – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression – in the new Penal Code. The government has also established a department within the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to investigate these crimes. 

The Rome Statute, applicable to Afghanistan since May 2003, and the Penal Code, in force since February 2018, both oblige the Afghan government to deal the war crimes and crimes against humanity occurring in Afghanistan since their enforcement. At the same time, the Amnesty law  provides immunity to perpetrators. This has put the Afghan government in a legal limbo in terms of holding perpetrators to account. Even so, although the Penal Code has not explicitly made the Amnesty Law obsolete, its article 916 could be understood to have implicitly done so. It says that “[c]riminal provisions of other laws, which are contrary to provisions contained in this law,” shall be abolished. The term ‘other laws’ should logically cover the Amnesty Law, at least until the Afghan Supreme court or other relevant authority advises differently. Noteworthy also is that the Law on Crimes Against Internal and External Security, adopted as early as 1987, has been integrated into the new Penal Code. This law criminalises acts of terror, fighting against the government and attacking public institutions – all crimes which the Taleban have committed. Immunity to the perpetrators of these crimes is explicitly ruled out by the Amnesty Law (article 4). 

Another step taken by the government has been to establish, on 17 February 2018, a special department within the Attorney General’s Office to investigate international crimes (this was proposed by Attorney General Muhammad Farid Hamidi and approved by President Ashraf Ghani – order number 863). The department has 20 staff, all in Kabul. While its establishment was an important first step, the department is not yet fully functioning. Its head, Muhammad Daud Afzali, told AAN, a year on, he still needs to recruit staff, especially in the provinces, ensure they receive training not only on international humanitarian law and international criminal law, but also how to investigate complicated war crimes, safely, in a time of conflict and without jeopardising victims and witnesses. This is especially crucial as no law defines victims and witnesses’ protection mechanism in the country. To be stable and sustainable, the department also needs to be recognised, as are other departments, by an amendment to the Attorney General’s Office Structure, Responsibilities and Jurisdictions Law, where the institution’s responsibilities and authority re defined. 

Afzali told AAN that an amendment to the law concerning the responsibilities of the department was proposed by the Attorney General’s Office and is being reviewed by the Ministry of Justice. The amendment suggested the department should have four responsibilities: 1) documenting, investigating and prosecuting international crimes; 2) cooperating with other states in relation to these three tasks, according to Afghan law; 3) managing the extradition of international crimes-related detainees and prisoners; and 4) performing any other tasks given to it, according to Afghan law. Although the amendment did not propose cooperation with international institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, as a separate task, paragraph four could cover this gap.

To make perpetrators accountable, it is also important that there should be a court with jurisdiction to hear cases filed by this department.(5) This would require an amendment to the Law on the Structure, Responsibilities and Jurisdictions of the Afghan Judiciary, which would need to be done by the Afghan Supreme Court. AAN was not able to find out if such an amendment has been proposed.

(2) Involving victims of war crimes in the peace process

President Ghani’s latest peace proposal, launched at the Geneva Conference on Afghanistan in November 2018, included the establishment of a Peace Advisory Board divided into eight different committees (see AAN’s analysis here). (6) The original plan did not include any specific involvement for Afghan war victims. According to Maina Abbasi, representative of the Transitional Justice Coordination Group (TJCG) (a coalition of different groups) to the Geneva Conference, they requested the National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Muheb, to establish an additional committee representing war victims. He welcomed the request and later, the Victims’ Families’ Representatives Committee was added to the Peace Advisory Board. A source in the National Security Council (who asked not to be named) told AAN in January 2019 that the initial idea was that the new committee should have 50 members, later decreased to 15. 

The inclusion of a committee for war victims in the Peace Advisory Board is the first time war victims have been provided an official platform. (7) However, the committee has yet to be established and AAN has not been able to clarify how and if committee members will be appointed or indeed what their role will be. Ahmad Shah Stanikzai, a member of TJCG, shared his concerns with AAN that, without a clear definition of how a member of the committee will be chosen, it might be misused; the government, for example, might bring in, in his words, “its own people.” He also added that it is not clear “how much the president would value victims’ committee’s recommendations” in the absence of a clearly-defined mandate. It is doubtful as well, he said, if these 15 representatives would be able to represent all victims in Afghanistan’s diverse society and over many years (the Taleban have been involved in the conflict for more than 25 years).

(3) A national consultation on dealing with legacies of the conflict

The AIHRC has started to prepare for a new consultation with Afghans on how they want to deal with the legacies of the conflict. This would be similar to its ‘A Call for Justice’ report published in 2004. In that year, in the course of seven months, the AIHRC interviewed 4,151 Afghans from all 32 provinces, as well as 400 Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 300 others in Iran, to collect their views on dealing with the legacy of the conflict, 1978-2001. The ‘A Call for Justice’ report did inform the drafting of the government’s Action Plan for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation (applicable from 2006 to 2009), and has remained an important advocacy tool for justice. The AIHRC’s Sima Samar, without giving an exact timeframe, told AAN that the Commission plans to carry out this national inquiry this year. The AIHRC does today have a much more developed infrastructure than it did in 2004, with offices in 14 provinces, and more qualified staff. At the same time, security has grown far worse. (8) Insecurity might create barriers not only for victims to share their views freely and without fear, but also for the AIHRC’s staff to travel to those parts of the country controlled or influenced by the Taleban. 

(4) Documentation and truth-seeking

The AIHRC’s national consultation ‘A Call for Justice’ report was supposed to be published together with a documentation of human rights violations and war crimes from the period 1978 to 2001 compiled by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) based on open source material. While the AIHRC released its report, the United Nations hesitated. It first published and then took down what became known as the ‘United Nations Mapping Report’ (a copy of which was cached and can be read here). After this, the OHCHR only shared copies of the report with the president and the AIHRC. 

Everything in the Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue – both objects and testimony – has been donated by victims of war crimes (Photo Hadi Morawej 2019)

The AIHRC’s in-depth, countrywide documentation of human rights violations and war crimes during earlier phases of the conflict (1978-2001) which resulted in its own Conflict-Mapping Reportwas its contribution to the implementation of the government’s Action Plan for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation. It finalised the report in 2012 but it, also, was never published. Sima Samar said she shared it with President Karzai in 2013, but both he and President Ghani have failed to decide to publish it (although Ghani, before being elected, said he would do so). The only comprehensive documentation of human rights violations and war crimes in the period up to the fall of the Taleban government that has been officially launched is a report by the Afghanistan Justice Project (AJP), a civil society platform. It has remained a valuable resource for activists and researchers. 

As regards the current period of the conflict, from 2001 till today, there is a great deal of ad hoc documentation available, both of human rights violations and war crimes as investigated and reported on by AIHRC, UN, Afghan and international human rights organisations, journalists (for example see the Killid Group’s reportage) and organisations like AAN. However, as of yet, yet there is no comprehensive report covering the conflict from December 2001 till today, and no analysis as to what gaps there are in the existing reporting. (9)

The main reasons why the UN and the AIHRC war crimes reports were not released said the leaders of these organisations was that they feared publication could endanger staff and be politically destabilising. In 2004, and again in 2013, there was both an anxiety that the alleged perpetrators of the crimes would retaliate, and a concern that the reports would increase factionalism. Publishing documentation on human rights violations and war crimes when perpetrators have political and military power, as is the case in Afghanistan, inevitably carries risks. In the years after the adoption of the Bonn Agreement, these risks were augmented by the fact that there was no clarity about the extent to which amnesty could be provided, no common, agreed-upon narrative about the conflict and no substantial efforts towards a peace process. 

There was – and is – no easy way to deal with the security risks relating to documentation exercises in a country like Afghanistan, but what was lacking in the UN and AIHRC documentation exercises was a clear idea about what the reports should be used for. Early and careful consideration about how documentation can be linked to truth-seeking and reconciliation might have eased the difficulties of getting the reports published. Possibly, the documentation exercises could have been supported by an official truth-seeking mechanism that also took into account the historical and social context of the conflict, that acknowledged and sought to support victims and that was a tool for reconciliation. 

‘Justice’ and ‘reconciliation’ are intimately intertwined in Afghanistan. Both demand that steps are taken towards creating a common and broadly-accepted narrative about what has happened during the conflict. Yet today, there is no such narrative, and the conflict since 2001 has only further fuelled factional narratives of the war, its reasons and its consequences. It is noticeable, for example, that the Afghanistan conflict is not taught in schools. This was a deliberate move. In 2002, when efforts to reform Afghanistan’s school curriculum began, the government decided that this history should not be added to school textbooks in any detail. The reason given by former ministry of education, Faruq Wardak, was that the school curricula needed to be “depoliticized and de-ethnicized” and this could not be done if Afghanistan’s conflict history was included (more details provided by this AAN’s report).

These days, some international institutions like UNAMA are also deliberating how to balance peace, human rights and justice. Richard Bennett, head of UNAMA Human Rights, told AAN that “human rights issues should be at the centre of the peace process.” He also noted that “many Afghans have expressed concern that human rights protections might be compromised in any agreement, or that recent achievements may be jeopardised.” This is particularly in regards to the protection of women’s rights, freedom of expression and freedom of the media. UNAMA is aware of the importance of including many voices in a broader process of deliberating the country’s future, he said, although there are many different models as to how this might be done. The UN hopes to offer relevant experience from other countries to the discussions in Afghanistan. 

(5) Memorialisation and Civil Society Initiatives

While the adoption of the Amnesty Law in 2008 put a lid on official engagement in transitional justice, including with regards to the publication of the AIHRC Conflict-Mapping Report, Afghan civil society organisations have continued to carefully engage on documenting war crimes, collecting war victims’ stories, advocating for a just peace and cooperating with the International Criminal Court. When the ICC was collecting the views and concerns of the Afghan war victims in December 2017 and January 2018, these civil society organisations and victims’ groups played an important role helping get the views of more than 6,500 victims on a possible investigation by the ICC in Afghanistan submitted to the Court ) (see more about representation phase in AAN’s previous dispatch here). (10) 

The Afghanistan Centre for Memories and Dialogue is one example of memorialisation. Setting up the museum is not a one-off event, but part of ongoing work. Hadi Marifat, the chairperson of AHRDO, told AAN they would be inviting more victims to publically share their stories. These would be followed by an experts’ roundtable discussion aimed not only at acknowledging of victims’ pain, but also discussing the root causes of conflicts and figuring out solutions for achieving a sustainable peace. 

Another example of memorialisation allied to activism – this time following the publication by the Dutch government of a list of 5,000 people who disappeared in the early years of the PDPA government – families of the disappeared set up a network, the Afghanistan Victims’ Families Association. Every year, on 10 December – International Human Rights Day and Afghanistan’s National Victims Day – members of the association visit the ‘Polygon’, an area close to the Pul-e Charkhi jail to the east of Kabul, where many of disappeared were buried in mass graves. Member Tawab Fayazi said they also have political demands, the main one being that no PDPA member should work in today’s Afghan government.

Peace with Justice?

Looking at the efforts to promote transitional justice in Afghanistan over the past 17 years, it is clear that accountability, in particular, has been almost entirely lacking. Even simply talking about the violations that Afghans have suffered has been difficult and risky. The absence of transitional justice has been evident from the adoption of the Bonn agreement and the adoption of the Amnesty Law to the peace deal with Hezb-e Islami. It has also been noticeable in efforts to ‘reconcile’ Taleban, such as the Afghanistan Peace and Reconciliation Programme (APRP).  Initiated in 2010, the APRP aimed at reintegrating insurgences and addressing local grievances. It automatically amnestied those coming over to the government side. The Afghan government has also lobbied against an ICC investigation and tried to do the minimum to convince the Court it is not needed, while remarks by US President Donald Trump have threatened the Court if it seeks to investigate US citizens. The main government vehicle adopted for transitional justice after the Bonn Agreement, the Afghan Transitional Justice Action Plan (2006-09), was never fully implemented; there was limited political will and to do so. Short-term stability has repeatedly trumped justice in Afghanistan, and it has trumped engaging with ordinary Afghans suffering violations during the conflict. (For further discussion on this, see for example here and here.)

However, there is an appetite for justice in Afghanistan. Broad consultations asking Afghans if and how they want to deal with past war crimes have been carried out by: the AIHRC, published in its 2004 “A Call for Justice” paper; the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, published in reports from five provinces, Bamyan, Baghlan, Nangarhar, Kabul and Uruzgan; and by the ICC. The most recent consultation, by the ICC, received submissions on behalf of 6,500 Afghans identifying as victims of war crimes. The overwhelming majority said they wanted the Court to investigate war crimes committed in Afghanistan. All these consultations, as well as investigations by AAN over the years, have shown that Afghans are realistic about what justice is available for them. They do want to know what has happened to disappeared family members, they want recognition for the wrongdoings they have suffered and they want a future for family members – especially children – disabled in the conflict. 

So far, in official or leaked reports of the current discussions between American and Taleban representatives, nothing has suggested that justice for victims of the 2001-19 phase of the conflict is even being raised. It might be different if direct negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taleban begin, although, going on past experiences, one would have to expect the silence on this topic to continue. Even so, as they have proved with their activism over many difficult years, civil society and victims’ groups will continue to push for justice to be a fundamental component in any peace negotiation.

Edited by Kate Clark

(1) The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) established a war museum in Herat (inaugurated in June 2010, more details here) and another in Badakhshan (inaugurated in April 2010, more details here). Ismail Khan, a mujahedin leader, also established a museum, commemorating the mujahedin’s fight against the Soviet Union, in Herat (its building was fully constructed in 2007, see more details here).

(2) At the moment, the Taleban are only talking to the United States, but it and the Kabul government want the insurgents to deal directly with the Afghan government.

(3) The RAND report, “Agreement on a Comprehensive Settlement of the Conflict in Afghanistan”, has not been published, but parts of the text were quoted by and discussed in the media (see AAN reporting for more detail). The New York Times reported that Laurel Miller, who was the US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan until June 2017, had authored it. Reuters quoted a tweet from the US embassy in Kabul saying Rand’s work was independent of the US government and did not represent US policy.

(4) President Karzai neither signed nor rejected the parliament’s decision. Based on article 94 of the constitution, if the president does not ratify a legislative decision of the Afghan parliament in 15 days after it was submitted to him, the decision would come in force.

(5) Before the entry into force of the Amnesty Law, a few Afghan war crimes trials had been conducted in Afghanistan. The cases show that individuals with no political protection, such as Asadullah Sarwari, a PDPA official, and Abdullah Shah, a mujahedin military commander from Abdul Rabb Rasul Sayyaf’s Ittihad-e Islami faction, who was sentenced and executed in 2004, can be prosecuted. AAN’s close analysis of the court proceedings against Asadullah Sarwari showed that the Afghan justice system can deliver war crimes trials, although maybe not in a proper way according to international ‘just trial’ standards. The Amnesty Law has also left opportunities open for haq ul-abd rights, ie for an individual, although not thee government to file their cases in front of a court. This right, however, has been difficult and dangerous for victims in practice without government support. No such case has been filed since the law came into force, in 2008. 

(6) These were the eight committees in the initial peace proposal of President Ghani: Political Parties’ Representatives Committee, Religious Community’s Representatives Committee, Women’s Representatives Committee, Tribal Elders and Representatives Committee, Cultural and Civil Society Representatives Committee, Private Sector’s Representatives Committee, Afghan Refugees’ Representatives Committee as well as Youths’ Representatives Committee.

(7) The National Department of Martyrs’ Family Members and Disabled People (separated from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in April 2018) has some responsibilities vis-à-vis victims. It registers victims and pays them or their relatives a small monthly amount of money. 

(8) Based on the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, (SIGAR’s) report, published in October 2018, the Afghan government had control or influence over 55.5 per cent of districts (see the report here).

(9) AAN has documented and analysed efforts to address legacies of past violations in Afghanistan in various reports and dispatches (eg, see here about torture, here about civilian casualties and here on the legacy of war).

Our reporting has included analysis about:

How justice and peace has been balanced (or not) in previous power-sharing and peace deals and especially in the first decade after the US-led intervention into Afghanistan (see AAN’s report about transitional justice and peace here).

The practical challenges of Afghan exercises to document war crimes and human rights violations from the early phases of the Afghan conflict and the successful efforts to bury this documentation;

The lengthy and often Kafkaesque legal proceedings against a handful of Afghan war criminals and the politics that led to the adoption of the Afghan Amnesty Law in 2007-08 (see here).

The equally lengthy and occasionally Kafkaesque efforts around the ICC’s engagement in Afghanistan and the US and Afghan governments efforts to put a lid on this engagement (AAN’s reporting about the ICC and Afghanistan here).

AAN has also regularly reported on the war crimes and gross human rights violations occurring in the current phase of the Afghan conflict and the efforts by individuals, families and communities to seek justice – or at least recognition – for the losses suffered (eg. here).

We have also reported on the importance of some of the public displays of truth-telling or recognition of victims’ suffering has had, including, for example, the release of the death lists of 5,000 people, forcibly disappeared by the PDPA (here and here).

Much of this reporting has been collected in AAN’s dossiers on ‘The PDPA and Soviet Invention’ (see here) and ‘Afghanistan’s War Crimes Amnesty and the International Criminal Court’ (see here). This dossier, from October 2017, has now been updated. 

(10) The victims’ representation might help the judges of the ICC to have a clearer understanding of the Afghanistan situation and the victims’ demands for justice and accountability for war crimes. If the judges authorise a full investigation, the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC would investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the Taleban as well as by Afghan and US security forces – these all appeared in the Prosecutor’s application to the judges. Based on the capacity of the ICC and its mandate, the prosecutor may make cases against a few responsible people from these three parties to the conflict. 

Dasht-e Archi, a district in the northeastern corner of Kunduz province is almost entirely controlled by the Taleban. They have established shadow sub-national governance structures in the district, while most local government officials are absent and work remotely from the provincial capital. Although the Taleban do not provide any services themselves, they have co-opted government and non-governmental organisation (NGOs) services in the district. AAN researcher Obaid Ali (with input from Thomas Ruttig and Jelena Bjelica) offers an in-depth account and analysis of how the local Taleban supervise basic service delivery, such as education and health in Dasht-e Archi. He explores how the two parallel forms of government operate in the district and how this affects the lives of ordinary people.

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). Our research methodology and literature review, can be read here and the first case study in the series, on Obeh district in Herat province, can be read here.

Dasht-e Archi district: the context

• District centre lies approximately 42km to the northeast of Kunduz city, linked by a non-asphalted road;
• Population assessed to be between 92,576 and 190,000 people, based on various available sets of data; the majority are Pashtun, followed by Uzbeks;
• Since 2013 there has been frequent fighting between the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). and the Taleban, including within the district centre; Jundullah, a group allied with the Taleban, is also present;
• Today the district is almost 80 per cent controlled by the Taleban; the district centre was temporarily taken by the Taleban in June and again in September 2015; in September 2018, the Taleban carried out another large-scale assault on the district centre, but were defeated by the ANSF.

Dasht-e Archi: service delivery 

• Education: of the 58 schools in the district, 27 have buildings, while 29 are open-air. One girls high school operates in the government-controlled area and one in the Taleban-controlled area. Most of the district schools are monitored by the Taleban;
• Health: There are ten health facilities in Dasht-e Archi, including a 20-bed health centre in the government-controlled district centre. Most of the others are located in Taleban-controlled areas. Therefore, they have the potential to influence them. However, as Taleban fighters and their families get treatment there, they largely refrain from interfering in the staff’s day-to-day work. The medical staff’s salaries and supplies for all facilities – in both the government and Taleban-controlled areas – are provided by the Ministry of Public Health through a national NGO;
• Electricity, media and telecommunications: there is no government-run provision of electricity and households mainly use solar panels; there is no mobile phone coverage at night; electronic media operate across the district, but is used by only the limited number of people with access to electricity and other devices (TVs, mobile phones)
• Other services: the government’s administrative system is paralysed; it operates mostly from Kunduz provincial centre; there are no development projects, the Taleban collect taxes and their primary court is open. 

Introducing Dasht-e Archi district

The district’s name refers to its pre-1930s, pre-irrigation geography: ‘dasht’ means desert, and ‘archi’ – originally ‘achi’ (آچی) – means ‘sour’, ie undrinkable, in Turkic. At that time, the district was mainly flat wasteland, with water only fit for livestock. It was mainly used as a summer pasture by Pashtun nomads. (The 1914 British Gazetteer of Afghanistan cites “scanty and brackish” water from springs and a small stream, also called ‘Archi’.) 

These nomads came from southern Kandahar and Helmand, as well as from eastern Kunar and Nangrahar provinces. There are a number of villages named after those tribes. There are, for instance the villages of Shinwari,Mangal, and  Kandahari (which is tribally unspecific, indicating the nomads might have originated from various southern and eastern tribes). The original population were Uzbeks who only settled in the far northern and northeastern parts of what today is Dasht-e Archi district, near the Amu Darya river. They are still in those areas today. At this time, the district was part of the northeastern province of Qataghan (1).

In the early 1930s, King Muhammad Nader Shah (ruled 1929-33) appointed Wazir Muhammad Gul Mohmand, a famous Pashtun author and poet, as tanzimayi rais, a kind of super-governor for the whole of northern Afghanistan. (2). Mohmand recognised Dasht-e Archi’s agricultural potential, if properly developed, and encouraged Pashtun nomads to settle there. He provided them with land deeds and constructed a large irrigation canal that started from the Kokcha River (situated in today’s Takhar province and a tributary to the upper section of the Amu Darya). This was part of a larger, provincial development plan that also involved the production and processing of cotton as a cash crop. A cotton textile mill was established in the provincial capital, Kunduz city, by the Spinzar (White Gold) joint stock company and was a major part of the economic development policies of both pre- and post-World War II Afghan governments. Over time, this visionary investment and major water-supply infrastructure development in the 1930s transformed the once-desert land of Dasht-e Archi into a fertile plain. Today the district produces a variety of fruits and vegetables.   

Dasht-e Archi is the most northeastern district of Kunduz province. It borders the province’s Imam Saheb to the west, Kunduz’s central district to the west (the Ab Dan desert lies between them) and Khanabad to the south. To the east and southeast is Takhar province and the districts of Khwaja Ghar and Bangi. Dasht-e Archi’s northern border is formed by the Amu Darya. Across the river lies Tajikistan.

Dasht-e Archi has three main roads out of the district, one, 25 kilometre-long, connecting to Imam Saheb, another, 23 kilometre-long, to Khwaja Ghar in Takhar province (neither are asphalted) and a third, to Kunduz city via the river port of Sher Khan Bandar. It is 42 kilometres long and asphalted only on the stretch between Sher Khan Bandar and the provincial capital.

There is no solid population data available for Dasht-e Archi. According to an Independent Directorate of Local Government (IDLG) profile of Dasht-e Archi in 2017, the district had an estimated population of 190,000 people (110,000 male and 80,000 female). The Central Statistic Office’s (CSO) estimate for 2018 puts the population at less than half of the IDLG’s figure, at 92,576 people (46,994 male and 45,582 female) (see here p25). Based on the CSO figure, Dasht-e Archi district comprises 8.4 per cent of the total population of Kunduz province, making it the third most-populated district (after Imam Saheb and Khanabad).  

Dasht-e Archi’s main ethnic groups are Pashtuns, followed by Uzbeks. The IDLG profile states that Pashtuns constitute 50 per cent of the population, with Uzbeks at 30 per cent, Tajiks at 15 per cent, Turkmen at five per cent, Arabs at three per cent and Gujar two per cent. The population is distributed between about 160 villages. 

Conflict and security

Dasht-e Archi has a long history of conflict and instability. In the 1980s, it was one of the mujahedin’s strongholds in Kunduz province. Commanders from different jihadi tanzims (factions) were involved in the fight against the Soviet occupation, but the district was largely under the influence of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami (HIG). Indeed, Hekmatyar was born in neighbouring Imam Saheb district. 

In the 1990s after the Soviet withdrawal, Dasht-e Archi suffered from infighting among the jihadi commanders, like other parts of the country. In 1997, Kunduz became a stronghold for the Taleban’s Emirate in the north and Dasht-e Archi divided along ethnic lines. Most of the Pashtuns and Hezb fighters allied with the Taleban, while most Uzbeks fought against them. Mullah Dadullah-ye Lang (Dadullah, the Lame), a Pashtun from Uruzgan, was appointed Taleban commander in charge of Kunduz, and remained a powerful Taleban commander in the northeast until the Taleban’s Emirate collapsed in 2001 (after which he led calls for a new ‘jihad’ – see AAN reporting here) and remained an influential commander until his death in 2007). 

In 2001, after the United States launched its bombing campaign against the Taleban, Dasht-e Archi was the first district of Kunduz to be captured by the so-called Northern Alliance, the anti-Taleban coalition (details here). The late Sheikh Sadruddin Sahdi, an Uzbek from Dasht-e Archi who joined the anti-Taleban Jamiat-e Islami as a commander in the late 1990s, overran the district. He then served as district governor for 12 years before being assassinated in August 2013. He was succeeded by his son, Nasruddin, who has now held the post for over five years. 

Until 2009, the district remained relatively peaceful, but by mid-2009 a new generation of Taleban who had studied in Pakistani madrassas had returned. They started to recruit fighters from the Pashtun community. The spread of their influence, however, was stopped in late 2010 by night raids and the targeted killings of Taleban commanders by US forces. Most of the surviving senior commanders left for Pakistan to avoid being killed, but some low-ranking Taleban commanders, however, remained in Dasht-e Archi and largely stuck to hit-and-run attacks against security forces and local governmental officials.   

After the late Mullah Salaam Baryal, a Kandahari-origin Pashtun from Dasht-e Archi, was appointed Taleban shadow governor for Kunduz in 2013, Dasht-e Archi once again became one of the Taleban’s major strongholds in the province. This happened between late 2014 and mid-2015. Before his appointment as shadow governor, Baryal had reportedly fought as the commander of a group (leading 15 to 20 fighters) during the pre-2001 Taleban rule of Kunduz and remained loyal to the Taleban after their defeat. 

Baryal moved the insurgents’ main base from Chahrdara district in the southwest of Kunduz to Dasht-e Archi, which is his home district, and made it the movement’s command centre for the province. Dasht-e Archi is in a better location, militarily, than Chahrdara district and this facilitated his operations, not only in Kunduz, but also in Takhar and Baghlan provinces, to the east and south. Under Salaam, the insurgency in the province developed a cohesive structure and better chain of command. Mullah Salaam’s strong links with Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, predecessor of the current Taleban leader (Mansur was killed in 2016, read AAN’s analysis here), allowed him to mobilise significant support from the Taleban’s Leadership Council. 

By 2014, Taleban fighters under Salaam’s command overran several strategic areas around Kunduz city and established a strong presence there (read AAN’s previous analysis here). Salaam invested significantly in gaining the support not only of the local Pashtun majority, but also of Uzbek communities by giving them Taleban district governorships and other positions. Salaam was also the mastermind and commander of the temporary capture of Kunduz city by the Taleban in 2015, and again in 2016 (read AAN previous analysis here). Therefore, he was considered one of the most trustworthy Taleban commanders in the northeast.  

After Mullah Salaam’s death in February 2017 (he was killed in a US drone strike in February 2017), Mawlawi Rahmatullah (also known as Mawlawi Muhammad) took the leadership of Kunduz’s Taleban. He is a Pashtun from the Safi sub-tribe of Chahrdara district and was one of Mullah Salaam’s close aides. However, he faced serious problems establishing his lead over the province’s insurgency, as the Kandahari Pashtuns in Dasht-e Archi were pushing for the appointment of a commander from their district and tribe. Eventually, the Taleban Leadership Council confirmed the appointment of Mawlawi Rahmatullah. This, however, did not quell the disgruntlement of the Dasht-e Archi Taleban. (There is no single leader among them and their strength lies in the unity of local elders and mid-level commanders.) Rahmatullah, therefore, remains a relatively weak shadow Taleban governor and his ability to orchestrate large-scale offensives against government forces in the provinces falls far behind his predecessor.

However, Dasht-e Archi continues to play a key role in the current militancy in northeast Afghanistan, as it geographically links the Taleban’s fronts in Takhar province to the east with those in Khanabad and Imam Saheb districts of Kunduz province to the south and west. This is part of a larger corridor through which the Taleban arrange logistical support and reinforcements from neighbouring districts and the neighbouring provinces of Baghlan and Takhar when needed for larger-scale operations. The district, which is also on the way to Badakhshan province, enables safe passage west for fighters via Takhar. From Badakhshan, they can cross Nuristan province to Laghman, Kunar and Nangrahar provinces in the east of Afghanistan, on their way to their major supply and retreat base, Pakistan. 

Today, the Taleban control around 80 per cent of the district’s territory. Most of the interviewees for this research told AAN that the government controls only the district centre and around 20 of the 160 villages in the district, covering about 15 to 20 per cent of the district’s total population. (These 22 villages, including the district centre, have higher populations than the villages further out in the district, which are under the Taleban’s control.) The estimate of District Governor Nasruddin Sahdi lies at the lower end; he told AAN that only about 15 per cent of the population live under government rule. 

According to Sahdi, the Taleban have brought under their control villages in the northern, eastern and western parts of the district, including the Uzbek villages in the northeast. Meanwhile, the government remains under virtual Taleban siege in the district centre. The frontlines are only a maximum of three kilometres away from the district governor’s office in all directions. To the north, Afghan National Army (ANA), commando special forces and ANA strike force units are stationed in a base in Wakil Sayed Akbar village. These units are well-trained and equipped with modern weapons to support the ANA. They take part in night raids, the targeted killing of Taleban leaders and special offensives against the Taleban. However, they are unable to widen the government’s reach in the district. To the east, west and south, Afghan National Police (ANP) and Afghan Local Police units are deployed in checkposts in Bazar-e Sheikhabad, Arbab Sayed Ahmad and Tajik Qeshlaq villages.The remaining parts of the district are controlled by the Taleban.

Most of the Taleban fighters in Dasht-e Archi are locals. A small number of outsiders from neighbouring Takhar operate alongside them. They are called in when there is a need for reinforcements during larger operations, after which they return to their original posts. 

Apart from the local Taleban, there is another active group of insurgents in the district, Jabha-ye Qariha (the front of the qaris, those who have memorised and can recite the Quran by heart). It is the military wing of Jundullah (Army of God), an independent group, although allied with the Taleban. Jundullah follows its own radical ideology, largely ignoring the local culture, in contrast to the Taleban permission and respect for local elders and their system of traditional mediation, carried out on a number of issues (read AAN’s previous analysis here). Initially, this front was established by Qari Aminullah Tayeb, an Uzbek from Rustaq district in Takhar province in 2013. Most of its fighters are from non-Pashtun communities such as the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Arabs. It consists of 100 to 120 religiously educated, young, radical fighters. 

Jabha-ye Qariha is based in Shahrwan, an area about 15 kilometres northwest of Dasht-e Archi’s district centre. Late Taleban shadow governor Salaam was able to ensure their alliance with the Taleban and prevented them joining the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, whose remnants are now mostly allied with the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Jundullah currently fights under the local Pashtun Taleban’s command in the northeast of the district and follows the shadow Taleban governor’s instructions. After Aminullah Tayeb’s appointment as the shadow Taleban governor for Takhar in 2015, the front’s leadership was taken over by Mullah Qader, an Uzbek from Khwaja Ghar district in Takhar province. The Taleban and the local population respect the group because all its members are religiously well-educated. This gives the front credibility when it comes to religious values and their interpretation. 

Jabha-ye Qariha is playing a significant role when it comes to youth radicalisation. The front encourages and mobilises madrassa students to fight against government forces in Dasht-e Archi in its ranks and provides recruits with military training in its Shahrwan stronghold. Apart from Dasht-e Archi, Jabha-ye Qariha also operates in some of Takhar’s northern districts that border Dasht-e Archi, such as Khwaja Ghar and Dasht-e Qala.  

In terms of numbers, the IDLG in 2017 estimated a total of 2,000 insurgents in the district. This includes 1,500 local Taleban and 300 non-local Taleban. The IDLG district profile does not specifically mention Jabha-ye Qariha or Jundullah but lists 200 “Central Asian” fighters. None of AAN’s local interlocutors could confirm the presence of foreign fighters in Dasht-e Archi today. (3) Local sources close to the Taleban told AAN that the total number of insurgents in Dasht-e Archi was only around 800 to 1,000 fighters. A member of the development council also thought their number was less than 1,000. It seems the IDLG might overestimated the number of insurgents operate in the district.   

Government provision of services

The government’s presence in Dasht-e Archi is limited to the district centre and nearby villages. Most respondents said that, apart from the district governor, the police chief and agriculture department staff, all other officials, including the district attorney general and the heads of both the health and education departments are based in Kunduz provincial centre and only rarely visit the district. This started when, in 2015, the district fell to the Taleban. After this, local government officials remained in Kunduz city for almost four months until the district centre was retaken by government forces (read media article here). Since then, sporadic visits have resumed. However, many regular services for the people have never resumed. For instance, one respondent said that if a person needs a tazkera (national identity card), he or she has to go to the provincial centre. Another respondent said that, to register a case with the district attorney general, one also has to go to Kunduz city and find the prosecutors for the district. He added there was no permanent office for the district prosecutors in Kunduz city and most of the time they were unavailable. 

The agriculture department’s staff remain in the district. The Taleban have taken a ‘soft’ approach towards them because of the assistance they provide to farmers, who, for the most part, live in Taleban-controlled areas and are often dependent on outside subsidies.

Many of the respondents said that local government appointments were largely based on nepotism and family connections. In a district with a majority of Pashtuns, local government posts are largely run by Jamiat-e Islami affiliated Uzbeks. Only the head of the education department is a Pashtun. There are two main reasons preventing Pashtuns from serving as local government officials in the district. First, the appointment of local officials has to be endorsed by Nasruddin Sahdi, the district governor, who is an Jamiati Uzbek with an anti-Taleban background. He favours people loyal to him and his party. The other reason is that the Taleban issue threaten local Pashtuns, warning them not to take government jobs. They focus their threats against Pashtuns because they form the majority ethnic group in the district. As for Uzbeks, if they work for the government, they are usually living inside the district centre and are loyal to the district governor. Most of the respondents said that, apart from the education, health and agriculture sectors, the Taleban have warned people not to serve as government employees. If they ignore these warnings, they will take their agricultural land and private homes in Taleban-held areas.

According to the IDLG profile of Dasht-e Archi district, as well as AAN’s interview with the district governor, the Afghan government security forces number about 655 officers. 

• Most belong to the Afghan National Army (ANA) – numbering 360 officers –based three kilometres north of the district governor’s office; 
• Afghan National Police (ANP): numbering 95 officers (from Uzbek, Tajik and Pashtun communities);
• Afghan Local Police (ALP): 200 officers (ALP members are from different ethnic groups such as Uzbeks, Tajiks and Pashtuns). The ALP unit is led by Hamid, an Uzbek, Jamiat-e Islami affiliated commander from the Qarluq area . 

These figures indicate that government forces are outnumbered by far by the Taleban.

The shortage of security forces, a lack of timely deployment of reinforcements and supply logistics are the major obstacles faced by local forces, according to most of the interviewees. A school teacher, for instance, said the only reason the Taleban have not taken over the district centre is their fear of airstrikes by US forces. Otherwise, he added, the Taleban are already much stronger and better organised than the government forces. 

An ALP commander in Dasht-e Archi told AAN that there was no serious intention from the government side to fight the Taleban. “The security forces are frustrated by continual fighting,” he said. The ALP commander also said the security forces in the district concentrate on protecting their own territory from the Taleban and do not get timely reinforcements or logistical support to be able to carry out their own offensives. He added that the local Taleban also face issues such as the recruitment of new fighters and supplies. 

Taleban provision

The Taleban have established a parallel shadow government in the district to deal with daily affairs. A development council member from Dasht-e Archi told AAN that it includes “a district governor, head of education, judicial, health, public outreach, military and the finance committees.” According to all respondents, these posts are filled by young Pashtuns and Uzbeks from the district. (4)

All the respondents said the Taleban ‘out-govern’ the Afghan administration particularly in the justice sector in addressing disputes among local people. This is largely because the government justice system is effectively paralysed, given it operates remotely from Kunduz city. 

The Taleban’s justice committee operates as a primary court (ie appeals are heard elsewhere – see the following paragraph), where people submit letters to register their cases and get a receipt with an exact date to attend a hearing. Generally, the court takes a few days to review registered cases but it depends on their complexity and the availability of the Taleban’s judges. A number of respondents stated that the Taleban justice committee was always busy. Locals usually take their cases to the Taleban court, where they are adjudicated faster, without corruption and with satisfactory outcomes. For many people, the only available option for their grievances is the Taleban court. Although they do not readily admit it, they often register their cases with the Taleban court so that they can force the opposing side to attend the hearing and accept the Taleban verdicts.  

The primary Taleban court’s verdicts are mostly accepted by both parties. If not, they can turn to the Taleban’s provincial justice committee, which functions as an appeal court. This committee (the appeal court) does not have a permanent office but its judges are available in Topra Kash, a more rural area of Kunduz’s central district and around 15 kilometres to north of the provincial governor’s office. Respondents said that it mostly endorses the primary court’s decisions. When neither decision has been acceptable to a party, respondents said they can turn to the Taleban’s Leadership Council, also known as the Quetta Shura or sometimes to the Peshawar Shura. (The Peshawar Shura deals with issues related to eastern, central and northern regions.) It operates as the supreme court but it is difficult to access for ordinary people as it requires spending a lot of money to travel all the way to Quetta or Peshawar in order to register a case. To register a case with either of the Taleban’s councils, the appeal court needs to refer the case to them. Basically, the court provides a reference number for the case, as well as a contact number, address and names of the person responsible for the case. 

For the implementation of the primary court’s decisions, the shadow Taleban district governor plays a key role, supported by the military committees. For example, if there is a land dispute, the shadow governor asks the military commander of the specific village to implement whatever decision the court takes. Minor cases, such as family disputes, are sometimes referred to the local elders’ council. This depends on both sides’ accepting the move. The elders’ council decisions are often approved by the Taleban court and again implemented by the shadow district governor. 

Other Taleban committees deal with daily affairs. For example, their public outreach committee delivers speeches at social gatherings and during Friday prayers in mosques. Their finance committee collects taxes from agricultural land, shops, commercial services such as telecommunication networks, construction projects and any other source of income at the local level. Their education committee supervises schools (see more details below), the health committee monitors health facilities in the district and assures the attendance of health workers. Apart from the justice committee, the rest of the Taleban’s committees do not deliver services because they do not have the capacity or ability to do so.    

Service delivery

AAN conducted 10 in-depth interviews with key informants in Dasht-e Archi district, based on a semi-structured questionnaire, itself developed following a review of the relevant literature. They included tribal elders, district authorities, respected individuals in the district, civil society activists, a head teacher and other teachers from Taleban-controlled areas, a female teacher from a government-controlled area, a local doctor from a Taleban-controlled area and local journalists. They were asked a series of questions about their experiences and perceptions of education, health, telecommunication and electricity, and other services available in their district. For more detail about our research methodology see this dispatch. A summary and analysis of their answers in triangulation with the background information is presented below.

1. Education services 

According to various sources, that include the Afghan Ministry of Education, the district governor, the head of the district development council, school teachers and local people, there are 58 government schools in Dasht-e Archi district, 27 in buildings, and 29 open-air. Of these 57 schools, 14 are high schools (16 to 18 years old) two for girls and 12 for boys; 12 secondary schools (12 to 15 years old); 27 primary schools (six to 11 years old); four Ministry of Education-run religious schools (age six to 18 years old) and one teacher training centre. There are also around 20 private religious schools in the district. According to these sources, there are 27,550 students in the district, 17,907 boys and 9,643 girls. and 404 teachers, 379 male and 25 female, who work in the district. It is difficult to confirm whether these numbers are real or only on paper. Regarding the two girls’ high schools, one operates in a government-controlled area and the other in the Qarluq area, which fell to the Taleban in November 2018. As schools have been off for examinations and their winter break since then, it is not yet known whether the school will be allowed to re-open when the new school year starts after Nawruz (21 March). However, the signs are not good. All respondents said that in the Taleban area, girls are only allowed to study until aged 12 years old (grade six). 

The statistics on the gender of teachers are the most striking. Just six per cent of teachers in the whole district are female. These 25 individuals only teach in the two girls’ high schools. In all the remaining girls schools, including the secondary schools, girls are taught by male teachers. As will be seen, this is one factor keeping many girls at home. 

The managing and monitoring of the schools is divided between the insurgents and the government based on who controls the area. According to a school teacher interviewed by AAN, “The education department has a specific team of five to six people to monitor the schools.” A local government official said:

In government areas, the local education department monitors the schools. In the rest of the district the Taleban monitors them. The education department’s monitors visit the schools once or twice a week. The teachers/students’ attendance record, textbooks, teaching method are the issues that controllers focus on. 

However, the schools in most of the district (80 per cent of the territory) are controlled by the Taleban’s education committee, which has influence on local education staff and often interferes in the curriculum. A teacher from a Taleban-controlled area said that Mawlawi Naser Khaksar, head of the Taleban’s education committee for Dasht-e Archi, along with four or five mullahs, monitor the schools. The Taleban’s monitoring team checks the textbooks, and teachers’ and students’ attendance records. In the opinion of a school teacher from the Taleban-controlled area:

The Taleban monitoring-system is somehow similar to the education department, but they put more emphasis on religious subjects. In some areas the Taleban interfere in the education curriculum. For instance, they are not interested in social science being taught or textbooks on culture. 

Most of the respondents confirmedthat the Taleban’s education committee also insisted on the study of religious subjects such as fiqh (jurisprudence, Islamic law) being taught instead of mahratha-ye zendegi (social science) and farhang (culture), subjects that are part of the ministry of education’s curriculum. 

Moreover, the Taleban sometimes introduce their own members to serve as school teachers in their areas, several respondents said, thereby assuring their influence on society and the education sector and getting their own people paid government salaries. Usually, they said, the local elders’ shura (council) presents the Taleban’s demand on appointments of teachers to the government education department. The Taleban mainly introduce those who hold education certificates from madrassas. The local shura then introduces the Taleban member as a teacher of religious subjects and also as a preacher for their village mosque to the local government. In this way, the local shura assures the appointment of Taleban members. The local education department usually accepts the recommendations. These teachers then receive government salaries. The Taleban in Dasht-e Archi rarely dismiss teachers in their area, but there have been cases where they have pushed for this, for example when a teacher regularly misses classes without consulting the school headmaster or informing the Taleban’s education committee.  In general, the Taleban go directly to the school teachers themselves, or to local elders, to address their concerns, as a civil society activist explained: 

Taleban do not dismiss teachers, but they transfer teachers from one school to the other if a teacher regularly misses classes. The Taleban send a message to the [government] education department and ask for an official replacement of the teacher.

The most striking and recent example of how the Taleban exercise their control over the education sector is the closure of schools in the province, including in Dasht-e Archi, for more than a month at the beginning of 2018. This was a response to the ministry of education’s decision that teachers’ salaries would now be transferred to them via the banking system. Before, teachers’ salaries had been paid in cash directly to them at the schools. The Taleban considered the decision an attempt to curb their influence on the system – although they do not tax teachers’ salaries. The Taleban were also afraid that if their members had to go to the provincial centre to collect their salaries they might be caught by the Afghan security forces The closure lasted from March to late April 2018. The Taleban also instructed teachers to protest against the provincial education department. 

In Dasht-e Archi, all the schools remained closed until the elders stepped in and mediated between the Taleban and the government. Eventually, the Taleban accepted that payments through the banking system could go ahead because teachers had become frustrated by their fruitless protests and started to criticise the Taleban’s decision. The Taleban realised that a long close-down of the schools might turn the teachers against them. Therefore, they allowed teachers to reopen the schools.   

Some respondents pointed out that the Taleban’s monitoring is not rigorous. Unlike the Department of Education officials, who were said to be visiting schools once or twice a week, a development council member said that “the Taleban sometime visit a school twice a week but other times, they do not monitor the school even for a month.” This may be because the Taleban are foremost engaged in fighting and lack the capacity to systematically staff their monitoring teams. When there is a large-scale offensive against government forces, all Taleban members, including members of their education committee and even some teachers, take part. 

In some other areas, according to respondents, neither the local government education department nor the Taleban monitor schools close to the front lines. Therefore, they said it remained unclear whether the schools were open or shut. Education in the district has been badly affected by clashes between Taleban and government forces, which mostly happen in the spring and summer, when schools are in session (the main school holiday in Afghanistan is from December to March). The schools in Dasht-e Archi’s district centre have also been regularly affected and remained closed for long periods of time, as the centre changed hands between the ANSF and Taleban several times in 2015 and 2016. 

It is the continual fighting and instability in the district which does the most harm to girls’ education. The two girls’ high schools have been repeatedly caught in the crossfire between Taleban and government forces. The Lisa-ye Naswan-e Markazi (Central Girls’ High School), with around 1,500 students, was moved from its original building to a rented house due to insecurity in 2015, so students could attend classes without feeling under threat. According to a female school teacher, this was a decision taken by the school’s personnel. She said the school teachers (ten men and nine women) paid the rent from their own pocket. The other girls’ high school, Lisa-ye Naswan-e Qarluq (Qarluq girls’ High School), with around 1,400 students, was in an area on the frontline for a long time. In November 2018, the Taleban overran the Qarluq area entirely and the school came under their control. According to Abdullah Mushfeq, the school’s headmaster, the Taleban did not close the school and did allow students to hold their final exams in November. They also told him they would allow girls to attend the high school the following school year, from March 2019 (Nawruz). However, it is still unclear whether the Taleban will indeed allow the girls’ high school to operate this coming year. Speaking to AAN, a local elder from Qarluq who did not want to be named, said he did not expect the Taleban to allow girls to attend the high school. He added that some local Taleban members had already told people that girls would only be allowed to study until grade seven, or when they are 13 year old.     

Generally, people in Taleban-controlled areas allow their daughters to go to primary school, but forbid or dissuade them from continuing further. Additionally, the Taleban’s regulation that women and girls cannot go out of the house without a male member of their families also blocks the participation of women and girls in society.  or these reasons, girls above the age of 12 years, whether Pashtun or Uzbek cannot go to school in Taleban-controlled areas, nor can women serve as school teachers there.

Health services

According to the Afghan Ministry of Health’s data on the basic package of health services, there are ten health facilities in total in the district, including one Basic Health Centre (BHC), three Comprehensive Health Centres (CHC), and six Sub Health Centres (SHC). (5). Health facilities in the district operate in both areas, in the government-controlled as well as Taleban areas. Most of them, however, are located outside the district centre and in areas under Taleban control. 

Almost every respondent said that neither the government nor the Taleban interfere in the day-to-day work of the health sector. On the Taleban side, this is because the health service is crucial for them as they have to rely on it to ensure treatment for any of their fighters who get wounded or sick. 

The majority of the interviewees also said men and women have equal access to health services. However, there are issues related to women’s access and a lack of female doctors across the district. The Taleban strictly apply a rule that women can not go to a health facility without a male relative. This is the most serious problem women face, most respondents said. Some of the interviewees also complained about the lack of female doctors in the district, as well as the number of health facilities in the district. Generally, female doctors are not interested in working in insecure, Taleban-dominated districts and a district not educating most of its girls even to twelfth class will not be producing ‘locally-grown’ female doctors. Respondents said the only female health workers available in the district are local midwives and nurses who graduated from two-year medical courses in the government-run medical institute in Kunduz city. One female interviewee said: 

It is difficult for many women who live in far-flung areas to reach a clinic. In general, those who live close to a health clinic can have access. The number of health facilities is also not enough to address local demands. Young girls cannot go to a health clinic alone. Because of fear of the Taleban, even male doctors do not treat women in the absence of a male family member.

Health service delivery in Taleban-controlled areas also suffers from a number of other serious shortcomings. The major issues are a lack both of timely medical supplies and of electricity, a shortage of medicine and delays in medical workers’ salaries. These issues were illustrated by a local doctor when he talked with AAN in mid-October 2018: 

The Afghan government does not address our demands. There are low-quality medicines in health facilities throughout the district and we work in dark rooms without electricity. The medical workers have not received salaries for the past four months. The Ministry of Public Health should not hand over all its responsibilities to NGOs to address our demands. The ministry should monitor the health facilities and assure our safety, logistical support and timely payment of the health workers.   

