Defence`s Feeds

EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq this afternoon closed the Agency’s 2018 Annual Conference on unmanned and autonomous systems in defence. Autonomous applications supported by Artificial Intelligence are already crucial capabilities whose importance for defence will further grow in the future but the challenges laying ahead are considerable, Mr Domecq said, reflecting a general assessment expressed throughout the conference.

 
Main takeaways

Mr Domecq singled out five key words which, in his view, will matter for Europe's future in relation to unmanned and autonomous systems:

• Action: Europe must catch up with the main global players dominating in this field, especially the US and China which invest much more in Artificial Intelligence and autonomous systems which are “game changers”, also in warfare. What Europe needs is a “Sputnik moment”: “We cannot afford to only talk about it, we have to do it”.

• Together: Cooperation is the only way for Europe to catch up: “We can only succeed if we do it together, in cooperation with governments, industry, the research community, tech leaders and civil society”;

• Speed: “Speed is of the essence” especially given that Europe is lagging behind considerably;

• Control: “Europe must stick to its values and principles”, keep Humans always in control of the use of lethal force and avoid becoming dependent on machines or robots;    

• Education: last but not least, “we need to get the buy-in of our citizens because we cannot provide security with tools which are rejected by the population we intend to protect”.  The benefits, challenges and opportunities of autonomous systems need to be assessed, explained and discussed in full transparency. “They cannot be simplistically reduced to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ tools”, Mr Domecq concluded.

 
More information:

• Federica Mogherini opens Annual Conference devoted to unmanned and autonomous systems
• Speech by Head of Agency Federica Mogherini at the EDA 2018 Annual Conference
• Speech Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on EDA Annual Conference
• Speech EUMC Chairman General Graziano

After the opening by the Head of Agency, Federica Mogherini (read news here), EDA’s 2018 Annual Conference taking place today in Brussels heard inspiring speeches from the new Chairman of the European Union Military Committee (EUMC), General Claudio Graziano, the European Commissioner responsible for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, the Chief of Defence of Estonia, General Riho Terras, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Defence of Austria, Dr Wolfgang Baumann (representing the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU) and the Senior Vice-President and Head of Urban Air Mobility within Airbus Strategy and International, Eduardo Dominguez Puerta.

Conference attendees also witnessed interesting statements and lively exchanges of views between high-level experts in three different discussion panels.

The first panel, moderated by Carmen Romero (NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary-General for Public Diplomacy), looked at how today’s Armed Forces are adapting to tomorrow’s technologies, with a special focus on unmanned and autonomous systems. The list of high-level panelists participating in this debate included Frank Bekkers (Director of the Security Programme at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies), Dr Luisa Riccardi (Director of Technical Innovation and Secretariat General of the Defence and National Armaments Directorate at the Ministry of Defence of Italy), Lieutenant General Atanas Zapryanov (Deputy Minister of Defence of Bulgaria) and Benedikt Zimmer (State Secretary for Procurement at the Ministry of Defence of Germany).

The second panel - composed by Rear Admiral Nicolas Vaujour (Deputy Chief of Staff Naval Operations, France) and Giovanni Soccodato (Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Leonardo) and moderated by Brooks Tigner (Jane’s Defence Weekly) - discussed an assessed the current and future challenges and opportunities of unmanned maritime systems (UMS) from a technical and operational point of view.

The third panel, moderated by Dr Gustav Lindstrom (Director of the EU Institute for Security Studies), looked into the prospects for the use of Artificial Intelligence in defence.

EDA Deputy Chief Executive Olli Ruutu also handed over the newly-established EDA Defence Innovation Prize to the two winner companies of the first (2018) edition, Aitex and Clover Technologies (more information here).
  

More information:

• Federica Mogherini opens Annual Conference devoted to unmanned and autonomous systems
• Speech by Head of Agency Federica Mogherini at the EDA 2018 Annual Conference
• Speech Commissioner Mariya Gabriel on EDA Annual Conference
• Speech EUMC Chairman General Graziano

 

The European Defence Agency’s Annual Conference 2018 entitled 'From Unmanned to Autonomous Systems: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities’ was opened this morning in Brussels by the Head of the Agency, Federica Mogherini.

Addressing a 400-strong audience representing the whole European defence spectrum - governments, armed forces, industry, EU institutions, NATO, think tanks and media - Ms Mogherini welcomed that the Agency's annual conference "once again, is a place to talk about innovation, and to look at the trends that are shaping our world and our security environment".

Devoting this year's conference to unmanned & autonomous systems and artificial intelligence proved to be a very timely choice as "this is not a debate about some distant future, or about science-fiction" but about technological developments which are already part of our lives, Ms Mogherini said. Artificial intelligence is everywhere and its applications are expanding at incredible speed, "also contributing to our security – for instance, in building stronger defence systems against cyber-attacks".
 

Humans must always remain in control of the use of lethal force

Yet we also know that artificial intelligence poses new security challenges, and it is now starting to be weaponised, the Head of the Agency said. "We are entering a world where drones could independently search for a target and kill without human intervention. Artificial intelligence could take decisions on life and death, with no direct control from a human being. The warning about the dangers ahead is coming from the very people who are working on artificial intelligence: researchers, pioneers, and business people as well, who don't want to see their own discoveries exploited for malicious goals". 

Against this background, the EU has a very special role to play – as a promoter of new global rules to protect our citizens' security, and at the same time, as a force for innovation and progress at the service of human beings, she stressed.

"So first of all, we are working to build consensus on what should and should not be allowed in the field of autonomous weapons. We would like scientists and researchers to be free to do their job knowing that their discoveries will not be used to harm innocent people. Together we can define the boundaries of artificial intelligence applications, so that within those limits, scientists are free to explore the immense positive potential of artificial intelligence", said Ms Mogherini, adding: "Our position on this has always been very clear: all weapon systems should comply with international law, and humans must always remain in control of the use of lethal force". 

Work is currently ongoing at the United Nations to define a first set of guiding principles on autonomous weapons, and this work needs close cooperation between governments, the industry and civil society.
 

"No time to waste on Artificial Intelligence"

Supporting innovation and having a strong industry is essential for Europe's security, and this is also true with artificial intelligence, Ms Mogherini stated. "Almost 50 per cent of global private investment in artificial intelligence start-ups is happening in China. We Europeans cannot afford to waste time, and to be less innovative than other world powers. It is a matter of economic growth, and it is a matter of security". 

Our European defence industries and research laboratories are among the best in the world. And yet, investment from European national governments in research and technology in the field of defence continue to decrease, she underlined.

"We, as the European Union, cannot tell national institutions how much to spend on defence or on research. What we can do – and what we are doing, is to incentivize our Member States to join forces, create new economies of scale, to the benefit of our industry and of our collective security. This is the logic behind all the work we have been doing on security and research, with the European Defence Agency, with the European Commission and with our Member States".
 

EDA's essential contribution to recent EU defence initiatives

The revised Capability Development Plan (CDP), the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund (EDF) are all tools recently set up to allow and foster increased defence cooperation. The European Defence Agency, Ms Mogherini said, "provided an essential contribution in crafting these initiatives, to ensure their coherence and to help turn them into concrete action". 

The Europe of defence is taking shape, and in the years ahead, the role of the European Defence Agency will be even more important, she stressed. "This can be the hub where governments and the industry meet. A place for coordination among national defence policies, following the guiding light of innovation and of our collective security".

 

More information

• Speech by Head of Agency Federica Mogherini at the EDA 2018 Annual Conference

 

  

An interesting Cold War episode worth 4 medals. During the 1980s, the U.S. flew regular SR-71 Blackbird aircraft reconnaissance missions in international waters over the Barents Sea and the Baltic Sea, the latter known as [...]

The Taleban attacks on Hazara areas in Uruzgan and Ghazni were unprecedented in their reach and led to massive displacement. The attacks indicated a clear shift in the Taleban’s behaviour towards the Hazara areas, stimulating various hypotheses about their motives. In this second part of a series of two dispatches, AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili and Martine van Bijlert (with input from Thomas Ruttig, Fazal Muzhari and Ehsan Qaane) provide in-depth background and analysis of the attacks and their consequences. They conclude that the Taleban had long been planning to advance into the Hazara areas to expand territorial control and increase their revenues.

The Taleban attacks on the Hazara areas in districts within Uruzgan and Ghazni provinces were unprecedented – at least in recent times – in terms of the number of incursions, the number of casualties and the level of coordination (three areas at more or less the same time). The initial attack on the largely self-governing Hazara enclave in the northeast of Khas Uruzgan was in response to a visit by notorious commander Abdul Hakim Shujai (more about him below) – and possibly his behaviour towards Pashtuns while he was there. At the same time, it came in the context of increased pressure by the Taleban on the Hazara population in areas that had so far largely been left alone. Coming at a time when the government and the Taleban are talking about a possible peace process, the Taleban suddenly seemed keen to show their reach and to increase their local revenue streams. The attacks appeared to fly in the face of local agreements between Hazara populations and the Taleban to largely leave each other alone. The level of violence and the slowness of the government’s response have, moreover, fed into fears of ethnic targeting by the Taleban and ethnic bias from the government. In this second dispatch in a series of two, AAN unpacks the triggers of the attacks and analyses its consequences.

Shujai’s presence in Kondolan

Abdul Hakim Shujai is a notorious former Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander from Malestan (who headed the ALP forces in Khas Uruzgan until he was forced to resign). His visit to Khas Uruzgan on 27 October was the trigger for the first attack. As Rahmatullah Amiri from The Liaison Office (TLO) told AAN, “There are strong anti-Shujai feelings among [local] Pashtuns, who will try to attack him wherever he appears, even if they know that a hundred people will be killed.” This animosity towards him is a result of Shujai’s role as a member of the Afghan Security Guards, a militia recruited by US Special Forces outside the Afghan chain of command (from 2008 to early 2010; see AAN’s earlier reporting here) and, later, as one of the district’s ALP commanders (for more background see this April 2013 report by AAN about his case and the precarious Pashtun-Hazara relations in Khas Uruzgan). As described in AAN’s earlier reporting (see here and here) Shujai has been accused of numerous extrajudicial killings and abuses towards the local Pashtun population, both when he worked with the US special forces and as an ALP commander. According to TLO’s Amiri, “There were two types of operations: first, when Shujai joined the operations led by the US special forces, and second, when the special forces sent Shujai to carry out raids.” (1)

Although Shujai was not the only abusive ALP commander, and possibly not even the worst, he appears to have been particularly targeted by powerful Pashtun leaders and local MPs, who demanded that he be prosecuted for his abuses – most probably because he was a powerful Hazara commander. After sustained criticism he was relieved of his duties and an arrest warrant was issued against him, but for a long time he continued to move freely and was even rumoured to still be commanding his ALP forces. TLO’s Amiri told AAN that Shujai continued to visit his men who were mainly from Khas Uruzgan, seeking to still act as their “protector.”

There are conflicting reports as to why exactly Shujai was in the area this time and what he did while he was there. Former Daikundi governor Qurban Ali Uruzgani, who hails from Khas Uruzgan, as well as other sources, told AAN that there was a dispute between Pashtuns and Hazaras over the routing of an irrigation canal and water pipe. In the spring of this year, Pashtuns had apparently closed a water pipe that ran from the farmland of a man called Qurban Ali Akhlasi in Karez, a sub-village in the southwest of Kondolan, through their farmland. The Hazaras retaliated and closed the irrigation canal (this was also reported by Etilaat Roz). The Taleban had ruled that both sides should allow the water to flow, but the issue resurfaced recently, whereupon the Pashtuns turned to the Taleban and Akhlasi turned to Shujai. A local source told AAN that when visiting Kondolan, Shujai was accompanied by four elders from Payk and four elders from Sia Baghal, two Hazara-dominated villages in Khas Uruzgan – in addition to an unknown number of armed men – to help him solve the dispute. They indicated that the Taleban attack was unprovoked.

Other sources maintain that it was Shujai’s behaviour in the area that had provoked the attack, first towards the local population, who then called in the help of the Taleban. A Pashtun elder from Khas Uruzgan told AAN that Shujai had come to the area to solve the issues of a Hazara woman from Hussaini who had taken refuge in the nearby Pashtun village of Abparan (she was apparently fleeing abuse and she had hoped to be returned to her family). When the Pashtuns refused to return the woman, he said, Shujai went to Abparan where he searched and possibly burned several houses and took some sheep. This was also alluded to in a report by Pajhwok on 6 November which said that clashes had erupted over the case of a woman, after a number of local elders had gathered and that the Taleban had engaged in the fight later. A former Hazara official of Khas Uruzgan, however, told AAN on 17 November that the issue with the woman had been solved and had nothing to do with the Taleban’s attacks.

