Female leader shows her courage

DR HABIBA SARABI: "My thanks to the government and the people of New Zealand for sending their sons and daughters to Bamiyan."

In an exclusive interview from Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Fairfax National Affairs editor Vernon Small talks to the province's female governor Dr Habiba Sarabi.

Habiba Sarabi is possibly the bravest person in war-torn Afghanistan.

As the leader of Bamiyan province, and as a personal appointment of President Hamid Karzai, the governor is an obvious target for the Taliban.

Bamiyan was one of the first provinces where security was handed over to local control, with transition from the New Zealand-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) formally taking place in July.

That would be enough to put the governor in the insurgents' crosshairs, without taking into account Sarabi's role as a leader of the Shia minority Hazaran community, the bitter enemies of the Sunni Taliban.

The insurgents have lately switched their focus to high-profile targets such as the British Council office in Kabul, where Kiwi SAS corporal Doug Grant was killed this month.

Two weeks ago, 22 were killed and 34 injured in a suicide bomb attack on the governor's offices in the nearby province of Parwan, though the governor escaped.

On top of all that, Sarabi is the first and only woman to be appointed governor of a province in Afghanistan.

During their rule the Taliban indulged in a form of "gender apartheid", banning education for girls beyond the age of eight and preventing many women from working.

Sarabi, now 55, fled with her children to Peshawar in Pakistan to avoid the Taliban repression, but returned in secret to visit her husband, who stayed on in Kabul.

Now, sitting in her office in Bamiyan with an armed police guard outside, she is philosophical about the risks she is taking.

"If the man or male governor can be a target, I also can be a target, and more than a man because I am the only woman and so it can be a good reason for the Taliban to target me. And of course it can be a credit for them. So, we believe [in] God and God save us."

In the relative peace of Bamiyan, where even the appearance of a Pashtun Sunni contractor is reported by locals to the police as a possible Taliban, there is little risk.

"Whenever I am in Bamiyan I feel secure, but after Bamiyan, no," Sarabi says, her voice tailing off.

The road to Kabul to the east is dangerous and the province is feeling increasingly under siege from more violent neighbouring provinces.

Even in the north east of Bamiyan, where the New Zealand Defence Force has stepped up its presence with two patrols of light armoured vehicles (LAVs), the security situation is fragile. Insurgents infiltrating across the border from neighbouring Baghlan province are blamed for roadside bomb attacks on the Kiwi forces, including the one that killed Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell last year.

Sarabi is looking forward to 2014, when the Kiwi forces are due to leave, and believes that with more modern equipment and heavy weapons – and some extra training – the local forces will cope.


She is also pressing for a quick reaction force for the province and for an army contingent to be posted to the north-east when the Kiwis pull out of the "problematic area" around the Do Abe village. At the moment there is no Afghan army presence in the province.

But she does not see an end to Kiwi involvement when the troops pull out.

"We cannot say it can be at the end. It depends on the whole situation in 2014. They can work more with our police, train them and be back-up as a supporter."

In the meantime, she believes the transition process is going well, and wants to convey her personal thanks directly to New Zealand for its assistance, including aid worth $10 million a year.

"My thanks to the government and the people of New Zealand for sending their sons and daughters to Bamiyan. I fully appreciate it and I want to thank all New Zealanders for that great support."

She credits the Kiwis' success to their cultural tolerance and multi-ethnic background. New Zealand's development assistance includes $7m this year to seal the airport runway, to help attract tourists, tractors for mainly subsistence farmers and a new generator to light the bazaar. At the moment storekeepers fire up individual generators when shoppers arrive.

PRT director Richard Prendergast says there are opportunities for New Zealand to ramp up its assistance and Bamiyan is ready for full transition in the wake of the July ceremony attended by prominent and charismatic politician Dr Ashraf Ghani.

"Ninety percent of the province is now secure, the Afghan national police are undertaking a lot of patrols themselves, there is real potential for improvements in governance and development."

Sarabi is also keen for help with agricultural and livestock production. "We need some expertise to guide the farmers; how they can work better and get more products, not only for agriculture but for animal husbandry."