The NGO he mentioned is Afghan, Just [sic] for Afghan Capacity and Knowledge (JACK). Until the end of 2018, another NGO, the Organisation for Health Promotion and Management (OHPM) also operated in the district, but then stopped after serious complaints about its failure to provide timely support to the health facilities. 

Local elders set up health shuras (councils) in order to ensure medical workers’ safety and the security of health clinics in a way that is independent from the Taleban, but also respected by them. It is not clear when exactly the shuras were set up, but locals say they have been there for years. The shuras consist of the representatives of villages served by the health facilities. A school teacher, who is also a member of a health shura, said: 

The health shura has 10 to 15 members from the villages nearest to the health facilities. The shura cooperates with the health clinics. For instance, the shura assures the safety and protection of female medical workers. 

Another member of a health shura said: 

The shura takes care of medical workers, as well as the property of the clinics. For instance, the shura does not allow locals to misuse the health facility. The main concern is the safety of female medical staff and their protection. 

The shuras do not allow weapons inside the health facilities, one interviewee said. 

 The Taleban have even set up their own health committee to regularly monitor health clinics in order to assure health workers attend their duties. The Taleban’s health committee is led by Qari Imran, a local Taleb from Dasht-e Archi. 

A civil society activist stated: 

The Taleban do not interfere in health clinics or their work. Of course, they sometimes use the health clinic’s ambulance for their injured fighters, but they do not force the doctors or nurses to only look after their fighters…. 

Access to electricity and media 

In 2014, the Provincial High Peace Council received 600,000 USD for a hydropower project in the district centre to supply power to around 1,000 households. The project was successfully implemented. However, in 2015, due to serious clashes between government forces and the Taleban, the hydropower station was entirely destroyed. Consequently, there is no supply of government-run electricity in Dasht-e Archi. As an alternative, many households have installed solar panels, which is sufficient to light rooms, recharge mobile phones and watch television.

Many residents in Dasht-e Archi who have access to electricity have TV sets at home that are connected to satellite dishes. People who can usually watch countrywide TV stations such as Tolo, Aryana, Shamshad and Aina, in order to follow the news and other programs. They also tune in to Central Asian TV stations, such as those from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. This is despite the Taleban ordering people not to watch TV or listen to music, instructions mostly delivered by the preachers during Friday prayers at the local mosques. They instead encourage people to listen to recitations of the Holy Quran and other Islamic programmes on the radio and at the mosque. In practice, however, these instructions are largely ignored, and the Taleban do not actively prevent people from listening to the radio or watching TV. For example, they do not conduct house searches for banned equipment. A civil society activist said:  

People place their satellite dishes in a hidden place. The dishes are mostly installed in the middle of the roof and covered with plastic. It looks like a greenhouse on the roof.

As for radio, there is no local radio station in Dasht-e Archi, although radio is widely listened to in the district. People listen to both national and foreign broadcasters. The latter, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the British BBC and the German Deutsche Welle, are mainly listened to by middle-aged or older people who want to follow the news. For younger people, national radio stations that broadcast music and other programmes such as cooking, sports and other entertainment are the favourite channels. According to a local elder,“There are one or two radios in every house.”

Most people, especially the young, listen to radio channels from Tajikistan, for music and other entertainment. They keep the sound low so that the neighbours cannot hear it. To have access to radio, householders place a long stick on the roof with an antenna on top of it. 

Access to telecommunication  

The other issue of concern in the district is the lack of access to mobile networks during the night. In Dasht-e Archi, telecommunication companies only operate during daylight, from six in the morning until four in the afternoon. The Taleban have forced mobile companies to switch off the network at night for security reasons. There are four active private mobile network operators in the district, Roshan, Afghan Wireless, Etisalat, and MTN. The Taleban do not allow Salaam mobile network because it is a government-run company. They have also instructed people to avoid using the Salaam mobile network. 

Most of the interviewees for this research said that telecommunication companies have complied with the Taleban’s instructions, implementing their orders immediately upon request, for fear of having their antennas destroyed by the insurgents. The Taleban also collect taxes from the companies. According to all of the respondents, the Taleban’s finance committee regularly receives money – amount unknown –from telecommunication companies based in Kunduz city. 

The Taleban banned the possession of internet-connected smart phones (ones without internet connection are allowed) among their own fighters in Dasht-e Archi in 2016. This rule was imposed after a number of drone attacks and night raids by the US and Afghan forces against Taleban commanders in the district (read media reports here). The Taleban perceive mobile networks as a tool that US and Afghan intelligence use to locate their hideouts. Only some people in government-controlled areas have smart phones with internet connections. In general, internet connections are very weak in the district and uploading a short video or a photo takes a long time. Locals in Dasht-e Archi mostly prefer to use old-style phones without internet access. In this way, they do not have to fear the Taleban. 

According to most of the respondents, residents in Taleban areas are supposed to have pro-Taleban songs on their smart phones (not connected to the internet), as well as religious scholars’ speeches on Jihad in case their phones were checked. In the same vein, they said, having a music video or a pro-government video could mark a person as a government spy, the penalty for which, they said, could be death. However, if people’s devices are checked by government forces and they carry pro-Taleban songs, they are perceived to be Taleban fighters and risk being arrested. In Dasht-e Archi, locals are forced to adjust their lives according to this doubly-coercive system. All in all, it is safer not to have a smart phone. A head teacher from Dasht-e Archi said: “It is better to have an ordinary phone without pro-government or pro-Taleban speeches or songs in it.”

Other available services 

Dasht-e Archi may have profited from development projects in the first half of the twentieth century, but today infrastructure development is marginalised. Insecurity is a ‘pretext’, interviewees insisted, used by the provincial government as an excuse for not carrying out construction or development projects. Respondents said that, in principle, the Taleban do allow NGOs to operate and that, in the past, they have allowed specific projects they considered beneficial, although they rejected others. All of the respondents believed that neither government nor non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were interested in carrying out development projects in the district. As to commercial construction projects, the Taleban charge a ten per cent tax on any project.

Construction of an asphalted Kunduz–Dasht-e Archi road, that was supposed to connect the district centre through Sher Khan Bandar dry port with Kunduz city, has only been partly implemented. Out of a total of 40 kilometres, only 21 kilometres, between Sher Khan Bandar and Dasht-e Archi have been asphalted; the remaining stretch of 19 kilometres remains unpaved. All the respondents said the Taleban were preventing the completion of the remaining part because they fear it would allow government forces in Dasht-e Archi to receive better reinforcements and supplies. 

The other roads, for example the 23-kilometre-long road between Dasht-e Archi and Khwaja Ghar district of Takhar province, and the 25-kilometre road between Imam Saheb district of Kunduz and Dasht-e Archi also remain non-asphalted. In these cases, according to most of the interviewees, this is due to neglect on the part of the local government. They said locals had asked for the upgrade of these roads a number of times, but the government, they said, had ignored their demands because of insecurity.  A provincial council member said: 

The Afghan government should pay more attention to Dasht-e Archi district. There is no development project in the district. If one compares Dasht-e Archi with other districts of Kunduz province, there are big differences in terms of allocated funds for development and construction projects.

It would seem the council member is somewhat right here, given that other insecure districts, such as Khanabad, Aliabad and Chahrdara, all have asphalted road to Kunduz city and electricity.

From the Taleban’s side, they provide nothing in the way of infrastructure.

Conclusion

From this research, it is clear that the significant presence of the Taleban in the district has meant they have a greater influence on most public services than the government, although – apart from in the judicial sector – they do not provide any services of their own. The Taleban’s presence in more than four-fifths of the district has harmedlocal government morale and its ability to monitor the delivery of basic services. 

Given their ability to control large swathes of territory and the people who live there, the Taleban are able directly interfere in services. In education, they play a large role in monitoring schools, notably teachers and students’ attendance records. They change the curriculum by adding more religious books and banning ‘modern’ subjects, as well as appointing their own members as teachers. Furthermore, they dictate the conditions under which girls’ education is possible. They enforce strict rules on telecommunication services. Their shadow government system is currently perceived to be much stronger than the government’s, not least through their tax-collection system – they tax not only the local population’s economic activities but also commercial services such as telecommunications. Without their blessing, the delivery of public services would be severely hampered.

Dasht-e Archi is a district in which the government forces’ presence is mainly symbolic, protecting as people put it “a few billboards within the district centre” (the forces are only able to protect the district governor office, district police chief’s compound and limited areas around the district centre). The local government is not capable of lobbying for construction or development projects in order to bring in income and generate work opportunities. For the local population, living in insecurity and largely ruled by the Taleban, and with local government largely absent means there is a limit to how much NGOs, government or companies want to work in their area.   

Edited by Thomas Ruttig, Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark

(1) Before 1964, Afghanistan had five provinces, Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Turkistan, and Qataghan and Badakhshan. In 1963, Qataghan and Badakhshan and was divided into four provinces, Baghlan, Kunduz, Takhar and Badakhshan (more details in this Ministry of Education high school geography textbook, grade 12,).

(2) Muhammad Gul Mohmand was a close aide of King Nader Shah’s and from 1930 served in various high-ranking government posts, for example as interior minister. While serving as tanzimayi rais, he was governor for the provinces of Qataghan and Badakhshan and Turkistan, as well as the hukumat-e ala (a lower-ranking province) Maimana (see map here). He was the author of ten books, most of them about Pashto literature and language. He was also a strong promoter of making Pashto as the country’s official language (read more here).

(3) It is possible that the IDLG included the Jundullah fighters when speaking about Central Asians. AAN has found during previous research on non-Pashtun Taleban and other insurgent groups in northern Afghanistan, that government information about these groups is often sketchy and vague.

(4) The Taleban’s shadow government for Dasht-e Archi comprises: 

• Mullah Zulfeqar: Taleban’s shadow district governor for Dasht-e Archi. He is originally from Takhar province but stays in Dasht-e Archi; 
• Mawlawi Naser Khaksar: Taleban’s head of education committee, originally from Dasht-e Archi;
• Mawlawi Musa: head of the judicial committee, originally from Dasht-e Archi;
• Mawlawi Awaz: head of the military committee, originally from Dasht-e Archi;
• Mawlawi Kaber: head of the public outreach committee, originally from Dasht-e Archi;
• Mawlawi Neyaz Muhammad: head of the finance committee, originally from Dasht-e Archi.

(5) Afghanistan developed its basic package of health services (BPHS) in 2003. The BPHS is implemented by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in Afghanistan and currently outsourced to 40 national and international NGOs, who are mandated with delivering BPHS services in 31 provinces. In the remaining three provinces, the MoPH delivers BPHS directly. For an overview of health service delivery in Afghanistan, see here.

The downturn in civilian casualties recorded in 2017 has reversed. UNAMA, in its 2018 Annual Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Afghanistan, released today, records almost 11,000 civilians injured or killed in 2018, a five per cent increase compared to 2017. It is the highest number of civilian casualties on record. The Taleban continue to cause the most civilian casualties, says UNAMA, although the Islamic State’s local franchise, ISKP, and its use of suicide attacks has pushed casualties from that type of attack to a new high. Civilian casualties from air operations, mainly carried out by international forces, are also at an unprecedented high. Certain parts of the Afghan security apparatus – largely CIA-supported and operating with impunity – have also precipitated a huge jump in civilian casualties during search operations. AAN co-director Kate Clark has delved into the report.

UNAMA’s report 2018 report into the Protection of Civilians can be read here, as can all previous reports: 

AAN analysis of UNAMA’s earlier annual reports can be read here: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2013 and 2012.

The statistics:

• 10,993 civilian casualties (3,804 deaths and 7,189 injured), representing an increase of five per cent compared to 2017 (with an eleven per cent increase in deaths and two per cent in injuries);
• 1,152 women casualties (350 deaths and 802 injured), a six per cent decrease from 2017;
• 3,062 child casualties (927 deaths and 2,135 injured), representing a “slight decrease” from 2017.

Since 2009 when UNAMA began systematically recording civilian casualties, it has documented 91,675 civilian casualties (32,114 killed and 59,561 injured).

How civilians were killed and injured (in order of magnitude):

Cause of CasualtyTotal Number of CasualtiesTotal Number of DeathsTotal Number of InjuredPercentage of all Civilian CasualtiesComparison with 2017Ground Engagements3,3828142,56831%3% decreaseComplex and Suicide Attacks2,8098861,92326%22% increaseImprovised Explosive Devices (IEDs)1,818 4751,343  16%2% decreaseUS and Afghan Forces Air Operations1,015 5364799% 61%  increaseExplosive Remnants of War4921503424% 23% decreaseSearch operations 353284693%       185% increase

Who is responsible?

Anti-Government Elements (AGEs), including the Taleban, the Islamic State Khorasan Province, ISKP (also known as Daesh), and other Afghan and foreign insurgent groups, were responsible for a total of 6,980 civilian casualties (2,243 deaths and 4,737 injured), representing 65 per cent of all civilian casualties, a three per cent increase compared to 2017.

Insurgent ActorTotal Number of CasualtiesTotal Number of DeathsTotal Number of InjuredPercentage of all Civilian CasualtiesComparison with 2016Taleban4,0721,3482,72437% 7% decreaseISKP2,181 681 1,50020% 118% increaseUndetermined AGEs and other actors6781964826%

The leading causes of civilian casualties carried out by AGEs (in order of magnitude) 

• suicide and complex attacks
• IEDs
• ground engagements

Pro-government forces, including Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), international forces (only the US has a declared combat mission in Afghanistan with military forces and the CIA present), and pro-government armed groups, were responsible for a total of 2,612 civilian casualties (1,185 deaths and 1,427 injured), representing 24 per cent of all civilian casualties, an increase of 24 per cent (and reversing the decrease of 23 per cent in 2017). 

Pro-Government ActorTotal Number of CasualtiesTotal Number of DeathsTotal Number of InjuredPercentage of all Civilian CasualtiesANSF1,535606 92914% (about the same)Pro-Government armed groups180 9981 2%  (94% increase)International military674 406268 6% (146% increase)Undetermined or multiple pro-government forces7743342% 

The leading causes of death by pro-government forces (in order of magnitude)

• ground engagements and aerial operations (each 39 per cent of the total)
• casualties resulting from search operations (14 per cent)

Unattributed cross-fire in ground engagements caused 10 per cent of all civilian casualties. Shelling from Pakistan into Afghanistan resulted in 60 civilian casualties (13 deaths and 47 injured), or one per cent of civilian casualties,about the same as in 2017. The remaining two per cent of civilian casualties could not be attributed to any party, but were mainly caused by explosive remnants of war.

Analysis

The Afghan war hit many horrible new records in 2018. More civilians were killed or injured in 2018 than in any single year since UNAMA began systematic monitoring, in 2009. The year saw record civilian casualties from suicide and complex attacks, and from air operations. The worst single attack recorded by UNAMA also took place. When the Taleban detonated an IED in a van painted to look like an ambulance outside the Ministry of Interior in Kabul on 27 January 2018 in Kabul, they killed 114 civilians and injured 229 others.

Afghanistan also suffered unprecedented election-related violence. From the start of voter registration on 14 April to the end of 2018, UNAMA verified 1,007 election-related civilian casualties (226 deaths and 781 injured) with more than half occurring on the two polling days (20-21 October). The first day of polling, according to UNAMA, recorded the highest number of civilian casualties on any single day in 2018. 310 civilians were also the victims of election-related abductions. 

In 2018, a record number of children were killed in the armed conflict (927; albeit just one more than 2016, but an increase since 2017). While there was a slight decrease in child casualties overall (including those injured), due to a decrease in casualties from ground engagements and explosive remnants of war, UNAMA noted that the increase in child deaths was attributable to airstrikes, including those carried out by international forces. 

Meanwhile, downward trends in 2018 were far fewer: those killed and injured in ground engagements continued to decline (by three per cent, following a 23 per cent reduction in 2017) – although this remained the leading cause of civilian casualties. There was also a reduction in civilian casualties from targeted killings by insurgents.

The one bright spark of hope in 2018 was the Eid ceasefire in June during which, with the exception of ISKP which neither called its own ceasefire, nor respected the Taleban, government and international forces’ ceasefires, was upheld. As we reported, it allowed Afghans to imagine their country at peace. Although not everyone was happy with it, many Afghans, both civilians and combatants from both sides took the opportunity to cross frontlines and fraternise with ‘the enemy’ (see reporting on varying experiences here). In September 2018, the United States also appointed a Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, its former ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad (see AAN reporting here). He has, at least, given a push to thoughts of how to achieve a political settlement, although nothing (yet) has translated into any reduction in civilian harm on the battlefield. 

UNAMA’s report is long, thorough and full of statistics, analysis and stories detailing the human and personal cost of the war. AAN recommends reading it in full. This dispatch is not intended to reflect the granular detail of UNAMA’s report, but focuses on four important trends: the decrease in casualties in ground operations; the sharp rises in civilians killed and injured in suicide and complex attacks, especially by ISKP; and in aerial operations; and in search operations by pro-government forces, especially NDS paramilitaries and the pro-government, but outside government command, Khost Protection Force.

Ground engagements

Civilian casualties from ground engagements dropped for the second year in a row. Three per cent fewer civilians were killed in ground engagements in 2018 compared to 2017, and that was 23 per cent lower than in 2016. (The pro-government forces causing civilian casualties in ground engagements were almost entirely ANSF and pro-government groups; UNAMA held international military forces responsible for only two per cent.) 

According to UNAMA, the most important factor in this overall reduction was a 44 per cent decrease in civilian casualties resulting from shooting by pro-government forces. At the same time, however, indirect weapons (such as mortars, rockets and grenades) used by pro-government forces caused harm to civilians at roughly the same level as in 2017 (854 civilian casualties – 211 deaths and 643 injured). UNAMA again called for all sides to cease using indirect weapons from and into civilian-populated areas. 

UNAMA noted that efforts by pro-government forces “to prevent civilian casualties, including continued implementation of policies and efforts to train forces, track and learn from civilian casualty incidents, contributed to the decrease in civilian casualties from ground engagements.” UNAMA also observed a decrease in the number of civilians killed by Taleban shooting during ground engagements, although casualties from indirect fire increased. 

UNAMA highlights two other factors helping to push down casualties from ground engagements: the shift in ground fighting “towards more sparsely populated areas,” and “warnings provided to civilians where fighting occurred.” Where fighting did take place in urban areas, casualties were high. During the Taleban’s five day offensive on Ghazni city on 10-14 August (see AAN reporting here and here), 262 civilians were killed (79) and injured (183); UNAMA says these figures may be underestimates due to difficulties in accessing the city to verify additional reports of casualties. Most of the verified casualties were from indirect weapons (130 – 26 deaths and 104 injured) and small arms fired (36 – 13 deaths and 23 injured) during ground engagements. (UNAMA also recorded targeted killings by the Taleban, and seven air strikes by pro-government forces which caused 81 civilian casualties). 

Suicide and complex attacks

The 22 per cent increase in deaths and injuries caused by suicide and complex attacks was driven largely by ISKP. It was responsible for 87 per cent of the civilian casualties caused by these types of attacks. Despite constituting a significantly smaller fighting force than the Taleban, ISKP caused one fifth of all civilian casualties in the Afghan conflict. The number of its civilian victims more than doubled in 2018 compared to 2017 (from 843 to 1,871). As ISKP has been beaten back by US and Afghan government forces in Nangrahar province, where it now operates from a far smaller territorial base (see recent AAN reporting), it has, as UNAMA says, “increasingly relied on asymmetric tactics, including suicide and complex attacks deliberately targeting civilians (including most prominently the Shia Hazara community).” That civilian harm was mainly split between Kabul city (1,027 civilian casualties) and Nangrahar province (991 civilian casualties), with a notable attack also on Shia Muslim worshippers in a mosque in a village in Paktia (see AAN reporting).

ISKP also pushed up the numbers of civilians targeted deliberately in the conflict in 2018: 48 per cent more than 2017 (4,125 people – 1,404 killed and 2,271 injured). 

Aerial Operations

1,015 civilians were killed (536) or injured (479) in aerial operations in 2018, mostly by international military forces (632 civilian casualties – 393 deaths and 239 injured). (1) This represents a 61 per cent increase in casualties from this type of operation – accelerating a trend noted in 2017 (seven per cent increase compared to 2016). A large majority of the casualties (82 per cent) were deaths. Aerial operations were also accountable for the record number of child deaths this year in the conflict: the number of children killed in airstrikes more than doubled compared to 2017.

The US air force released 70 per cent more weapons in air operations in 2018 than in 2017 (7,362 compared to 4,36; itself a significant increase on the 1,337 weapons released in 2016), and caused more than double the number of civilian casualties. UNAMA says this followed additional deployments to Afghanistan at the end of 2017 and “a relaxation in the rules of engagement for United States forces in Afghanistan, which removed certain “proximity” requirements for airstrikes.” While the report does not provide any more details, UNAMA cites testimony made by then defence secretary General Jim Mattis in which he agreed with a question from a Senate Armed Services Committee member that “aggressive action and use of air power” was part of the “new strategy in Afghanistan.” Mattis said that the “kind of restrictions that did not allow us to employ the air power fully have been removed,” but that they would still do “everything humanly possible to protect the innocent that the enemy purposely jeopardizes by fighting from in amongst them.” Not surprisingly, the new rules have not been published, but Mattis’ remarks suggest they allow the US air force to interpret what constitutes a defensive operation far more broadly than before. (See his remarks in full in footnote 2.) 

Such rules are crucial. In the latter years of the ISAF and Enduring Freedom missions (which ended on 31 December 2014), the US military realised the harm civilian casualties were doing to its military mission and the overall political project. Its drive to reduce civilian casualties included new tactical directives on the use of air power introduced in late 2011. They included the instruction, “Presume that: every Afghan is a civilian until otherwise apparent; all compounds are civilian structures unless otherwise apparent; in every location where there is evidence of human habitation, civilians are present until otherwise apparent.” Approval for the defensive use of air fire depended on troops on the ground being in danger. (For detail, see this dispatch). In conversations with military personnel following the bombing of the Medecins Sans Frontier hospital in Kunduz by US aircraft in October 2015, ie after ISAF/Enduring Freedom had been replaced by Operation Resolute Support and Freedom’s Sentinel, AAN was told instructions then had not changed (our analysis of why and how the strike on the hospital happened was to do with rules and safeguards not having been followed – see here).

The UNAMA report suggests the US military is now taking a more ‘robust’ line against insurgents using civilian homes as cover. It gives as one example US forces carrying out airstrikes on a residential compound in Chahardara district, in Kunduz province, on the morning of 19 July 2018, which killed 14 women and children; indeed all the members of one extended family were killed except one baby, who was injured.

The incident took place during a ground operation by Afghan national security forces, including Afghan National Army commandos, who were supported by international military forces on the ground. During the operation, Afghan forces reportedly came under attack and responded with heavy gunfire, followed by mortars, on the compound from which they believed the shooting originated. A member of the family inside the compound reportedly called an Afghan Local Police commander stationed nearby to ask for help getting out of the house, but before anything could be done, an international military forces’ jet conducted an airstrike on the corner of the compound where they were located. A second bomb was then dropped directly on the house, completely destroying the building.

The US eventually accepted that civilians had been killed in the air strike. (3) 

In assessing the significant increase in civilian casualties related to air strikes, UNAMA said that, “[e]ven if one party to the conflict fails to respect international humanitarian law, that does not absolve opposing parties from their international humanitarian law obligations” and that, aerial operations should be cancelled or suspended if it “if it becomes apparent that it may be expected to cause civilian harm that would be excessive to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” UNAMA says those carrying out air operations must balance the military advantage against expected civilian harm and “take into account the likelihood of civilians being present in the area or inside structures from which Anti-Government Elements may be fighting.” It has called on Afghan and US forces to “review targeting criteria and pre-engagement precautionary measures, particularly considering the likelihood of civilians being present in the same buildings and locations as Anti-Government Elements.”

UNAMA says it is “particularly concerned that aerial operations by international military forces conducted in support of Afghan forces, mainly National Directorate of Security (NDS) Special Forces, during search operations, have also caused significantly more civilian casualties (including extremely high numbers of deaths) in 2018.” Civilian casualties resulting from those search operations also, themselves, shot up in 2018.

Search operations – NDS special forces, Khost Protection Force and the role of the CIA

Search operations by pro-government forces, said UNAMA, caused 353 civilian casualties (284 deaths and 69 injured) in 2018, a 185 per cent rise from 2017, when 92 civilians were killed (63) or injured (29). The vast majority of the casualties were caused by the NDS Special Forces and the extra-legal Khost Protection Force, both of which, says UNAMA “are supported by international military forces.” 

Most of the casualties caused by search operations were by NDS special forces (see reporting by AAN from 2013 on them here). In 51 incidents documented by UNAMA, 19 of which were joint operations with international military forces, 240 civilians were killed (203) or injured (37). All took place in central, eastern and southern regions (teams are known as NDS-01, operating in the central region; NDS-02 in the eastern region; and NDS-03 in the southern region). UNAMA also documented 51 civilian casualties (41 deaths, 10 injured) caused during 13 search operations conducted by the Khost Protection Force. (4) Such incidents have also been documented by AAN, including how the Khost Protection Force was accused of intentionally killing in a joint operation with US forces, presumed to be CIA, in Zurmat district of Paktia on 30 December 2018, the media (for example here and Human Rights Watch).

UNAMA said “[t]he high number of fatalities compared to the number of injured suggests that force was employed indiscriminately.” Additionally, UNAMA raised concerns 

…about the significant increase in incidents of human abuses, criminality and damage to civilian property by the Khost Protection Force. UNAMA has also received reports of unlawful and arbitrary detention, including following mass arrests, by different National Directorate of Security Special Forces, and the Khost Protection Force. It received credible accounts of detainees having experienced torture or ill-treatment while held in places under the authority of these entities.

UNAMA reports that 21 per cent of all civilian casualties caused by pro-government armed groups were carried out intentionally, mostly by the Khost Protection Force.

Overall, civilian casualties attributed to the Khost Protection Force in 2018 increased by more than ten-fold compared to 2017, with 107 casualties (70 deaths and 37 injured) in 22 documented incidents, compared with five (three deaths and two injured) in 2017. Some of those civilians were deliberately killed, said UNAMA, while others were incidentally harmed during search operations and others were harmed in ground operations. UNAMA says the group’s area of operations expanded in 2014, with 14 incidents documented in Khost, four in Paktia and four in Paktika. It has also intentionally damaged civilian property, including homes and vehicles, and illegally detained people. UNAMA calls on the government to 

… either formally incorporate the Khost Protection Force into its armed forces, and hold its members accountable for any potential violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of international human rights law, or to disband the group and investigate and prosecute members for acts allegedly contravening Afghanistan’s criminal law.

What is significant in looking at these search operations is that Afghan army special forces also carries them out, but is not reported as causing civilian harm. As AAN understands it, they are mainly supported by the US Special Forces while the NDS paramilitaries and the Khost Protection Force are supported by the CIA, although this is, of course, a very murky area (see AAN reporting here). The Khost Protection Force is not even part of the formal Afghan government apparatus, but a ‘campaign force’ ie, it has a foreign chain of command, answering to the CIA. As UNAMA says, its operations, along with those of NDS special forces, “appear to be coordinated with international military actors, that is, outside of the normal Governmental chain of command, which raises serious concerns about transparency and accountability for these operations.”  That the NDS and Khost Protection Force are problematic and Afghan army special forces are not implies systemic problems with the former in terms of command and control, and impunity.

One thing to note is that, like ISAF before it, it is NATO’s Resolute Support mission which answers to queries from UNAMA on civilian casualties, even though Resolute Support is non-combat (with a mandate only to use lethal force in self-defence). It is not the US military, which has its can-be-combat Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, nor the CIA which respond to enquiries about civilian casualties either from US air strikes or from search operations by CIA-supported armed groups.

Conclusion

As someone who has followed the Afghan conflict over many years, this author has come to expect demoralising news on civilian casualties from UNAMA’s annual reporting. However, this year, many of the trends are particularly worrying. There have been small improvements in Afghan Security Forces’ attempts to protect civilians, although the numbers killed and injured by government forces remain roughly the same as in 2017. The numbers killed and injured by the Taleban have fallen, but remain at shockingly high levels; the movement is still the main cause of civilian casualties in the conflict. Meanwhile, ISKP’s transformation into a sectarian, terrorist outfit bent on carrying out large-scale, deliberate attacks on civilians in cities has meant calamitous casualties in horrific single attacks.

On the pro-government side, two trends were of especial concern. The first was the sharp rise in civilian casualties from air operations, especially those by international forces. This is especially so given the efforts made in the latter years of the ISAF/Enduring Freedom missions by the US military to drive civilian casualties down. In 2017, civilian casualties from air strikes also rose, but UNAMA could still argue then that, proportionally (ie in relation to the number of weapons dropped), they had not. This, it said, suggested that the “quality of safeguards is not falling.” (6) Commenting on air strikes conducted by international forces in 2018, by contrast, UNAMA has written at length about air strikes in relation to the Geneva Conventions and its principles of proportionality, precautions and discrimination. (5) It called on international forces to:

Thoroughly review and strengthen current tactical protocols to prevent civilian casualties, particularly in the context of strikes carried out in support of Afghan and/or international military forces on the ground who come under attack, and strikes carried out on structures in any context. 

The harm done to civilians by NDS special forces and the Khost Protection Force is alarming, not only because of the sharp increase in civilians killed and injured, but also, because as UNAMA has documented, many of the killings were deliberate. Furthermore, both groups appear to answer to a foreign chain of command. This helps make it difficult, if not impossible, for Afghan civilians harmed by their actions to hold them or their main backer, the CIA, to account (see AAN reporting from 2012 on the CIA’s role in the war).

In 2019, Afghanistan will enter its fortieth year of war and eighteenth year of this particular phase of the conflict, with little hope in sight that the harm done to civilians on the battlefield will be reduced – unless and until there is progress in a political settlement and an enduring ceasefire.  

Edited by Danielle Moylan

(1) UNAMA attributed 304 casualties in aerial operations (118 deaths and 186 injured) to the Afghan Air Force and said it could not determine responsibility for the remaining 79 civilian casualties.

(2) Excerpt from proceedings of the US Committee On Armed Services on the Political and Security Situation In Afghanistan on 3 October 2017.

Senator Fischer: Okay. Over the last few years, we have seen a decrease in our combat air operations in Afghanistan. From 2010 to 2015, we saw the total sorties conducted against enemy targets decrease by 84 percent in a span of only 5 years. During the previous administration, this was coupled with, I felt, very restrictive rules of engagement, and that focused on returning fire rather than allowing commanders to proactively attack those Taliban targets. In contrast, the air campaign against ISIS [in Iraq and possibly Syria] has reached record levels with over 21,000 sorties flown in 2016. The use of American air power helped stem further inroads by ISIS, and I think it was used successfully in locations such as Sinjar and Ramadi. Are we looking at something similar, this aggressive action and use of air power, as a new strategy in Afghanistan? 

Secretary Mattis: It is embedded in the revised strategy [on Afghanistan and South Asia, announced by President Trump on 21 August 2017], absolutely. In 2017, as you noted, we have had more airstrikes than any year since 2012. 

So already, you see some of the results of releasing our military from, for example, a proximity requirement. How close was the enemy to the Afghan or the U.S.-advised Special Forces? That is no longer the case, for example.

So these kind of restrictions that did not allow us to employ the air power fully have been removed, yes. 

That said, we will never fight at any time, especially in these wars among innocent people, without doing everything humanly possible to protect the innocent that the enemy purposely jeopardizes by fighting from in amongst them. That is something we will always take as an absolute, in terms of how we conduct our tactical events on the battlefield.

(3) UNAMA reported that on 20 July, the Afghan Ministry of Defence acknowledged the civilian casualties. A US military spokesperson denied this on 25 July, telling the media all those killed in the attack had been legitimate military targets, and it was denied again on 10 August. “Following significant advocacy from UNAMA,” the 2018 Protection of Civilians report says, “Resolute Support reopened its review process of the incident and it proceeded to a formal investigation under United States Army Regulation 15-6, which confirmed 12 civilians were killed and one injured.” 

(4) UNAMA attributed the remaining civilian casualties from search operations by pro-government Forces as follows: 13 civilian casualties (8 deaths and 5 injured) jointly to various pro-government forces; five civilian casualties (4 deaths and 1 injured) to international military forces; and 11 civilian casualties (9 killed 2 injured) to undetermined pro-government forces.

(5) UNAMA explains these principles in its legal section:

The contents of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and several rules similar to those found in their Additional Protocols are also largely part of customary international humanitarian law. The following are amongst the most relevant principles that apply to all the parties in the conduct of hostilities in Afghanistan’s non-international armed conflict (for the quotations see footnotes on page 58 of the report) :

• Distinction: The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack and parties to the conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants.

• Proportionality: “an attack against a military objective which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

• Precautions in attack: “[…] civilians shall enjoy general protection against the dangers arising from military operations”.“In the conduct of military operations, constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects” and all feasible precautions must be taken with the “view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

It has been almost four years since the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) captured territory in southern Nangrahar province, where it ruled with extreme brutality, and nearly two years since the United States military and Afghan government forces began concertedly fighting the group there. (The Taleban, too, have fought ISKP sporadically.) The last commander of NATO and US forces, General John Nicholson, vowed then that he intended to defeat ISKP in 2017. It has been driven back, but still holds some territory – and the ‘battle’ goes on, with ISKP mainly now targeting civilians in large-scale, urban, terrorist attacks. In this dispatch, we get an eye-witness account of the fighting in Nangrahar from journalist Andrew Quilty* and juxtapose it with excerpts from an article that appeared in the German media. 

Journalists Andrew Quilty, from Australia, and Wolfgang Bauer, from Germany, have both spent time with pro-government forces fighting ISKP, also known as Daesh, in the Mamand valley of Achin district. Quilty was based in a small US special forces base, while Bauer was with a unit of the Afghan National Border Police (ANBP). Their reportage gives insight into the daily life of soldiers, police and local civilians. They discuss air strikes and cooperation between US and Afghan forces and the difficulty of shifting ISKP from territory and from minds. They share one conclusion, that the fight against ISKP will only succeed if the local population come to trust the government and they question the US special forces alliance with one local strongman in particular, a commander of an Afghan Local Police unit named Belal Pacha, whom locals accused of murder and kidnap. After the end of Quilty and Bauer’s reporting trips, Belal was arrested and jailed. 

Both journalists have anonymised the names of soldiers and officers.

Andrew Quilty: 2018

With their heads bowed, the 12-man Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) team gathered around the visiting army chaplain. It was July 2018 and at 7am, as the sun flooded the Mamand Valley in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangrahar Province, it was already sweltering.  “…As we impose costs on the enemy,” said the chaplain, “[we] strike fear into their hearts, and deal blows of death from which they will not recover.” The team chuckled with approval at the violence evoked by a holy man, then mounted their vehicles and departed. It was one of the final missions of their six-month deployment to rid the valley, less than ten miles from the border with Pakistan, of fighters from the Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch, the ISKP. 

The rise of ISKP

The so-called Islamic State was declared by Iraqi-born Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in Mosul, Iraq, in June 2014. That same year, militants from Pakistan were welcomed by communities in southern Nangrahar after they had crossed the Durand Line from their redoubts in North Waziristan, one of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). They were fleeing Pakistani military operations. By April 2015, those militants were pledging allegiance to the new, self-declared caliph in Iraq. 

Prior to this, residents of the Mamand Valley had lived for several years under uncontested Taleban rule – described by some as strict but fair, and by others as merely “less cruel than Daesh.” Taleban control across southern Nangrahar at that time was characterised by a lack of cohesion that made for ineffective shadow governance. ISKP seized on the disorder and forced the Taleban out. ISKP was also able to establish itself in southern Nangrahar because of the disarray and rivalry that ran through government, security and societal networks. As then AAN researcher Borhan Osman wrote, in September 2017. “The weakness of these anti-ISKP forces [government, tribal and Taleban] was coupled with the vitality of two pro-ISKP forces: small militant groups lacking fixed loyalties and the Salafi militants fighting in the ranks of the insurgency.” He continued, “As for local communities, in essence… they have been consistently undermined in recent decades and had become too divided to stand as a bulwark against a new and extremely brutal armed group.”

Locals described the new group as initially ruling benevolently, but then descending into “darkness.” At first, ISKP offered generous salaries to new recruits, sometimes exploiting inter-tribal rivalries and local grievances to strengthen their ranks. Some Taleban groups defected and soon foreign fighters from Central Asia and the Caucasus also began to appear, joining the Pakistanis already in the valley. Within months, however, ISKP changed. Their edicts grew harsher even than those the Taleban had inflicted on Afghans during their time in power (1996 to 2001). The atrocities for which ISKP would quickly become famous – including murder, house burning, forced marriage and closing schools – gave most residents little choice but to leave. In 2015, thousands of families fled Achin, the site of ISKP’s first ‘capital’.

Joint US-Afghan operations against ISKP began across southern Nangrahar in early April 2017. After retaking several villages between Achin district centre and the foot of the Spinghar Mountains, the advance of the US special forces and their Afghan allies, foremost among them, the Afghan National Army Special Forces (ANASF), stalled at the mouth of the Mamand Valley, where ISKP fighters fought from a decades-old cave complex. On April 13 2017, President Trump authorised the use of the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat – the so-called Mother Of All Bombs, shortened to ‘MOAB’. It obliterated the ISKP frontline and allowed special forces into the valley (see AAN reporting here). The US established Observation Post (OP) Bravo, just over a kilometre from the site of the MOAB. 

The following month, in May 2017, General John Nicholson, then commander of US forces in Afghanistan, declaredhis intent “to defeat ISIS-K [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Khorasan, aka ISKP] in 2017.”

Visiting Blackfish

Captain J – mild-mannered with a scruffy, ginger beard – arrived in the Mamand Valley ten months after Nicholson’s declaration, in March 2018. He was on his first combat tour at the age of 31. His Army Green Beret team, from 2nd Battalion, First Special Forces Group, based out of Tacoma, Washington state, was the third team to occupy OP Bravo. They renamed the base ‘Combat Outpost (COP) Blackfish’, after their team logo, which combines the team’s home-base on America’s Pacific Ocean coast and a marine ‘animal of war’, the killer whale, also known in Washington state as ‘blackfish’. 

Blackfish was established in an abandoned Afghan farm compound. A colourfully-painted concrete structure contained the ‘team room’ of the ODA (short for Operational Detachment Alpha, the 12-person team made up of Army Green Berets, and an Airforce Combat Controller and ‘parajumper’). The room was filled with combat equipment and shelves stocked with junk food and energy drinks. There were three small bedrooms and, separated by a flat-pack timber wall, an operations room. This was the only part of the base I was forbidden to enter. A black Islamic State flag was still painted on the wall from the time the militants had occupied it.

Despite being in one of the most hostile districts in the country, at the time, the ODA’s physical defences were meagre. While the corners of Blackfish were manned by conventional soldiers with heavy machine guns, some of the base’s boundaries were secured by nothing more than knee-high concertina-wire. Part of the reason could be heard, almost constantly, in the sky above. SOF’s place, high in the US military hierarchy, means they have almost unparalleled access to air support, including F16 jets, Apache attack helicopters, surveillance and weaponised drones and B1 bombers. On at least one occasion during the two embeds I was invited on, there were no less than five ‘air assets’ circling above Blackfish.

After two previous ODAs and their Afghan National Army Special Forces (ANASF) counterparts had fought their way into Mamand, Captain J’s mission was to continue pushing ISKP back, extending the Afghan government’s reach into Achin’s remote valleys. Two months before the team arrived, a member of the previous ODA, Sergeant 1st Class Mihail Golin had been killed and four others wounded in a firefight. Captain J’s team had six months to extend the ‘government’s reach’ by clearing more territory of ISKP fighters and building checkpoints for the ANSF to man as they progressed. He had never been to Afghanistan before.  Yet, in some ways, his mission was less fraught than it might seem at first sight. ISKP has been roundly rejected by Afghans, so the ODA was joining a popular fight. In Achin, the US military presence appeared even to be tolerated by local Taleban, for one good reason, as Captain J explained, “We think people associate us with the absence of ISIS-K.” Furthermore, almost all residents had long since fled Mamand when Captain J arrived in early 2018, so the risk of incurring civilian casualties in their area of operations – another cause of hostility towards US forces – was almost nil. Tolerance, however, was no guarantee of the soldiers’ safety. As he told me another time, Captain J aimed never to travel by road from COP Blackfish—through Achin, Shinwar and Bati Kot Districts—to the nearest major US base at Jalalabad airfield: an ambush, he believed, would be almost inevitable. 

In terms of its specific mission, continuing to push ISKP back, Captain J’s ODA was wholly successful. But he liked to look at their mission in far broader terms. “It’s not one or two fighters… hiding up in the mountains, it’s the organisation and ideology as a whole,” he told me. “I kind of took it seriously that 12 of us were asked to hold the line between ISIS and the greater population of Afghanistan.” 

Going into the Takhto Valley and discussions about the ANSF

Operational Detachment Alpha members during a mission into the Takhto Valley, to the east of Mamand Valley, Achin, on July 26, 2018. Photo: Author

For Achin and Mamand Valley, the success of the anti-ISKP mission will partly depend – along with seeing functioning governance established – on building up the Afghan National Army Special Forces [ANASF], who have been close allies of the US special forces mission. Mentoring the Afghan special forces has been central to US’ Freedom’s Sentinel counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan, as a whole. Not everyone in the team is convinced of the efficacy of this, however.

The ODA’s Master Sergeant, ‘D’, a four-tour Afghanistan veteran who commands respect beyond his rank, does not hide his frustration when the ‘subtleties’ of the mission appear to him to come before killing. During a mission into the Takhto Valley, east of Mamand, in July 2018, Master Sergeant D voiced his suspicions to the author that the Afghan mine clearance team were, as he put it “slow-rolling” their sweep because they did not want to go into the valley. “It was different back in the day, before the whole ‘Afghan-face’ thing,” he said, referring to the strategy of having the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) ostensibly leading missions. “Now, it’s a constant struggle just to push the Afghans forward.” Captain J was more sanguine. He also thinks there are deep-rooted problems within the ANSF that lead to a lack of motivation in places like Mamand. “Some of the guys [understand] that it [is] their country and they [need] to fight, other guys [don’t] seem to care.” 

The reality may be very different. One de-miner attached to the team, who wore a “FUCK ISIS” patch on his shoulder, told me how hard their job was. “In these narrow valleys and against IS as an enemy, I’m very cautious.” Just a couple of months previously, one of his National Mine Reduction Group (NMRG) team mates had found an IED during a foot patrol with the same ODA. “He was preparing to ‘bip’ it with C4 [an explosive], stepped back a few metres and stepped on another mine. He died instantly. It takes only one mistake to lose the lives of friends.” Moreover, for the de-miners and the Afghan special forces soldiers working alongside the ODA, fighting and de-mining is a daily reality, not a one-off, six-month deployment.

Later, on the mission into Takhto, after hiking six kilometres into the valley, the ODA stopped under a tree. Last time they had come this far they had taken fire and lost an Afghan commando. They rested with two Afghan special forces officers and the mine clearance team as Afghan special forces teams pushed forward, high up on the ridges either side of the valley. There had been the occasional round coming from a ‘hook’ in the valley ahead, so the men were alert, but with two Apache helicopters cruising overhead in slow circuits, I sensed that most of the team considered missions like this one boring, unless they were getting shot at.

Then, without warning, a shot rang out. For seconds, no one could work out where it had come from, but it sounded close. Everyone but an Afghan captain, W, jumped to their feet. He had a trickle of blood running from where a bullet fragment, part of a single round accidentally fired by a de-miner, had ricocheted off a rock and lodged in his temple. The wound was minor, but for Captain W, who had been wounded in combat twice before, it signified more. By the time the ODA’s medic was cleaning the wound back at Blackfish, Captain W had fallen into a gloom emblematic of the low morale that plagues the ANSF. “It’s been eight years. I’m tired,” he said. “I will try to go to Europe.”

Airstrikes

For Captain J, his greatest asset in his Mamand mission is AB, a US air force combat controller attached to the team. AB coordinates all US (the author saw no Afghan air assets and it seems unlikely they would be needed with so much America airpower available), as well as remotely-fired artillery and rockets. At 25, the power he wields with a radio and ATAK – a smartphone-like device used for mapping fighting positions – is in contrast to his surfer image. He typifies the American special forces ‘off-the-leash’ reputation. Unkempt brown hair escaped from the sides of his baseball cap, blending into a beard cultivated with deliberate neglect. He wore cheap knock-off Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses and, on-base, ‘combat Crocs’, plastic sandals.

Combat Controllers like AB, and ‘Joint Terminal Air Controllers’ (JTAC) as their army equivalents are known, are responsible for the targeting and requesting of almost every airstrike that the US military conducts in combat. In 2018, in Afghanistan, the US dropped more munitions (7,362 according to US Air Force Central Command) than in any other year since the war began. The report, published on February 8 2019, states that the strikes were “[i]n support of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for ISIS-K, al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations…” and that “The missions assisted Afghan National Defense and Security Forces operations in applying military pressure in coordination with the international community’s effort to set conditions for a political solution in Afghanistan.”

However, a day spent at Blackfish shows why such figures might be misleading. AB’s JTAC counterpart, Sergeant 1st Class ‘D’, said he had called in more than 100 airstrikes just four months into his deployment, including several during my second embed with the team. None, however, targeted fighters. Instead, the two used their seemingly limitless firepower to keep ISKP fighters off high ground from where they might mount an attack, for “softening up an area before going out there,” as he put it, and even to allow new pilots target-practice in a combat zone. 

Even for strikes against non-human targets, however, a request had to make its way through several links in the chain of command for approval. More than once during my time with the ODA, team members expressed frustration at the reluctance of their superiors to hit what they believed were legitimate targets. One Green Beret had spent time in the NATO Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan Joint Operations Centre, where ground and air missions are overseen at Bagram Airfield, and, without elaborating, said he could understand why airstrikes took so long to approve. Since he was now “back on a team,” though, he could not hide his frustration with delays and denials. “Now,” he said, “I’m like, ‘come on.’”

One evening, the team’s attached mortar platoon fired over 200 rounds into a fold of the valley from where friendly forces had once been shot at, for ‘terrain denial’. On other occasions 500lb bombs were dropped on what I was told were ISKP ‘defensive fighting positions’. Captain J explained it as defence by offence. “We are not,” he said, “directly dropping bombs on bad guys, [but it’s] an effective tool for increasing force protection at a remote site [like COP Blackfish].” After a suspected ISKP fighting position overlooking Blackfish was destroyed in an F16 strike in April 2018, the team’s communications expert picked up radio chatter from near the site: “They’ve destroyed everything, even my clothes.” 

Airstrikes do not always go to plan. The first three days of my visit to Blackfish in April 2018 were spent mostly indoors, sheltering from rain, with some killing time playing X-Box. AB, who was planning an escape from the military into venture capitalism, studied a book by Warren Buffet. Everyone took their turn manoeuvring ammunition cans beneath leaks in the roof, emptying them as they filled. They shunned the formalities of military hierarchy, calling one another by nicknames rather than by rank.

The low, heavy clouds had mostly cleared by late afternoon on my third day. The air was electric blue, and unseasonably frigid. In the ODA’s operation’s room, the team’s communications expert picked up a radio conversation and triangulated the source to a mountain the team had dubbed ‘Pandora’, about two miles away. Pilots in Apaches soon spotted footprints in the snow, then three figures lying prone beneath the canopy. 

On the roof of Blackfish, AB, the Combat Controller, spoke with the pilots via radio. “I don’t think they’re sun-baking,” he said, scanning the ridge through a spotting scope. In the operations room, Captain J began negotiations with his superiors via radio for authority to strike. The helicopter pilots needed to refuel and turned back for Jalalabad Airfield. AB turned to Captain J, who had climbed the stairs to the roof. “We’ve got a B1, 45 minutes out,” he said, referring to a supersonic, heavy-bombing aircraft. As the colour faded from the landscape, a thick, fuzzy cloud began floating down the mountains toward where the three figures lay. Within 15 minutes it had enveloped the ridge. AB, now alone on the roof, his face illuminated by the screen of his ATAK, radioed to call the B1 crew off. The Apaches returned, but were blind above the cloud. To the night falling around him, and me, AB thought out loud: “All the might of the US military; brought down by a cloud.”

Relations with local powerbrokers

Credit: Roger Helms for AAN.

