This event is organised in partnership with BBC World Service.

As Afghanistan gears up for a pivotal presidential election we will be bringing together a panel of experts to take an in-depth look at the candidates and what they are offering.

The election is the third presidential poll since the fall of the Taliban and it anticipates the country’s first peaceful democratic transfer of power. With Hamid Karzai barred from running again, the departure of foreign troops imminently approaching and a long-term security deal with the US not yet agreed, the stakes are high.

We will be looking at the candidates and the challenge that awaits them of managing the country and relations with the international community.

Chaired by Paddy O’Connell of BBC 4’s Broadcasting House.

The panel:

Horia Mosadiq is an Afghan human rights activist and journalist with around 20 years of work experience in Afghanistan and the region, in the fields of media, human rights, transitional justice and women rights. Since September 2008 she has worked at Amnesty International, International Secretariat as an Afghanistan Researcher.

Michael Semple is a visiting professor at the Centre for Conflict Transformation, Queen’s University, Belfast, and affiliated to the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. He conducts research on the Afghan Taliban Movement, conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan and approaches to reconciliation.

Emal Pasarly is the multimedia editor for the BBC Pashto-Persian service. He was born in Northern Province of Kunduz, Afghanistan and as a result of the Russian invasion, his family migrated to neighbouring Pakistan. He moved to London in 1993 and began working with the BBC World Service in 1996. He also writes fiction in Pashto and has published two novels and four collections of short stories.

Francesc Vendrellhas had a long career in the UN and, later in the EU, in the settlement of internal and international conflicts, including Central America, Haiti, Nagorno-Karabakh, Cambodia, Myanmar, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. From 2000 to 2002 he was the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for Afghanistan and from mid-2002 to September 2008 the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan. As Chair of the Board of AAN, he regularly visits Afghanistan. 

Monday 4 March

Monday will see the long-awaited opening of the Al Sweady inquiry, examining the circumstances surrounding a 2002 incident in Maysan province, Iraq, involving British security forces. Following a firefight on 14 May at a vehicle checkpoint known as Danny Boy, a number of Iraqis were taken to UK detention facility, Camp Abu Naji. There is a dispute over how many Iraqis were killed in the firefight, but the following day the British soldiers returned 20 bodies to the Iraqi authorities. There are accusations that several of the Iraqis may have died while in custody.

Meanwhile, eurozone finance ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday, with a bailout package for Cyprus high on the agenda now that elections there have been completed. The politics of a financial aid package are complicated by the fact that Cyprus is home to significant amount of Russian money, which many suspect is being laundered on the island.

Finally Monday, the posthumous trial of whistleblowing lawyer Sergey Magnitsky on tax evasion charges is scheduled to resume. Magnitsky died aged 37 in prison in November 2009 as he awaited trial. Critics suggest the charges were trumped up in retaliation for Magnitsky’s role in exposing an alleged $230m fraud that was linked to a Russian Interior Ministry official.

Tuesday 5  March

On Tuesday, the once-a-decade political transition that will see Xi Jinping formally appointed China’s President will reach its final stage when a two-week session of the National People’s Congress opens in Beijing.

Lastly, elections are scheduled to take place in the Federated States of Micronesia. Refreshingly, all candidates are non-partisan, since the country has no formal political parties.

Wednesday 6  March

On Wednesday, in Brasilia four of Brazil’s five main unions are scheduled to start a march to protest sluggish growth and to call for labour market reforms.

In Cairo, the once-high-profile trial of NGO workers charged with working for “illegal” civil society organisations will continue. The case disappeared from mainstream coverage once the 19 American citizens accused in the case were allowed to return to the US last March.

Finally, Israeli President Shimon Peres will be in Brussels on Wednesday, where he will meet with Herman Van Rompuy.

Thursday 7 March

On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague will host a Friends of Yemen meeting in London co-chaired by representatives from the Yemeni and Saudi governments. Other members of the grouping include Gulf Co-operation Council, G8 member states, the UN, EU, Arab League, IMF and the World Bank.

In finance, both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are scheduled to announce interest rate decisions.

Finally, in Brussels, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso are scheduled to speak at a conference on the future of Europe, titled Europe 2020.

Friday 8 March

Following his 9 January sentencing, jailed businessman Christopher Tappin is due to begin serving a 33-month sentence relating to the sale of batteries used in Iranian missiles. He entered a guilty plea on 1 November 2012 to one count of aiding and abetting the illegal export of defence articles. Tappin may be allowed to serve his sentence in the UK; however a final ruling from the US Bureau of Prisons remains pending.

Lastly. the US will on Friday release its latest monthly unemployment figures, provoking the usual blame-game between Democrats and Republicans.

Weekend

On Saturday, nine policemen, including the former head of Port Said Security Directorate General Essam Samak, are among the remaining 54 defendants due to be sentenced over the 1 February violence at a match between Al Masry and Al Ahly football teams, which saw 74 Al Ahly supporters killed. The civilian defendants face charges of premeditated murder, while the police face charges of aiding the attackers. On 26 January, the court handed down 21 death sentences in connection to the incident, sparking widespread violence.

Finally, Sunday is the deadline for US special forces to leave Wardak province following President Hamid Karzai’s announcement on 24 February that they must leave over allegations of torture and murder. Previous such deadlines issued by Karzai have subsequently been revised.

Images Courtesy of Featureflash / ID1974 / Shutterstock.com

By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi

Women would be the biggest losers if Afghanistan’s peace plan includes a deal with fundamentalist elements of the Taliban, according to Rachel Reid, who hosted Frontline’s talk with Afghan journalist Zarghuna Kargar.

