Tag: karzai
Abdullah Threatens To Back Out Of Afghanistan Election

Abdullah Threatens To Back Out Of Afghanistan Election

By Ali M. Latifi, Los Angeles Times

The campaign team of Abdullah Abdullah — the former foreign minister running against Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai for the presidency of Afghanistan — has issued a 24-hour notice to the United Nations and international observers that if changes are not made to the processes of the ongoing audit of all eight million votes cast in the second round of the election, they will back out of the election process entirely.

“We will give one day to the international community to review and assure that the vote auditing and the political negotiations are moving forward properly… If our demands are not met and the auditing not conducted legitimately and the political talks without honesty, then we will withdraw from both processes,” said Abdullah spokesman Syed Fazel Sancharaki.

The Monday afternoon warning came a week after the team of Reform and Partnership, as Abdullah’s campaign refers to themselves, backed out of the audit claiming their concerns about widespread fraud in the June 14 runoff were ignored by the United Nations.

“From the beginning we were willing to join the audit because we thought it would lead to the separation of clean and fraudulent votes. That’s what we were working towards,” Muslim Saadat, a spokesman for the Abdullah campaign, told The Times last week, after the Reform and Partnership team backed out of the audit.

If followed through, Monday’s warning would mark the fourth and presumably final time the Reform and Partnership team has backed out of the election process since the second round in June.

What sets Monday’s threat apart from prior boycotts is that for the first time since Abdullah and Ghani first pledged to form a government of national unity per the audit result, the Reform and Partnership team has threatened to walk away from the political process that was intended to be carried out in parallel with the technical process.

Sancharaki said his team would “form a national unity government only when all the results are finalized” and fraudulent votes are separated from clean ones.

That political process included negotiations on dividing responsibilities and posts of the potential unity government.

The threat of backing out from the political negotiations is seen as a formidable shift among the Abdullah camp.

Speaking to The Times last week, Saadat said, with the exception of a couple of points, which had been referred to the candidates themselves, the political process had been “mostly on track.” The technical side, however, including criteria for the invalidation of votes, “saw consistent blocks along the way,” Saadat said.

Referring to a “triangle of fraud” comprised of the presidential palace, the Independent Election Commission and the Ghani campaign, representatives of the Abdullah team presented evidence of what they said were 1.5 million result sheets panning several districts.

Most notably, the Reform and Partnership team showed examples of what they said were result sheets from 2,200 polling stations which showed nearly 100 percent of votes for Ghani, featured similar handwriting, and were signed by a single person.

On sheets where there were signatures by Abdullah campaign observers, a representative from the Reform and Partnership team said votes for Dr Abdullah were entirely absent.

“That means the Abdullah team observer could sign, but not vote,” the representative said.

Sources speaking to The Times said Monday’s threat of withdrawal from the political process may be a sign of disunity among the Reform and Partnership team.

The most divisive figures, said sources speaking on condition of anonymity, remain Mohammad Mohaqiq — the Hazara warlord running as Abdullah’s second vice president — and Atta Muhammad Nur — the governor of northern Balkh province.

Nur, who had previously warned of nation-wide unrest if Abdullah lost the presidency in a fraudulent ballot, issued a similar warning on his Facebook page shortly after the press conference:
“It is to be noted that the national and international institutions would be accountable for any consequences, despite our previous warnings which have been ignored by them. Those, who ridiculed the election process with industrial-scale fraud and are attempting to grab power by legitimizing their frauds, would be accountable.”

Monday’s threat came 24 hours before the date Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, had hoped the new president would be inaugurated after the initial August 2 date was pushed back to accommodate the audit.

In a statement to the media, Aimal Faizi, presidential palace spokesman, tried to ease fears that Karzai would vacate his post prior to a resolution of the election deadlock.

“The President is not considering the step down before the official transfer of power to the new Afghan President. It is unconstitutional to step down before officially transferring the power to his successor.”

International and domestic election watchers had hoped the matter would be resolved before a September 4 NATO conference was scheduled to begin in Wales. If no president is elected by that time, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, defense minister, would attend as the Afghan representative.

AFP Photo/Shah Marai

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Amnesty Slams United States Over Civilian Deaths In Afghanistan

Amnesty Slams United States Over Civilian Deaths In Afghanistan

By Ben Sheppard

Kabul (AFP) — The families of thousands of civilians killed by American forces in Afghanistan have been left without justice or compensation, Amnesty International said Monday, in a damning indictment of the U.S. military as it withdraws.