Villagers from Kondolan had a different story, saying Shujai’s men had run into a group of Pashtuns travelling from Hussaini to Kondolan bazar on 27 October and had killed three of them. Those who survived reported it to the Taleban. Others said the men had not been killed, but had been searched by Shujai when he encountered them on the road, after which they had reported the matter to the Taleban. According to a local source, the local Taleban first refused to take action, but after it came to the attention of the Taleban’s man in charge of military affairs for Khas Uruzgan, Mawlawi Rashed, he ordered the lower-level Taleban commanders to go after Shujai, and they attacked within the hour. (2)

The government mainly seems to have picked up reports of local Pashtuns responding to Shujai’s alleged misbehaviour – which could explain why the violence was initially treated as a local conflict. For instance on 29 October, the Dari service of the Voice of America (VoA) quoted Uruzgan’s NDS head, Abdul Qawi Omari, as saying that Shujai first attacked a Pashtun area and that “the Taleban with the help of local people started the fight against Shujai and his fighters.”

Others said Shujai had travelled to Kondolan for a security meeting (and possibly had meant to tend to the other – more minor – matters alongside the meeting). Khaleq Ibrahimi, who along with two other journalists had travelled to Malestan, told AAN on 18 November that the meeting had been called in response to the increasing influence of the Taleban’s commando-type ‘red unit (also known as ‘special sniper groups’; read AAN’s previous reporting on the shift in the Taleban’s strategy from a ‘front system’ to a ‘red unit system’ here) in Khas Uruzgan since the spring. Others mentioned that Mawlawi Rashed had been given a green light from the Quetta Shura to conduct more aggressive campaigns to collect zakat from the local Hazara population. According to an elder from Payk, the Taleban had recently sent two letters to Kondolan and Hussaini telling the population to decide whether they would cooperate with the Taleban – including the paying of ushr and the giving of young men to the jihad– or face the consequences. The elder said the people of Kondolan and Hussaini had invited Shujai to ask him whether he would defend them or whether they should surrender and agree to the Taleban’s demands. (3)

Shujai claimed something similar in an interview with VoA on 30 October, saying that he was engaged in a fight with the Taleban, not with the Pashtuns, and that he had wanted to set up a commission to resolve the increasing Taleban pressure on “our people in the area.” This, he said, was why he went there, but “the Taleban had plotted” and carried out an attack against him.

Deputy chief executive Muhammad Mohaqeq on 8 November criticised the Taleban for playing a double game: on the one hand “in coordination with local elements portrayed to the government that the fight with the Hazaras is an ethnic fight and conflict and that [the government] should not intervene” and on the other hand pretended to the world that their fight in Uruzgan and Jaghori or other Hazara-dominated areas was “not a systematic ethno-sectarian killing, but an attack against the bases and militias of Ashraf Ghani’s government.”

The Taleban expanding its reach into Hazara areas

Sources close to the Taleban told AAN that about three months ago, Mawlawi Rashed, the Taleban official in charge of military affairs for Khas Uruzgan, complained to the Taleban’s leadership council that the local Hazara population was refusing to pay ushr and zakat and received the green light for a more aggressive campaign to collect these taxes (including, reportedly, an additional land tax, calculated on the basis of acreage; ushr and zakat are calculated based on yield or income).

According to a former official from Khas Uruzgan, around 15 to 20 days before the fighting started, Rashed had already asked the people in Kondolan to pay 100,000 kaldars or Pakistani rupees (around 745 USD). The people could not afford it and had tried to reduce it to 60,000 kaldars. The Taleban including Rashed had also called to a meeting people from the other predominantly Hazara villages of Khas Uruzgan, such as Hussaini, Sewak, Ola wa Khawja Roshnayi, Sia Baghal, Haji Muhammad and Payk, in which they asked the people to pay ushr. The people told the Taleban that they would decide after three months during which the Taleban should not cause any trouble for them.

The population of Jaghori and Malestan had received a similar message from the Taleban. On 16 May 2018, the Taleban’s shadow governor of Ghazni, Haji Yusuf Wafa, sent a letter (AAN has seen a copy) to “all residents, respected ulema (religious scholars) and mujahedin of the districts of Malestan and Jaghori,” saying he had appointed three shadow officials for the areas. The letter introduced Abed as the military head (massoul-e nezami), Hafez Bashir as head of the military commission and Hamidi as civilian head of the two districts. The letter also said, “All mujahedin are duty-bound to obey [them] within the framework of sharia and the regulations of the Islamic Emirate and to continue the holy jihad.” (See also this report by Khabarnama).

On 25 June 2018, the Taleban in the Rasana area of neighbouring Gilan district sent a letter (AAN has seen a copy) to the elders of the Dah Murda area in Jaghori, saying they had been keeping their appointed officials waiting and asking the elders to come to Rasana bazar so “we can all come to an understanding.” On 27 June 2018, Muhammad Yunus Samim, head of the Association of Social Coherence of Jaghori, told AAN that some elders from Nawa, Anguri and Hutqul areas of Jaghori had indeed gone to Rasana to learn the details and had been told by the Taleban that if they did not surrender – that is, submit to the Taleban’s demands – they would be attacked. The Taleban warned them that they had 150–200 fighters ready and that other groups could come as reinforcements.

After several gatherings to decide on a response, the people of Jaghori, according to Samim, finally sent a message that they would be under the central government as long as it was there and that the Taleban should not wage war on a specific ethnic group.

Some sources claimed that agreements had already been in place between the Taleban and community elders in Khas Uruzgan, Malestan and Jaghori, including for paying ushr and zakat to the Taleban, in exchange for the Taleban not attacking the Hazaras. Such agreements also regulated access to local bazaars. On this basis, for instance, the Taleban were only allowed to visit or pass through Gandab bazaar unarmed when travelling between Malestan and Khas Uruzgan (Gandab is a ‘major’ local bazaar in Khas Uruzgan where goods from Ghazni city are on offer). (4) Based on agreements with elders in Jaghori, the Taleban had similarly been given free passage to the areas further west and north, sources said, if they promised not to attack the local population (although other sources dispute that this was ever the case). (5) (The International Crisis Group’s senior analyst Borhan Osman told AAN that the Taleban’s attacks on Jaghori had been triggered by the population’s refusal to continue to allow the Taleban’s movement through Jaghori.)

Such deals would not always hold, as illustrated by the kidnapping of Hazaras on the roads between Jaghori and Ghazni city and also other places in Ghazni and Zabul; sometimes the hostages were released, sometimes they were killed. Whenever kidnappings occurred, Hazara elders would try to contact local Pashtun elders for their release, which might have led to indirect contacts with the local Taleban leaders, which in turn may have resulted in more unwritten deals. Khadim Hussain Kartimi described such deals to AAN as “good neighbourhood agreements” which meant that the people on both sides would not allow a third force (the Taleban or the government) to carry out operations that would harm the local people.

Strong reactions from Hazara communities

Reactions from the Hazara community – within Afghanistan, online and internationally – to the Taleban attacks on the three districts were swift and fierce. There were spontaneous demonstrations, social media campaigns (some rather extreme) and sustained pressure on the government to take action.

Uprising forces from other areas in Hazarajat travelled to Jaghori and Malestan to bolster the local resistance and morale. For instance, on 10 November, Etilaat Roz reported that Abdul Ghani Alipur (also known as Qomandan Shamshir), the commander of the Jabha-ye Moqawamat (Resistance Front), an autonomous Hazara self-defence armed group in Behsud district of Maidan Wardak, arrived in Jaghori district of Ghazni to support the local “public uprising forces” and asked residents not to leave their areas and homes. The paper quoted Alipur as saying, “The enemy is not that strong and widespread, but unfortunately the enemy’s infiltrators have spread rumours among the people which have created fear and terror.” He called on the people to resist the Taleban and withstand the rumours (about their strength). (6)

AAN also observed efforts by Hazaras in Kabul to raise funds to buy weapons – especially sniper rifles and night goggles – to ensure that the resistance forces in Jaghori and Malestan were armed with the same kinds of weapons the Taleban were using against them. This seemed a clear signal that the Hazara community did not trust the government to come to the aid of the besieged communities.

When, in the evening of 11 November the district centre of Malestan was reportedly on the verge of collapse, hundreds of people marched to the Arg, the former royal palace and now home to the president, in a spontaneous protest (see media reports on the protests here). The protest that started around 10 at night was triggered by the Facebook post of a young social media activist, Ahmad Jawid Tasha, who wrote at 9:29 pm: “Guys, if possible, let’s march toward Arg just now.” A few minutes later, at 9:40 pm, he wrote: “I’m just 10 minutes away from Haji Nowruz’s square. Anyone who has the courage and guts please get out and we will get together along the Shahid Mazari road. Let’s march toward the Arg” (for more details see the Kabul-based news website Reporterly here). Tasha, from Qarabagh district of Ghazni, told AAN later that he had tried to call his friends in the area after he saw rumours about the fall of Malestan on social media, but had been unable to get through. Losing contact with his friends, who were inside the district centre’s compound, and remembering them saying goodbye (in earlier calls), led him to take to the street.

Haji Nowruz Square is in Barchi, a neighbourhood in the mainly Shia/Hazara area in the west of Kabul, which has been the starting point for several mass protests over the past years: from the Tabassum protest (AAN reporting here) in 2015 to the Enlightenment protests in 2016 (AAN background here). The call to march towards the palace coincidentally came on the third anniversary of the Tabassum protest against the killing of seven Hazara travellers, including two women and a child. (7) As during the earlier protests, the police tried to block the protestors from reaching the Arg, but they finally managed to get there. The security measures, however, created massive traffic chaos in the morning for Kabulis who wanted to go to work.

In front of the Arg, many protesters braved the night’s rain and stayed until the next day and on into the early afternoon hours, with more joining. Many had been irked by President Ghani’s quasi-election campaign visit to Daikundi and Bamyan provinces on 9 and 10 November, respectively. There he presented his current second vice-president, Sarwar Danesh, a Hazara from Daikundi, as his running-mate for the 2019 presidential election and had indicated that Jaghori district might be elevated to provincial status, but he had not commented on the on-going fighting in the Hazara districts in Ghazni. When given a chance to send a delegation to meet the president, the protesters instead insisted that the president go live – either on the palace Facebook page or national radio and television – to convey his message to the people in the three districts.

Latif Fayyaz, one of the protestors, told AAN on 12 November that the protesters had five demands: (a) dispatch military support for the uprising forces in the three districts, (b) carry out clearance operations in the border areas where the Taleban had mobilised and were threatening those districts, (c) secure the roads that connect the districts to the provincial centres and other provinces, (d) provide relief aid to the IDPs from those districts and (e) establish an army corps in the Hazarajat.

These demands were sent to the president and communicated verbally after the protesters finally agreed to talk to him by telephone (Asef Ashna, a former deputy spokesman for Chief Executive Abdullah spoke on their behalf). President Ghani in response said that the dispatch of commandos to Jaghori (they had been killed the day before) had been a demonstration of the government’s will and commitment. He also said he had: (a) ordered the use of the air force the night before (and that airstrikes from 11:30 pm to 03:00 am had led to a reduction in the intensity of the fighting in both Jaghori and Malestan), (b) instructed the army chief to travel to Ghazni and personally lead the fight, (c) commando forces from 201 army corps were on the way to Jaghori and Malestan, (d) the plan for large-scale operations would be presented to him in the commander-in-chief meeting and would be carried out from four sides and (e) basic food stuff had been prepared and there was a commitment to address the needs of the IDPs. The president said that what could not be done immediately was to establish a permanent battalion and that he would not promise something which was not immediately feasible. (8)

The demand to establish an army corps had emerged after the Taleban killed more than 20 local Hazara police personnel in Jalrez district of Maidan Wardak in July 2015 (see media report here). (9) Currently, the Tandar Corps, the Afghan National Army Corps 203 based in Gardez in Paktia, is responsible for Jaghori and Malestan (it is the ANA command centre for southeastern Afghanistan, Loya Paktia, Logar and Ghazni). It is deployed far from Jaghori and Malestan and had even not been able to come to the rescue of the much closer Ghazni city when it temporarily fell to the Taleban in August this year (see this media report here and also AAN’s report about the insecure spring in Ghazni here; a detailed analysis by AAN of the brief fall of Ghazni is forthcoming).

Hazara analysis of what might be behind the attacks

Observers appeared to have been taken by surprise by the Taleban attacks on the Hazara areas. For instance, Muhammad Nateqi, deputy leader of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Mardom, described on his Facebook page on 12 November how a year ago he had a conversation with Taleban representatives in Qatar. The first point he raised with them was that “our people [still] hold you responsible for the martyrdom of Ustad Mazari” (founder of Hezb-e Wahdat-e Islami who was killed by the Taleban in March 1995). The Taleban’s response had been that they were sorry, that the murder of Mazari had not been their work, and that something should be done so there would no longer be problems between the Taleban and the Hazaras. But the bloody events of Malestan and Jaghori, Nateqi said, showed “that the Taleban do not have memory. Just as they were responsible for the martyrdom of Ustad Mazari, they are exactly responsible for the killing of our defenceless people in Malestan and Jaghori.”

