Afghanistan may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but official figures do not quite paint a picture of a country deep in the throes of poverty and underdevelopment.

Fardin Sediqi, chief of the Methodology and Supervision Department of the Ministry of Economy, says “in the last two years poverty has declined from 42 percent to 36 percent.

From 2004 to 2009, says Aziz Shams, spokesperson of the Ministry of Finance, the average income of Afghan workers has grown six-fold from 70 U.S. dollars a year to 426 dollars.”

Shams adds that between 2003 and 2009 Afghanistan’s annual revenue went up from 207 million dollars to 803 million dollars, and is expected to reach one billion dollars this year.

Add to this what the international community has pledged to the war-torn country since 2002 – 62 billion dollars, of which 35.4 billion dollars have been given to Afghanistan. Of this amount, eight billion dollars went to the Afghan government and the rest has been spent directly by the donor countries for Afghanistan or by non-government organizations.

Noorullah Delawari, president of the World Bank-funded private initiative Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, says that between 2002 and 2006 Afghanistan attracted 3.8 billion dollars worth of investments, of which 27 percent came from foreign investors and the rest from local entrepreneurs and business groups.

Delawari notes, however, that investments into Afghanistan have been on the decline in the last three years, but did not give details.

Whether a seemingly improving economic outlook has translated to the alleviation of poverty in Afghanistan remains to be seen. On the contrary, the picture looks dismal when viewed through another prism.

Despite 35.4 billion dollars having been delivered to Afghanistan in global aid since 2002, the nation still ranks the second poorest, after Niger in West Africa, among the 182 countries considered in the 2009 Human Development Report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Within the UNDP’s human poverty index for 135 countries that fall below certain threshold levels based on the different dimensions of the human development index such as healthy life, Afghanistan ranks at the bottom.

The index shows that 40.7 percent of the estimated 25 million Afghans are not expected to live more than 40 years, 72 percent are illiterate, 78 percent do not have access to clean water and 39 percent of children under five years old are underweight, while the economic possibilities of an additional 20 percent of the population are deemed “fragile.”

A report by the British-based nongovernmental organisation Oxfam says that one in five children dies before his or her fifth birthday.

Conceding that “widespread poverty” afflicts Afghanistan, deputy minister of Agriculture Saleem Khan Kunduzi says the reasons for this are “the ongoing insecurity, growing poppy cultivation, lack of job opportunities and continued drought.”

But to what extent these are feeding into poverty is not clear. For instance, there appears to be no significant impact of drought on famine – one of the major ills afflicting Afghanistan – based on data from the Ministry of Water and Energy.

Of the country’s yearly 80 billion cubic metres (cu m) of water, only 30 billion cu m serve the country’s needs and 50 billion cu m go to neighbouring countries, the officials of the ministry said.

Yet mismanagement of Afghanistan’s water resources appears to be at the heart of the incidence of diseases known to have been triggered by polluted waters.

On top of improving the provision of basic services to the Afghan people to mitigate the impact of poverty, Khan Jan Alokozai, deputy president of the International Chamber of Commerce, sees the need to address the export-import imbalance.

“For the last couple of decades, Afghanistan has been a heavy consumer of products imported from neighbouring countries,” he says. Between 2000 and 2008, Afghanistan’s export gross income grew from 300 million to 700 million dollars in stark contrast to the import value of six billion dollars every year during the same period, says Alokozai.

Key to development is agriculture, says the World Bank, which, if neglected, could result in a deep recession that would in turn lead to inflation.

Speen Jan Lalahand, lecturer and member of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Kabul, says that in the last eight years agriculture has not been a development priority for the Afghan government. This, he says, explains why no agricultural project has been successfully implemented in the country. Improving exports could be a prime source of revenue for agricultural producers, he stresses.

Deputy minister Kunduzi believes that lack of adequate manpower is fuelling underdevelopment in agriculture. According to Mohammad Ramin Atiqzad, secretary general of the Central Statistics Office of Afghanistan, 80 percent of Afghans depend on farming activities as their main sources of livelihood.

Kunduzi adds that much of the cultivatable land in Afghanistan is now unused. Of this fallow land, 2.1 million hectares are irrigable and 1.5 million are rain-fed.

Still, he is optimistic about the prospects for increased agricultural produce such as rice, corn, vegetable and fruits in the coming years. To implement a five-year-plan in this direction, the agriculture ministry needs 8 billion dollars, says Kunduzi, half of which should be spent on rebuilding and rehabilitating irrigation systems and dams, while the rest will go to animal husbandry projects.

Against this backdrop, the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) is now looking forward to the next five years and a 1.5-billion dollar development plan for small-scale undertakings.

Since 2001 it has channeled one billion dollars to local initiatives. According to Wais Barmak, deputy minister of MRRD, over 800 million dollars have been spent on 50,000 small-scale projects throughout Afghanistan, with funding delivered to 22,000 local administrative councils in 34 provinces.