Amnesty said it had gathered evidence of “a deeply flawed U.S. military justice system that cements a culture of impunity” in dealing with Afghan civilian deaths and injuries caused by U.S.-led NATO coalition operations since 2001.

President Hamid Karzai has often castigated U.S. forces for civilian casualties and he welcomed the release of the Amnesty report, though it triggered a firm response from the U.S. and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Amnesty researchers interviewed 125 Afghans who had first-hand information on 16 separate attacks that resulted in civilian casualties, as well as collating data from 97 reported incidents in the last seven years.

An Amnesty spokesman said its data that thousands of civilians had been killed by U.S. forces was based on UN reports on civilian casualties, a Science magazine investigation in 2011 and other sources, but it gave no total death toll.

“The U.S. military justice system almost always fails to hold its soldiers accountable for unlawful killings and other abuses,” said Richard Bennett, a director of Amnesty International.

“None of the cases that we looked into -– involving more than 140 civilian deaths -– were prosecuted by the U.S. military. Evidence of possible war crimes and unlawful killings has seemingly been ignored.”

The Amnesty report, entitled “Left in the Dark,” detailed a U.S. bombing in 2012 when women were collecting firewood in the mountains of Laghman province.

Seven women and girls were killed and seven more were injured.

Ghulam Noor, who lost his 16-year-old daughter Bibi Halimi in the attack, brought the bodies to the district centre after hearing NATO forces claimed that only insurgents had been killed.

“We had to show them that it was women,” Noor told Amnesty. “I have no power to ask the international forces why they did this. I can’t bring them to court.”

Amnesty said villagers filed complaints with the provincial governor, but international forces are immune from Afghan legal processes and no one ever contacted family members to investigate the attack.

“I’m very happy that you have focused on something that is the main point of disagreement between Afghanistan and the U.S.,” Karzai told Amnesty representatives invited to the presidential palace on Sunday.

“I believe that civilian casualties should never happen. Together with you, we should stop them.”

– Strained U.S.-Afghan ties –

The U.S. department of defense said U.S. forces “go to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties” and investigations and prosecutions are launched when incidents may be unlawful.

ISAF underlined that the UN attributes just one percent of all Afghan civilian casualties to international military forces — with insurgents responsible for 90 percent.

Last week Afghan officials said a U.S. air strike had killed four civilians in the western province of Herat, in a misguided revenge attack after rockets were fired at an airbase.

Amnesty said its report concentrated on the United States rather than other members of the NATO coalition since it was the largest national force and was implicated in the majority of civilian casualties.

“Amnesty International is aware of only six cases over the last five years in which members of the military have been criminally prosecuted for unlawfully killing Afghan civilians,” it said.

In the most high-profile killing, U.S. army sergeant Robert Bales was sentenced to life in prison after gunning down 16 villagers in 2012.

U.S.-led foreign troop numbers in Afghanistan have declined from a peak of 150,000 in 2012 to just 44,300 now — of whom 30,700 are American.

All NATO combat soldiers will depart by the end of the year, though a follow-up support mission of about 10,000 troops is planned if the next president signs security deals with the United States and NATO.

The deal with the United States would continue to give so-called “immunity” to American troops, who would be prosecuted under their own legal system.

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

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U.S. Aid To Afghanistan Exceeds Marshall Plan In Costs, Not Results

U.S. Aid To Afghanistan Exceeds Marshall Plan In Costs, Not Results

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

The United States has now spent more on the reconstruction of Afghanistan than it did on the Marshall Plan that lifted Western Europe from the ruins of World War II. But it can expect far less return on its investment in the still-unstable Central Asian nation, a Pentagon auditor reports.

Afghanistan is mired in political crisis and will remain dependent on foreign donors, primarily the United States, for years to come, writes John F. Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, in his latest quarterly report to Congress.

U.S. spending on the Afghanistan nation-building project over the last dozen years now exceeds $104 billion, surpassing the $103.4 billion current-dollar value of Marshall Plan expenditures, which helped rebuild European nations after World War II. The spending helped a vanquished Germany emerge as the economic engine of Western Europe.

“SIGAR calculates that by the end of 2014, the United States will have committed more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it spent on 16 European countries after World War II under the Marshall Plan,” says the report.