Reid sais she had lost hope that peace in Afghanistan would include progress for women. Reid, currently working at Human Rights Watch, recounted a conversation she had with President Hamid Karzai last summer, in which he asked whether he should stop children dying or send girls to school. “He has showed himself capable of trading away women’s rights,” said Reid.

But Kargar, who has been documenting the lives of Afghan women for more than 10 years, argued that Afghanistan “cannot go back to what it was 10 years ago.”

Women have lost so much [from the war]. Mothers have lost their sons and husbands. Women have been raped. They have had big losses. For these women peace is what matters.

We want peace but not at the price of losing what we have achieved in the last 10 years. Democracy doesn’t work without women.

Kargar’s knowledge on what matters to Afghan women comes from presenting Afghan Woman’s Hour, a BBC World Service Trust radio show covering a wide range of issues and in which women were able to tell their stories.

The show discussed taboo subjects like homosexuality, sex and the dire consequences for women and girls of ancient traditions such as ‘baad’ where Afghan girls were given away as gifts to end local disputes. Kargar said:

One of the [problems] is lack of information. Some people think this the way that Muslims do things. They don’t. Traditions which have been made for men, by men, are continuing.

In her new book, “Dear Zari: Stories from Women in Afghanistan”, Kargar shares the unique stories of Afghan women, whose problems often seem insurmountable. One woman became an outcast because she did not bleed on her wedding night, another was forced to dress and act as a boy (and then a man) to make up for the absence of sons in one family.

There are many tales of injustice, abuse, violence and rape, but there are some positive, inspiring stories, such as the widow who is determined not take the only route that seemed open to her and go begging on the streets. Instead she started a kite-making business with her children. Such stories inspired and encouraged her to include her own experiences in the book, said Kargar:

I hope people who read it will respect what we disclose about our lives. The courage they [Afghan women] have, there is so much resilience in them for a better tomorrow. They came with such huge trust and told us their stories. That’s why I fell in love with them.

Ghorak district is north-west of the city, and not especially important in itself. Off the top of my head, it was the first district that the Soviets abandoned during the 1980s when they started their slow wind-down and withdrawal to the city. Nowadays its only value is its use and value as a transport hub for the Taliban.

Ghorak is relatively straightforward tribally speaking. It’s somewhere between 25 and 50% Popolzai (the same tribe as President Karzai), and two other big tribes are the Alikozai and Eshaqzai (along with dribs and drabs of others). There are maybe around 8000 people living there in just over 100 separate villages, with apparently only one teacher to cater for all of them. And there are no schools in the district – just 9 ‘inactive’ schools. There are no hospitals, no health clinics, and no doctors. There is no mobile phone coverage in the district either (although I imagine that will change in the next year).

It’s also not covered by the National Solidarity Programme (the NSP) which is often touted as evidence for development going on around the country (although the reality is a lot less clear). There are supposedly just under 100 Afghan policemen stationed there, but actually there are probably only about 30 present in the district, and even then they’re only in the district centre defending the building. There is no ANA (Afghan National Army) base, and the Canadian soldiers who were stationed there left some 8 or 9 months ago.
All in all, Ghorak is pretty far away from the city, and everything that the city might be seen to represent.

It also happens to be the only way to cross from Helmand (Sangin) into Uruzgan (Deh Rawud) province. It’s an important district in terms of drug traffic being transported from one place to another. The photo above is of US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne heading out for a patrol into the section of Ghorak valley that juts into Helmand province.

I was speaking to one of the big tribal elders of Ghorak in the middle of August about the jihad in the 1980s, but he kept coming back to the attack on his family home and fort a few days before. The Taliban had killed 3 of his relatives and another 3 were wounded. I saw one of the survivors that night – a bullet had entered in his neck and exited through one of his cheeks.

This attack, the elder told me, was part of a campaign to force all the big tribal families and landowners (often the same thing) to leave the area. Of course in defending their land and tribal ‘space’ many of his family were at the same time being used by the government as ‘police chief’, ‘district chief’ and so on.

Then a few weeks later I went to see a group of policemen who had just arrived that evening from Ghorak desperately seeking help for their fellow defenders of Ghorak district centre. Their guns and RPGs lay haphazardly spread around the room as if they’d just arrived or were about to head out that moment. There were policemen from all over the country sitting in that room – in the photo below you can see some of the guys from Herat, as well as the deputy police commander – and before even speaking to them you could tell that they’d been through a lot. Their eyes were red and a little bloodshot, their faces somewhat sallow and some of the younger ones fell asleep as they sat there.

Just over 8 or 9 months ago, the Canadians and the ANA who were stationed in Ghorak left the district. They handed control over to the ANP (Afghan National Police), of which there were around 120 men. Each had an AK-47 for himself, and they also had 4 PKs, 4 RPGs and 1 mortar (that apparently didn’t work properly). They had some ammunition, but once the fighting started they soon ran out.

Their commander had to travel to Kandahar City personally to petition for more supplies for his men at one point.
Assigned to protect the district centre, these 120 policemen were marooned there for six months (“a nightmare”) under siege from the Taliban. There were four major battles, but the most recent one took place just a few days before I spoke with them. The fighting was characterised by them as “fierce”, and they lost 2 soldiers there in the 12-hour engagement.

One of those two killed was the brother of the deputy commander, Fateh Mohammad, aged 32 (pictured wearing the black turban in the photo above). They had no support during this time from the government or from the Canadians, were resupplied no ammunition, and in fact their commander had to go to Kandahar City and personally knock on some doors to get some more bullets for his men.
And don’t think that ‘going to the city’ is like travelling from Windsor to London.