Equally vital to the ODA’s mission were its relationships with local power-brokers. The secretary of the Achin District Council, Mohammad Ayaz, explained how fraught these can be. “The problems occur,” he told this author, “when [Afghan] Local Police commanders take control of villages to which they don’t belong.” One such commander, Belal Pacha, originally from Kunar, defected from the Taleban to the government in 2015 but, the author was told, retains strong connections with Taleban in the area. His reputation for extortion and murder provoked hundreds of men to protest against his allegedabuses in September 2018, in Momand Dara district. A suicide bomber infiltrated the protesters, killing 70 and wounding as many as 200. Pacha’s reputation was well-known to the ODA, but they relied on his cooperation to secure a nearby area. This pattern, of the US military relying on abusive figures for capturing or holding territory, is a familiar one; from 2001 onwards, it has been a symptom of the short US deployment cycle, where expediency is prioritised over long-term consequences. Captain J told me, “We knew [Pacha] was a bad dude, so we always kept our distance, but he had a lot of contacts in the area and we needed his influence.”

Belal Pacha and two of his brothers were arrested, tried in court in Jalalabad and sentenced to six years in prison soon after the demonstration, but it remains to be seen whether the problems surrounding rogue ALP units and local militias, will be dealt with by the time the Americans hand over to local forces. 

Belal Pacha was the sort of person who helped ferment the discord that enabled ISKP to roll into Achin in the first place, in 2015. That he and others like him have been recent US special forces allies does not bode well. Most people from Achin I spoke to believe that once the Americans leave the Mamand Valley, unless the government has the support of the local population – and that means genuine and widespread support, not just the support of a few strongmen –  it will not be able to hold the area against the Taleban or ISKP for long.

Looking ahead

By July 2018, General Nicholson had wound back his early optimism but vowed to continue the mission until it was complete. “ISIS has proven to have a degree of resilience in southern Nangrahar,” he told me. “They’re tough fighters and they’ll be steadily reduced and we’re going to continue the fight until it’s complete.” 

In Achin the following week, residents were slowly trickling back into the Mamand and Takhto Valleys. “The highlight mission at the end… was seeing [Takhto] one last time,” Captain J told me via email from Blackfish shortly before he finished his deployment in September. “About 40 to 50 civilians were roaming around [in an area they had only recently cleared], collecting wheat up and going through abandoned houses. It is nice to see that after [six] months of work, a small valley like that could be given back to the Afghan population.” 

At the start of their mission, aside from the fighters still lurking among the homes, Mamand Valley appeared lifeless. By its end, from Blackfish at night, five faint lights could be seen twinkling against the dark.

Outside Captain J’s area of operations, however, the fight against ISKP is less convincing. After pushing fighters back in Achin, US special forces teams did the same in neighbouring Kot District. With ISKP on the run, US Army Green Berets handed their base there over to the Afghan National Army and pursued the fighters further west into Deh Bala, where the militants had established a new de-facto capital, five kilometres southwest of the district centre, in Gargari. The Green Berets built another base, Camp Blackbeard (named after a coffee company run by special forces veterans), on a flat, dusty hilltop near the district centre in June 2018. From there, according to a spokesperson for the US military in Afghanistan, US and Afghan special forces killed 167 ISKP fighters and destroyed caves and weapons caches in a five-day-operation to retake Gargari in June 2018. Surviving ISKP fighters then re-grouped in the caves of Tora Bora, in Pachieragam District, where Osama bin Laden once hid out. There, they remain.

As of January 2019, according to the latest quarterly report from the US Special Inspector General for SIGAR Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), published on 30 January 2019, Achin is now ‘under government influence’. (2) Here, it remains ISKP, not the Taleban, which is still the second most important player (after the government). Interviewees for a forthcoming AAN dispatch on Achin (part of a series on service deliveries in insurgency-influenced areas – the introduction can be read here), also confirmed that ISKP is still not yet gone from the district. It continues to operate in mountainous areas of the Spinghhar range, including at least some parts of the Mamand, Pekha and Bandar valleys. Interviewees told AAN ISKP is still running its own prison and court systems in parts of the Mamand valley

We asked Resolute Support for an update on where they thought the fight with ISKP now was. In a statement, they said, “In terms of Mohmand, Takhto and Baghdara Valley, we’re not providing detailed operational updates to the media.” The statement said that Resolute Support is continuously build[ing] understanding” of the threat posed by ISKP embodied and “move to and operate from locations where we can achieve effects to disrupt and destroy their capabilities… using targeted operations and enabling capable local security partners.” 

ISKP has proved a difficult enemy to dislodge, mainly for reasons of geography, as Borhan Osman, now the International Crisis Group’s head researcher for Afghanistan, said to this author, “With a vast recruitment pool on both sides of the border, it’s hard to defeat [them] militarily without addressing the reasons for the emergence of ISKP in the first place… You can’t just kill them to death.”

ISKP’s territorial control in eastern Afghanistan, has shrunk markedly since the Afghan/US campaign against it began in 2017. Yet, the group’s ability to hit its enemies hard has not abated. The vast majority of those enemies are now Afghan civilians and the toll ISKP has wreaked on them has been devastating. When anti-ISKP operations began in April 2017, the militants began attacking ‘soft’ targets; schools and health clinics in Nangrahar, and Afghan Shia Muslims, mainly ethnic Hazaras, in Kabul and elsewhere (see some of AAN reporting here, here and here). In less than two years, ISKP has claimed responsibility for more than 50 separate bombings or complex attacks that have claimed nearly 900, mainly civilian, lives.

***

Wolfgang Bauer, November 2017 and February 2018

Wolfgang Bauer, a German journalist with the Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit, provides another perspective on the US and Afghan special forces’ fight against ISKP in Achin district. He was embedded with a 14-strong Afghan National Border Police (ANBP) unit posted on a hill overlooking the village of Abdulkhel. All the policemen were from outside Nangrahar. Bauer also had a view of the US special forces’ base Andrew Quilty visited, which is located on a mountain ridge. Bauer’s original German text can be read here. What follows is a summary made by AAN senior analyst, Thomas Ruttig. 

Abdulkhel village, which was under Taleban control between 2012 and 2015, then ISKP after they pushed the Taleban out. Pro-government forces (unspecified in original text) took back half of the village between 2015 and February 2018. Abdulkhel is divided by a river that is dry for part of the year and today, Abdulkhel’s river divides the government and the ISKP-controlled sectors of the village. Since pro-government forces took half of Abdulkhel, ISKP fighters have twice overran the government post, each time killing almost all the policemen present, 22 in all. Their severed heads were displayed for weeks dangling from a mobile phone antenna on a neighbouring hill.

Yet it was Taleban brutalities, a local malek (village chief) told Bauer, had paved the way for the ISKP’s 2015 takeover. Quickly-rotating Taleban commanders had villagers killed who worked for the government, kidnapped businessmen and killed those who did not pay ransom. They killed mullahs who criticised their behaviour. As a result, the villagers were initially happy when the ISKP fighters arrived. But then, they discovered, ISKP did not “respect local traditions.” They banned women from shopping in the bazaar, told men to grow their hair long and suppressed poppy growing. Both Taleban and ISKP exploited family feuds to get local support.

The Taleban, when in control, had also initially stopped the construction of a madrasa that had been privately initiated by a local religious scholar and financed with World Bank money through the government (scheme not specified in original text). The provincial head of education department, however, sent a delegation to meet Taleban leaders in Pakistan who finally agreed to it. The madrasa began teaching, not only religious, but also ‘modern’ subjects. When ISKP took over, it closed the madrasa again. As the madrasa is on the government-controlled side of the river, it had re-opened, and even children from the ISKP side attend. However, the madrasa’s head teacher told Bauer, they have adapted IS ways of live and thinking, and speak even against the mullahs on the government side.

The Afghan Local Police unit Bauer visited was tasked with intercepting ISKP fighters driven out of the nearby Mamand valley. It was a 70-strong unit and lead by the notorious commander, Belal Pacha. It cooperated with, and was supported by the newly-deployed US special forces. Belal, Bauer mentions, had been part of a ‘Taleban splinter group’ linked with the Pakistani Taleban umbrella, the TTP (which also includes Afghans), until 2015 when he changed sides and was now paid by the Americans. 

The US forces, Bauer wrote, “monitor phone traffic in the day and hunt the ISKP at night.” He also described their plentiful air support. On a daily basis, B-52s, other jets and helicopters circled over the village. He described how one afternoon, a B-52 fired on the houses on the other side of the river. “Children run around in panic between the mud houses. Then, dust starts to cover the village. Once more it fires higher into the hillside, where the pastures are where the children graze their village’s goats.”

“We do not consider them civilians,” the Afghan border police commander told Bauer about those families.

Bauer is told the story of two boys killed in a similar incident the day after he left, in November 2017. He contacted the US military, he said, but did not receive any reply by the time of publication.

Belal’s fighters, who had pushed out ISKP from one half of the village, were ‘taxing’ local traffic and businesses at their checkpost at the road leading into Abdulkhel, according to the ABP unit commander and a local firewood trader. Altogether, the trader said, there are six checkposts on the way to the next bigger bazaar where he was being forced to pay ‘tax’. Some of the checkpoints were controlled by the Afghan National Police (in the district centre) and others by other ALP commanders, among them some loyal to Nangrahar strongman and MP, Haji Zaher. Belal sometimes accused traders of working for ISKP and confiscated all their wood. He would then take it to the bazaar on a lorry he had also stolen. Belal, the trader said, “is the worst” and that, because of him, he now hated “the government and the IS.”

Belal was also playing the role of the local judge, Bauer observed, as there was no other judicial authority. He publicly took money from the parties. The local maleks and mullahs accused him of killing villagers without trial, of kidnapping businessmen and maintaining a private jail and of torture. They complained to the provincial police chief and asked for Belal’s arrest – by then, without result. They also accused provincial officials of being paid by Belal. Belal was finally arrested in October and, with two brothers, jailed.

Belal was also said to have shot people when he was high on drugs. He kept a disabled boy, whom Bauer thought was then 12 years old as a ‘dancing boy’ (ie an underage youth kept for sex). The ABP commander told Bauer, Belal was the “scourge of this valley, worse than the Taleban and IS put together.”

Bauer returned to Abdulkhel once more in February 2018, after a cold, but almost snowless winter. 60 people, he was told, had died from the cold, whooping cough and from ‘poverty’. People did not dare to go to the mountains where they used to collect firewood, anymore as these areas were controlled by ISKP. The local clinic had no medication anymore. And as the local opium factories had been closed, people were deprived of cash income. Hundreds, Bauer is told, had been living from the drug economy.

Bauer concluded, that the Americans have established the countrywide system of the [Afghan] Local Police. The US military believes that they cannot stop the IS and Taleban’s advance without men like Belal. In Abdulkhel they have created a monster, though, he said, and: For most people in the village, this monster is the government in Kabul, that put Belal in place.

Edited by Kate Clark

* Andrew Quilty is an Australian freelance photojournalist. He has been based in Kabul since 2013. His work in Afghanistan has garnered several accolades including the Polk Award for Photojournalism, a Pictures of the Year International Award and the Gold Walkley, the highest prize in Australian journalism. His website is: www.andrewquilty.com.

Material in this dispatch originally appeared in a New York Times article: Andrew Quilty “The Last Americans Fighting in Afghanistan”, 5 October 2018.

(1) After an initial Taleban attempt to regain territory in Mamand in July 2015 which called on local men to join in the fight, ISKP retook the territory and detained 80 men and executed 11, in brutal fashion. Residents fled and ISKP confiscated their lands and property, settling new fighters, arriving from Orakzai and Bajaur agencies, along with their families, there. In subsequent fighting, both Taleban and ISKP targeted civilians they believed were linked to the other party, as they sought to gain the upper hand; that included burning homes, public executions and forced exile. ISKP also closed schools and government-run clinics and banned opium cultivation. For detail on all this, how ISKP managed to establish a base in Nangrahar and the repercussions for local civilians, see:

Borhan Osman, “The Islamic State in ‘Khorasan’: How it began and where it stands now in Nangarhar”, AAN, 27 July 2016. 

David Mansfield, “The Devil is in the Details: Nangarhar’s continued decline into insurgency, violence and widespread drug production”, AREU, February 2016. 

See UNAMA’s “Afghanistan Annual Report 2015 Protection Of Civilians In Armed Conflict” for detail on civilian displacement and ISKP closures of schools and threats against health facilities and workers.

(2) SIGAR categorizes each area into five categories: under insurgent control, under insurgent influence, neutral/at risk, under government influence and under government control. The SIGAR map of control is based on NATO RS assessments, which consider such issues as who governs, who gets taxes, who controls infrastructure and who controls ‘messaging’ in a district (for further explanation, see page 5 of this report).

With Sebghatullah Mujaddedi, another of the historic leaders of the mujahedin parties, which fought the Soviet occupation (1979-89), has died. Mujaddedi belonged to a famous family of Sufi leaders and for this spiritual position, he was widely known simply as with the honorific ‘Hazrat Saheb’ in Afghanistan. Having been severely ill for some time, Mujaddedi died in Kabul on 11 February 2019. It was four days before the 30th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal, an event which paved the way for his return home – but only another three years later. AAN’s co-director and senior analyst Thomas Ruttig looks back at his life (with input from AAN’s team in Kabul).

His greatest hour

28 April 1992 was possibly Hazrat Saheb (1) Sebghatullah Mujaddedi’s day of fame. On that day, he entered the Afghan capital Kabul with his 20-strong cabinet in a large convoy of vehicles. They had driven from Peshawar and he was taking over as Afghanistan’s interim head of state. Mujaddedi himself, as The New York Times reported, rode in an “an ivory white Mercedes” and was greeted “by restrained public jubilation [and] celebratory gunfire from the guerrillas controlling the capital.”

Describing the handover ceremony, the Times went on to report that Mujaddedi disembarked from his German-made cabriolet 

… at a large house that had once belonged to the Committee for Solidarity and Friendship under the old Communist Government. Around his car, hundreds of battle-dressed fighters struggled to control rapidly mushrooming crowds of Kabul residents screaming “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is Great!”

Several members of the old government escorted the President into the house, including the Foreign Minister, Abdul Wakil, and the commanding general of the Kabul garrison, Nabi Az[e]mi. Mr. Mojadedi walked briskly into the house followed by a black-bearded military aide, his uniform lathered in gold braid and campaign ribbons. Outside the gates, guerrillas shattered the silence firing thousands of rounds into the sky from their assault rifles. [… M]embers of the old Government, including the former Prime Minister, the leaders of the old Senate and House of Representatives, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court, handed power to Mr. Mojadedi [sic] in a formal ceremony at the Foreign Ministry. (…)

The Times reported him as “[b]athed in the glare of television lights and surrounded by guerrilla bodyguards and crowds of aides who had worked with him in his exile in Pakistan” as he addressed the small diplomatic corps, telling them that he and ‘his brothers’  had “received power from the Kabul regime and removed the Kabul regime from power and established an Islamic Government.” He went on: “One of the main things we can do is try to bring peace in Kabul and Afghanistan so that the people no longer have war.”

For Mujaddedi, scion of a powerful religious family, who as we will see suffered terribly in the regime which took power in the 1978 coup, this was his greatest hour. Peace, however, did not come then, and ever after to this very day.

Sufi and religious reformer family background 

Sebghatullah Mujaddedi came from a famous family of Naqshbandi Sufi leaders. They trace their origins back to Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, known as mujadded-e alf-e thani (Renewer of the Second Millenium), a religious reformer (2) born in Kabul province in 1564 who established a religious centre, Fathgarh, in Sirhind, in today’s Indian part of Punjab. Further back, they trace their roots to Omar Ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islam.

The family came back to Afghanistan in the early nineteenth century. They established a madrasa and khanaqa (Sufi lodge) in Shor Bazar, a part of Kabul’s old city on the southern bank of Kabul River (‘shor’ meaning crowded or noisy), which was largely destroyed during the war. Therefore, their respective leaders were each known as the Hazrat of Shor Bazar. The family later branched out, most importantly to Herat city and to Ghazni province – where it established the Nur al-Madares madrassa in Andar district, still one of the most prestigious in the country. 

During the reign of Amanullah (1919-29), the family took an openly political role. After initially supporting Amanullah’s anti-British and pro-independence course, with one of its members, Muhammad Ibrahim, serving as justice minister between 1919 and 1924, the family went into opposition when the amir-turned-king started his modernisation programme. It was during this time of upheaval that Sebghatullah Mujaddedi was born, in Kabul (in 1926, according to the official biography published by his party although most other sources in recent obituaries – for example here – have given 1925). 

Three years later, in 1928, during Amanullah’s second Loya Jirga the Mujaddedis collected 400 signatures that called the King’s reforms ‘anti-Islamic’, an act which led to a tribal uprising andrevolts in the Tajik northand, finally, to Amanullah’s fall from power a year later, in 1929.

After that, the family’s influence in the court soared further; Fazl Omar Mujaddedi – known as Nur ul-Mashayekh (The Light of the Sheikhs) and Sebghatullah Mujaddedi’s grandfather – and Fazl Ahmad Mujaddedi – son-in-law of the Nur ul-Mashayekh – were both appointed justice ministers (1929-32 and 1932-36, respectively). The clergy, including the Mujaddedis, also regained their influence over the education system; it had been curbed by Amanullah. This meant the young Mujaddedi grew up as a member of Kabul’s elite. He graduated from Habibia High School in Kabul, and also gaining private religious education and then travelled to Egypt to study sharia law from al-Azhar in Cairo, graduating in 1952 and returning home that year. 

From religious to political leader

Sebghatullah Mujaddedi entered the political stage in Afghanistan in his early thirties. A short period of more political openness under Prime Minister Shah Mahmud had just ended. According to his official biography, he refused to take a government position but started to teach at Kabul University’s sharia faculty, the Institutes of Teacher Training and Arabic Studies, and at various Kabul high schools. As the same biography underlined, his position was that

… [f]rom the start of the second half of the twentieth century, the political, religious and ideological leadership of the Afghan society demanded a rather new approach [namely] against [the] infiltration of the atheistic communism [which] was strongly geared against Islam and the Muslim lands, following the Second World War.

In 1959, Mujaddedi was imprisoned for five years by the government of Prime Minister Muhammad Daud (under King Muhammad Zaher Shah), according to most sources (including Ludwig Adamec’s famous Who’s Who in Afghanistan) for campaigning against a planned visit of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchov in 1959 to Kabul or even for allegedly plotting to assassinate him. Some detail in this narrative, however, does not make sense. Khrushchov, accompanying Soviet head of state Nikolai Bulganin, had actually visited Kabul four years earlier, in December 1955. (3) The only high-ranking Soviet visitor in this period was Soviet then head of state Kliment Voroshilov, the previous year, on 1 October 1958. In May 1959, Daud did visit Moscow where he signed an agreement on the expansion of Soviet-Afghan economic and technical cooperation. As a result of this agreement, more Soviet technicians came to Afghanistan, helping in the construction of the Kushka-Herat-Kandahar highway and the reconstruction of the Kabul airport. More significantly, earlier that year, Daud had ordered the ban of the face veil for women. All this enraged Afghanistan’s religious establishment and a wave of protests followed. It surely was Mujaddedi’s involvement in these protests – which, in Kabul, were brutally beaten back by a police force trained and equipped by West Germany, using, among other means, electrically-charged batons – that landed Mujaddedi in jail. There, he said, he was mistreated, resulting in chronic illness.

Mujaddedi was released in 1964, after King Zaher – so far more or less a token ruler while real power rested with the dominant Musaheban family (4) – to which Mahmud and Daud belonged. The king initiated a new, more liberal constitution that gave more political freedoms and led to the establishment of semi-official political groups and to the freeing of political prisoners. Mujaddedi left the country for a year. He went to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Upon his return to Afghanistan, he found himself banned from teaching for five years. Members of the illegal Islamist movement of the Jawanan-e Musalman (Muslim Youth), established in 1969, inspired by and possibly a branch of the Egypt-centred Muslim Brotherhood and including students such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, offered him the leadership of the organisation. (5) But he declined, and instead founded his own one, Jamiat-e Ulema-ye Muhammadi (Association of the Muhammedan Clergy) in 1972. Its dual religious-political character made it difficult for the government to suppress. Mujaddedi was also the first Afghan to translate Egyptian Islamist ideologue Sayyed Qutb’s book Milestones into Dari which became a major source of insipation for the Afghan Islamist movement.

In July 1973, Daud ousted his cousin from power, toppling the monarchy in a coup d’état in a coalition with leftist military officers linked to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and bringing about a republican order. Mujaddedi happened to be at a conference in Saudi Arabia. From there, he did not go home but went to Denmark, where he founded and headed a large Islamic centre and mosque in Copenhagen, with branches including in Oslo, Norway. He stayed in Denmark from 1974 to 1978. 

In that year, the PDPA took over in another coup d’état and Mujaddedi fled to Pakistan, where he founded the Jabha-ye Melli bara-ye Nejat-e Afghanistan (National Front for Afghanistan’s Liberation, usually called the ANLF in English). (6). It was originally intended to be umbrella organisation for the then five main Sunni factions – or ‘tanzims’ in Dari and Pashto – under Mujaddedi’s lead, but – as on many later occasions – disunity prevailed and the ANLF became just a sixth faction (with Sayyaf’s Ettehad-e Islami created in 1982 making a seventh).

In January 1979, the Khalqi regime rounded up almost a hundred of Mujaddedi’s male relations who had remained in Afghanistan and likely had them executed – what happened to them exactly has never come to light. Among the disappeared was Sebghatullah’s uncle, Muhammad Ibrahim Mujaddedi, then the head of the family and known as Zia ul-Mashayekh. (His father, Muhammad Massum Mujaddedi, also known as Rasul Agha Jan and later as Mian Jan, had died earlier, in 1971 in Lahore.) In March that year, Sebghatullah Mujaddedi called for a jihad against the Kabul regime. 

It was during this period that the Ghazni branch of the Mujaddedi family, which retained control over Nur ul-Madares, parted ways with Sebghatullah. They mainly joined the Mansur faction of Harakat-e Inqelab-e Islami which later, under the name of Khuddam ul-Forqan, remained an organisationally separate subgroup of the Taleban (see this AAN paper for more background). (Member of the current Taleban negotiating delegation, Suhail Shahin, belonged to this group, as well as several so-called reconciled Taleban residing in Kabul. Its leader Muhammad Amin Mujaddedi lives in Pakistan.

Mujaddedi’s was the smallest of the mujahedin factions. Jebha-ye Melli, which drew on the Naqshbandi Sufi order for recruits, advocated what Adamec called “the establishment of a traditional Islamic state with a parliamentary democracy.” It was seen at the time as ideologically ‘moderate’, compared to the Islamist factions of Jamiat, Ettehad and both Hezb-e Islamis, of Hekmatyar and of Yunes Khales. Among its more famous members (or at least future famous members) was a young Hamed Karzai. He ran ‘foreign affairs’ for the faction and often acted as English translator for various mujahedin leaders during the jihad (see this AAN dispatch).

[Amended 13 Feb, 10pm Kabul time: It is also remarkable that the Jabha’s fighters seemed to have behaved relatively positively during the jihad. Although the fact that it was the smallest group among the big ones might have contributed to this, in any case, there are no reports in files we know that accused them of any atrocities.]

It was only after the signing of the Geneva Accords in 1988 which led to the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan between May 1988 and February 1989, that the mujahedin tanzims started to establish a joint government-in-exile. In the first such administration, established on 9 February 1988 with Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai (from Sayyaf’s Ettehad) as Prime Minister, the ANLF held two posts (as did each tanzim): Mujaddedi’s son Zabihullah (7) was deputy prime minister and the party also held the ministry of planning. In the next one, formed on 28 February 1989 in Rawalpindi after the Soviet withdrawal had been finalised – the so-called Afghan Islamic Interim Government (AIG), Mujaddedi was elected its head by 450 delegates from most mujahedin parties. At least ten tanzim leaders, including all the well-known ones, stood, and Mujaddedi just came ahead of Sayyaf by one vote. (Sayyaf then became prime minister.) 

Despite all elaborate procedures, also this government-in-exile came to nothing, as the Najibullah government unexpectedly survived the Soviet withdrawal – but not the cut of financial and military aid by Russian president Boris Yeltsin in 1992. This triggered a bloodless internal coup of mid-April 1992 on 15 April against  President Dr Najibullah. His First Vice President, Abdul Rahim Hatef, a Kandahari non-party member, took over as head of state. But the real power – if one could still called it that – were with dissidents from his own party, led by Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil, and the commander of the Kabul garrison, General Muhammad Nabi Azemi. The PDPA/Watan dissidents rushed to embrace the mujahedin, and many of the military leaders were absorbed by their factions. The civilians mostly ended up in exile.

The mujahedin take power

Four days before Mujaddedi’s convoy triumphantly entered Kabul, on 24 April 1992, the leaders of the mujahedin parties, while still in Pakistan, had agreed upon a new plan for the transfer of power from the Kabul government. This was the so-called Peshawar Accord. They envisioned three stages. In a first one, a 50-member Islamic Jihad Council (IJC) for a two-month interim period. Mujaddedi was the leader of the smallest of the seven main Sunni mujahedin factions known as the Peshawar Seven (after the place where they had their headquarters). He was elected chairman of the ICJ by the other members. 

The council consisted of representatives of the Peshawar Seven. However, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of Hezb-e Islami did not agree to the accord, and his people – including Abdul Sabur Farid who had been nominated prime minister – refused to take their seats in the council. The main Shia factions, Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami and Harakat-e Islami were never invited to join the council in the first place.

The plan was for the Mujaddedi-headed Islamic Jihad Council two-month interim administration would be followed by a four-months’ interim government as stage two. It was to be headed by Professor Borhanuddin Rabbani of Jamiat-e Islami, and, four months after that, by an interim government chosen by a shura. In stage three, the interim government was to rule for eighteen more months after which elections would be held. The country was also officially renamed the Islamic State of Afghanistan (Daulat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan) or the ISA.

One day after Mujaddedi’s arrival in Kabul, he declared an amnesty for all members of the former Afghan government, with the exception of Najibullah. About him, Mujaddedi announced, “the Afghan people” would take a decision. Najibullah, meanwhile, was sheltering in a United Nations compound in Kabul after a UN-sponsored handover of power earlier in April 1992 had failed. He unsuccessfully tried to leave the country, but was held up by fighters of his erstwhile ally General Abdul Rashid Dostum who had taken over Kabul airport and switched sides. Grateful for this ‘service’, Mujaddedi confirmed the general’s rank awarded to Dostum by the Najib government and even compared him to Khaled ben Waled, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad who had initially severely opposed the prophet, a kind of Saul-turned-Paul story of early Islam (see a chronology of events here). 

Mujaddedi also fended off a Pakistani demand to sign a bilateral Strategic Partnership Agreement with Islamabad, according to a former mujahedin leader present during those events (earlier AAN reporting here). The agreement had been presented to Mujaddedi by then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in order to secure a special relationship after the takeover of the mujahedin. However, as it would have been rather unpopular among Afghans, Mujaddedi evaded giving a clear answer as a refusal would have burned bridges with the neighbouring country. (Such an agreement still does not exist.)

Between war and peace

While Mujaddedi later repeatedly claimed, including in a meeting with then European Union Special Representative Envoy Francesc Vendrell (the author was present and recalls this was in 2003) in his residence in Kabul’s Kargha suburb, that he had presided over the only peaceful period in the recent history of Afghanistan, the reality was much more blurred. Already, after the anti-Najibullah coup, mujahedin forces, mainly of Hezb-e Islami, Abdul Rabb Rasul Sayyaf’s Ettehad-e Islami and Jamiat-e Islami, under the command of Ahmad Shah Massud, had advanced to positions just outside the capital and were fighting each other in Kabul’s streets. Indeed, rockets were fired into Kabul on the very day of Mujaddedi’s inauguration. Facing this danger, and a still largely-functioning Kabul army – the loyalty of which was not assured – Mujaddedi had to be heavily persuaded to move into Kabul by co-mujahedin and their Pakistani supporters, as several Afghan interlocutors who were part of those events have told the author.

Fighting continued throughout Mujaddedi’s short tenure. In late May 1992, a peace agreement between Jamiat’s Massud and Hezb-e Islami’s Hekmatyar which named the latter as prime minister (Massud was already the defence minister) collapsed in less than a week, according to a report by Human Rights Watch that reconstructed the events of those days. On 29 May, Mujaddedi’s plane was hit as he was coming back from talks in Islamabad. Hekmatyar’s forces were blamed. Still, at this point, Human Rights Watch said, there was only “minimal damage to the city” from the fighting.

Mujaddedi was also not fully content with only serving for two months. Contemporary sources say he threatened not to hand over power to Rabbani, arguing in a famous sentence that two months was not enough time to demonstrate any success:“Pe dwo miashto ki cherga chechan ne shi istelai” or A hen cannot produce chicks in two months. (Hens’ eggs actually hatch after 21 days, but poultry keeping was not Hazrat Saheb’s strong point). Finally, he was persuaded to do so. (Also his party, Jabha-ye Melli did not have the firepower to match that of Jamiat.) On 28 June 1992, Rabbani took over the presidency of the interim government. 

Down the slope

The Islamic State of Afghanistan government disintegrated in the inter-factional wars between 1992 and 1996. Mujaddedi found himself on the side of the so-called Coordination Council (Shura-ye Hamahangi). He was the nominal head of this coalition, but its strongest forces were Hekmatyar’s Hezb, Dostum’s Jombesh and Abdul Ali Mazari’s Shia Hezb-e Wahdat (which had meanwhile been allowed to joint the government). Over the European new year of 1994, the Shura-ye Hamahangi tried and failed to oust the Islamic State of Afghanistan’s Rabbani/Massud leadership that had increasingly monopolised power and pushed out other factions one by one. The shura’s attempted coup included one of the worst barrages of rocket attacks of the war. 

When the Taleban took over Kabul in 1996, Mujaddedi initially welcomed their ascent, apparently hoping – as many other Afghan leaders – that he would be able to influence them. Also Adamec wrote that the ANLF recognised the Taleban government. However, Mujaddedi’s official biography comments that the Taleban “failed to benefit from the wise advices [sic] of Sheikh Al-Mojaddedi towards moderation.“ He later went into strict opposition to them, joining the National United Front for the Salvation on Afghanistan (more commonly know as the ‘Northern Alliance’). For his criticism of the Islamabad-backed Taleban, Mujaddedi was forced out of Pakistan in 1999 and went to Denmark another time.

Mujadeddi also joined political forces with the late Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani’s National Islamic Front (Mahaz) of Afghanistan, in a new coalition, Jabha-ye Melli Islami-ye Afghanistan (as Mahaz, Jabha also means ‘front’, so this also translates into English as the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan). It morphed into the Association for Peace and National Unity of Afghanistan, in January 1999, and further into the looser Cyprus Group, which sent a delegation to the Afghanistan Conference in Bonn in 2001, led by Hekmatyar’s son-in-law Humayun Jarir.

A late political life in post-Taleban Afghanistan

With Hamed Karzai, a member of Mujaddedi’s ANLF became the new leader of post-Taleban Afghanistan in 2001. Mujaddedi expected that he would be consulted and play a central role in the new government, or, as his official biography put it, he would keep “a close eye on the President and his government’s performance and handling of affairs.” Although Karzai regularly consulted a council of the former top mujahedin leaders, Mujaddedi’s expectations obviously not fully materialised. In meetings with foreign dignities during this time, he would often not mention Karzai by name, but refer to him as “my assistant.” Later, publicly, he patronised him by calling him “my son and my student” and described how Karzai kissed his hand and greatly respected him (see earlier AAN reporting).

Relations improved after Karzai made Mujaddedi chair of the Constitutional Loya Jirga in late 2003. There, Mujaddedi vehemently rejected a petition signed by the required number of delegates to be voted upon that suggested naming the country the Republic of Afghanistan, again, without the adjective ‘Islamic’. He twice called the signatories ‘unbelievers’ and ‘apostates’ who, after the jirga, “will be punished.” Later on during the sessions, when female delegate Malalai Joya spoke of the “presence of those felons who brought our country to this state” in the jirga, without naming names but with a message clear to all Afghans, friends and foes, Mujaddedi reacted strongly again, calling her a ‘communist’ and an ‘infidel’ from the plenum. Although Mojaddedi apologised for his language in the final session, there is a death sentence for apostasy.

At the end of the sessions which took 22 days and spilled over into the new year 2004, Mujaddedi urged the 102 female and 400 male delegates to rise from their chairs “for two minutes” as a sign that they agreed to the new constitution late on 4 January 2004. All stood up without protest, although some had initially hesitated. The delegates received a medal as a memento of the occasion. Mujaddedi wept out of emotion. But there was no formal vote about the constitution (more AAN background here).

After the first post-Taleban parliamentary election in 2005, Karzai appointed Hazrat Saheb as a member of its upper house, the Meshrano Jirga or Senate. (The president had the right to appoint 34 of its 102 members.) Mujaddedi ran for its chair in December that year, but failed to win a 50 per cent majority of votes in the first round against the other two candidates, the former ‘Northern Alliance’ (Jamiat) intelligence chief and first post-Taleban director of NDS, Engineer Muhammad Aref, and Bakhtar Aminzai, a businessman from Paktia less than half his age. This led to a fit of anger, during which Mujaddedi referred to his merits in liberating Kabul and stormed out of the room. It took the efforts of a number of his co-senators to persuade him to return, after which Aminzai (who would have pitted against Mujaddedi in the second round of the vote) withdrew his candidacy with a rhetoric bow to the ‘jihadi leader’ Mujaddedi and the latter was proclaimed chairman without any further procedure.

Mujadeddi was reappointed as a member of the Senate in 2011. He did nor run for its chair, and soon fell out with Karzai, for whom he had done estekhara (a religious practice to find answers to pressing issues) (8) before his first election. In April 2012, he resigned from all his official positions, including in the Senate and his membership in the High Peace Council (HPC). The original statement by Mujaddedi’s office, reported by media in Kabul, cited the failure of the president “to consider the sincere views and demands of renowned jihadi leaders and public figures on issues of national importance” as his reason for quitting. It hinted at Mujaddedi’s disappointment that he had been passed over as head of the HPC when its chairman, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated in September 2011. (Rabbani’s son, Salahuddin, was appointed his successor.) Hazrat Saheb had been one of the two original leading contenders for its chair when the HPC was established in September 2010 (AAN analysis here), although Karzai had, finally, opted for Rabbani. Mujaddedi had previously headed the failing predecessor to the High Peace Council, the Independent National Commission for Peace and Reconciliation with its Program-e Tahkim-e Solh (PTS, Programme for Strengthening Peace). It was supposed to reintegrate insurgent fighters, but all but officially closed down on the insistence of donor governments for being “morally and financially bankrupt,” as an internal UN document put it (see AAN analysis here).

Another clash with Karzai happened during the November 2013 Consultative Loya Jirga convened to advise Karzai on whether or not to sign a bilateral security agreement, officially called the Security and Defence Agreement, with the United States. Mujaddedi chaired both the preparatory committee and the jirga itself. The majority of delegates, including himself, spoke in favour of the agreement. However, Karzai rejected the advice and Mujaddedi told him he would “resign and leave the country.” He used the religiously charged word “hejrat” for this threat, in an attempt to drive his point home, but in vain. Karzai never signed the agreement. Mujaddedi did leave, going to Denmark once more, but returned for the 2014 elections when he supported Ashraf Ghani in the second round of the 2014 presidential election. According to ToloNews, he said: “Days and nights I was thinking who to support, at the end and after istekharas (…) and the information I receive from people I reached the decision to support Ashraf Ghani.”

[Next two paragraphs amended 13 Feb, 10.45pm Kabul time] The tradition of trying to get Hazrat Saheb’s support has continued; the 2019 presidential candidate and former director of the National Security Council, Hanif Atmar, said on 18 January – a few weeks before Mujadeddi’s death – in his speech at an official ceremony in Kabul Star Hotel before going to the IEC for registration:

Last night, I went for dast-busi (kissing the hand) of honourable Hazrat Mujaddedi. He was [lying] in sickbed. He accepted to receive me in that condition and said, I performed prayers [blessings] to you for the sake of Afghanistan. I ask the Almighty God for his full health and recovery.

Despite suffering worsening health, Mujaddedi remained politically active, although he was sidelined more and more. In August 2015, he set up a High Council of Jihadi and National Parties (CJNP), bringing together jihadi figures that had supported Ashraf Ghani during his election campaign but had then become frustrated by the president (AAN analysis here). It was founded to reassert their political influence on the new government, with Mujadeddi claiming the lead again as the elder statesman, with a stated mission to “fight corruption, bring peace and to support the good work of the government and oppose any wrongdoings of the government.” Members included Muhammad Karim Khalili, former second vice-president and leader of the largely Hazara Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami, Ahmad Zia Massud, the president’s special representative for good governance and reform, and two other presidential advisors, Qutbuddin Helal from Hezb-e Islami and Sayyed Hussain Anwari, head of the Shia mujahedin tanzim, Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami (until his death on 5 July 2016). However, this lose group did not take off, and key members went different ways.

… and then there were three

As a Sufi leader, as the leader of one of the more moderate mujahedin tanzims (but not a royalist as often purported) and as a mediator, Hazrat Saheb Sebghatullah Mujaddedi was well respected by large parts of the Afghan population. He has become the sixth of the eight historical top mujahedin leaders who are now dead, following Abdul Ali Mazari (the only Shia among them, murdered by the Taleban on 12 March 1995); Mawlawi Muhammad Nabi Muhammadi of Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami (died 21 April 2002); Mawlawi Yunes Khales, leader of one of two historical Hezb-e Islami (died 19 July 2006); Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani of Jamiat-e Islami who was assassinated by a Taleban ‘envoy’ 20 September 2011; and Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani of Mahaz-e Melli-ye Islami who died on 21 January 2017 (media report here). This only leaves Abdul Rabb Rassul Sayaf of Ettehad-e Islami, Muhammad Karim Khalili, Mazari’s successor as leader of Hezb-e Wahdat, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of Hezb-e Islami alive, the latter having returned from the insurgency to political life in Kabul in May 2017 (AAN reporting here) after a controversial peace deal a year earlier. (9)

The government has declared 13 February 2019 a public day of morning, and announced that government institutions will remain closed. On that day, a public fateha (mourning ceremony), will be held in Kabul’s Ghazi (or Olympic) stadium. Mujaddedi will then be buried at the famous Asheqan o Arefan cemetery where a last resting place for members of his family already exists.

Other literature used for this dispatch and not directly quoted in the text:

• Abuzar Purzada Ghaznawi, Tarikh-e siasi-ye Afghanistan-e mu’aser 5: Ahzab-e jihadi-ye Afghanistan [Political History of Modern Afghanistan 5: Jihadi political parties], Kabul: Hamid Resalat, 1395 [2016]
• Sayyed Muhammad Baqer Mosbahzada, Aghaz wa farjam-e jombeshha-ye siasi dar Afghanistan, 1284-1381 [The beginning and evolution of political movements in Afghanistan, 1905-2002], Kabul: Shah Books, 1384 [2005].

Edited by Kate Clark

(1) Hazrat is an honorific Arabic title used in Islamic societies to honour a person which literally denotes and translates to “presence, appearance” in a religious sense, with denotations of the charismatic. Saheb is the equivalent of “Sir.”

(2) This is based on the belief that after every one thousand years, God choses someone for the renovation of religion.

(3) This visit started a period of closer Afghan-Soviet cooperation, after the US had shunned Afghanistan (including its requests for arms deliveries), following Kabul’s insistence on its internationally non-aligned position and refusal to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact (later CENTO). (More background in this AAN paper.)

(4) The Musaheban brothers or ‘companions’ of late Amir Habibullah (1901–19) were rivals of Habibullah’s son and successor, Amanullah. After the assassination King Muhammad Nader (ruled 1929–33), who was one of them, they were the effective rulers of Afghanistan, while Zaher Shah was still very young. (He once related in the presence of the author that he was made one year older when ascending to the throne, to reach the required age of 18 years.) The other Musaheban were: Muhammad Hashem (Prime Minister 1929–46), Shah Mahmud (Prime Minister 1946–53), Marshal Shah Wali (commander of the Central Army Corps in Kabul) and Muhammad Aziz, Daud’s father who had been assassinated in 1933 by a supporter of Amanullah while serving as an Ambassador in Berlin.

(5) The first Islamist circles started to gather around Ghulam Muhammad Niazi, the dean of the Sharia Faculty at Kabul University, in 1957, according to Afghan historian Muhammad Hassan Kakar.In 1969, the student wing of this movement, led by Abdulrahim Niazi evolved into the Jawanan-e Musalman (Muslim Youth) which, in turn, morphed into Jamiat-e Islami around 1973. 

(6) Mujaddedi’s party, interestingly, was the only one of the eight largest tanzimsthat did not have the word ‘Islamic’ in its name, reflecting the idea widespread in Afghanistan that this does not need even to be mentioned in a country where more than 99 per cent of the population is Muslim.

(7) Later he also served as his father’s ‘chief executive’ at the Program-e Tahkim-e Solh.

(8) [Amended 13 Feb, 10pm Kabul time: In the Hanafi’s school of thought and according to the Prophet’s instruction, in this case one does his/her prayers (نماز – namaz) and (دعا – du’a) then goes straight to bed and the advice whether to do something or not appears in the dream.]

(9) [Amended 13 Feb, 10pm Kabul time: While technically, Khalili is not one of the historical leaders (the founders and number ones in their particular tanzims; that was Mazari), he stands long enough at the top of Hezb-e Wahdat that we count him here. There is also Sheikh Asef Mohseni, the founder of Harakat-e Islami, who is still alive, but his tanzim was (it has split meanwhile), so to say, the largest among the many small mujahedin factions (others would be the Shia groups that, in 1989, joined Hezb-e Wahdat, or Muhammad Mohaqqeq’s Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom, but that split from the original Wahdat later; or the Mansur faction of Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami), so we did not count him here.]

The Independent Election Commission has published the preliminary list of the 2019 presidential candidates. The list includes 18 candidates. It should now go through a vetting process and a challenge and appeal period before it is finalised and published on 26 March, according to the electoral calendar. AAN’s researcher, Ali Yawar Adili, looks at the list and provides a brief background on the 18 presidential tickets. He also points out that there are still doubts about whether the election date, 20 July 2019, can be adhered to, not least because new rifts between the president and the other candidates about some necessary electoral reform steps have appeared (with input from Thomas Ruttig). 

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has published the preliminary list of the candidates for the presidential elections scheduled for 20 July 2019. The list was published on 5 February 2019, as per the electoral calendar. The IEC has approved all 18 candidates who had submitted complete documents and paid the deposit money of one million afghanis (around USD 13,300). (This amount is returned to the candidate if they win or receive at least ten percent of the valid votes polled in the first round of the elections.). Two applicants were rejected because they had failed to meet the legal requirements. (1)

The candidates include: incumbent Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, and former national security adviser, Muhammad Hanif Atmar. They are widely seen as the favourites. 

Almost half of these 18 candidates had run in at least one previous presidential election. Apart from the incumbent (who had run unsuccessfully in 2009) and the 2009 and 2014 runner-up Chief Executive Abdullah, there are: Zalmai Rassul (2014), Latif Pedram (2005), Hakim Tursan and Dr Faruq Nejrabi (2004).

In contrast to the 2004 and 2009 elections, there are no women candidates. In 2004, the only female candidate, Massuda Jalal, finished at rank six from amongst a total of 18 candidates (see the results here). In 2009, two female candidates stood. In 2014, there was one female candidate who was disqualified before the poll. (2) This time, only three candidates have proposed one woman each for one of their two vice-presidential posts (see the list of the tickets in the table below). 

The initial nomination period was from 22 December 2018 to 2 January 2019 when the elections were still planned for 20 April 2019. It was extended until 20 January after the election date was moved to 20 July 2019 (see AAN’s previous reporting here).  

Who are the presidential tickets?

The IEC has published the following preliminary list of the candidates (see the statement and list here: and the list with photos here). It is unclear how the IEC has chosen the order. In response to AAN’s enquiry, a deputy spokesman for the IEC, Abdul Aziz Ibrahimi, first said that it was based on alphabetic order, but when he was shown that this was definitely not the case, he said that it was not important, as it is still a preliminary list. Earlier, the IEC had published the names in a different order, based on the order of the dates they had registered (see here): 

NoPresidential candidateFirst running-mateSecond running-mate1Abdul Latif PedramMuhammad Ehsan HaidariMuhammad Sadeq Wardak2Haji Muhmmad Ibrahim Alekozai Khadija GhaznawiDr Sayyed Sami Kayani3Dr Zalmai RassulAbdul Jabbar TaqwaGhulam Wali Wahdat4Pohand Professor Dr Ghulam Faruq NejrabiSharifullahMuhammad Sharif Babakarkhel5Dr Faramarz TamanaPohanmal (Prof.) Sayyed Qiyas SaidiDr Muhammad Amin Reshadat6Shaida Muhammad AbdaliAbdul Basir SalangiZulfiqar Omid7Nur Rahman LiwalDr Abdul Hadi Zul HekmatMuhammad Yahya Wayar8Enayatullah HafizJannat Khan Fahim ChakariAbdul Jamil Shirani9Muhammad Shahab HakimiAbdul Ali SarabiDr Nurul Habib Hasir10Ahmad Wali MassudPohand Dr Farida MomandDr Abdul Latif Nazari11Muhammad Hakim TursanMuhammad Nader Shah AhmadzaiDiplom Engineer Shafiullah Qaisari12Rahmatullah NabilMurad Ali MuradDr Massuda Jalal13Gulbuddin HekmatyarPohandoy Dr Fazl ul-Hadi WazinMufti Hafiz ul-Rahman Naqi14Sayyed Nurullah JaliliAbdul Khalil RumanCheragh Ali Cheragh15Dr Abdullah AbdullahDr Enayatullah Babur FarahmandAsadullah Sadati16Muhammad Ashraf GhaniAmrullah SalehGhulam Sarwar Danesh17Muhammad Hanif AtmarMuhammad Yunus QanuniHaji Muhammad Mohaqeq18Nur ul-Haq UlumiBashir Ahmad BezhanMuhammad Naem Ghayur

The two tickets not registered were: Ahmad Elyas Elyasi, with Abdul Maqsud Hasanzada and Amruddin Fahim as running-mates; and, Ustad Zia ul-Haq Hafizi, with Muhammad Zalmai Afghanyar Popal and Omid Langari as his first and second running-mates (see also media report here).

What will happen now?

Now that the preliminary list has been published and according to the electoral calendar (see it annexed to AAN’s previous report here), the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) will conduct a 48-day vetting process from 5 February to 22 March. 

For up to two weeks following the publication of the list, objections to the preliminary list can be submitted to the ECC in accordance with article 74 of the electoral law. Paragraph one of article 91 of the same law says that “individuals, political parties and other organisations” may file objections with regard to the ineligibility of a particular candidate or candidates within two working days. 

It is not clear why two deadlines are given for the objections. It seems that the ECC also is not fully clear about this. Spokesman Rohani told AAN that one interpretation could be that article 79 refers to the general objections to the preliminary list, while article 91 is specifically about ineligibility. It is also unclear why the time for objections is so limited (particularly the two-days deadline that, practically, makes objections impossible), while the commission has been given almost seven weeks to work on their decisions on them. 

The criteria under which candidates on the preliminary list can be disqualified are given in two articles of the electoral law:  

Article 44 bans members or commanders of illegal armed groups from standing. The responsibility to investigate their possible links to illegal armed groups rests with a Vetting Commission that forms part of the ECC. It is headed by the ECC chair, currently Abdul Aziz Ariayi, and includes representatives from the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Ministries of Interior and Defence and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG). These institutions are charged with providing the ECC with the needed intelligence about candidates. After its deliberations, the vetting commission then recommends a list of those candidates found to be linked to illegal armed groups to the ECC for disqualification, which then takes the final decisions (see AAN’s previous reporting here).

