Azaranica is a non-biased news aggregator on Hazaras. The main aim is to promote understanding and respect for cultural identities by highlighting the realities they face on daily basis...Hazaras have been the victim of active persecution and discrimination and one of the reasons among many has been the lack of information, awareness, and disinformation.

Monday, May 9, 2011

پترائوس: فعلا برنامه انتقال مسئولیت مهم ترین برنامه است

به روز شده: 13:12 گرينويچ - دوشنبه 09 مه 2011 - 19 اردیبهشت 1390




ژنرال دیوید پترائوس فرمانده نیروهای ائتلاف و ناتو در دیدارش با مقام های محلی بامیان تاکید کرده است که برنامه انتقال مسئولیت تامین امنیت از ناتو به نیروهای افغان درحال حاضر مهم ترین برنامه جامعه جهانی و دولت افغانستان و این برنامه باید با موفقیت کامل انجام شود.

این برنامه که قرار است تابستان امسال در هفت ولایت افغانستان به اجرا گذاشته شود، تا حدود یک ماه دیگر نخست از ولایت بامیان در مرکز افغانستان آغاز خواهد شد.


ولایت بامیان در سالهای پس از سقوط طالبان آرام بوده و شماری از نیروهای نیوزیلند در مرکز این ولایت مستقربوده اند. نیوزیلند در افغانستان حدود ٢٥٠٠ سرباز دارد که از این میان حدود ١٠٧ تن از آنها در مرکز ولایت بامیان هستند.

نیروهای نیوزیلندی در ده سال گذشته در بامیان، شاهد هیچ درگیری مسلحانه ای نبوده اند.

فرمانده ناتو و ائتلاف، در دیدارش با حبیبه سرابی والی ولایت بامیان و دیگر مقام های محلی این ولایت گفته است که موفقیت یا عدم موفقیت این برنامه در بامیان، بر کل این روند در دیگر نقاط افغانستان تاثیر خواهد کرد.

در این دیدار مقام های محلی بامیان و ژنرال پترائوس، توانایی نیروهای امنیتی، نیازمندی ها و شرایط و امکانات برنامه انتقال کامل مسئولیت تامین امنیت ولایت بامیان به نیروهای امنیتی افغان را بررسی کردند.

مقام های محلی بامیان می گویند، ژنرال پترائوس قول داده است که برای موفقیت برنامه انتقال مسئولیت به نیروهای افغان، برنامه هایی را برای توسعه و بازسازی این ولایت اجرا خواهند کرد.

بامیانی ها همواره از دولت افغانستان به دلیل بی توجهی به بازسازی و توسعه این ولایت انتقاد کرده اند.

مردم بامیان در اعتراض به اینکه جاده های آنها آسفالت نشده، سال گذشته بخش هایی از جاده را کاهگل کردند. چند ماه پیش در اعتراض مدنی دیگر به کمبود آب آشامیدنی و بی توجهی دولت، به الاغ هایی که به خانه ها آبرسانی می کردند، مدال خدمت دادند و در آخرین مورد، یک چراغ نفتی بزرگ ساختند و در اعتراض به نبود برق، آن را در چها راه اصلی شهر، نصب کردند.

حالا ژنرال پترائوس گفته است که برای موفقیت برنامه انتقال مسئولیت های امنیتی، برنامه هایی جدی را برای بازسازی و ایجاد اشتغال در بامیان روی دست خواهند گرفت.

بامیانی ها هنوز به چنین وعده هایی به دیده شک می نگرند.

Source,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/afghanistan/2011/05/110509_l09_petraus_bamian.shtml

In Afghanistan, India Inc learns to hang togethe

By

Indrajit Gupta

Amidst all the drama around Osama bin Laden’s assassination, we shouldn’t lose sight of an important game-changing story brewing in the region, especially from an Indian perspective.