“In addition,” he says, “we have supported micro-finance projects that helped many rural women to start their own businesses, the reconstruction of small roads and potable water distribution.”

Notwithstanding the generally positive outlook conveyed by some government data and the officials’ upbeat mood on the economy, it still remains to be seen whether Afghanistan really puts its money – however small or big – where its mouth is.

*(Killid is an independent Afghan media group. IPS and Killid have been partners since 2004.)

Last week President Obama made what is probably the most crucial announcement in the past five years of war.

In a speech at West Point, the U.S.’s most famous and prestigious military academy, Obama laid out how he will send 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, in addition to thousands more from allies like Britain.

The forces are to be divided into two groups: one, including a large contingent of U.S. Marines, will fight the insurgency head-on, with a special focus on the south of Afghanistan. The other group will focus on training Afghan security forces, increasing the strength of Afghan National Army and Police to 400,000 strong.

Perhaps the biggest surprise to come out of Obama’s announcement is the news that U.S. forces will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan 18 months from now.

This seems to go along with President Karzai’s vow to have international forces out of Afghanistan in the next five years, with responsibility for Afghan security falling squarely on the shoulders of Afghan police and the army.

The American president’s plan follows closely on the recommendations made by U.S. General Stanley McChrystal during the fall. His recommendations – as enumerated by a confidential memo leaked to reporters a few months ago – called for 40,000 more soldiers to be deployed in population centers like Khost, Kandahar and Kabul. The fresh soldiers would stay close to the local population and try to protect them from insurgents, while creating a force too big to be attacked with the kind of sporadic strikes that are the hallmark of the Afghan insurgency.

But McChrystal’s strategy also hinged on a regime of transparency in the national government and also leadership at the local level. To this end, Obama has promised to work with the Karzai government to bring accountability to leadership in Kabul and try and build some trust between the Afghan people their elected officials.

But the success of this “surge” hinges on a central and crucial question: Will the Afghan government rise to the challenge? Afghan security forces are as riddled with corruption as the Kabul government, with high ranking jobs sometimes being auctioned off for tens-of-thousands of dollars. And despite years of training and mentoring, much of the supply line operations, that is feeding, clothing and arming security forces, is still done by the U.S.

Another unanswered question is how this surge will affect a possible reconciliation process with the Taliban and other insurgent fighters.

In his speech, Obama made clear that the U.S. and her Afghan allies would welcome any insurgent fighters who choose to lay down their arms and support a national unity government. But during this summer’s election, candidate Karzai promised to hold a “super shura” with top Taliban commanders and his own high-level negotiators.

Can these talks still take place with 30,000 plus new foreign soldiers on the ground here? Perhaps, but certainly not in public.

What is clear is that back home, President Obama now “owns” this war. While he used much of his speech last week to criticise his predecessor, who ignored Afghanistan to invade Iraq, by making the case to the world that the U.S. effort here should be redoubled, this phase of the Afghan conflict has become Obama’s own. It is likely no coincidence that his timetable for withdrawal ends right before the next time he is up for re-election, in 2012.

Back home in Afghanistan, people are wary.

Afghans aren’t interested in more soldiers if more soldiers means civilian casualties, increased military checkpoints and foreign support of provincial governors that do not have the people’s best interest at heart. More soldiers will also likely do little to provide round the clock power to far-flung provinces, get clean water to villages and increase the number of paved roads in Afghanistan. But this troop increase could also be a turning point in the war.

Though insurgents now have the advantage in many parts of Afghanistan, a muscular thrust by Americans and the Afghans they are training, could put anti-government forces back on their heels and put a serious dent in the insurgency for the first time since 2004.

It could give the Afghan people a chance to participate in government and civic life without fear of reprisals. It could give businesses a chance to expand and infrastructure programs – such as the recent push to erect cell-phone towers in the north – that have been hampered by the heightened insurgency.

The good news is that it won’t be long before Afghans know how this will turn out. The first new U.S. soldiers should be arriving here no later than February, just two months from now. The impact should be immediate, and if positive, hopefully sustained.

But it is yet unknown what the impact will be. The only certainty is that more will die on both sides of the conflict. *IPS and Killid, an independent Afghan media group, are partners since 2004.

Soon after President Hamid Karzai acceded to a runoff two weeks ago, challenger Abdullah Abdullah put forward an avalanche of requests so complex, that his objective remains unclear.

Abdullah called for transparency in this second round of voting and also for the sacking of Azizullah Lodin, the head of the Afghan Independent Elections Commission, which oversaw the initial vote.

He also suggested that Minister of Education Farouq Wardak, Minister of Interior Hanif Atmar and Minister of Borders Assadullah Khalid should temporarily step aside until after Nov. 7, so that they cannot interfere in the runoff process.