Article 38 of the electoral law prescribes further requirements for the presidential candidates, as follows: they must be 1) an Afghan citizen, a Muslim and born to Afghan parents and not have the citizenship of another country; 2) not be less than 40 years of age on the day of candidacy; 3) not have been convicted of crimes against humanity and felony or deprived of civil rights by the country; 4) not have been elected as a president or vice-president for more than two terms. Their running-mates are also required to meet the same requirements. (3) 

Any candidate the ECC disqualifies will have the opportunity to appeal. The ECC will then address this, and then the decision will be final. (4)

It is not clear whether or not all 18 candidates will survive the vetting and challenge process. In 2014, 27 candidates had registered, but the IEC brought the list down to 10 (see this list here). The then head of the commission, Yusef Nuristani, told journalists they had excluded candidates who had a second citizenship or had failed to submit 100,000 voter cards of supporters from at least 20 provinces or had other problems with their registration. This time, the IEC sent a query to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the issue of a possible dual citizenship of candidates or their running-mates, as a deputy spokesman for the IEC, Ibrahimi, told media on 6 February. However, it seems that the IEC has not yet received any response. Ibrahimi said that, as this would possibly be time-consuming, the issue could be clarified later and before the publication of the final list. 

Candidates on the preliminary list can still withdraw their names by 23 March. In this case, they should inform the ECC in writing. There have been such cases during previous elections when some candidates decided to withdraw to favour another candidate in return for them securing a government position should the favoured candidate win or to enter into another form of a political deal. If they withdraw after that date, they remain on the ballot, but any votes cast for them are not counted and their deposits are not returned with the money going into the state revenue. (5)

When this procedure is finished, the IEC will conduct the ballot lottery on 25 March to determine the order of candidates’ names on the ballot and publish the final candidates list on 26 March. The election campaign will start on 19 May and continue for 60 days until 17 July. This will be followed by a silence period of 48 hours before the polling day on 20 July.

Brief background to the tickets

Most registered tickets have adopted a name to indicate the focus of their respective election campaign or programme. (6) ‘Justice’ and ‘peace’ are the two most used words. We follow IEC’s order of the tickets on the preliminary list: 

Azadi wa Adalat (Freedom and Justice) team led by Abdul Latif Pedram, a Tajik from Badakhshan, who leads his own party, the Tajik-ethno-nationalist and pro-federalism National Congress Party. Pedram was an unsuccessful 2004 presidential candidate, a two-term (2005-10 and 2010-19) former MP, and an unsuccessful 2018 parliamentary candidate from his home province of Badakhshan. His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Ehsanullah Haidari, a Hazara from a prominent family in Ashterlai district of Daikundi province. He has a degree in sociology and archaeology from Kabul University. Haidari worked with several NGOs, including Oxfam and French Action contre la Faim. 
• Muhammad Sadeq Wardak, a Pashtun from Maidan Wardak province. He attended school up to secondary education and is a former Jihadi figure. (The info about both comes from diplomatic community sources) 

Mubareza bar zed Zulm wa Be-adalati (Fight against Oppression and Injustice) team led by Muhammad Ibrahim Alekozai, a Pashtun from Kandahar, who is the head of the National Consensus of the People of Afghanistan, a political coalition that came together in 2017 (media report). Since then, the group has been taking positions on political issues in a bid to establish political relevance. Alekozai is an elder of the eponymous tribe and chief of its council (according to diplomatic sources). He has graduated from political sciences from Kabul University and ran in the 2018 parliamentary elections in Kandahar, but was not elected (media report). His first and second running-mates are respectively:

• Khadija Ghaznawi, a Hazara born in Badakhshan (see here), but the family with origins from Ghazni (diplomatic sources), who tried to run with her own ticket in the 2014 presidential elections, but was disqualified (AAN’s reports here and here). Ghaznawi owns a logistic company, and is the president of the Ibrahim Asia Group of Companies.
• Sayyed Same Kayani from Ismaili-inhabited Kayan valley, Dushi district of Baghlan. 

Wahdat, Shafafiat wa Etedal (Unity, Transparency and Moderation) team led by Dr Zalmai Rasul, a Pashtun born in Kabul, but originally from Kandahar, who is a medical doctor, and served as minister of transport and civil aviation, minister of foreign affairs, and national security adviser to former President Karzai. Before 2001, he was the chief of staff of former King Zaher Shah in his exile in Rome. Rassul, with Ahmad Zia Massud and Habiba Sarabi as running-mates, also ran in the 2014 presidential elections (see here), and ranked third in the first round. His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Abdul Jabbar Taqwa, a Tajik from Farkhar district of Takhar, who was a member of Jamiat-e Islami during mujahedin (diplomatic sources) and has served as a governor of Parwan, Takhar and Kabul (see his biography here)
• Ghulam Ali Wahdat, a Hazara from Bamyan, who has servedas a governor of Bamyan as well as in several positions within the ministry of interior, including provincial police chief in Bamyan, police chief of the 404th Maiwand zone in southern Afghanistan, deputy minister of interior (see here). He is the brother of MP Safura Elkhani. He competed for 2018 Wolesi Jirga elections and was sentenced to three years in prison for misusing his authority and, as of October 2018, was said to be imprisoned, but still had the right to appeal (diplomatic sources).

A yet-unnamed ticket led by Ghulam Faruq Nejrabi, a Tajik from Kapisa province, who is the leaders of Hezb-e Esteqlal Afghanistan, holds PhD in surgery from Indira Gandhi University, India. It is the third time he is running for presidency (see also media report). His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Sharifullah (no information available so far) 
• Muhammad Sharif Babakarkhel 

Tadbir wa Tawse’a (Prudence and Development) team led by Dr Faramarz Tamana, a Tajik born in Herat, who holds two PhD degrees in the field of international relations and studies from Tehran University, Iran, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He has worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in various capacities since 2002. Before registering to run for the presidential elections, he was head of the Centre for Strategic Studies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has been teaching as lecturer in different universities for the last ten years and is the chancellor of a private Afghanistan University. His first and second running-mates are respectively:

• Pohanmal (Prof.) Sayyed Qias Saidi, born in Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province. Sa’idi has completed his higher education in the field of economics from the University of Nangarhar and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He has worked with UNICEF as the head of public outreach and information in Nangahar, in charge of regional office of the United Nations Refugees Agency in eastern provinces, and head of Nangarhar provincial department of economy. 
•  Dr Muhammad Amin Reshadat, a Hazara born in Ghazni, holds a PhD in sociology (development and social change) from Shiraz University in Iran. Reshadat is currently deputy chancellor and a member of founding board of private Gharjestan University in Kabul. (The biographical information is extracted from their biographies published in Dari on Tamana’s Facebook account on 17 January 2019.)

Musharekat wa Taghir (Participation and Change) team led by Shaida Abdali, a Pashtun from Kandahar, who holds a master’s degree from the US and a PhD from India, and served as former deputy head of the National Security Council under former President, Hamed Karzai. Abdali has also been ambassador to India (2012-18). His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Abdul Basir Salangi, a Tajik from Parwan, is a member of Jamiat-e Islami party, has served as chief of police in Kabul, Maidan Wardak and Nangarhar between 2002 and 2009, as well as governor of Parwan and Farah in 2009-18 (see also this).
• Zulfiqar Omid, a Hazara from Daikundi, is the leader of Labour and Development party and is one of the leaders of the Enlightening Movement, a predominantly Hazara protest movement that emerged in protest to the rerouting of TUTAP power line from Bamyan to Salang (see AAN background here and here). Omid served as the director of international relations at the administrative office of the president during Karzai’s second term, and was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate 2018 from Kabul and 2004 from Daikundi.

Masuliat wa Adalat (Responsibility and Justice) team, led by Nur Rahman Liwal. He was born in Logar province and is a computer and software engineer and the founder and owner of Pashto language software company in Kabul (media report here). He was also a candidate in the 2014 presidential election. His first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Abdul Hadi Zul-Hekmat, a Pashtun from Logar province 
• Muhammad Yahya Wyar, a Pashtun from Khak-e-Jabar district of Kabul province, and a medical doctor with Jihadi background. He was a candidate for both 2014 and 2018 WJ elections, but failed to be elected. He worked as a public outreach officer for the Joint Election Management Body (JEMB) in 2005.

Khademin-e Mellat (Servants of the Nation) team led by Enayatullah Hafiz, a Hazara from Behsud district of Maidan Wardak. He has graduated from language and literature from Shahid Rabbani Education University, Kabul. He has been an unsuccessful two-times candidate for provincial councils, as well as an unsuccessful one-time candidate for the Wolesi Jirga (media report here). His first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Jannat Khan Fahim Chakari, a Pashtun from the Chakari area, Bagrami district of Kabul province. Chakari holds a bachelor degree in military affairs and is a former military officer (diplomatic sources).
• Abdul Jamil Shirani, also a Pashtun, from Kabul. He holds a bachelor degree and is a former employee of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (diplomatic sources).    

Solh, Qanuniat wa Refah (Peace, Lawfulness and Welfare) team led by Shahab Hakimi, a Pashtun from Maidan Wardak province, who holds a degree in agriculture from Kabul University and a master’s degree in administration from Preston University, Islamabad. He has worked as a lecturer at Kabul and, recently, as the director of the Mine Detection Centre. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2005 Wolesi Jirga elections. His first and second running-mates are respectively (media reports here and here):  

• Nur ul-Habib Hasir (no information available so far)
• Abdul Ali Sarabi (no information available so far)

Wefaq-e Melli (National Accord) team led by Ahmad Wali Massud, a Tajik from Panjshir, who is another leading Jamiat member and brother of assassinated mujahedin leader Ahmad Shah Massud. He served as Afghan ambassador to London for many years, starting under the ISA government of Prof Borhanuddin Rabbani (1992-96). Today, he heads the Ahmad Shah Massud foundation in Kabul. Massud’s first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Pohand Dr Farida Momand, a Pashtun from Nangarhar, who has served as professor at Kabul Medical University and dean of the paediatric department, and minister of higher education from President Ghani’s camp from April 2015 to 14 November 2016, when she lost a vote of confidence in the Wolesi Jirga (see AAN’s background here and here); She was an unsuccessful candidate for the 2009 provincial elections,  the 2010 and 2018 parliamentary elections.
• Dr Latif Nazari, a Hazara from Ghazni, holds a PhD in international relations from Tehran University, Iran, and is the founder of Eslahat Newspaper and the head of board of founders of private Gharjestan University. Nazari was a 2018 parliamentary candidate from Kabul, but did not win (his bio on his supporters’ Facebook page here). Nazari was previously a member of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom led by Muhammad Mohaqeq.

Amal mekonem, sho’ar na medehem (We act, we do not chant slogans) team led by Hakim Tursan, an Uzbek born in Kabul. He graduated in Persian literature from Kabul University, and served in various intelligence capacities under former President Dr Najibullah. He ran in 2009 (but withdrew before the campaign) and 2014 (according to his bio, his supporters published). His running-mates are respectively:

• Nader Shah Ahmadzai, a Pashtun from Kabul, who is head of Civil Rights and Research Organisation of Afghanistan. He was one of the 17 presidential candidates disqualified in the 2014 presidential election
• Muhammad Shafi Qaisari, an Uzbek from Qaisar district of Faryab (see also here). He graduated from the Polytechnic Engineering Faculty at the University of Kabul and is a former head of Governmental Housing Company (Tassadi-ye Microrayonha) in Kabul. Qaisari is a leftist and former member of the Jombesh party (according to diplomatic sources). 

Amniyat wa Adalat (Security and Justice) team led by Rahmatullah Nabil, a Pashtun from Maidan Wardak (see AAN bio here). He served as the head of President’s Protection Service (PPS) in the presidential palace under President Karzai and then as chief of National Directorate of Security (NDS) from July 2010 to late 2015 (see AAN’s previous reporting here). He is a founding member of Mehwar-e Mardom-e Afghanistan coalition (AAN reporting here). His first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Murad Ali Murad, a Hazara from Ghor province, who has served as commander of the Kabul Garrison until early 2019 (a position he resigned from in order to be able to run) and before as senior deputy minister of interior for security, first deputy of chief of army staff, and general commander of ground forces (see also his short bio on a Facebook page of his supporters here).
• Dr Massuda Jalal, a Tajik from Badakhshan, who was a presidential candidate in the first, 2004 presidential election, and then served as the minister of women’s affairs from October 2004 to July 2006 (see also AAN’s previous reporting here). She was a candidate in the October 2018 parliamentary elections from Kabul, but was not elected.  

Solh wa Adalat-e Islami (Peace and Islamic Justice) team led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun from Kunduz, the leader of Hezb-e Islami during the war against the Soviet occupation and now of one of its factions (AAN background here). His first and second running-mates are respectively:

• Dr Fazl ul-Hadi Wazin, a Tajik from Parwan, who has a PhD degree in Islamic studies from Imam Muhammad Ben Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and served as lecturer in International Islamic University in Islamabad, and a visiting professor in Fatema Jinah University, Pakistan. 
• Mufti Hafiz ul-Rahman Naqi, a Tajik from Badakhshan, who has served as a judge, as well as in other capacities in the judiciary, and was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2010 and 2018 parliamentary elections.

The information about the two running-mates is extracted from their bios AAN received from a deputy spokesman for the party, Fazl Ghani Haqmal. He claimed in a conversation with AAN on 7 February that Hezb-e Islami had picked the running-mates based on merits, and not on any division of ethnic groups. Haqmal said that both running-mates were members of Hezb-e Islami. Media had earlier wrongly reported that Wazin was an Uzbek (see here and here). 

A yet-unnamed ticket led by Nurullah Jalili. Ali Madad Rezayi, the person in charge of his public relations, told AAN on 7 February that the name and slogan of Jalili’s ticket had not yet been finalised. Jalili is a Sayyed from Nangarhar province and graduated from Kabul medical university. He previously worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Taleban. He is the director of the Kabul-based road-construction company America. Both he and his company worked as contractors with the US military (according to diplomatic sources). His first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Khalil Roman, a Tajik born in Kabul, who has graduated in journalism, was a member of the Parcham branch of People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, has served as chief of staff of former President Dr Najibullah, and deputy chief of staff of former President Karzai. He was an unsuccessful candidate in 2010 parliamentary elections from Kabul province. 
• Cheragh Ali Cheragh, has served as director of Kunduz public health department, head of Jamhuriyat hospital, Kabul Medial Institute, acting head of Shahid Rabbani Education University, and head of Balkh University (media report here). Cheragh was the second running-mate of Dr Abdullah in the 2009 presidential elections. 

Subat wa Hamgerayi (Stability and Integration) team led by Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the current chief executive of the National Unity Government and a prominent member of Jamiat-e Islami. After 2009 and 2014, this is the third time Abdullah has run for the presidency. Some leaders of his party, such as Ismail Khan, had requested him not to run again, criticising him for his – in his view – too quiet role in what he called the “kindergarten” National Unity Government. Abdullah’s first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Dr Enayatullah Babur Farahmand, an Uzbek born in Jawzjan, who holds a medical degree from Balkh University and has served as correspondent, producer and reporter with the BBC Uzbek service. He was an MP from 2010 to 2015, and chief of staff of first Vice-President General Abdul Rashid Dostum from 2015 until January 2019 when he resigned to be Dostum’s man in Abdullah’s ticket (see his bio on his Facebook page in English here). 
• Asadullah Sadati, a Hazara MP from Daikundi, who holds a degree in literature from Kabul University and a master’s degree in international relations from the private Ibn-e Sina Unversity, also Kabul. He was an MP from 2010 to 2019 and is affiliated with the leader of one faction of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami and head of High Peace Council, Muhammad Karim Khalili.  

Dawlat-sazan (State-builders) team led by Muhammad Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun from Logar province, who is the incumbent president of the National Unity Government since 2014. He has served as adviser to former President Karzai during his interim administration, chancellor of Kabul University, and minister of finance. He was a candidate in the 2009 presidential elections and ranked fourth. He was appointed by Karzai as the head of the Transition Coordination Commission. The team’s title possibly refers to Ghani’s book Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World (2009, with Clare Lockhart). His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Amrullah Saleh, a Tajik from Panjshir, and a former Jamiati who has distanced himself from his old party. He now runs his own Green Trend of Afghanistan, which he established after his resignation as NDS director in 2010 and had its first public appearance on 5 May 2011. Saleh supported Dr Abdullah in the 2014 presidential election. During the NUG, he co-headed the fact-finding commission investigating the 2015 fall of Kunduz. He was appointed as state minister for security reform in March 2017, but resigned after three months and as minister of interior in December 2018. After less than a month, he resigned again to be able to run on Ghani’s ticket (see AAN background here and here).
• Second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh, a Hazara from Daikundi province, served as the first governor of Daikundi (after it was established in 2004), minister of justice and higher education under former President Karzai. Danesh was a member of the constitutional drafting commission in 2003. He is a member of Khalili’s Wahdat-e Islami Party, which supported Ghani in the 2014 presidential election. However, this time, Khalili’s party has announced its support for Abdullah. 
• It is important to note Ghani has also picked a third, informal running-mate: Muhammad Yusef Ghazanfar, an Uzbek and former MP from Balkh, and brother of former minister of women’s affairs, Husn Banu Ghazanfar (diplomatic source). Ghazanfar was present at Ghani’s registration and might serve as an adviser or special representative to him, until any possible amendment to the constitution to create a third vice-presidential post. 

An idea had been floated to amend the constitution to create a third vice-presidential post, but in more practical terms, this step is a bid to garner the votes of the Uzbek community,the fourth-largest ethnic group of the country. (On Ghani’s 2014 ticket, Dostum was the vice-president ‘for the Uzbeks’; there was no Tajik on the ticket then.)

Solh wa Etedal (Peace and Moderation) team led by Muhammad Hanif Atmar, a Pashtun from Laghman, who has served as national security adviser to President Ghani until 2018, and before as minister of rural rehabilitation and development, education and interior under President Karzai (who fired him – AAN background here and here). Atmar is also a founding member of the Right and Justice party established in 2011 (AAN background here). His first and second running-mates are respectively: 

• Former vice-president Muhammad Yunus Qanuni, a Tajik from Panjshir, is senior Jamiat member. In 2001, Qanuni served as chief negotiator for the ‘Northern Alliance’ delegation at the Bonn conference.  He was a candidate in the 2004 presidential election, ranking second. He also served as speaker of Wolesi Jirga from 2005 to 2010, MP from Kabul from 2010, and as first vice-president following the death of Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim in March 2014 (AAN background here) till October of the same year. 
• Muhammad Mohaqeq, the second deputy to Chief Executive Abdullah, and the leader of Hazara-dominated Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom-e Afghanistan. Mohaqeq served as a vice-president and the minister of planning in Karzai’s interim government, and was a candidate in the 2004 presidential elections, ranking third. He was a two-term MP from Kabul (2005-10 and 2010-14 when he resigned to join Abdullah’s ticket as second running-mate). On 24 January, President Ghani issued a decree dismissing Mohaqeq from his position as the deputy chief executive, which he rejected as “illegal.” Chief Executive Abdullah, who had nominated him, called the dismissal as “totally in contradiction with the spirit of the political agreement founding the National Unity Government,” saying that the government would continue to serve till the next presidential elections are held and “the next legitimate government is formed.” 
• Like Ghani, Atmar has also picked a third, informal running-mate, Alem Sa’i, an Uzbek and a former governor of Jawzjan. He is a member of the anti-Dostum New Jombesh party, which declared its existence in June 2017 (AAN background here).

Mardomsalari, Enkeshaf wa Tawazun (Democracy [People’s Power], Development and Balance) team led by Nur ul-Haq Ulumi, a Pashtun from Kandahar, who leads his own political party called Hezb-e Mutahed-e Melli (National United Party) and served as minister of interior from January 2015 to February 2016 (see AAN reports here and here). He was an MP from Kandahar from 2005 to 2010. Under the government of President Najbullah (1986-92), he was a general and head of the southwestern zone, ie ‘Greater Kandahar’. His first and second running-mates are respectively:  

• Bashir Bezhan, a Tajik from Badakhshan,  who has served as editor of Ariana Airlines magazine Parwaz, editor of Khabar Negar and the founder and editor of the weekly cultural magazine Cina magazine. He was and unsuccessful candidate in 2009 presidential elections and 2018 parliamentary elections from Kabul.
• Muhammad Naim Ghayur, born in Guzara district of Herat, according to his Facebook profile, is from a mixed Tajik/Pashtun family. His father is originally from Ghor province and his mother hails from the Katawaz area of Paktika province. He holds a bachelor in law and political science degree, as well as attended several military and intelligence courses in Afghanistan and abroad. He started his official governmental career as Enjil district direct of NDS and served in the ministry of defence in different capacities, including director of intelligence for 606 Ansar police zone in Herat province (2014-18). Ghayur is said to be a leftist, formerly with the PDPA’s Parcham faction (diplomatic sources), and is currently a member of Ulumi’s party.

Conclusion: Caveats

All proceedings for the planned July 2019 presidential election continue to be overshadowed by the on-going peace efforts (AAN analysis here) and the election reform process. On the former, US special envoy for reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, said at an event at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC on 8 February that he hoped to achieve a peace agreement with the Taleban before the 20 July 2019 election date. An agreement, whenever reached at, would require to then merge the (old or new) Afghan government with the Taleban who – as a partner of such an agreement – however so far do not consider the government in Kabul as an actor in its own right.

On election reform, President Ghani held a consultative meeting with a number of presidential candidates or their representatives, as well as with representatives of some political parties in the presidential palace on 8 February (report by the presidential office here). There, the president said that there was a consensus to amend the electoral law and that the government had prepared draft amendments. On 9 February, another consultative meeting with representatives of candidates, parties and observer organisations was chaired by Vice-President Sarwar Danesh to discuss various articles of the proposed amendments to the law (see here on his Facebook page). No outcome was officially reported. Mobinullah Aimaq, the head of Free Watch Afghanistan, an observer organisation, who had participated in the meeting, told AAN on 9 February that there was no agreement reached and it was decided to meet again. 

On 9 February, a joint committee of the presidential candidates, which includes all presidential tickets except President Ghani’s, issued a statement. This said that the council had rejected the amendments proposed by the Palace on 8 February. These candidates submitted their own draft amendments including: retaining the selection committee for shortlisting applicants for the position of electoral commissioners, but changing its members (while the government’s draft amendment, of which AAN has seen a copy, calls for abolishing the selection committee and asks registered political parties and election-related civil society organisations to introduce 15 candidates each and the president – then in consultation with the chief justice, speakers of the two houses of the parliament, attorney general, heads of the commission for overseeing the implementation of the constitution and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, as well as heads of political parties and civil society organisations – appoints seven of them as IEC members); calling for the appointment of new electoral commissioners and heads of the IEC and ECC secretariats in consultation with the candidates; cancelling the existing voter list and preparing a new one using biometric technology only; and using technology in the presidential elections (without specifying whether it means they want electronic voting). 

On 11 February, the IEC issued a statement saying that it had been informed through the media that the government seeks to amend the electoral law and endorse it through a legislative decree. It said that given that the president and the chief executive of the national unity government are among the candidates, amendments to the electoral law by the national unity government at this critical time “will not pursue any other goals other than manipulating the upcoming election process, which is very dangerous for the country’s future and the post-elections that will result from this will move the country to crisis.” 

The IEC said that it had referred the issue of how to amend the electoral law to the legal institutions, including the Supreme Court and the Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution so they can share their legal opinions with the IEC and other bodies that seek to amend the electoral law at this juncture.

This shows that the palace and a unified front of all other candidates are currently at loggerheads over large parts of the electoral reforms, including the mechanism of changing the commissioners, and they both face backlash from the IEC. If the disagreement lingers, it will continue to hamper the preparations and, perhaps, lead to another delay in the elections, as the IEC might not be able to start certain important activities, such as the top-up voter registration exercise planned for 1 to 20 March and the registration of candidates for the provincial and district council elections, as well as Wolesi Jirga elections in Ghazni planned for 1 to 15 March.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

(1) According to article 73 of the electoral law, the application for presidential candidacy should include the following:

• Name and specific address
• A copy of the document that proves his/her identity 
• Verified copy of educational documents as mentioned in this law.
•  Information on non-conviction, age, health status, movable and immovable properties, permanent and current residence addresses, latest place of employment and other instances stated in this law. 
• List of names, number of the voter registration cards and the fingerprints of one hundred thousand voters, from a minimum of twenty provinces, at least two percent from each province
• Provision of official document of resignation from the government positions pursuant to the provisions of the law. 
• Provide the names of two eligible vice-presidents, who fulfill the conditions set forth in this law. 

(2) In 2009, Foruzan Fana and Shahla Atta ran. The former, widow of minister Dr Abdul Rahman, who had been assassinated in 2002, scored best, ending on seventh place with 0.47 per cent of the total valid vote (see AAN analysis here). The IEC did not provide any reasons for the disqualification of the only female candidate in 2014, Khadija Ghaznawi,  but generally (there were other disqualifications) cited failure to meet registration requirements and having dual citizenship (see AAN’s report here).

(3) Article 38 of the electoral law reads:

• A person may nominate himself/herself for the presidency, who meets the following requirements:
  • Shall be an Afghan citizen, a Muslim and born to Afghan parents and shall not have the citizenship of another country.
  • Shall not be less than 40 years of age on the day of candidacy.
  • Shall not have been convicted of crimes against humanity and felony or deprived of civil rights by the court.
  • Shall not have been elected as a president or vice- president for more than two terms.
• The vice-presidents shall also meet the requirements mentioned in clause (1) of this article.

(4) Article 74 of the electoral law says:

• The Commission is obliged to publish the preliminary list of candidates soon after the completion of the candidacy period.
  • The persons, who may have objections to the preliminary list of the candidates, may submit their objections to the Central Complaints Commission within a maximum of two weeks following the publication of the list. These objections shall be addressed in compliance with the relevant procedure and this decision shall be final.
  • Once all the objections are addressed by the Central Complaints Commission, the final list of candidates shall be published by the Commission. This list shall be unchangeable.
  • The Commission is obliged to display the final list of candidates at the polling centres on the Election Day.

(5) Article 75 of the electoral law reads: 

•  In case a candidate withdraws from his/her candidacy, he/she is obliged to inform the Commission in writing prior to the date determined in the electoral calendar.
•  In case a candidate withdraws from his/her candidacy or dies after the date determined in the electoral calendar or if he/she is disqualified by the Complaints Commission, the votes related to him/her shall not be counted during counting of the votes. 
•  Only the deposit money of those candidates would be returned, who have withdrawn or died within the period of time determined in the electoral calendar.

(6) Source: Terms of reference of the joint committee of 2019 presidential candidates, which includes 17 presidential tickets, except President Ghani’s (AAN has seen a copy).  The committee, which they also call the Council for Collaboration of the 2019 Presidential elections, has been formed after candidate nomination ended. The term of reference sets the following objectives for the committee or council: a) to facilitate consultation and taking joint stance regarding the instances pertaining to the integrity of the election process; b) to prevent illegal interference and influence by the government and other institutions in the election affairs; c) to forge coordination among candidates and different electoral teams about the necessary electoral reform, as well as in working with the relevant commissions; and d) to observe the election process. It issued a statement on 2 February saying that the council had approved a proposed procedure on preventing the abuse of government resources, authorities and facilities for election and political campaigning, which sets out “binding moral limits.” The statement said that majority of candidates had approved the procedure and officially sent it to the presidential office. The statement also said that the council had discussed a second document, which is a draft proposal on electoral reforms (AAN has seen both documents). 

With the US-Taleban negotiations in Doha actually addressing how to end the Afghan war, and with first progress being made in the form of an agreed draft framework, Afghanistan seems to be slowly inching beyond the impasse of only ‘talks about talks.’ With this, a peace process has possibly left the starting blocks, but only barely. The main problem is that, so far, the negotiations have only involved two of the three main parties to the conflict. The Taleban are formally still blocking the inclusion of the Afghan government in the talks, but they might have room for manoeuvre. The Afghan government, meanwhile, has been incensed by talks about an interim government by which it feels being undermined. AAN co-director and senior analyst Thomas Ruttig looks at the issues that were discussed at the talks, as well as those that were not yet, at least not officially (with input from Martine van Bijlert and Obaid Ali).

This research was supported by the Embassy of Canada in Kabul through its Canada Fund for Local Initiative (CFLI) Program.

The ‘framework’

The contours of the latest round of US-Taleban negotiations in Qatar have begun to emerge. After six days of meetings with representatives of the insurgents, US special ‘reconciliation’ envoy Zalmay Khalilzad came to Kabul on 27 January 2019 to brief the Afghan leadership. He told the New York Times that a “framework” had “in principle” been agreed upon. The framework seems to mainly consist of two key topics that need to be further negotiated: the withdrawal of all foreign forces and Taleban guarantees against a post-agreement return of al-Qaeda-type terrorist groups to Afghanistan. Or in Khalilzad’s words: “We have a draft of the framework that has to be fleshed out before it becomes an agreement.” For that purpose, two “working groups” have been established.

This means that both sides have accepted to work out the practicalities of how to implement each other’s main immediate political goals into a workable sequencing: making sure all foreign troops leave Afghanistan – which has always been the Taleban’s main demand (although the wish to withdraw is now also shared in large parts of the US administration, but not fully by Republicans in Senate) – while ensuring that renewed 9/11-style attacks cannot emanate from Afghan territory again – which has always been a main US demand. 

It is not clear how much has already been put in writing, or whether the discussions were based on written documents (both in Doha, and during the round of talks in Abu Dhabi in December 2018). (1) What is clear is that, for the first time, the threshold from preliminary ‘talks about talks’ to substantive negotiations has been crossed (after earlier rounds of negotiations, from 2011 to 2014, that focused mainly on a prisoner swap that actually happened, see AAN analysis here; the fact that those talks took three years, indicate how difficult negotiations, on even a single issue, can be). The duration of the latest round of negotiations in Doha – six days, the longest since talks commenced in 2018 – indicated that both sides worked seriously on an agreement. 

According to Taleban sources, the US have also “promised” to help in reconstruction efforts after its troop withdrawal, and the Taleban would welcome this. “We have told them that after ending your military intervention, we will welcome U.S. engineers, doctors and others if they want to come back for reconstruction of Afghanistan,” Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanakzai, the outgoing head of the Taleban office in Doha, said. (2)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US envoy Khalilzad called the agreement on the framework “significant progress.” Several media outlets, possibly encouraged by their briefers, even opted for the term “breakthrough.” The Taleban simply spoke of “progress” after the latest Doha round.

According to outgoing Taleban chief negotiator Stanakzai (quoted here), for the next meeting in Doha, set for 25 February, “the two technical teams will prepare proposals and take decisions and bring them to the table.” He added that after that a larger meeting would be arranged, with major powers, the United Nations and representatives of Islamic countries in attendance as “guarantors” where assurances will be given that all foreign troops will leave Afghanistan. But he still made no mention of the possible inclusion of the Afghan government.

The conditionalities of a ‘package deal’

Spreading optimism is part of a diplomat’s basic toolbox. It is also currently a necessity in the US, where President Donald Trump’s lack of patience with the US mission in Afghanistan is well known. Trump made it clear long before he came into office that he would have preferred a quick pull out (see AAN’s annotated collection of his pre-election, Afghanistan-related tweets here). Khalilzad is well aware of this need to placate this impatience and, for now, seems to have done so satisfactorily. One of the President Trump’s fearsome tweets on 30 January lauded the Afghan negotiations as “proceeding well” (quoted here).

Still, Khalilzad works and Afghans live under a Trump “tweet of Damocles” (a term the Wall Street Journal seems to have coined). When Khalilzad took on his new assignment in September 2018, he told diplomatic colleagues that he probably had six to twelve months to produce a breakthrough for the president, according to “people briefed on the discussions” quoted by the Wall Street Journal in November 2018. Other outlets suggested that he had until the 2019 Afghan presidential election, which has been postponed from April to July 2019. According to the WSJ article, it was Khalilzad who had raised the issue of a possible delay – something he himself denies – as an election could stand in the way of ‘peace’.

The NYT article that broke the news of the agreement on a ‘framework’ and that inspired a media frenzy across the world also had more details on the possible complexities of what lies ahead. It quoted an unnamed “senior American official involved in the talks”, who said the Taleban had asked for time to confer with their leadership on the additional US requirements of a cease-fire and direct talks with the Afghan government. The official described these issues as “interconnected” and part of a “package deal.” 

This suggests that the talks will not simply revolve around a framework with a topic list, but that all will depend on the ability to agree on the sequencing and interconnectedness of the various points of conditionality. 

Thus, the United States said it would agree to withdraw its “combat troops” from Afghanistan “only in return for the Taliban’s entering talks with the Afghan government and agreeing to a lasting cease-fire.” Khalilzad stressed elsewhere that all talks would take place in accordance with the principle that “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” (A principle that was also used in Colombia’s peace negotiations with FARC; see AAN’s dispatch on what Afghanistan can learn from this process here).

The Taleban, in turn, insisted on a conditionality of their own. Reuters quoted their spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed as saying that “until the issue of withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan is agreed upon, progress on other issues is impossible.” They also continue to refuse to talk with the Afghan government. (3)

The two conditionalities, for the moment, seem to block each other. However, the fact that the Taleban delegation is said to have asked for a break of the Doha negotiations to confer with their leadership, shows that there may be room for manoeuvre. Also, on their ambivalent wording on their seemingly unmovable position not to talk to the government in Kabul before all foreign soldiers have left. At the Afghanistan conference in Moscow in mid-November 2018, (4) Stanakzai told Russian media in an interview:

Those matters which are related to the Afghan side… the future government, the constitution etc, that can be discussed with the Afghan side… But before that, the American side should guarantee and they should fix a timetable for the withdrawal of their forces. When they give an international guarantee for the withdrawal of their forces, than it is possible [to talk] with the Afghan side also. … Also with other forces that have influence in Afghanistan. 

Here, the existence of a timetable is set as the precondition for direct talks, not the finalised withdrawal. 

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani has his own conditionality: he has vehemently rebuked talks about an “interim government”, particularly as feels this is been discussed over his head (more about this below). 

Issues agreed upon ‘in principle’

1.Troop withdrawal 

Even though the withdrawal of foreign forces is part of the agreed framework, and of the future talks’ agenda, not much is clear yet. Some media have reported, quoting Taleban sources, that the US has agreed to withdraw forces within 18 months (which seems unlikely under the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”), while noting that the US had denied that a timeline was even discussed (see, for example, here). Taleban spokesman Mujahed also denied that an 18 months’ timeline had been established in Doha. Outgoing Doha office chief Stanakzai was quoted in Pakistani media as saying that “I think the US government is very serious to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.“ However, AAN has been told by Afghan journalists that Khalilzad told them – off the records – that a US military withdrawal within 18 months would be definite. (This still doesn’t mean it has been formally agreed with the Taleban, but their public statement clearly indicate they got this message, too.)

So far, the Taleban have made their involvement in an agreement conditional on US readiness to, at least, commit to a timetable. This was also one of the take-aways of the Moscow conference, the Taleban’s Stanakzai told Russian media: “Before [intra-Afghan talks], the American side should guarantee and fix a timetable for the withdrawal of their forces.” The US had already signalled its readiness to discuss a timetable in future negotiations in February 2018 during the Kabul Process 2 meeting (AAN analysis here). 

Regardless of whether an 18-months withdrawal period has been substantively discussed, or not, it does seem logistically possible. For example, the reduction of ISAF troops (90,000 of which were Americans) from 129,000 in March 2012 when the drawdown was decided, to around 28,000 in November 2014 (which was the last available figure; full withdrawal was never completed and the remaining troops were re-labelled Resolute Support) had been possible within less than three years. The Soviet Union even managed to withdraw their circa 100,000 troops within ten months between May 1988 and February 1989 (although this was made somewhat easier by the fact that it was a neighbouring country and they could use land routes). 

The discussions around troop withdrawal, so far, seem to focus on all “foreign forces”, which seems to imply that it will also cover all non-US, NATO and non-NATO, troops. The New York Times article quoted above, speaks about the withdrawal of “combat troops” which, as it is not a direct quote, might be the interpretation of the paper. But it could also leave open the possibility of non-combat missions, such as the current (but further reduced) US/NATO-led Resolute Support “train, advise and assist” mission, or – as the Brooking’s Vanda Velbab-Brown suggested – a “residual U.S. military force, of say 1,000 soldiers to protect the U.S. embassy, which – wink, wink, with the Taliban’s permission – will have the capacity to conduct limited counterterrorism strikes.” Or just an intelligence presence, as Trump suggested in his 3 February 2019 interview with CBS. There are further questions as to whether the discussed withdrawal would also cover private security contractors and whether the US may seek continued access to Afghan military bases in the context of counterterrorism. 

There are also indications that the US would like to keep the bilateral US-Afghan security agreement (BSA) of 2014 in force after a possible deal (more on the BSA here at AAN, including the full text) after a peace deal. Resistance to a maintained agreement, that regulates the presence and activities of US troops in Afghanistan might not only come from the Taleban. Stanakzai had stated in Moscow: “We will not tolerate a single American soldier in our country,” but he is not the only one who feels that way. Islamists and nationalists in Afghanistan itself, including in parliament, have spoken out against the US presence. Former president Hamed Karzai has also vehemently opposed the agreement and resisted signing the document that was worked out during his tenure. He had left it to his successor, Ashraf Ghani, who also opted not to sign it in person, but passed it on to his then national security advisor (and now challenger in the 2019 elections) Hanif Atmar. 

The US currently has 14,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, divided between the Resolute Support mission (8,500 by December 2018, according to NATO) and the purely US ‘can-be-combat’ counter-terrorism mission Freedom’s Sentinel (see AAN analysis here). Additionally, there are some 8,000 troops from 38 NATO and non-NATO countries, ranging from Germany to Georgia (currently troop providers number two and four), from Great Britain (second largest) to New Zealand, and from Turkey to Mongolia. 

It is likely that many countries will leave if the US does, even if they are not asked to do so. German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen, for example, already told national media on 16 January 2019 that, in the case of a full US withdrawal, her country would also pull out its troops. She quoted the NATO principle of “together in, together out.“ Practically speaking, most non-US troop providers would be unable to stay behind anyway, as many of them depend on US logistics and air cover. There is also an ‘Afghanistan fatigue’ in many governments and parliaments, who would welcome a withdrawal. A number of other countries, such as Canada and France, have already fully withdrawn. With Turkey, Azerbaijan and Bosnia, there are some Muslim-majority countries with forces in Afghanistan. But the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the only Arab country ever participating in ISAF with doctors and Special Forces, has pulled out.

2.Counter-terrorism 

The Taleban have reportedly agreed not to allow Afghanistan to be used as an operational basis for terrorist groups again. This mainly refers to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (called Daesh in Afghanistan and the Middle East), with its Afghan-Pakistani franchise, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), but also to an array of other groups active in the region, ranging from Pakistani Lashkar-e Taiba, to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The root of this demand is the fact that Osama Ben Laden’s al-Qaeda had planned, or at least inspired, the terrorist attacks on US territory on 11 September 2001, while living in Afghanistan. The Taleban hosted al-Qaida at that time and had refused to hand over Ben Laden (initially for his role in the October 2000 al-Qaida attack on USS Cole at the Yemeni coast). The Taleban had, however, neither been involved nor, apparently, been told about either of the planned attacks.

Since 2001, the US administration has often framed the war in Afghanistan as a war of ‘national security’, to ensure that the country would never again be used to plan or direct attacks against the US. Therefore, it would be very difficult, both practically and in terms of narrative, to enter into an agreement to withdraw troops without such a commitment.

The Taleban, it seems, will have no problem in agreeing to deny ISKP a safe haven. Despite some common elements in their modus operandiand ideology, as well as, reportedly, some local collusion or non-interference agreements, the Taleban consider the group an unwanted rival that is encroaching upon the arena of their own jihad. Since its appearance in 2015-16, the Taleban have systematically fought ISKP, and vice versa.

The nature of the relationship between Taleban and al-Qaeda is more controversial, and they have so far only distanced themselves from the group indirectly, not mentioning it by name. That the Afghan government, many Western analysts and large parts of the Afghan public, view the links between them as symbiotic and even inextricable seems to be debatable, at least. 

Indeed, before 2001, al-Qaeda contributed financially and with fighters to the Taleban’s struggle. Mullah Omar’s protection of Ben Laden also had to do with a certain personal gratitude for his role in supporting the anti-Soviet mujahedin in the 1980s. (Omar had been a mujahed, too). But already then, al-Qaeda was more dependent on the Taleban than vice versa. In their doctrine, they needed what they called a ‘liberated’ Islamic territory from where to declare a ‘legitimate’ jihad and, in this view, Afghanistan was the only one available. As a result, Ben Laden and later Ayman al-Zawahiri repeatedly swore allegiance to Taleban leaders. The Taleban also were always much stronger militarily than al-Qaeda, and are even more so today. The US never attributed more than a few hundred fighters to al-Qaeda after 2001, which is surely much less than one per cent of the Taleban’s strength. 

Today, the Taleban are also not (that) dependent on al-Qaeda’s financial and military support any more – if they ever were. Their widespread collection of taxes among Afghans (even beyond the immediate area of their control – see, for example, in Ghazni city here) has likely become their main income by now. There are also indications that, after 9/11, the Taleban revaluated al-Qaeda and realised that the attacks cost them their rule of Afghanistan. (5) With that and their control of large parts of Afghanistan, as well as their re-evaluation of al-Qaeda’s role, they will be able to curb their activity. That they have not distanced themselves from the group by name is likely caused by their fear to anger private Taleban sponsors in Gulf countries and elsewhere. Losing them might be outweighed by far by regaining power through a peace deal.

Finally, the Taleban and al-Qaeda are strategically far apart. In contrast to al-Qaeda’s internationalist-jihadist aims (shared by IS/ISKP), ie establishing a worldwide caliphate, the Taleban’s agenda remains focussed on Afghanistan. This does not exclude sympathies for internationalist jihadism among some Taleban, but this has, to this day, not found expression in their practical policy. A resurgence of al-Qaeda or a strengthened IS foothold in Afghanistan would interfere in the Taleban’s domestic goals, namely remodelling Afghanistan according to its own ideas of a ‘truly Islamic order’ (AAN analysis here). Activities of globally active, but – in Afghanistan – marginalised terrorist groups from Afghan soil, or reverting to their own highly radical policies would draw unwanted international attention to the country again, instead of letting it diminish after a full troop withdrawal. It rather seems in the Taleban’s interest to cut links with international terrorist groups and to moderate their stance on issues, such as education and women’s rights.

Thus, it is not a huge concession, and actually desirable for the Taleban to distance themselves from al-Qaeda and IS, at least as long as they continue to be one of most powerful factions in the country. In fact, and the Taleban continue to point this out, they have repeatedly stated that they would not allow any activity against any other countries from Afghan territory. In Moscow they said:

… we don’t have an agenda of destructive actions in other countries. In the past 17 years we have proven, in practice, that we have not interfered in any way in other countries. Similarly, we do not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against other countries, including neighbouring countries.

That they have not yet explicitly mentioned al-Qaeda so far might have to do with some nostalgic connotations to the 1980s and pre-2001 alliance. But it is more likely that the Taleban realise the importance to the US of the assurance, making it a bargaining chip they want to keep.

Issues still open

1. Ceasefire

The US official’s remarks about the ‘package deal’ indicate that there are more issues than just the two on which agreement has been reached ‘in principle’. First, there are the two big issues mentioned earlier: the US demand that the Taleban enter into a “comprehensive” – ie countrywide and longer-term – ceasefire and that they agree to an intra-Afghan dialogue. The US and Afghan governments may need to make substantial concessions to persuade the Taleban to lift this blockade. On the other hand, now that an agreement on troop withdrawal seems to come within reach, it may not be in the Taleban’s interest to be too intransigent on these issues. 

A comprehensive ceasefire would involve a promise by the Taleban (as well as the government and international forces) to stop fighting, while talking to the Afghan government and allowing US troops to leave. Earlier, in the December 2018 negotiations in Abu Dhabi, as Khalilzad told the Afghan news agency Ariana in an interview on 21 December, hediscussed a three-month ceasefirewith the Taleban, which, he might hope, could be extended when negotiations make further progress.

That the Taleban are able to agree to and implement a nation-wide ceasefire was shown over the Id festival in June 2018 (see this AAN report) The three-day truce, during which there was not a single violation, rekindledAfghans’ hopes their country could be at peace again. The Taleban’s behaviour during the Id ceasefire, moreover, seemed to have changed the minds of some observers in the west who, thus far, had still seen the Taleban as an unruly composition of factions without clear command-and-control (as the author recently witnessed during an international workshop in the Canadian capital of Ottawa). 

Of course, the stakes will be much higher, as will be the incentives for spoilers, when faced with a longer ceasefire and a possible end to the entire war. The Taleban are also aware that it will be difficult to motivate their fighters to return to the war if negotiations collapse after a longer lull, as The Economist quoted one of them. But the main issue here is whether and how a ceasefire – if agreed to – should be monitored, by whom, and what kind of sanctions could be realistically applied in case of violations? A monitored ceasefire without consequences if broken will not work. Experience from other conflicts shows that negotiations break down over unkept promises of ceasefires and arguments over who broke it first and most. An unmonitored ceasefire is also difficult to imagine. 

2. Taleban demands of confidence-building measures

While the Americans have now publicly laid their main demands on the table, the Taleban had also presented a list of issues in a kind of position paper that Stanakzai presented at the Moscow conference. This paper included four “Preliminary steps for Peace”, which were further explained as “parts of confidence-building measures” to be taken “before the beginning of the peace talks”. The four preliminary steps, according to the Taleban, were: removal from the sanctions list, release of detainees, formal opening of the Doha office, and an end to the “poisonous propaganda against the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”

The lifting of the UN sanctions’ regime against Taleban leaders would ease negotiations, as it would officially give them the freedom of travel (even though this is already de facto the case for those actively participating in the Doha talks and other track II events; see AAN analysis here and here). The release of detainees, according to the Taleban, involves “tens of thousands” of prisoners held in “secret and open prisons”. The Doha office, the third point,had officially opened in June 2012 and was almost immediately closed again after the Afghan government protested its use of the term “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, thus claiming a quasi-government-in-exile status. The office, however, continued to function semi-officially (AAN analysis here). The call to end propaganda against the Emirate specifically mentioned“unfounded accusations” against the Taleban for attacks on civilians and infrastructure, but, interestingly, did not refer to the label “terrorists” regularly used for them by their adversaries.

Neither side has referred to these issues after the six days of Doha talks. However, the subject of detainees (from both sides) did apparently figure in the December 2018 Abu Dhabi talks that were initiated by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but then broke down. According to media reports (see, for example, here), the Taleban had rejected the US demand to release two lecturers of the American University in Kabul who had been abducted in 2016 and were held by the Taleban-affiliated Haqqani network. (AAN understands the US suggested they be exchanged for Haqqani family member and main fund raiser Anas Haqqani, similarly to the 2014 prisoners swap of US soldier Bowe Bergdahl against five Taleban-related Guantanamo detainees. Anas Haqqani, who had been captured in Afghanistan in 2014, is held in Kabul and has been condemned to death.

3. A new political system?

Stanakzai’s Moscow speech – that had been similar to earlier Taleban statements at several conferences and Track II events (AAN analysis here) – also referred to five so-called “obstacles to peace”. They also could be called the major outcomes of peace talks, in the view of the Taleban.

The six obstacles to peace he mentioned were: 

• the “occupation” (which would be covered by an agreement to withdraw foreign troops); 
• the lack of an “independent Islamic system” in Afghanistan; 
• the “current constitution”, which he said was “copied from the West and has been imposed on Afghanistan’s Muslim society under the shadow of occupation” (a new constitution, he said, would need to be drafted by “Afghan [religious?] scholars and intellectuals”); 
• the lack of guarantees for the implementation of future peace agreements (plural); he mentioned the United Nations, “major powers”, member-countries of the Islamic Conference and “facilitating countries” as possible guarantors; 
• the “continuation” of the US’s “war policy” with reference to the additional soldiers deployed, the increased number of airstrikes, military operations and civilian casualties caused by them.

The need for the release of detainees doubled as an “obstacle” in the paper, too (but it is not included in the above list).

While the first point on the list has been addressed in the Doha talks and agreed on ‘in principle’, the second and third points pertain to a crucial – and large – issue, which, obviously, cannot be addressed in negotiations with the US alone. This is, what a future political set-up – including possibly a new constitution – into which both Afghan sides would merge, would look like and how they would get there. 

The Taleban have made it clear that they would not simply ‘join’ or be ‘integrated’ into the current system and lay down their arms, as this would be surrender for them, and that they instead demand “reform”, including a new constitution drafted by “Afghan [religious] scholars and intellectuals.” This demand has been repeatedly raised, the last time in Moscow. At the same time, the Afghan government and large parts of the population are unwilling to surrender the democratic and human rights, including women’s and minorities’ rights, that are enshrined in the current constitution. If such discussions are indeed opened, the challenge will be to negotiate a political and legal system that both satisfies the shared desire for reform, while safeguarding rights and protections and guaranteeing room for genuine pluralism and inclusivity, not least of the genders. 

