Afghan Opium - where is the fatwa?

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has just published its winter assessment of the Opium trade in Afghanistan and it makes fascinating and encouraging reading. Opium production is down. The 18 provinces that were opium-free in 2008 are likely to remain so and four others – Badakhshan, Baghlan, Faryab and Herat – could see all poppy cultivation eliminated this spring. Nangahar province is opium free for the first time in anyone’s memory.

Opium cultivation is becoming concentrated in the seven most unstable provinces in the south and south-west, although even in Helmand production may decrease this spring. These seven provinces produce 98 per cent of the country’s opium. In fact Helmand produces more opium than any other region in the world. The UN estimates that about 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s population - around 2.4 million people - is involved in opium cultivation.

The reasons for the drop in production vary. In the north, centre and east of the country it is due to government pressure, higher prices for legal crops and the success of a government propaganda campaign; in the south and east it is due to high wheat prices and a severe water shortage. In the southern region, 21 per cent of village headmen questioned about why they had not planted opium said the reason was because it was against Islam.

Overall, 29 per cent of villages in the south said they would not be cultivating opium, compared to only 15 per cent a year ago. Eighteen per cent of the villages (compared to 29 per cent a year ago) said that they had received a cash advance for growing poppies, although it was not clear who had provided this money.

Despite the fall in production, prices have also fallen by around 20 per cent. This is in part due to massive over-production during the last three years and therefore stockpiles are high – although the location of these stockpiles is unknown. However, as the report notes: “the drugs trade remains a major source of revenue for anti-government forces and organized crime operating in and around Afghanistan. Drug money is also a lubricant for corruption that contaminates power.”

The survey found that the average farm gate price for opium had fallen to $55/kg by November 2008, compared to almost double that in 2006. However, total income for opium farmers totalled around $752 million, compared with about $1 billion the previous year.

Another significant finding is that opium is grown in more than 50 per cent of villages where security is poor, but is not grown in more than 90 per cent of villages where security is good. There is, therefore, a close correlation between opium production and insurgency.

This is the subject of an excellent article by Jacob Townsend, writing in the Jamestown Terrorism Monitor. Townsend is a consultant working with the UN in Afghanistan. He points to several consequences of the recent trends in opium production.

First, he argues, falling prices for opium means the Taliban will be forced to tax non-opium crops more than at present. Second, farmers will have to pay more for their illicit crop to be protected by the Taliban; third, the Taliban will be forced to become more involved in trafficking opium as a way of protecting its income. And fourth, as drug money declines as a form of Taliban income, other sources of funding for the insurgency – for example, donations from the Gulf –will become more evident and thus possibly easier to stop.

Townsend suggests that the nexus between the insurgents and the criminals involved with the opium trade will become even more blurry than it is at present: “a recession in insurgent control will unmask the collusion between local powerholders, opium farmers, and, in many cases, government officials in Kabul.” He argues that next two years - before the opium price rises again - will be critical.

There are several points to make about all these statistics. The first and most important is that the UN has failed to communicate what is happening with the opium trade to the general public. Most people are unaware of the recent successes.

Second, it has not yet been able to persuade enough Moslems that opium cultivation is haram. The truth is that the vast majority of the opium and heroin produced in Afghanistan is consumed locally or in neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Its main victims are Moslems. Where are the fatwas? Why has the Taliban not been challenged? It was against opium production when it ruled the country.

Third, it is clear that much of the opium business is being conducted not by the Taliban, but by warlords and criminals who are close to the Karzai administration in Kabul. Is anyone prepared to name and shame?