Abdullah listed other ministers, such as Kari Khoram, Hajj Sediq Chakari and Omar Zakhilwal, who he felt must be tightly supervised and controlled by legal and government watchdogs, to prevent any pre-election hi-jinx.

Abdullah vowed to lodge these requests and complaints officially through UNAMA and if he does not receive a response by Nov. 1, he will make his ire known.

If Abdullah attempts to boycott the runoff, it is unclear exactly what impact this would have on the political process, what sort of problems it would cause and how they would be solved. The implications for the international community – which is heavily invested both figuratively and monetarily in this runoff – could be dire.

Further, it is as yet unclear if what Abdullah wants is even legal, constitutional or provided for under Afghan law.

It seems that Abdullah wants only to stall the runoff process through impractical requests, buying time to stave off what will likely be a defeat on Nov. 7. Abdullah is also playing on tribal and ethnic divisions with this tactic, as nine of the aforementioned officials are Pashtun and he and many of his supporters are Tajik.

Perhaps he is hoping to score a victory in central Afghanistan, where many voters cast ballots for Bashardost and will likely turn to Karzai in a runoff. Abdullah may think that he can reap victory by pitting those who voted for Karzai against those who voted for Bashardost.

While this logic may win Abdullah a few votes with key constituencies, his tactics will ultimately backfire with decision makers in Kabul and especially the international community.

Campaigning is already underway for the second round and both candidates have shown an unwillingness to spend much money on advertisements or get-out-the vote drives.

The campaigns know that the Afghan people have likely already made up their minds about whom they will vote for, and are well acquainted with both candidates from last summer’s campaign blitz.

Abdullah’s challenges will serve as stumbling blocks to this election going smoothly and has created an atmosphere of difficulty around the proceedings.

This runoff already has enough challenges without Abdullah’s stalling; the fast-approaching winter, a raging insurgency and an extremely short timetable. Afghans are worried about the deteriorating security situation ahead of the Nov. 7 vote and with corruption being so prominently reported in the first round, many are wondering whether this time will be any better.

Though everyone – from Afghan and international election officials to leaders of coalition governments – has stressed that the lessons from Aug. 20 have not gone unlearned, it is hard to imagine this vote going smoothly, especially given Abdullah’s determination to have his grievances aired.

*IPS and Killid, an independent Afghan media group, are partners since 2004.

The U.S. and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) have spent billions of dollars, sacrificed hundreds of lives and worked for years to fight insurgents and foster democracy in Afghanistan.

Though it now appears that the western appetite for continuing this endeavor may be waning, some – in the U.S. at least – would like to increase their country’s commitment to Afghanistan, by increasing the U.S. force size by as many as 40,000 more soldiers.

Despite this U.S. history of sacrifice for Afghanistan, there are some – perhaps many -here who are extremely mistrustful of the coalition’s motives, and even go so far as to accuse the U.S. and its allies of materially supporting Taliban and other insurgent groups.

Two weeks ago, President Hamid Karzai claimed that insurgents were using helicopters to insert fighters into northern Afghanistan and Noor-Ul-Haq Ollumi, head of the Afghan House’s National Security Committee, seconded the statement. The insinuation was that because insurgents are thought to not have helicopters, they must have been getting them from someone whom does.

U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry denied that such airborne insertions were taking place, saying that since U.S. soldiers were actively trying to secure Afghanistan, helping insurgents would be counterproductive.

Last week, a series of stories in The London Times alleged that the Italian intelligence service paid off insurgents in Sarobi district, near Kabul, and Herat province in western Afghanistan, not to attack their soldiers. The Times reported that Italian intelligence service paid “tens of thousands of dollars to Taliban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet.”

An anonymous NATO commander was quoted in that story, saying, “It was payments of tens of thousands of dollars regularly to individual insurgent commanders. It was to stop Italian casualties that would cause political difficulties at home.” Both the Italian and Afghan governments strenuously deny the allegations, though a Taliban commander as well as two Afghan military officials, in a follow up story by The Times, corroborated the account.

Given the rift created between NATO countries over the story, the possibility that this is a Taliban intelligence operation should not be disregarded either.

Hervé Morin, the French defense minister, said the idea that an army might pay Taliban insurgents not to attack them would breach established military doctrine. “I have no reason to question the word of the Italian Government,” Morin says.

Canada has also been forced to deny similar reports. A foreign wire service quoted an Afghan Army source as saying that Canadian soldiers in Kandahar province had made payments to insurgents.

“With the number of casualties we’ve been getting, had we paid these guys they wouldn’t be holding up their end of the bargain,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Lemay, a spokesman with the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command.

Nevertheless, revelations such as these do not exactly endear the NATO coalition to the Afghan people. Double-dealing with insurgents while touting the success of the Italian military – as The Times also describes – strikes people as dishonest because that’s exactly what it is.

