Thursday, January 03, 2013 11:07:41 PM
Taliban fighters changing sides in Herat
By David Loyn BBC News, Herat
31 August 2012 Last updated at 06:36 GMT
'Me, or the Taliban': Fighter leaves for love - ..embedded video
Much of the recent history of Afghanistan can be told through the life of one commander in
the western city of Herat - Abdullah, known as "Charsi", which means "the hashish smoker".
In a city proud of having Afghanistan's only museum to the jihad, the Islamist war against Soviet domination in the 1980s, Abdullah "Charsi" was one of the mujahideen fighters, led in the west by the legendary commander Ismail Khan.
He lay low in the Taliban years in the late 1990s, but amid growing disorder when US-led troops came into the area, he joined the Taliban. Now he has brought his followers back from the mountains to rejoin the government side.
Abdullah's alliance with the Taliban was not ideological but practical. They offered security at a time of insecurity.
Now, amid a general redrawing of forces ahead of the departure of foreign combat troops in less than two years' time, he is switching to what he believes will be the stronger side. He says that as the foreigners leave, "we Afghans have to take the country for ourselves."
He knows of three other groups of ex-mujahideen fighters, numbering hundreds of men each, moving back from the Taliban to the government side.
Red Cross worker Abdul Karim says he
was tortured by Abdullah's men
Since he left the Taliban, Abdullah claims his men have been at the forefront of several operations by Afghan government forces against the Taliban - unofficial militias fighting alongside uniformed government troops.
Now he wants to join the government formally and rolled out a long sheet of paper marked with hundreds of thumbprints and signatures of local elders who back his bid to be the police chief for a large part of the city of Herat and the border with Iran.
"I haven't done anything against the law. I went to the mountains with the Taliban because of security problems," he said.
"I did not plant mines in villages, or use suicide bombers as they did.'
Torture claims
But not everybody backs him. Abdul Karim is a Red Cross official who claims he was tortured by Abdullah's men when they were with the Taliban.
He said that twice they threatened him and extorted large quantities of fuel, and when he did not break his links with the government, more than 30 men appeared on motorcycles and took him away.
"They took me to the edge of the river, tied my hands and feet, blindfolded me and beat me.
“
If you have committed crimes against humanity, or
crimes like torture, then you will be held accountable”
Gen David Hook
[ OOPS? C'mon, David - accountability for torture in Afghanistan, while not for even in the USA? ]
"They hit me so hard that I began to bleed." He says that they threw him into the river, and left him for dead.
He said that Abdullah should not be made a police chief, but "should have been hanged in public, as a lesson to others".
Abdullah denied the allegations of torture. But he said that Adbul Karim should have been killed for what he did - claiming he was a government spy (working for the very government that Abdullah is now trying to join).
The process of "reintegration" - persuading those allied to the Taliban to hand in their weapons and come over to the government side - is led by a British general, David Hook.
He said that to encourage the switch, fighters are given a general amnesty, but not for serious crimes: "If you have committed crimes against humanity, or crimes like torture, then you will be held accountable by the legal system of Afghanistan."
If the torture victim we spoke to is to be believed, then those running reintegration programmes are not looking very closely at the pasts of those they disarm.
And what appears to be happening in the Herat region is men coming over to the government side, not because of government incentives, but because of a change in atmosphere, as alliances alter ahead of the departure of foreign forces.
Those who take up the government offer to leave the Taliban receive a coat, a Koran, and three months' wages.
But the scheme is having little impact in the places where the Taliban are strongest. Most of the 5,000 who have reintegrated in the last two years are from the north and west - with the largest number coming over in Ghor Province, never a Taliban stronghold.
'Me or the Taliban'
Parveen persuaded her husband Basir
Ahmad to leave the Taliban
[ YEAH! ]
At a reintegration ceremony in Ghor witnessed by the BBC, many taking up the offer were old men, handing in rusting, locally-made single-shot rifles, and did not look like Taliban at all. Some western diplomats have privately expressed doubts about the value of the scheme.