Dostum still in Turkey. Return unlikely

Despite denials from the Turkish Foreign Ministry that he is in exile, General Abdur Rashid Dostum is still in the country and shows no signs of returning to Afghanistan any time soon (see my post of 4 Dec 2008 below for more details about his departure).
When Dostum left Afghanistan on a private jet in early December the official explanation was that he was visiting his wife and nine children (who live in Ankara) during Eid al Adha and that he would be returning soon after. But nearly two months later and there is no sign that he is about to leave Turkey.
According to one source I have spoken to, Dostum's departure was arranged by the CIA and the Turkish intelligence service. The source maintains that the General had become a serious thorn in the side of everyone in Kabul, where his outbursts and irrational behaviour were causing consternation.
It was already known that his kidnapping of and attack on Akbar Bai in February 2008 had left President Karzai with a serious problem.
Then it was announced by the Physicians for Human Rights group that in the summer of 2008 Dostum's men had destroyed the site of a mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili near Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan. To be more precise, they had cleared the site - where around 2,000 former Taliban fighters had been killed in November 2001 by Dostum's men - with bulldozers, depositing the remains into a local river.
The site was officially a war crimes site and disturbing it is a very serious offence.
Nor was Dostum the only Uzbek causing problems for Karzai's government. A former commander in Dostum's Jumbesh-e-Melli party, Abdul Rahim, was accused in August 2008 of rape and murder and levying illegal taxes. Residents of Sarang Cherak district in Sar-e-Pul, close to Balkh, took to the streets demanding action against Rahim. And in July 2008 another former Dostum commander, Kamaluddin, was arrested on charges of multiple murder and land expropriation.
So, it seems, a plan was drawn up to get rid of Dostum. As I previously reported, President Karzai - who has looked indecisive in this whole affair- agreed to drop charges against Dostum if he would leave the country, at least for a while.
My source says that after a few weeks in Turkey, Dostum telephoned former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani to complain that he had asked for a return flight to Afghanistan, but that it had been made clear to him he was not going anywhere. The penny finally dropped and Dostum realised he had been tricked and that there was little chance he would be returning to Kabul.

Human Rights Watch and The Azizabad Massacre

Last week's letter from Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch to outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates will, I hope, be remembered for marking the end of a US military policy that has brought nothing but disrepute to the armed services of that country.
His letter concerns the US night air attack on the small town of Azizabad, near Shindand in the West of the country that took place on 21-22 August last year and which has been the subject of much controversy.
The US military authorities have been accused of a cover-up over the incident in which it is thought around 80 civilians were killed. Initial statements denied any civilians were killed and even after a senior USAF officer was brought in to conduct an inquiry, the military would only accept that around 30 civilians had been killed - as a result of the Taliban using them as 'human shields'. No-one else places any credibility on this story.
In his open letter Adams noted the recent statements from senior military figures that in order to minimise civilian casualties, various tactical directives have been issued that should ensure actions are called off if there is any danger of civilians being killed. Why that was not the case right from the beginning of the conflict is in itself hard to understand.
But leaving that point aside, it is to be welcomed that the Coalition forces have at long last acknowledged the enormous damage done by indiscriminate airstrikes on civilians. The use of airstrikes has grown enormously in the last two years. According to John A Nagl and Nathaniel C Fick, writing in Foreign Policy magazine recently, "In 2005 the Coalition conducted 176 close air support missions in Afghanistan. In 2007 it completed 3,572 such missions." That's a 20-fold increase.
However, HRW is "deeply dismayed" by the investigation by USAF Brig Gen Michael W Callan into the bombing at Azizabad, a summary of which was made public on 1 October 2008. HRW has now investigated that report. Its verdict? "Instead of being an exemplary US investigation derived from a new operational mandate, the Callan Report Summary (the report itself is still classified - Ed) appears to be little more than a return to the discredited inquiries of recent years."
HRW says Callan dismisses the methodology used in the three other investigations - by the UN, the government of Afghanistan and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. It also rejects information provided by villagers, exonerates the US forces of any wrongdoing and places the responsibility for preventable civilian deaths on the Taliban.
This is buck-passing of the worst kind. More to the point, it is the sort of denial that will strengthen the very forces the US military is fighting in Afghanistan. Nothing acts as a better recruitment sergeant than the deaths of innocent civilians.
Let us recall, very briefly, what happened at Azizabad on the night in question. US and Afghan forces entered the town to find a 'high value' target named as Mullah Sadiq. As they approached the village they were fired upon and responded with close air support, including an AC130H gunship (armed with M102 105mm howitzers and 40mm grenades) and an MQ-9 Reaper unmanned drone which at one point dropped a 500-lb bomb. Around 12-14 houses were completely destroyed. Five men were taken into custody, including three Afghan National police and two local residents. Four were released within a few days and the fifth spent three months in Bagram before he too was released without charge.
In the immediate aftermath the US military denied there had been any civilian casualties. A day later they admitted five deaths. The three investigations mentioned above came to very different conclusions: they said between 78 and 92 civilians had been killed, mostly children.
The military only began to change its story when video shot on a mobile phone by a local doctor clearly showed a large number of dead civilians lying in rows in the local mosque. A new inquiry, under Callan, was ordered.
Callan accepted that 33 civilians had been killed, but refused to confirm the higher figures found by the three other inquiries. His report failed to acknowledge an intelligence failure, suggested (without evidence) that the Taliban had used civilians as human shields and judged that the air attack was lawful.
The HRW report addresses all of these points. They note, for example, that five of the men killed were contractors working as security guards for the UK-based Armor Group. Only 15 weapons were found at the site by US forces, of which five were legally registered to the contractors. According to HRW: "The Callan Report Summary says that the presence of a small number of rifles, a box of mobile phones and some mines were evidence that all 22 men killed were 'Anti-government militia'." They strongly dispute this saying evidence on the presence of Taliban fighters is "problematic".
Brad Adams' letter states "The weaknesses in the Callan Report Summary call into question the depth of the Defense Department's commitment to institute reforms that would reduce civilian casualties. We are concerned that unless such reforms are urgently implemented, more unnecessary civilian deaths and injuries will result, generating greater public outrage and hostility towards the presence of international forces."
Azizabad was not the first time that large numbers of civilians have been killed in Afghanistan as a result of poor intelligence or (as may be the case on this occasion) internal Afghan rivalries.
Nothing could be more appropriate for attention by the new Secretary of Defense than he should publish the full Callan Report and take in hand the culture within sections of the military which appears to believe that dead civilians don't count. They do, Mr Secretary, they do.