Further, Afghans find it hard to believe that the U.S. and NATO cannot defeat insurgents despite having impressive arsenals, air-power, satellite technology and endless resources with which to fight. Rather than beating the insurgents and securing Afghanistan, the coalition has withdrawn from key areas such as eastern Nuristan, leaving them in the hands of insurgents, who will soon be reinforced by others from across the nearby Pakistan border.

The U.S. also knows very well – as does everybody – that Pakistan is a crucial and sizable haven for Afghan insurgents, yet the U.S. rewards Pakistan by handing them a multi-billion dollar aid package.

And though the U.S. talks the talk of democracy and human rights in Afghanistan, they have supported many governments in Pakistan that have subverted that country’s rule of law and imprisoned journalists there.

To Afghans who cannot square the circle of these contradictions, the allegations and intimations, such as those made by President Karzai and The Times, are viewed at face value: A coalition country was assisting the insurgency, therefore the coalition has sympathies with the insurgents and does not want the best for Afghanistan. Any positive contributions that the coalition has made to this country are then viewed skeptically.

This puts NATO countries in the difficult position of having to be even better than the ideals they espouse and comport themselves with the utmost adherence to fair-play, transparency and respect for Afghan cultural traditions.

Afghan officials also have a role in this. It is not enough for them to merely finger-point at coalition missteps, but rather they must demonstrate that they have the resolve to deal firmly with governments in Islamabad and Tehran and insurgents here at home, while establishing a skilled, transparent and corruption-free government.

Until these challenges can be met, every half-baked theory – from the coalition helping insurgents, to Karzai conspiring with foreign governments against the Afghan people – will be met with nods of belief, rather than the sceptical derision they deserve.

*IPS and Killid, an independent Afghan group, are partners since 2004.

The rate of civilian casualties in Afghanistan during 2009 has increased exponentially if compared with previous years.

When he first took command of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces in Afghanistan this summer, U.S. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal placed an emphasis on the reduction of civilian casualties. Since then, though, civilian casualties have increased as the result of both NATO air strikes and insurgent’s attacks.

When 23,000 fresh U.S. soldiers arrived in Afghanistan over the spring and summer, they were ready to fight Taliban groups face-to-face, but insurgents changed tactics, increasing suicide bombings, roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and remote control explosives.

In the past few months insurgents have detonated a bomb in front of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in downtown Kabul, sent a suicide bomber to his death near Kabul airport, exploded car bombs in Maiwand and Almar districts, exploded a giant fuel tanker in downtown Kandahar and, most recently, set off a massive explosion near the Indian embassy and the Ministry of Interior in the capital city.

In all, hundreds of civilians have died and this isn’t even counting the running battles between NATO and insurgent forces.

Not only is each of these deaths a tragic waste of life, but many of those who died were the sole supporters of large and extended families. Children were orphaned because of this violence, forced to the streets because of Afghanistan’s inadequate child welfare safety net.

The Oct. 8 attack is the second time that the Indian embassy in Kabul has been hit. The first one was in July 2008 and killed 58 people. Again, most of the dead were civilians.

Making matters worse, some of these actions may actually have little to do with internal Afghan affairs.

The attack on the Indian embassy is a good example. Pakistan and India have long been bitter rivals and the embassy bombing, according to Afghan officials accusing the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI of masterminding it, was likely yet another bloody skirmish in this antagonistic relationship, with Afghans caught in the middle.

In Nimrooz too, many of the suicide attacks have been organised and funded by groups inside Iran, some intelligence sources evaluated.

It would seem that those involved in these larger conflicts care little for the lives of Afghan civilians. And they are not alone.

Taliban groups also seem to have little regard for those not directly involved in their conflict with the Afghan government and the foreign troops.

In a recent Eid message, however, the leader of Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, mentioned that civilians should in fact be protected. His missive surely did nothing for the families of those who died in the October attack in Kabul.

One of the more troubling aspects of this is that the Afghan government is unable to fight the insurgency or keep Afghans safe.

Recently, President Hamid Karzai claimed that insurgents have placed their forces in northern Afghanistan – particularly in Kunduz, Baghlan and Samangan provinces – through air-borne insertion, meaning that they used helicopters to transport fighters and flew away undetected.

“Even today we received reports that the furtive process [of airborne insertion] is still ongoing,” said the president, according to ‘Outlook’, an Afghan daily. While Karzai did not share evidence of this with inquiring journalists, he did say that a comprehensive investigation was underway to determine just which country the helicopters belonged to.

Such attacks weaken Afghan’s confidence in their government. Unfortunately that is exactly what the insurgents want.

The government has not done much to win their trust back. Basic necessities, like ample electricity and clean water, are sorely lacking while in an emergency many people feel they cannot trust police.

To begin to rectify this lack of trust the Afghan government needs to speak directly to the people, particularly to the families of those killed in attacks.