One tribal leader near Herat has left the Taliban for an unusual reason. The girl he wanted to marry gave him a simple message: "Choose me or the Taliban." Basir Ahmed is not a typical Taliban fighter, being easily persuaded to pick up his harmonium, and sing a love song.
He had joined the Taliban - like so many others in this region - to defend himself against criminality and disorder. He handed in his rifles to the headmaster at the school where his intended wife, Parveen, was studying.
Now both regret it. He has left himself defenceless, and his house has been attacked three times.
Ending conflict and dealing with wrongs committed during it are never tidy affairs.
The challenge to the Afghan government, both in the case of the alleged torture victim Abdul Karim, and the singing ex-Talib, Basir Ahmed, is to provide security to protect them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19153734
======
Why Taliban are so strong in Afghanistan
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul
2 February 2012 Last updated at 17:33 GMT
Many doubt Afghan forces will be able to withstand the Taliban after 2014
Nato has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 10 years trying
to raise a modern army for Afghanistan and to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
But if a leaked classified report prepared by the alliance is to believed, all this will go to waste soon after foreign combat forces withdraw in 2014.
The latest in a series of leaks suggests that Nato is much more worried about the course of the war than it lets on in public.
Nato has tried to play down the importance of the report by calling it a "compilation of opinions expressed by Taliban detainees", but it highlights many failures in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.
The harsh reality is that an increasing number of Afghans are turning to the Taliban, having grown mistrustful of Nato and Afghan forces.
In remote parts of the country where the government rules only on paper, the Taliban are often preferred.
"Americans are like Kuchi nomads," a tribal elder from the south-east once told me. "They come with their tents for some time and before you know them, they leave."
Taliban courts
People have little choice but to support the Taliban in many areas, given the power of the militants.
But widespread corruption in the government and a culture of impunity - where senior bureaucrats or those with connections to them easily escape punishment even for serious crimes like murder - are seen as reasons for people moving closer to the Taliban.
In Kunduz in the north, for instance, several militia commanders working for the government have been accused of extortion, robbery and rape, but not one has ever been tried.
Locals say corruption is rampant even in the judiciary and they have no option but to turn to shadowy Taliban judges to resolve disputes.
One Kabul man I spoke to, Jamshid, a fruit vendor in his 30s, compared the judicial system of the Karzai administration with the desert courts of the Taliban.
"The Taliban courts were swift and strict," he said with admiration.
"A thief would be given the death sentence after a short trial. But under Mr Karzai's rule, it will take a century to prove a thief guilty - and even then there is no guarantee that he will be punished."
Villagers often prefer the Taliban to "corrupt"
Afghan authorities, the report alleges
The country's poor literacy rate and the Taliban's psychological war in many districts is believed to have helped the insurgents to win the hearts of the Afghan population.
Taliban songs, videos and ringtones play on people's emotions.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar has launched his own style of counter-insurgency, and a shadow Taliban administration of sorts is in place in many areas.
Taliban officials do the rounds in villages, districts and valleys collecting taxes and dispensing their version of justice.
I know of several cases where Taliban officials have been fired because people have complained about them - many people see this as a more responsive system than the actual government where such action is rare.
And family loyalties run deep. People from the same village or district as a Taliban fighter will never hand him over to Nato or the Afghan government.
Many families have members working on both sides, some for Afghan forces, others for the Taliban - this is seen as a form of local insurance policy. When villagers hear US President Barack Obama or Vice-President Joe Biden discussing withdrawal in 2014, the Taliban come and say, look Nato is leaving, but we will be here.
“Please don't mind because you [Afghan government officials]
have helped the mujahideen and you are our friends”
Taliban radio broadcast
The Taliban's reach is thought to extend right into parts of the government.
When I was in Sarkano district in the eastern province of Kunar, I could hear the Taliban presenter on Radio Voice of Sharia FM: "This is a message for apostate employees of the Afghan government. But not to some of our friends in the government - they know who they are."