Several media have speculated (for example, here) that the Doha agreement would also include an interim government of which the Taleban would be part – as a possible transition mechanism to a post-agreement Afghanistan – and that this had already been discussed in Doha. However, Khalilzad categorically denied in Kabul that this was the case (quoted here). On the issue of rights enshrined in the current constitution, he was recently quoted as saying that although the US “is in favor of a democratic system where every Afghan’s rights are respected, where everyone has equal rights and responsibilities under the law … we did not talk about these issues with the Taliban because they are Afghanistan’s internal issues.” This does not sound like a strong commitment and is particularly worrying, as long as the Taleban and the US are the two only parties at the table.

Other related issues that may or may not be discussed in the near future, include the status of the Afghan security forces and current Taleban fighters under a possible joint political set-up, issues of (partial) disarmament and demobilisation and the question of possibly merging both sides into a joint security force. 

4. One agreement or more?

There is also the paramount formal question on how many agreements there will be and between whom. There may be one trilateral agreement – between the US, the Afghan government and the Taleban – or, possibly, a withdrawal and a peace agreement, flanked by what could be called a regional framework, including how the implementation of an agreement’s provisions could be practically monitored – and by whom. There is also the, rather undesirable, option of an agreement negotiated only between the US and the Taleban, with possibly other relevant parties – for instance, the Afghan government, or an array of intra-Afghan dialogue participants – being persuaded or pressured to sign up, with or without substantive input. 

The RAND paper: a blueprint or simply some drafted input? 

For the last few weeks, a draft document by the Rand Corporation has been making the rounds in Kabul. It contains some of the topics that were addressed in Doha, and many more. The document, titled “Agreement on a Comprehensive Settlement of the Conflict in Afghanistan,“ is labelled a “work-in-progress,” and, on most topics, several options are given. Its exact status is unclear, but it appears to be aimed at providing substantive input and possible wording for the negotiations and looks like much more than just a thought experiment. Since Khalilzad worked for this think tank, between 1993 and 2000, it can be assumed it was designed to inform his work, whether on his initiative or not.

Parts of the text have already been discussed by several media, such as Reuters, the New York Times and the Afghan news agencies Pajhwok and ToloNews. The existence of the document, and its level of detail, has served to exacerbate fears among many Afghans that an agreement is now under work over their heads. The New York Times alleged that Laurel Miller, who had acted as the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan until June 2017, had written it. Reuters quoted a tweet from the US embassy in Kabul said Rand’s work was independent of the US government and did not represent US policy.

The text contains far-reaching, detailed, politically controversial suggestions about what a future Afghan system could look like and how the country would get there. Such suggestions include a new political system, either to be determined by the Agreement or in debates by a transitional government or some form of intra-Afghan dialogue; a new constitution; the possibility of an Ulema High Council to review all laws for congruence with Islamic principles; a Joint Military Commission that would merge and/or demobilise former combatants; and reduced powers for the president coupled with a far-reaching devolution of power from the centre, possibly based on supra-provincial regions. 

It further mentions that all “important” parties and factions could be invited to sign “a side agreement … stating that the government representative’s signature on the Agreement is on behalf of all of them.” Although not made explicit, several of the suggestions would probably further formalise the influence of jihadi leaders and provide outsized importance to current opposition figures. They also appear slated to further legalise local militias and put a lid on the non-factional and non-violent political forces that could help overcome Afghanistan’s ethnically based political fissions. Thus, it resembles Khalilzad’s 2001 ‘big tent’ approach at the Emergency Loya Jirga (which turned out to be mainly for ‘jihadi leaders’), an approach that hampered democratisation and significantly contributed to Afghanistan’s current factionalised state of political institutions (more detail here).

The Rand document is weak on human rights, mentioning them as one of the principles on which the constitution is based, listed after Islam and before Afghan traditions and stressing “the rights of all citizens of Afghanistan to equal access to education, employment, and health care.” The latter is now, more or less, the position of the Taleban, as has been reflected in several of their documents. There is further a suggestion to apply the current ‘amnesty law’ “equally to members of the Taliban movement.“ This involves “judicial immunity … in regard to past political and military acts, except for claims of individuals against individuals based upon haq-ul-abd (rights of people) and individual criminal offenses.” An explaining footnote adds “the referenced law … has been controversial because of the breadth of the amnesty it provides.” (6) Most of the human rights-related language is in footnotes, seemingly reflecting the little weight they have been given. “Reconciliation” measures are given a separate chapter, though, “intended to provide some balance with the preceding Article on amnesty.” 

The draft also contains a timeframe of 18 months for a, possibly phased, troop withdrawal, the establishment of the transitional government and the drafting and passing of a new constitution. NATO is suggested to become a fourth signatory to the peace agreement; a “request by the Afghan parties” for future counter-terrorism support is suggested – a possible backdoor for a continued, although reduced US troop presence – and a Joint Implementation Commission of the four signatories is to be established. The Good Offices of the UN Secretary-General are given as one option for the monitoring of the agreement’s implementation. The insurgents feature under their old name, Islamic Movement of the Taleban, not as “Emirate”, which would acknowledge a quasi-governmental status.

Afghan reactions

It can be safely assumed that the Afghan government has seen the paper.President Ghani and sectors of the Afghan public reacted harshly, both to the news of the progress of the Doha talks – which took place without the Afghan government’s participation – and to what they, based on rumours and the Rand paper, believed may have been on the table too. 

Before Khalilzad came to visit him after the latest round of the Doha talks, Ghani publicly said: “Afghans do not accept an interim government – not today, not tomorrow, not in a hundred years.” In October 2018, the Afghan government had already conveyed to the media that it felt “blindsided” by the US talks with the Taleban (media report here).

On 28 January, the day after the meeting with Khalilzad –which had been a marathon session deep into the night, according to diplomats indicating that it had been tough and controversial – President Ghani went public with a high-profile, televised speech, staking out his red lines. According to an AAN transcript, Ghani called listed a number of values that were “indisputable”, including national unity, national sovereignty, territorial integrity, a strong and efficient central government and the fundamental rights of Afghan citizens. He once more urged the Taleban to start talking directly to his government. 

Three days later, on 31 January, he sent another strong signal to both Khalilzad and the Taleban. In a speech before youth representatives in the Loya Jirga tent in Kabul he announced that, if anyone thought he would sign another “Gandamak treaty” (the 1879 Anglo-Afghan treaty through which Afghanistan lost the control over its foreign affairs), they were making a mistake. Thus, it seems that Khalilzad’s briefings have not alleviated Ghani’s fears.

There are indications of widespread fears in the Afghan public that the US-Taleban talks may be a withdrawal-only “exit strategy” for the US, rather than a peace agreement, as a civil society activist said on Twitter. They are concerned they might lead to a draft agreement that is presented as a fait accompli to the Afghan public and which the government will be expected to accept. So far, this has mainly been publicly raised by individuals, not organisations. Kabul journalist and university lecturer Sami Mehdi, for example, said “peace without recognition of human rights, women’s rights, freedom of expression, inclusion of minorities, a democratic system won’t last long.” An op-ed in leading Kabul Hasht-e Sobh daily, written by civil society activist Samia Ramesh calls to defend the constitution and human and women’s rights, although “we only went half of the way.” One of the few organisations that went public so far is media rights watchdog Nai who raised concerns that the freedom of media and expression have been “forgotten” in the US-Taleban talks. AAN also heard from concerns among women and human rights organisations. [Amended 4 Feb 2019, 5pm Kabul time: Meanwhile, the Afghan Women’s Network came out with an appeal to Afghan negotiators, saying “We, women of Afghanistan, are very concerned about this process.” They are calling “on all Afghan men involved in the peace talks to adhere” to six points : “Do not change the political order; do not compromise law and order; bring Afghan women to the table; do not choose peace without human rights; be direct about women’s rights; do not cut off Afghanistan from the international community.” Others came out in support of a negotiated agreement, such as journalist Habib Khan Totakhel, who supported the idea of an interim government and said that only the “elites” would fear this. 

In order to alleviate the fears of Afghans, a State Department spokesperson when asked about Khalilzad’s instructions told Foreign Policy: “Any final agreement must include an intra-Afghan dialogue that includes the Taliban, the Afghan government and other Afghan stakeholders.” Obviously, the nature, timing and actual substance of such a dialogue will be crucial.

The discussion inside Afghanistan on whether to support the current US-Taleban Doha talks, or not, is somewhat muddied by the local political controversies and the wish of the president’s opponents to see him further weakened – including with an eye to the upcoming presidential elections. This is unfortunate at a time when the country needs politicians to take a longer view. 

In his context belongs the participation of a number of political rivals of President Ghani in the next Afghanistan talks in Moscow scheduled to begin on 5 February where also a Taleban delegation will attend. (The Taleban announced that Stanakzai will lead it again.) This time allegedly not organised by the Russian government (although in the same hotel as the November 2018 meeting, see here), the Russian Embassy in Kabul said (quoted here) it is organised by an “Afghan Society of Russia.” A list of 38 politicians “accompanying former president Hamed Karzai” to Moscow has been published, but there are also some additional names reported in various media to be attending. (7) The non-Taleban Afghan participants have presented the meeting in a joint statement as “the first step towards intra-Afghan peace talks.”(full text here; the statement does not give the names of the participants.) Representatives of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council (HPC) or the government have reportedly not been invited. The HPC nevertheless said in a statement on 4 February that it hoped the upcoming Moscow meeting would pave the ground for talks between the government and Taleban. Haji Din Muhammad who led the delegation to the November 2018 conference in Moscow now is on the Karzai delegations’ list.

AAN has also been told by Afghan journalists briefed by Khalilzad that he told them off the records about his dissatisfaction with what he calls President Ghani’s “egoism.” He is allegedly accusing him of supporting peace only under the condition that he would be able to stay in power, as reflected by his insistence to hold presidential elections. He also reportedly told them that the Taleban were still not ready to talk with the Afghan government but with what he called “ethnic groups.“ This points to those now gathering in Moscow and indicates that the US is content with the pressure on Ghani building up from this side.

Atmar more or less directly echoed this statement by saying on 4 February that he will “insist on making intra-Afghan talks inclusive” but called on the government at the same time “to not look at the peace process from a narrow window and respect the role of the political parties and the nation in efforts for peace and in safeguarding the system and national institutions.”

The Taleban, meanwhile, announced in a statement distributed via email on 4 February that, in Moscow, they want “to clarify its Shariah-based and ethical stance to various parties and explain its policy and mechanism about future Afghanistan vis-à-vis end of occupation, enduring peace in homeland and establishment of an intra-Afghan Islamic system of governance.”

Taleban upgrading their negotiations team

On 24 January 2019, the Taleban appointed Mullah Abdul Ghani, better known as Mullah Baradar (“brother”), as the new head of the Doha office. With this new appointment, the Taleban delegation may have greater authority to enter into substantive negotiations on difficult issues. Mullah Baradar replaced Stanakzai, a non-Kandahari without a strong home base in the Taleban movement, who had led the Taleban delegation until the mid-November Afghanistan conference in Moscow (media report here) but was said to be on the way out for the last several months.

Baradar is of another calibre. He was deputy to Taleban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar from the beginning of the movement in the mid-1990s. In 2010, he was arrested by the Pakistani intelligence, in response to his involvement in possible talks with the then Karzai government, which had not been authorised by the ISI (see my AAN analysis here). He was released in late 2018, under US pressure (AAN analysis here). His closeness to Omar – who has always been, and still is, beyond criticism within the Taleban movement – is a strong asset: it likely gives him full authority to negotiate, as well as the weight to function as a guarantor if a future agreement does not cover all Taleban demands. Mullah Omar’s son, Yaqub, who is currently one of the two Taleban deputy leaders, may also be susceptible to Baradar’s opinion. 

Baradar has not yet participated in the latest Doha round, and has not yet arrived in Doha from Karachi, but is expected to do so when the negotiations recommence on 25 February. 

Conclusion: Some contours, additional tracks 

The priorities set in the US-Taleban negotiations in Doha are determined by the fact that there is a president in Washington whose policies are based on the slogan “America First” and that the US seem mainly interested in their own security and in cutting their losses in Afghanistan. The fact that the two sides are talking about issues of substance is, undeniably, progress in itself. Limiting the talks to two parties has allowed them to make more progress than had so far been the case. However, progress achieved so far must be seen in the context of US not necessarily Afghan interests. 

With the various recent statements to the press, the first contours of a possible agreement – or agreements – with the Taleban have begun to emerge from the political fog (a fog to which the RAND paper cited above might still belong). The US side, driven by its president’s impatience and volatile decision-making, has dropped a major red line: no talks with the Taleban before Kabul is involved, ie the insistence on an “Afghan-led” peace process that had been almost dogma over a long time. This could still be interpreted as an attempt to break the current government-Taleban impasse and to bring in the Afghan government as well. 

The ball would then be in the court of the Taleban, and it should be their turn to make concessions. As said above, there is room to manoeuvre on their side. Also they have brought more heavyweights on their negotiating team which makes it easier for them to come to binding decisions. 

At the same time, the fact that the US have started spreading the message that they are dissatisfied with President Ghani, putting pressure on him, together with the new Moscow talks, are bolstering their position. They have said for a long time that they would talk to “other Afghans.” This they can do now at the upcoming Moscow talks, with the help of Afghan opposition politicians and factions but also some who until recently were part of the government. As in Doha, the government remains excluded there.

The exclusion of the Afghan government is highly problematic. Although its legitimacy has suffered as a result of its tumultuous elections, its institutional weaknesses and its dependence on external resources, it cannot simply be ignored. A US-Taleban solo ride in the form of a crudely negotiated, narrow cut-and-withdraw deal might give it the moral upper hand domestically, as it has started to mobilise popular discontent over a looming imposed deal.

All this may well result in an agreement that is more about US interests and less about Afghanistan itself. It is also clear from the nature of the ‘agreement’ – a draft framework identifying two topics that still need to be “fleshed out” – that this was only a first step on a very long way still to go even if there is buy-in from certain Afghan factions. In the end, also buy-in of the larger population and organised parts of the Afghan public is necessary. Therefore, a sell-out of or simple lip service to currently (if often only theoretically) guaranteed rights needs to be prevented. It remains to be seen which of the Afghan political forces will pick this up most convincingly – or would be ready to sacrifice them for remaining in power.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert

(1) That negotiation rounds were held in Abu Dhabi and Doha is a reflexion of regional tensions – with Saudi Arabia and the UAE on one side, and Qatar on the other one. The Abu Dhabi talks (where also Pakistani representatives took part, bringing the number up to five participating countries) were a failed effort by the UAE and Pakistan to lure the diplomatically prestigious ‘Taleban talks’ away from Qatar. It is interesting that the Taleban managed to get the talks back to Qatar (where, according to AAN information, only the US and Taleban spoke with each other) and that the US went along with this, against their Saudi and Emirati allies’ wish – another possible sign how much time pressure the envoy Khalilzad is under. The Taleban had also rejected the option of moving the negotiations to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. 

(2) Stanakzai was apparently not involved in the latest round of talks in Doha; this AP report by Kathy Gannon does not list him among the participants. Instead, two of the five Taleban released in the prisoner swap – their former ministers Muhammad Fazl and Khairullah Khairkhwa – reportedly acted as negotiation team leaders. Stanakzai doesn’t seem to have departed in anger, as a number of post-negotiations interviews show, see, for instance, here and here. In an interview with the Afghan news agency Ariana he even praised Baradar’s negotiation skills.

(3) The government of Afghanistan – both under Karzai and Ghani – has tried to pay back in kind, by repeatedly intervening with other governments and the UN when they wanted to organise “intra-Afghan” dialogues involving the Taleban. The resulting ‘blockade’ was, interestingly, broken by the Moscow conference.

(4) The Moscow Conference on Afghanistan (also known as Moscow format consultations) in mid-November was organised by the Russian foreign ministry. The Washington Post wrote that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov “played the roles of mediator and experienced hand in Afghanistan’s conflicts.” A delegation of the Taleban attended which got plenty of media coverage.

Originally scheduled for 4 September 2018 (media report here), the Afghan government had misgivings about this meeting and reportedly  insisted it must be in the lead because, in its view, the meeting would boost the international standing of the Taleban. It decided to not officially participate. The US initially concurred. This indeed led to the postponement of the meeting. Finally, a delegation of the High Peace Council participated from Afghanistan; the council is formally independent, but acts based on guidance from the Afghan government sent a delegation. (It had, with its deputy chair, Habiba Sarobi, the only woman at the conference table.) Also, the US finally sent Moscow-based diplomats, as “observers”, not participants (as did India). There were also diplomats from China, Pakistan and the five Central Asian republics present (see the list here).

However, Kabul’s ambassador to Russia, Abdul Qayum Kochi, an uncle of the president, was also seen in during the conference (see here).

(5) In this 2012 article, Michael Semple – a long-term Afghanistan and Taleban observer, including as political officer with the UN and the EU – quoted a high-ranking Taleb:

At least 70 per cent of the Taliban are angry at al-Qaeda. Our people consider al-Qaeda to be a plague that was sent down to us by the heavens. Some even concluded that al-Qaeda are actually the spies of America. Originally, the Taliban were naive and ignorant of politics and welcomed al-Qaeda into their homes. But al-Qaeda abused our hospitality. It was in Guantanamo that I realised how disloyal the al-Qaeda people were… To tell the truth, I was relieved at the death of Osama. Through his policies, he destroyed Afghanistan. If he really believed in jihad he should have gone to Saudi Arabia and done jihad there, rather than wrecking our country.

It should also not be forgotten that not the Taleban invited Ben Laden to Afghanistan. He came there under the mujahedin regime, before the Taleban took power. He was hosted near Jalalabad by one of their factions after he was expelled from Sudan in 1996 and fell under Taleban rule when they took over eastern Afghanistan soon after.

(6) The amnesty law already has a provision that it can be extended for insurgents.

(7) A published list of 38 politicians accompanying Karzai (who is the main proponent of an interim government) includes Ghani’s presidential elections rival Zalmay Rassul; former ministers like Ismail Khan (also a leader of Jamiat-e Islami), Omar Zakhilwal, Yusuf Pashtun, Rangin Dadfar Spanta and Karim Khorram; several former Taleban (Salam Zaif, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkel, Hakim Mujahed, Mawlawi Qalamuddin and Wahid Muzhda, also an analyst) and Hezb-e Islami members (Hekmatyar’s former deputy Qutbuddin Helal); former head of the Independent Electoral Commission Daud Najafi; and two women parliamentarians, Raihana Azad (current) and Fauzia Kufi (former). Presidential candidate Hanif Atmar and former Balkh governor and Jamiat Chief Executive Atta Muhammad Nur (see here and here). According to the latter media report, Hezb-e Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; Muhammad Mohaqeq who had just been sacked by Ghani as deputy Chief Executive; Ismaili leader Sayed Mansur Naderi; Kabul think tank head Hekmat Karzai; and former communist defence minister Shahnawaz Tanai who had unsuccessfully launched a military coup against then president Najibullah in 1990 in cooperation with Hekmatyar have also been invited. Mohaqeq said he or his deputy would attend; Hezb-e Islami also confirmed they would send a delegation, possibly led by Hekmatyar’ son Habib ur-Rahman, as well did Mahaz led by Pir Hamed Gailani and Jabha-ye Nejat led by Sebghatullah Mojaddedi. The Jombesh party, led by Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, announced on 5 February, that their deputy leader Mawlawi Abdullah Qarluq will attend the Moscow meeting.

Herat – the generally safe and prosperous city in western Afghanistan – has seen a series of attacks against Shia religious figures and sites, especially since 2016. Fieldwork shows there is little empirical evidence as to who the perpetrators are or why they carried out these attacks. Based on conversations with Shia and Sunni activists, AAN researcher Said Reza Kazemi reviews the incidents, puts them in the context of Herat’s changing population and presents the main different theories as to who and what is behind them. Specifically, he discusses an increasing rivalry between Shia and Sunni hardliners at the local level and the linkages to regional developments, including the war in Syria and the broader Iranian-Saudi rivalry. He notes that, at least in the foreseeable future, existing Shia-Sunni solidarity in Herat makes sectarian conflict there very unlikely.

Attacks on religious figures and sites

The city of Herat has witnessed an array of mostly small-scale attacks against Shias, particularly since 2016. The targets of these attacks – religious leaders, mosques and worshippers – show that they are deliberate. They have targeted the heart of the local Shia religious community by disrupting and wanting to provoke it, thereby crossing one of the last ‘red lines’ of violent conflict in Afghanistan.

This author has recorded the following chronological list of attacks against Shias in and around Herat city from November 2014 onwards: (1)

• 13 November 2014: Two men on a motorcycle shot dead Sheikh Azizullah Najafi, an influential Shia cleric and former member of the Herat Provincial Council. In his funeral procession two days later, thousands of Herat residents including notably both Shias and Sunnis protested in front of the Provincial Governor’s Office and demanded the arrest of those behind this assassination. The then provincial governor, Fazlullah Wahidi, told the demonstrators that the provincial government would arrest the perpetrators within three days. The following day (16 November), the then Herat police spokesman, Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, reported the police had arrested six suspected people – a statement that was rejected by the then police security director, Aminullah Azad, the day after (see here). This resulted in a dispute between the provincial governor and the police security director, with the former alleging the latter had corruptly handled the case.

• 22 November 2016: A blast in Rezaiya Mosque, a Shia mosque in the Ghur Darwaz area in the north of Herat city, injured four people including the mullah imam (mosque leader) named Mustafa Rouhani. The explosion took place during evening prayer.

• 8 December 2016: 50-year-old Sheikh Abdul Wahed Saberi, the mullah imam of Muhammadiya Mosque, a Shia mosque in Baghche-ye Mustufi in Police District (PD) 9 of Herat city, was assassinated by two men on a motorbike. The mullah imam was shot in the head while going from his home to the mosque. The assassins escaped. Previous to this incident, armed men killed Sayyed Yunus Alawi, a Shia cleric, on his way home after evening prayer.

• 1 January 2017: An explosion in the vicinity of Imam Muhammad Baqer Mosque, a Shia mosque in Pul-e Bagh-e Zubaida in the Darb-e Iraq area of Herat city, wounded six people including a woman. One of the injured, the mosque leader Mullah Ramazan Sarwari died afterwards in hospital. The blast took place next to the mosque wall after evening prayer (see pictures of this attack here).

• 19 January 2017: A blast in Abul Fazl Mosque, a Shia mosque in Jebrail area in PD 13 of Herat city, destroyed many parts of the mosque. There were no deaths or injuries.

• 11 April 2017: There was an explosion in the vicinity of Saheb ul-Zaman Mosque, located in PD 7 of Herat city. The explosives, carried on a motorcycle, killed one person and injured two others including a woman. It is thought the explosives went off prematurely before the motorbike reached the mosque.

• 6 June 2017: A blast near the northern gate of the Grand Mosque, Herat’s ancient mosque situated near the Office of the Provincial Police Chief in the city centre, killed at least seven people and injured at least 16 others including influential Shia clerics. Among the killed were Hujjat ul-Islam Fayyaz, head of the Shia ulama council in Injil district of Herat province, and Hujjat ul-Islam Karimi, manager of the Rasul-e Azam Madrasa in Jebrail area of Herat city. Sheikh Musa Rezai, head of the Herat Shia ulama council, was severely wounded. The explosion happened while a funeral ceremony was under way in the Grand Mosque.

• 1 August 2017: So far the worst attack in Herat, two suicide bombers stormed the fully-packed Jawadiya Mosque, a Shia mosque in Bekrabad neighbourhood of Herat city, during evening prayer. They began shooting at the worshippers and then blew themselves up, killing at least 34 people and injuring dozens of others (see the mosque after the attack here). Afterwards, local protests broke out with angry people throwing stones at a nearby police station and later setting it on fire. They alleged that the policemen were the first to escape the area when the incident happened. A later demonstration was attended by thousands of Herat residents, both Shias and Sunnis. The demonstrators criticised the Afghan government for failing to provide security for religious sites and figures. Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility for this attack.

• 5 March 2018: Two suicide bombers attacked Nabi Akram Mosque, a Shia mosque located in Bazaar-e Lelami area in downtown Herat. They were challenged by security guards who opened fire on them. One of the two suicide attackers was killed. The second detonated his explosives, killing at least one person and injuring eight others. ISKP said it carried out the attack.

• 23 June 2018: Armed men killed Sheikh Jafar Tawakkoli on his way home from mosque after prayer in the 64-Metre Road area of Herat city. Sheikh Tawakkoli was an important local Shia cleric: he owned a local radio station called Hekmat (Wisdom), represented Ayatollah Hakim, an influential Shia ayatollah based in Iraq, and was a member of the Shia ulamacouncil (see reporting here).

• 21 September 2018: The police and mosque guards prevented an attempt to attack worshippers in a Shia mosque in Injil district close to Herat city. Two attackers were arrested carrying rifles and riding motorbikes. One was injured in the clash with the police and mosque guards.

A changing population

Attacks on religious figures and sites are a new phenomenon in Herat (read previous AAN analysis on the start of such violence in post-2001 Afghanistan). In Herat where Sunnis and Shias have coexisted and intermingled peacefully for long, the incidents have shocked the overwhelming majority of the local population.

To make sense of these attacks, one needs to bring in the wider social context. The population of Herat city has been changing over the last couple of decades, especially since 2001. A greater Shia segment is the main feature of this demographic change. Repatriation from neighbouring Iran and displacement from central provinces of the country have increased the numbers of Shias that have settled in and around Herat city, building homes and mosques in new settlements. The change in demographics has led to greater Shia assertiveness, which in turn has led to sensitivity among some Sunnis.

It is thus not difficult to come across Shia and Sunni hardliners in and around Herat city. They reduce deep-rooted and longstanding local Shia-Sunni interactions to an incessant and potentially violent struggle for supremacy. One example from each side should suffice here.

When getting out of the Sadeqiya Seminary, the principal Shia Muslim religious organisation in downtown Herat, after a visit in August 2014, a talaba(religious student) pointed to a minaret that was being raised to increase its visibility from across the city. “The Sunnis cannot stand to see our tall minaret, the mosque that is being built behind it and the development of the Sadeqiya in general,” he told this author. This was while, he alleged, “They have themselves built a huge complex with Saudi money,” referring to the huge size and development of the Ghiasiya Seminary, the Sunni counterpart of the Sadeqiya, in the east of the city.

There is a similar thinking on the part of local Sunni hardliners. The author encountered a rickshaw driver in October 2016, who was upset by increasing Shia assertiveness especially during the mourning month of Muharram in 2016 when they carry out their religious rituals in mosques and other places of worship and get out onto the streets in large numbers towards the climax of the rituals (read our dispatch on the last Muharram in 2018). He revealed his strong anti-Shia leanings with unsolicited remarks, saying, “What have the Shias become? Who do they think they are? Look at what they are doing in the city. They have closed the roads for their nonsense mourning. I would be pleased if a suicide bomber attacked them or someone detonated explosives among them.”

Some local Sunnis think the Iranian government has intentionally supported the Shia population increase in Herat. They accuse Iran of carrying out a “policy of changing Herat’s population fabric in favour of Shias” with a view to promoting “Iran’s soft power and revolutionary Shiism” in Herat and in Afghanistan more generally (see pages 48-50 of this paper). They hold that, aided by Sayyed Hussain Anwari, a Shia Hazara who served as Herat provincial governor from 2005 to 2009, the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee (IKRC), a key Iranian charity organisation, has provided “non-indigenous Shias in Herat with development assistance and interest-free loans” to encourage the development of settlements that now encircle the city of Herat (see also here and here). “Seen from the view of Sunni hardliners,” Abdul Qadir Salehi, a leading local Sunni activist, told AAN, “it is like what Israel is doing in occupied Palestinian territories.”

Iran’s role in local Shia affairs and the fact that it sees Herat as its buffer zone in Afghanistan cannot be ignored (read about it in this publication), but seeing all recent Shia settlements as entirely engineered by the western neighbour is hard to marry up with the reality of life for Afghan returnees, said Ali Ahmad Jebraili, an influential local Shia leader. “Razavi Khorasan [Iran’s north-eastern province bordering Herat] does not give Afghan returnees money to buy and own lands and build houses in Herat. They even take money from the returnees for leaving Iran under what they call municipal fees.” However, Jebraili did admit that the concentration of Shia newcomers in settlements circling the city of Herat was “a cause of concern for some Sunnis, especially their hardliners.”

A distinction is made by both local Shias and Sunnis between the recent Shia settlers, who are mostly Hazara, and what are called ‘the indigenous Shias of Herat’ who are Farsiwan, ie Persian speakers with a Herati Dari dialect. Salehi, the Sunni activist quoted above, said that the indigenous Shias were “not the problem” because they and local Sunnis were related through longstanding family, business and other ties over the years. It was the recent Hazara settlers, he said, who made some local Sunnis sensitive by their increased presence and the settlements they constructed around the city.

From a technical urban development perspective, the way recent Shia settlers and IDPs have built their places to live does not seem to have had a specific ethno-political agenda. Many of their settlements are informal and thus unplanned. Research shows that such settlements across the country, including in Herat, have arisen because of “the extremely limited absorption capacity of major urban areas and the lack of affordable formal settlement solutions for many city dwellers, i.e., migrants and refugees and their families” (see page 15 of this paper).

Nevertheless, the changing demographics has built up some tension, especially between hardliners in both Shia and Sunni camps, which in turn may have contributed to the range of attacks against Shias in and around Herat city. It may also have contributed to the conjectures that Heratis make and the narratives they tell about who is attacking Shias and why.

Four theories as to why Herati Shias have been attacked 

Few people in Herat city want to talk about or investigate the recent attacks against Shias, at least publicly. There is one obvious reason: almost all are afraid of the potential security implications. Shias in particular fear that raising the issue could put them in danger by singling them out for more attacks in the future – either individually or as a community. Both Shias and Sunnis may also fear that by paying too much attention to the violence, it may become entrenched.

The Herat provincial authorities have in practice done and achieved very little, despite publicly assuring Shia and Sunni protesters that they are serious about arresting the culprits for prosecution. “The government has thus far just informed us about the prosecution of a 21-year-old man,” Jebraili told AAN. “He is accused of having provided board and lodging and motorbikes for the perpetrators of the attacks on the Jawadiya Mosque and the Grand Mosque in summer 2017. He has been sentenced to death. That youth doesn’t look very criminal to us. Nothing else has been done by the government to address the incidents.”

So the strategy both for most people and the government has been to let time pass and hope no further incidents like the ones listed above occur. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Shia and Sunni residents of Herat have felt great relief that there have been no new attacks, since late September 2018.

However, speculation about the attacks abounds. Four theories are presented here. The first three focus on domestic aspects and the last relates to regional dimensions, although there is significant overlap between them. 

The first theory is that the attacks, or at least some of them, have been perpetrated by local insurgents affiliated to ISKP, as this group has itself claimed responsibility for at least two of the attacks listed above. Many Shia youth from Herat have gone to fight on the side of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and its backer Iran, in the war in Syria (read this author’s previous dispatch). ISKP might have thus resorted to carrying out disparate attacks to take revenge on Shias in Herat for the involvement of some of their members in the war in Syria. At the same time, ISKP might have tried to show that its reach is not restricted only to eastern Afghanistan, Nangarhar province in particular (read previous AAN analysis on ISKP in Afghanistan here and here).

Blaming ISKP for each and every attack, however, conceals internal religious dynamics that may have contributed to the attacks. The second theory therefore points to the growing radicalisation in Herat, particularly among some sections of Sunnis (and some groups of Shias), that may be driving the anti-Shia violence. In his typology of religious trends in contemporary Herat, (2) Abdul Kabir Salehi, a researcher writing for the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS), describes the increasing activity of Sunni religious groups (see pages 30-31, 44-45, 58, 65-67 and 71 of his paper). He has given the following five examples, the first and, to some extent, the fifth are part of regular Sunni religious practice, while the second to the fourth concern more hardline ones:

• The Herat branch of Tablighi Jamaat (a largely South Asian Sunni missionary movement focusing on return to what it sees as ‘original Sunni Islam’) held a three-day congress in Herat in October 2017 that was attended by over 35,000 people, potentially making it “one of the most influential social groups in Herat.”

• The Herat High Seminary (Dar ul-Ulum-e ’Ali-ye Herat), connected to Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan and run by Mawlawi Jalilullah Mawlawizada and his five sons, has become increasingly politically active. Mawlawizada was a top justice official in the Taleban regime. In July 2017, the seminary declared Ahmad Zia Rafat, a Herati poet, lecturer in Kabul University and former member and spokesman of Afghanistan’s Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC), an apostate for what it regarded as his “sacrilegious poetry” (see also here). In August 2017, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) office in Herat, moreover, arrested what it called “two terrorists” from inside this seminary (see also here). On 17 April 2018, the seminary gathered about 500 ulama from across Afghanistan to announce that they would boycott the 20 October 2018 parliamentary elections if foreign forces did not withdraw from Afghanistan unconditionally and the heads of the National Unity Government did not apologise for an aerial operation on a religious gathering in Dasht-e Archi district of Kunduz province and hold its perpetrators accountable (read AAN analysis of this incident here). (3) These ulamadid not say a word about the growing attacks against Shias in Herat, where their gathering was held.

• The Gazergah Mosque has become a major venue for Wahabbi Salafism in Herat city, a religious trend called “the road-opener for takfiri jihadists” by Salehi (see page 57 of this paper). According to Salehi’s description, the mosque is run by Mawlawi Mujib ul-Rahman, who often travels to Saudi Arabia, and his younger brother, who have turned it into a platform for “violent and fiery speeches against Afghanistan’s national interests and security.” In addition to this mosque, Mawlawi Mujib ul-Rahman is working with “Saudi-financed Persian-language TV channels to promote Salafism and provide violent religious teachings,” according to Salehi. Mawlawi Mujib ul-Rahman himself escaped an assassination attempt in November 2018 (see this media report).

• Hardliners have also come to dominate the “intra-paradigm dialogue” in the Herat branch of Jamiat-e Eslah, says Salehi, pushing out moderates such as he himself (for background details on Jamiat-e Eslah, see this AAN paper). The dialogue, which was mostly conducted through a monthly publication called Mahname-ye Marefat( Knowledge Monthly), dealt with the extent to which “modern values and institutions such as human rights, democracy, pluralism, elections, the rule of law and women’s political participation” were compatible with their interpretations and understandings of Islam.

• Hizb ut-Tahrir (an international, pan-Islamist political organisation that promotes the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate) has become increasingly popular among students in Herat University (see also this paper on radicalisation among some university students in Herat).

Several Shias, including the hardliner ones, told AAN that they thought the greater radicalisation among some locally active Sunni groups had been the source of attacks against members of their religious denomination in Herat. This allegation was rejected by several Sunnis who spoke to AAN. In a similar fashion, they regarded increasing radicalisation among some Shias, especially the ones attending seminaries in or supported by Iran or taking part in the war in Syria as mobilised by Iran, as responsible for provoking the attacks that have been perpetrated against the Shia population in Herat. 

Thirdly, there is speculation that increased political party rivalry may have played a role in some of these incidents, particularly in the context of the previous parliamentary and upcoming presidential elections. One observer, Ali Mousavi, speculated that these incidents could have been “the deadly and bloody outcome of hard and expanding retaliatory acts between rival and hostile ethno-political groups, including Jamiat-e Islami, Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [both mainly Sunni] and different Hezb-e Wahdat factions [all mainly Shia] in Herat province” (see here). This observer linked the incidents, in particular, to the re-entry of Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e Islami into the power game in the western province, since their leader’s return in May 2017. However, this speculation is very weak as it fails to explain why and how this might have led to targeting of mosques, religious leaders and worshippers. It would not be easy for these organisations to justify this type of violence, even to their members and sympathisers.

Nevertheless, the existence of ethnically-inspired political rivalry may be further exacerbated by the recent arrival in and around Herat city of what the daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh says are “one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Farah, Ghor, Badghis and some southern provinces” (4) many of whom are Sunni Pashtuns. There are mounting concerns among many Heratis about the change these newcomers might make to provincial public life. Some local residents told AAN they feared there may be an organised policy to settle Pashtuns in the city in order to destabilise it, just as Farah had been destabilised as a result of Taleban attacks on the provincial centre (read our previous dispatch on insecurity in Farah city here). However, many of these IDPs have fled either war or drought, or both, in their provinces and taken refuge in Herat; changing the sectarian demographics of the city must surely be very far from their thoughts or intentions.

Lastly, there is perennial speculation about what the ramifications of the Iranian-Saudi, Shia-Sunni rivalry for security in Herat might be and whether it may be driving the recent wave of attacks against Shias. Some Shias and Sunnis, especially their hardliners, see any development or prosperity of ‘the other’ as a deliberate act of the opposing regional rival, either Iran or Saudi Arabia (as seen in the remarks of the religious student discussing the size of various religious buildings in the city, quoted earlier in this piece). Such thinking extends to the regional level with Iranians seeing the attacks against Afghan Shias, as part of a broader Saudi strategy to strengthen its Sunni allies, scare the Shia population out of and increase its influence in Herat and the wider western region of Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim would be to encircle and hurt Iran (read such an Iranian analysis here). A similar perception is held by the Saudis about what it considers Iran’s interventionism in its own sphere of influence, in countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen and, of course, Afghanistan (for details, see here). According to researcher Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, both Iran and Saudi Arabia would prefer a government in Herat, and Afghanistan more broadly, that is “friendly to their interests at best, or in the worst case scenario – a renewal of civil war – to protect their interests, investments, and even territories” (see page iv of this PRIO paper).

Conclusion: more solidarity than conflict

There is hardly any empirical evidence as to who the perpetrators of the attacks were and what motives they might have been pursuing. This means there is little to go on when trying to substantiate whether or not any of this speculation might be the ‘real reason’ behind the attacks on Herat’s Shias. Nonetheless, at least three points can be made. 

First, the changing population in Herat and regional dynamics and conflicts have harmed local Shia-Sunni relations by making some Shias assertive and some Sunnis sensitive. In particular, the fact that some Shias, mostly Hazara newcomers, have gone to fight for Assad’s government in Syria, may have singled out the entire local Shia population as targets of resentment and outright attacks, particularly by ISKP.

Second, many locals from both sects feel that hardliners on both sides should be restrained, fearing that, if not, they will only tighten their grip on the practicing adherents of the two religious sects. In fact, the majority of Sunnis in Herat are moderate and tolerant, as are most Shias. In a conversation with AAN, Mawlawi Kababiyani, a well-regarded local Sunni cleric, said that prominent Sunni leaders such as his close colleague Mawlawi Khodadad Saleh, the influential head of the ulama council in Afghanistan’s western region, had time and again stressed the need for moderation, restraint and sustaining the unity of Sunnis and Shias, not just in Herat but beyond. (5) Another local Sunni cleric, Mawlawi Abdul Muqtader, told AAN, “I am 50 years old and in all this time I have witnessed good relations between Sunnis and Shias in Herat and across the country. They visit each other and eat each other’s food at home, have joint businesses and are even tied in family relations.” Similar calls for continued Shia-Sunni solidarity have been made by leading Shia leaders. “During the funeral procession of the late Sheikh Tawakkoli, I made it clear to all those attending, particularly our youth, that there is and should be no space for retaliation,” influential Shia leader Jebraili emphasised in his conversation with AAN. The moderate Sunni and Shia religious leaders and the public at large in Herat are therefore increasingly concerned about the need to restrain hardliners on both sides and prevent any escalation in sectarian tension.

Third, and perhaps most important, it is far too early to speak of a sectarian conflict in Herat. The attacks seen in the city have, apart from the one on the Jawadiya Mosque, been small-scale. Population movements, everywhere, very often create tension. In Herat’s case, however, the tension and the attacks have to be seen against the backdrop of deep-rooted, longstanding cordial ties between the majority of local Shias and Sunnis, which continue to exist. This means, as well, that on the whole both communities continue to staunchly believe that clashing with the other is in no one’s interest.

Edited by Sari Kouvo, Thomas Ruttig, Kate Clark and Martine van Bijlert

(1) The author has compiled this list by crosschecking personal observations, informal interviews and media reports. The list could be incomplete, because there may have been incidents that have not come to the author’s notice. However, the list does cover the major attacks against Shias in Herat city, particularly since 2016.

(2) Salehi presents the following typology of religious trends in contemporary Herat (see page 5 of this paper):

1. Traditional conservative: 
2. Traditional Hanafism
3. Traditional Shiism
4. Tablighi Jamaat
5. Sufi orders

• Political Islam trends:
• Deobandi Hanafism
• Revolutionary Shiism
• Salafism
• Muslim Brotherhood
• Hizb ut-Tahrir

• New religious thinking (an approach that challenges classic understandings of Islam to establish a connection between religious teachings and modern requirements)

(3) Hasht-e Sobhdaily newspaper, 18 April 2018, page 7.

(4) See Hasht-e Sobh daily newspaper, 11 September 2018, pages 6 and 8. See also this report by The Killid Group, a media organisation, which is also active in Herat.

(5) There was an assassination attempt on Mawlawi Saleh himself during a Friday congregational prayer in Herat’s Grand Mosque in October 2016 which was condemned by both Shia and Sunni leaders.

Professor Ludwig W Adamec was the author of “The Who is Who of Afghanistan” – a book every student of Afghanistan will have encountered early in her or his career. Printed in 1975, and updated several times since then, it is nothing less than one of the standard works of Afghan studies. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig bought his copy for a lot of money second-hand in Kabul in 1983 – its provenance may have been murky; books were stolen from libraries in large numbers and sold in Kabul bookshops. Professor Emeritus Ludwig Adamec passed away in Arizona on 1 January 2019 at the age of 94.

Ludwig W. Adamec, an Austrian-turned-American, belonged to the first generation of post World War II academics who turned their interests to Afghanistan, when still a country far from the focus of international reporting and even research. Visiting consistently over many decades, until the 1978 Saur coup and the 1979 Soviet intervention interrupted this opportunity, he became the meticulous encyclopedian of Afghanistan, informing generations of scholars with his work. He will remain remembered as a champion of Afghan studies.

Youth under fascism

Ludwig Adamec was born in the Austrian capital Vienna in 1924. He was not even a teenager when a proto-fascist, authoritarian regime took over in 1933, and was just 14 years old when Nazi Germany annexed his country in 1938. 

Later, in a 2010 testimonial titled “Die Würde der Arbeit“ (“The dignity of work”), Adamec wrote that, as a teenager, he developed the wish “to see the world but as a child of [the 1930s economic] depression there seemed to be no chance to fulfil this dream.” (1) He learned English anyway “just in case” and in what spare time he had left working as an apprentice toolmaker, he watched American movies and listened to Jazz. He became a ‘swing boy’, a member of the era’s nonconformist youth, who wore knee-long jackets, tight pants and long neckties with small knots. Adamec had a first run-in with a band of the militant Hitler youth, which – apart from some abuse because of his outfit – luckily remained non-violent. “Naturally I did not want to become a member,” he remarked later. 

Aged 16, Adamec became a full orphan and decided to leave the country. However, during his first attempt, a ‘friendly’ Red Cross lady, who had given him a bed in a town near the Swiss border, locked him in and handed him over to the Gestapo – Germany’s Secret State (political) Police. This started a long journey of stays in – and escapes from – jails, orphanages and ‘correction’ institutes. During the war, food was scarce and only available on the basis of coupons for those with an address and a registration. So, while on the run, Adamec depended on the help of friends. After another failed attempt to leave the country, this time through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, he was re-arrested and jailed in his home city, Vienna. 

In detention, Adamec witnessed other people, among them a man from the Roma minority, being sent to Auschwitz. He himself was sent in shackles to the Moringen juvenile concentration camp to do hard labour; first, in a salt mine and, later, in a quarry. In the camp, he was subjected to harsh treatment, beatings, humiliation and indoctrination lectures. His situation improved when he was sent to a metal workshop, given his vocational skills, but he still had to work 12-hour shifts, with only one meal of cabbage or pea soup per day. Apart from the lucky ones, who received food packages from relatives or the Red Cross, he wrote, “we were all undernourished.” 

Towards the end of the war, Adamec narrowly escaped being executed. While cleaning the guards’ barracks, he heard reports on an ‘enemy’ radio station of the capture of the first German cities by the allied forces. When he told his co-detainees about these reports, a guard overheard and reported him. Luckily, the man was a so-called ‘Volksdeutscher’ (Germans from the occupied areas, mainly in Eastern Europe) who spoke German badly, so Adamec was able to talk himself out of the allegations and was spared.

When the camps’ inhabitants were marched further away from the approaching frontline, Adamec managed to escape. “With someone else from Vienna, I marched through the front line at night, passing the American soldiers who did not stop us when I told them: ‘We are your friends, prisoners from a concentration camp.’”

This part of Adamec’s biography reminds us of the disturbingly long list of people who the Nazis considered “unworthy to live” – according to their antihuman terminology. Not only Jews, communists and political opponents were detained and killed in ‘labour’ and extermination camps, or experimented on in gruesome ‘research labs,’ but also the mentally ill, ‘gypsies’, homosexuals, criminals, the so-called ‘work-shy’ and ‘anti-social,’ as well as the non-conformist youth. Adamec was lucky to have survived this.

Ludwig Adamec as a young man. Photo: National Funds Austria.

Travelling to Afghanistan

After his escape and rescue, the fulfilment of Adamec’s dream to see the world started. Ludwig Adamec left Austria in 1950 and travelled extensively through Europa, Asia and Africa. In 1952, he came to Afghanistan for the first time. He stayed in Herat  – where a German-educated Afghan engineer had him hired for a job in the construction of a power plant built with assistance from the government of Germany – and Kabul for two years.In the 1960s and 1970s, he travelled to Afghanistan every year. 

In 1954, Adamec settled in the US and wrote his PhD thesis in Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles under the supervision of the prominent Austrian-American Middle East scholar, Gustave von Grunebaum. In 1967, he joined the University of Arizona at Tucson as a scholar in Middle Eastern studies. There, he taught the history of Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa from 500 AD to the present day, and Arabic and Persian, until his retirement in 2005. 

In the summer of 1967, as an assistant professor at Tucson, he was part of pioneering a ground-breaking “special studies seminar” at the University of Michigan. This aimed to give “public notice of scholarly efforts… on new methodological and geographical frontiers,” namely Afghanistan. As the University of Michigan’s George Grassmuck wrote in the foreword to the early Afghan studies handbook, titled “Afghanistan: Some New Approaches” (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1969), which the project resulted in:

Until well into the middle of the twentieth century the study of Afghanistan was heavily historical… [and] Afghanistan falls between the centers of South Asian study, Middle Eastern study, and Soviet and Central Asian studies; and because it remains in limbo, those who do research on the country, often approach it from the vantage point of their know references… The justification for [this] effort lies in the conviction that now is a good time for ordering the scattered varieties of new knowledge about this old land and long independent state, so that there can be broader and better comprehension, and so that the stock of knowledge about it will better serve those both inside and outside Afghanistan who must arrive at operative decisions or ‘non-decisions’. …

If there are to be new approaches to the study of this unique country, studies which produce conclusions based on consideration of various types of information, then it is necessary to pull together special capabilities and qualifications.

In 1975, he established a Near Eastern Center at the University, which he headed for the subsequent ten years. In 1986-87, he headed the Afghanistan Branch of Voice of America.

Adamec was lucky enough to witness Afghanistan under peaceful conditions, before its internal political tensions morphed into – still small-scale – armed conflict in 1975 and became internationalised in 1979. The fact that he saw Afghanistan in more peaceful times is reflected in the last paragraph of his 1967 monograph Afghanistan, 1900–1923: A Diplomatic History (Berkeley: University of California Press) where he wrote in full optimism:

As 1973 ended, Afghanistan was at peace with the world: relations with both [sic] neighbours were satisfactory, and the traditional policy of balancing powers appeared no longer to be relevant. The power of the British Empire that was Afghanistan’s traditional enemy had been reduced to the status of a secondary power. Germany was again a major partner of Afghanistan in the country’s development and modernization, and the Soviet Union and the United States had moved from the political field to the more positive area of competition for the goodwill of the Afghan people.