Instead of security officials going before the Afghan Parliament to offer sanitised explanations, they should take time to engage the victim’s families and explain how this could have happened and what they will do to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Such action will likely have little effect toward assuaging the grief of these family members, but perhaps it could be a positive step toward rebuilding the trust that citizens of every nation need.

*Killid is an independent Afghan media group. IPS and Killid have been partners since 2004.

For generations, Pakistan’s southern Waziristan region has been a launching pad for insurgent military operations in Afghanistan

During the Soviet invasion of this country, Mujahiddin used the area as a staging ground for attacks on Russian soldiers. Now, the region is a strategic base of Taliban and Al Qaeda operations as well as a keystone in the insurgent supply line.

This region is also the staging area for operations against the Pakistani government itself and that army has suffered massive losses in Waziristan. And it’s not just Waziristan. Western Pakistan’s Swat, Dir, Bonir, Bajour and Mohmand valleys are all remote, mountainous areas, cut off from the government in Islamabad, and teeming with fighters ready for a fight in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Now, the army of Pakistan has vowed to cleanse these insurgent-hospitable regions of insurgent elements. Recently, a Pakistan army spokesman announced that in the next three months, military operations would commence in western Pakistan; operations that would root-out these anti-government insurgents and hopefully crush the threat to Pakistan’s sitting government.

Pakistan will bring 60,000 soldiers – already deployed in the region – to the fight, in what would soon become Central Asia’s fiercest battleground. The once scenic district of Swat will devolve further into the miasma of war, as its crystalline streams run red with blood.

This operation will benefit Afghanistan in that many of the insurgents who meet their deaths in Pakistan would otherwise soon be fighting here. But it could also have a potentially catastrophic effect on the civilian population on this side of the Durand Line.

Simply put, when the Pakistani army begins to push the insurgents in its western tribal region, it will be pushing them into Afghanistan. This will expand the war here exponentially and drive the most hardened jihadi’s and their leadership structure into areas of this country where the Kabul government, to say nothing of the NATO coalition, has a weak or tenuous presence and little loyalty from the local population.

It’s worth mentioning that the Pakistani government and army are not the only ones with an operational strategy.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, head of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan asked his foot-soldiers to turn their guns west, toward the foreign forces in Afghanistan. If a recent video of Hakimullah Mehsud, broadcasted on Al Jazeera, is to be believed, that charismatic leader of hard-core insurgents is alive and well.

Just a month ago, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence reportedly killed Mehsud in a drone-borne missile strike. But last week, he appeared on television and radio reports, having recently given an audience to five journalists who broadcast his wish to expand the war in Afghanistan. He also voiced his support of and allegiance to Mullah Omar.

The Pakistani government has already stepped up operations against these men, killing one of Osama bin Laden’s top aides, the Uzbek Tahir Yaldish and arresting Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Taliban in Swat Valley. Mahmood Khan, another Taliban leader in Swat, was also arrested there, barely one month ago.

And the pressure is on Pakistan to keep up the fight. Top representatives of the U.S. government are forcing the Pakistani military’s hand, trying to persuade Pakistan to continue confronting the insurgents within the Pakistan border. In the past three months, both Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the highest ranking NATO commander in Afghanistan and U.S. Ambassador to Kabul, retired Gen. Karl Eikenberry, have visited Islamabad, pressuring the government there to crack down on militants in the western tribal regions.

Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. President Barak Obama’s personal envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan also made the trip to Islamabad to reinforce the message.

These emissaries brought more than just tough talk to Pakistan’s capital. Last week, the U.S. congress approved 1.5 billion dollars of annual, non-military aid to Pakistan, through the year 2011. The money would be used to build roads, schools and other infrastructure resources that might help prevent future generations from turning to violent Jihad.

But the assaults by the Pakistani army, while moderately successful for Pakistan, have already helped push Taliban and other insurgent groups into new areas in northern Afghanistan, turning places like normally peaceful Mazar-e-Sharif, into a fierce battleground.

As the interminable election process drags on in Kabul – further subtracting from whatever legitimacy the Karzai government will have when it eventually takes power -this new injection of insurgents comes at a particularly vulnerable time.

The U.S. is considering a new infusion of tens-of-thousands of soldiers into Afghanistan, and this might go a long way toward combating the rising insurgent threat from Pakistan, but the arrival of these fresh forces is far from a foregone conclusion. There are many in the U.S. who are against any further involvement in Afghanistan. After eight years of war on two fronts, Americans are wary of sending more of their sons and daughters into the line of fire.

If these military initiatives by the Pakistani army do push more insurgents into Afghanistan, it will be up to Afghans to confront and deal with this new threat. But with a weakened central government and a hesitant NATO coalition, the challenge will be far from easy to meet.

*The commentary is by correspondents of Killid, an independent Afghan media group. IPS and Killid have been partners since 2004. (*The story moved Oct. 12 contained an error. The video broadcasted by Al Jazeera was of Hakimullah and not Baitullah Mehsud.)