Others like Muhammad Amin Ahmadi, the president of private Ibn-e Sina University, tried to analyse the fact that the Taleban’s attacks continued even after Shujai had fled Khas Uruzgan. In a piece for Hasht-e Sobh on 3 November, he argued that “The Taleban want to expand their territory towards Malestan and Jaghori … and bring all these areas under their influence and control to pressure the central government more than before and strip the government of the support of the Hazaras and make the Hazaras disappointed with the support from the central government and force them to surrender to them [the Taleban].” Ahmadi warned that if the Taleban achieved this goal, “the legitimacy of the central government [at a time when] it is announced that the government controls only 50 per cent of the country’s soil will be undermined more than before, because even from a religious perspective, it will be argued that the government has lost its necessary shoukat [power] and authority and is unable to maintain order and security even for its supporters, so in old terms, it is no longer a zi-showkat [powerful] sultan against which fighting is haram [forbidden] religiously. Its position in peace negotiations will also be strongly undermined.”

In a separate post on 11 November, Ahmadi argued that the Taleban aimed to capture Hazara districts by “al-nasr bel ru’b (victory by scaring)”. He wrote, “The Taleban by the killings that they carried out in Uruzgan scared the ordinary people and made them understand that their slightest move would be responded to by widespread and heinous killing. They have announced and are announcing this policy of terror that the people should not intervene in their fight with the government or even [should not] come out of their homes, otherwise, they would be killed, so that they can easily capture the local administrations and rule the people.” Ahmadi also said, “The Hazara community and in a sense all proponents of the constitutional system and opponents of the Taleban’s rule have stood at a turning point of destiny. We should all answer this question whether to allow the Taleban [to] overthrow this system and as a result accept extremist and hard-line, exclusivist and non-participatory Taleban rule? Whether to not seek justice and equality [and] pay taxes and ushr just to survive? It is time for a right, unified and inclusive decision, tomorrow is [too] late.”

Threats and possibly violence towards Pashtuns in the affected areas

Violence and threats against Pashtuns in the affected Hazara areas have been reported since the Taleban left. Sources from Andar district in Ghazni, for instance, told AAN that some of the 80 to 100 Pashtuns from Nawa and Gilan districts who had active businesses in Anguri (fuel stations, pharmacies, car dealerships, well drills, etc.) had been unaware of the attack beforehand and were thus unable to leave the area. One source said that he was stuck in Anguri bazaar for one week during which, he said, the uprising people were giving him death threats every day. They told these businessmen that they would be killed very soon because the uprising people had lost 70 of their friends in the fighting with the Taleban. He also said some of the businessmen were beaten and that the businesses of some Pashtuns had been burnt during an attack by local uprising people – but the reports are somewhat inconclusive. (For example, the fuel station of Haji Ibrahimi, a rich man from Rasana area, was reported to have been burnt and Haji Ibrahim was said to have been missing since the day the attack started. Others however claim that Haji Ibrahim has since then reappeared and that people who travelled to the area have since found the fuel station intact.)

Journalist Karimi, quoted above, however, claimed that many Pashtun businessmen had in fact disappeared from Anguri with their vehicles and other important possessions the night before the attack, in response to the earlier Taleban threats and letters warning of a possible attack. He said that local people who had been taken by surprise by the Taleban attacks, later criticised themselves for failing to notice the departure of the businesspeople as a sign of an imminent threat.

AAN was told that on 18 November 2018, two airstrikes hit two civilian houses in Rasana in Gilan (the Taleban had attacked Hutqul from Rasana in Gilan). The first house was empty and only the building was destroyed. The second strike hit the house of Abdul Malik (see photos of the victims and Abdul Malik in this Facebook post) and killed his wife and his daughter and wounded another four family members. According the sources, the airstrikes continued on 19 November and as a result more than 1,000 families fled. They started returning on 20 November after the fighting reduced. BBC Pashto reported that 1,200 families had left the area.

Local residents told the BBC that they were leaving the Rasana area, chiefly due to indiscriminate shelling by the uprising people from Anguri area. They told BBC that two children had died due to cold weather while they were on the way to Aghujan, Shinki and Guha areas. One local resident told the BBC, “They fire rockets at our area because they say Taleban are living here.” The spokesman for Ghazni governor, Arif Nuri, confirmed the killing of one civilian in the bombing, but did not comment on the wounded civilians or the destruction of civilian houses. Ghazni police chief Daud Tarakhel told the BBC that the bombing had not killed civilians.

Conclusion: What to make of this new phase of Taleban assault?

Since the attacks started on 27 October, the Taleban have been pushing into Hazara areas in Uruzgan and Ghazni provinces. The Hazaras have been putting pressure on the government to deploy forces to protect them from the Taleban’s assault. They have also been mobilising public uprising forces to defend their areas. While the Taleban have now been pushed back from Jaghori and Malestan districts, they continue to pose a threat of renewed attacks on certain parts of Jaghori and Malestan.

The Taleban’s attacks on the Hazara areas in Uruzgan and Ghazni have an ethnic dimension; that is to say, the Taleban, a predominately Pashtun movement, has attacked areas inhabited by Hazaras – from areas dominated by Pashtuns. This has further strained the already precarious inter-community relations in those areas.

The Taleban’s attacks on the Hazara areas have been catching headlines, raising speculation and theories as to why the Taleban have attacked at the very time that they are also holding meetings with the US towards a possible political settlement.

First, the Taleban may have wanted to gain more territory before the start of any peace talks. This was one of the hypotheses that Zalmai Khalilzad, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, pointed to in a question and answer session with journalists. He said some alleged the Taleban wanted “to improve their relative position” as the country moved from “war to talk” and that in the areas where the defence was relatively weak, it was easier for them to strengthen their position. (10) This was echoed by Muhammad Ali Alizada, an MP from Jaghori, who told AAN on 15 November that the Taleban had already claimed in Moscow that they controlled “55 per cent of the territory and by spring might claim to be controlling up to 70 per cent.” Alizada said that the Taleban, in fact, wanted to “expand both their territorial control and power” before any peace talks.

Second, the Taleban seem to have wanted to expand their influence within all ethnic groups. This was highlighted by Amiri of the TLO who said that “the Taleban have influence among Tajiks and Uzbeks. The Hazaras are the only community that is not influenced by the Taleban yet. The Taleban want to try it with the Hazaras.” Observation from the north, however, shows that the Taleban mainly co-opted people from Tajik and Uzbek communities there, unlike their recent attacks on the Hazara areas, which led to widespread fear and displacement.

Third, the Taleban seem to long have been planning to attack Hazara areas in an attempt to establish their administration, a major part of which is the collection of taxes and ushr. This was confirmed by the government’s fact-finding delegation which found, as reported by Hasht-e Sobh, that the Taleban had asked residents of Kondolan, Hussain and Sia Baghal to pay taxes and hand over their weapons. The daily quoted Asadullah Falah, the head of the delegation, as saying that the Taleban had asked those villagers to “resort to jehad” against the government and that the Taleban intended to “collect taxes from the people and use them against the government.” AAN’s own research also shows that the Taleban long wanted to move their administration into these areas to expand their territory and increase their revenues. The timing for the attack may have been influenced by the fact that the Taleban had already captured large parts of the Pashtun areas in the two provinces of Ghazni and Uruzgan and, given the possible new momentum for peace talks, now wanted to expand their territory so they could negotiate from a position of greater strength.

It was against this backdrop that the Taleban seem to have used Shujai’s appearance in Khas Uruzgan as an opportunity to launch their attacks. It is not clear why they engaged in indiscriminate killing in the way they did, particularly in Kondolan and Hussaini. Some Pashtun sources claim these killings were done by individuals intent on revenge and that the Taleban has dealt with the perpetrators, internally. A former official of Khas Uruzgan told AAN he thought the Taleban had simply launched their attack on the two Hazara-dominated districts of Jaghori and Malestan, after their foray into Khas Uruzgan, when they realised how vulnerable and defenceless the two districts were.

 

 

(1) Accusations of killings by Shujai are documented in this Human Rights Watch report, published in March 2015. The report said:

Abdul Hakim Shujoyi, a militia leader in central Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, became an ALP commander in 2011 at the insistence of U.S. forces. He personally murdered civilians, including a rampage in July 2011 when he shot dead 7 villagers and set fire to their crops. After a further attack in which he killed at least 9 civilians in 2012, the Ministry of Interior issued a warrant for his arrest. Nevertheless, he remains at large, apparently protected by senior government officials.

For more details, see also this AAN report.

(2) Sources told AAN that the Taleban had appointed Mawlawi Rashed as masul nezami (military in charge) for Khas Uruzgan about a year ago. He is said to be around 35 years old, an Achekzai Pashtun (Ardozai by sub-tribe) from Sheikha in Khas Uruzgan and a former lower-level Taleban front commander. The Taleban have been appointing three main officials for each district: in addition to the military in charge, they also appoint a masul mulki (civilian in charge) and masul kemisyun nezami (person in charge of the military commission). As reported above, they introduced the same structure for Jaghori and Malestan, jointly, in May this year.

(3) Over the years the Taleban have put pressure on the Hazara pockets of Khas Uruzgan. The first area to come under heavy pressure was Bagh o Char in the southeast of the district. The Hazara population was unable to withstand the Taleban’s demands and decided to vacate the area. More recently, the Hazara areas of Palan, Shashpar and Siro came under de facto Taleban control. The Hazara areas in the southeast of the district – Kondolan, Hussaini, Haji Mohammad, Gandab and Payk – due to their proximity to Malestan had until now been relatively protected against such pressure and incursions.

(4) Gandab bazaar is the main bazaar for five villages in the neighbourhood: Payk, Sia Baghal, Haji Muhammad, Abesto and Ola wa Khawaja Roshnayi. They are all Hazara villages. The two villages closest to Malestan are Haji Muhammad and Payk on the east.

(5) According to local sources, Bashi Habib – who was killed in the latest fighting – had first made a deal with the Taleban after they attacked his house in Jaghori in 2007. (According to this blog, his wife, two sons and two nephews were killed in the attack). A source from Autli, a village near Rasana in Gilan district, told AAN that according to this deal the Taleban would not cause problems to Hazaras and vice versa, nor for the security forces that passed through the Hazara areas. In exchange the security forces would not harm them and the Taleban would be allowed to seek refuge in Hazara areas, provided they came to the areas without weapons. As a result of this agreement, Taleban fighters would commute quite often to Anguri bazaar in Jaghuri, but without weapons. They would come to see doctors, fix their motorbikes and tend to other needs. Bashi is said to have also given weapons and money to the Taleban at the time (as Shujai is said to have done in the past).

(6) Alipur was arrested by security forces in Kabul on 25 November for having established “an illegal armed group … involved in illegal activities” such as ransom seeking, illegal extortions, arming and supporting criminal groups, harassing people, and carrying out an armed attack on security forces (see here for the NDS media report). His arrest sparked protests by his Hazara supporters in Kabul, Bamyan, Balkh, Daikundi and other places for two consecutive days. The protests in Kabul and Bamyan turned violent (see media reports here and here). He was released in the evening of the following day after committing, among others, to either registering all his weapons, ammunition and military equipment or handing them to the government; staying in Kabul until all legal phases of the investigations were completed; and to answer to the judicial authorities if there were any claims against him by the people (see media report here). Alipur himself said, in his defence, that he had left his transportation job and had “founded the resistance” after he witnessed “the disasters and misery of the people” in Maidan valley (see this document).

(7) There were further protests in the same night, including in front of the girls’ dormitory of Kabul University, in Mazar-e Sharif and in the morning on the campuses of the university and the Polytechnic Institute in Kabul. There, students blocked the entry gates, but allowed them to reopen when lectures started. Further demonstrations were reported from the provincial centres of Bamian and Daykundi.

(8) When the Kabul protestors dispersed after Ghani’s phone call, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a group of young people close to Zarnegar Park and Isteqlal Lycee, killing six people, among them three young women and a traffic policeman who was hit by shrapnel. Some 20 more people were injured. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for this attack.

Among the dead were three youth activists – Gulchehra Sadaf, Fereshta Akbari and Ismail Bashardost – who reportedly had been among the first who helped victims of earlier terrorist attacks and donating blood. One of them, Gulchehra, had been photographed carrying the casket of a student victim of the 15 August 2018 attack on the Mawud educational centre in West Kabul.