Serious threat
Senior officials have told me some government members think the Taliban might return.
"So, they tell the Taliban, 'look we have sympathy with you'," one of the officials said.
"Then the Taliban tell these officials to prove their support. Sometimes, they ask these officials to help carry a fighter, a suicide attacker, or to help with weapons and access."
Another reason for locals turning away from the elected government is its failure to restore or maintain order in areas vacated by Western forces. Afghan security forces, grappling with high illiteracy rates, desertion, drug addiction and Taliban infiltration, have failed to instil confidence in the people.
There have even been several reports of Afghan police selling their weapons to militants.
While Afghan officials admit there are problems in the army and police - on whom the country's future security depends - they say there is no systemic failure.
"The reality is that they sell their bullets and weapons in the market to the highest bidder and that sometimes includes Taliban or other insurgent groups," said one senior Afghan security official in Kabul.
Pakistan is crucial
The leak also puts Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a very difficult position.
He has been trying to repair ties with Afghanistan's not-so-friendly neighbour, Pakistan, which denies sheltering the militants. The report's claims that Pakistani security services are helping the Taliban will do nothing to help his efforts.
Mr Karzai has told his confidants on several occasions that a peace dialogue with the Taliban will succeed only when it has the backing of Pakistan.
"If you have a hundred channels to talk to the Taliban through, and Pakistan is not on board, all of these channels will get closed, but if you have a small number of channels to contact Taliban through, along with Pakistan's approval, it will surely take you somewhere," one senior aide to the president told the BBC.
The leaked document seriously undermines Nato and Afghan government claims over the years that the Taliban have lost their punch.
On the contrary, the Taliban remain a more serious threat than ever to peace and stability in Afghanistan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16851949
There is a feeling that Afghanistan may go full circle. What will the US do if the Taliban come back in Afghanistan?
Those two elderly ones are taken from within your first "Related" ..
Death spells trouble for Pakistan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20900876
By David Loyn BBC News, Herat
31 August 2012 Last updated at 06:36 GMT
'Me, or the Taliban': Fighter leaves for love - ..embedded video
Much of the recent history of Afghanistan can be told through the life of one commander in
the western city of Herat - Abdullah, known as "Charsi", which means "the hashish smoker".
In a city proud of having Afghanistan's only museum to the jihad, the Islamist war against Soviet domination in the 1980s, Abdullah "Charsi" was one of the mujahideen fighters, led in the west by the legendary commander Ismail Khan.
He lay low in the Taliban years in the late 1990s, but amid growing disorder when US-led troops came into the area, he joined the Taliban. Now he has brought his followers back from the mountains to rejoin the government side.
Abdullah's alliance with the Taliban was not ideological but practical. They offered security at a time of insecurity.
Now, amid a general redrawing of forces ahead of the departure of foreign combat troops in less than two years' time, he is switching to what he believes will be the stronger side. He says that as the foreigners leave, "we Afghans have to take the country for ourselves."
He knows of three other groups of ex-mujahideen fighters, numbering hundreds of men each, moving back from the Taliban to the government side.
Red Cross worker Abdul Karim says he
was tortured by Abdullah's men
Since he left the Taliban, Abdullah claims his men have been at the forefront of several operations by Afghan government forces against the Taliban - unofficial militias fighting alongside uniformed government troops.
Now he wants to join the government formally and rolled out a long sheet of paper marked with hundreds of thumbprints and signatures of local elders who back his bid to be the police chief for a large part of the city of Herat and the border with Iran.
"I haven't done anything against the law. I went to the mountains with the Taliban because of security problems," he said.
"I did not plant mines in villages, or use suicide bombers as they did.'
Torture claims
But not everybody backs him. Abdul Karim is a Red Cross official who claims he was tortured by Abdullah's men when they were with the Taliban.
He said that twice they threatened him and extorted large quantities of fuel, and when he did not break his links with the government, more than 30 men appeared on motorcycles and took him away.