No one can blame Adamec for not foreseeing the ugly turn of events that Afghans were to experience within less than a decade. 

Before his last visit to Kabul in 2008, at the invitation of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to participate in an international seminar on Mahmud Tarzi, he visited Afghanistan again only twice; once each in the time of Hafizullah Amin’s (1979) and of Najibullah’s government (1986-92), to collect material to update the Who’s Who.

Adamec’s oeuvre

Adamec’s Who’s Who of Afghanistan, which has a historical and a contemporary part, is the most well-known book from his oeuvre. He consulted many scholars in the East and West for this book, including in Afghanistan. In his introduction to its first edition in 1975, Adamec wrote: 

Research in Afghanistan studies has advanced tremendously during recent years with the appearance of numerous works in virtually every field of scholarly interest. However, many scholars, especially those interested in history and contemporary research, have keenly felt the need for a reference source which would provide concise biographical data.

Adamec said he knew it was not exhaustive, but that he had followed the advice of Afghan scholar and diplomat, Abdul Ghafur Rawan Farhadi, “that it is preferable to publish a work [relatively quickly] and spend twenty years improving it… than to spend twenty years in seclusion in an effort to attain a perfection which may never be reached.” And that is exactly what he did, for more than twenty years.

In 1997, the Who’s Whobecame the Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan, with a second, further expanded edition, in 2002. It contained a great deal of additional entries, mainly of the new political players who had emerged on the Afghan scene with the revolutions and resistance of the 1980s and 1990s: from Hafizullah Amin to Abdul Qadir Zabihullah, then the most famous Jamiati commander in Balkh province, the memory of him now overshadowed by the surviving Atta Muhammad. A detailed timeline and an impressive list of sources were added, including cabinet lists. The genealogies of important Afghan families, mainly linked to the now overthrown monarchy, were dropped.

The Who is Who was printed in the city of Graz, in his home country Austria. Graz was also the home of the Afghanistan Journal, a three-monthly publication of research articles in English, French and German, covering everything from pre-war flora and fauna and ethnology, to economy and politics. The journal started in 1974, with Ludwig W Adamec on its team of scientific advisors and authors (in cooperation with the German-language academic Arbeitsgemeinschaft [working group] Afghanistan). It was discontinued in 1982, when its editor wrote that the political changes after the 1978 ‘April revolution’ had made it impossible for western scholars to still travel to the country and present up-to-date research results. 

Much of Adamec’s other works also show him as Afghanistan’s foremost encyclopedian. These include his 1973/74 re-publication of the monumental, six volume Historical and political gazetteer of Afghanistan.This had originally been compiled in 1914 by the general staff of the government of British India, as a secret reference source representing all information on Afghanistan that had been collected up to that time. There is also a Historical Dictionary of Islam (2nd edition 2009) by Adamec and a number of entries by him in the online Encyclopedia Iranica, which cover his second field: Afghanistan’s foreign relations. Some of his books – such as his 1967 monograph Afghanistan, 1900–1923: A Diplomatic History (Berkeley: University of California Press) – were translated into Persian.

Of particular interest, but not very well known, is an article Adamec wrote in 1998 and which was reprinted in 2015 in Afghanistan: Identity, Society and Politics since 1980 (London and New York). This was a ‘best-of’ of articles published by the prestigious Afghanistan Info. This bulletin, over four decades, distributed news and reviews about Afghanistan from Neuchâtel in Switzerland but was discontinued in 2017. Both, book and bulletin, were edited by Micheline Centlivres-Demont (more here).

Adamec’s article dealt with one of the most contentious issues linked with Afghanistan, the question: whether there had been a chance of reuniting Afghanistan with the tribal areas now part of Pakistan, titled “Greater Afghanistan: A Missed Chance?” In it, Adamec reproduced a secret document – a legal advice sought by the British Foreign Office in case it was taken to an international tribunal for arbitration, dated 28 April 1949, ie after the partition of British-India – he had found in the archives of the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library. The document indicated a ‘yes’ to this question, saying this had been possible “if the tribes had placed themselves under the protection of Afghanistan or if, with the consent of the tribes, the tribal areas had been annexed by Afghanistan.” Adamec commented: “It seems that Afghan diplomacy missed the chance to regain the Pashtun tribal belt, but it was a very slim chance.”

Parts of Ludwig W Adamec’s oeuvre. Photo: Thomas Ruttig

Ludwig W Adamec is survived by his wife, Rahella Adamec, his son, Eric Adamec, his step-daughter, Helena Malikyar, his step-son, Mahmood Malikyar, and his grand-daughter and step-grandchildren (see source). Watch another obituary, in Pashto, by the Voice of America here.

Edited by Martine van Bijlert

(1) Adamec wrote the testimonial for the Austrian Republic’s National Fund for the Victims of National Socialism (see here). It was first published in: Renate S. Meissner im Auftrag des Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Hg.): Erinnerungen. Lebensgeschichten von Opfern des Nationalsozialismus.Vienna, 2010, pp 234-41.

Like other provinces, the 2018 parliamentary election in Daikundi faced some technical, logistical and security challenges, but compared to other places these problems were limited. As a result, both the process and the outcome of the election have been largely uncontested. Women participation, both during voter registration and polling, was high: more women registered and voted in the province than men. Women also won half of the province’s parliamentary seats: two out of four. Political parties didn’t fare as well. Whereas in the last parliamentary elections all four seats were taken by political party candidates, in this election there were just two. AAN’s Ehsan Qaane, who was in Daikundi on election day, looks into the background of the province’s vote and tells us how the 2018 parliamentary election went.

Turnout: high level of women participation

Daikundi was named by the IEC as one of four provinces with the highest turnout (the other three were Kabul, Herat and Nangarhar, see here). Based on the final results, a total of 134,695 votes were cast, out of a total of 166,942 registered voters, which meant that around 80% of the people who registered turned up to vote on election day. The turnout, in absolute numbers, was lower than in the 2014 and 2010 elections, when respectively 171,842 and 150,256 voters cast their votes. Because we were not able to find any reliable sources about the decrease or increase of the population in Daikundi between these three elections, it is difficult to draw a nexus between the reduction in turnout and the population status.

Although the results did not provide information about the voters based on their gender, Aziz Ahmad Rasuli, the IEC’s head of office in Daikundi, told AAN on 16 December 2018 that 53 per cent of the voters had been women. According to the voters’ list, also more than half of the 166,942 people who registered were women: 91,408 women against 75,467 men. The higher level of female registration was also reflected in the number of polling stations that had been planned: 306 for women and 288 for men. According to the chairperson of the IEC, Abdul Badi Sayad, Daikundi and Jawzjan had the highest percentage of female participation in the country. 

The higher number of registered women, compared to men, was found in all districts of Daikundi, including therelatively insecure districts of Pato and Kijran (see table below). 

Number of registered voters by districtTotal
WomenMen
% female
% maleMiramur28,33416,06612,25856.7%43.3%Shahristan26,88014,00112,86852.1%47.9%Kiti20,54012,7257,80962.0%38.0%Nili17,8679,5388,32553.4%46.6%Ashtarlai17,0888,9768,10252.5%47.5%Khedir16,6688,7927,87052.7%47.3%Sangtakht16,3468,4267,91451.5%48.5%Kijran12,3576,9555,37956.5%43.5%Pato10,8625,9184,94254.5%45.5%

In the 2010 parliamentary election, numbers had been the other way around, with more men voting than women (82,748 men, compared to 67,365 women). Between the two elections the number of women voting rose a little (from 67,365 to 71,388), while the number of men voting decreased considerably (from 82,748 to 63,306). 

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) estimated the total population of Daikundi to be 498,840 at the beginning of 2018, 242,814 women (49 per cent) and 256,026 men (51 per cent). 

Possible reasons for the high level of women’s participation

Since 2001, female participation has been relatively high in Daikundi, not only in the elections, but also in education and other types of outside-the-home work. Women are generally accepted not only as voters, but also as public figures, governmental authorities and employees. The current mayor of Nili, Khadija Ahmadi, is a woman. She was appointed in August 2018. Before her, from 2008 to 2015, Uzra Jafari served as the first female mayor in the history of Afghanistan. In addition, Daikundi is the second province, after Bamyan, to be governed by a female provincial governor: Masuma Muradi served in this position from June 2015 to October 2017. 

The decrease in the number of men voting is probably linked to an increase in economic migration, with men moving in and out of the province for economic purposes. 2018 was a difficult year in terms of the local economy. The main sources of income in Daikundi –  farming and foreign labour in Iran – both suffered, respectively due to droughts and the US sanctions on Iran. Shopkeepers said that this year farmers only harvested a very small amount of almonds, which are the leading cash crop. In October 2018, which is the season for almonds, it was hard to find any in the local markets. The author, himself, only found a small amount after searching both Nili and Jawuz markets. Most families in Daikundi also depend on remittances from family members working in Iran. However, the US sanctions on Iran have caused the Iranian currency to lose value against other currencies, including the Afghani, which means that the amount of money sent home does not go as far, and does not cover expenses. 

This has caused more men to leave their homes in search of jobs in other areas. The author met a young man at a local hotel in Nili whose story illustrates the effects of these economic dynamics on voting: Ali Nazari said that he, his father and one of his uncles, had all left their home district of Shahristan in the last year to seek work to add to the family income. His father and uncle sought coal-mining jobs in Samangan and he himself came to Nili to work in the hotel. He said he had registered at the Paleech polling centre but now that he was no longer present in the district, he could not change his voting location, nor could he go to Paleech due to his work commitments in Nili. (According to the new election law, voters could only cast their votes in the polling centre where they had registered; for more analysis read AAN’s dispatch here). His father and uncle did not manage to register at all, due to insecurity on the route between Samangan and Daikundi.

Although Daikundi itself is largely secure, the roads that connect the province to Kabul, Mazar, Kandahar and Herat are not, which indirectly contributed to decreased voter registration, and ultimately to fewer male voters. Locals shopkeepers said that during the registration process, rumours had spread that the Taleban were checking passengers’ tazkira(national ID) and punishing those who had registered for the election. Most shopkeepers need to travel to Kabul to buy supplies for their shops, and many of them did not register out of fear of Taleban checks. Other people who frequently travel in and out of Daikundi are school or university students. The author interviewed a 20-year-old boy, Ahmad, while he left Sang-e Mum polling centre in Nili together with his elderly father. Ahmad told the author that he had not registered – and thus had not voted – because he frequently travelled between Daikundi and Kabul where he was enrolled in pre-university courses.

The winners and reasons why they won

According to the final results, 41 candidates ran for the 2018 election, including eight women and eight political party representatives. (One candidate, Habibullah Radmanish, former deputy governor of Daikundi, abdicated on 3 October 2018 and was appointed deputy governor of Ghor on 6 October 2018. He was not included in the final count, even though his name still appeared on the ballot papers). The election was won by Rayhana Azad, Sherin Muhsini, Sayed Muhammad Daud Nasiri and Ali Akbar Jamshidi. 

Daikundi has four seats in the lower house of Parliament (wolesi jirga). Based on the constitutionally mandated quota system, at least 25 per cent of seats of each province should be held by women, which in the case of Daikundi would be one seat. However, following the 2018 elections, Daikundi will have two female MPs: Rayhana Azad and Sherin Muhsini. Both received a high number of votes and were elected on the strength of their votes. 

The four winners are generally less well-educated than most of the other candidates, but they are well-known in Daikundi, each having had at least one term in the lower or upper houses of Parliament and strong political support from Kabul. The background of the four winning candidates is as follows:

• Sayed Muhammad Daud Nasiri is from Kijran district of Daikundi. He came in first with 13,055 votes (a little under 10% of the total number of votes). In the 2010 parliamentary election he came fifth, and so was not given a seat in the Parliament (given that Daikundi has four seats). However, when one of the elected MPs, Muhammad Noor Akbari, resigned to join Qayum Karzai, Hamid Karzai’s brother, as his second running mate for the 2014 presidential election, Sayed Daud became his replacement in the Wolesi Jirga. Prior to this, Sayed Daud was a senator from Daikundi from 2006 to 2010. He is not an educated man, but he is rich and owns land in Daikundi and Kandahar. He is a member of the Mahaz-e Mili political party, led by Sayed Hamid Gilani. Although he ran as an independent candidate, he had the strong support of the Gilani family. His elder brother, Sayed Muhammad Sadat Nasiri, was deputy governor of Daikundi during the election (he resigned on 15 January 2019). Sayed Daud’s brother-in-law, Sayed Taher Etemadi, is the district governor of Pato, the newly-established district of Daikundi. Some sources AAN talked with believe that Said Daud’s brother used his influence and power in favour of Said Daud. He did not benefit from his brother-in-law’s position, as their relationship is not good.

• Rayhana Azad is from Shahristan district of Daikundi. She came in second with 12,689 votes. During the 2009 presidential election, she campaigned for President Karzai. In the 2010 parliamentary election, she was elected as the only female MP from Uruzgan for the Wolesi Jirga. Though she is not a member of any political party, she has strong links with many powerful politicians in Kabul. In public campaign speeches, Rayhana Azad reportedly said that her election bid was supported by the first lady, Rula Ghani. [Amended 28 Jan 2019: AAN was told this by two sources independent of each, including Daikundi provincial council member Suhrab Etemadi and another candidate who has asked to not be named. This claim, however, was rejected by Azad.”]

• Ali Akbar Jamshidi is from Sangtakht district of Daikundi. He came in third with 10,490 votes. Jamshidi is a member of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan, led by Abdul Karim Khalili, the chairperson of the High Peace Council and former Second-Vice President of the former President, Hamid Karzai. Jamshidi was a senator from Daikundi from 2010 to 2015. Before being a senator, he worked with the Ministry of Education. In this capacity, he promoted education in Daikundi, especially in his district, by building schools. 

• Sherin Muhsini is from Shahristan district of Daikundi. She came in (a very close) fourth with 10,480 votes. She is a member of Hezb-e Islami Mardum-e Afghanistan, led by Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq, the second deputy of the Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah. Her husband, Aref Hussain Dawari, is a known local jihadi commander who still plays a strong role in his province and who actively campaigned for her. In the 2010 election, Muhsini was elected as the only female MP from Daikundi.

The winners competed with candidates who had more formal education and more experience working in national and international institutions outside the province (Almost 70 per cent of the candidates had at least one bachelor decree). But the candidates who won, according to people AAN interviewed, had strong political support, both on the ground and in Kabul, money and, more importantly, skills to effectively approach “ordinary people.” Several people told AAN that the educated candidates were new to the voters and did not know the needs of ordinary people or how to speak to them to gain their trust. Rahmat Shariati, a lecturer at the only university in Daikundi (the private Naser Khosraw University; its owner, Abdul Karim Surush, with a PhD decree, was also a candidate), said that for most of people in Daikundi a good candidate was someone who could help them work their issues through the Afghan bureaucratic system (by, for instance, helping them to secure a medical visa to Pakistan, Iran or India). The new and educated candidates neither had the skills nor the networks to convince voters that they could help them with their daily problems, said Shariati. He added, “Instead, their mottos were about legal and structural reforms of the government. Of course people also want a good government, but their daily problems are more important.” Sharif Ashrafi, a civil society activist in Nili, made the same point. He said that winning candidate Daud Nasiri had helped locals in Kabul with small demands, such as their passport applications or by paying for the accommodation of university students from Daikundi. He said “Sayed Daud is not an educated man, but he knows how to behave with ordinary people.” 

The winners also all had earlier experience of campaigning, which gave them an upper hand over the new candidates who did not have such experience. Unsuccessful candidate Hussain Nusrat, who has a Masters degree in International Relations and who worked with the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), told AAN, “One of the reasons I failed was because I lacked experience in campaigning. Even my [election] observers reported to other candidates who had stronger campaign teams than me.”

Two female winners: Female candidates face-off

As mentioned before, two of Daikundi’s four seats in the Wolesi Jirga will go to women: Rayhana Azad and Sherin Muhsini. Both received a high number of votes, coming in second and fourth, in the popular vote count. 

Eight out of the 41 candidates were women: Amina Alemizada (who received 7,240 votes), Fatema Akbari (who received 3,702 votes), Masuma Amiri (who received 1,274 votes), Rana Kamel (who received 622 vote), Zahra Surush (who received 124 votes), Benazeer Sedaqat (who received 48 votes) and Sherin Muhsini and Rayhana Azad. Except for Azad and Muhsini, the other female candidates were relatively young and unknown, although some of them still received a relatively high number of votes.

Rayhana Azad and Sherin Muhsini were positioned as political competitors, standing for different directions and constituencies. Although Azad told AAN on 21 October 2018 that she had mainly competed against the male candidates, locals said that in reality, her main competition had been Muhsini, since both of them wanted to win the female seat. Azad had more educated and typically younger voters support as she stood for progressive values, such as human rights and the rule of law, locals said. For instance, Gul Jan Hujati, the head of Shuhada Organisation in Daikundi, told AAN on 19 October 2018, “The competition between Rayhana and Sherin is a competition between the pen and the gun.” By “gun” she was referring to Muhsini’s husband, Aref Husain Dawari, a leader of an armed group in Daikundi that was known for its brutality. By “pen” she was referring to the promise of rule of law in Daikundi and modes of governance advocated more by the young generation. 

Notwithstanding her appeal to younger voters, during the campaign Azad targeted both the younger and older generations. According to Suhrab Ettemadi, a member of the Daikundi provincial council, Rayhana’s campaigners went door to door and distributed scarfs, clothes and volumes of the holy Qu’raan to the female voters in the household. AAN also heard this from some shopkeepers in Nili, and from Hussain Nusrat, another parliamentary candidate from Daikundi. Nusrat said that where in previous elections, candidates had distributed a longi (turban) to male voters, this time, packages with female scarfs and the holy Qu’raan were distributed to female voters. Azad confirmed that she had campaigned door-to-door, but rejected that she had distributed of scarfs, clothes and the holy Qu’raan. Distribution of money and gifts, with the purpose of buying votes, is defined as an electoral crime (Art 99 of the election law).

Political parties lost two seats: Changes in political party representation

Every Hazara-Jehadi political party, except Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami Afghanistan, (1) fielded at least one candidate in Daikundi. Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq’s political party (Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Mardum-e Afghanistan) had the highest number with four candidates: Sherin Muhsini, Abdul Baseer Muwahidi, Ghulam Husain Joya and Al Hajj Muhammad Zaher Qulagzada. From his party, only Muhsini managed to win a seat. Two candidates, Ali Akbar Jamshidi and Amina Alemizada, were from Muhammad Karim Khalili’s party (Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami Afghanistan). Jamshidi is on the final list. Amina Alemizada failed, though she secured 7,240 votes, which put her among the top eight candidates on the general list and third among the female candidates. Khalili and Muhaqiq’s parties, the two main Hazara political parties, (2) each managed to secure one of the four seats, as they had in the 2010 parliamentary elections (respectively Sherin Muhsini from Muhaqiq’s party and Asadullah Sa’adati from Khalili’s party).

This time, the Daikundi candidates backed by Hezb-e Insijam-e Mili (led by Sadiq Mudaber, the head of the administrative office for former president Hamid Karzai) and Hezb-e Herasat-e Islami (led by Muhammad Akbari) were not elected. Each of these parties had one MP in parliament after the 2010 election: Nasrullah Sadiqizada Nili from Akbari’s party and Muhammad Noor Akbari from Mudaber’s party. Both ran this time again, but came in fifth and sixth, respectively (Muhammad Noor Akbari with 8,785 votes and Nasrullah Sadeqizada Nili with 8,234 votes). Sadiqizada Nili told AAN on 30 December 2018 that he accepted the preliminary results and had not registered any complaints.

The failure of Hezb-e Herasat to secure a seat in Daikundi was a hot discussion among many Hazaras, not only in Daikundi but also in Kabul. The party’s leader, Muhammad Akbari, had run for Parliament himself from Bamyan, where he had also not been elected. Akbari’s party is the successor of Pasdaran-e Jehad-e Islami-ye Afghanistan (also known as Sepah-e Pasdaran), a political-military group established in 1984 by Muhammad Akbari and Muhammad Husain Sadiqi Nili (father of Nasrullah Sadiqizada Nili). In the era of mujahedin fighting against the Soviet-backed communist regime, this group was the most influential one in Daikundi. It had also played a major role in the violent internal Hazara-Shia conflict at that time. This, together with Akbari’s support for Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government during the civil war period, caused great animosity between the supporters of Sepah-e Pasdaran led by Akbari and the many Hazaras who supported Hezb-e Wahdat led by Abdul Ali Mazari. This legacy of the pre-civil war era still has a strong impact on political affairs in Daikundi, so any shift in relative power is watched with great interest. 

The security situation on election day

Daikundi was one of the few provinces where relatively few irregularities and security challenges were reported on election day. This was in large part due to the relatively good security situation and the close monitoring by a large number of observers. Most of the more than 5,000 observers were candidate agents, but there were also 112 observers from independent organisations: the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) had 30 observers, the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) had 60, the Afghanistan Civil Society Forum Organisation (ACSFo) had 12 observers and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) had 10 observers, according to Aziz Ahmad Rasuli, the head of the IEC’s office in Daikundi. These election watch bodies, except ACSFo, had observers in all eight districts (although in some case not more than one or two people). ACSFo’s observers were only in the provincial capital. The Election Complaints Commission (ECC) also had one observer in each polling centre. 

Although, no security incidents occurred on election day, three of the 276 polling centres (3) remained closed due to high security treats and the possible presence of the Taleban: two in Kijran district and one in Pato. Both districts are on the border with Uruzgan and Helmand provinces. On 17 October 2018, three days before election day, the Taleban killed 13 Afghan security forces in Kijran. One day later, a woman was killed and two women and a child were injured in an IED explosion close to a public cemetery in the Padangak area of Kijran. Officials believed that the Taleban launched these attacks to dissuade people from voting and had planned to engage in more election-related violence and attacks in Kijran and Nawamish. However, the Taleban also suffered many casualties in their attack on 17 October 2018, which may have forced them to rethink their plans. 

The situation in Pato district was different. Pato is a newly established district that used to be part of Gizab. The population is 70 per cent Hazara and 30 per cent Pashtun, with the Pashtun population concentrated in Tamazan and Pato villages (the district name comes from this village, which is also the official district centre). Gizab had long been a source of contestation: over whether it should belong to Uruzgan or Daikundi, and whether it should be split in two or not. The establishment of Pato as a separate district in June 2018, and the local discord that sowed, affected the security situation. The polling centre in Pato which remained closed on election day was in Tamazan, where Mula Sangul is from. Mula Sangul was the commander of the Pato unit of the Afghan Local Police and was in charge of security in the district’s Pashtun areas (for more background on Mullah Sangul and previous conflicts, see for instance this AAN dispatch). After his attempts to become the district governor of Pato failed in June and July 2018, Sangul joined the Taleban with the help of his brother, Mula Naeem, who is a Taleban commander with close links to Abdul Hakim, Gizab’s main Taleban commander. 

Although the Taleban’s attacks were expected on election day, Naeem and Sangul did not attempt to disrupt the election. People, including women, still came out to vote: even in Pato more women voted than men. According to Sayed Taher Ettemadi, the district governor of Pato, local security authorities had been well prepared: each polling centre had been guarded by three armed men, one from the national police (ANP), one from the local police (ALP) and one from the intelligence agency (NDS). However, two months after the election day, on 15 December 2018, the brothers started a raid against the Afghan security forces and local upraising groups in Pato, killing and injuring 27 Afghan security forces and displacing 80 families. The Taleban captured three military posts in Tamazan and Raqul villages, one of them just 11 kilometres from Nili, but were forced to leave the area again after a few days and retreated to Barmani village. 

Irregularities on election day: biometrics, voter lists and ballot papers

A last-minute decision by the IEC to introduce biometric voter verification in all polling stations in the parliamentary election led to great confusion and chaos in large parts of the country. In Daikundi, however, the problems seemed less pronounced. The main issue seemed to have been that none of the biometric verification machines were connected to the central database, as according to Aziz Ahmad Rasuli, the head of IEC’s office in Daikundi, the internet was not working properly. This will have curtailed the ability of the IEC to detect attempts at multiple voting. In three out of the 594 polling stations, voting happened without the use of the biometric machines: one in Kiti district, the Baghban polling centre in Kijran and the Jafaria polling centre in Sangtakht. As these polling stations were far from the provincial capital, the IEC office was unable to replace the broken machines with new ones in time. The latter two centres were named in a complaint letter to the ECC by candidate Muhammad Noor Akbari. In some polling centres, where the biometric machines were replaced because they broke down or ran out of charge, polling continued until the evening to make up for lost time. Even when the machines operated normally, the IEC staff often lacked skill in using the machines, which in many cases caused the voting to start with delay. 

Like in many other provinces, some voters could not cast their votes because their names were not included in the voter lists. On election day, AAN interviewed two people who had experienced this. One of them was an old man who had walked for 40 minutes from his home to the Rubat Dasht School polling centre. He said that the identification officer could not find his name on the voter list and that while he was waiting in the queue, he had witnessed four other people who could not vote for the same reason. The IEC tried to solve the problem – nationwide – by instructing its staff, at 13:00, to allow these voters to vote anyway and to add their names by hand to the official voter list. This was, however, not implemented everywhere and also did not solve the fact that some voters had already left and did not come back. There were also an unknown number of polling centres where no voter lists had been sent at all, or that had received the wrong voter lists. There were also instances of ballot paper shortages, which the IEC tried to solve by sending more papers. In some cases, the number of ballots sent did not match the number of voters on the list, while in other cases the centres ran out of ballots after they had allowed voters who were not on the list to vote as well. AAN was not able to find out how many polling centres were affected by ballot shortages in Daikundi. 

Because of the many irregularities, the IEC issued a nation-wide decision to extend the duration of the vote until 20:00 for all polling centres where voting had started with delay (until 13:00) and to call a second day of voting for all polling centres that had opened after 13:00, or not at all (read AAN’s reporting here and here). Despite the extension, in some cases, voters could still not cast their votes before closing time. On the second day of the election, IEC staff in Daikundi re-opened some polling centres, like Barkar polling centre in Miramur district, but they were immediately closed again before anyone could vote. These centres had opened with delay on the first day of the election but had been active before 13:00, so they were not allowed to open again. According to IEC’s Rasuli, there was only one day of polling in Daikundi and no voting happened in the second day.

Not many complaints

Despite these irregularities, most sources agreed that the election in Daikundi went relatively well. The Electoral Complaints Commission’s office in Daikundi received 97 complaints, mainly against IEC staff, with a few against the winning candidates. Unsuccessful candidate and former MP Muhammad Noor Akbari registered the most serious complaints, alleging fraud and claiming that Rayhana Azad and Ali Akbar Jamshidi had influenced the IEC staff in six specific polling centres in their favour (one polling centre in Rayhana Azad’s case, and five in Ali Akbar Jamshidi’s). The Electoral Complaints Commission’s office in Daikundi found no evidence to support his complaints. Although Akbari appealed the decision, Ali Reza Ruhani, an ECC commissioner, told AAN that even if his appeal was successful, it would not change the results. The final results were announced on 20 January (according to Akbari, without dealing with his appeal). None of the unsuccessful candidates have formally reacted to the final results, so far. 

Edited by Erica Gaston and Martine van Bijlert

• Neither the Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami Afghanistan, nor its offshoot led by Sayed Husain Anwari, had fielded a candidate of their own. Anwari, a former military commander of Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami, left the party in 2004 and established Hezb-e Harakat-e Islami Mardum-e Afghanistan. His party supports a small irregular armed group in Ashtarlai district. The group is known as Tol-e Mubaligh (the family of Mubaligh).

• Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan was established by Abdul Ali Mazari in 1989, during the mujahedin war against the Soviet-backed communist regime. It consisted of eight smaller Hazaras political-military parties. After Mazari was killed by the Taleban, Muhammad Karim Khalili was elected as his successor. Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq was a military commander of this party in the North of the country. In 2004, Haji Muhammad Muhaqiq left the party and established his own under the name Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Mardum-e Afghanistan. 

• The total number of 276 polling centres included 20 polling centres in Nawamish district of Helmand, which were administered by the IEC’s office in Daikundi (the area was virtually cut-off from Helmand’s capital Lashkargah, but fairly easy to reach from Daikundi). The voters in these polling centres cast their votes for candidates who ran in Helmand. 

Afghanistan has just concluded its candidate nomination period for the presidential election, which has been moved from the initial date, 20 April, to 20 July 2019. The election will now involve four votes at the same time: provincial elections, district council elections, parliamentary elections in Ghazni province, and the presidential poll. With this, the country has been plunged into an important period that will be characterised by demands for electoral reform, as well as uncertainty about the sequencing of elections and peace. AAN’s researcher Ali Yawar Adili (with input by Martine van Bijlert) lays out the background to the delay of the election date, the competing demands of the process and the likely obscurity of the year ahead. He concludes that the calls for reforms, including changing the electoral commissioners, may well turn into a new battlefield between various factions and forces inside and outside of the government. 

Delay of the presidential election until summer

After weeks of speculation, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has formally delayed the presidential election until 20 July 2019. It has also decided to hold four pending elections at the same time. The new date was announced on 30 December 2018. The elections, which were initially planned for 20 April, were delayed for various reasons. These included: the need for reform, especially after the mismanagement of the 2018 parliamentary elections; the winter weather conditions; and possible pressure in favour of peace talks, or even a negotiated agreement before the poll (even though peace processes tend to be lengthy and unpredictable, whilst the linking of the two could obscure the preparations for the elections in the months ahead). 

In fact, the delay could be seen as a negative spill-over effect of the IEC’s decision to delay last year’s parliamentary election from 7 July to 20 October 2018 (on top of the fact that more than three years were spent on reform, thus missing the constitutional date according to which the parliamentary poll had to have been held by June 2015). As AAN wrote then, the delay meant “that parliamentary and district elections would be held just seven months before the presidential poll is due, risking electoral congestion and political chaos.” Since then, the problems have only been compounded by the cumulative delay of the results of the 2018 parliamentary elections, which have still not been finalised (see here).

The initial announcement of the presidential election date was made well ahead of the legal deadline during a press conference on 1 August 2018 (see AAN’s previous reporting here). (1)  The president had, at the time, asked the IEC to announce the election date early in order to stave off pressure by political parties. (In the run-up to the parliamentary vote, the parties were calling on the government and the IEC to suspend the on-going voter registration and to use biometric technology, calling the manual voter registration “flawed and fraudulent.” After initial resistance by the government and the IEC, they yielded to the pressure by the political parties and introduced biometric voter verification.)

At the time, UNAMA welcomed the announcement of the presidential election date as “an important moment for democracy in Afghanistan,” while some election observers criticised it as “a rush.” For instance, the executive director of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), Yusuf Rashid, told the media that, either the date would be missed, or the elections would be held on that date, but with a myriad of problems. “We are worried about the consequences of the next election,” he said. 

Candidate nominations for the presidential election had already started on 22 December 2018, but the process was slow and uncertain. Although potential candidates did come to collect information packages, they did not yet register and, on 24 December 2018, the IEC put out a statement saying that a new candidate nomination period would be announced after further consultations. On 26 December, the BBC quoted a source within the IEC saying that, although 50 people had received the nomination information package, none of them had met the conditions yet. A number of the candidates had not been able to introduce their running-mates, or to pay the one million Afs (around USD 13,300) deposit to the bank. A few days later, on 30 December, as mentioned above, a new election date, with a new electoral calendar (annexed to this piece for reference), was announced.

The new candidate nomination period ended on 20 January 2019. According to Etilaat Roz, “credible sources” within the IEC claimed that President Ghani had asked the IEC to further extend the candidate nomination period. An IEC official confirmed to AAN that the president had, indeed, made such a request, but the IEC could not accept it, as the president himself was one of the potential candidates. Both President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah finally registered on the last day of the nomination period.

According to the IEC, more than 70 people had collected candidate nomination information packages from the IEC. 20 of them came to the IEC for registration, while only 18 of them were able to meet the legal requirements and register their nomination (a separate AAN piece on the candidates and their nomination is forthcoming). 

Reactions to the delay of the electoral date

After the announcement of the new election date, the presidential palace immediately indicated that it respected the IEC’s decision to delay the elections, and promised to cooperate. Other major political forces on the other hand, such as the Grand National Coalition, the coalition of political parties, Mehwar-e Mardom (see AAN’s background here), as well as the Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution, called the IEC’s decision a violation of the constitution, given that the presidential term expires on 22 May 2019. (2) At the same time, they called on the IEC to use the opportunity to carry out necessary reforms – in a seeming acknowledgement that an election on a constitutionally mandated date would be neither feasible, nor preferable.

On the side of the international community, there were the usual cautious statements of support. UNAMA welcomed “the clarity in the electoral calendar,” acknowledging “the IEC’s assessment that additional time is needed in order to learn from the 2018 parliamentary elections and adequately prepare.” UNAMA further called for “a full package of realistic and prioritized reforms,” which would include cleaning the voters’ registry, establishing a clear division of responsibilities between the IEC and its secretariat, ensuring the secretariat was fully staffed and professional, and making changes to its structures.

The various political groups differed over whether or not the current government could continue in its current form after its term expired on 22 May 2019. Some said that a new arrangement should be set up to take over the state’s affairs, some called for curtailing the president’s authorities after the expiry date, and others called for a broader consensus to decide about the issue. 

Opposition group Mehwar-e Mardom-e Afghanistan said the delay was in “clear contravention of article 61 of the constitution and Afghanistan’s election law.” It indicated that only peace could justify a delay, which it considered “an illegal act.” Mehwar called on the government to stop interfering in the IEC’s affairs and to halt all dismissals and appointments of senior government officials. It further stressed that government resources should not be used for election campaigns, necessary reforms should be carried out in the electoral bodies (without specifying what these reforms should look like), and that an online biometric verification system should be implemented in all electoral processes.

The Grand National Coalition, a conglomerate of opposition groups, said it considered the “ambiguous process” of delaying the presidential elections, for whatever reason, unacceptable and concerning. (3) At the same time, it continued to emphasise four principles: full use of technology in the voter registration and on election day; change and reform of the structure of the electoral commissions; a change in the electoral system from SNTV (single non-transferable vote) to MDR (multi-dimensional representation) (see AAN’s background here); and monitoring of the election process by parties and the coalition. The joint committee of political parties issued a similar statement.

Former national security adviser and a presidential candidate Hanif Atmar, who had already been very outspoken in the run-up to the announcement of the delay, called the decision “in contravention of the clarity of the text of the constitution” and said that no “legal and logical justification had been presented for the unexpected delay.” He reiterated his earlier position that holding four elections at the same time was beyond the capacity and capability of the IEC and called on the leadership of the current government to step down after their legal term had expired. (4)

Neither the joint committee of political parties, nor the Grand National Coalition, went as far as Atmar. So far, they have remained silent about the legitimacy of the current government after 22 May. Akhlaqi of Jamiat told AAN on 9 January that, since the constitution does not specify whether the current government can continue after 22 May, – it only stipulates that the government will no longer be legitimate – they would call for a grand political national consensus among the political parties and civil society, supported by the international community, to decide on an alternative. According to him, this could be: 1) continuation of the government, but with a reduction in the president’s authorities, 2) an interim government, or 3) the president stepping down and, for instance, the chief justice taking over the affairs of the state. 

The Independent Commission for Overseeing the Implementation of the Constitution (ICOIC) issued a legal opinion saying that the IEC’s decision was a “clear violation of the constitution” and called on the IEC to “compensate for its inefficiencies in making the necessary arrangements to hold the elections and end the violation of the constitution”  (see here). When asked what the ICOIC wanted the IEC to do, Abdullah Shafayi, a member of the commission, told AAN that the commission had the responsibility to hold those who violate the constitution accountable to the public opinion. Otherwise, he said, “ab rafta ba joy bargardana namesha (what is done cannot be undone).”

In 2009, under former President Hamed Karzai, there had been similar discussions, after the IEC delayed the presidential elections to August of that year, also in contravention of the constitution. At the time, the discussions had included calls for a loya jirga as an alternative to the elections itself; formation of an interim government; and, declaring a state of emergency. The matter was resolved in President Karzai’s favour after the Supreme Court issued an opinion that the continuation of the president’s term was in the interest of the country (see this AAN paper). The issue of delay in this year’s presidential elections may well be settled in a similar fashion, if political forces continue to press for an arrangement for the period between May and July.   

Call for changing the electoral commissioners

In the meantime, elections observers and political parties have been calling for the replacement of the IEC’s commissioners, given the breakdown in management of the 2018 parliamentary elections. FEFA’s Yusuf Rashid told Hasht-e Sobh on 26 December 2018 that, if the members and leadership of the IEC were not changed, the presidential election would be marred by the same problems as the parliamentary election: “The [IEC] is in no way competent [enough] to manage the presidential election” (see here). Similarly, on 7 December, the Alliance of Election Observer Groups for Transparent Elections, a group of six domestic election observer organisations (5), “firmly called on the leadership of the government of Afghanistan to suspend the duty of the [IEC] members and leadership and appoint a special committee of election specialists to supervise the parliamentary elections affairs and put an end to this dilemma, given today’s realities that the [IEC] no longer has the capability to lead and manage an election process” (Dari here and English here). They made the call in the wake of the decision of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) to completely nullify the Kabul parliamentary vote (see AAN’s reporting here). Although the ECC’s decision was later overturned, the dispute has not gone away, for example, on 22 January, candidates closed the entry gates to Kabul city in protest against the preliminary results of the Kabul vote (media report here).

On 10 January, the Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), another major election observer organisation, also called for dismissal of “all members of the IEC,” saying that the IEC lacked “the required capacity to bring electoral reforms or to hold the upcoming presidential elections.” (see here). Even IEC members seemed to believe they would be changed soon. Maliha Hassan, an IEC commissioner, recently said that “changes to the leadership of the IEC were likely” and that, with a change of faces in the management of the IEC, the election would be successful. 

On 13 January, Vice-President Sarwar Danesh also seemed to indicate changes were coming when he said in a speech: “The electoral commissions must know that the people are running out of patience, and can no longer tolerate the weaknesses and inefficiencies. It is now the duty of the National Unity Government to initiate comprehensive reforms and prevent a further infringement of people’s rights, otherwise, the presidential elections will meet a destiny [even] worse than that of the parliamentary elections.” (see here) 

This raises new questions about the legal procedure to replace the commissioners. According to article 14 of the electoral law, four members of the IEC are appointed for a period of five years and three for a period of three years. This means the term of three current IEC members will only expire in November of this year and the term of three others in November 2021. (See the annex in this AAN’s report here). However, there is a precedent of terminating electoral commissions after every election and before they complete their terms. For example, the previous commissions that had supervised the 2014 elections also had not completed their term and were replaced after the electoral law was amended (as part of the National Unity Government agreement). (see here).

It seems that both the government and political forces are now converging towards an agreement on the need to replace the commissioners. This may be a matter of principle, but it may also simply be the hope – on all sides – to be able to influence the appointment process.

Political parties have, so far, discussed three main ways in which the commissions could be replaced. First, in accordance with the existing electoral law, a selection committee can call for applications, vet the applicants, and submit a shortlist of candidates to the president, who then appoints IEC and ECC members from among them (see earlier AAN reporting here). But since the president himself is seeking re-election, political parties have their doubts about the transparency and neutrality of the existing process. Muhammad Nateqi, the deputy leader of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom-e Afghanistan, called this option “haman ash wa haman kasa” (meaning: the same old story). The second option would be to appoint new commissioners in consultation with political parties and candidates. A third possible option would be to fully outsource the management of the elections to a private company. According to Nateqi, the German company Dermalog, which had also provided the biometric technology for the parliamentary elections, had expressed its willingness to undertake such a venture. It told the parties that had they implemented the technology during the parliamentary poll, they would not have faced the technology failures observed on election days. The political parties, unsurprisingly, prefer the second option.

The government has now started consultations on how to carry out yet another round of electoral reforms, which include changing the commissioners. Rashid from FEFA told AAN that he had been asked for his views and that FEFA was working on a proposal that would allow political parties and election observers to introduce ten people each to the president, from which he could pick four, and that three others would be appointed by the president in consultation with government officials. Head of TEFA, Naim Ayubzada, reported similar meetings with government leaders, in which they discussed replacing both IEC and ECC commissioners; amending the existing mechanism for appointing new commissioners; and holding the commissions accountable for their work. To introduce a new selection mechanism, the president might envisage issuing a new legislative decree while the parliament is on winter recess. 

Other reforms that have been called for include: filling the vacancies with experienced people, cleaning the voter registry and amending regulations and procedures. While the IEC has specified in its electoral calendar that it plans to do a top-up voter registration exercise, the political parties have called for a complete new biometric voter registration with a scan of all ten fingerprints, an eye scan and photos taken either on the election day or before. This may well become a time-consuming controversy. Last year, the political parties effectively threatened to withdraw their support for the parliamentary election and pressured both the IEC and the government into a last minute decision (see AAN’s analysis here) to use biometric voter verification on election day. (For a first-hand AAN account of the ensuing chaos, see here.)

IEC member Rafiullah Bidar had earlier already listed most of these issues, or similar versions of them, as major lessons that the IEC had learned and that, he said, needed to be taken into consideration before conducting the presidential elections. These issues included: the voter list should be reformed, completed and published; new software and programmes should be installed into the biometric devices; IEC offices in the centre and provinces run by acting heads should be reformed [staffed]; polling staff should be trained; and more and better public outreach should be conducted. However, what is important is whether or not the IEC, the government and other political parties will be able to agree on the nuances of the necessary changes. While it is not clear if the parties will stick together on their reform proposals, the way voters should be registered ahead of the next election may well turn into a new point of dispute with consequences for the preparations.

Four elections together or not?

The IEC is currently planning to hold four elections at the same time. It had earlier decided to only hold the presidential elections and the delayed parliamentary election for Ghazni province on 20 April, while holding the provincial and district council elections later in the summer. (6) At the time, Zabihullah Sadat, a deputy spokesman for the IEC, told the media that the IEC, due to low capacity, time constraints and lack of financial resources, would not be able to hold four elections together. The government, however, did not seem to agree. On 21 December 2018, second Vice-President Sarwar Danesh wrote a Facebook post titled “Unknown fate of provincial and district councils, incomplete structure of the Meshrano Jirga and unclear status of the Loya Jirga.” In this piece, Danesh criticised the fact that the dates for the district council or provincial council elections had not been published, adding that the government “had announced to the IEC very clearly that the electoral calendar should be set in a way to complete the government structures after years” and had, therefore, asked the IEC to hold all four elections simultaneously. (7)

Danesh provided the following arguments for the decision to hold all the elections together: it would meet the constitutional provision and complete the national structure of elected bodies, as well as the composition of the Loya Jirga. It would, moreover, decrease the sacrifices of the security forces, lower the election costs, increase both the turnout and the legitimacy of the elected bodies, and make voting easier for the voters, who would only have to come once, instead of every few months.   

Danesh’s post was a bit of a surprise given that, during an earlier event in August 2017, he had openly said he saw no need for district council elections (or village council or municipal council elections), and had argued that four elected institutions (the presidency, Wolesi Jirga, mayoral and provincial councils) were enough. He also said that Afghanistan did not have the money to hold so many elections, the expertise to manage the various elected bodies, or any need for them in terms of democracy and popular will. (See AAN’s previous reporting here)

Although the district councils have no clear function in Afghanistan’s day-to-day government system, they are needed to complete two important institutions: a Constitutional Loya Jirga and the upper house of the parliament – and are, thus, a prerequisite to be able to change the constitution. Not having elected district councils, therefore, could be used as an excuse to reject demands for a Loya Jirga. So, when it was revealed that the IEC, in late July 2018, was proposing a delay in the district council elections, critics like Mohiuddin Mahdi, an MP from Baghlan and a member of Jamiat-e Islami, called this “an antidemocratic decision” of a government taking “pre-emptive action” against the convening of a Loya Jirga to amend and reform the constitution. Some of the presidential candidates, including President Ghani himself and Hanif Atmar, in the meantime, have picked a third, informal (ethnic Uzbek) running-mate (Yusuf Ghazanfar for Ghani and former Jawzjan governor, Alem Sa’i, for Atmar), in addition to the first and second (respectively Tajik and Hazara) vice-presidential candidates. The idea is, presumably at some point, to amend the constitution to create a third vice-presidential post. The move seems motivated by the wish to expand their appeal by including representatives from, in the case of both Ghani and Atmar, the Turk-tabaran (Turkic) community – with the Uzbeks and Turkmens as their largest groups – to join their tickets. 

In practice, a lot remains to be done to ensure inclusive district council elections. SIGAR’s latest quarterly report, published on 30 October 2018, shows that out of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, only 226 districts are under government control (75) or government influence (151); 49 districts are under insurgent control (10) or influence (39). The remaining 132 districts (32.4 per cent of Afghanistan’s districts) are contested. The IEC was not able to register voters in most of the districts controlled by the insurgents and will struggle to hold elections there. 

Peace or elections?

‌Recent United States initiatives to seek a negotiated end to the Afghan war and a withdrawal of its troops from the country, has lent new urgency to the Afghan government’s peace efforts (see AAN’s analysis here). It has also led to discussions in public and private circles as to whether or not the elections should be postponed in favour of peace talks, or how the two processes may help or harm each other. According to media reports, the US administration had wanted to press the Afghan government to postpone the presidential elections, so that peace talks with Taleban could take place first. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, had raised the idea to push back the poll in talks with “various stakeholders and intermediaries.” On 18 December 2018, the media quoted Taleban officials saying that the US delegation, led by Khalilzad, had pressed “for a six-month truce as well as an agreement to name Taliban representatives to a future caretaker government” during their meetings in Abu Dhabi.

This was later rejected by Khalilzad, who told Ariana News on 20 December 2018: “The question of a plan for the political future of Afghanistan is a question that Afghans should sit together and agree on. We did not say even one or two sentences to them about an interim government or putting off the elections. Some who have negative or vicious goals spread false news to create problems between us and Afghans or the government.” He did, however, say that, in his opinion, it would be better “if an agreement is reached about peace before the elections” – even though he must know how highly unlikely this is. (8)

In a comment issued on 10 January, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed to the US for the delay of the election date, saying: “Everything seems to suggest that the decision to put off the election was made under the United States’ influence, which needs additional time to prepare for holding the upcoming voting in accordance with its patterns and building a peace process in Afghanistan according to its own scenario. … We note that this decision was made despite the repeated assurances by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Afghanistan’s Election Commission concerning the need to strictly adhere to the deadlines for the election announced earlier.” 

Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, however, told the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers on 14 January that the delay had nothing to do with the peace, and that the elections had been postponed due to “technical problems,” which, he said, had been clearly seen in the parliamentary elections, including the fact that the results had not been announced after almost three months. (See media report here). Abdullah further related a funny comment from his friend about the long-drawn-out 2014 presidential elections, who had said: “If Afghanistan had the population of China, the election results would not be announced until doomsday.”

On 20 January, during his registration, President Ghani reacted even more fiercely (see video here), saying “Afghans do not accept an interim government today, tomorrow and a hundred years later. If someone has such stupid ideas, and a few former employees [his deputy spokesperson did not know who he was referring to] whom I refused to accept to be my students have come up with proposal of an interim government, they should think again.” 

Conclusion: will the new election date be met?

With the conclusion of the candidate nomination process for the presidential election, the country has been plunged into a period of excitement and intense activity. The political mobilisation and potential turmoil will last at least until 7 October this year, when, according to the electoral calendar, the final results of the provincial and district elections are scheduled to be announced. 

The responses of political groups and forces, as well as the international community, to the announced delay of the elections illustrate what are to be the likely themes and controversies in the near future. First, the fact that the delay is formally a violation of the constitution – but at the same time, practically inevitable, given the state of the IEC, the chaotic conduct of the last parliamentary election and the fact that they have still not been satisfactorily finalised. Second, the demand that the delay should be used for electoral reform, including the replacement of the electoral commissioners – a demand that has been made after every election, but tends to swiftly get lost in bureaucratic delays and political and legal wrangling. Third, the call by some of the political groups for an interim solution after the constitutional term of the current government expires on 22 May. Where some have called for a limiting of the president’s authorities, others have simply called vaguely for a broad consensus to decide about the matter. 