(9) In December 2016, Vice-President Danesh and deputy chief executive Mohammad Mohaqeq submitted a “Comprehensive Security and Administrative Plan for the Central Hazarajat Regions” to the National Security Council. They wanted to draw the government’s attention to the “existing dangers and threats in Hazarajat” so it would take measures to make people feel confident that the government would ensure their security. As part of this plan, they proposed that a lewa (an army brigade) comprised of six kandak (battalions) be established with its centre in Bamyan. They suggested the following distribution of battalions: (a) one in the centre of Bamyan, (b) one in Sheikh Ali district of Parwan, (c) one in Behsud district of Maidan Wardak, (d) two in Kejran and Nili of Daikundi, (e) one in Lal wa Sarjangal in Ghor. They also proposed that Jaghori and Balkhab, which are far from Bamyan, would be given battalions from, respectively, the Ghazni army brigade and the northern 202 Shahin corps. The proposal also said the people in Hazarajat demanded the establishment of three new provinces with their capitals in Jaghori (currently Ghazni), Behsud (Maidan Wardak) and Lal wa Sarjangal (Ghor). Until those provinces were created, the proposal said, the big districts in the central highlands should be split as follow: (1) Lal wa Sarjangal with an estimated population of 180,000 should be into two; (2) Waras of Bamyan with an estimated population of 160,000 should be split into into three; (3) Behsud district of Maidan Wardak with estimated population of 160,000 into three; (4) Nahur district of Ghazni with estimated population of 140,000 into two; (5) Jaghori with estimated population of 300,000 into three; (6) Malestan with estimated population of 140,000 into three; and (7) Miramur district of Daikundi with estimated population of 160,000 into two.

(10) Khalilzad also said he had heard another hypothesis:that “some Talebs who have developed some relations with Iran” were responsible for the attacks in order to justify the possible use of fatemyun– a brigade of Afghan fighters who fought in Syria – “to say those areas needed defence and therefore let’s deploy defence forces.” But he added that, based on his discussions with Mohaqeq, he had the strong impression that the central region, the Hazarajat area, does not want any fatemyun deployed and that they had confidence in the government and its partners to deal effectively with the security of the area.

On 15 November, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies organised an event about a recent report by the Middle East Institute where speakers raised concerns about the use of fatemyun in Afghanistan.

 

Michael Kofman and I published a short analysis of the naval battle in the Kerch Strait on the Monkey Cage. Here’s a sampler.

The Nov. 25 skirmish between Russian Border Guard and Ukrainian navy ships in the Kerch Strait has escalated tensions not just between the two countries, but also between Russia and NATO.

Two Ukrainian navy small-armored boats and a tugboat attempted to cross into the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait. A Russian Border Guard ship rammed the tug. Russian forces eventually captured all three boats, holding them in the Crimean port of Kerch. 

This crisis kicked off months ago 

In March 2018 Ukraine seized a Russian-flagged fishing vessel, claiming that it had violated exit procedures from the “temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.” Although the Russian crew was released, the boat remains detained in a Ukrainian port. Subsequently, Russia began to seize Ukrainian vessels for inspection, starting in May when a fishing vessel was detained for illegally fishing in Russia’s exclusive economic zone.

A new Russian-built bridge linking Crimea to southern Russia is at the center of Russia’s attempt to assert sovereignty over the entire Kerch Strait. The bridge opened in May, and its low clearance height cut off many commercial ships and reduced revenue at the Mariupol port by 30 percent. Russia has imposed an informal blockade on the remaining maritime traffic, with ships often waiting more than 50 hours to cross, and Russian authorities insisting upon inspecting the cargo. This has substantially raised transit costs — and has been slowly strangling the Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.

To read the rest, please click here.

In late October 2018, the Taleban pushed deeper into Hazara areas than they had ever done before. They first pursued Hakim Shujai, a notorious former Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander, into Malestan, then launched an assault on the district of Jaghori and thereafter attacked Malestan’s district centre, almost resulting in its collapse. The attacks were unprecedented in their reach and scope and led to massive displacement of local people. In this series of two dispatches, AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili and Martine van Bijlert (with input from Thomas Ruttig, Fazal Muzhari and Ehsan Qaane), first, look into the details of the attacks and, second, provide in-depth background and an analysis of the attacks.

The Taleban attacks on Hazara areas in districts in Uruzgan and Ghazni provinces were unprecedented – at least in recent times – in terms of the number of incursions, the number of casualties and the level of coordination (three areas at more or less the same time). The initial attack on the largely self-governing Hazara enclave in the northeast of Khas Uruzgan was in response to Shujai’s visit – and possibly his behaviour towards Pashtuns while he was there. At the same time, it came in the context of increased pressure by the Taleban on the Hazara population in areas they had so far largely left alone. Coming at a time when the government and the Taleban are talking about a possible peace process, the Taleban suddenly seemed keen to show their reach and to increase their local revenue streams. The attacks appeared to fly in the face of local agreements between Hazara populations and the Taleban to largely leave each other alone. The level of violence and the slowness of the government to respond have, moreover, fed into fears of ethnic targeting by the Taleban and ethnic bias from the government. In this first dispatch in a series of two, AAN provides a detailed account of the attacks.

The attack in Khas Uruzgan and incursions into Malestan

The attack on Khas Uruzgan started on 27 October 2018. On that day, by all accounts, Hakim Shujai, a notorious former Afghan Local Police (ALP) commander, arrived in the Kondolan area in the northeast of Khas Uruzgan in a convoy of several cars (Shujai is from Malestan, but headed the ALP forces in Khas Uruzgan until he was forced to resign). After refuelling his vehicles and moving around in Kondolan bazaar for a while, he went to an area called Dakhni in the centre of the area where he decided to spend the night. The Taleban, alerted to his presence, approached Dakhni around 7:30 pm and started shooting to find out whether he was really there. When they drew return fire, they attacked.

Shujai was injured in the attack, but managed to escape with his remaining men to Hamza, a hamlet at the edge of Kondolan. From there, he continued to Ochi (also known as Gerdai Chaman), which is in the Shirdagh area of Malestan district in Ghazni, just across the border. The Taleban pursued him into Shirdagh where they engaged in fighting over the days that followed. Taleban reinforcements arrived, first from other areas in Khas Uruzgan, later also from Ajiristan district in Ghazni, according to local sources. They were stationed in houses and mosques in the Hazara areas of Kondolan, Husseini, Haji Muhammad and Gandab – the northeastern corner of the district where the Hazara population had so far largely managed to keep their independence from the Taleban. In the days that followed, several civilians were violently killed, leading ever more families to flee the area out of fear of violence. (1)

On 28 October 2018, the Taleban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that “the brutal commander Shujai had resorted to an aggressive attack for the purpose of looting in the Kondolan and Jaga Righ areas of Khas Uruzgan and had faced tough resistance.” The Taleban’s report claimed that eight of Shujai’s forces had been killed and injured and six more, including “a policewoman,” had been captured. (Local sources told AAN the woman was not a policewoman and had been captured because she had picked up a weapon to fight off the Taleban, being the only person in the house; the sources also said the Taleban later released the prisoners). According to sources AAN spoke to, the Taleban killed 11 people in the attack, including two of Shujai’s deputies, Fakuri and Khan Ali Ghulami (known as Shujai’s ‘minister of war’).

On 1 November 2018, President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree in response to the public outcry over the attack – although the wording of the text only made matters worse. The decree tasked a 12-member delegation “to investigate and resolve the recent conflict among the ethnicities of Uruzgan province.” (3) The fact that the president had referred to the violence as ‘ethnic conflict,’ was met with sharp criticism by many Hazaras who argued that this was clearly a matter of the Taleban attacking a pro-government area and it was the government’s responsibility not just to investigate, but to act. For instance, the head of private Ibn-e Sina University, Muhammad Amin Ahmadi, wrote on 4 November (under the title “A government that establishes peace between the Taleban and the local population”):

[It is such a] confused government whose ethnocentrism has rendered it unable to understand even the simplest issues. According to a report by [Kabul daily] Etilaat Roz, the president has appointed a delegation to find the root of the Taleban’s conflict with the local people in Uruzgan, as if the conflict is an ethnic-based one, or between the Taleban and a local commander. … The government should answer this simple question: does it agree with the Taleban’s advance into its sovereign territory? Does it want the people to surrender to the Taleban? Is it not concerned about the weakening of the government and the fall of the system?

The president’s own vice-president and chief executive also weighed in. Vice-President Sarwar Danesh said in a speech on 1 November 2018, “These people were under government rule and are supporters of the system and, for that very reason, have come under the Taleban’s brutal attack.” He criticised his own government saying, “for whatever reason, no practical action has been taken by the local administration or our security institutions in [Kabul] to defend the people.” Danesh also called on the local population “not to surrender … and to defend their dignity and freedom manly.” A few days later, on 5 November, Chief Executive Abdullah told the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers that he had met with representatives from the (Hazara) central region who complained that the issue was presented as an “ethnic fight.” He admitted that the delay in the government’s response had led to civilian casualties and displacement of the people.

Former Daikundi governor Qurban Ali Uruzgani told AAN that he had met Vice-President Danesh, along with a number of other Hazara representatives, to discuss the decree’s three main problems: (a) it called the conflict “ethnic”, (b) the delegation included only two Hazaras and (c) the decree had tasked the governor’s office in Uruzgan – that is, the officials who had initially reported the conflict to the president as an ethnic one – with facilitating the delegation’s stay. Uruzgani said that it was as a result of these efforts that the decree was amended. (4)

On 5 November, Ghazni provincial council member Muhammad Naim Tawhidi, who according to media reports had been at the scene of the clashes, was quoted as saying that the Taleban’s so-called commando-type ‘red units’ had attacked the police forces in Shirdagh, Malestan, during the night of 4 November. (Read AAN’s previous reporting on the shift in Taleban strategy from a ‘front system’ to a ‘red unit’, also known as the Taleban’s ‘special sniper group’ system here). Tawhidi said that 13 policemen had been killed in the clashes and the security forces had withdrawn towards Meradina, Malestan’s district centre. Pajhwok quoted Malestan district governor Zamen Ali Hedayat, who added that scores of civilians had also been killed. (The possible presence of the Taleban’s red units was also mentioned by other local sources and repeated by Deputy Chief Executive Muhammad Mohaqeq here).

Provincial council member Tawhidi complained that more than 30 army soldiers had arrived in Malestan centre a few days earlier, but they had not yet been allowed to carry out operations.

Several sources told AAN that following the Taleban’s assault on Shirdagh, local people struck a deal with the Taleban and gave up the fight. Khaleq Ibrahimi, who had travelled to Malestan along with two other journalists to investigate the Taleban attacks, in a conversation with AAN, quoted a resident of Shirdagh saying that it had not been “a peace deal, but rather it allowed us to lengthen our survival (“dam-e khod ra daraz kunim)” and that it had come at the cost of schools and paying ushr (an obligatory charge on agricultural produce). (AAN’s conversations with different sources show that the fighting indeed stopped, but only until 10 November when the Taleban attacked Malestan’s district centre – more on this below.)

On 5 November, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) issued a press release on “the armed conflict in Uruzgan province,” saying that around 63 local people had been killed or injured in the Taleban attacks on the villages of Kondolan, Hussaini, Karez and Gerdai Chaman in Khas Uruzgan district, and that hundreds of families had been displaced.

On 6 November, Pajhwok reported that Asadullah Falah, the head of a government delegation, while visiting neighbouring Malestan and Jaghori (more on this below) had confirmed the killing of 40 civilians in recent clashes between the Taleban and an “illegal commander” in Khas Uruzgan and Malestan districts. The report also quoted Falah as saying that the Taleban had attacked residential buildings and villages and caused casualties to civilians and that around 500 families had been displaced. Later he told Hasht-e Sobh that 54 people had been killed: “After the people of these areas disobeyed the Taleban’s order, 25 people in Kondolan, nine people in Hussaini village and 20 in other villages of the district were killed by the Taleban. Eleven security forces were also killed in the fight in Khas Uruzgan. Six security forces were injured.” (5)

On 7 November, the president’s office reported that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces had reviewed the general security situation of Khas Uruzgan, Malestan and Jaghori (as well as other districts under threat, such as Qala-ye Kah in Farah and Chaharsada in Ghor). The statement said that the security forces had been instructed to present “a clear security picture and plan” and to take urgent action and that the US/NATO-led Resolute Support mission had promised air support.

The attack on Jaghori

On the same day, on 7 November, the Taleban went on the offensive in neighbouring Jaghori district. They attacked a number of posts in the Hutqul area, a village that borders Rasana in Gilan district, around 1:00 in the morning. The Taleban first attacked posts that were manned by Salam Akrami – a commander of around 30 local police (ALP) – in Awri Gardu. Then they moved to a post run by Habibullah Haidari, known as Bashi Habib, in Bazar-e Kohna Lashkarai, as well as posts in Ferozkoh manned by ALP and local uprising forces. (6) Khadim Hussain Karimi, a journalist from Hutqul, told AAN that the Taleban overran Salam’s posts – killing him and most of his men – as well as Bashi’s posts. They then moved to Bashi’s house where they killed him and two of his sons, in his home. (7) On the same night, the Taleban entered Daud village from Larga in Muqur district of Ghazni where they met no resistance.