The head of the Afghan Supreme Court, Mohammad Zaman Sangri, denies that a legal double standard exists in Afghanistan, saying that all Afghans receive equal treatment before the law.

“Whenever an insurgent or transgressor is captured there is rigorous investigation,” Zaman Sangri says. “The case is then handed to the judiciary system, which prosecutes the case seriously and fairly.”

But there is much evidence showing that Afghanistan’s judiciary branch has never been able to deal fairly with rich and powerful men.

Three years ago Abdul Jabar Thubet was appointed Attorney General of Afghanistan. He promised the National Assembly that he would eradicate corruption.

During trips to the provinces, Thubet did prosecute a number of local government authorities, but he could not follow through with the prosecutions because of a lack of evidence.

This shows that the government does not have the authority or ability to prosecute powerful men, even for crimes as obvious as stealing land.

The Ministry of Rehabilitation and Rural Development has said that over 3 million hectares of public land has been appropriated by private individuals. Most of these individuals wield tremendous power in their districts.

The Independent Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has said that these land-grabs have caused displacement and homelessness in Afghanistan.

IHRC spokesman Nadir Naderi says that approximately 208 families nationwide have lost their homes and property to theft by powerful men.

Human rights groups and government-watchers say that the Afghan parliament has also failed to keep the judiciary honest.

Mowlavi Gul Ahmad Amini, an MP in the House of Representatives, says that the governing body has not been aggressive enough on the issue. “There is law,” he says. “But unfortunately, it has not been implemented in a transparent way. This has caused doubt among the people, of the effectiveness of parliament.”

On Jul. 15, the attorney general announced that Mohammad Rafiq Mojadadi, the mayor of Herat city was sentenced to five years in prison and given a fine of 90 million dollars. He is accused of misusing his position and embezzlement surrounding the construction of a five-star hotel in Herat.

This is the first time that a high-ranking official was sentenced to prison and fines, though a few years ago some officials at the ministry of Hajj were investigated.

One Herat resident, Nooruallah, says that the prosecution of Mojadadi gives him hope. Still his hope is tempered with caution. “Finally” he says, “a high-ranking official is sentenced. But will this sentence be carried out? We shall see.”

Deputy Attorney General Enayatullah Kamal says that the sentence will be enforced “as soon as possible.”

If the Afghan people see more prosecutions of corrupt officials like Mojadadi, it may help restore some of the legitimacy of the criminal justice system in this country. This legitimacy is sorely needed, if Afghanistan is to fully recover from the social and political inequality of the last decades.

(*This is the third of a three-part investigative series on corruption in Afghanistan by Killid Weekly. IPS and Killid Media, an independent Afghan group, have been partners since 2004.)

Being powerful in Afghanistan does not only mean that you can break the laws of government. It also means that you can abuse your fellow citizens in the most awful ways and never be punished.

The rich and powerful in Afghanistan are known to rape women and young girls with impunity. The government’s inability to stop these horrors have only encouraged those in positions of authority to continue abusing Afghanistan’s most vulnerable.

Last year, the son of a member of the Afghan National Assembly raped an eight-year-old girl. On the basis of Afghan law, he should have been severely punished.

But the victim’s family claims that the rapist had connections with local authorities. Rather than submitting to punishment, he was able to have his tazkira (ID card) illegally altered, making him younger than he actually was and ineligible for a rape charge. This change allowed him to avoid being punished for the crime the girl’s family says he committed.

Mooneseh Rahimi of the Law Institute of Kabul, says this happens all the time.

One particularly chilling incident occurred when gunmen in Samangan province raped a woman and were sentenced to eight years in jail for the crime. Yet the men served less than a year after being released by a local judge. “Her husband said that they would not be able to continue their lives in the district, given the shame the family had endured. The judge suggested that they move.”

These attitudes by Afghanistan’s judiciary have only encouraged violence against women by powerful people.

Two months ago, a woman and her daughter were raped by a powerful local commander. This powerful man warned her husband, who is a teacher, to leave the village and find a new home, as soon as possible. When the man refused, the commander convened a jirga of local leaders, who sided with the commander and decided that the family should indeed move to another district.

Incensed, the man told the authorities that if the rape of his family was not punished in court, he would join the Taliban.

Residents of northern districts like Taher Youwaldish say that the reason the Taliban has been able to make inroads in the area is because of the weak and corrupt justice system. “The main reason for Taliban success in northern Afghanistan,” says Noorullah Shahryar, of Mazar, “is the lack of law enforcement and the intimidation of local people by powerful individuals.”

One example of this is the Afghan prison system. Last year, reports surfaced of sexual assaults on women by guards in Pulcharki Prison. The victims claimed that they were raped by their guards and some were impregnated. Charges were never brought against the guards.

The legal double standard appears in other strange ways. One girl, accused of having sex outside of marriage, managed to escape her home. Later, she was brought back to her district and a judge sentenced her to a year-and-a half in prison, though she denied ever having sex with anyone.