Sometime in August this year, some of the largest mining and steel companies around the world will make final bids for the exploration rights to the 1.8 billion tonne Hajigak iron ore mines in the war-torn Bamiyan province in Afghanistan.
There’s a good reason why my colleagues and I at Forbes India have been following this story very closely. So here’s the angle that’s worth tracking: 15 Indian firms are among a total of 22 firms bidding for these assets, considered to be among the biggest iron ore deposits available through an open market process. If they bid individually, they’d get swept aside by their bigger rivals, like Vale of Brazil.

So after much deliberation, our steel firms, at least five of them, are contemplating bidding as a consortium. And what’s more, the Indian government is likely to dip into its existing corpus for rebuilding Afghanistan and put up 15 percent of the acquisition cost. If the government sticks to its word, it could again be the first time that the government has supported an initiative such as this.

Now, while the concept of co-opetition, or collaborating to compete, is now widely understood, I believe this current move in Afghanistan represents a new narrative for India Inc. It’s not often that competitors in India are able to set aside their intense industry rivalries to come together for a larger cause. When we met Malay Mukherjee, the CEO of Essar Steel and one of the key architects of this consortium, he told us just how difficult it was for Indian entrepreneurs to change their prevailing mindsets. In the last decade, one such experiment—the Indian Steel Alliance—has already collapsed when Tata Steel walked out of it. So what’s changed? Quite simply, across the world, Indian players have realised the futility of being drawn into intense bidding wars for iron ore mines, particularly with the three global mining companies who control 70 percent of the iron ore reserves. So now, pushed to the wall, they’re finally coming around to the view that co-opetition perhaps does make economic sense.

Stitching together the new partnership hasn’t been easy. Fortunately, for the Indian steel industry, three key change agents have come to the forefront: Mukherjee, who worked as a senior executive for 15 years with Lakshmi Mittal’s Arcelor Mittal, Chandra Shekhar Verma, the new SAIL chairman, and V Krishnamurthy, the doyen of the Indian manufacturing industry and former SAIL chairman. They’ve been ably supported by PK Mishra, the current steel secretary.

Designing how the consortium works isn’t really that difficult. So far, while it looks like NMDC, India’s largest iron ore miner, will lead the Indian consortium, the partners will get the allocation of resources according to the investment they bring. And the NMDC-led consortium could include SAIL, Tata Steel, JSW and Essar, which is practically the majority of the Indian steel industry. This could give the Indian consortium more than a realistic change to pip the rest of the playing field.

While the public and private sector players may indeed succeed in forging an alliance, it’s the government’s role and its perceived ambivalence that needs to be watched carefully. So far, India Inc’s international expansion has largely been on its own steam. Unlike the Chinese, the Indian state, for most part, has chosen to watch from the sidelines.

This time, the steel industry is hoping that the government realises the strategic benefits of gaining access to mineral resources for an economy to maintain its trajectory of growth for the next 10 years. Without access to vital iron ore reserves, the India growth story could come to a grinding halt. If the bid goes to plan, the government could consider a long-standing decision to create a new multi-billion dollar sovereign fund that supports domestic companies to buy energy assets—oil, coal and iron ore—abroad. So far, there hasn’t been enough consensus within the government and in the public policy domain for a poor country like India to spend its monies on creating a sovereign fund to buy assets abroad, instead of using it to tackle the public welfare issues of education, health and infrastructure. Like all things in India, this is one of those larger ideological debates we tend to get locked into—without any hope of ever finding a viable solution.

On the Afghanistan bid, though, apart from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), there are three key ministries that will need to work together to make this joint bid a reality: steel, external affairs and finance. And their track record in the past of giving up turf wars to support industry action has been far from encouraging. Last week, I spoke to KV Kamath, the chairman of ICICI Bank and Infosys, who spoke of the intense frustration during his term as president of CII to get these different ministries to see eye-to-eye.

So even if private and public enterprises realise the value of such co-opetition, it may still be too much to expect the government to drop all its baggage and step up to the challenge. Of course, if you’re an optimist, it may make sense to make sense to wait for the ides of August.