All the roads leading from the district centre to anywhere else are controlled by the Taliban, as is the land surrounding those roads. At some point during the six-month siege (which you won’t have read about anywhere, by the way) things got so desperate that they decided to send men out of the district centre to summon help. Four left on foot but only two made it back alive. It took them 14 hours to walk to the nearest ‘safe’ road, and that journey took them up and down through mountains and valleys. It was, I was told, “easy to get lost in the mountains.”

They said that they’d left 25 policemen back at the district centre, but that they hoped to persuade the government to open up a real road of some sort to them at the district centre in Ghorak. “If this doesn’t happen, the place will fall any day now…” they said. The lack of any connection to the world outside their district centre building was even killing people. There were no doctors in the district and their inability to transport the injured to where they can be treated meant that policemen were dying of relatively simple wounds. Fateh Mohammad’s cousin was hit by shrapnel from a grenade (or a mortar, depending on who’s telling the story) on his ankle.

A relatively minor injury, but he lost so much blood through the wound and through lack of medical supplies that he died after a day.
They had requested air support six times during their time under siege, but no bomb was ever dropped. When they passed on the GPS data to NATO in the midst of battle, they counted on getting that support. Instead – in what they assume is hesitation borne out of a desire to avoid civilian casualties – planes simply flew past but never actually engaged the Taliban.

As I left to go home they drew my attention to one of the cars standing in the yard. One day they heard that the Taliban were preparing an ambush so some of the policemen went out to challenge them before something happened. A fight ensued, and – don’t ask me how – by the time both sides had disengaged, the Taliban had seized the two police cars, and the police had taken two of the Taliban’s vehicles. These were the vehicles that the policemen had used to get into Kandahar city on the day I met with them.

This afternoon I get a call from an old friend. “Do you want to come to the hospital?” he says. I hold my breath. Every time he asks me this question it means something has gone wrong somewhere; I worry about the friends I have here, that they will get targeted or caught up in something.

The Chinese Hospital in Kandahar city is the mirror of shadows that sometimes allows you a glimpse into what’s going on in the districts. If there was a battle in Panjwayi, the wounded end up there. If there’s a suicide bomb in town, the bodies get taken there to the morgue.
So I spent this afternoon with Hajji Abdul Zahir and several of his sons, in fact relatives of the tribal elder I met in August.

You can sort of see it in the video, but he was injured in his knee, waist, and one of his thumbs had to be amputated – none of which seemed to be causing him any pain, I might add. I did some video recording during the interview with my Flip Camera but you’ll have to excuse the fact that none of this is subtitled. It would take too long, and in any case the clip isn’t long enough for what he said to be especially interesting. I’d rather have this post up sooner than in a week when the story has taken on another dimension again. And apologies for the noise in the background; we were about 15 people crammed into a very small room and everyone was having their own discussion.

600 Taliban versus 8 men from the same family defending their house. Those were the odds Hajji Abdul Zahir and his sons faced, he told us this afternoon. They had been receiving guests for the post-Ramazan ‘Eid celebrations at their homes, as is the tradition. Not all the visitors were necessarily ‘good guys’, and they went back and told the Taliban that there were few people in the house and presumably that it wouldn’t be too difficult to mount an attack.

So a week ago the government called them on their satellite phone to warn them that there were numbers of Taliban moving in their direction and that they should expect an attack. It didn’t happen that evening, but the next morning after the dawn prayer Hajji Abdul Zahir was on the roof and he saw the Taliban setting up their weapons all around. He shouted to his sons (some of whom were in a nearby house) to come and defend the main compound.
A pair of shots rang out from the Taliban side, but nobody was hurt.

Then Abdul Zahir’s sons mounted their own attack, firing some mortars against the Taliban hiding in nearby pomegranate orchards. The Taliban responded with their own volley of mortars and the battle had started. They didn’t stop fighting until many hours later at around 11pm.
The forty surrounding houses were occupied by the Taliban, and Hajji Abdul Zahir and his sons had to defend their compound. The Taliban came up close and started firing mortars and other smaller shells (from a weapon called Agayaz in Pashtu) directly into the compound. When we spoke with the sons they were still wondering how the Taliban managed to get hold of these weapons.

The last time they’d seen them was in Canadian hands while they were working together with the police forces in the area. Maybe that’s how they ended up with the Taliban, they mused.
At any rate, it was these mortars (large and small) which caused most of the injuries. Five of Hajji Abdul Zahir’s nine sons were injured on that day – one had been killed the previous year by the Taliban, also defending Ghorak – as well as two of the women from his family. Some of his grandsons were injured, too.
The only fatality of the battle was a policeman who died stepping on a landmine when leaving the house during the battle.

The 10-year old son of Hajji Abdul Zahir was also injured – he was one of those fighting to defend against the Taliban, injured on his back from grenade shrapnel. He kept quiet about his injuries until they reached Kandahar City because he was a tough guy (essentially).
During the initial hour of the attack members of Hajji Abdul Zahir’s family made frantic calls to friends in Kandahar to rally support and to alert the Canadians at the PRT (who had left a business card ‘in case you have problems in the future’). The calls they made on their satellite phone finally appeared to have paid off when they heard the sound of helicopters and jets in the skies above.