Political author Ahmad Saeedi says that powerful men in Afghanistan have always gotten away with crimes that the poor could not. He points to the example of traffic enforcement. “The powerful drive our streets and barely acknowledge the traffic laws,” says Saeedi. “But imagine if the average driver violated the rules of the road. He would be fined by the police.”

Karim, a taxi driver in Kabul is one such average driver. “If we stop our car in the wrong place, we have to pay a fine of 300 Afghanis (nearly 7 U.S.dollars),” he says. “But a powerful man in a nice car can park wherever he likes.”

Last year, this immunity from traffic laws led to the deaths of five innocent pedestrians.

Powerful men in fast cars were speeding through the streets of Kabul when they struck and killed the pedestrians. The government ended up paying 100,000 Afs (2,027 dollars) to the families of the dead and 50,000 Afs (1,013 dollars) each to those injured in the accident.

It is shameful that the very people most in danger by these drivers – the Afghan tax-payers – are forced to pay for their reckless behavior.

(*This is the second of a three-part investigative series on corruption in Afghanistan by Killid Weekly. IPS and Killid Media, an independent Afghan group, have been partners since 2004.)

Three weeks ago, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned five international narcotics traffickers after the Supreme Court found the men guilty and handed down a sentence of 12 to 15 years in prison.

One of the pardoned traffickers is the nephew of Hajji Din Mohammed, chief of Karzai’s re-election campaign. Presidential elections in Afghanistan are due on Aug. 20.

Both presidential spokesman Homayoon Hamidzadeh and Wahid Omar, spokesman for Karzai’s presidential campaign, have recently said that Karzai released the men due to requests from provincial elders.

One legal rights expert, who did not want to be named in this report, said that clause 18, Article 64 of the Afghan Constitution gives the president power to pardon criminals, but within strict guidelines delineated by the law.

“This means that the president must act on the basis of legal principle,” said the expert, not the whims of other power brokers.

The executive branch has created two forms of the law for Afghans.

Powerful people who commit crimes often go unpunished. But if the average Afghan were to violate some part of the Afghan constitution, they would be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Sovereignty of the law is a keystone feature of democratic societies, but experts say that such freestanding legal codes have never existed here. Afghanistan has appropriate laws in most cases, but due to lack of equal enforcement, those laws have been weakened.

Like many members of the democratic global community, Afghanistan’s political structure has – in principle, at least – recognised the sovereignty of the law. But again, the problem is fair and equal implementation and enforcement of that law.

Abdul Hamid Faizi is an assistant advocate at the court in Kabul. He tells a story heard often in the Afghan halls of justice.

“In one case” Faizi says, “security officials arrested a man suspected of narcotics trafficking and the judge sentenced him to five years in prison. The primary court judgment was approved by a high court but,” continues the lawyer, “the accused men presented evidence that they were only doing the bidding of much more powerful traffickers, and offered to help the prosecutor bring charges against their bosses. The court refused to hear the evidence, because the top drug lords were able to pull strings and use well-placed connections in high Afghan government.”

Faizi points out that if the average Afghan gets arrested with only a few grammes of drugs “he will be arrested. Yet more than a thousand hectares of Afghan farmlands are used to cultivate opium and thousands of tonnes of drugs are sold on the black market and no-one does a thing about it.”

Meanwhile, those who make and sell these illegal drugs get rich. With the money comes power and as a result, Afghan officials do not have the means to confront them.

Richard Holbrook, U.S. Special Envoy Afghanistan and Pakistan, has called the coalition effort to eradicate opium, “the worst programme ever” and describes it as “a failure.” Holbrook also points out that eradication initiatives have only helped the Taliban by making enemies of local farmers.

He seeks to change the way that the international community fights the narcotics trade in Afghanistan, by encouraging farmers to grow alternative crops and giving them the resources and know-how to do so. Hopefully, this change will have a positive impact on the corruption surrounding the narcotics trade in Afghanistan.

(*This is the first of a three-part investigative series on corruption in Afghanistan by Killid Weekly. IPS and Killid Media, an independent Afghan group, have been partners since 2004.)

After a series of well-known Afghan politicians announced their candidacy, the up-coming presidential election was widely believed to be a turning-point in the country’s history. But most of the big names declined to register, leaving what critics allege is a weak opposition to President Hamid Karzai.

Although Karzai was widely reputed to be ineffective, the fractured opposition means that many analysts expect the president to win this summer’s elections in a landslide. The turn of events begs the question – why did Karzai’s erstwhile opponents back down?

Critics allege that the opposition to Karzai – a motley collection of former government officials, businessmen and warlords – were unable to come together and decide on a united stance. The leading contenders – Gul Agha Sherzai, Ashraf Ghani, Ahmed Ali Jalali – were unable to put aside their differences and choose a common representative.