Source,

http://www.firstpost.com/economy/in-afghanistan-india-inc-learns-to-hang-together-6145.html

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Baloch Hal Editorial: Stop Shia, Hazara Genocide

Historically, Balochistan has remained a secular and tolerant society. It has remained home to Muslims belonging to all sects of Islam, Hindus and other religious minorities. It was the only province of the country which was not abandoned by the Hindu minorities at the time of Partition in 1947. For the people of Balochistan, a person’s affiliation toward another sect has always been a personal or at least a communal matter. It was only two decades back when Sunni kids used to attend Shia religious processions in different parts of Quetta. This clearly demonstrated a deliberate ignorance of the members of our society toward the scourge of sectarianism.

Sectarian harmony has always been the hallmark of the society in Balochistan. This tradition must be upheld at all costs.

Increasing sectarianism in Balochistan is not solely the result of social unrest but is a clear exhibition of bad governance. The provincial government’s inability to dismantle gropes that are targeting the members of the Hazara tribe and Shia community is highly regrettable. This issue has to be fixed only by hunting down the rogue elements within the security establishment.

Balochistan Police have enormously suffered in its operations against sectarian groups in a plenty of attacks. A lot of policemen have been killed in such assaults which the perpetrators claimed were either in response to the arrest of their supporters or as a warning to the government to stay away from the Sunni-Shia battle. Yet, the police department has not fully owned the challenge of fighting this ugly battle.

The fresh killing of six innocent civilians in an incident of rocket firing in Quetta is disturbing. It just came as a reminder that the threat of sectarianism was not over and the Hazara tribe living in Balochistan continued to remain vulnerable. It is important to understand that the bulk of Shias living in Balochistan belong to Hazara tribe. While almost every Hazara is a Shia, all Shias, on the other hand, are not Hazaras. Thus, these attacks cannot be termed as ethnically motivated. They have religious ambitions. Attacks on Shias in Balochistan mostly take place in Quetta because most of them live in the provincial capital. However, as some Shias have started to live in areas like Mastung and Bolan, the constituency of violence directed toward members of the Shia community has also gradually expanded.

It is encouraging to see that the nationalist political parties and trade unions have joined hands to condemn the killing of the members of the Hazara tribe by observing a complete shutter down strike in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital, and elsewhere in the province. There is a greater need for all the political and social stakeholders to cooperate with each other to retain the secular and tolerant qualities of this society.

Since former military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq inducted his suspicious policies of Islamization, Shias of Balochistan, like their compatriots elsewhere in the country, have enormously suffered because of his insane wave of violence. Thousands of innocent people have been butchered by underground Sunni militant groups. Over the years, no federal or provincial government prioritized the issue of uprooting sectarian violence in the country. While it is almost impossible to exterminate sectarianism itself, combating sectarian violence is still possible if the government makes it a top priority.

Baloch political parties must play a more proactive role in condemning such violent incidents inside the province and offer all possible cooperation to the members of the Shia and Hazara communities. The Hazara Democratic Party, for instance, has always backed the Baloch demands and strongly condemned the oppression and operations against the Baloch. At this critical juncture, they must be offered unqualified assurance and support from every responsible citizen of the province.

The government of Balochistan should also work on areas requiring improvement in the domain of law and order. It is pathetic that no First Investigation Report (FIR) of the shootings had been registered until the writing of this editorial. Quetta Police have claimed to have randomly detained at least ten suspects which is unlikely to genuinely address the matter itself. The provincial administration should do whatever it takes to defeat sectarianism.