"They took me to the edge of the river, tied my hands and feet, blindfolded me and beat me.
“
If you have committed crimes against humanity, or
crimes like torture, then you will be held accountable”
Gen David Hook
[ OOPS? C'mon, David - accountability for torture in Afghanistan, while not for even in the USA? ]
"They hit me so hard that I began to bleed." He says that they threw him into the river, and left him for dead.
He said that Abdullah should not be made a police chief, but "should have been hanged in public, as a lesson to others".
Abdullah denied the allegations of torture. But he said that Adbul Karim should have been killed for what he did - claiming he was a government spy (working for the very government that Abdullah is now trying to join).
The process of "reintegration" - persuading those allied to the Taliban to hand in their weapons and come over to the government side - is led by a British general, David Hook.
He said that to encourage the switch, fighters are given a general amnesty, but not for serious crimes: "If you have committed crimes against humanity, or crimes like torture, then you will be held accountable by the legal system of Afghanistan."
If the torture victim we spoke to is to be believed, then those running reintegration programmes are not looking very closely at the pasts of those they disarm.
And what appears to be happening in the Herat region is men coming over to the government side, not because of government incentives, but because of a change in atmosphere, as alliances alter ahead of the departure of foreign forces.
Those who take up the government offer to leave the Taliban receive a coat, a Koran, and three months' wages.
But the scheme is having little impact in the places where the Taliban are strongest. Most of the 5,000 who have reintegrated in the last two years are from the north and west - with the largest number coming over in Ghor Province, never a Taliban stronghold.
'Me or the Taliban'
Parveen persuaded her husband Basir
Ahmad to leave the Taliban
[ YEAH! ]
At a reintegration ceremony in Ghor witnessed by the BBC, many taking up the offer were old men, handing in rusting, locally-made single-shot rifles, and did not look like Taliban at all. Some western diplomats have privately expressed doubts about the value of the scheme.
One tribal leader near Herat has left the Taliban for an unusual reason. The girl he wanted to marry gave him a simple message: "Choose me or the Taliban." Basir Ahmed is not a typical Taliban fighter, being easily persuaded to pick up his harmonium, and sing a love song.
He had joined the Taliban - like so many others in this region - to defend himself against criminality and disorder. He handed in his rifles to the headmaster at the school where his intended wife, Parveen, was studying.
Now both regret it. He has left himself defenceless, and his house has been attacked three times.
Ending conflict and dealing with wrongs committed during it are never tidy affairs.
The challenge to the Afghan government, both in the case of the alleged torture victim Abdul Karim, and the singing ex-Talib, Basir Ahmed, is to provide security to protect them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19153734
======
Why Taliban are so strong in Afghanistan
By Bilal Sarwary BBC News, Kabul
2 February 2012 Last updated at 17:33 GMT
Many doubt Afghan forces will be able to withstand the Taliban after 2014
Nato has invested hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 10 years trying
to raise a modern army for Afghanistan and to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
But if a leaked classified report prepared by the alliance is to believed, all this will go to waste soon after foreign combat forces withdraw in 2014.
The latest in a series of leaks suggests that Nato is much more worried about the course of the war than it lets on in public.
Nato has tried to play down the importance of the report by calling it a "compilation of opinions expressed by Taliban detainees", but it highlights many failures in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.
The harsh reality is that an increasing number of Afghans are turning to the Taliban, having grown mistrustful of Nato and Afghan forces.
In remote parts of the country where the government rules only on paper, the Taliban are often preferred.
"Americans are like Kuchi nomads," a tribal elder from the south-east once told me. "They come with their tents for some time and before you know them, they leave."
Taliban courts
People have little choice but to support the Taliban in many areas, given the power of the militants.
But widespread corruption in the government and a culture of impunity - where senior bureaucrats or those with connections to them easily escape punishment even for serious crimes like murder - are seen as reasons for people moving closer to the Taliban.