In the meantime she is using her position as a prominent female to promote women's rights in the male-dominated society. In Bamiyan, 44% of the 130,000 school pupils are female. There was one female police officer in 2005 when she arrived, now there are 20. She also gave her personal protection to the first woman to open a store in the bazaar.

The scale of her achievement comes into focus later at a dinner to celebrate the promotion to general of the province's police chief – a recognition of the peaceful transition to local control. Among a who's who of Bamiyan society, including police, military leaders, judges and religious leaders, she is at the head of the table ... the only woman in the room.

- Sunday Star Times

For Shia Hazaras, it’s Funeral After Funeral

By Zofeen Ebrahim

Another funeral procession of a Hazara killed in an attack.

Credit:Altaf Hussain Safdari/IPS.

KARACHI, Aug 26, 2011 (IPS) - Rukhsana Ahmed finds comfort visiting her husband Ahmed Ali Najfi’s grave. "I feel at peace there," says the 60-year-old widow, mother of four and member of the Shia Hazara community.

What disturbs her moments of peace is the increasing number of fresh graves of the Hazaras in Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, where some 550,000 members of the minority community are concentrated.

"It was September of 2009. My husband was going to his factory when he was ambushed by five armed, masked men who sprayed him with bullets and then fled," recalled the widow, speaking with IPS over phone from Quetta.

The killers of 63-year-old Najfi were apprehended. They belonged to the banned Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). "The killer admitted publicly that he killed my husband because he was a Shia," said Rukhsana. "He even flashed a victory sign!"

Shias of all ethnicities account for about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 160 million, Sunni-majority population.

The LeJ, which has strong ties with the Al-Qaeda and Tehrik e-Taliban Pakistan, is a sworn enemy of the Shia sect and considers its members to be apostates.

The LeJ has a declared agenda of ridding Pakistan of all Shias who include the 966,000 Hazaras, descendents of Mongols who were part of Genghis Khan’s armies.

Eliminating Pakistan’s Hazaras follows a pattern in which they were persecuted in neighbouring Afghanistan under Taliban rule from 1995 until 2001, when they were ousted by invading U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) forces.

The Hazaras of Pakistan fled Afghanistan some 120 years ago when they faced an earlier round of persecution from the dominant Sunni Pashtun tribes. In Pakistan, they were well received and rose to hold important positions in the government.

Today, however, the Hazaras are being persecuted in Pakistan because of their ethnicity and their history of conflict with Sunnis.

"The same game played over a century ago to force Hazaras out of Afghanistan is being replayed. Religion is used as a tool to persecute them," says Irfan Ali of the Human Rights Commission on Social Justice and Peace in Quetta.

"We are easily distinguished because of our (Mongol) features and physical attributes," says Abdul Khaliq, a prominent Hazara politician and leader of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP).

Hazaras also speak Persian, rather than Balochi, Pashto or Urdu, Pakistan’s national language.

Anti-Shia violence reached a high in July. On Jul. 10, two people were killed and 11 injured when armed men ambushed a bus carrying Shia pilgrims to Iran. On Jul. 30, 18 Shias, including a woman, were shot dead in Quetta. Eleven of the victims were Hazaras.

Earlier, on Jun. 16, Syed Abrar Hussain Shah, a Hazara boxer who represented Pakistan in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, was shot dead in Quetta.

"We are attending one funeral after another and there is no stopping it," said Khaliq, whose predecessor as HDP chief, Hussain Ali Yusufi, was assassinated by the LeJ in 2008.

Over the years, says Rukhsana, the provincial general secretary of the women’s wing of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, the cream of the community has been systematically eliminated. In the last 10 years, some 500 Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan and over 1,500 have suffered injuries.

"If you look at the list of those killed, you will find it includes doctors, engineers, teachers, students, politicians and even ordinary shopkeepers and vendors. Not a single person had any political affiliation," said Khaliq.

Three months ago, on May 18, Mohammad Ali, 45, a vegetable vendor, was going to the market in a pickup along with 12 others when masked gunmen opened fire on the van, killing seven. "My father was among the dead," said Asadullah, a cobbler and the eldest of Ali’s seven children.