Taleban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed issued a statement on 7 November saying that their attack on Jaghori district was “against military centres of the enemy and against the Kabul administration and servants of America.” The statement emphasised that the attacks were not against any specific qawm (ethnicity), qeshr (group) or mazhab (religious sect) and called on “our countrymen in Jaghori district, especially Hazara and Shia … to be mindful of the conspiracy by the corrupt few and America’s lackeys sitting in Kabul” who might try to portray the Taleban attacks “as against the people.” The statement reiterated that, as they would do everywhere else in the country, the Taleban would “carry out attacks against the servants and lackeys of America and punish them for their acts of treason to their religion and country” and would “continue such attacks in Jaghori and other areas that remain under the control of the Kabul administration.”

Following these attacks, Ghazni MPs and provincial council members met Chief Executive Abdullah and NDS chief Muhammad Masum Stanekzai to call for the urgent dispatch of reinforcements. Both promised to send air support before the end of the day, if the fighting continued (see here). A day later, on 8 November, Ghazni spokesman Nuri said that the Taleban had been pushed back after security forces enforcements arrived, that 39 of the Taleban had been killed, and that clearance operations were on-going.

The Hutqul area, from where the Taleban first attacked, remained quiet on 9 and 10 November. On 11 November, the Taleban carried out another deadly assault that started at 3 am and continued until 7 am. Media reports differed as to the number of casualties. Etilaat Roz reported (see here) that 25 commando soldiers and 15 civilians had been killed.  A New York Times team that later travelled to Sang-e Masha reported that it had seen the bodies of 20 commandos which had been airlifted in four days earlier (on 8 November: see media report here) “laid … on sheets on the ground, side by side on their backs.” It is not clear how the Taleban managed to kill so many commandos in a single attack.

Journalist Karimi, quoted above, told AAN that the local uprising forces had been left demoralised after the high rate of commando casualties. As a result, on 13 November around 10 am, the Taleban captured the public uprising posts in Balna Koh in Hutqul without a fight (see here). The Taleban then, Karimi said, proceeded to capture several villages, including Hutqul, Anguri, Daud, Zirak, and Kotal Lokhak. They advanced towards the district centre, reaching as far as Kotal Dala and Kotal Loman.

On 17 November, the Ministry of Defence finally announced that military operations led by Muhammad Sharif Yaftali, the chief of army staff, had been launched to clear Jaghori and Malestan districts. (See media report here)

On 19 November the Taleban attacked Baba village in western Jaghori, killing three people (one guard of a telecommunication antenna tower and two public uprising forces) and wounding three more (see also this breaking news on Etilaat Roz Facebook page). Local sources told AAN that, on 9 November, the Taleban had already given an ultimatum to the people of Pato, Baba and Hicha, villages in the western part of Jaghori, saying they would come to no harm if they allowed the Taleban fighters to pass through on their way to Jaghori’s district centre, Sang-e Masha. After meetings and consultations, the local people in Baba and parts of Hicha decided to resist the Taleban’s demands to allow them to advance.

The attack on Baba on 19 November came after the Taleban had already entered parts of Hicha and Pato on 16 November. The Taleban entered Pato village based on a deal with Ibrahim Abbasi, a local commander of Hezb-e Islami-e Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. According to this post by Etilaat Roz journalist Esmat Sorush, as well as AAN’s local sources, Abbasi had several rounds of meetings with the Taleban and finally called on the people of Pato not to stand against the Taleban, arguing that they did not have the capability to fight. Abbasi, according to the sources, agreed to allow the Taleban’s advance towards the district centre, in return for the Taleban not harming the people of the village.

The Taleban attacked the Baba front on 22 November for the second time, killing a member of the uprising forces who had arrived from a neighbouring village, Chehel Baghtu, and injuring a few more (see here).

Attack on Malestan district centre

In the meantime, on 10 November, the Taleban attacked the district centre of Malestan, Meradina.‌‌ BBC quoted local people as saying that Taleban forces had crossed the Siah Baghal and Zawli areas in Khas Uruzgan the night before, driving Humvees and ranger pickups they had captured from the government. Muhammad Ali Akhlaqi, an MP from Malestan, told AAN that a convoy of 100 to 150 Taleban fighters had departed from Gandab in Khas Uruzgan, five to six kilometres from the Malestan border, in the morning of 8 November. The Taleban stopped at Kotal Kharzar, only five kilometres from Meradina, for a reconnaissance likely out of fear they might be ambushed if they proceeded.

Etilaat Roz reported that fighting between the Taleban and the security forces started at around 10 am of 10 November, after the Taleban had taken positions a few kilometres from Meradina under the shelter of darkness, including in people’s homes in Dahan-e Bum and Qushang, as well as in Moklai village, close to the district headquarter of Malestan.

After people heard the Taleban were attacking the district centre, the bazaar of Meradina closed and hundreds of families fled, including from Dahan-e Bum and Moklai, Etilaat Roz and the BBC reported. The BBC added that only men stayed behind, to protect their property and belongings. The police forces stationed at the district centre went out to fight the Taleban, but the special forces said they were not allowed to do so. That night, the Taleban advanced to within 200 metres of the district centre and there was fighting in the surrounding villages.

District governor Hedayat wrote on his Facebook page on 12 November that the Taleban had been pushed back by the security forces and on 18 November the Ministry of Interior announced that Malestan district had been totally cleared of “terrorists.” This was confirmed by the Ministry of Defence on 19 November, which said that in the fighting, 31 Taleban had been killed and 15 others wounded.

The Ministry of Interior also said that it had established two tolai (companies) of an “urdu-ye mantaqawi” or territorial army (a new initiative to set up community defence forces – supposedly – under the Ministry of Defence with ‘community’ involvement in their establishment, recruitment and, possibly, oversight – AAN background here). The Ministry of Interior also said it had mobilised 600 locals within the framework of public uprising forces (see footnote 6 for a description) in the two districts, saying they would be equipped and assigned to maintain security in their areas after receiving training.

Although the Taleban have been pushed back from both Jaghori and Malestan, many of those displaced are wary about returning, as they fear that with the departure of additional security forces, the Taleban fighters will return to the area (see for instance this BBC report here). Several sources have told AAN that Taleban reinforcements, including the notorious red units had come from other areas to help with the fight in Jaghori and Malestan (including from  Ajirestan in Uruzgan and Gilan and Andar districts in Ghazni). Although they have now returned to their own areas, they could be called on again in the future. 

Conclusion: The local population pays the price for the conflict

The fighting in the three districts led to massive displacement, at a time when winter has already come. Presidential adviser Muhammad Aziz Bakhtyari, a member of the government’s fact-finding delegation told the BBC on 14 November that 60 to 70 per cent of civilians from Jaghori and Malestan had been displaced (the figure might be only from areas that experienced actual fighting, though). Most of those fleeing the violence, or threat of violence, travelled to Bamyan, Ghazni and Kabul, while smaller groups of IDPs from Khas Uruzgan, Malestan and Jaghori arrived in Tirinkot, the capital of Uruzgan province, and Daikundi.

Bamyan: During the fighting, the number of IDPs arriving in Bamyan rose rapidly. On 13 November, the head of Bamyan’s department of refugees and repatriation told AAN that his staff had counted 2,000 arrivals, mainly from Jaghori. The next day, Ismail Zaki, a human rights activist in Bamyan, told AAN that a total of 450 families (around 4,000 people, most of them women and children) had arrived. The night before, snowfall had closed the road and many cars had become stuck in Nawur district of Ghazni. According to a UNOCHA flash update of 21 November, “the unverified figures of IDP families in Bamyan Center rose from 930 families (6,510 individuals) to 1,208 families (8,456 individuals).”

Zaki said that around 50 families had been given shelter in the state-run Garzandoy Hotel; the rest had been hosted by local residents. He himself also hosted two families – 22 people, all women and children – who had arrived in Bamyan by car. The drivers, he said, had been 13 and 14 years old. Apparently, many of the drivers had been under-age and often not skilled enough for the long road, but they had had to drive because their fathers had either stayed back in the villages, to protect their properties, or were abroad. Zaki said that he himself had seen two young girls drive their families to Bamyan.

Ghazni: On 20 November, the BBC quoted the head of Ghazni’s provincial department of refugees, Abdul Khaleq Ahmadi, as saying that 2,511 families had been displaced to Ghazni, 70 per cent of whom were women and children (the figure was also reported by OCHA in its flash update, cited above). The IDPs had faced many problems on the way. The Taleban closed the Nawur-Ghazni city road on 13 November and many who had fled Jaghori and Malestan were forced to turn back. The road between Sang-e Masha and Ghazni city, through Qarabagh district, had also been closed since the day the Taleban attacked Jaghori, although it was not clear whether the Taleban had really blocked it or whether people had simply not dared to travel on it.

On 9 November, the Taleban cut off two major telecommunication networks (Roshan and Etisalat) in Jaghori and Malestan, which rendered many people unable to contact their family members there.

A person who travelled the Nawur-Ghazni road on 15 November told AAN that it was reopened but that the Taleban had stopped vehicles and checked passengers’ tazkeras (national ID cards). One traveller who had been stopped told AAN that he had been asked what his occupation was and whether he had gone to school, whether there was any fighting in Jaghori, whether he had a Facebook account, how many people in Jaghori had become Christian and how many churches there were. He said the Taleban also checked his hands (perhaps to see whether he was a white- or blue-collar worker) and had taken his Facebook address.

Kabul: OCHA’s flash update of 21 November said that in Kabul “the number of reported and unverified IDP families stood at 1,066 families (7,462 individuals). 123 families (861 individuals), out of the 642 families (4,494 individuals) that were verified, were identified as vulnerable and in need of humanitarian assistance.” OCHA suggested there was “a new trend” of IDPs moving from Malestan and Jaghori to Kabul and then to Bamyan.

People were also displaced within Jaghori and Malestan. Their numbers, according to OCHA, were estimated to be 500 and 600 families respectively. Moreover, a female teacher who had escaped the fighting in her village told AAN that all schools had been closed since 8 November, the second day of the attack on Jaghori (which according to this Etilaat Roz report has 105 schools – 62 high, 22 middle and 21 primary – where 50,686 pupils – 26,694 male and 23,988 female – are enrolled).

This high number of IDPs seems to indicate both a high level of fear of the Taleban and the atrocities they may commit when taking over the areas (especially after the reports of indiscriminate killing in Khas Uruzgan), and a lack of confidence in the government’s ability to effectively protect the population. Both points are reflected in this Washington Post article that says:

One militiaman who fled to Bamian, Habibullah Ahmadi, 48, said he had lost faith that the government would protect them. Several others said that Taliban representatives had told villagers they wouldn’t be harmed if they stayed indoors, but that nobody trusted them.

 

(1) A source from Khas Uruzgan provided the following details:

In Hussaini, five people were killed on the first day of the attack (including three people aged above 70): three people were made to disembark a vehicle and were then killed; two people were dragged out of their homes and killed outside. There was no fighting on the second night. On the third night, villagers returned to their houses to feed their livestock (cows, sheep and goats). Four people were killed: one of them was Ibrahim who was aged 84; two others were killed while trying to flee the village; one person who had visited his family in Kondolan was killed when he returned to Hussaini.

In Kondolan the following killings were reported: On the fourth day, Haji Abdullah, aged 69, who had just returned from hajj was killed when some Taleban fighters went to his house for tea (and possibly bread or food). He was providing the tea when another Taleban fighter arrived; as he stood to greet and hug him, the Taleban fighter shot him to death.

On the sixth day, one person called Ishaq Jaghori Gu (he was called Jaghori Gu because he had lived in Jaghori for a while) was taken out of his home and killed in front of his house. A young person, aged 18 or 19, was killed in a valley after he had been taken from his home. Two people who had been guests in Karez were killed with gun bayonets.

(2) One source who originally comes from Khas Uruzgan told AAN that the woman fought back the Taleban fighters, allowing Shujai to escape. The woman was later captured by the Taleban and taken away. He also said that three of Shujai’s men had been killed.

(3) The delegation that was tasked with “finding the root cause of how the conflict occurred, take action to solve it, and submit its findings to the president” consisted of the following people: Ustad Muhammad Akbari, a Ghazni MP; Mawlawi Muhammad Jora Taheri and Mawlawi Mohiuddin Baluch, both presidential advisers for religions affairs; Eid Muhammad Ahmadi, presidential adviser for social affairs; Muhammad Alam Rasekh, presidential adviser for scientific and social affairs; Mawlawi Sayyed Rahman Haqani Pashai, adviser to the Commission for Conflict Resolution and People’s Relation with the Government; authorised representatives of the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Interior Affair and National Directorate of Security (NDS); Attorney General’s Office; Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG) and the Department of Defence and Security in the administrative office of the president.