Remembering the Bamiyan buddhas

A coincidence has prompted me to write about the giant buddhas at Bamiyan that were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001. First, while looking for something else, I came across the ticket shown above, hidden away in a drawer. It is my entrance ticket to the buddhas that I purchased during a visit in early March 1975. I still remember very well sitting on the head of the largest buddha and looking out over the green Bamiyan Valley 150 feet below. At that time the only accommodation was in a chai khana where I stayed for several nights.
My recollection is that I was on one of the first vehicles to get through to Bamiyan after the winter snows. Two men perched on the back of the lorry as we travelled from Kabul, holding huge wooden wedges over their shoulders which were placed under the back wheels as we negotiated the numerous steep slopes on the road. The wedges stopped the vehicle rolling back down the slopes, still covered in snow and ice.
Then a couple of nights ago I was reading Eastern Oddysey by Georges Le Fevre, published by Victor Gollancz in 1935. This account of a French expedition in tracked Citroen vehicles from Paris to Beijing, includes a brief mention of a visit to Bamiyan in May 1931. Amongst the expedition members was Joseph Hackin, curator of the Guimet Museum in Paris who was particularly interested in the buddhist sites along the route taken by the expedition. The Guimet Museum today has one of the greatest collections of buddhist art in the world.
Le Fevre revealed that the Taliban were not the first to attempt to destroy the buddhas. The legs of the larger one were used by Nadir Shah and the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb as artillery targets, while in order to destroy the mural paintings they had coated them in tar and set fire to them. Le Fevre was clearly deeply moved by what remained:
"Such was Bamiyan, where the Expedition arrived after two and a half months of travel - a sort of cross-roads in the history of humanity, where formerly Greece, India and Sassandid Persia met.
"There, to the creative impulse which Rome had given to the world, the Orient had added the expression of its own philosophy - of contemplation and dreams of the Infinite. For us, so recently from the West, who so far had seen only the Islamised face of the East, the pilgrimage to this silent valley in the fastness of the Hindu Kush was not in vain, for it gave us the occasion for contemplation and meditation on the symbol of FAITH and LOVE (author's emphasis) deposited there by Time, the last and living traces of three past and gone civilisations."
Hackin pointed out to the others how the treatment of the wavy hair and the monastic cloak draped over the shoulders of the buddha was very much in the Greek style. The cave paintings, executed three centuries after the figures were carved, had borrowed from the Sassanid civilisation of Iran, he said. New rulers were in charge by then, nomads from central Asia who imposed new conventions in decorative art - floating ribbons, jewelled ornamentation, vases and diadems.
He noted that the family groups of princely figures of either side of the main buddha wore Sassanian headdresses crowned with globes and crescents and the buddhas were in full dress. Another ceiling decorated with medallions engraved with boars' heads was similar to decoration on the robes of one of the Persian emperors on the frescoes at Tak-i-Bostan near Kermanshah.
And so it was for around 1400 years - the statues were built at around the time that Islam came into existence. Until on a whim the Taliban decided to destroy the buddhas.
There has never been a full account of how the decision was taken to destroy the buddhas. It is known that in 1999 the Taliban leader mullah Omar issued a decree in favour of their preservation. That, of course, suggests there were already moves afoot to destroy them. His argument was that the statues would bring substantial tourist revenue into the country.
Over the next two years the argument continued and in the end it was Mowlawi Mohammad Islam Mohammadi, the Taliban governor of Bamiyan, who organised the destruction. Allegedly the decision was taken after a foreign aid group asked to restore the face of one of the buddhas. Personally I find this hard to believe. It is very clear today that this was an act aimed primarily at the Hazara people of the region, who were hated by the Taliban mainly because they were Shias. The Taliban had already carried out several massacres of Hazaras, both in Mazar-i-Sharif and in the Bamiyan Valley. Mohammadi, who was later elected to the Afghan Parliament, was assassinated in Kabul in January 2007.
Will the buddhas be rebuilt? Personally I very much doubt it. A much better case can be made for a campaign to preserve the remaining Gandharan sites in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of which have been pillaged and looted in recent years. This wanton destruction has nothing to do with Islam and more to do with greed and revenge.
At the same time, we should remember that the destruction of the buddhas was a crime against humanity. All of us suffered this loss. One day, perhaps, those responsible will face justice for their barbarism.