Today an unlettered Asadullah, who earns a mere Pakistani rupees 200 (2.30 dollars) a day, feeds 11 mouths in his family.

"We are a liberal, open-minded and educated community, compared to the Baloch and Pashtuns," said Rukhsana. According to Amjad Hussain, a correspondent with Dawn News, a private television channel, young Hazaras do not see any future in Pakistan and are steadily migrating.

"Till a few years back, many were fleeing to Australia, via Indonesia. Of late, though, the interior ministry has directed the Indonesian embassy to stop issuing visas to Hazaras," he said.

Hussain believes that pro-Taliban lobbies (including Pakistan’s intelligence agencies that backed the Taliban initially) are penalising the Hazaras for colluding with the Northern Alliance and the U.S. army in Afghanistan.

It is also possible that members of the defeated Taliban who found refuge in Balochistan province, after fleeing Afghanistan, may be taking their revenge on the community.

The Shia and Hazara killings, and growing insecurity among Pakistan’s biggest minority sect, have failed to draw the attention of the state or media.

"Hazara killings do not make headlines because Balochistan is sandwiched between the big story of Baloch nationalism and the alleged Taliban presence in Balochistan," says Malik Siraj Akbar, a young Baloch journalist.

Akbar added: "Although the HDP has always stood behind Baloch and Pashtun nationalists during hard times, they have never condemned the persecution of Hazaras."

At the same time, said Akbar, the Islamic political party, the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), an important partner in the coalition ruling Balochistan, has never condemned the killings of Hazaras or Shias.

Khaliq said his party has tried but failed to get Islamabad to act against the ethnic cleansing.

"All they come up with are hollow words of regret after each death. They can stop the killings instantly, if they want to do it. We cannot accept their words of comfort anymore," he said. (END)

Article Source,

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104900

Assassination of Jawad Zahak. شهید محمد جواد ضحاک!

Bamiyan Cultural Heritage demining project-UNESCO/UNMACA

Reporters (France 24) - Bamiyan, the future for Afghanistan?

Australians don't fully understand what is being done in their name

Julian Burnside
August 26, 2011
OPINION


The Norwegian freighter Tampa. Photo: Reuters

Misinformation and dishonesty abounds over asylum seekers.
ON AUGUST 26, 2001, a small fishing boat called Palapa I began to sink in the Indian Ocean. Ordinarily, it would have been fit to carry 20 or 30 people.
On board were 433 asylum seekers, mostly Hazaras escaping the Taliban and trying to reach Australia.
The Norwegian cargo ship Tampa rescued them. When Tampa tried to put them ashore on Christmas Island, the SAS took control of the ship at gunpoint.