(4) On 4 November 2018, the deputy presidential spokesman, Shah Hussain Murtazawi, posted a new version of the decree on his Facebook page (but still with the original date of 1 November). The new decree called for an investigation into “the civilian casualties of the recent incident in Uruzgan province” and added two new – Hazara – members to the delegation (Dr Muhammad Rasul Taleban, presidential adviser on social affairs, and Muhammad Aziz Bakhtyari, presidential adviser on social and cultural affairs). The head of the delegation, Asadullah Falah, when visiting the area later on 7 November, told the residents of Malestan that the fighting in Uruzgan had been “misreported” to the president as ethnically based.

(5) Most sources agree that well over 50 people were killed in Khas Uruzgan alone. A former official in Khas Uruzgan said 58 people had been killed. Former governor of Daikundi Qurban Ali Uruzgani told AAN he had received reports that 57 people had been martyred, 25 people wounded (some still under treatment) and six people captured who had subsequently been released.

A source provided the following list of 41 people killed in the fighting in Khas Uruzgan:

• Four from Hamza: Khan Muhammad, son of Ali Hamza; Mullah Daud, son of Mullah Baz Muhammad; Ahmad Shah, son of Haji Nabi; Muhammad Esa, son of Baz Muhammad
• Eight from Hussaini: Shir Mahdawi, son of Madad; Muhammad Ali, son of Qanbar; Salman, son of Aziz; Usta Salman; Ibrahim, son of Mami; Sultan, son of Sami; Rezwani, son of Tata; Amir Khan, son of Shah Hussain
• Eleven from Kondolan: Abdul Khaleq, son of Mullah Bustan; Eshaq, son of Juma; Jan Ali, son of Askar; Sakhidad, son of Khan; Abdul Samad, son of Arbab Haidar; Eshaq, son of Ghulam Hussain; Reza, son of Ghulam Hussain; Reza, son of Ghulam Sakhi; Amir Khan, son of Shah Hussain; Jan Ali, son of Ghulam; Khudad, son of Nawruz
• Five from Kariz: Abdul Khaleq, son of Eshaq; Qambar, son of Eshaq; Akhar Muhammad, son of Abdul Zawar; Shir Muhammad, son of Ghulam Ali; Malek Abdullah, son of Ghulam Reza
• One from Pashi: Fakuri
• One from Paik
• Three from Zardak: Haji Abdul Hussain Rahimi, son of Ali Rahm; Hamid Muradi, son of Muhammad; Karbalayi Amin Saadat, son of Haji Ghulam Hussain
• One from Jaghori: Ustad Muhammad Taqi Fazilat

He added that this was not a complete list, since many victims had not been identified yet. Several sources also said the Taleban had not allowed people to film or photograph the dead and those who buried them did not recognise some of them as they had been defaced with bullets.

(6) As AAN has written (in this background paper on militias), the ALP in its current form was created out of local militias in 2010. “Since 2012, it has become increasingly institutionalised within the Ministry of Interior. Another type of local force also emerged from 2012 onwards. So-called ‘uprising forces’ (patsunian in Pashto and khezesh in Persian) were supposedly spontaneous rebellions organised by locals against the insurgency, although they usually turned out to have been prompted by or were soon supported/co-opted by the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and/or Independent Directorate of Local Government (IDLG).”

The forces that fought back the Taleban in the Hazara areas in Khas Uruzgan, Malestan and Jaghori, and that have been referred to in as uprising forces in some media reports,  might have been part of these forces, but they may have also taken up arms spontaneously to repel the Taleban’s attacks.

(7) The Taleban released a video on 23 November that showed a cameraman talking with local residents and local Taleban fighters in the Anguri and Deh Murda areas of Jaghori. A Taleban fighter in Anguri told him: “We have been here for the last several days. When we first came here, there were eight security posts. We defeated the policemen and uprising people and several of them were killed. When we got close to the Anguri area, someone was wounded in front of his house. He was receiving several calls. After he was wounded, we took his weapons. Later when he died, we learned that he was Habibullah Bashi [Bashi Habib].”

 

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE organized a public hearing on 'The threats posed by drones to Europe's armed forces' on Tuesday 20 November 2018, from 09.30 to 11.00, with external experts
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak, room 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Presentation of Colonel Christophe Michel, SGDSN
Presentation of Tal Inbar, The Fisher Institute for Air & Space Strategic Studies
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE organized a public hearing on 'Artificial intelligence and its future impact on security' on Wednesday 10 October 2018, from 09.00 to 11.30, with four external experts
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak, room 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

SEDE organized a public hearing on soldiers' rights in EU Member States with representatives of the European Organisation of Military Associations (EUROMIL) and the Geneva Centre for the Democratic control of Armed Forces (DCAF).
Location : Altiero Spinelli, room A3E-2
Further information
Draft programme
Presentation by Emmanuel Jacob, EUROMIL
Presentation by William McDermott, DCAF
Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

An interesting “close encounter” in the Black Sea was captured on video. During the filming of a documentary, UK’s Channel 5 captured interesting footage of a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer “buzzed” by Russian fighter [...]

Americas

The US Army is ordering a special netting system from Saab. The Swedish company will deliver several of its Ultra Lightweight Camouflage Net Systems (ULCANS) at a cost of $66 million. The ULCANS system consists of one hexagonal and one rhomboidal screen, available in both woodland and desert version. It features a simplified interconnect system and effective snape disrupters. These multi-spectral camouflage nets offer improved concealment for vehicles and field positions by masking visual, thermal, near infra-red and broadband radar signatures. Erik Smith, president and CEO of Saab Defense and Security USA, said: ‘Saab’s camouflage systems provide the US Army with a state of the art signature management capability for its land forces including exceptional levels of multispectral protection against any possible sensor threat available today.’ The netting system are expected to be delivered between 2019 and 2020.

The US Air Force’s 461st Flight Test Squadron is currently testing an Auto GCAS system on F-35 JSFs. Stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System fitted aircraft will undergo several rounds of testing. Auto GCAS is designed to prevent CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) mishaps by executing an automatic recovery maneuver when terrain impact is imminent. The system relies on a set of sensors that continently measure the fighter jets trajectory, speed, terrain data and pilot input. If GCAS senses an incoming crash, the system calculates the best way to recover to a safe trajectory, automatically overrides the flight controls and flies the aircraft away from danger. The GCAS system is being developed by Lockheed Martin and will be “the stepping stone to increased combat capability via a fully capable combat autopilot that will be able to execute tactical manoeuvres to defeat inbound kinetic and non-kinetic threats, and maximise lethality through precise weapon employment,” says Lt Col Raven LeClair, a F-35 test pilot with the 461st Flight Test Squadron.

Middle East & Africa

Israel’s Golden Eagle Squadron is welcoming two more F-35i Adir advanced fighter aircraft. The new aircraft will be stationed at Israeli Air Force’s Nevatim base, southeast of Beersheba. The planes took off from the United States last week, but were slightly delayed in arriving in Israel, apparently due to bad weather. Israel’s F-35i ‘Adir’ fighter is based on the standard F-35A variant modified with Israeli-made electronic counter-measures systems. Israel has, for now, agreed to purchase 50 F-35 fighters in total from the United States, which are scheduled to be delivered in installments of twos and threes by 2024. With a need to keep ahead of regional changes and increased threats in the Middle East, the Israeli Air Force is expected to soon place orders on several new aircraft to upgrade its ageing squadrons.

Europe

Europe’s next-generation fighter jet program will officially launch next year. Airbus and Dassault Aviation will be the first contractors to start work on the Franco-German project. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel first announced plans for the development program in July 2017, with the first contracts expected to be issued in early 2019. “This is a decisive step for European defense, which shows that France and Germany can unite for future projects,” the two governments said in a statement on Wednesday. The two companies will now jointly draft a common concept for the new Future Combat Air System (FCAS), this includes the fighters design, its weapons and connectivity with other aircraft, including UAVs. The FCAS program, known in France as SCAF (Système de Combat Aérien Futur), is envisioned as a complex system of systems comprising a new-generation fighter aircraft, unmanned combat aircraft, future air-launched missiles, and swarms of small drones, all interconnected with satellites, other aircraft, NATO networks as well as national and allied ground and naval combat systems. Key technology challenges for the firms will be the design of an engine fulfilling the needs of a stealthy aircraft with high connectivity and excellent performance.

Asia-Pacific

The Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) will soon deploy the country’s next-generation Surface-to-Air Anti-Missile. Dubbed the Haegung, the missile which also known as K-SAAM, is a 3.07 m long ship-based anti-air projectile that employs inertial mid-course guidance and a dual microwave and imaging infrared seeker for terminal guidance. The missile is being developed by South Korea’s state-run Agency for Defense Development (ADD), and recently completed an evaluation test, where 9 out of 10 missiles accurately hit their targets. In development since 2011, the Haegung will soon start to replace Raytheon’s Rolling Airframe Missile, the current system operated by the South Korean Navy.

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Americas

The US Special Operations Command is modifying a contract with Insitu. The additional $18 million cover mid-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance services under the MEUAS 1.5B program. Insitu will use its ScanEagle as an advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) solution in order to provide the US military with the capability to effectively execute a number of deployment operations. The ScanEagle is an unmanned aerial vehicle that can hover over areas for over 24 hours at a maximum altitude of 19,000 feet and carry several kinds of sensor payloads and other equipment. The modification increases the ceiling value of the contract to $250 million in an attempt to bridge gaps in ISR services as orders transition to MEUAS III.

The US Naval Sea Systems Command is contracting VT Halter Marine to start production on the Military Sealift Command’s next survey ship. The contract is priced at $9 million and provides for further design engineering, procurement of long-lead time material and limited advanced production of the Oceanographic Survey Ship (T-AGS 67). MSC’s oceanographic survey ships are special mission ships, which are operated by civilian mariners who work for private companies under contract. These ships can perform acoustical, biological, physical and geophysical surveys. They gather data that provides much of the military’s information on the ocean environment. The collected data helps to improve technology in undersea warfare and enemy ship detection. Work will be performed at the company’s facilities in Pascagoula, Mississippi; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New Orleans, Louisiana. Performance of the contract is scheduled for completion by May 2019.

Middle East & Africa

Jane’s reports that South Africa’s Denel group is accelerating the development of its Cheetah C-RAM missile. Reinart Moraal, Denel Dynamics’ chief systems engineer says that successful trials of the Cheetah missile earlier this year have taken it closer to full integration with Rheinmetall Defence’s Oerlikon Skyshield CAP. The Cheetah missile flies at Mach 3 to ranges of 10.000 m and acts as an effector as part of a C-RAM system designed to counter cruise missiles, UAVs and helicopters. The Cheetah-Skyshield combination will protect South African troops against widely available light artillery weapons, such as shoulder fired rocket launchers, mortars and light cannons, which are increasingly found on the asymmetric battlefield.

Europe

The Serbian Air Force will soon receive its first two H-145M multirole helicopters. They are part of a 9 unit order, with first deliveries scheduled for December. The M is the member of the H145 family and can be deployed in transportation, special operations, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR), search-and-rescue, fire support, and medical evacuation missions. The helicopters are equipped with the HForce battle management system designed to engage conventional and asymmetric threats with a large set of ballistic or guided air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons.. The platform can be fitted with different equipment packages depending on individual mission requirements. The Serbian aircraft will be equipped with a fast roping system, high-performance camera, fire support equipment, ballistic protection as well as an electronic countermeasures system to support the most demanding missions. The Serbian government expects to receive all six H145M battlefield support helicopters by the end of 2019. The contract between Airbus Helicopters and Serbia foresees transfer of technology, spare parts, tools and documentation for the helicopters’ maintenance and repair.

Germany’s next steps in its upcoming fighter jet acquisiiton program will be announced by the end of the year. Sources familiar with the process told Reuters that the Eurofighter consortium and Lockheed Martin will be the main contenders in the multi-billion competition. The new fighter jets will replace the Luftwaffe’s ageing fleet of Tornado aircraft, which will be phased out from 2025 onwards. Ursula Von der Leyen, Germany’s Defense Minister, favours a European solution which would put the Eurofighter in the lead, but her office also reviewed data submitted in April by the US government on the F-35, and the F-15 and F/A-18E/F jets, both built by Boeing. One of Germany’s key requirement will be a nuclear capability. The new jets must be able to carry and deliver nuclear bombs, so that Germany can fulfil some of its NATO nuclear-sharing policy obligations. This nuclear requirement put tip to balance in favour of Lockheed’s F-35, as nuclear certification is much cheaper than the Eurofighter’s which is estimated to cost over $793 million. A decision on the Tornado’s replacement needs to be approved by parliament within the next two years and a contract signed by 2020 or 2021 to ensure deliveries by 2025.

