December 9, 2005

This Week in Afghanistan Watch:

• Afghanistan at a Crossroads: Details from TCF’s UN Roundtable
• “Historic and groundbreaking” Conference on regional economic cooperation
• UN: Afghanistan at Risk for HIV/AIDS Epidemic
• Suicide Attack in Kandahar ; Helicopters Attacked; Parliamentarian Assasinated
• Inside an Al Qaeda Operative’s Escape
• U.S. Missile Strike in Pakistan Kills Al Qaeda Commander
• Report: Terrible Conditions for Afghan Carpet Weavers

Churchill once remarked: democracy is the worst system of government except for all the rest. Afghanistan, after experiencing monarchy, authoritarianism, communism, anarchy, warlordism, and theocracy, is perhaps the one country that has tried them all.

—Dr. Craig Charney, at the Century Foundation/UN Roundtable

Charney Research conducted a recent national poll in Afghanistan
which suggests the efficacy of voter education efforts.
The results are available here.

The time has come for Afghanistan and the region to seize the opportunity.

—Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah,
on this week’s regional conference

It is embarrassing and amazing at the same time. . .It was a disaster.

—An unidentified U.S. defense official, on the escape of four
Al Qaeda operatives from a military prison at Bagram

The dramatic situation we witness today in Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation, where HIV prevalence rates among drug user groups are extremely high, can easily spread to Afghanistan in the near future.

—Emmanuel Reinert , Executive Director, The Senlis Council.

Afghanistan is like the Ginger Rodgers of least developed countries—it has to do everything that all the Fred Astaire’s of least developed countries do but it has to do it backwards and in high heels.

—Dr. Barnett Rubin , at the Century Foundation/UN Roundtable

Afghanistan, Neighbors Pledge Cooperation
Afghanistan ’s first major regional economic conference focused on the critical need for electricity, which is a major impediment to investment. Karzai told the opening session that Afghanistan can provide power to only 6% of its population, with even Kabul receiving only a couple hours of electricity per day, and that the country would continue to import electricity for a decade. Water, transport infrastructure, and better customs practices were also highlighted as priorities.

KABUL, Dec 5 (AP)—Afghanistan and its neighbors vowed Monday to work more closely together, ending what a British official called a groundbreaking conference to boost economic cooperation in a region reaching from China to Turkey and the Persian Gulf.

Following a two-day meeting billed as Afghanistan's debut as host of a major economic conference after decades of war, delegations from 12 nations pledged cooperation in areas including electricity trade, water resource management and counternarcotics.

They also vowed to seek investment by improving the regional business climate, an undertaking British Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells called "absolutely central" to its prosperity. Britain co-chaired the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference as current holder of the G-8 presidency. Howells called the conference "historic and groundbreaking" and said the declaration, which assigned the Kabul government a leading role in following up on its decisions, marked "the moment when Afghanistan has become a real player in bringing peace and stability to this region."

The meeting brought together officials from the six nations bordering Afghanistan—Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan and China—as well as India, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan: Intervening Before It’s Too Late
While there is no reliable data on the state of HIV in Afghanistan, all the indicators are troubling: the UN estimates that Afghanistan is now home to almost a million (920,000) drug users, 200,000 of which are in danger of contracting aids.

Opium has been used on a small scale in Afghanistan for centuries, but is traditionally not injected. The use of injected heroin has recently been imported into Afghanistan by refugees who used the drug in Pakistan or Iran. In Russia, India, and Central Asia, injected drugs have been a central cause in the rapid spread of the epidemic.

Afghanistan is at clear risk, and the time to intervene is now—not after the country has crossed the tipping point and the virus spreads among the general population (where it is far more difficult to combat.) Successful interventions in other countries suggest that a modest and targeted campaign of education, clean needles, and methadone treatment for addicts could save tens of thousands of lives and prevent a general epidemic.

See also:

• BBC’s Andrew North: UN gives Afghanistan HIV/AIDS warning
• AFP: Afghanistan must act to prevent HIV, AIDS, Experts Say

Suicide Bombing in Kanhahar
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, December 4 (Guardian) By Carlotta Gall—A suicide bomber threw himself at a convoy of passing Canadian troops in this southern city today, killing himself and a passing civilian and wounding several other civilians and a policeman, police officials here said. . . The attack was the latest in a string of more than 15 suicide attacks against foreign and Afghan troops in recent months as insurgents have turned to new tactics to disrupt security and reconstruction. . .