A Federal Court judge ruled that the government was obliged to bring the asylum seekers ashore and assess their claims for asylum. That decision was handed down at 2.15pm, Melbourne time, on September 11, 2001: a date which significantly altered the political calculus.
A week later, the full Federal Court reversed that decision.
The people rescued by Tampa were taken to Nauru. By early 2002, Australia was forcing Afghans to return to Afghanistan, saying the Taliban were defeated and Afghanistan was safe for Hazaras. On August 26, 2002, the Tampa refugees were preparing to commemorate the first anniversary of their rescue. One of them, 20 year-old Mohammad Sarwar, awoke that morning, cried out and fell back dead. His friends told me that he died of a broken heart: he had just been refused protection. Australia continued to force Afghans held on Nauru to return to Afghanistan.
The Tampa episode was the start of Australia's conspicuously harsh approach to boat people. The idea was to "send a message", and the message was: we do not want you asking for our help.
It is a melancholy fact that John Howard's government made political capital by its treatment of boat people. The 2001 election turned on the issue. But it depended on misinformation and dishonesty.
Ten years on, we are behaving just as badly as we did at the time of Tampa. Instead of hijacking people at sea and sending them to Nauru, we plan to divert them to Malaysia. Labor doesn't care that Malaysia has not signed the Refugees' Convention. It doesn't care that Malaysia has a bad track record with human rights generally and asylum seekers in particular. Although Malaysia has agreed not to mistreat the people we plan to send there, that agreement is incapable of being supervised or enforced. A fall-back plan is to send them to Manus Island: a malaria-ridden, northern outpost of Papua New Guinea.
To understand what has happened since the time of Tampa, we need to start with a few simple facts. Boat people are not "illegal" in any sense. There are no queues in the places they flee from. They come in very small numbers. Asylum seekers who come by plane outnumber boat arrivals about three to one. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat are, historically, very likely to be assessed as genuine refugees; those who come by plane are, historically, unlikely to be assessed as genuine refugees. However, asylum seekers who come by boat are held in detention, whereas those who come by plane are not: we treat most harshly those who are most likely to be traumatised already and most likely to be lawfully entitled to our protection.
Why do we do this? What is it about our national character that explains such cruel, illogical behaviour? Simple: the politicians do it for political gain, and most Australians do not fully understand what is being done in their name. When Tampa sailed into Australian domestic politics a decade ago, the coalition was deeply worried about the drift of hard-right, anti-immigration voters to One Nation. Jackie Kelly confronted Howard with exactly this concern as he was entering the Parliament to deliver a speech about dealing with the Tampa. He waved his speech at her and said, in effect: "This will fix it."
Tampa was all about politics; it had nothing to do with "protecting" our borders, which are, in any event, virtually watertight.
Since Tampa, Australia's treatment of boat people has been all about politics. The net result has been to tarnish Australia's reputation as a nation that once valued and respected human rights.The big question is: is this really what Australia is about?
Like Malcolm Fraser on this page on Monday, I believe most Australians are better than this. We are badly served by major political parties willing to play politics with defenceless, terrified people. Let Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard tell us plainly: do they honestly think their treatment of boat people reflects Australia's national character?
I have spent the decade since Tampa wondering about these things. I cling to the belief that, if most Australians knew the truth of what is being done in their name, they would be shocked.
I believe most Australians do not support the idea of locking up innocent people for years, or mistreating them just because they tried to save their lives and the lives of their families.
I know that most Australians, if they visited a detention centre, would be appalled to see the misery that we are inflicting on ordinary people who want nothing more than the chance to live safe from the fear of persecution.
I believe that, placed in the same circumstances, most Australians would do exactly what boat people do: run for your life, do whatever you can to get to safety, whatever the risk.
All these things I believe about this country and its people. Am I wrong?
Julian Burnside, AO, QC, is a prominent barrister and human rights advocate.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/australians-dont-fully-understand-what-is-being-done-in-their-name-20110825-1jcbn.html#ixzz1W9bDP2Z9

How the Buddha got his wounds

On Monday Afghanistan's Taliban rulers were promising to safeguard the country's historic treasures. On Thursday they started shelling them. Luke Harding explains what changed their minds


Luke Harding
The Guardian, Saturday 3 March 2001


It had seemed like a good meeting. Sitting in one corner was Afghanistan's bearded foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel. On the sofa opposite, a delegation of western cultural experts who had flown to Kabul to discuss the preservation of Afghanistan's few remaining antiquities.

Over cups of green tea, Mutawakel smilingly assured the delegation that all was well. The Taliban, Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers, had no intention of destroying what was left of the country's heritage, he said. This was at 5.30pm on Monday. Two hours later, however, Radio Sharia - the Taliban's official station - broadcast an announcement that would plunge Afghanistan into further isolation and provoke a major international outcry. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's reclusive, one-eyed spiritual leader, had issued a new decree: that all Afghanistan's ancient statues should be destroyed.

The decision was in line with Islamic law and had been taken following a gathering of the country's most senior religious leaders, he explained. "We were just blown away," said Brigitte Neubacher of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage (SPACH). "This came immediately after our one-and-a-half hour meeting. Whether the timing was deliberate or not we don't know. I am totally horrified."