Another Afghanistan

These images from Afghan photographer Najibullah Musafer serve to remind us that despite the unremittingly bad news that comes from Afghanistan every day, there is another Afghanistan that is a million miles away from the land of conflict and chaos we always hear about. If you would like copies of Najibullah's pictures - some from the Bamian Valley, others from Kabul and Band-e-Amir - please contact him directly at n_musafer@yahoo.com.

Who's who in Guantanamo

The Brookings Institution has published a brief, but important, report called The Current Detainee Population in Guantanamo: An Empirical Study which makes for interesting reading. The report notes that since the camp opened in January 2002, the Pentagon has consistently refused to identify those who have been held there.
"We have sought to identify the detainee population using a variety of records, mostly from habeas corpus litigation", say the authors, " and we have sorted the current population into subgroups using both the government's allegations against detainees and detainee statements about their own affiliations and conduct."
The authors say that as of mid-December there were 248 detainees left in the camp - out of a total of around 779 detainees who have passed through since it was opened. Since 2004, when the Pentagon set up a review to evaluate the 558 remaining prisoners, 330 have been transferred or released. Other facts gathered by the Brookings researchers include the following:
1) 81 detainees travelled to Afghanistan for jihad
2) 130 stayed in al-Qaeda, Taliban or other guest/safe houses
3) 169 detainees took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan
4) 84 actually fought for the Taliban, many of them on the front lines against the Northern Alliance
5) 88 were at Tora Bora
6) 71 detainees' names or aliases were found on computers, hard drives, physical lists of al-Qaeda operatives, or other material seized in raids on al-Qaeda safehouses and facilities.
7) 64 detainees were captured under "circumstances - military surrenders, live combat actions, travelling in a large pack of mujahideen, or in the company of senior al-Qaeda figures, for example - that strongly suggest belligerency".
8) 28 detainees served on Osama bin Laden's security detail.

The Brookings Institution says that in order to make more concrete the US government's allegations against each of the present detainees, it has created five broad categories that help illuminate the role that each of them allegedly played in the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other groups.
Looking at the figures this way we see that:
1) 27 were members of al-Qaeda's leadership cadre
2) 99 were lower-level al-Qaeda operatives
3) 9 were members of the Taliban's leadership cadre
4) 93 were foreign fighters
5) 14 were Taliban fighters and operatives.