At the same time, they could hear the Taliban shouting amongst themselves to ‘bring the landmines’, with which they wanted to blow up the outer walls to the compound and thus gain entrance. In fact they managed to do this, but the jets appeared roughly at the same time and made several passes close to the area from which a massive smoke plume was now rising.
Down on the ground, neither the Taliban nor Abdul Zahir and his sons could see anything. “It was all smoke and dust, and I think we were all confused,” he said. And nothing happened with the planes either, he was quick to point out. “They hovered around and about for a few hours,” he said, “but not a single bullet was fired.”

Trying to call the PRT over the phone to get them to engage the Taliban wasn’t easy either. “Whenever we made a call, the Taliban could hear our voices and then they knew where we were. A few seconds later several mortars would get launched in our direction,” he said. They gave up trying after a few attempts.
Early the next morning ‘Americans’ came with helicopters and evacuated Hajji Abdul Zahir, all his sons and all the women from the house. The only possession Hajji Abdul Zahir managed to save from his home was a spare pare of clothes, he said. Everything else was lost. He presumes that the Taliban have blown his house up with the landmines that they were using on the outer walls.

So there are three roads leading from the district centre in Ghorak – one going to Sangin in Helmand province, one going to Garmabak/Maiwand and the other going to Khakrez district. All of these are in the hands of the Taliban, the numerous survivors of last week’s battle who were gathered in the cramped hospital room told us. “Now that we have left, the district is 100% controlled by the Taliban.”
Apart from the district centre, that is. The Taliban apparently moved on from Hajji Abdul Zahir’s house and turned on the district centre building, although as I write this there hasn’t been active combat between the police and Taliban for a couple of days.
So why is this an interesting story? Why did I write all this detail.

Well firstly, the actual detail of the story is far more complicated than actually related here, whether that’s when you consider the relationships between the police, the families living in the area, and the Taliban fighting on the other side. Then when you look at the tribal issue the stew thickens. Why, we had asked the policemen who came to Kandahar city a month ago, why are you fighting against the Taliban? Why don’t you just give up? (Or why aren’t you simply fighting with the Taliban?)
“We’re Popolzai,” the ones originally from Ghorak answered. The Taliban – and this is a generalisation, because there are in fact many Popolzai Taliban – see the Popolzai tribe as being tainted by Karzai, and as such they “have no choice” but to fight with the government.

Even if they didn’t want to do so, they couldn’t just live in their houses oblivious to things going on around them – the Taliban force them to fight.
And then there’s the whole issue of district centres. As everyone acknowledged, Ghorak is only one of several districts currently controlled by the Taliban that only have a government presence in the district centre. Others include: Maiwand to the west, Miya Nisheen to the north, Shah Wali Kot to the north, and Khakrez just to the east of Ghorak. “You can’t go even 1 kilometre outside the district centre in any of those districts,” the deputy commander of Ghorak told us. Now of course this isn’t news to anyone who has been following events in Kandahar.
But what does it actually mean to continue holding these district centres? Of the 120 policemen entrusted with Ghorak when the Canadians and ANA left 8 months ago only around 25 are still alive.

Can we say that their deaths have served some greater purpose? Can we say look Hajji Abdul Zahir straight in the eyes and say that we really care what goes on in Ghorak? Or are we holding the district centre just for show, so when the BBC or CNN produces a map of government control we can say that ‘most of Kandahar is being policed by the government’, or something to that effect. Then again, what message would it send to abandon all these district outposts altogether?

All hard questions, I think, but if we’re going to continue to claim the moral high ground in the mission that foreign troops are carrying out in places like Kandahar, we need to thoroughly reconsider our entire presence there. Are the Taliban an inevitable force? And to what extent are foreign troops the Taliban’s raison d’etre?
I ended my last post saying that I hope to write on the small group of ideas being floated around western policy circles these days: negotiations, ‘sons of Afghanistan’ or Afghan Awakening Councils, and the ‘surge’. Will get round to it soon, I promise…
[Thanks to Baghdad Brian of Alive in Baghdad for helping upload the site – unbelievably circuitous process…]

Even within Afghanistan, it doesn’t merit any attention from local journalists. This is undoubtedly on account of ethnic biases against the purported ‘victims’, the Hazaras.
Not that it’ll mean anything to most of the readers of this blog, but here’s one of the few videos made for local television (in this case Tolo’s Pashtu-language Lemar TV station) which shows images of Kuchi (/Taliban?) fighters in the district, as well as burned houses and those killed in the conflict:

The Hazara people who live in the three eastern districts of Wardak province – Behsud 1, Behsud 2 and Dai Mirdad – have been in some sort of conflict with the largely Pashtun Kuchi (or ‘nomad’) people for over 100 years. Hazaras claim that they are the original inhabitants of the land and that Kuchi groups are trying to force them off their land.

In recent decades there was some measure of balance in which the Hazara would allow some Kuchis grazing rights for their cattle and sheep. This became difficult to sustain in the past two or three years as the numbers of nomadic Kuchis who have arrived in the district has increased each year. Each summer Afghan media outlets report new deaths among the Hazara community in the district at the hands of Kuchis.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the Taliban, who are in de facto control of the western districts in Wardak province, have reportedly formed alliances with the Kuchis to force out Hazaras from the district. The Taliban hope that their support of the Kuchis – a majority of whom are Pashtuns – will buy loyalty and will allow them to take control of more of the province.
Some video from a trip I made last week to Wardak’s provincial capital, Maidan Shahr:

Recent research by the Senlis Council, an international think-tank, shows that over half of the province – just 45 minutes from Kabul by road – is under Taliban control. Behsud district so far has been relatively free of Taliban influence and as such remains out of their control.
The Hazaras – traditionally believed to be descendants of Genghis Khan’s hordes from the 13th century – are somewhat an anomaly in Afghanistan and are treated as such.