By Thursday, Taliban fighters deep in the Hindu Kush mountains started putting Mullah Omar's edict into effect. They set about what was once Afghanistan's most famous tourist attraction - two enormous statues of Buddha, 38 and 55 metres high, carved into a cliff-face. Using tanks and rocket launchers they began to destroy the two works, which had survived since the second century AD.

The magnificent colossi were built in the remote and beautiful Bamiyan Valley - seven hours' drive from Kabul - 1,000 years before the arrival of Islam in Afghanistan. They were built by the flourishing Buddhist Kushan dynasty, which had grown rich from its strategic position on the Silk Road between China and Rome.

The statues were unique. They were visited by pilgrims from across Central Asia; tended by yellow-robed priests who lived in caves carved into the sandstone hillside; and decorated with exquisite frescoes. "The buddhas are absolutely spectacular. I have never seen anything like them in my life," one awed visitor to Bamiyan told me. The statues even outlasted an attack by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. But they have finally met their match in the Taliban.

In retrospect, the international community could have spotted the danger signals. Three weeks ago, Taliban officials allegedly broke into Kabul's bombed-out museum and destroyed around 50 objects of cultural significance, according to reports.

There was not, it has to be said, much left to destroy. Rival Afghan mujaheddin factions looted most of the museum's best pieces when they fought for control of the city in 1992. But a few things were still on display when I visited last October: a couple of friezes, a limestone Islamic bowl and a rather fetching statue of King Kanishka, who ruled Afghanistan 1,800 years ago.

One observer who recently managed to peer through the locked museum's windows spotted some white marks on King Kanishka's enormous royal feet, suggesting the already headless statue had been hit by a hammer. "We don't know how great the damage is. We weren't allowed into the museum to verify the reports," one member of the SPACH delegation said.

The Taliban's decision to destroy the few relics that managed to survive 20 years of war and Soviet occupation can only be explained by recent political events. In February, the UN imposed fresh sanctions on Afghanistan. The Taliban's office in New York was closed down by the United States, a country obsessed with capturing the Afghanistan-based Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden. Within the Taliban, a dialogue of sorts had been going on. Moderates, such as the Taliban's culture minister Abdul Rahman Hotaki, advocated a degree of co-operation with the west. But after the most recent wave of sanctions Mullah Omar appears to have concluded that a policy of engagement was entirely pointless. Instead, he has thumbed his nose at the international community. "All we are breaking are stones," he shrugged. "I don't care about anything but Islam."

Since the Taliban swept into Kabul four years ago, imposing the world's most extreme brand of Islam, portrayal of the human image has been forbidden. Painters, for example, are now confined to depicting landscapes; Kabul's art gallery is hung with innocuous Victorian pastorals. In September 1998, a renegade Taliban commander blew off the head of the smaller Bamiyan buddha using dynamite. He also fired rockets at the large buddha's groin, damaging the luxurious folds of the statue's dress.

But the Taliban then decided to take a more pragmatic view of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past. In July 1999 Mullah Omar issued a decree that said the Bamiyan buddhas should be preserved. There were, he pointed out, no Buddhists left in Afghanistan to worship them. But he added: "The government considers the Bamiyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The Taliban states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected."

Then, over another cup of green tea four months ago, Hotaki assured me that the Taliban had no intention of damaging the statues. To suggest as much was "foreign propaganda", he said. Sadly, though, the rumours have proved all too true.

The Bamiyan valley, with its serene mountain views and pastel colours, is also an unwelcome reminder to the Taliban of their own vulnerability. Opposition fighters from Afghanistan's Northern Alliance seized the valley last month and were dislodged only after a massive battle. The Taliban have now sealed the valley and have rejected all requests by foreign observers to visit.

It is not just the buddhas that face annihilation: 20 tin trunks that may contain the Kabul museum's celebrated Bactrian treasures are currently stored in the vaults of the presidential palace and the Taliban's culture ministry. They have not been opened, so no one is sure what they contain. The only certainty is that after Monday's edict, they are likely to be lost to the world for ever.

"I consider myself a friend of Afghanistan. I have spent 15 years trying to help the country," one western cultural expert said this week. "But it is becoming an island of madness."

Article Source,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/03/books.guardianreview2