The problem of what to do with these remaining prisoners will eventually be solved by the new Obama Administration about to enter the White House. The foreign fighters in particular are said to pose a serious problem, although hundreds have been allowed to return home without incident. However, it has always struck me as odd that so many Afghans were held in Guantanamo. It cannot be because they were directly involved in bin Laden's activities. None of them would have been privy to the plans for the 9/11 attacks, not least because many of the Arabs around bin Laden looked down on the Afghans.
It is also unlikely that they were being trained for al-Qaeda operations abroad. Many of them were captured in the final days of the Taliban regime when their leaders deserted them and fled to Pakistan. Some of them were simply regular Taliban fighters involved in fighting the Northern Alliance. Others were Pakistani Pakhtuns sent over the border in a futile gesture of bravado and solidarity.
It is thought that at least another 60 prisoners are due for imminent release and the US has suggested that maybe only up to 80 others will enter into the US legal system following the closure of the remaining prisoner facilities. For some idea of the options, this article by Benjamin Wittes and Jack Goldsmith is very useful. Whatever happens, the closure of Guantanamo Bay cannot come quick enough.
Incidentally, if you would like to find out which 'celebrities' have recently visited Guantanamo, you might want to check out this page. If you would like to follow official news on what is happening with the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, you can look here.

Thriving on a sense of injustice

This morning the Guardian published a fascinating report by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad based on his interviews with a number of Taliban fighters in Wardak province, in Ghazni and in Kabul. The subject of much of the report was Qomendan Hemmet, a young Taliban commander who declared: "When I started in this area, three years ago, I had six fighters, one RPG and two machine guns like these. Now I have 500 fighters, 30 machine guns and hundreds of RPGs."
There is no way at present of checking these figures, but even allowing for a degree of hyperbole, no-one can now doubt that the Taliban is becoming organised throughout the country. Qomendan Hemmet explained how each province now has its own Taliban governor, military leader and shura (consultation) council. Below these are the district commanders, who in turn have smaller units under their command.
Hemmet explained that the Taliban now place a great deal of emphasis on offering some form of government in the areas in which it has a presence. Most importantly, its sharia courts dispense justice, mostly in cases involving bandits or land disputes. The success of the Taliban in offering even a modicum of justice may be one of the reasons behind the recent announcement by the Karzai government that it had begun executing criminals. It wants to be seen as decisive and as popular as the Taleban in the way it tackles crime and property.
Another interviewee, Mullah Muhamadi, also emphasised the importance the Taliban now attaches to being seen to be a government in waiting. "When we control a province we need to provide service to the people. We want to show the people that we can rule and that we are ready for the day when we take over Kabul, that we have learned from our mistakes."
Those mistakes, it would seem, include the closing down of all schools and also the open-ended support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. While deeply resenting what they see as the military occupation of their country by foreign forces, the new Taliban also know that it was bin Laden who brought death and destruction to their country by launching the 9/11 attacks from their soil. He may now have support amongst some of the tribes along the border because of personal connections, but most Afghans feel little, if any, allegiance to bin Laden and the global jihad.
The Taliban interviewed by Abdul-Ahad appear to have a consistent plan based on cutting the cities off from their hinterlands. They remark that the army and police may control the roads by day, but by night they are in charge. This strategy, most successfully developed by the Peoples Liberation Army in China under Mao Zedong, is just about the only one that can be followed by what is, in essence, a peasant militia. It is unlikely to lead to the collapse of the present government, but it will make much of the country ungovernable.
The reasons it is being successful include the fact that much of the population, particularly in the south, is disillusioned with the Karzai government for not getting rid of warlordism and not settling accounts with those who carried out atrocities in the past.
A good example of this has come to light in the last week. According to IRIN, the UN's office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the site of a mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili near Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan, has been disturbed in the last few months and human remains have been removed. The group Physicians for Human Rights, who discovered the mass grave in 2002, issued a statement alleging that General Abdul Rashid Dostum (see my previous blog below) is responsible for the recent excavations. The involvement of Dostum is examined in more detail in an investigation by Tom Lasseter of McClatchy newspapers.
It was Dostum's men who were accused of carrying out the original massacre of more than 2,000 captured Taliban fighters who had surrendered to the Northern Alliance and US Special Forces after the fall of the city of Kunduz in November 2001. Ever since PHR discovered the remains in January 2002 it has been advocating a full inquiry into what happened there. Their own investigations showed that many of those who died had suffocated as a result of being crammed into freight containers. It was a shocking crime. At the time the US government played down reports about the deaths, saying only that several dozen had died.
However, PHR has now issued much more information that it received from the Departments of Defense and State and also the CIA as a result of a FOIA inquiry.
The documents include a State Department intelligence assessment from November 2002 advising government officials that the remains of between 1,500 and 2,000 individuals were deposited at the site, and that four Afghans who witnessed the death of the prisoners and/or the disposal of their remains had been detained, tortured, killed, and/or disappeared. "Despite having this information," says PHR, "the US Government did not revise its public statements on the issue, nor did it launch a vigorous investigation into the circumstances surrounding these alleged crimes".
PHR adds that the FOIA response calls into question the US Government’s commitment to its responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. These laws require full investigation and accountability for war crimes undertaken by allies during joint military operations. During the time in question, US Army and CIA personnel were advising, equipping and protecting General Dostum, and both parties received the prisoners who surrendered at Kunduz.
So is it any surprise when we now hear that many Afghans are flocking to the banner of a resurgent Taliban? It took several years after 2001 for the Taliban to regain its confidence and to reassert its military forces. Now, as everyone can see for themselves that great unjustices have still not been put right, that aid money appears to have evaporated and that the old warlords continue in power we can harldy be surprised that the insurgency is getting stronger.