Source,

http://www.thebalochhal.com/2011/05/editorial-shia-hazara-genocide-must-stop/

Daily Times Editorial: Attack on Hazaras

A terrorist attack on members of the Hazara community in the ground and adjacent cemetery in Hazara Town of Quetta left eight dead and 15 wounded. People were taking an early morning stroll, playing sports in the ground or praying at the graves of dead relatives in the adjoining cemetery when the attack took place. Preliminary police investigation reveals it was a sectarian attack. The audacity with which this attack has been carried out boggles the mind. In a highly coordinated assault, after firing rockets from the nearby mountains, about a dozen terrorists appeared on the site in vehicles, lobbed hand grenades and started indiscriminate firing. This continued for about 20 minutes before they fled, leaving behind a trail of blood and gore. The death toll could have been much higher had this happened in an enclosed compound instead of an open ground. According to media reports, banned sectarian outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for this incident. In reaction, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and Hazara Democratic Party observed a shutter-down strike in Quetta.
Extremist Wahabi outfits such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba consider Shias wajib-ul-qatl (worthy of murder). The Hazaras are a Shia community straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is not the first time that they have been targeted due to their religious orientation. There is so much fanatical hatred amongst these extremist groups that it really does not matter to them if they are killing unarmed innocent people, including women and children, as long as the targeted persons fit their description of being ‘infidels’. It is alarming that, despite being banned, these outfits are operating with impunity in the length and breadth of Pakistan. Strangely, in a highly sensitive area such as Quetta, which is in the grip of an insurgency, no prior intelligence was available to law enforcement agencies about this attack. Frontier Corp and intelligence agencies have gained notoriety for their highhandedness in dealing with Balcoh activists, whom they illegally detain, torture and murder. How is it possible that they did not know of the presence of sectarian outfits and their activities in the area? Where was the police when this was happening? It is time the law enforcement agencies revamped their priorities and focused on protecting the citizens by rooting out militant sectarian networks and remaining vigilant about any such presence in their area. Otherwise, violence will not stop here. *

Source,

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011%5C05%5C08%5Cstory_8-5-2011_pg3_1

Quetta city closed to mourn killing of people

Posted on May 8, 2011

QUETTA (INP): Quetta city observed a shutter down on Saturday to condemn the killing of six people and injuries to 10 others in Hazara Town which had been termed an apparent sectarian attack by the locals.
The Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) and the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) gave the strike call, which was supported by the Baloch National Party, the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, the Awami National Party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and traders union.
Jinnah Road, Circular Road, Shahrah-e-Iqbal, Liaquat Bazaar, Prince Road, Abdul Sattar Road, Maykangi Road, Kansi Road, Airport Road, Zarghun Road, Almo Chowk, Ispny Road, Pashtun Abad, Almdar Road, , Jinnah Town, Shahbaz Town, Hazara and small and big trading centres in other areas of the city remained closed.
Six people were killed and 10 others wounded in firing and rocket attacks in Hazara Town, Brewery Road area on Friday early in the morning when people were taking morning exercise.
A banned militant group Laskhar-e-Jhangvi had claimed responsibility of the attack. Preliminary investigations by the police have confirmed this was a sectarian incident.
Police officials said dozens of people belonging to the Hazara community were busy in taking their morning walk at around 6:30am at a ground adjacent to the Hazara Town graveyard when unidentified armed men riding two pick-ups arrived and fired three rockets and opened indiscriminate firing.
The people who went on protest and shutter down have demanded of the government to nab the culprits and save the city from such terror incidents in future.
Meanwhile, funeral prayers of those killed in the Friday ambush were offered and were laid to rest in the Hazara graveyard.
However, FIR of the incident has not been lodged because SHO Ameer Mohammad Dashti of Barvari Police Station was also injured in the assault on Friday and was under treatment in hospital.

Source,

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/?p=11391

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Official website of Bamiyan Tourism

Discovering Bamyan

Click below on "Bamiyan Tourism" to go to website

Bamiyan Tourism

The remote land of Bamyan lies at the heart of Afghanistan in the midst of the Hindu Kush, far from the well-beaten tracks of the 21st century. The spirit of the great Buddhas still presides over this valley. To travel here is to discover something of an older world when merchants, pilgrims and conquerors from half of Asia passed through this area.
Bamyan lies at the crossing of ancient trade routes which traversed the Hindu Kush from north to south and east to west, linking Central Asia, India and Iran. Approaching by road you cross the bleak Shibar Pass, then pass through precipitous gorges until suddenly a lost world opens up before you...

Visit Bamiyan tourism website;

Bamiyan Tourism