In other violence, a newly elected legislator was killed in a gunfight in eastern Afghanistan. The legislator, Esmatullah Muhabbat, a well-known former commander, died from gunshot injuries after an altercation with a businessman. Three of his men were also killed in the gunfight, an Interior Ministry spokesman, Yousuf Stanizai, said. Mr. Muhabbat, who was held for a year at the Bagram air base but was released by the American military without charge, was elected from his home province, Laghman. He is the second legislator to have been killed since the Sept. 18 elections.

Five American soldiers and one Afghan soldier were also injured in two separate incidents when their helicopters made crash landings in southern Afghanistan during combat operations, the American military said in a statement today. None of the soldiers were in serious condition, but one helicopter was badly damaged, the statement said. . .

Details Emerge on a Brazen Escape in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON, December 3 (NYT) by Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden—The prisoners were considered some of the most dangerous men among the hundreds of terror suspects locked behind the walls of a secretive and secure American military detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan. Their escape, however, might as well have been a breakout from the county jail.

According to military officials familiar with the episode, the suspects are believed to have picked the lock on their cell, changed out of their bright orange uniforms and made their way through a heavily guarded military base under the cover of night. They then crawled over a faulty wall where a getaway vehicle was apparently waiting for them, the officials said. . .

One of the four suspects was identified as Al Qaeda's highest-ranking operative in Southeast Asia when he was captured in 2002, a fact that emerged only during an unrelated military trial last month. Another, a Saudi, was also described by intelligence officials as an important Qaeda operative in Afghanistan. . .

One American intelligence official said the prisoners also took advantage of "a perfect storm" of mistakes by the military guards. The escape is believed to have been the first from one of the detention centers established by the United States for people suspected of being terrorists after 9/11. Military officials, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the incident are classified, said there was still much they did not know about how the men escaped. . .

Intelligence officials gave differing views on the importance of Mr. Kahtani. One official described him as having been responsible at one point for maintaining Al Qaeda's operational support structure in Afghanistan; another said he was an important Qaeda fighter, but not a senior-level operative.

U.S. Missile Strike in Pakistan Kills Al Qaeda Commander
BERLIN, December 3 (WP) by Craig Whitlock and Kamran Khan—The killing of an al Qaeda commander in a U.S.-led operation in a remote corner of Pakistan marks an advance in the struggle to locate and eliminate the network's leadership, which has managed to replenish its ranks after suffering key losses in recent years, counterterrorism officials and experts said Saturday.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said that Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed Thursday in an explosion in a tribal area along the border with Afghanistan. Although there were conflicting reports about the details of Rabia's death, Pakistani intelligence sources said U.S. operatives killed him and four others with a missile fired by an unmanned Predator drone.

Pakistani and U.S. officials described Rabia as a major figure in al Qaeda's murky hierarchy and said he would have been responsible for plotting large-scale attacks against U.S. or European targets. At the same time, however, his rapid rise in the network shows how al Qaeda has been able to regenerate after similar setbacks in the past. . . The interrogation of Libbi by U.S. and Pakistani intelligence operatives "confirmed that Abu Hamza Rabia was in touch with Ayman Zawahiri and he was an important connection between Zawahiri and various Al Qaeda cells, at least until last year," said another Pakistani intelligence official, who is involved in counterterrorism work in the tribal areas. The official added that contact between Rabia and Zawahiri appears to have ceased during the last several months. A third Pakistani intelligence official said that for the past few months, Rabia had been "playing hide-and-seek with the Americans, who were on his tail. He was a fast mover who shuttled between the tribal areas and Afghan border areas frequently."

Survey Calls for End to Female Carpet Weavers’ Misery
KABUL, December 1 (IRIN)—Thousands of women and girls who toil in appalling conditions to make Afghan carpets for export are treated as unpaid slaves and suffer from routine exhaustion, long hours and health problems, according to a survey conducted by a local rights body released on Thursday.

The world famous handmade carpets, woven mainly in northern and central Afghanistan, are one of the poverty-stricken country's few exports and can fetch thousands of dollars abroad. According to the Ministry of Commerce, there are around 1 million small carpet workshops across the country, in which around 6 million people, mainly women and children, are employed.

The Rabia Balkhi Advocacy and Skill building Agency (RASA) conducted the survey over seven months in three northern provinces: Balkh; Kunduz; and Jawzjan, and spoke to more than 300 weavers. “Most of the weavers spend up to 18 hours a day working in poor conditions, with many becoming ill and taking opium to relieve their pain,” Nilofar Sayar, regional director of RASA, said. Afghanistan's 2003 constitution limits the normal working day to eight hours. . . According to the survey, 113 out of the 300 interviewers had started weaving the carpets below the age of 10. . . Illiteracy was another problem among the women interviewed by RASA. Some 265 out of 300 were illiterate. Only 35 of them had had primary education, according to the survey.

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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