CFM International is being contracted to deliver a new jet engine to Norway under the Foreign Military Sales program. Priced at $13 million the contract sees for the procurement of one P-8 Poseidon engine. The Poseidon is powered by a CFM56-7B27AE high-bypass turbofan aircraft engine. Norway bought nine Poseidon multi-mission maritime aircraft in 2016 to replace its ageing P-3 Orion fleet. Work will be performed at factories in Villaroche, France, Evendale, Ohio, Bromont, Canada and Singapore. The contract is set to run through September 2019.

Asia-Pacific

Vietnam will equip its KCT-15 cruise missiles with Russia’s GLONASS system. GLONASS is one of four GPS systems. The KCT-15 is Vietnam’s license build version of Russia’s Kh-35 anti-ship missile. Development of the Kh-35 started as a Soviet response to the US Harpoon, but was adopted into service only in 2003. The Kh-35 carries a 300 lbs High Explosive Fragmentation warhead, and is designed to pierce horizontally through the bulkheads and compartments prior to exploding inside the ship. It travels at subsonic speed and is effective against frigates and smaller destroyers. Yevgeny Bushmin, Russia’s vice-president, recently said that the Kremlin was very supportive of concluding an intergovernmental agreement with Vietnam on the development and use of the GLONASS system. GLONASS is a high-altitude orbital space complex comprised of six high-elliptical orbiting satellites, that will provide high-precision navigation services from 2023 onwards. This will give Vietnam extensive access to Russia’s GLONASS network.

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The Afghan Government and United Nations will co-host the Geneva ministerial conference on 28 November 2018. This is the 13th high-level international conference on Afghanistan since 2001. The focus of the conference will be peace efforts and development, but it will also be an opportunity to assess the Afghan government’s reform efforts and reconfirm commitments made by donors to Afghanistan at the Brussels conference in 2016. Ahead of the conference, the AAN team answers some key questions regarding what will and will not be discussed at the event.

1. What is the Geneva conference about?

The Geneva conference is a non-pledging ministerial-level conference between the Afghan government and its international supporters. The conference will be co-hosted by the Afghan government and the UN, and will take place at the Palais des Nations, the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland (for more details, see the Afghan Government’s official website on the Geneva conference and for an overview of the conference, see UNAMA’s website, here).

The main focus of the conference will be the peace effort and development.It will also be an opportunity for the government to present its track record on reforms and for the international community to reconfirm its commitments for development priorities until 2020. More specifically, the Afghan government will aim to show that it is on track with the implementation of the Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework (ANPDF), the five-year strategic framework for self-reliance adopted in 2017. It will also need to show the progress made on the 24 commitments agreed upon at the 2016 Brussels conference, called the new Self-Reliance through Mutual Accountability Framework (SMAF) indicators or SMART deliverables (for the July 2018 progress reports see here and here), and, in particular, that it has delivered on most of the six commitments mutually agreed upon to be a minimum threshold for the Geneva conference. These were decided at a meeting of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) in July 2018 and included benchmarks such as holding parliamentary elections, which were held on 20 October but were marred by significant organisational shortcomings (the announcement of the final election results has been delayed once again and is now scheduled for the end of the year (see AAN dossier on elections preparations here and reporting on the elections here, here and here). The government will also need to show commitments made towards anti-corruption efforts (for the Afghan government’s progress, see the latest UNAMA report here, as well as the latest Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction – SIGAR –  report here), as well as advances in security sector reform (see AAN reporting here and here). It will also need to show that it has met the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) benchmarks in macroeconomic stability, fiscal and financial reforms; that it has fostered private sector development; and worked towards the development of the ten National Priority Programs (NPPs).

According to the ANDF draft progress report prepared by the Afghan Ministry of Finance for the Geneva Conference, which AAN has seen, the Afghan government has, as of late October 2018, met “38 per cent of deliverables it set out had been fully achieved, with 45 per cent partially achieved.” The report said that the highest performing sectors were “justice sector reform, fiscal and economic reforms, growth through regional integration, public sector and civil service reforms and security sector reforms.”

The draft final report on the implementation of the 24 indictors agreed on at the Brussels conference (and seen by AAN) shows that, of these indicators agreed on in 2016, only 10 have been fully achieved, two are still in their initial phase and the remaining 12 have only either partially been achieved or only minor parts of a commitment have been achieved.

The two-day conference in Geneva will comprise a main event and a series of side meetings. It will start with a day of high-level side events (on women’s empowerment; private sector; people on the move; food security and livelihoods in times of drought) and four side meetings (regional connectivity and infrastructure; human rights; growth and development and counter-narcotics) on 27 November. This will be followed by four additional side meetings (anti-corruption; population dynamics; sustainable development goals (SDGs); Women Peace Process and NAP 1325, and the ministerial conference itself on 28 November. (For the agenda of the main event and an overview of side events and meetings, see here.)

On 28 November the Swiss and Afghan foreign ministers, Ignazio Cassis and Salahuddin Rabbani, will deliver the conference’s welcoming statement. Almost the entire morning part of the ministerial conference on 28 November will be dedicated to the topic of peace. The two key-note presenters here will be President Ashraf Ghani and UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

The rest of the day will be dedicated to presentations of the results from the side events and statements by regional and bilateral partners. There will also be feedback on the four side events held on 27 November focusing on the inclusion of women, economic development, migration, and climate change, the latter included in a session entitled ‘food insecurity in times of drought’. (The term ‘climate change’ itself will not be used, at least not in the programme, on the insistence of the US government, various diplomatic sources in Kabul have confirmed to AAN.) Key-note speakers for the first two events will be Rula Ghani, the Afghan president’s wife, who often takes on humanitarian issues, and Ashraf Ghani, respectively, while Chief Executive Abdullah will be the key note speaker for the last two events. The background documents of the side events provide a sobering reality check for the Ministry of Finance’s progress report. The background document on migration, for example, underlines that:

Afghans remain one of the largest displaced populations in the world with approximately 6 million Afghans residing in Iran and Pakistan; over 850,000 residing in the EU; and an estimated 2 million internally displaced. Afghan refugees constitute almost 15 per cent of the global refugee population and more than half of the 4.1 million refugees in protracted forced displacement of 20 years or longer.

The background document on food security and drought outlines the impact of conflict and climate change within Afghanistan:

Afghanistan is experiencing high – and rapidly rising – rates of food insecurity. The 2017 Afghan Living Conditions Survey (ALCS) found that 44.6 percent of the population is food insecure, an almost 12 percent increase from 2014. While conflict is a significant driver of this deteriorating situation, it is increasingly recognized that climate change is also having profound impacts on the food security of the Afghan population. […] In 2018, a major drought has left over 1.4 million people in need of urgent assistance. Given the country’s highly fragile ecosystems, the negative impacts will only increase over time, undermining agriculture, the leading economic sector, and contributing to displacement and continued instability, reinforcing the conflict.

It is relevant to note that the conference will be carried out mainly in English with translation into all six official UN languages at both the side events and the main conference on 27 and 28 November. According to the UN logistics document for the conference, “No interpretation will be available in any other language”. There will thus be no translation into either of Afghanistan’s two official languages. The same applies to the civil society event (more about this in part 4). The Afghan civil society organisations selecting their delegates for Geneva have therefore been requested to only send English speakers. This is problematic, as it excludes activists from the Afghan provinces where the operational languages are Dari and Pashto.

2. What are the expected outcomes of the conference?

While the Brussels conference in 2016 was a pledging conference, the Geneva conference will be focused on reviewing progress on commitments, as well as discussing policy and strategy. The formal outcomes of the conference are expected to be a Joint Communiqué and the renewal of Afghanistan’s commitments to international partners renamed as the Geneva Mutual Accountability Framework (GMAF).

A version of the draft communiqué seen by AAN takes note of the previous year’s “efforts to achieve peace” by the government, and includes an appeal from the signatories of the Joint Communiqué “to the Taliban and other parties to the conflict to embrace these opportunities for peace, especially the government’s offer to hold talks without preconditions.” Nasir Ahmad Andisha, Deputy Foreign Minister for Management and Resources, told Tolo news that the Geneva conference was about creating a ‘united definition of peace’ agreed on by international and regional actors.

In the development section of the draft communiqué, the deliberations on Afghanistan’s economic development are put into a regional context. It emphasises “continued efforts by regional partner countries, organizations and mechanisms such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process, CAREC (Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program) and the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA).” It mentions “the establishment and expansion of air and ground corridors that facilitate products from Afghanistan accessing international markets, and other regional initiatives.” (1)

The Geneva Mutual Accountability Framework  (GMAF) should be aligned with the ANPDF and the National Priority Programs (NPPs) and sets out measurable reform objectives for 2019-2020 (see here for the NPPs).

3. What were the previous international conferences on Afghanistan about?

The Geneva conference is the thirteenth high-level, international conference. Since the 2001 US-led intervention in Afghanistan, these conferences have usually been co-hosted by the Afghan government and changing international actors. This is the first time that no bilateral donor country has been ready to host the conference, according to multiple diplomatic sources in Kabul. The UN is therefore filling this gap. The EU, a major donor to Afghanistan, hosted the last conference.

The first international conference on Afghanistan was organised in Bonn in December 2001. There, Afghan and international representatives agreed on a road map for the re-establishment of permanent, democratically elected Afghan government institutions, the so-called Bonn Process. This process was to culminate in simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections, to be held at the latest by June 2004. However, the presidential election was only held in October 2004, and the parliamentary elections had to be postponed for a year for organisational reasons.

In January 2002, the Tokyo conference on Afghanistan saw international donors pledge over 1.8 billion US dollars to rebuild Afghanistan, and over three billion US dollars for the years after (see AAN’s Kate Clark reporting here).

The Berlin conference on Afghanistan in April 2004 was supposed to mark the end of the Bonn Process, but participants were only able to note the “substantial progress” achieved since the Bonn Agreement of 2001, mainly the new Afghan constitution adopted at the 2003 Constitutional Loya Jirga (see an AAN account of this event here). Multi-year commitments were made for the “reconstruction and development” of Afghanistan, totalling 8.2 billion US dollars for the Afghan fiscal years 1383 – 1385 (March 2004 – March 2007), including a pledge of 4.4 billion US dollars for 1383 alone (March 2004 – March 2005).

In January 2006 at the London conference, the Bonn Process was formally declared successfully finalised. There, a first set of benchmarks were adopted based on what was called the Afghanistan Compact. This overarching conference document identified three areas of activities: security; governance, the rule of law and human rights; and economic and social development. Under each of these thematic areas, a number of benchmarks and target timelines were defined. Additionally, key principles of aid effectiveness were agreed on between donors and government, including to “increase the proportion of donor assistance channelled directly through the core budget, as agreed bilaterally between the Government and each donor” (see annex two of the Afghanistan Compact on pp 13 and 14, here). In April 2006, the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB), made up of the government of Afghanistan and its international supporters, was established and tasked with the strategic coordination and monitoring of the implementation of the Afghanistan Compact and the Interim Afghanistan National Development Strategy (IANDS).

In June 2008, at the Paris conference, co-hosted by the French and Afghan governments and the UN, international donors pledged an additional 21 billion US dollars to Afghanistan. The conference reaffirmed the Afghanistan Compact as the agreed basis for cooperation, as well as a new commitment to support the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) for 2008-13.

In 2009, after the Den Haag international conference, co-hosted (as in Paris) by tripartite chairs, the communiqué emphasised that “effective, well-funded civilian programmes are as necessary as additional military forces and training programmes.” The participants agreed to significantly expand the resources and personnel devoted to civilian ‘capacity-building’ programmes, and pledged to improve aid effectiveness, in line with the June 2008 Paris Declaration.

In 2010, there were two major international conferences, in addition to the Lisbon NATO summit, where the plan for a phased handover of security responsibility from NATO and ISAF to the Afghan security forces (Inteqal)was announced.

At the 2010 London conference on Afghanistan, it was agreed that Kabul would gradually take over responsibilities for running the war and running the country over the following five years (see also previous AAN reporting). In July 2010, as had been agreed in London, the Kabul conference was held. There, ‘mutual progress’ on commitments was reviewed. Under the motto ‘Afghan-owned and Afghan-led’, President Karzai launched 22 National Priority Programmes grouped in six ‘clusters’ and asked for 15 billion US dollars in pledges (see also AAN previous reporting here; here; and here).