Taliban tightens the screw

The news that new talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are to take place in Dubai in the next few days is welcome, although the Taliban leader Mullah Omar has issued an uncompromising statement - his first for some time - in which he appears to argue that Coalition forces in the country are on the brink of defeat.
Speaking on the eve of Eid e Ghorban, Mullah Omar suggests that the collapse of the US economy is directly related to its military activities in Afghanistan and Iraq and warns that sending more troops to back the regime in Kabul will not relieve the situation. "Thus the current armed clashed which now number into tens, will spiral up to hundreds of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up to thousand casualties of dead and injured simultaneously," he says.
He does not specifically mention the Dubai talks, but last time negotiations took place, at the end of September, the Taliban leadership denied that they had happened. "The Afghan Islamic Emirate leadership council considers such baseless rumours as a failed attempt of the enemy to create mistrust and concerns among Afghans and other nations and Mujahideen. No official member of the Taliban is currently or in the past negotiating with the US or the puppet Afghan govrnment. A few former officials of Taliban who are under house arrest or have surrendered do not represent the Islamic Emirate."
Precisely who is involved in the negotiations and their importance will be the subject of a future posting, but whatever is happening in Dubai, it is clear that the Taliban and other groups opposed to the Karzai government are now in control of much of the country. According to a bleak new report from the independent International Council on Security and Development, the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72 per cent of the country - up from 54 per cent a year ago (see map above).
The report claims that four of the five routes out of Kabul to neighbouring countries are now unsafe for Afghan or international travel. It points to a growing nexus between the Taliban and criminal elements who are "closing a noose" around the capital.
"The Taliban are now dictating terms in Afghanistan, both politically and militarily," says the report. "At the national level, talk of reconciliation and power sharing between undefined moderate elements of the movement and elected government officials is commonplace. At a local level, the Taliban are manoeuvring skilfully to fill the governance void, frequently offering a mellower version of localised leadership than characterised their last stint in power."
The report continues: "It is their combination of recruitment bulk and propaganda know-how that enables the Taliban to outlast NATO-ISAF and US forces. Simplistic though it may be, their unity of purpose gives them a distinct edge over the cumbersome command structure of Western security and development efforts."
"We don't see the figures in this report as being credible at all," said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. "The Taliban are only present in the south and east, which is already less than 50 percent of the country." And the Afghan government has also rejected the report and said "in addition to the questionable methodology of the report and its conceptual confusion, the report has misinterpreted the sporadic, terrorizing, and media-oriented activities of the Taliban."
Yet it is clear that travel in Afghanistan is now almost impossible for most aid workers, who cannot even visit the projects they are supposed to be financing.
And just across the border in Pakistan supporters of the Taliban have in recent days been engaged in a campaign of attacks against military supply convoys entering the country via the Khyber Pass. On Sunday 7th December insurgents broke into a depot on the ring road outside Peshawar and set fire to 50 containers. The previous night they had burned more than 100 vehicles (see picture above) carrying military supplies. Security guards said that around 200 militants had entered the terminal shouting Allah-o-Akbar and 'Down with America'. A week ago 22 trucks carrying food supplies were burned in the same area.
While these attacks are unlikely to act as a serious threat to the military mission in Afghanistan, they are certainly more than pinpricks. More important than the effect on supplies is the propaganda value. They demonstrate to the average Afghan that Karzai's government is losing control of the country. And in a country where historically people wait to see who is winning before deciding who to support, time is running out.