The 259-page account features a photograph of a pile of metal frames from school furniture in Nangarhar province from which the wood was stripped and burned for heat.

Sopko’s accounting of the record U.S. foreign investment makes it clear that the proceeds from Afghanistan will fall far short of the German experience.

Afghanistan is beset by corruption, tribal conflicts, and a resurgent Taliban poised to strike government targets once U.S. troops end their combat mission in December. The Islamic militants chased from Afghanistan by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion have stepped up attacks on the fledgling Afghan National Army, inflicting many of the 2,330 deaths suffered by the force over the last two years, the auditor noted.

Almost two-thirds of America’s investment in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, $62 billion, has gone to building up its military and police forces, which are now at a level that far overwhelms the country’s ability to pay for them. Even if the government succeeds in its plan to reduce the size of its security forces by 35 percent by 2017, the projected annual $4.1-billion cost for the 228,500 citizens under arms is almost double what the country collects in tax revenue, Sopko pointed out.

The Afghan government approved $7.6 billion in spending this fiscal year, despite anticipated revenue of $2.8 billion.

“This year, donor grants will make up most of the shortfall, but aid to Afghanistan has been falling since 2010, and history suggests it will fall even more sharply after U.S. and coalition troops are withdrawn,” the report notes.

The predicted donor fatigue after U.S.-led NATO forces leave would coincide with a reduced ability for U.S. auditors to evaluate how Afghans are using their U.S. aid, the inspector general noted.

A companion report to Congress this week warned that lax oversight and inventory practices for the $626 million worth of U.S. weapons delivered to Afghan soldiers and police could mean weapons will fall into the hands of militants.

Sopko’s office, known by its acronym SIGAR, said it was initiating “a new series of lessons-learned reports” from the most expensive foreign reconstruction effort underwritten by the U.S. taxpayers.

The report detailed billions spent on ill-considered agriculture and infrastructure projects unsuitable to Afghanistan’s terrain and culture. Among them was a failed attempt to curb opium poppy cultivation to deprive the Taliban of a vital source of income.

The inspector general also alluded to the unfinished work of democracy-building in Afghanistan, where two rival presidential candidates claim to have prevailed in the multistage election that began in April. A recount of more than 8 million ballots cast in the June runoff is under way in hopes of determining the winner between former World Bank official Ashraf Ghani and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who had beaten Ghani in an earlier election round.

Until a successor to President Hamid Karzai is inaugurated, the United States cannot get the necessary endorsement from Kabul for a plan to leave behind a U.S. force of nearly 10,000 troops to train Afghan security forces.

AFP Photo/Massoud Hossaini

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More Than 90 People Die, About 50 Injured In Afghan Attacks

More Than 90 People Die, About 50 Injured In Afghan Attacks

By Hafiz Ahmadi, dpa

KABUL, Afghanistan — Nearly 100 people were killed Tuesday and around 50 others were wounded in two separate attacks in Afghanistan, officials said.

Eighty-nine people, mainly civilians, were killed when a suicide car bomb exploded in the eastern province of Paktika, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said.

“The attack also left 42 wounded,” Azimi told dpa, adding that the ministry sent two helicopters and eight ambulances to transport the injured to military medical facilities.

The attack took place at 10:30 a.m. near a police checkpoint in a crowded bazaar in Orgun district, district governor Mohammad Reza Kharoti said.

It was the deadliest single attack in Afghanistan this year, and came in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“The explosion was so powerful that it shook the entire area. Hundreds of shops and other business places were damaged,” Kharoti said.
“Two police officers were also among the dead.”

The hospital is overcrowded with the victims, he added.

Local media quoted officials as saying that children were among the victims.

Taliban militants denied involvement in the attack.

Paktika shares a porous border with Pakistan’s tribal regions, where the country’s military has launched an operation against the Pakistani Taliban hideouts.

Separately, two employees of the presidential office were killed by a roadside bomb in Kabul.

President Hamid Karzai’s office said five were wounded.

Karzai condemned the attacks.

“These attacks are against all religious and human values, and cannot be justified by any means,” Karzai said in a statement. “Targeting innocent civilians in the holy month of Ramadan is an unforgivable act and pouring Muslims’ blood is a big crime.”

Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing, and said they had targeted a vehicle of the president’s press office.

AFP Photo/Massoud Hossaini

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