It is not fully clear what is behind the decision to delay. It does not seem very likely that it was because of the hopes to start peace talks. As Nateqi told AAN, the result of peace talks will probably not be an election, but rather an interim government. Several people have cited practical considerations, such as unfavourable weather conditions that, in some areas, would impede any voter registration exercise ahead of the vote. The need and calls for reforms could be both a reason for the delay, as well as a new battlefield for various factions, candidates and parties inside and outside the government. Experiences from the past have shown there will likely be a tug of war over who controls the appointments to the commissions, especially given that the presidential elections are high-stake. 

The tug-of-war could be between within the government, in particular between President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, who are both running, but do not have to resign from their positions (unlike other senior government officials). They may now have an added incentive to want to ensure that ‘their’ people are appointed to key positions (the media have, for instance, already reported that Abdullah and Ghani disagreed over the appointment of the new acting minister of interior, after Amrullah Saleh resigned to join Ghani as his first running-mate). It could also take place between the government and political parties or other candidates. This likely political wrangling may hold back the necessary reforms and, thus, further delay the elections. They could also discredit the elections even before they take place, if reforms are not implemented or implemented half-heartedly. 

Edited by Martine van Bijlert 

(1) The early announcement of the election date on 1 August 2018 was made in response to a call by President Ghani during a meeting in the Palace on 22 July with the IEC, the UN, the EU and a number of ambassadors of countries supporting the elections. The president asked the IEC to “set the presidential election date and share it with the people as soon as possible.” A day before the announcement of the election date, the IEC had held a consultative meeting with the ECC leadership, representatives of political parties, civil society and international organisations, where according to the IEC a “majority” of the participants had agreed with the 20 April 2019 date, but the parties’ agreement with the date might have been an attempt to avoid any blame for a possible delay. 

(2) The presidential term expires on 22 May 2019. According to the electoral law, the election for a new president should be held 30 to 60 days before the expiry date, which is between 22 March and 22 April 2019. Article 71 of the electoral law stipulates that the IEC should announce the election date at least 180 days in advance, and publish the electoral calendar at least 120 days before the election day. This means that the respective deadlines were 22 September to 22 November to announce the date, and 22 October 2018 to 22 December 2018 to publish the electoral calendar. 

(3) The Grand National Coalition was launched on 26 July 2018 as an expansion of the ‘Ankara coalition’ that was formed in June 2017. It also included the New National Front, Mehwar-e Mardom and influential figures from the Greater Kandahar Unity and Coordination Movement and the Eastern Provinces Coordination Council. However, the coalition may have fallen apart, as several of its members have joined different presidential tickets. 

(4) Earlier, on 27 December, Atmar had issued a statement saying that “It seems that the Election Commission under pressure by the government plans to delay the presidential election date which … will lead the country into crisis.” The statement said that he considered any delay illegal and unacceptable and “the beginning of the engineering of the election process by the government.”

(5) The Alliance of Election Observer Groups for Transparent Elections consists of FEFA, Free Watch Afghanistan (FWA), Training Human Rights Association for Afghan Women (THRA), Free Election and Transparency Watch Organisation (FETWO), Elections and Transparency Watch Organisation of Afghanistan (ETWA), and Afghanistan Youths Social and National Organisation.

(6) The IEC had initially planned to hold the district council elections together with the parliamentary elections in October 2018. However, on 29 July 2018, it proposed that they be postponed. The IEC argued that only 40 out of Afghanistan’s 387 districts had an adequate number of candidates to compete. On 27 November, the IEC, in decision number 114-1397 (AAN has seen a copy of it), set the following dates: 20 April 2019 for the presidential elections and parliamentary elections in Ghazni and 30 Sunbula 1398 (21 September 2019) for the provincial and district council elections.

A separate law to regulate the authorities and responsibilities of the councils still has to be approved by parliament and the president. The IDLG had been reportedly holding consultative meetings in different regions of the country on what roles should be codified for district councils. However, since the district council elections were postponed, there is no indication of any progress yet..

(7) Danesh pointed out that the legal term of both the provincial councils and one third of the Meshrano Jirga had already ended, which calls into question the legitimacy of the Meshrano Jirga. Provincial councils are elected for a period of four years, while district councils – which have so far not been established – are to be elected for a period of three years. Two thirds of the Meshrano Jirga’s 102 members are to be elected from among the provincial and district councils. These bodies – and, thus, the electoral processes that elect their members – are particularly relevant for when the government wants to call a Loya Jirga, which according to article 110 of the constitution, comprises of: 1) members of both houses of the national assembly; 2) heads of all provincial councils; and 3) heads of all district councils. 

(8) Tolonews, however, leaked a document by the RAND corporation, a global policy think-tank in the US, titled “Agreement on a Comprehensive Settlement” (AAN has seen a copy of it) that called for the establishment of “a Transitional Government for the 18-month transitional period, including a Transitional Executive with a negotiated by-name list of a Chairman, several Vice Chairmen, and members (rotating chairmanship is suggested in case the parties cannot agree on a single individual to serve as Chairman.” According to Tolonews the document had been shared with several senior Afghan government officials.

Annex: electoral calendars

The IEC has published two calendars: a detailed one also covering the remaining activities linked to the parliamentary elections, and a shortened version dealing only with the presidential elections. Original can be found here.

Calendar 1: Electoral calendar, also including the remaining activities for the parliamentary elections

 ActivityStartEnd Duration1Election Calendar Publication31 December 201831 December 2018 12Wolesi Jirga Elections finalisation – Result announcement23 November 20187 January 2018 483Lessons Learned Workshops HQ and PEOs – Identification of key activities in preparation for the next elections15 December 201831 December 2018 17 4Recruitment for vacant posts – completion of taskhil posts HQ and field offices1 January 201931 March 2019 595Capacity building plan and training for newly hired staff1 February 201931 March 2019 596Development and approval of public outreach plan for top-up voter registration1 January 31 January 2019 31 7Implementation of public outreach plan for top-up voter registration1 January 201931 March 2019 59 8Operations plan and budget finalisation (including NUG and IC funding commitment)20 January 201920 January 2019 19Possible legislative changes required (ie Gahzni elections)31 January 20191 February 2019 210BVV assessment/procurement or introduction of other new technologies1 January 20191 February 2019TBC32 11Security – PC assessment; commitment from ANDSF to electoral timeline1 January 20191 February 2019 3212Socialisation and agreement on readiness report by key stakeholders30 June 201930 June 2019  13Voter list cleaning1 January 201910 March 2019TBC69 14Voter registration update1 March 201920 March 2019 2015Voter registration update Ghazni1 March 201931 March 2019 3116Public display of voters list for review for correction1 March 201931 March 2019 3117Publication of preliminary voter list10 April 201910 April 2019IEC118Objections against the preliminary voter list10 April 201913 April 2019419Corrections on preliminary voters list10 April 201913 April 2019420 Complaints against exhibition and correction process10 April 201927 April 2010ECC1821Candidate nomination Presidential22 December 201820 January 2019 3022Verification of candidate documents – presidential 21 Jaunary 20194 February 2019 1523Publication of preliminary list of candidates5 February 20195 February 2019 124ECC vetting process5 February 201922 March 2019 4625ECC submission of decision (s) to IEC23 March 201923 March 201933+14126Challenges and appeals to preliminary list of candidates5 February 201922 March 2019 4627Candidate withdrawal final date23 March 201923 March 2019 128Ballot lottery 25 March 201925 March 2019 129 Publication of final list of candidates26 March 201926 March 2019 130Candidate nomination PC-DC-Ghazni1 March 201915 March 2019 1531Verification of candidate documents- PC- DC- Ghazni2 March 201921 March 2019 2032ECC vetting process22 March 20196 May 2019 4633ECC submission of decision(s) to IEC29 April 201929 April 2019 134Challenges and appeals to preliminary list of candidates22 March 20196 May 201933+144635Publication of preliminary list of candidates22 March 201922 March 2019 136Candidate withdrawal final date6 May 20196 May 2019 137Ballot lottery 7 May 20197 May 2019 138Publication of final list of candidates7 May 20197 May 2019 139Finalisation of polling centres list by security 20 April 201920 April 2019 140Establishment of media committee1 March 20191 August 2019 15441Accreditation of observers and candidate agents10 January 201910 May 2019 12142Publishing final voter list 1 May 20191 May 2019 143Generation and printing of ballots- arrival of sensitive material at the IEC1 May 201917 June 2019 48 44Presidential campaign period19 May 201917 July 2019 60 45District council and Ghazni WJ campaign period3 July 201917 July 2019 1546Provincial council campaign period28 June 201917 July 2019 2047Sensitive material packing18 June 20192 July 2019 1448Movement of sensitive material from HQ to provincial offices20 June 20194 July  1449Movement of sensitive material from provincial offices to polling centres4 July 19 July 2019 1550Silence period18 July 201919 July 2019 251Submission of compliants on campaign period19 May 201917 July 2019 6052Polling daySaturday, 20 July 2019Saturday, 20 July 2019 153Recording of challenges about E-day for presidential and provincial elections20 July 201921 July 2019ECC254Processing challenges about E-day presidential and provincial, district and Ghazni WJ elections20 July 201921 August 2019ECC3355ECC submission of final decision22 August 201922 August 2019ECC156Tabulation of votes20 July 20199 August 2019 2057Announcement of presidential preliminary results 10 August 201910 August 2019 158Recording of challenges about the preliminary presidential results10 August 201911 August 2019ECC259Processing of challenges about the preliminary presidential results10 August 201912 September 2019ECC3360ECC submission of final decision 13 September 201913 September 2019ECC161Announcement of final presidential results14 September 201914 September 2019 162Announcement of preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results1 September 20191 September 2019 163Recording of challenges about the preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results2 September 20193 September 2019ECC264Processing of challenges about the preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results3 September 20195 October 2019ECC3365ECC submission of final decision6 October 20196 October 2019ECC166Announcement of final provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results 7 October 20197 October 2019 167Presidenetial second round (probable) (1)    

Calendar 2: Electoral calendar for the presidential elections – shortened version

 ActivityStartEndDuration1Voter registration update1 March 201920 March 2019202Voter registration update Ghazni1 March 201931 March 2019313Public display of voters list for review for correction1 March 201931 March 2019314Candidate Nomination Presidential22 December 201920 January 2019305Publication of preliminary list of candidates5 February 20195 February 201916ECC vetting process5 February 201922 March 2019467ECC submission of decision (s) to IEC23 March 201923 March 201918Challenges and appeals to preliminary list of candidates5 February 201922 March 2019469Candidate withdrawal final date23 March 201923 March 2019110Ballot lottery 25 March 201925 March 2019111Publication of final list of candidates26 March 201926 March 2019112Candidate nomination PC-DC-Ghazni1 March 201915 March 20191513Publication of preliminary list of candidates22 March 201922 March 2019114ECC vetting process22 March 20196 May 20194615ECC submission of decision(s) to IEC29 April 201929 April 2019116Challenges and appeals to preliminary list of candidates22 March 20196 May 20194617Candidate withdrawal final date6 May 20196 May 2019118Ballot lottery 7 May 20197 May 2019119Publication of final list of candidates7 May 20197 May 2019120Accreditation of observers and candidate agents10 January 201910 May 201912121Publishing final voter list 1 May 20191 May 2019122Presidential campaign period19 May 201917 July 201960 23District council and Ghazni WJ campaign period3 July 201917 July 20191524Provincial council campaign period28 June 201917 July 20192025Polling daySaturday, 20 July 2019Saturday, 20 July 2019126Tabulation of votes20 July 20199 August 20192027Announcement of presidential preliminary results 10 August 201910 August 2019128Recording of challenges about the preliminary presidential results10 August 201911 August 2019229Processing of challenges about the preliminary presidential results10 August 201912 September 20193330ECC submission of final decision 13 September 201913 September 2019131Announcement of final presidential results14 September 201914 September 2019132Announcement of preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results1 September 20191 September 2019133Recording of challenges about the preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results2 September 20193 September 2019234Processing of challenges about the preliminary provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results3 September 20195 October 20193335ECC submission of final decision6 October 20196 October 2019136Announcement of final provincial and district council and Ghazni WJ results 7 October 20197 October 20191

There has been a fresh attack on civilians by armed men whom the victims’ family and the Paktia provincial governor’s spokesman have said were from the Khost Protection Force, an irregular militia supported by the CIA. A survivor of the attack carried out in Surkai village in Zurmat district, in Paktia province, described to AAN how five men in his family, including three university students, and a neighbour, were summarily executed and how he was questioned by an American in uniform accompanying the Afghan gunmen. The Paktia governor’s spokesman has also confirmed that ‘foreign troops’ were involved in the operation (and the US military spokesman has said the US military was not involved). As AAN Co-Director, Kate Clark, reports, the incident raises yet again the unaccountability of such forces and the impunity with which they act. It also raises the question of motive – this particular family was a bulwark against Haqqani influence in Zurmat.

What happened in Zurmat

On the night of 30 December 2018, Ghulam Muhammad told AAN he was at home in the large compound he shared with his brother, Naim Faruqi, in the village of Surkai, in Zurmat.

I was listening to the ten o’ clock news on the radio. I thought I heard a drone, then, I was not sure – did they make the hole with a bomb or a rocket? – in any case, [a detonation] left a hole in the [compound] wall. I understood this was a raid, as I have seen many before… Then, there was shouting that no-one should move or turn on the lights.

Uniformed men with night vision goggles and head-mounted lights had forced their way into his home.  “When they came into my room,” he said, “I stuck my hands up.” He said one of the girls of the house who is disabled cried out in Pashto and the men said they would not harm her as they took him outside. From the room came the sound of a muffled shot. He would later learn his younger brother, Sayid Hassan, had been shot dead.

With the armed Afghans, he said, was an American who asked, via a translator, if Ghulam Muhammad knew the Taleban commander, ‘Sargardan’. He said he told the American that there was no one by that name in Paktia or Paktika. The name is indeed strange. Then, he said the American told him Commander Sargardan had come to the house the previous day and sat with his brother. Ghulam Muhammad said he had been trying to explain how the previous day he had met someone very different, the “tough anti-Taleban” border commander from neighbouring Matakhan district of Khost province, Commander Wadud. Ghulam Muhammad said they had discussed security and he had suggested to Wadud there should be a checkpost in his area – evidence, presumably, that he and his household could not possibly be a threat or supporting the insurgency. He said the American had been listening to this conversation when he asked about the commander.

According to Ghulam Muhammad, the men of the house were separated into different groups. One of the armed Afghans revealed they had orders to kill him, but instead, he was going to spare him. Saying “Pray for me, as I am saving you,” he sent Ghulam Muhammad to a ruined building nearby, telling him to wait there. He waited a long time, until concern over one daughter with a heart problem sent him back to the house. 

I heard her voice [so knew she was alright]. When I got into the house, I went to my room and saw that Sayid Hassan had been killed. I went to the guest room and found Atiqullah and Fath al-Rahman, also dead. [In another room] were Naim and Karim, both killed – one of my nieces, the daughter of Naim, was with them. Naim was sat on the floor – he had been shot in the eye. Karim had been shot in the mouth and his face was destroyed…

The wolf from the mountains doesn’t carry out such actions. They shot them in the eyes and mouths, where the women were sitting, a mother was sitting. I can’t explain… And those young people, they were the future of Afghanistan, students at university. 

Later, at around 1.30 am, a phone call came – it was the son of a neighbour, Muhammad Omar. He said his father had been martyred. Then, at dawn, Ghulam Muhammad said, neighbours came with lanterns.

In all, six men had been killed: Naim Faruqi and Sayid Hassan (Ghulam Muhammad’s brothers), Muhammad Karim (his son and Naim’s son-in-law), Fath al-Rahman and Atiqullah (Naim’s sons) and Muhammad Omar, a farmer and neighbour of Naim. Ghulam Muhammad had five bodies to prepare for burial.

In our culture, the bodies of martyrs do not have to be washed… But Islam says that if someone says a word after they have been wounded [and before they die] then they must be washed. We had not seen the martyrs die, [so we didn’t know if they had said anything]. So we agreed that, to be careful, we should bathe them.

The funerals, however, were delayed. The family decided to go with the bodies to the governor. They could have gone to see the governor either of Paktika where they believed the armed men had come from, or their own province, Paktia. They chose their own provincial capital, Gardez, said Ghulam Muhammad:

We decided that ten cars should go. But when people got to hear of it, 100 vehicles came. The deputy governor [Alhaj Abdul Wali Sahi] met us on the steps and told us that he understood a terrible thing has been done. We have no response for you. This was oppression.

A later delegation went to see the Paktia governor himself, Shamim Katawazi who, Ghulam Muhammad reported, was hostile. He fully defended the operation and criticised the people of Zurmat for, he said, not resisting the Taleban. Ghulam Muhammad said the governor also told him there was a ‘kill list’ of 16 other men and he was on it. The governor’s spokesman denied the governor had said this or that the Khost Protection Force has a kill list.

A government investigation team from Kabul, including head of the Senate security commission Hashim Alakozai has visited the house. The Paktia governor’s spokesman also told AAN that the provincial authorities, including the deputy governor, local NDS and other security institutions were also investigating. As of now, nothing has been reported back to the family or the public.

Who was killed

The brothers, Naim Faruqi and Ghulam Muhammad, had seen many night raids, more than one hundred, since 2001. Both had been commanders with the mujahedin faction, Harakat-e Enqelab-e Islami, fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and the third brother, Sayid Hassan, a younger man had been a junior commander in the later stages of the war. After the PDPA government of Dr Najibullah lost power to the mujahedin in 1992, Naim became district governor of Zurmat and Ghulam Muhammad became the district police chief, staying on in these posts when the Taleban captured Paktia in 1995. Many Harakatis, including the sub-faction the brothers belonged to, led by Mawlawi Nasrullah Mansur, joined the Taleban (see AAN reporting here), so the fact that the brothers kept their posts under the Taleban government was unremarkable. After 2001, however, they were among the many civilians caught up in the madness of the campaigns of mass arbitrary arrests carried out by the United States military and CIA in the first two years of the intervention.

Those detained in Zurmat and sent to the US prison camp in Guantanamo (many more were sent to Bagram or held locally) ranged from prominent elders and mullahs to criminals to a twelve year old boy, a victim of bacha bazi. They included reconciled Taleban, those who had opposed (and been jailed and tortured) by the Taleban when the movement was in power, and men who had tried to stand up to the corrupt provincial government officials appointed by President Karzai and then defence minister Marshall Qasim Fahim in 2001. Details of these detentions can be read in Anand Gopal’s book “No Good Men Among The Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes” (pages 133-139). Details of the disastrous government appointments and ensuing corruption and abuses that fed rebellion and insurgency can be found in this AAN dispatch, “2001 Ten Years on (3): The fall of Loya Paktia and why the US preferred warlords”. 

Those sent from Zurmat to Guantanamo included Naim Faruqi, as Gopal writes:

Commander Naim was an eminent tribal elder who had been elected security chief of Zurmat following the Russian departure, stayed on through the Taliban years, and was reelected in 2002. An ardent supporter of the Americans and one of the most popular figures in Zurmat, he nonetheless discovered one day that some men under his command had been detained by US troops. When Naim showed up to ask why, he, too, was arrested, blindfolded, and handcuffed. “They stripped me naked, out in the open, where everyone could see,” he told a reporter. “I was thinking that these are infidels who have come to a Muslim country to imprison us, just like the Russians.” Taken from one base to the next, Naim eventually found himself shackled in the wire-mesh cages of Kandahar Airfield. “We were without hope because we were innocent,” he recalled. “I was very sad because I could not see my children, family, friends. But what could we do?” 

Naim suspected that a rival, Mullah Qasim, had given false information to the Americans and got him detained (see also documentation from Guantanamo). Such false tip-offs, made by Afghans for money or to get the US military and CIA to target their personal rivals were common in this era. Naim was eventually assessed as “neither affiliated with al-Qaeda nor being a Taliban leader” and as not posing “a future threat to the U.S. or U.S. interests.” He was recommended for release on 18 January 2003 and transferred to Afghan custody, and, Gopal writes, finally released “following intense tribal pressure.” Sources in Paktia said Karzai offered Naim the Zurmat district governorship after his release, but he declined, saying that, having lost everything, he did not want to be further involved, and that the government and the people of Zurmat should adhere to a policy of mutual non-interference.

Naim was detained, yet again, in 2010 and this time taken to the US detention camp north of Kabul at Bagram airfield, as Gopal describes:

[In 2010], Naim attended a meeting with the governor to discuss how they could convince insurgents to come in from the cold and support the government. Upon leaving, he was arrested by American special forces. Angry protests swept the province, and merchants carried out a three-day general strike in his support. 

Naim was in Bagram for more than two years. Ghulam Mohammad and Sayid Hassan (the other brother killed on 30 December) were also both jailed in Bagram, in 2002, for two and three years respectively.

‘Naim Faruqi’s is a well-known, landowning family. A sign of their standing in the province is that Ghulam Muhammad was one of Paktia’s representatives to the Emergency Loya Jirga of 2002. The process of selecting and electing these representatives was easily the cleanest exercise in democracy Afghans have experienced since 2001 with the majority of those sent to Kabul genuinely popular and representative (see AAN reporting here). Throughout the years, despite the raids and detention, Naim maintained relations with the provincial authorities and participated in jirgas. One source said he had been due to see Paktia’s governor Shamim Katawazaithe week after his death. None of those killed in the raid were combatants. If the authorities had wanted to question any of them, they could have asked them to come to Gardez. 

Killing civilians is, of course, a war crime. Even if it was not, politically and militarily, the killing of these six men makes no sense. In a province like Paktia where the Haqqani network is powerful, such families as Naim’s, with their strong background in the anti-Soviet jihad and standing in the community provide a bulwark against the insurgents – not just politically, but also militarily.

Naim and his brothers, the older Ghulam Muhammad and the late Sayed Hassan, have repeatedly blocked Haqqani expansion from the network’s base to the south in the Shahi Kot highlands area of Zurmat district. There were clashes five years ago between the brothers and other local men, and Sulaimanzai Kuchis whom, Paktian sources said, had been armed and supported by the Haqqanis. The Kuchis were claiming government land on the western side of the Shahikot escarpment (between Sahawza and Shahikot). The Zurmatis interpreted this as an attempt by the Haqqanis capture their area and extend the Haqqanis’ sphere from Shahikot deeper into Zurmat. They forcibly expelled the Kuchis. 

Later, there were demands for transit ‘rights’ through the Zurmat valley by the Haqqanis and their allies, who locals call ‘Kafkazis’, often translated as ‘Chechens’, but more accurately Muslims from the north Caucasus or, even more broadly, former Soviet Union (see earlier AAN work on the difficulty of defining ‘Chechen’ during the Afghan war (here and here). The foreign fighters, members of al-Qaeda, have established bases in Shahi Kot and, with the Haqqanis, wanted to be able to travel through Zurmat and on to Gardez and potentially Kabul. Naim and his brothers rejected this, on the basis that it was their territory and that no one had the right to enter or operate in it but them, and they did not want their area further affected by the conflict or the Haqqanis expanding. In the summer of 2017, AAN was told, the foreign fighters established a post near Surdiwal on the junction linking Shahikot, Nek, Surkai and Gardez. The Zurmatis set up three posts to block them. They refused to move and the Zurmatis attacked, with men lost on both sides and the Haqqanis and foreign fighters forced to retreat. There were similar clashes in the summer of 2019 with again the Haqqanis and their allies withdrawing. 

All this makes the motive behind the killing of Naim and his family members and neighbour baffling. The KPF and the CIA, counter-insurgency forces bent on battling the Haqqanis, have succeeded in aiding their enemies. Also, when considering the future of places like Zurmat and Paktia, the loss of the three sons, all at university, is troubling. Zurmat is a conservative province and most families send their sons to the local madrassa to get educated. Naim and Gul Muhammad were from the small handful of families sending their boys to college. In a country where the cultural and political split between modern and madrassa education is sharp, killing off university students who are the sons of traditional madrassa-educated men undermines future hopes for social reconciliation.

The victims

1. Naim Faruqi

Around 60 years old, former front commander with Haraqat-e Enqelab and district governor of Zurmat.

2. Sayid Hassan

Mid-40s, brother of Faruqi and Ghulam Muhammad, a businessman. He had served as Harakat commander in the latter stages of the fight against the Soviet army and PDPA government. During Rabbani’s mujahedin government (1992-1996), he was head of an intelligence unit (qeta-ye kashf)in the Gardez Army Corps. 

3. Muhammad Karim

Son-in-law of Naim Faruqi and son of Ghulam Muhammad. In his twenties. Student in his fourth year at Gardez university. 

4. Fath al-Rahman 

Son of Naim. In his twenties. Student in third year of Khost university.

5 Attiqullah

Son of Naim, In his twenties, student at the Sharia faculty, University in Khost. 

6. Muhammad Omar,  a farmer and neighbour of Naim.

Who carried out the killings?

The armed men who came to Naim’s house were uniformed and well-equipped. They were accompanied by a foreigner who spoke English and asked questions through an interpreter. Ghulam Muhammad said he had been told by one of his sons in Sharana, the provincial capital of neighbouring Paktika, that a convoy of 50 vehicles had come from there that evening. The family believe the armed men who carried out the raid were from the Khost Protection Force (KPF) which is under nominal NDS command, and operates with CIA support out of its base in Camp Chapman in Khost province. It also has battalions, AAN was told, in Sharana and Gardez. (1) The Paktia Governor’s spokesman, Abdullah Hasrat, confirmed to AAN that those carrying out the operation were from the Khost Protection Force and also that “foreign troops” were involved. The US military spokesman, David Butler, told AAN that US military personnel were not involved in this operation. 

The allegation is reasonable, that the KPF carried out the killings, and also that the American accompanying them was from the CIA. Allegations against the Khost Protection Force are longstanding and include extrajudicial killing, torture, beating and unlawful detentions. The occasional presence of CIA personnel or ‘Americans’ or ‘foreigners’ when atrocities have been carried out has also been alleged before.

The KPF is a ‘campaign force’, one of the Afghan militias established after 2001 under international (usually CIA or US special forces) control. Other examples include the Kandahar Strike Force and Paktika’s Afghan Security Guards. The Khost Protection Force emerged out of the 25th Division of the ‘Afghan Military Forces’, the term used to describe the various Afghan armed forces that came under formal Ministry of Defence command in 2001 and 2002 and received US funding. This was before the creation of the Afghan National Army. The Afghan Military Forces encompassed a wide range of militias and forces drawn from the Northern Alliance and those loyal to pro-US Pashtun commanders. The 25th Division in Khost was unusual in that it had a high proportion of former members of the PDPA army, from the party’s Khalqi wing, including its commander, General Khialbaz who is from Khost’s Zazi Maidan district.The 25thDivision was spared Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) because of its good links to the CIA, although Khialbaz claimed to this author in 2004 it was because of its success as a “non-partisan grouping.” Over the years, accusations against the KPF have been numerous and their modus operandiconsistent:

In 2014,UNAMA found that five detainees who had been arrested by the Khost Protection Force together with international military forces and detained at the US Camp Chapman basein Khost had been subjected to ill-treatment. 

In December 2015, The Washington Post  and New York Times both reported allegations against the KPF of killing civilians, torture, questionable detentions, arbitrary arrests and the use of excessive force in night raidsand the presence of what the papers called “American advisors.” The Washington Post described a raid carried out in October 2015 similar to that which was carried out on Naim Faruqi’s house.

“When my father opened the gate, they shot him dead,” recalled [Darwar] Khan, who was inside the house at the time. “Then, they tossed a grenade into the compound, killing my mother.” His father was a farmer. His mother was a homemaker… (2)

UNAMA’s 2016 mid-year report cited particular concerns about the number of civilian casualties caused by the Khost Protection Force.

In 2018, UNAMA, in its third quarterly report into the protection of civilians, again named the Khost Protection Force, along with NDS Special Forces, which are also backed by the CIA and operate outside formal ANSF command.

In the first nine months of 2018, UNAMA documented 222 civilian casualties (178 deaths and 44 injured) caused during search operations by Pro-Government Forces, more than double the number recorded during the same period in 2017. UNAMA attributed 143 civilian casualties (124 deaths and 19 injured) to search operations involving National Directorate of Security (NDS) Special Forces, either alone or partnered with international military forces. 

UNAMA said it had also received “consistent, credible accounts of intentional destruction of civilian property, illegal detention, and other abusescarried out by NDS Special Forces and pro-Government armed groups, including the Khost Protection Force.” 

Most recently, in December 2018, The New York Times reported how ‘campaign forces’ including NDS special forces and the Khost Protection Force were leaving “a trail of abuse and anger.” The newspaper reported the a night raid on a house in Nader Shah Kot in Khost province by the KPF in which two men and a woman were allegedly shot deadand the house burned down, within it a three year old girl who burned to death.

Lack of accountability

It has proved impossible for Afghans to hold forces like the KPF and NDS special forces to account. This is due partly to their murky chains of command and partly to the power and secrecy of their backer, the CIA. 

UNAMA has highlighted both issues. In 2018, for example, it said:

These forces are of particular concern as many of them appear to operate outside of the Afghan National Security Forces’ chain of command, resulting in a lack of clear oversight and accountability given the absence of clearly defined jurisdiction for the investigation of any allegations against them.

It has called for the KPF’s integration into regular ANSF “with clear reporting lines to the Government and that jurisdiction for the investigation of any allegations against them are clearly defined in law.” (see here). Until such time as these forces are regularised, it said “their activities are contrary to the laws of Afghanistan and the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.”

In its third quarterly report for 2018, UNAMA mentioned the problems it was facing just trying to talk to NDS special forces and the KPF and their backers: “The mission urges NDS and international military forces working with NDS Special Forces to provide a point of contact through which UNAMA may engage with these groups.” Humanitarian agencies working in Khost have also faced similar problems trying to get the sort of protocols they have with other parties to the conflict so that, for example, they can get through KPF checkpoints or have a point of contact if something goes wrong. 

Yet, the problem is not only with the KPF’s murky chain of command, but also the secrecy with which its backer operates. Since late 2001, the CIA has operated out of the Ariana Hotel, between the Presidential Palace and the US Embassy and NATO/US military headquarters. Unlike the US military, it can not be contacted by Afghan MPs or their constituents, the media or NGOs. Again, unlike the military which publishes its training and legal manuals, we do not know whether agency operatives get training in the Laws of Armed Conflict or are disciplined for breaching them. The only monitoring of the CIA is in the United States and is domestic, through the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Moreover, different US legislation governs the CIA and the military. The CIA, as opposed to the military, has extensive license to run secret programmes and the government is legally restricted from providing information about them. This has also meant the NDS is excluded from monitoring by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), one of its officials told AAN, because its funding comes from the CIA. The agency is also not subject to human rights vetting procedures under America’s Leahy Law, which proscribes the use of American taxpayer dollars to assist, train or equip any foreign military or police unit perpetrating gross human rights violations. (See AAN reporting on the use of this law against the late General Razeq, former police chief of Kandahar province and reporting on the CIA in Afghanistan (here  and here).

What happens next?

In the early years of the intervention, hubris and ignorance led to many civilians being targeted, detained and tortured by the CIA and its allies (as well as by the US military) for unfathomable reasons. One would assume those days were long over. Yet, the reported presence of an American at the house where the six civilians were killed on 30 December 2018 suggests this was not the work of a ‘rogue group’, but authorised. From a counter-insurgency standpoint, the killings in Zurmat make no sense whatsoever; they will hamper attempts to curb Haqqani influence in Zurmat district. The killings look to be the consequence of bad intelligence and the lack of even rudimentary knowledge of provincial politics and military history. They are also the consequence of the secrecy and lack of accountability surrounding both the CIA and the Khost Protection Forces, which make abuses and breaches of the Laws of War more likely to happen. 

Who ordered these killings and why needs to be investigated and those responsible held to account. Also, of immediate concern to civilians in the province is the suggestion that the KPF is operating a ‘kill list’. If Afghans are not to fear more extrajudicial killings from this and similar forces in their country, there needs to be a full, public and judicial investigation into the deaths of the six men in Surkai village on 30 December. 

(1) As well as the KPF having a record of committing extrajudicial killings, one friend of the family from Zurmat said that, while he was sitting with elders from Sharana, received a call from someone identifying himself as the “secretary of Tanai,” presumed to be Nemat Tanai, commander of the KPF. He reportedly warned the elders not to hold the large memorial service they were planning and said there were 12 more people from Ghulam Muhammad’s family who should be eliminated (“Bayed gilim jam shawa”).

(2) Darwar told the Post he was taken with his brother to Camp Chapman where he was “interrogated by Afghans, but Americans fingerprinted him and scanned his eyes, communicating with him through an interpreter.” His uncle who lived next door appeared to have been the target of the raid. He bought and sold Kalashnikov rifles, his relatives said, “hardly the high-level type of suspect the CIA typically targets,” reported the Post. He was also detained and was still unaccounted for when the Post reported the raid two months later. 

(3) The killing of Naim Faruqi brings to mind the targeted killing of another civilian who had huge potential for peace-making, but was tarred by his having been a pre-2001 Taleban commander, Zabet Amanullah. He was killed while campaigning as an agent for his nephew in the 2010 parliamentary elections in Takhar province. Our granular investigation revealed the extent of the bad intelligence behind the targeting.

A new local defence force is being mobilised in Afghanistan. The establishment of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force was announced by President Ashraf Ghani in April 2018. Careful consideration has gone into its design, with safeguards built in to try to avoid the pitfalls associated with previous locally-recruited forces, such as the Afghan Local Police. AAN Co-Director Kate Clark (with input from Erica Gaston and Ali Yawar Adili) has been speaking to some of those involved in setting up the new force. In this dispatch, she looks at what the Territorial Force is and whether it will be better than its predecessors in protecting local people and holding territory, and not being co-opted by strongmen or factional interests. She reports that haste to get ‘boots on the ground’ over the summer has already led to an expansion of the Territorial Force before pilots were evaluated. She also looks in detail at the Territorial Force companies now being set up Jaghori in Ghazni province. 

This dispatch is published as part of a joint three-year project (funded by the Netherlands Research Organisation) by AAN, the Global Public Policy institute (GPPi) and the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani exploring the role and impact of militias, local or regional defence forces and other quasi-state forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

A translation of the as yet unpublished decree authorising the new force appears in an annex to this dispatch.

1. What is the Afghan Territorial Force (ANA TF)?

The Afghan National Army Territorial Force (ANA TF) (quwat-ha-ye manteqawi urdu-e milli-ye afghanistan) (also referred to in Persian as the ‘territorial army’ or urdu-e manteqawi) is a new local defence force currently being mobilised under the Ministry of Defence as part of the Afghan National Army (ANA). Each company (tolai) draws soldiers from a particular district but is led by officers from outside that district who are already serving in the regular ANA or who are in the ANA reserves. The aim is for the Territorial Force to eventually be 36,000 strong.

The ANA TF was authorised by presidential decree (a copy of which is in an annex) in February 2018. The initial aim was for a pilot phase in eight to ten locations and, after evaluation, for it to roll out to a phase 1 with as many as 48 districts (discussed below) and then a phase 2. President Ghani announced the establishment of the Territorial Force on 5 March 2018, recruitment was reported to have begun on 15 April and the training of the first 370 “cadets” at the Kabul Military Training Centre reported on 11 June.

2. Why was a local defence force felt to be necessary?

Despite the many pitfalls associated with local defence forces – see the next Q&A for detail on this – international forces and the Afghan government have kept returning to them because when they work, they work extremely well, producing determined fighters with local knowledge who protect the civilians in their areas and often stand their ground more than regular troops because they have nowhere else to retreat to. (See AAN case studies in Yahyakhel, Paktika and Shajoy. As AAN detailed in “Enemy Number 1: How the Taleban deal with the ALP and uprising groups”, this has made them more feared and hated by the Taleban than regular Afghan forces or even foreign troops. Equally significant is that local forces are cheaper to mobilise and support. 

As to the ANA TF specifically, Ministry of Defence (MoD) sources told AAN the idea for it came out of brainstorming between President Ghani and the then commander of NATO and United States forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson and was an attempt to address four key issues: 

1. 1) Supporting ANA forces at current levels is not financially sustainable in the long-run or by the government of Afghanistan. (1)
2. 2) The need to free up regular ANA for offensive, not defensive/hold operations, something which, in turn, should mean Afghan special forces are less stretched. (2)
3. 3) The need to address ANA recruitment gaps and retention issues, including the hope that Pashtuns from the south and east might be more willing to serve if they could stay in their home areas. 
4. 4) The need to leverage local knowledge and expertise. As one Ministry of Defence official put it, regular ANA “keep walking into traps that a normal villager wouldn’t.” 

Also at issue was continuing United States dissatisfaction with the Afghan Local Police (ALP), which is currently about 28,000 strong (see page 102 of the latest SIGAR report). The US is the sole funder of the ALP and, as AAN has written, has put significant pressure on it to reform and address allegations of abuse, misconduct and graft. Even so, in the face of continued US Congressional scrutiny and criticism from many sides, the US had been poised to cut funding to it by the end of 2017. Dislike of the ALP is not directly related to the ANA TF mobilisation, but a significant impetus seems to have been to channel US ALP funds into a more accountable and fit-for-purpose local force programme.

3. Why was setting up a new local defence force controversial?

When word came out, in September 2017, that a new force was being planned, it was met with concern (see reporting by AAN here and here), Human Rights Watch and various media, for example, here. This was not the first effort to mobilise local forces and, whether paid for by the international military or government, they have had a sorry history, of association with war crimes, impunity and graft, capture by factional, ethnic, tribal and/or criminal interests, and some with collusion. There have been many iterations of the local forces model since 2001, including the CIA or US military-backed ‘campaign forces’ (in the news recently again with allegations of summary executions, private security companies, the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and popular uprising forces (for the full, long list, see this AAN/GPPi review). National security forces have not been immune to problems of corruption and factional capture either, as AAN has detailed in its look at the Ministry of Interior and Afghan National Police (ANP). However, local forces have been particularly prone to committing abuses with impunity and of capture by local interests and are often referred to by Afghans simply as ‘militias’. 

The largest of the recent local force mobilisations, the ALP, was envisioned in 2009 as a sort of ‘community watch’ with local forces protecting their communities and standing up to the Taleban. However, as the programme expanded, it became a way for Kabul politicians and regional strongmen to put their militias on the payroll and many ALP were found to abuse local people more than they protected them (see examples of abuse allegations in part III of the AAN/GPPi review).

The other current iteration of the local defence force model are the popular uprising forces (wulusi patsunin Pashto and khezesh-e mardomi in Persian).Emerging since 2012, but especially from 2015, these groups supposedly coalesce from spontaneous rebellions by local civilians against the Taleban. The resistance usually turns out to have been prompted by or was soon supported/co-opted by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), with, it has been assumed, the support of its main sponsor and funder, the CIA. As the UNAMA human rights unit has pointed out in their reports on the protection of civilians in the conflict, uprising groups have no legal status. Nor is it clear what, if any, chain of command they answer to. (3) Consequently, there are also no formal mechanisms for accountability. 

Afghans also remember the war crimes, impunity and general state dissolution associated with the PDPA-era kandakha-ye qawmi (‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic battalions’) usually referred to in English as ‘tribal militias’. These were mobilised especially by President Najibullah in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (4) He came to rely on them to defend his government and as the Afghanistan Justice Project’s “Casting Shadows: War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: 1978-2001”, has documented, this helped them enjoy effective impunity. 

Yet the idea of setting up a new local defence force was not only controversial for human rights activists. The leadership of the Ministry of Defence was initially allergic to the idea of hosting a local defence force, adamant that a ‘militia force’ would not be planted in its ranks, given the record of the ALP and uprising groups and the tribal militias. They also bore in mind the 1990s civil war when the national army split on ethnic grounds and joined the various warring tribal militias and mujahedin factions. “Militias are like a poison for building a force with integrity,” one MoD official told AAN. The tribal militias, he said, were “small snakes turned dragons with funding and weapons,” while the ALP “had destroyed the name of the [Afghan National] Police.” 

4. How is the ANA TF different from the ALP? 

At first blush, the ANA TF and ALP models seem quite similar. Both are designed to mobilise men from a local community (neither recruit women, unlike the regular ANA and ANP) and develop them into a defensive, hold force. They are supposed to be auxiliary or adjunct forces only, with limited weaponry (5) and a limited geographical remit permitting them to operate within their own communities. However, the ALP operates at village level, the ANA TF at district level; Territorial Force soldiers can be deployed anywhere within their district, making the force, it is hoped, less prone to very local capture. Restrictions are also more explicitly spelled out for the ANA TF (including that they may not independently undertake duties in enemy-controlled areas, carry out independent offensive manoeuvres, or undertake civilian policing or “dangerous operations, such as strikes, arrests and rescue operations” (for more detail, see the Annex), but were also implicitly part of the model for the ALP. 

One major change is that the ANA TF falls under Afghan National Army command rather than, as the ALP does, the Afghan National Police. The ANA has generally had far better command and control than the ANP with a more advanced (and functional) disciplinary and military justice system, to which the ANA TF would be fully subject. The Ministry of Defense also has a better accountability record with donors than the Ministry of Interior and has been much better able to escape factional and criminal interests. 

Other differences in command, oversight and training are designed to reinforce MoD command and control, and institutional accountability. Each Territorial Force company will be under the command of officers from the regular ANA, ideally from the reserves, and these officers may not come from the company’s district (although Non-Commissioned Officers, NCOs, can be). By contrast, ALP units follow a local commander, something which increased the tendency towards pre-existing militia units simply being ‘re-hatted’ as ALP, with their commanders and other agendas intact (see Derksen’s comprehensive paper detailing this enduring pattern). ANA corps commanders select the officers and NCOs of the ANA TF. Having an experienced, professional leadership, said one international advisor “should be a counterbalance to it becoming too local a force.” 

Other efforts are going into institutionalising Territorial Force soldiers into the rest of the ANA (here, there have been some minor modifications between the plan and what has eventually transpired – see question 9 below). ANA TF recruits are subject to the same ten-week training as regular soldiers, including on human rights, rule of law, and humanitarian law. The initial aim was for recruits first to come to Kabul for an initial round of training and then to have another round regionally at the ANA headquarters they were to deploy under; this was to ensure good cooperation between regular and territorial soldiers. The original plan was for ANA TF soldiers to live in ANA barracks, co-located with regular soldiers, again to ‘socialise’ them into the ANA. ANA TF soldiers will only be allowed home when not on duty (this has not been changed), unlike the ALP who live at home.

These institutional changes could make a difference. Perhaps more importantly, every Afghan and international involved in setting up the new force has shown a greater interest in getting recruitment and ANA TF locations right from the start. The spectres of the past – Dr Najib’s militias and the civil war, the ALP and uprising forces – spurred those planning the new force into incorporating as many safeguards as possible.

Two other major differences between the ANA TF and ALP relate to funding and image. The creation of the ANA TF does not mean the overall force strength (tashkil)of the ANA will grow; every Territorial Force soldier stood up means giving up a regular ANA soldier, with the overall size of the ANA held steady. The formation of the ANA TF within the ANA, then, should not inflate costs and, in the long run, because a local force is cheaper to maintain, should reduce them.

Also significant is that, while European countries have never funded the ALP on the grounds that it is a ‘militia’, NATO is involved in the ANA TF, although it remains a largely US-military supported force.

5. Who gets to join the force and what are the benefits? 

The general requirement is for men aged 18 to 40 who are from the district, with a preference for former members of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Hopeful recruits have to pass a background check by NDS and, according to an MoD official, be vouched for by local elders (the presidential decree specifies elders vouching only for former members of the ANSF, not other recruits. Sources have also said recruits need to be signed off by the provincial governor or his/her deputy, although this is also not mentioned in the presidential decree. 

In an attempt to avoid ANA TF companies effectively being captured by pre-existing local militias, planners told AAN that members of the ALP and uprisers were banned from joining the new force. 

ANA TF wages are set at 75 per cent of a regular ANA soldier’s wage. The 25 per cent reduction sets off the benefit of serving in one’s home area. The hope is that the wage will be high enough to encourage enlisting, but not so high as to make the ANA TF more attractive than the regular ANA. ANA TF soldiers and officers or their families get the same benefits as those in the regular ANA if they are disabled or killed in action. Officers get the same wages as regular officers. There is also a career structure: ANA TF can be promoted, but only if they leave their districts; officers can move back to the ANA and will be treated the same as other offices. 

6. Is the ANA TF a community force, or just a local recruitment arm of the ANA?

AAN’s research into what works and what does not with the ALP suggests that behind the success stories lies strong community engagement and control and a determination to have all groups within a local population involved (see the Yahyakhel and Shajoy case studies and a contrary example of what can go wrong when there is not widespread community support in AAN’s Andar case study). A locally-backed force not only benefits from intelligence and tip-offs, but its members tend to fight harder when defending their own people. The opposite is also true; imposing a local force on a population which does not view it as legitimate can benefit the Taleban. It will then be they who benefit from tip-offs, intelligence and recruits. Where local communities have had some authority over the establishment of an ALP unit, recruitment to and some control over it, those units appear to behave and fight better (although a local force with the backing of only some elements of the community may also fight well, as was seen in the Andar case study).

Those behind the ANA TF – both international and Afghan – have all stressed community involvement in the new force. However, most of the innovations designed to make it different from the ALP involve elevating institutional controls, without the same attention to community control and support. The presidential decree setting up the ANA TF deals almost entirely with the state’s role in recruitment and command and control. The one specific role given to ‘the community’ is in guaranteeing former ANSF members who want to serve in the new force. On paper, this is less involvement than communities were given in the setting up of ALP units (although in practice, ALP models of full community engagement in selection and accountability rarely bore out in reality, see section II of the AAN/GPPi literature review). AAN was told there is more detail in the guidance given to those setting up the force, but we are not privy to that. 

Those involved in mobilising the ANA TF pilot forces also described the need for ‘community sensitisation’ and public education, before asking for volunteers, and recommendations from elders and community leaders. It appears that there are aspirations for community involvement and a desire for the ANA TF to be ‘local’ in a sense greater than just to be made up of men living in a particular district. However, the means of achieving this does not appear, as yet, thought-out. In April 2018, we were told the pilots would be watched carefully to see how this aspect of the force panned out. This, however, did not turn out as planned – more on which below. Also, some innovations have been made to the model – again, more on which below. 

7. Why was the location of ANA TF companies such a difficult issue?

The question of where to locate the pilot projects was critical and highly contentious. “Everyone had a view on where they should be located,” one international planner told AAN. “It was very painful. There was a lot of internal politicking, disagreements.” Strict criteria had been agreed in order to avoid the many problems associated with ALP mobilisation. ALP units were stood up in places where the model was never designed to work: in areas where it could never be a ‘hold’ force because active fighting was not over, where the community did not want it and would not support it, or where the presence of factional interests, illicit economic sources, or local strongmen was likely to result in a compromised or self-interested force. The cautions against mobilising ALP in these environments were often ignored due to expediency, pressing security demands and political pressure (for a behind-the-scenes accounts of these pressures, see our analysis of the setting up of the Andar ALP). Political pressure on the ALP remains to this day. Ministry of Interior officials have described to AAN how politicians and MPs still constantly ask for ‘their own’ ALP units to be set up in their home areas. 

Those establishing the ANA TF told AAN they sought to avoid these issues by only choosing districts where the model could work. They had to be in what the military calls ‘green areas’, ie in territory held by the government or only ‘lightly contested’ and locations need to be near regular ANA back-up. As one international officer said, “Because they are a static force. The precursor [for the ANA TF] has to be a clearing operation, with the potential to last. These are not even yellow areas. They have to be green.” They also had to be in locations where they would not in danger of being caught up in politics and factional interests, but where there was support form the governor and corps commander, and where they were needed.

Given this background and these guidelines, discussions were fierce. A long-list of 120 locations was whittled down, but even then, the ‘final list’ went through numerous iterations: 38 different sites were decided upon only for most to be ruled out. Eventually, an actual final list of nine locations was determined. Sites were ruled out because they were too vulnerable to the Taleban or to narrow political self-interest and interference or to factional or ethnic takeover or because they were safe and did not need an ANA TF company. 

One Ministry of Defence official described the selection process as “agonising.” He also recounted the political pressure put on Afghan planners from some of the highest officials in government to locate ANA TF companies in their areas. Nevertheless, the determination that ANA TF companies would not be co-opted by strongmen, MPs or factional, ethnic or tribal interests was strong. Whenever these requests were made, the MoD official said, “We kept pushing back.” Luckily, he said, they could use the US military as cover. “We told them, ‘Sure. We can create a unit, but General Nicholson won’t pay for it.’ Then they backed down.” The Tribes and Borders Minister, Agha Sherzai, also made a bid for half of the planned funding, so that he could make ‘tribal forces’ to guard the borders, or as interlocutors with AAN put it “arm ‘his’ Barakzais [ie men from his tribe].” 