While new programmes and agreements have been negotiated ahead of every new conference, ‘progress’ has remained elusive, as noted by AAN’s Thomas Ruttig in 2010:

A glance at the recent international conferences exhibits vague and unknown progress, even by the rough statistics. For example, in 2006 the government of Afghanistan introduced the Afghanistan Compact at an international conference in London. The Afghanistan Compact was a comprehensive plan to address some of the basic and fundamental social development and governance priorities of the Afghan government and its people. However, right after two years of the Afghanistan Compact, another plan was introduced at the Paris Conference and that was the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. Again two years down the line, Afghanistan sees almost no significant signs of the implementation of the ANDS on the ground. It is worth mentioning, that the Comprehensive Strategy concluded at the Hague Conference last year too has remained unachieved so far.

In Lisbon, on 20 November 2010, the nations that contributed troops to ISAF issued a declaration (Lisbon Declaration on Afghanistan) announcing what they called ‘Afghanistan’s Transition’ – the gradual withdrawal of foreign forces and their replacement by Afghan ones. This transition to full Afghan security responsibility and leadership was to begin in early 2011 “following a joint Afghan and NATO/ISAF assessment and decision” and aimed to have the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) “lead and conduct security operations in all provinces by the end of 2014” (See also comments by AAN’s Thomas Ruttig ahead of the Lisbon summit here, a discussion of the phased handover here for an overview on NATO summits on Afghanistan see AAN reporting here.)

Nevertheless, 2010 marked the beginning of the so-called “process of transition,” which was to be completed by the end of 2014 and followed by a “transformation decade” (2015-2024). This was also a main message from an international conference held in Bonn in 2011, to mark the tenth anniversary since the first international conference on Afghanistan in 2001.  Even the title of the conclusions from this conference “Afghanistan and the International Community: From Transition to the Transformation Decade” shows the spirit of a long commitment and two clearly defined processes that are in sequel to each other – from a military transition to a social and political transformation.

In July 2012, Afghanistan’s donors pledged 16 billion US dollars for the country’s economic and development needs at another international conference in Tokyo (see a UNAMA report here and rather more critical reporting by AAN here). The Tokyo pledges were made in response to the Afghan government’s strategy document, “Towards Self-Reliance”.This ambitious new strategy sought “sustainable growth and development” through the National Priority Programs (NPPs), focusing on economic growth, revenue generation, job creation and human development. The conference further agreed to a new set of benchmarks, known as the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF).

Although, according to Afghan Ministry of Finance figures, 57 billion US dollars had already been disbursed in development aid between 2002 and 2010, with largely varying results, pledges and money continued to be given to a country with a very weak rule of law, virtually no mechanisms to control corruption and growing insecurity in large parts of the country. (For more details, see also AAN’s e-book Snapshot of an Intervention. The Unlearned Lessons of Afghanistan’s Decade of Assistance 2001–2011 and a recent SIGAR report Corruption in Conflict: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan.)

In December 2014, the tenth international conference on Afghanistan was held, again in London. This time the then-new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, presented a new reform programme entitled “Realizing Self-Reliance: Commitments to Reforms and Renewed Partnership”. The conference was not an explicit pledging event. Moreover, the National Unity Government had not been able to do much by that point, as it had been unable to agree on its cabinet. The conference communiqué thus simply stated that “the International Community reiterated its commitment, as set out in the Tokyo Declaration, to direct significant and continuing but declining financial support towards Afghanistan’s social and economic development priorities through the Transformation Decade.” (See AAN reporting on the London conference here). Ghani’s government at the Senior Officials Meeting held in September 2015 introduced a new document, the “Self-Reliance through Mutual Accountability Framework” (SMAF), which consolidated both its new reform agenda and the previous TMAF benchmarks, laying out a set of 39 benchmarks.

In October 2016, the European Union (EU) and the Afghan government co-hosted the Brussels conference (see AAN’s dispatch here). The conference resulted in the endorsement of and continued commitment to the three pillars of the Afghan government’s programme for the transformation decade (2015-2024). These included a commitment to an Afghan-led state and institution-building as outlined by the Afghanistan National Peace and Development Framework (ANPDF) and as measured by 24 indictors agreed upon in the new Self-Reliance through Mutual Accountability Framework (SMAF), called SMART SMAF (see here and here). The donors also committed to sustain international support and funding at or near current levels through 2020 with increased aid effectiveness. The third commitment included regional and international support for a political process towards lasting peace and reconciliation.

International donors pledged a total of 15.2 billion US dollars to support this agenda. The Geneva conference is an opportunity to review progress and commitments made at the Brussels conference.

4. What is the role of civil society at the conference?

Ten civil society delegates (half of them women – see the list and bios here) will participate in the high-level side events, the side meetings and the main Geneva Conference. This resembles the practice of previous conference. (2)

The Civil Society Working Committee (CSWC), a composition of the main umbrella civil society organisations, in cooperation with the co-hosts of the Geneva Conference identified, interviewed and selected the delegates. For developing their position paper, the Afghan civil society organisations held focus group meetings at the provincial level to collect civil society activists’ opinions. The result was discussed in a two-day national conference in Kabul on 11 and 12 October. This process was technically supported by the advocacy and networking organisation, the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group (BAAG). Two of the delegates, one woman and one man, will present this position paper at the main conference on 28 November.

In addition to this, a one-day civil society event will be held on 26 November in Geneva, organised by BAAG. The event is envisaged as a series of working group discussions, which should determine key  civil society requests from the donor community and government related to governance (elections, anti-corruption); security and peacebuilding; civic space; humanitarian issues (drought, people on the move); service provision (livelihoods, education, health) and gender equality and rights. Representatives of the donor community and the Afghan government are expected to join the civil society event in the afternoon of 26 November, when BAAG will present to them the key requests defined in the six working groups’ discussions.

Two of the civil society activists at the Geneva conference – one who will be the spokesperson for the ten official civil society delegates, the other will participate on behalf of his organisation outside the delegation – told AAN that, apart from one meeting with the Ministry of Finance, the conference organiser on behalf of the Afghan government, there was no prior consultation with the government. Naim Ayubzada, the spokesperson said that the meeting that took place on 16 November consisted of a briefing about the conference and was merely “symbolic.” He said that prior to earlier conferences, the government had consulted a broader array of civil society organisations based in Kabul, including those that did not have delegates. Ayubzada did not believe that their inputs would be included in the official conference documents. Abdullah Ahmadi, the chairperson of the Civil Society Joint Working Group who will travel to Geneva as one of several other organisations’ representatives participating on behalf of this group, confirmed that the government did not seek consultations with those groups

5. What difference do such conferences make?

Seventeen years since the international military intervention in Afghanistan and 12 conferences later – almost one conference every year and a half – progress in Afghanistan remains elusive. The Taleban control growing swaths of the country (see the latest SIGAR report); the government-run basic services, such as education and health, have been rife with corruption, and the population’s access to them has become more difficult due to the security situation (see AAN reporting here; see this MEC report about corruption in the Ministry of Public Health from June 2016 here; see also this SIGAR report on corruption in the health sector).

The Geneva conference, nevertheless – like the previous 12 high-level, international conferences on Afghanistan – will provide an opportunity to show donor governments’ and international organisations’ continuing commitment to Afghanistan and Afghans. Although this is largely symbolic, it is a chance to obtain public and media attention for a conflict that has increasingly dropped from the centre stage of world politics, although it continues to escalate (see this AAN analysis). With the Syrian war partially subsiding, Afghanistan is possibly becoming, once again, the most violent conflict worldwide (see this ICG quote) and a country whose population’s majority still lives beneath the poverty line.

The conference will also provide an opportunity to scrutinise the ever-changing indictors by which progress is measured, whose changes are often a question of semantics, but which always describe the same desired outcomes – less corruption, more peace, better security and governance. (See also this 2012 AAN report about “NATO’s effective abandonment of a conditions-based approach in implementing the [security] transition” – a phenomenon also witnessed in the tacit dropping or revising of agreed benchmarks in other fields).

For a few weeks, once again, Afghanistan will not only be the focus of diplomatic missions in the country and Afghanistan desks in capitals, but background briefs and speaking points will be read and edited at the highest levels of government and international organisations. This is also why the most important part of the Geneva conference will be the preparatory phase: the many meetings between the co-chairs about the what is on the agenda and what is not, preparing preliminary drafts of outcome documents and smoothing out possible diplomatic hiccups or crises in advance.

The outcome of an international conference like this will depend on how well it is negotiated before it begins. Realistic outcomes that all key actors can agree on are more likely to be implemented and easier to monitor. This is also why it is important that civil society – in all its varied forms – have an input throughout the process. Their delegates can also cut through diplomatic formulas and clearly point out the miseries the Afghan people continue to face. They did this, for example, at the December 2011 ‘Bonn 2’ conference, where, as AAN reported, the two civil society representatives that were allowed to address the main governmental plenum (of a delegation of 34) delivered “the strongest message of the day“ (our report here; unfortunately the link to their full speech, on the Afghan president’s website, is broken now). (3)

The failure to have a broader and topical consultations process with civil society organisations across the spectrum, not simply limited to Kabul, indicates that civil society involvement in such conferences remains largely formalistic. Consigning them to side events, and only allowing them a short statement and inclusion in the photo opportunity at the end is far from sufficient.

 

(1) This includes “the [two regional electricity transmission systems, the planned first phase of an integrated regional energy market in East, Central and South Asia]CASA [Central Asia-South Asia]-1000, TUTAP (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan power project), the groundbreaking [sic] of the Afghanistan segment of the TAPI gas line, and the signing of the [Afghanistan-Black Sea] Lapis Lazuli Corridor Agreement, and the Trilateral Trade and Transit Agreement on Chabahar were conceded top priorities of the government of Afghanistan for achieving self-reliance.” (For news on the Lapis Lazuli Corridor Agreement, see here).

(2) Here are references to civil society in the documents from previous conferences:

• Brussels 2016 communiqué:

We recognize the role of civil society and media in Afghanistan’s development and the need to include civil society in the political processes. We welcome the Afghan civil society’s contributions to the Conference and recognize also the contributions of international NGOs, both for Afghanistan’s development and in partnership with Afghan civil society, including in the provision of humanitarian assistance. 

• London 2014 communiqué:

The Participants recognised the important role Afghan civil society has played in Afghanistan’s development. The Participants welcomed the Afghan Government’s commitment to the constructive, on-going dialogue with civil society, including Afghan women’s organisations, to ensure Afghan civil society’s full and meaningful involvement in key political processes, strengthening governance and the rule of law, as well as the development, oversight and monitoring of the refreshed TMAF. The Participants also noted the importance of protecting and strengthening free media. The Participants acknowledged the Afghan civil society statement at the Conference and welcomed the outcomes and conclusions of the Afghan civil society-led “Ayenda” associated event on 3 and 4 December. The Participants also noted the role that international NGOs play in development in Afghanistan as well supporting Afghan Civil Society and recognised as important their traditional role in humanitarian assistance in the future. 

• Tokyo 2012 conference communiqué:

The Participants took note of the statement by Afghan civil society organizations at the Tokyo Conference. The Participants also welcomed the results of the civil society event jointly organized by Japanese and Afghan NGOs on July 7 in Tokyo.

• Kabul 2010 conference communiqué:

The Kabul Process is to include annual meetings between the Afghan Government, the international community, and civil society, including those providing services, to promote norms and standards for mutual accountability.  

(3) It is worth re-reading AAN’s reporting from this conference, as it will become apparent how similar problems discussed there are to those still on the agenda in 2018, speaking for a lack of progress made over those years. On the civil society forum, here and here, on the main conference here and here.

The Technology Behind Smart Weapons and Military Drones

More than 30 Douglas C-47 Skytrain and Dakota  will retrace their flights from Britain to the original D-Day Drop Zones in Normandy, France. Two thirds will be coming from North America. On Jun. 5 2019, [...]

EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq held talks today (23 November) in Kiev with First Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defence Mr Ivan Rusnak, and representatives from other national authorities. Current and future opportunities for cooperation between the EDA and Ukraine were among the main topics of discussion.

Talks with the Deputy Minister of Defence mainly focused on the state of play of Ukraine’s participation in EDA projects and activities, via its 2015 Administrative Arrangement. Mr. Domecq welcomed Ukraine’s involvement in EDA projects and activities.

“Following the conclusion of the Administrative Arrangement between the European Defence Agency and the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in December 2015, I am very pleased to visit Ukraine for the first time. It was an excellent opportunity to assess, along with Deputy Minister Rusnak, the good progress on the implementation within the four identified areas for cooperation namely Single European Sky, Standardization, Training and Logistics. This was also the occasion to exchange views on ways to further enhance and facilitate Ukraine’s involvement in EDA projects and activities within these four areas”, said Mr Domecq.

On his side First Deputy Minister of Defence noted: ‘I appreciate how EDA supports our aspirations and results’.

Mr. Domecq also held productive discussions with the Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine, Mr. Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, the Vice-Prime-Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Urkraine, Ms. Ivana Klympush-Tsintsadze as well as with other officials form the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 
 

More information:

• Signing of EDA-Ukraine Administrative Arrangement