Kabul itself is now as much as 40% a Hazara city, and anywhere you go in the west of the city you find members of this massive underclass, ready to do the jobs nobody else wants. These neighborhoods are the closest thing Afghanistan has to a slum.
Casual racism dominates most passing discussion of the Hazara, and it is this that has in turn influenced the lack of local and foreign media interested in the issues of Behsud.

Afghan television and radio stations covered the big demonstration in Kabul on 23rd July (with over 50,000 demonstrators), but the root issues of the problem were never properly explored, and the stories of many went untold.
Last year, several journalists were able to visit Behsud on a day-trip with elders from the districts. Tom Coghlan, writing for the Telegraph newspaper (UK) reported:

With its lofty peaks, streams and carpet of wild flowers, Behsood ought to be a tourist’s delight. Instead, refugees are pouring out in clapped-out cars and minibuses; more than 4,000 are estimated to have fled so far. In the villages, week-old plates of half-eaten food sit on abandoned tables. link

This year, the conflict and displacement seems to have been bigger. I say ‘seems’ because I haven’t managed to visit the district myself to check. And listening to what’s going on through interlocutors here in Kabul just provokes confusion. Here’s a picture of some graffiti on the wall written by Kuchis last year.

A translation from the Pashtu reads:

Death to Karzai.
Death to the Hazara people. They have become American.
Death to the Americans. link

Tens of thousands of ethnic Hazaras closed down part of Kabul on Tuesday 22nd July in the afternoon in a demonstration calling for the Afghan President Hamid Karzai to resign over a land dispute in the eastern and neighbouring Wardak province.
At least 50,000 demonstrators crowded the streets near Kabul Zoo in southern Kabul and were preparing to progress on towards the city centre when one of the demonstration’s organizers, Hajji Mohammad Mohaqiq, called on the crowd to end the demonstration before it turned violent.

Hajji Muhaqiq (Photo: Philip Poupin) had been on a hunger strike for over a week in protest against what he said was the government’s inaction over the issue when we spoke to him on the day of the demonstrations. 51-years old, Muhaqiq previously served as planning minister under Karzai and is a senior leader of the Shi’a Hizb-e Wahdat (Unity Party).

The militia he commanded during the 1990s has often been accused by Afghan people, politicians and media outlets of committing atrocities against civilians.
Mr Muhaqiq said there was “no government to stop the Kuchis from traveling into the district with large amounts of weapons.” These Kuchis, who he claimed were coming from as far as North Waziristan (Pakistan) and the south-eastern Paktya province (Afghanistan), were in the hands of the Taliban now. These attacks and attempts to force Hazaras off their land showed that the Taliban were “trying to exert control over the province.”

Muhaqiq was keen to connect the problems in Behsud district with more general problems of Afghan governance. The President, he said, had set the country’s national unity back 10 years through his policies. Citing various ethnic slights in which Karzai – as a Pashtun – has been seen to ignore other groups, Mohaqiq said that only a new team and another president can bring Afghanistan back on the road to national unity.
Elders from Wardak told us that as many as 5000 families (with an average of 10 members per family) had been displaced to Kabul or to Bamyan on account of the fighting.

“Every family”, they said, had been affected in the conflict in the three districts. 80% of Behsud 1, 40% of Behsud 2 and 100% of the Hazaras in Dai Mirdad district had been forced out on account of the Kuchi incursions, we were told.
They saw the problems as a Pashtun government-led conspiracy against the Hazaras. “Why is Karzai doing this? We have no opium here? There is no insecurity. Why can’t he help us to develop the area instead of expelling us?” said Hajji Wakil Hani, head of the Wardak people’s shura or council.
Looking all the way back to Amir Sher Ali Khan, the elders said that it was the Amir Abdur Rahman who started the present wave of Hazara persecution.

62% of all Hazaras (they said) were either killed or displaced from their homes during this period.
But now, they reasoned, what was the point in disrupting the Hazarajat areas? “We just want our children to study. This year most of the schools are closed – last year as well – in these Behsud areas. In most of the Hazarajat there are no killings, no insecurity, but still Karzai threatens the people in the south. ‘You’ll get a Hazara government if you don’t sort things out…’ Karzai warns his fellow Pashtuns. What kind of a threat is that?” one of the speakers interjects.

The head of the Ulemaa’ (religious clerics) in Wardak, Agha Mobarez, asks, “What is Karzai doing? Why is he encouraging the destruction of the only place that is secure? And can we even talk about ‘Kuchis’ anymore? They live like everyone else.”
They pointed to the lack of electricity, medical clinics, and road-building in Kabul’s District 13, inhabited by around 1 million Hazaras, as evidence for the government’s lack of care.

The problems of the district have only increased with the influx of thousands of refugees – as many as 5,000 homes they estimate.
Mohammad Ali, 65, one of the refugees from the conflict who was now living in a friend’s house along with 46 others from his village, said he didn’t know what he could do now. “We are waiting until the winter when the Kuchi will leave.

Our wheat is burned, our livestock and our houses too. What can we do? We can’t return to our houses and we have nothing here.”
He had left from Qash village (in Behsud 1) in which there were 15 houses. All the families fled the village when they received news that Kuchis were coming. Walking 20 km to Jalrez district, they then took a car to Maidan Shahr, and from then to Kabul.
“Last year we thought it would stop, so we returned. But now it happened again.” They asked me to record their names for the record: Mohammad Ali, Hashim, Khodabakhsh and Zikria.