Gone at last?

So is it farewell, General Abdurrashid Dostum? The notorious Uzbek warlord flew out of Afghanistan onTuesday in a Turkish government jet, possibly to end his days in exile in Ankara - although a Turkish government official has merely confirmed that he is in the country for the Eid Ghorban festival. Removed from his largely symbolic job as military chief of staff to the President in February after kidnapping and beating up a former ally, it is being said that President Karzai agreed to drop all charges if Dostum left the country permanently.
Details of theoriginal incident are unclear, but on 2 February 2008, Dostum's fighters reportedly kidnapped Akbar Bai, a former ally who had become his rival. During the attack Bai, his son, and a bodyguard were allegedly beaten (according to former US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Dostum personally assaulted Bai with a beer bottle, almost killing him), and another bodyguard shot. The following day Dostum's house was surrounded by police. Bai and the three others were freed and hospitalized. According to the authorities, the stand-off ended with Dostum's agreement to cooperate with the authorities in an investigation of the incident.
A few weeks later he was suspended from his post. President Karzai was initially reluctant to take any action, but with growing protests he was forced to act. The investigation concluded in the autumn and then there appears to have been a certain amount of horse-trading, which has not reflected well on the President. Akbar Bai agreed to drop all charges and Dostum was restored to his old job on 30 October, if only to ensure he didn't lose too much face. However it may now be that he has agreed to leave Afghanistan forever.
Dostum's long and bloody political career began in the 1970s. He first rose to prominence as a Communist Party union boss and following the Soviet intervention backed the pro-Moscow government in its battle against the Western-backed mujahideen. He soon rose to become commander of the 53rd Infantry Division and then Unit 374 in Jowzjan, which was loyal to President Najibullah.
After the Russians left Afghanistan Dostum joined forces with the Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud in April 1992 to fight against the islamist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. His forces later captured Kabul where they were accused of rape and looting. Then in 1994 he swapped sides again, this time teaming up with Hekmatyar (another notorious warlord) to fight Massoud and the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani. Once more charges of rape and looting were laid against his militiamen.
When the Taliban swept to power in 1996 Dostum teamed up with Rabbani and even protected Massoud's troops as they withdrew from Kabul in the face of the Taliban onslaught.
Based in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Dostum established a kind of mini-state where he earned a reputation for cruelty, sometimes executing people by having them driven over by tanks. However, in 1998 he fell out with his second-in-command, General Abdul Malik - who defected to the Taliban - and was forced to flee to Turkey where he lived in exile until April 2001 when he once again joined forces with the Northern Alliance of Massoud and the Herat-based Ismail Khan.
After the Taliban were driven from power it emerged that Dostum's troops had been responsible for a massacre of several thousand Taliban who had been captured in the northern city of Kunduz. The men were loaded into containers where many of them died after Dostum's men opened fire. Others were suffocated. The massacre remains one of the most shameful events in modern Afghan history.
Dostum's men were also involved in the battle at Qala-e-Jangi, an old fortress where around 300 mostly foreign fighters (Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis) were held at the end of November 2001. The fighters staged an uprising in which CIA agent Mike Spann was killed. It ended after almost a week with air strikes that killed all but 86 of the foreign fighters, most of whom were later transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
Under the Karzai government Dostum was initially deputy defence minister, but he continued to court controversy and became involved in fighting against the Tajik commander Ustad Atta Mohammed Noor over control of Mazar-e-Sharif. Although that conflict later subsided, he remained a thorn in the side of Karzai, who was unable to touch him because of his support amongst the Uzbeks.
The attack on Akbar Bai seems to have been the final straw and although Karzai was reluctant to move against him, in the end he seems to have beeb persuaded to leave the country, according to Watan newspaper. In the northern provinces where he had wide support from the Uzbek population, Dostum was revered and could count on a loyal following. He allowed religious freedom (he is an atheist) and also allowed women to work outside the home.
Whilst Dostum may have protected the interests of his kinsmen in the northern provinces, he was never able to reconcile himself to the idea of a democratic Afghanistan. If he has left is a victory of sorts for progressive forces in the country, although it has shown President Karzai in a poor light for his indecisiveness. We can only hope that a few more of the Soviet-era warlords will follow his example and quit the country for good.