Defence`s Feeds

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.

Chinese QJY-88 Light Machine Gun

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.

Chinese QJB-95 Light Machine Gun

Russian Club-M Coastal Defense Missile System

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.

The European Union faces an increasingly challenging security environment, with a climate of international instability and a level of tension not seen since the end of the Cold War. Repeated chemical attacks by both State and non-state actors in the context of the Syrian conflict, the Novichok attack in Salisbury and the disruption of two ricine terror plots in Germany and in France in 2018 came all as stark reminders that the threat remains real and that Member States could be affected. In this context, the European Union (EU) continues to strengthen its capacities in the field of CBRN preparedness and response. The use of EU mechanisms and Member States’ military assets is one of the possibilities for strengthening prevention capacities that must be explored more thoroughly.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

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. 

JPIO action: Munitions in the Sea
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Length of video : 141'
You may manually download this video in WMV (1.3Gb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Length of video : 75'
You may manually download this video in WMV (767Mb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Length of video : 79'
You may manually download this video in WMV (727Mb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Length of video : 113'
You may manually download this video in WMV (1Gb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Length of video : 101'
You may manually download this video in WMV (934Mb) format

Disclaimer : The interpretation of debates serves to facilitate communication and does not constitute an authentic record of proceedings. Only the original speech or the revised written translation is authentic.
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

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

American Columbia Class Ballistic Missile Submarine

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.

The main objective of the hearing is to identify human rights challenges and best practices related to EU security policies in third countries.
The focus of the current European external security agenda is mainly the fight against terrorism, organised crime and cybercrime as well as border management. However, more consideration of human security is needed, as outlined by the UNDP's 1994 Human Development Report, including the threat posed by interpersonal violence, especially gender-based violence. This hearing will therefore widen the focus to human rights and human security as an integral part of security policy.
Location : ASP 3G3 BRUSSELS
Further information
Draft programme
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

EDA’s Governmental Satellite Communications (GOVSATCOM) Pooling and Sharing demonstration project (GSC Demo) entered its execution phase this Tuesday 15 January with the first meeting of the Project Arrangement Management Group taking place in Madrid.

This means that the project is now ready to provide GOVSATCOM services to meet the GOVSATCOM demands of Member States and European CSDP actors through pooled capabilities (bandwidth/power and/or services) provided by contributing Member States. This governmental pooled capability is set up to provide satellite communication (SATCOM) resources that cannot be obtained on the commercial market with sufficient level of guaranteed access and security.  The GSC Demo corresponds  responds to an existing need and is fully in line with the revised 2018 Capability Development Plan and its related EU Defence Capability Priorities. It has also to be seen in the light of the ongoing efforts within the European Union to establish an EU GOVSATCOM within the EU’s next space programme. Furthermore, the GSC Demo project also complements EDA’s EU Satcom Market project, already in place since 2012, which provides commercially available SATCOM and CIS services in an efficient and effective manner. 

Today’s milestone was achieved after intensive work done since June 2017 to establish a Project Arrangement. Under the leadership of Spain, all 15 contributing EDA Member States of the project (Spain, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) accepted the Project Arrangement as baseline for mutual support and collaboration. Norway, which has signed an Administrative Arrangement with the Agency, is also contributing to the project.

EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq, who attended today’s meeting in Madrid, stated: “The role of satellite communication in a European strategic autonomy perspective cannot be overstated. I am pleased to say that EDA has played its part in facilitating SATCOM solutions for the EU for some time and in an incremental fashion that has proved quite successful. This GSC Demo project together with the Agency’s EU SatCom Market project underlines the importance of SATCOM and confirms the priority that has been granted to this capability during the most recent revision of the Capability Development Plan".

Major General Salvador Alvarez Pascual, the Deputy Director of Programs in the Spanish Ministry of Defence, said:  "Now it is time to start this project which is the result of significant work of experts from different nations. Spain will face the chairmanship of the Project Arrangement Management Group with confidence to have a good cooperation. The project will fulfill our common objectives and targets and provides the ideal opportunity to test its governance“.
 

Background

Reliable, stable and secure communications are crucial in any CSDP mission and operation. Yet, terrestrial network infrastructures are not available everywhere, for instance in areas hit by natural disasters, at sea, in the air or in hostile zones. SATCOM can be the solution: rapidly deployable, flexible and distance insensitive, SATCOM can offer communication links where terrestrial networks are damaged, overloaded or non-existent.

However, access to SATCOM cannot be taken for granted at any time, especially not when governmental users require them at short notice and without pre-arranged agreements. In situations of high demand, competition with other users of commercial SATCOM capacities creates a risk of non-availability and high costs. Against this backdrop, EU leaders decided in 2013 that there was a need for a new solution combining the advantages of commercial and military satellite systems in order to address both civil and military needs through European cooperation. The European Defence Agency, in collaboration with the European Commission and the European Space Agency, since then is preparing the next generation of GOVSATCOM. 

GOVSATCOM is seen as a capability that is placed in between the commercial satellite communication market and the highly protected military satellite communication capability.

The project originates from an EDA Steering Board decision of November 2013 which tasked EDA to pursue its work on GOVSATCOM coordination with Member States, the European Commission and the European Space Agency in order to propose a comprehensive programme for Member States who wish to participate. After a sound preparatory work, the aforementioned EDA Member States decided in June 2017 to establish the GSC Demo project and intensify their collaboration in GOVSATCOM.