They had assembled two rows of women for us to talk to, all sitting on the porch outside the house. “They took our livestock. They are the black enemies, and they took our cows. Karzai should do something. They’re killing us, and we’re starving. Karzai did this to us. It’s not Kuchis, it’s Taliban. This is all a plan of Karzai’s making. No development has reached the area,” they all interject.
It was at this point I heard the first of the rumour that the Kuchis come in Afghan National Army (ANA) helicopters.

According to what they said – and what most of the other Hazaras we spoke to over a week-long period said – these helicopters are seen in the sky moments before Kuchis appear in the area.
Amir Mohammad, 47, had taken 3 days to come from Lataband area of Dai Mirdad district, and said that the Hazaras compliance with the Afghan government’s disarmament programme had meant they were unable to defend themselves against the Kuchi arrival. 2 cows stood in the courtyard of the Kabul house, the last remaining livestock of the village.

The woman in this video is explaining the exact way she was displaced out of her village. She spoke of ‘stages of displacement’, whereby every time the Kuchis came close to where you were staying, you’d move 3 or 4 villages backwards. Eventually, you’d read Bamyan or Kabul, she said, but each person that had reached these big cities would have therefore been displaced several times prior to arrival.

The men in this video explain how they left. “The Kuchis were in the village just up the road,” they say. “We didn’t have any people killed or injured from our villages.” It took them about 3 or 4 days to reach Kabul. Amir Mohammad explains how the Hazara had handed in all their weapons as part of the DIAG disarmament programme and so were unable to defend themselves.

They also complain that no assistance or houses has reached them from the billions of dollars pledged to Afghanistan. And the Kuchis, they said, were taking advantage of the knowledge that the Hazaras had handed over their weapons.
Then they added the story (/rumour) that helicopters and Afghan internal security forces were helping the Kuchis. They give estimates that 200 villages were burnt in the wider Behsud area, amounting to some 5000 houses. We were unable to verify this claim.

On Tuesday, a funeral was held outside Kabul for 3 further Hazara men killed by Kuchis. The funeral procession for Mohammad Musa, Mohammad Ali Naseri and Anwar Husseini started in Dasht-e Barchi (a Hazara-majority area) in a procession (see video below) and then the mourners were put on busses and taken outside Kabul for the burial.

A car with with the family of one of the victims passes by: one man driving, eyes red, and 6 women (2 in front, 4 in the back). It’s the one time I’ve regretted my beard – grown for southern Afghanistan, but immediately provoking suspicion and unease among the mourners. My bag is checked several times by Hazara security guards who must think that I am a Pashtun suicide bomber.

Over 2000 mourners are bussed to Koh-e Qogher, a remote hillside cemetery that overlooks the city. Once used by the Soviets for accomodation, the area surrounding the hill is now inhabited by Hazaras.
Those being buried were reportedly killed on 26th July in Dai Mirdad district after President Karzai had issued an edict demanding the withdrawal of all Kuchis from the area.

This, many of the mourners told me, was evidence of “institutional racism” and showed that Karzai was conducting a “personal war against the Hazara people.”
Again I heard stories of ANA helicopters arriving and giving weapons to the Kuchis/Taliban (the words were used interchangeably). By noon the sun was fierce, and men walked through the crowd distributing water brought up in a tanker for the mourners.

There were many speeches after the bodies were buried. One Shi’a mullah from Kabul compared the dead men to the martyrs of Karbala.
A man called Faissi, a representative of the Kabul Hazara community, gave a very political speech – although people didn’t seem all too moved by the sentiment.

Some quotes: “the government is not listening to the cries of our martyrs…the silence of the government on the Kuchi crimes is reprehensible…”
A Mullah from Dai Mirdad itself gave a religiously-intoned speech appealing to people’s better judgement. “Islam is a religion of peace,” he said. “Nobody said life should be free of war…BUT it should be conducted within a framework and within a clear set of rules.” ‘Adalat or justice was mentioned countless times by all who got up to speak.

If it isn’t already clear from the above, this story was pretty confusing to make sense of, and the more I talked to people, the more things were complicated. I went to visit someone at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to make sense of what I’d heard. They are an official Afghan government organ, and last year during the clashes in Behsud they wrote a long report detailing exactly what was going on.

I wanted to see if they’d been to Behsud this year.
Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy Chair of the AIHRC, agreed that the issue was heavily politicised on both sides and that obtaining an accurate picture of what was going on in the area had been especially difficult. They had not, he said, released their assessment of the issue because they had not been able to talk to Kuchis involved in the dispute.
“Any small problem in Afghanistan has the potential to become a significant political and ethnic problem,” he said. By their assessment, 18 Hazaras and 19 Kuchis had been killed this year so far. His figure for the number of families displaced was much higher than the numbers the Hazara gave us – 6000-7000 families, the equivalent of about 55-65,000 people.

Mullah Tarakhel (Photo: Philip Poupin), a Kuchi MP and head of the Kuchi Affairs Commission, said that the problem was a result of the manipulations of politicians in Kabul. “Kuchis and Hazaras used to live peacefully together, but these problems now have been created out of nowhere,” he said. He named several prominent Hazara politicians – if you’re in Afghanistan, you’ll know who he named – who he said were exploiting the issue for their own benefit.

A question as to the extent and veracity of Hazara claims that Taliban are helping the Kuchis provoked smiles all round. No, he said, the Kuchis obey the government. His proof for this was the fact – he claimed – that the Kuchis had withdrawn from Behsud when Karzai recently ordered them to do so. He categorically denied Taliban help or involvement with the Kuchis.
His figures for Kuchi casualties of this year’s conflict were as follows: 27 killed, 99 injured, as well as 5 just over two weeks ago.