ANA TF recruits being trained at the Kabul Military Training Centre in Kabul, (US Air Force Sgt Sharida Jackson June 2018)

8. How has the pilot phase of the Territorial Force gone?

In the summer of 2018, there was a major change of plan: the ANA TF pilot was rolled into phase 1 – with 52 more locations added – before the pilot had finished or been evaluated. This was explained variously as either General Nicholson operating under intense pressure from Washington for quick results and evidence of progress in the war, or him wanting to capitalise on the dynamics of the Eid ceasefire. It came as a great surprise then, especially given the painstaking care which had gone into designing the ANA TF and pinpointing the most suitable locations and the insistence that the pilot would be evaluated before moving on that expansion was expedited. Haste to get boots on the ground in the hope of changing fortunes on the battlefield has been a factor behind earlier forces failing or expanding with design flaws and weaknesses intact. That haste has undermined both national and local forces in the past, including the ANA, ANP and ALP. 

After General Scott Miller took over as commander of NATO and US forces on 2 September 2018, he called a halt to the expansion and a slowing down of the project so that the current ANA TF companies could be reviewed. One of the concerns emerging, AAN was told, was recruitment. A senior international officer said there were doubts as to whether the new companies “reflected community mobilisation,” whether the “current recruitment model worked” and whether there was “accountability.” (6) 

Planners asked AAN not to disclose information as to how many companies are now operational, in training or being recruited. However, they did discuss some of the issues thrown up by the mobilisation up till now. Recruitment has been slow, one MoD planner told us, the result, partly he thought, of the lack of public education as to what the ANA TF is: “The continual militarisation has been confusing, the ALP, the uprising groups, now the Territorial Force, and the local militias of various strong men.” He also said, some specific recruitment issues had emerged: the reluctance of people in the north to ‘give’ more sons to “the Territorial Force or anything else” because of the “many coffins [of ANSF that] have been coming home”; in some places in Loya Paktia, a scarcity or men because they are “already divided between the Taleban, the Haqqani network, the army and working in the Gulf” and; some communities “unwilling to give volunteers because of the repercussions they know will come from the Taleban.” 

The MoD planner also said they had discovered a recruitment problem on the officer side: the ANA reserves, from which the MoD had hoped to draw the ANA TF’s officer corps, were far smaller than the payroll had suggested: “We were supposed to have 18,000 in the reserves. We did an exercise and barely 1,800 turned up. They were dead, had left the country and so on. We didn’t have reserves in the south and east to command these units. So NATO told us we had to [recruit officers] from our active force.”This has been more difficult to achieve than was envisaged, sources told AAN, with officers fearing that serving with the ANA TF, an as-yet untested force, could harm their future chances of advancement in the future. 

9) What changes have been made to the model to address some of these problems?

Perhaps most significantly, a unit within the Independent Directorate of Local Government (IDLG) which works with communities, has been tasked with helping with community mobilisation. The IDLG and its director, Matin Beg, are also advising on locations of ANA TF companies. This came out of the awareness of the “profound need,” as one advisor put it “for the force to be accountable and broadly representative of the community.” In early November 2018, General Miller also stood up a cell within Resolute Support to focus on the ANA TF and ensure coordination, accountability and synchronisation (a military term to do with timings, in this case that training, equipment, support etc are available at the appropriate times). Many of the officers in the cell are veterans of the Village Stabilisation Operations (VSO) programme, which set up the precursors to the ALP and the ALP (for detail on this, see the AAN/GPPi review cited earlier), which means they are very aware of the many problems setting up a local force can run into. 

International advisors told AAN there are now specific mechanisms for consulting local communities and that various people need to agree to a company being established in a particular district for it to go ahead: elders in the district need to meet in a ‘security shura’ to formally agree to the ANA TF company and there also has to be agreement and support by the IDLG, ANA corps commander and provincial and district governors. AAN was also told there had been a ‘circling back’ to reassess the Territorial Force companies authorised over the summer. Corps commanders and advisors have now re-assessed each one and were happy that the ‘accountability pillars’ – agreement by elders, provincial and district governors – were in place and there was ANA support. One advisor, who worked on the ALP in 2010 and recalls how the US military accelerated its expansion – “punched the gas” – and all the problems that then ensued, said they were in a “lucky position” this time and the ANA TF companies so far were “right.” She added, “What we have is smart growth, not growth at all costs.” 

Some flexibility in terms of training and deployment have also been introduced into the model, including:

Training: The two-layer approach, ie first in Kabul and then at the regional level, has not suited everyone. Southerners did not want to come to Kabul, so have been trained in the region. Easterners were happy to come, so have done so. The MoD is using a mix of approaches.

Co-location of ANA TF and regular ANA soldiers:Most ANA TF companies will be co-located with regular ANA soldiers, AAN was told, but for those who were not, regular soldiers had to be “very near” and in locations where they could support the Territorial Force, militarily and with medevac. International advisors stressed that even trained and ready-to-deploy Territorial Force companies would not be deployed until they could be properly supported (see next question). 

10. Can you give an example of how one of Territorial Force companies is doing?

AAN was given a list of the ANA TF pilot locations, but asked not to publish them because of the particular threats the force is facing from the Taleban. However, one location which has been publicly reported on, both in the media and by the government is Jaghori in Ghazni province. It is notable because planners initially rejected it for a pilot because it did not meet Territorial Force criteria. It is too far – 70 to 80 kilometres – from the nearest ANA bases (in Qarabagh and Muqur districts) for there to be support, let alone co-location of ANA TF and regular ANA soldiers. Also, as one planner put it, the district is “on the edge of contested areas,” with neither of the two routes into Jaghori from the provincial capital, Ghazni City, under the full control of the Taleban or government, again making support difficult. (7) Although Jaghori itself is almost completely Hazara, it is on the Hazara-Pashtun ‘border’ (8) and planners also did not want to risk any hint that, as one person put it, “the [Territorial] Force could be used in an ethnic-centric way.” 

However, a territorial army company for Jaghori was later agreed to, partly, it seems, through successful lobbying by Second Vice President Sarwar Danesh who said Hazaras there felt vulnerable and, as elsewhere in the country, employment opportunities were needed. Both he and Second Chief Executive Muhammad Muhaqeq had been lobbying anyway for the deployment of regular army forces to Hazarajat, including to Jaghori. (9) Agreement for two ANA TF companies for Jaghori, we were told, was given before the Taleban’s assault on it and neighbouring Malestan district in early November and on Khas Uruzgan in Uruzgan province in late October (for AAN reporting on the assault, see here and here). However, that assault does appear to have accelerated the establishment of the Territorial Force, as well, significantly, as an uprising force. As well as lobbying by both political figures and the population for the government to ‘do something’ to defend this district, there was probably also the realisation by the government that if it failed to act, local people would mobilise forces against the Taleban anyway. These might be less easy to control and, especially with elections coming up, could be problematic. Also, government support for the defence of Jaghori (even though the administration’s initial response to the Taleban’s autumn attacks was tardy) would be popular with voters. The fact that both the Territorial Force and uprising forces were given the go-ahead at the same time and mentioned by local interviewees asked only about the Territorial Force is significant: local people appear to view the ANA TF in terms of a local defence force, with better pay and conditions for recruits than the uprising forces not as an arm of the ANA.

The establishment of the two ANA TF companies in Jaghori has strayed from the model. It is being formed in the absence of any assured long-term regular ANA presence, according to MPs and local security officials. ANA soldiers were deployed to the district to push the Taleban back in November. Ghazni MP Muhammad Ali Alizada told AAN that he and other MPs had been lobbying the government to deploy one of the six Ghazni ANA battalions to the district permanently. As of now, they have not received any assurances and fear that, once the ATA is formed, the regular ANA will leave and this will encourage the Taleban to attack again. District chief of police Yunus Ramazani also told AAN he thought the regular ANA could leave once other forces were up and running. Moreover, far from territorial soldiers being ‘institutionalised’ into the body of the ANA, according to Ramazani, the ANA TF will be co-located with the ANP, ALP and the new uprising force in two or three joint bases (qarargah). (10) When new ANA TF and uprising forces are all mobilised, he said there should be around 1,000 combined forces in Jaghori, none of them regular ANA:

• ANP: 150-200 under Ministry of Interior
• ALP: about 200 under Ministry of Interior
• NDS paramilitaries: about 60 to 70
• Uprising forces 300 under NDS, newly recruited 
• ANA TF: around 220 with ten [this should be about 20 or, ideally 26 for two companies, so may be a mistake] regular ANA officers, under Ministry of Defence (11) 

It has to be stressed that local sources, including security sources, are saying different things from international officers advising on the ANA TF. Asked specifically about Jaghori and the absence of long-term assurances of a regular ANA presence there, one international officer said: “The ANA TF cannot be deployed until they can be properly supported.” In other words, even if a company has gone through recruitment and training, he said, regular ANA support still has to be in place before it can be deployed.

Local sources in Jaghori have told AAN that Territorial Force recruitment, now completed, was carried out under the supervision of an ANA commissary. Two tolai (companies) have been stood up, each with 108 to 110 soldiers, who are now almost all in Kabul for their ten-week training. Recruits, sources said, had to be volunteers, 19-40 years old and not be disabled or addicted to drugs. Priority was given to former ANA members. The recruits had to fill out the forms and bring a zamen (a local guarantor). That is, recruitment complied with the ANA TF guidelines. Local sources noted that there was no sense of any wider community involvement. 

One recruit, who asked not to be named, said he joined the ANA TF because of doubts that the district would regain the level of security it enjoyed before the Taleban assault; defence forces, therefore, were necessary. During the Taleban attack, he had felt duty-bound to take part in patrolling and keeping watch (paira) in his area.This is a standard response in this area to a Taleban threat; after a community decision, self-defence is arranged and villagers take their personal weapons (whatever they might have) and take turns to go to the hills to patrol and keep watch, especially at night. This is done mainly in the areas bordering Pashtun districts from which the Taleban could attack. Since the Taleban were pushed back, the threat has reduced and some patrols have ceased. 

The ANA TF recruit said that in his area people were continuing to patrol, each taking their turn, but he had felt it better to join the ANA TF which is paid, equipped and armed by the government. He said there had been no consultation on the new force or public meetings. Instead, notices had been posted in village bazaars and mosques and, seeing these, he had decided to join. He also said Hassan Mujahed, (12) the general commander of uprising forces in his village (Baba) had encouraged young men to join the ANA TF, paying the fare for them to travel to Sang-e Masha for enrolment. Sources have also described to AAN the recruitment to the new 300-strong uprising force, being set up at the same time as the ANA TF: uprising fighters bring their own weapons and the NDS provides vehicles and motorbikes and pays salaries.

As AAN reporting has detailed (here and here), the Taleban’s attack on Khas Uruzgan district in late October came, partly, out of extremely tricky ethnic politics and a history of inter-communal violence; international and Afghan-sponsored, anti-Taleban local forces there leveraged and inflamed ethnic tensions. After the Taleban captured Khas Uruzgan, they capitalised on this to make an outrageous bid to take over Malestan and Jaghori, districts in which the movement has no local support. 

All this means that setting up local forces in Jaghori is not a straightforward issue. The decision to establish ANA TF companies in Jaghori could be early evidence of the force falling the same way as ALP – with strict criteria and safeguards abandoned because of the need for boots on the ground or political stakeholder pressure. However, the urgency felt by local people for forces to defend them from an insurgent group which has just brutally overrun their areas is significant. Moreover, despite the absence of formal community involvement in setting up this force, it looks to be both popular and have strong local backing. As such, though, it may not be typical of other districts where popular opinion and experience of both Taleban and government is more mixed. 

This issue of whether the ANA TF will be deployed if regular ANA are not in Jaghori needs to  watched. Finally, it is worth noting that both MPs and local people said what they really wanted was regular ANA, not the ANA TF. 

AAN has been doing some preliminary investigations into the ANA TF pilots/phase 1 locations, to see how communities receive them and whether the careful safeguards in the model are actually being put into practice. We hope to publish on this in the future. 

11. Is there evidence the new strategy and model is working? 

It is still far too early to say anything about whether the newly-established ANA TF companies are working well or not. Even the oldest were established only weeks ago. Looking ahead, one would want to scrutinise various aspects of this force: whether ANA TF companies are being mobilised according to the model, that is only where there is a genuine local desire and backing for them, only in green areas and without their capture by politicians, factional forces or strongmen; whether the community involvement is something other than just the ANA TF recruiting locally; whether ANA command and control is effective and the ANA TF is institutionalised into the regular army and; whether the ANA TF succeed in protecting local people and territory, are supported by the regular ANA, and free up regular ANA soldiers to take more offensive action. 

It is worth stressing that today’s Afghanistan is not an easy environment in which to make an innovation like the ANA TF. The MoD is trying to set up a new force while fighting an often vicious insurgency. On the US side, as well, there is general pressure to show ‘progress’ in Afghanistan especially on the battlefield to a White House that appears to be hovering on the brink of pulling out American troops. At the same time, one of the international advisors was somewhat reassuring on this last point, insisting they were not under pressure and that “battlefield benefits tomorrow” was not their aim. These would be welcome, she said, but the focus was on the long-term, “We are doing this [setting up the Territorial Force] deliberately and making sure accountability is in place.”   

Finally, there is one tiny victory to report. One of the main fears, certainly within the MoD, was that Afghans would consider the ANA TF to be a militia and the integrity and reputation of the ANA as a whole would be damaged. Up till now, what media reports there have been, (for example here and here) have described members of the force as “soldiers” and trainees as “cadets.” Even if, in the same news report, the ALP is referred to as a militia, reporters have not used the ‘m word’ to describe Afghanistan’s newest local defence force. 

Edited by Erica Gaston and Sari Kouvo

Annex: The President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Decree on the Creation of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force 

The following actions will be undertaken in order to improve the security situation, provide better security services to the people of Afghanistan, and establish the Afghan National Army Territorial Force with the aim of changing the defensive posture of the National Army to an offensive oneand extending security to all districts: 

1. After evaluating outcomes from the pilot [programme], theAfghan National Army Territorial Force shall be created, as a contingent force to the National Army, with an estimated thirty-six thousand (36,652) personnel. 
2. Afghan National Army Territorial Force personnel will be an integrated and essential constituent of the National Army. They will be recruited in accordance with relevant laws, rules and regulations from districts where they live. They will be trained within the framework of the National Army and deployed under the command and control of experienced National Army cadre.
3. The Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will establish several pilot companies (tolai) of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force in the fourth quarter of 1396 (the month of Delw) [21 January to 20 February 2018]. Long-term planning for the creation of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force will proceed based on [lessons learned from] their experience. Details are specified in the six (6) articles attached to this decree. 
4. The Deputy Chief of the National Security Council Office on Armed Forces Affairs shall monitor the implementationof this decree and provide regular reports on its progress to the meetings of the National Security Council. 

Attachment to the Decree of the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on the Creation of the AfghanNational Army Territorial Force

Article One:Tashkil and Regulations

1. Establishment and Tashkil of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force: The Ministry of Defense shall undertake the following actions to establish the Afghan National Army Territorial Force:
2. Structure and organise the Afghan National Army Territorial Force on the model of the National Army, in companies (tolai) and battalions (kandak);
3. Create a pilot [programme] of Afghan National Army Territorial Force companies (tolai) alongside National Army battalions (kandak), or under the respective battalion’s protection;
4. If an aforementioned company is upgraded to a battalion, these forces will be included, as an Afghan National Army Territorial Force battalion, in the tashkilof the National Army brigade (lewa) posted to that province;
5. The leadership cadre for Territorial Force companies shall be selected from the National Army. While serving with the Afghan National Army Territorial Force, the aforementioned cadre will be considered part of National Army staff and will receive full salary and benefits provided to National Army personnel;
6. As the Afghan National Army Territorial Force expands, its cadre and leadership can be deployed to parts of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces within the framework of the Ministry of Defence [unclear what this means];
7. The cadre and leadership of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force at the level of platoon and higher will be selected from the National Army and those at levels lower than platoon, such as squads, should be selected from the National Army Territorial Force;
8. During the pilot phase of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force, the National Army Brigades support forces shall meet their needs;
9. All equipment for the Afghan National Army Territorial Force shall be provided in accordance with their tashkiland staffing.
10. Local Recruitment:All Afghan National Army Territorial Force personnel will be recruited, and serve, in the districts in which they live. The leadership cadre and commanders of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force are excluded from this order. 

National Training:  The Afghan National Territorial Force will receive basic and on going training to a professional level by qualified National Army cadre in National Army training centres. 

• Leadership and Command:The current cadre and commanders of the Afghan National Army will have command and control responsibility in order to ensure the effectiveness and stability of the National Army Territorial Force.
• Cost-effective and Sustainable: The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are designed to be cost-effective and sustainable so that the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will have the long-term ability to meet their expenses. The Afghan National Army Territorial Force is one such cost-effective and sustainable force. Their cost, as compared to the National Army, will be lower without impacting their effectiveness and duties. 

Article Two: The Creation of a Pilot Territorial Army, Location and Timeline for Their Creation

1. The Ministry of Defense shall establish the Afghan National Army Territorial Force pilot [programme] in several locations in the fourth quarter of 1396 (the month of Delw) [21 January to 20 February 2018]; and develop a long-term plan for creating the Afghan National Army Territorial Force based on [lessons learned] from this experience. 
2. The Ministry of Defense shall select locations for the establishment of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force [pilot programme].

Article Three:Responsibilities and Duties of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force

1. Duties and Responsibilities:As local security forces, The Afghan National Army Territorial Force, will have the following responsibilities in areas under the full control or partial control of the government:
2. Provide security for areas that have been cleared of enemies by the National Army and Special Forces Units and prevent the enemy from re-entering these areas;
3. Be a source of information for the National Army and Special Forces on activities of the enemy in the area;
4. Perform duties in areas under the control of the government;
5. Perform duties in areas under the control of the enemy only with close support from the National Army;
6. Establish stable relations between government and people through the district authorities;
7. Provide security services at the district level and below;
8. Prevent the movement and activities of the enemy in the region;
9. Secure and protect key government infrastructure in the region, including highways;
10. Protect and defend the area until reinforcements or supporting forces arrive;
11. Help victims of natural disasters and emergencies;
12. If necessary, ensure the safety of events or ceremonies in the area.
13. Duties the Afghan National Army Territorial Force Will Not Undertake:The Afghan National Army Territorial Force will not undertake the following duties:
14. Independently undertake duties in areas under the control of the enemy;
15. Undertake independent offensive manoeuvres;
16. Dispatch and execute duties in provinces, districts and other villages (outside their area of responsibility);
17. Perform duties in offensive operations against large enemy groups;
18. Perform the duties of rapid reaction forces, in the place of forces from other districts;
19. Carry out dangerous operations such as strikes, arrests and rescue operations;
20. Perform the duties of the city police.

Article Four:Leadership Cadre

1. Selection Requirements:The leadership cadre of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force are members of the National Army personnel during their posting and until the end of their assignment. The Ministry of Defense shall recruit them in line with the following considerations. [They must]: 
2. Be an officer or sergeant of the National Army;
3. Be approved by the commanders of the relevant corps;
4. Have sufficient relevant experience and skills;
5. Be fluent in the languages of the [local] Afghan National Army Territorial Force;
6. Must not be from the same district as the pilot [programme] Afghan National Army Territorial Force to which they are assigned.
7. Education and Training: The Ministry of Defense shall direct the cadre members to the necessary training for their assigned duties after they are selected and before taking up their assignments as leaders of Afghan National Army Territorial Force.
8. Salary and Privileges: Officers and sergeants who are selected as cadre and commanders of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force will receive the same salary and benefits as they did in their previous assignment. The Ministry of Defence shall make all necessary arrangements to pay salaries and benefits. 

Article Five: Recruitment Requirements and Privileges for Afghan National Army Territorial Force

• Recruitment Conditions: The Afghan National Army Territorial Force personnel will be recruited according to the following conditions. [He must]:
• Be a resident of the same district where the Afghan National Army Territorial Force is established;
• Be between 20 to 40 years of age;
• Pass all National Army health standards successfully;
• Meet all Ministry of Defense assessment criteria based on his records and credentials successfully;
• Individuals who have previously served with the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces as enlisted personnel [صفوف] may retain their [previous] rank and can join the Afghan National Territorial Army Force after a revaluation by investigative bodies, in line with National Army recruitment policies, and after obtaining guarantees from local representatives, elders and district and provincial councils. Likewise, persons who have served in the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces as non-commissioned officers [چوکات] for one year — up to the level of squad commander – can retain their [previous] rank contingent on successfully completing professional training and receiving approval fromthe cadre or commanders of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force. 
• Training and Higher Education:Individuals recruited to the Afghan National Army Territorial Force will receive training at National Army regional training centres under the supervision of the Ministry of Defense. 
• Afghan National Territorial Army Force personnel who have served one-year successfully and completed professional training can join the National Army after their nomination and endorsement by the Afghan National Army Territorial Force commanders. After being recruited into the National Army, they can maintain their rank, but cannot be promoted to commanders and leadership cadre of the Afghan National Army Territorial Force in the same district;
• Afghan National Army Territorial Force personnel will receive on-going professional training up to squad commander level;
• The Ministry of Defense shall assign experienced personnel to regional training centres to train Afghan National Army Territorial Force pilot [programme] Personnel.
• Salary, Benefits and Other Expenditure:
• National Army Territorial Force personnel will receive salaries and benefits equivalent to 75 per cent of an ordinary National Army soldier;
• National Army Territorial Force personnel will receive all medical benefits which are afforded to those serving in the National Army;
• Budgetary expenditures (salaries, benefits, engineering reinforcements, uniforms and other equipment) for National Army Territorial Forces soldiers will be paid from the Ministry of Defence National Defense budget by the CSTC-A ([United States] Combined Security Transition Command- Afghanistan) Command;
• Benefits for martyrs, captives, the missing, and the disabled are the same as those of the National Army;
• Technical personnel of ANDSF who have successfully completed at least one period of servicewill receive the same salary as National Army Territorial Forces upon joining the National Army Territorial Force (except at cadre and leadership positions).

Article Six: Command and Control, and Promotions:

1. Command and Control:
2. Brigade commanders are responsible for command and control of the National Army Territorial Force as per the chain of command. In accordance with the chain of command, brigade commanders will assign National army battalion commanders to command and control pilot Afghan National Army companies established in the area;
3. Cadre and leadership of the National Army will be assigned to the battalions and brigades where pilot companies of the National Army Territorial Force are established. 
4. Protection and Survival: 
5. The commanders of the corps are responsible for assigning one brigade to protection and survival duties and providing essential logistical services to the National Army Territorial Force as a Rapid Reaction Force. This process will be activated quickly upon request. 

(1) In 2018, the Ministry of Defence was budgeted to receive 62 million Afghanis (about 825,000 USD) and the Ministry of Interior 61 million Afghanis (around 811,000 USD) (read the budget here). Estimated domestic revenue for that year was 153 billion Afghanis (about two billion USD). As was written in the budget, that year as in all previous years, “a significant proportion of the resources available to the Government for security is still provided by Afghanistan’s partners outside the national budget.” If the government had had to pay for the ministries of defence and interior out of its own pocket, it would have eaten up more than three-quarters of domestic revenue. As the budget document said, “…for the foreseeable future, the cost of maintaining security will be beyond the capacity of the tax system to meet.” 

The main donor for Afghan security (and other sectors) is the US. In 2018, it was projected to spend $4.67 billion USD on the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) which funds the sustainment, operations, training and infrastructure of up to 352,000 members of the ANSF, including army, police and local police. (See the latest SIGAR quarterly report from October 2018, pages 52-55). 

For some scholarly assessments of the financial sustainability of the Afghan National Security Forces, see research carried out in 2014 for the US congress, “Independent Assessment of the Afghan National Security Forces”, William Byrd’s 2014 article for Foreign Affairs, “Who Will Pay for Afghan Security Forces?” and, a broader study, Anthony H Cordesman’s 2017 study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “The Afghan War: Key Developments and Metrics”. 

(2) The ANSF has faced continual difficulties holding territory that is under its control or that is lightly contested. This holding role, a NATO question and answer sheet from October 2017 on the ANA TF proposal said, was “currently conducted by a patchwork of forces including the Afghan National Police, Afghan Local Police and local militias with varying degrees of success.” One consequence, it said, was that the ANA is often drawn into the holding role and one aim of a “well-run local force” would be to free up the regular ANA, enabling it to change from having a defensive to an offensive ‘posture’. This, it is hoped, would also free up Afghan special forces, described by one of the international planners as “overused, constantly fire-fighting.”

(3) Examples of uprising forces, relevant to the ANA TF debate, are those in Nangrahar province where the idea for the ANA TF initially included the possibility that uprising forces in Achin and Kot districtswould bewould be re-hatted as a ‘territorial army’. These groups were the government and US military were fighting the local Daesh franchise the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP). As we wrote at the time, these uprising forces “… received arms from the Ministry of Defence, not just light, but also heavy weaponry, including pika (PK machine guns), dashaka (DShK heavy machine guns) and rocket-propelled grenades.” That might sound like the state had established the militias, we said, but actually, “local powerbrokers have been crucial or even primary in their formation.” For them, mobilising forces against the Taleban and Daesh were as much to do with trying to recover smuggling routes and illegal checkpoints in areas which the insurgents had captured. At the same time, we wrote, the uprisers, along with the ALP and Afghan National Border Police were “effective, aggressive against the enemy and, unlike other places, not particularly abusive of the population.” For other examples of uprising forces, see our in-depth look at Andar.

(4) As the Afghanistan Justice Project put it, “Before an Afghan national army had existed, the state relied on similar irregular forces to suppress revolts.” The most famous of the PDPA era militias were those which went on to become the largely Uzbek Jombesh-Milli, commanded by (now) First Vice-President General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Sayyed Jaffar Naderi’s much smaller Ismaeli militia. However, there were many others, including local mujahedin groups whom the state turned, re-badged and on whom they relied to keep control of local areas, as the Afghanistan Justice Project described: 

A plethora of armed structures parallel to the regular army and the paramilitary police were established by the communist government throughout the country in the years following the Saur Revolution in 1978. Some of these were affiliated to the communist party, while others were defensive and linked to industrial installations or specific localities, particular tribes or feudal personalities. As the years passed, the number increased, as did their level of organization and the complex nature of their identity and inter-relationship. From being in the main local defense forces many had metamorphosed to being combat units deployed outside their areas or origin, displaying—by virtue of their recruitment pattern—considerable group solidarity and military coherence.”

(5) AAN was told that planned equipment for the ANA TF was: AK47 rifles, rocket propelled grenades, DShK heavy machine guns (dashaka), VHF radios, motorbikes, vehicles and D30 artillery for every company (more than the ALP has). 

(6) One Afghan involved in advising on the ANA TF described how they recruited: “First education, putting up posters telling people what the new force is, then gather together community elders and explain the idea and ask them to introduce people. Ask them to guarantee that someone is a good guy.” 

(7) There are two main routes into Jaghori from Ghazni city, one via Qarabagh and Jaghato and one via Nawar. Both have had variable security in the past years and been vulnerable to Taleban checkposts (in the Dasht-e Qarabagh area of Qarabagh and Qiyagh area of Nawar).

(8) Jaghori borders both completely Hazara districts, Malestan(to the north) and Nawur (east), mixed Hazara-Pashtun districts, Qarabagh (east) and Muqur (south), and Pashtun districts, Gilan (south) and Khak-e Afghan, also known as Kakarof Zabul province (west).

(9) Danesh and Mohaqeq submitted a plan in December 2016 titled “Comprehensive Security and Administrative Plan for the Central Hazarajat Region” in which they had called for a brigade (lewa) to be deployed to Bamyan for Bamyan and Daikundi provinces and separate battalions for Jaghori and Balkhab districts (details in footnote 9 of the second dispatch on Taleban attacks on Hazarajat).

(10) At the official level, there appears to be some confusion about the new forces in Jaghori. The Ministry of Interior, for example, said on 18 November that it (sic) had established two tolai (companies) of a ‘territorial army’ and mobilised 600 locals within the framework of public uprising forces in the two districts of Malestan and Jaghori, saying they would be equipped and assigned to maintain security in their areas after receiving training.

(11) Etilaat Roz, quoting security sources  on 18 December 2018, gave somewhat different figures: combined security forces for Jaghori have been increased from 300 to 1090: 450 ALP, 350 public uprising forces, 240 ANA TF and 50 NDS paramilitaries. It reported that one big security base was planned along with 39 posts (16 for ANA TF and the rest for uprisers and ALP) in the villages of Hutqul, Angori, Daud, Zirak, Kotal-e Loman, Dahmarda, Pato, Tailum, Qarqunda, Drazqul, Parkhasha of Baba, Ghogha and Pushta-e Hicha. 

(12) After the Taleban attacks, Hassan Mujahed became the general commander of public uprising forces in Baba village. He fought with the mujahedin faction, Nasr, during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. It was one of the biggest of the ten Shia Muslim mujahedin factions forming Hezb-e Wahdat in 1992. Recently, he has been aligned with former Second Vice President and now Chair of the High Peace Council, Abdul-Karim Khalili (also from the Nasrist strand of Wahdat). Mujahed also served in the army in the early years of the Karzai administration.

Hashish or chars is a fairly common substance in Afghanistan. Its use, without ever attaining the levels of mass consumption that characterise other lightly-intoxicating substances in other war-torn countries, like the chewing of qat in Yemen or Somalia, for example, has remained relatively widespread. This does not mean that it is condoned by society: hashish-users, known as charsi, are stigmatised in popular discourse as lazy or even unhinged. However, the use of hashish in Afghanistan has also acquired an element of communal ritual, allowing sometimes for a different depiction of hashish-smokers to emerge, one more acceptable to dominant Afghan values and traditions. In this dispatch, AAN’s Obaid Ali, Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica look at the cultural history of hashish in Afghanistan.

This is the second dispatch in a two-part series on the cultural history of hashish in Afghanistan. The first dispatch, which looks at the cultivation and production of hashish, is available here.

Although opiates have understandably dominated the discourse around drug use in Afghanistan (read AAN analysis here and here) over the past decades, hashish has long been a mainstay of recreational drugs throughout the country. In fact, its use has traditionally been more widespread than that of opium (which was once widely consumed, often as a form of self-medication in places such as Badakhshan or Herat). Nowadays, the number of hashish smokers has increased to over a million users, and has spread among the young and educated class in urban areas.

Afghans’ familiarity with hashish is also quite apparent from its references in Afghan folklore. There are, however, different perceptions of hashish-smokers in society. Arguably, an ordinary Afghan could smoke an occasional spliff in order to relax and still keep his social status untainted more easily than if he consumed alcohol or opiates (the social stigma for women consuming any drugs, including alcohol, would be far higher). Even so, regular smokers get the rather nasty label of charsi. The social stigma attached to smoking hash seems to stem less from the illegality of the substance, than from the real or imagined effects it provokes. Hashish smokers have a reputation for being rascals and criminals.

Use of hashish in Afghanistan from the 1970s until today 

The use of hashish in Afghanistan from the 1970s to the mid 2000s is not well-documented. Sources from the 1970s, such as the US 1974 cables (here and here) offer rare insights into local habits. However, these documents mainly portray an official narrative, ie the Afghan government blaming local consumption on “the bad example of youthful western tourists.” In another cable, also from 1974, the Afghan government informed its American counterpart there had been no indications of significant ‘abuse’ of the drug by Afghans themselves. In this 1975 cable the US reported that “GOA [the Government of Afghanistan] does not, however believe there to be an urban drug abuse problem with exception of foreigner transients.” The cable said that, “Widespread traditional use of hashish is either overlooked, ignored or not seen as constituting a problem.” The post-1978 coup State Department’s annual narcotics report on Afghanistan said that between “150 and 250 metric tons of hashish per year is derived from locally cultivated cannabis,” while the “statistics on drug abuse within Afghanistan are virtually non-existent.”

In the 1980s, during the anti-Soviet jihad, the use of cannabis spread. Former United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) drug advisor in Afghanistan David Macdonald in his book Drugs in Afghanistan writes that “many mujahideen fighters were paid or rewarded for their fighting with hashish, which they often consumed before going to the battle.” Macdonald was told this by Mullah Akhundzada, the then-head of the Taleban High Commission for Drug Control, at a meeting held in 1999. Hashish consumption has long since been connected to the primary actors of this conflict. The use of chars by some notorious Kandahari commanders and their militiamen was associated with the loss of all moral order and breakdown of social rules that characterised the Civil War of 1992-94 there and in many other parts of the country. Even more recently, the age-old connection between the use of hashish and fighting has not been denied. Policemen (both ANP and ALP) in particular have been known to consume hashish, especially when left stranded to man isolated and remote security outposts. The Afghanistan Ministry of Interior (MoI) conducted nationwide urinary drug screening of Afghanistan National Police (ANP) in 2009 and 2010, which found that of the 9,034 ANP who tested positive for drug use, 80.5% (7,269) screened for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a psychoactive constituent of cannabis. (1) The 40 years of continuous wars in Afghanistan undeniably contributed to an increase in drug use, not only of hashish but of others too (see this AAN dispatch on drug use in Afghanistan here).

During the Taleban regime, hashish was perceived as a ‘traditional Afghan vice’, as its use was widespread and an old habit among parts of the population. The Taleban imposed “draconian sanctions against both producers and users” (Macdonald, pp 25). In 1997, the Taleban issued a statement, which said that the use of hashish and heroin was not permitted in Islam (Macdonald, pp 80). These measures, however, were not particularly enforced. In 2003, a UNODC assessment on problem drug users in Kabul city, Macdonald reported, found that almost 24,000 people were regular hashish users, as reported by doctors, mullahs, shopkeepers and other key informants. But this number, according to him, was incorrect and probably an underestimate due to a lack of data and limitations of the UNODC assessment.

The latest Afghan drug use survey carried out in 2015 by the United States Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) found that approximately 900,000 to 1.1 million Afghans use cannabis. The survey also found that cannabis is the second most prevalent drug used in urban centres in the country, with the highest rates of cannabis use in Herat (4.0 per cent of the population) and Kabul (3.9 per cent). Cannabis, the INL survey found, is used by 2.4 per cent of the adult population, with men being the predominant users. Evidence of cannabis among women and children was negligible, the survey found. Smoking charsis almost entirely a male pastime, then. Before looking at how hashish is viewed in Afghanistan, it is worth stressing that its use is not an entirely ‘happy’ phenomenon, a point Macdonald makes (p26):

Western sensibilities and perception of cannabis often neglect the fact that the hashish produced in Afghanistan is often more powerful than much of the hashish available in Europe, and daily consumption rates among Afghan users significantly higher than their western counterparts. Reports suggest that hashish use in such an impoverished country as Afghanistan contributes to severe financial problems for the family, leads to arguments and fights among family members over money spent on drugs and exacerbates endemic health problems such as bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis and other respiratory complaints.

Cannabis sativa plant. Photo: Dinesh Valke
(under CC BY-SA 2.0).

Hashish to suit different tastes and budgets

Afghan hashish is found on sale in different varieties, which largely refer to where it was produced and also define its quality and price. Balkh and Panjshir provinces are famous for their high-quality chars, known as shirak. Their hashish, compared to that in other parts of the country, is also more expensive.

Northern Balkh province has for some decades been home to the most famous type of Afghan hashish: the so-called ‘Afghan Black’ of international renown largely coincides with the hashish produced in this area. Over the course of the last few years, however, Shirak-e Panjshir has become the most sought-after and expensive product on the Afghan market, with seven grams fetching a price of 250 Afghanis (around 3,5 USD). Shirak-e Panjshir has a peculiar green hue and a very strong smell and easily melts in the cigarette or chillum. Among those who smoke it, Balkh now ranks second in the chars’varieties in Afghanistan. Shirak-e Mazar is the most famous type of hashish originating from this province: it is of a dark brown colour and has a pungent smell. Compared to Shirak-e Panjshir, its effects are less strong and therefore it is comparatively cheaper (7g for 200 Afs). Kandahar and Logar (2) provinces provide products of a relatively lower quality that rank in third place. Both provinces produce chars of a black-colour, which is found in the market for the relatively cheap price of 150 Afghanis for seven grams. The ‘best price’ product available to consumers without much money to spend is that coming from Nangrahar province: it sells at 100 Afghanis for seven grams and is also the lowest quality chars on the Afghan market.

Besides commercial production, habitual charsis sometimes produce home-made chars for their own consumption. In Kabul, for instance, there are a number of mini-production factories that only produce small amounts of chars. Basically, hemp is cultivated in the house courtyard, usually in a corner of the garden that remains out of sight of potential guests or neighbours. Once the bush grows enough and its blossoms have dried, it is cut off and dried. This process takes at least six months. Once it is dry, then the dried blossom is removed and it goes through a filtering process in order to collect the particles and pieces of dried blossom. The collected parts are then slowly warmed up over a fire and mixed together for around ten minutes. The preparation turns into an oily substance and is pressed together into a piece of chars.

Hashish in Afghan popular culture

Hashish is an established topic in popular Afghan culture, being the subject of many jokes and songs. (3) The most famous hit about hashish is probably the Pashto classic folk song “Adam Khana Charsi”, performed by many singers throughout the years (here in a rendition by Naghma). Written in the tradition of landai women’s poetry (read also here), the lyrics lambast Adam Khan’s lack of virility, enjoining him to remove his bed from the nuptial chamber to the courtyard as his wife is not interested only in sleeping, as he seems to be. From the title of the song to the mimicry usually enacted by singers who perform it (see also this video), the figure of Adam Khan is a stereotype of the chronic hashish-smoker, apathetic and lethargic.

In fact, one of the effects most frequently associated with the use of hashish in Afghan popular belief in the reduction of the sexual impulse and thus of the inability of a man to fulfil a husband’s obligations thereby securing his progeny. As these are issues of some importance in the eyes of the Afghans, the inculcation of this notion by society at large can well represent an attempt to discourage the use of hashish through psychological propaganda. Interestingly, the same fears had already been raised by medieval Islamic scholars in order to deter believers from indulging in hashish smoking (although some ascetics actually sought a reduction of their sexual urge through smoking, in order to better concentrate on spiritual matters).

Compounding the apathy it induces, hashish is also said to provoke fits of rage and madness, making charsis extremely aggressive at times. The term charsi can thus be used in Afghanistan to refer to anybody who behaves over the top, arguing, bragging or boasting to the point of appearing out of his mind. This is partly due to the long-term impact of cannabis: cannabinoids lodge in the fatty deposits of the brain and remain there for weeks, unlike alcohol or many other drugs, which the body excretes rapidly through urine. The effects of the drug are therefore longer-term and can appear to affect a person’s character or personality. This can give regular hashish smokers a recognisable appearance and attitude, which has given rise to a stereotype applied to other people as well, as a way of slighting them.

Overall, Afghans view hashish-smokers as generally being socially useless. However, there seem to be niches of popular discourse in which the charsis are not just criminals or despicable characters but a peculiar class of people, noted for their generosity and with their own sociability. In some parts of the country, this tradition seems to still be alive.

In the chillumkhana of Baba Qu

Ways of smoking chars in Afghanistan indicate a rural-urban divide, slowly bridging towards a standardisation of practices by young people countrywide. While urban hash smokers generally prefer a to empty a cigarette and fill it with hashish and tobacco (with youngsters developing creative ways of smoking bongs, such as piercing holes in an apple to inhale the smoke through it) – the rural, and, arguably traditional, way of consuming hashish still practiced by the elderly is through an earthen pipe or chillum. This can sometimes take the form of a collective act, one more sociable and ritualised than sharing a joint among friends, as will be seen in the most famous of all Afghan chillum-smokers, Baba Qu-ye Mastan.

Baba Qu, a figure who lived in the first half of the twentieth century and whose historical persona borders on the mythical, still inspires a form of mystical devotion. He is buried in the ancient town of Balkh of the namesake province, and is still remembered across northern Afghanistan as a generous and chivalrous man, who would always provide lavish hospitality of food and chars to anyone in need. Even today, when local charsis light their cigarettes or chillum filled with chars, they first praise Baba Qu:

بابه قوی مستان

دور قبرت گلستان

هم بهار و هم زمستان

Baba Qu-ye Mastan

Your grave is a flower garden

Be it summer or winter

When charsis being smoked collectively and the cigarette or chillum passes from one person to another, smokers repeat this invocation:

پره به  پره جوانای سره، هرکس بد می بره سر نبره

Pass on, pass on to the brave youngsters, death to those who hate.

(The word parah describes the act of passing a cigarette or chillum filled with chars from one person to another).

After Baba Qu’s death, his fellow charsis built what is known as the chillumkhana (chillum-house) or saqikhana next to his grave. (4) This is a small building consisting of a main hall, very dark and with a low ceiling, furnished with stone-made benches lining the inner walls. There are several chillums available in the room and a caretaker in charge of filling and lighting them. The rules of the chillumkhana are clear: whoever gets inside has to smoke and failing to do so would be disrespectful. Visitors are welcome to contribute with offers of money or chars – provided they have a good batch, for in the chillumkhana only top-quality Shirak-e Mazar is used. If they do not wish or cannot afford to contribute, this is no problem: they get to smoke for free, but most importantly they have to smoke and pay a tribute to Baba Qu. At any rate, inside the chillumkhana the air is saturated with the fumes of burning hemp: all the windows and doors are kept shut and there is no fresh air circulating, augmenting the effects on the smokers. This way of smoking is called shishaband or darwazaband (closed-window/door).

Seeking solace in Kandahar

Baba Qu-e Mastan was by no means an isolated instance. A senior teacher in Kabul recalled how in the time of Zaher Shah, when he had been posted to a school in Spin Boldak, he would go on days off together with his colleagues to the place of Zabar Ali Padsha in Khadanay, roughly halfway between Spin Boldak and Kandahar city. Zabar Ali was an elderly man who had never married and had a big guesthouse with many servants devoted only to providing guests with chillums filled with the best-quality hashish. He was apparently well-off, or received sumptuous donations from the more affluent guests, because he would attend to his guests’ needs for whole evenings, not only offering them a smoke, but even having lambs slaughtered and cooked to feed them when, later in the night, they would go hungry. After some years of such visits, having become well acquainted with Zabar Ali, the teacher was astonished to see the old man, by now over ninety years old, performing a series of gymnastic exercises that would have put to shame a circus acrobat. Zabar Ali attributed his body strength to his still being a virgin, something he confessed to his friend, the teacher, and to his steadfast use of only the best quality hashish.

A more recent character familiar to many Kandaharis – Mrech Agha – has taken the place of Zabar Ali Padsha. In his guesthouse outside Kandahar city, until quite recently, Mr Chili Pepper, as his name translates, would host whoever wanted to enjoy a joint, assisted by a small army of servants and volunteers. Mrech Agha assiduously held his darbar (court), (5) utterly indifferent to the fierce battles being fought between first, the mujahedin, then between the Taleban and government forces, until his death in 2014. Mrech Agha was for a long time a local celebrity. Taxi drivers in Kandahar would sport placards with poetry praising his goodness, something along the lines of: “This person is good, that one is also good, but I salute Mrech Agha!” (A video of a Pashto song praising Mrech Agha here.)

After his death, a tense standoff took place at his home. His eldest son, feeling he could not step into his father’s large shoes, summoned all the assistants and announced he was dismissing them, as he would have to discontinue his late father’s habit of providing hospitality to half of Kandahar’s charsis because of the costs it entailed. Mrech Agha, however had two wives, the son being born from the first one. Reportedly, at the critical moment, the other, younger wife, summoned him and enjoined him not to dismiss the house-servants, “not to destroy Mrech Agha’s langar (refectory)”: she herself would provide whatever economic means was required in order to continue her late husband’s enterprise. Thus, she showed the same resolve as Malalai on the battlefield of Maiwand, even if the cause was not quite so noble.

The role played by figures such as Baba Qu, Zabar Ali and Mrech Agha sit somewhere between that of a private entertainer – with all the ideas of individual hospitality that that entails – and that of an institution which offers a service to the public at large. The idea of making a langar is obviously connected to the practice of providing food for everybody attending a religious ceremony or festival, common to Islamic communities across Central and South Asia, and often, but not exclusively, connected to Sufi brotherhoods. More significant than showing a connection in terminology between this type of hosts and the sphere of Sufi mysticism is the fact that Mrech Agha’s assistants came to call themselves his muridan, which translates closely into ‘disciples’ and is a term used quite exclusively for the followers of a Sufi tariqa or ‘brotherhood’. It is also possible to listen to a tarana (in the context of southern Afghanistan, a mostly vocal song often dealing with religious topics) sung by the muridan of Mrech Agha.

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Merch-Agha.mp3

Baba Qu himself had reportedly been the disciple of a famous Sufi leader in Balkh. Also, marginality and eccentricity in Afghanistan are seldom allowed to totally develop as such, as a sort of counter-culture in open opposition to the established social order. Thus, these ‘social charsis’ have developed their own sub-culture and gatherings in the shadow of some holy shrines. Notable individuals among them were connected to these or followed established patterns of networking and symbolic codes in order to achieve some degree of public recognition.

But what is the purpose of such a social institution, then? The comparison to Sufi spirituality can again be useful. The latter, as described by scholars of Afghan history such as Robert Edwards or Nile Green (6), has often been enjoyed by Afghan men in order to transcend boundaries of kinship and fulfil the universal human need for avenues of social and spiritual engagement, detached from the strife and tensions of everyday life. At another level – and for different kinds of souls – this peculiar type of hashish-smoking gathering may have served the same primary purpose.

Other invocations uttered routinely by Afghan smokers point to this therapeutic aspect of the use of cannabis:

Nush nush, deh ke gham-et faramush

Smoke, smoke, come on so that you may forget your sorrow

Or the more caustic:

Nush nush, dushmanha-et kus-forush

Smoke, smoke, your enemies are just pimps

By allowing Afghan men to fraternise beyond divisions of class, ethnicity or tribe, characters like Mrech Agha may have played an important role in allowing Afghans not to lose their humanity amid the havoc of a lifelong conflict.

Conclusion

In the West, for hash users at least, Afghan chars has acquired something of the status of a legend: ‘Afghan Black’ has a reputation as a potent psychoactive drug, as seen in the first dispatch in this mini-series. Afghan experiences and views of hashish use are quite different. Most respectable Afghans continue to consider charsis a useless and marginal category of people. Nonetheless, the great number of Afghan hashish smokers may show, instead, the growing strains affecting many strata of beleaguered Afghan society. From soldiers to students, many seek solace in a puff of smoke. That they are almost all men shows something about who can access such solace and points to costs paid by wives and children if limited household income is ‘misspent’ by husbands and fathers. Even so, it can also be recognised that the charsi subculture also has its legends and rituals, and that these connect to the great Afghan values of generosity and hospitality, and to music, poetry and Sufism.

Edited by Kate Clark

(1) A local militia commander called Abdullah Charsi even became a high-ranking officer of the Afghan National Border Police in western Afghanistan in 2012, showing the possibility of a career even with such a strongly-flavoured sobriquet.

(2) During the anti-Soviet war, Logar also had a famous local mujahedin check post, on a hill west to the road to Paktia, the fighters at which were known as charsian. It was a famous weekend hang out spot for the local youth who had not much choice where to spend their spare time.

(3) The same sorts of jokes and gossip are reported from the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. For example, the Afridi Pashtuns inhabiting those parts of the Khyber Agency where hashish is extensively grown are said to be the world’s most skilled people at recognising varieties of chars by its smell: these ‘human hounds’ are able to tell not just the variety but even the specific field where a particular hemp plant is grown, just by smelling a piece of its hashish.

(4) Saqi is the cup-bearer of Persian classical poetry, a symbol for the serving of substances, which offer a pleasant intoxication that allow one to forget personal or worldly troubles.

(5) The lexicon here is important: Mrech Agha ‘held court’ like some sort of secular or religious authority; Zabar Ali also styled himself a padsha, a king, showing the status recognition that this unique class of people enjoyed in the eyes of at least part of Afghan society.

(6) David B. Edwards, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier, University of California Press, 1996; Nile Green, “Tribe, Diaspora and Sainthood in Afghan History”, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 67, n°1, 2008.