In Kunduz in the north, for instance, several militia commanders working for the government have been accused of extortion, robbery and rape, but not one has ever been tried.
Locals say corruption is rampant even in the judiciary and they have no option but to turn to shadowy Taliban judges to resolve disputes.
One Kabul man I spoke to, Jamshid, a fruit vendor in his 30s, compared the judicial system of the Karzai administration with the desert courts of the Taliban.
"The Taliban courts were swift and strict," he said with admiration.
"A thief would be given the death sentence after a short trial. But under Mr Karzai's rule, it will take a century to prove a thief guilty - and even then there is no guarantee that he will be punished."
Villagers often prefer the Taliban to "corrupt"
Afghan authorities, the report alleges
The country's poor literacy rate and the Taliban's psychological war in many districts is believed to have helped the insurgents to win the hearts of the Afghan population.
Taliban songs, videos and ringtones play on people's emotions.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar has launched his own style of counter-insurgency, and a shadow Taliban administration of sorts is in place in many areas.
Taliban officials do the rounds in villages, districts and valleys collecting taxes and dispensing their version of justice.
I know of several cases where Taliban officials have been fired because people have complained about them - many people see this as a more responsive system than the actual government where such action is rare.
And family loyalties run deep. People from the same village or district as a Taliban fighter will never hand him over to Nato or the Afghan government.
Many families have members working on both sides, some for Afghan forces, others for the Taliban - this is seen as a form of local insurance policy. When villagers hear US President Barack Obama or Vice-President Joe Biden discussing withdrawal in 2014, the Taliban come and say, look Nato is leaving, but we will be here.
“Please don't mind because you [Afghan government officials]
have helped the mujahideen and you are our friends”
Taliban radio broadcast
The Taliban's reach is thought to extend right into parts of the government.
When I was in Sarkano district in the eastern province of Kunar, I could hear the Taliban presenter on Radio Voice of Sharia FM: "This is a message for apostate employees of the Afghan government. But not to some of our friends in the government - they know who they are."
Serious threat
Senior officials have told me some government members think the Taliban might return.
"So, they tell the Taliban, 'look we have sympathy with you'," one of the officials said.
"Then the Taliban tell these officials to prove their support. Sometimes, they ask these officials to help carry a fighter, a suicide attacker, or to help with weapons and access."
Another reason for locals turning away from the elected government is its failure to restore or maintain order in areas vacated by Western forces. Afghan security forces, grappling with high illiteracy rates, desertion, drug addiction and Taliban infiltration, have failed to instil confidence in the people.
There have even been several reports of Afghan police selling their weapons to militants.
While Afghan officials admit there are problems in the army and police - on whom the country's future security depends - they say there is no systemic failure.
"The reality is that they sell their bullets and weapons in the market to the highest bidder and that sometimes includes Taliban or other insurgent groups," said one senior Afghan security official in Kabul.
Pakistan is crucial
The leak also puts Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a very difficult position.
He has been trying to repair ties with Afghanistan's not-so-friendly neighbour, Pakistan, which denies sheltering the militants. The report's claims that Pakistani security services are helping the Taliban will do nothing to help his efforts.
Mr Karzai has told his confidants on several occasions that a peace dialogue with the Taliban will succeed only when it has the backing of Pakistan.
"If you have a hundred channels to talk to the Taliban through, and Pakistan is not on board, all of these channels will get closed, but if you have a small number of channels to contact Taliban through, along with Pakistan's approval, it will surely take you somewhere," one senior aide to the president told the BBC.
The leaked document seriously undermines Nato and Afghan government claims over the years that the Taliban have lost their punch.
On the contrary, the Taliban remain a more serious threat than ever to peace and stability in Afghanistan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16851949
There is a feeling that Afghanistan may go full circle. What will the US do if the Taliban come back in Afghanistan?
Those two elderly ones are taken from within your first "Related" ..
Death spells trouble for Pakistan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20900876
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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