“Unless,” he said, “the problem is solved through the Afghan government, police and local organs, it naturally will lead to ethnic strife and will only continue to be exploited by others.”
The United Nations have committed themselves to supporting the efforts of the Afghan government as well as offering help to local initiatives and dialogue aimed at solving the problems in Behsud. Just this week they sent a team to Behsud to open a fourth round of negotiations.

Beyond this, though, the story remains opaque: simple to the passing observer, too small for the international community to involve itself, and yet also seemingly too intractable for it to be solved by the responsible Afghan government organs.

[First time I’m doing a longer piece like this that includes videos. If you have suggestions, comments etc on how I could make it more interesting etc, please email them or leave in the comments section…]

Mullah Salaam was, after all, the Talib who turned; the insurgent commander whose promise of defection resulted in a battle, of sorts, for the town and Britain’s most tangible victory in Helmand to date.

But as he told his story, kicking off his silver-sequinned, curl-toed sandles to reveal an impressively dyed set of toe-nails, it was clear that the legend behind Mullah Salaam’s ascent to power was rather grander than the reality.

Nevertheless, it remained a classic Afghan tale of treachery, bloodshed, farce and fate which exemplified both the finest traditions of hill-station intrigue as well as the murky undercurrents of Helmand’s political scene.

Mullah Salaam had indeed served the Taliban, but had long since laid down his arms when he first met Michael Semple in Kabul just over a year ago. Semple, a veteran Irish diplomat with unrivalled experience in Afghanistan, was serving in the country as an EU diplomat.

But he was also working on a project central to the British strategy to divide the Taliban through covert negotiations with biddable elements. Salaam had something to offer.

The 45 year old Afghan had left the Taliban in 2001 after the collapse of the fundamentalist regime.  Imprisoned for eight months by Sher Mohammed Akhunzada, the infamous governor of Helmand appointed by President Karzai, he was released from jail in 2002 and returned to his home in Shakahraz, 15 kilometres east of Musa Qala.

Disaffected with Karzai’s representatives in Helmand, he was also disillusioned by the neo-Taliban who seized Musa Qala in 2006. Two of the leading Taliban commanders were from rival Alizai sub-clans to Salaam’s own, a situation antagonised by existing tribal disputes.

This status, combined with his knowledge of the Taliban and his own tribal powerbase, led him to identify himself to Semple and Karzai as a useful behind-the-lines ally. After a series of meetings in Kabul in 2007 he returned to Musa Qala, by then something of a Taliban sanctuary, where contact was retained with him through British and Afghan intelligence handlers.

Last autumn Salaam travelled again to Kabul for a further meeting with Karzai. He captured the Afghan president’s imagination with the promise of a tribal uprising against the Taliban. Karzai was not the only one tempted by the possibility of having Musa Qala delivered into government hands with barely a shot fired. The idea led to a war cabinet in Kabul which included the British and American ambassadors and ISAF commander General Dan McNeill.

The result was Operation Mar Karadad, an ambitious plan to take control of Musa Qala on the back of Mullah Salaam’s tribal uprising. There was just one hitch. There was no uprising.

Far from leading a rebellion against the Taliban, as Afghan, British and American units closed upon Musa Qala last December, Mullah Salaam remained holed-up in his compound in Shakahraz with a small cortege of fighters.

From there he made increasingly desperate pleas for assistance both to Karzai, an Afghan General acting as an interlocutor for British intelligence officers, and Michael Semple. The authorities in Kabul were at first dismayed, then angered.

“He said that he would bring all the tribes with him but they never materialised,” recalled one British officer. “Instead all that happened was a series of increasingly fraught and frantic calls from him for help to Karzai. He was seen a sideshow after COMISAF made the decision to move upon Musa Qala and he hadn’t come up with the goods.”

The British had promised Salaam protection and in the newest twist, as NATO and ANA troops advanced towards the town an Afghan militia force was transported in British armoured vehicles to Mullah Salaam’s village as a guard force.

To British annoyance Mullah Salaam rejected the force, claiming it was not heavily enough armed. So the militia were transported back to Lashkar Gar. Then Salaam changed his mind. This time dressed in police uniforms, the unit eventually succeeded in making it back to Shakahraz and securing Mullah Salaam’s compound.

Meanwhile the Taliban fled Musa Qala anyway. Unsettled by the size of the forces deployed against them they gave little fight. Total allied fatalities were one British soldier killed by a mine during the advance and an American killed in a gun battle. The ANA, who entered Musa Qala to find it empty, lost not a single man, and Taliban casualties were estimated to be in the dozens rather than hundreds.

With Mullah Salaam still bogeyed up in his compound to the east, the British set about trying to find a governor for the district by facilitating a series of local shurahs. Apart from a leading narco-dealer there were few volunteers. But on 24th December Mullah Salaam came back to town. He appeared in Musa Qala utterly alone, but wished to address a shurah.

“It was the first time we had heard Mullah Salaam speak,” a British officer recalled, “and he spoke bloody well. In fact he dominated the whole show. He gave the government message: anti-Taliban, counter-narcotics, interspersed with Qoranic verses. He came across as an accomplished politician, far away from the reports from Kabul where he had been pilloried by then as a fraught and frantic man. So we reported back up the chain that he was a charismatic, good orator.”

In a series of further shurahs Mullah Salaam seemed to impress Musa Qala’s locals too. He wooed tribal elders with the promise of health clinics, schools and madrassas in which to educate their children rather than send them to Pakistan. It was a strong if simple message that appealed to the heart of rural Pashtun desires.

In January Karzai confirmed Salaam’s appointment. The onetime Talib was Musa Qala’s governor, sudden centrepin to an ambitious stabilisation plan whose success or failure will deeply influence Helmand’s future.

Throughout their six months on the ground, the paras were locked in almost non-stop combat with the Taliban. The idea came from the MoD and 3 Para’s commanding officer, Stuart Tootal. Harper Collins, due to family connections to the paras, published. It head-hunted Bishop, author of much-praised World War II battle sagas, to write. While it bears the fluid, engaging hallmarks of Bishop’s style, his usual journalistic expertise and analytical ability are not easily discerned this time. He does his best to balance the tale with caveats, but there are too many military hands on the message to make a critical study.

The battle group is deployed in an environment of such abject strategic confusion that it is a wonder they were not immediately routed. Their mission is given as a take-your-pick mix of civil reconstruction and fighting, with a bit of counter-narcotic intervention for good measure. The chain-of-command is a baffling Gordian Knot of Americans, Canadians, NATO types, Afghan officials and Whitehall. The paras lack the right kit, ammunition and enough helicopters. Clausewitz would have written off any chance of their success by chapter two. While the paratroopers get on with it as paras do, their commanders confound their efforts with a contentious series of decisions that British troops in Afghanistan are still paying for now. Rather than preserve the battle group’s cohesion and confine its efforts to their designated triangular area of responsibility, the unit is split into quarters and deployed piecemeal across northern Helmand in isolated defensive positions. In Sangin, Musa Qala, Nawzad and Kajaki, the paras find themselves bogged down in furious defensive battles which continue to the end of their tour. Reconstruction of infrastructure was a non-starter. The paras returned home, leaving areas around their bases smoking, depopulated ruins.

According to the book, the blame for these decisions appears to rest solely on the shoulders of Helmand’s provincial governor, Mohammed Daoud. Britain had chosen him for the position, but President Hamid Karzai removed him for being too intelligent and not nasty enough. Nevertheless, it stretches belief that a middle-ranking Afghan civilian held such influence on the deployment of a British battle group. Perish the thought that our own commanders ever bungled. It’s war all right, but in a version diluted by the MoD.

Reviewer: Anthony Loyd is author of Another Bloody Love  Letter.

It is a country that has seen constant battle over the last three decades; first by way of a proxy war between Cold War superpowers, then civil war among ethnic groups which led to the rise of the Taliban and most recently the scars from the dominance of NATO. “I can’t believe what has happened to Afghanistan,” says Wajia, a widowed Afghani refugee who fled her country almost a decade ago.

It is 2003 and this is Wajia’s first time back in the capital in 25 years. The city that used to have parks filled with trees and blooming flowers is now a dusty vision in brown. As she drives around Kabul with her son and a work colleague, who is covered up in a burkha, she appears at times almost despondent.

Wajia has come back to Kabul on a fact- finding trip sponsored by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Wearing a black veil with an intricate lace-like design she rests her chin on her palm. “I thought I should feel safer in my country, but I don’t,” she says.

Wajia is one of three women that writer and director Meena Nanji  follows in her riveting documentary “View from a Grain of Sand.” These women are only three voices in a choir of modern Afghani discontent. Begun in 2000, Nanji’s documentary starts with riveting images of Afghan women in a camp on the Pakistani/Afghan border. The faces of these women – revealed on camera as they take off their burkhas – tell the story of loss, struggle and survival.

Bibi Gul, a charming elderly Afghan woman with few teeth and a pink veil, says there is little to make her go back to her country. “There isn’t so much as snake’s poison there,” she says laughing. But for Shapiray, a teacher with dark syrupy eyes, Afghanistan still holds out hope and a possible future for her family. Having fled the Taliban less than two years earlier, Shapiray and her family live in a dusty mud hut.

It is her husband who actually is one of the highlights of the film,  arguing with his wife that religion should be democratic and tolerant. “And if Islam is the only religion, and it is not tolerant, then it is not right?” he says. Shapiray looks away. You get the feeling this is a discussion the couple have had before.

The third woman is Roeena, an unmarried doctor who travels from Peshawar every day to work in the camps. Having studied medicine in Kabul – she points out that she used to sit next to men in class – she fled to Pakistan during the civil war. “Walking to school, it was like a dream to me,” she says, reminiscing over her school days.

Throughout the documentary, Nanji uses archival footage to tell the history of Afghan women from the 1960s until the present. There are scenes of hip urban women walking down the streets of 1970s Afghanistan – a land where, since 1964, women had the right to vote. Underage marriage was banned and there were no laws on how women should dress. There were even campaigns to get women into the workforce – Nanji includes a fabulous television ad campaign aimed at recruiting female bus drivers. She then sweeps in with the political history of Afghanistan and its implications for women.

Nanji goes back to Afghanistan several times after 9/11 to check how her three subjects are coping. Both Roeena and Wajia have decided to stay in Pakistan even after modernizing president, Hamid Karzai,  comes to power. But Shapiray and her family go back to their home outside Kabul. It is bombed out. In her words: “There is no one left, not even a fly.”

And yet though they are without electricity and running water they have hope of building up not just their home but their country as well. Her husband has a job in local government and she is teaching local children. The beauty of this documentary – aside from a marvellous use of archival footage and its vibrant cinematography – is that Nanji does not preach about the future of this ravaged land. She lets the women tell their tales and through them we get a glimpse of the complicated, beautiful and tragic patchwork that is Afghanistan.