“Everyone has an ego and no one wanted to allow anyone else to take the center stage,” says Jalali, the former interior minister.

Many say that candidates will peddle their support for privilege and fame. “As soon as weak candidates realise that they can’t win the election (alone), they will give their votes to a more powerful candidate and in return they will ask for some privileges,” says Said Jawad Hussaini, president of the Afghanistan-e-Jawan party.

For other potential candidates in the August presidential poll, the issue might have been losing privileges, not gaining them. For instance, Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Kabul, was widely rumoured to be a top contender for the presidency.

Numerous tribal groups held demonstrations in favour of his candidacy, and he even convened a large meeting in Dubai to discuss Afghan politics and reconstruction. But analysts say that he may have decided against running because, per the Afghan constitution, he would otherwise have to give up his American citizenship.

Similar sentiments might have forced Jalali, another American citizen, from giving up his candidacy. It is also widely rumored that Jalali and another candidate, Anwar-ul-haq Ahadi, quit the race because of files the Afghan security forces have on them that they were reluctant to have open to public scrutiny. Jalali’s Chief of Staff, Ajmal Shinwari, denies such accusations, however.

Rafiq Ahmad Shaheer, a lecturer at Herat University, says that Ahadi might have been dissuaded from running because of pressure from his party, the Pashtun-nationalist group Afghan Millat.

President Karzai’s deft manoeuvering also stymied the opposition. Karzai replaced his first vice president, Ahmad Zia Massoud, with Qasim Fahim, in a move that split the opposition. Fahim is a leading figure associated with the United Front, and it is widely believed that Karzai bartered a vice-presidential seat for support from him.

“Karzai chose him because he wanted to weaken the National United Front and gain the support of Jihadi leaders,” says Dr. Muhajudin Mehdi, a politics expert.

Karzai’s move is also in keeping with the time-honoured tradition of balancing out the representation from various ethnic groups. “This is why candidates are trying to choose their vice presidential candidates from other ethnic groups,” says Abdullah Uruzgani, a researcher and member of the Andisha Foundation, a think tank.

Karzai is playing the game deftly, he says, and other candidates have not been able to use vice presidential appointments to their advantage, he adds. “Ashraf Ghani was expected to choose powerful vice presidents, but on the contrary, he chose some not very well-known people and this shows that he is not serious,” Uruzgani says.

Most of the candidates lacked any strong support network within the country, whereas Karzai has built just such a network over the last few years.

Karzai is reputed to have the backing of many tribal elders, ulema, and other influential figures, who can mobilise support for him come election time. Jalali, Ghani and Khalilzad all live in the United States, making it difficult to cultivate such support networks here.

Moreover, many candidates may have lacked international backing as well. In an age where political support from international countries is crucial, this may have further discouraged some from running.

“The candidates’ resignations show that important decisions in Afghanistan cannot be made independently,” says Ghulam Mujtaba Rasoli, an Afghan political expert. “The support of powerful countries has a role in every decision made in Afghanistan, including the presidential election.”

“Although the fourth article of the Afghan constitution claims the right of sovereignty for its people,” he adds, “we can not deny the influences of some foreign and neighboring countries. Considering the decades of war in Afghanistan it is impossible to make decisions independently, which is a striking example of what I am talking about.”

Most importantly, the U.S. could not find another candidate to back, despite trying.

The Obama administration has proved much more critical of Karzai than the previous administration, and in many cases officials have openly criticised the Afghan president. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called Afghanistan a “narco state” and Obama has said that “Karzai should get out of from under his bunker and attend to his country.”

A recent report from the British Guardian newspaper declared that U.S. officials were trying to limit Karzai’s power by appointing a prime minister. This did not succeed and the U.S. was left without options or alternatives in Afghanistan. Experts say that none of the other major candidates received U.S. backing, something that also dissuaded them from running.

The result of most leading candidates dropping out of the race is that most experts believe that Karzai will easily win the election. “Without any opposition, and with his support networks in place, Karzai will have an easy time in August,” says Haroun Mir, policy analyst with the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies.

“Karzai is a very clever politician,” he adds. “No one has been able to beat him, and he has proven that even if he can’t run the country well, he certainly can play politics well.”)

(*Killid is an independent Afghan media group which has been an IPS partner since 2004. This is from the Killid Weekly.)

The U.S. administration has pledged to increase aid and reconstruction as a central part of President Barack Obama’s new strategy. But critics charge that the new policy contains very little specifics on how to bring development and jobs to the country.

Afghanistan’s official unemployment rate (measured in 2005) is 40 percent, but observers say that in reality it is likely to be much higher.

“The international community should be establishing professional and technical schools to tackle this problem,” says Ahmad Ghaus Bashiri, the deputy chairman of the Ministry of Labour.

Others say that the U.S. should focus on agricultural development, since this is mostly an agrarian society. According to the Afghan Investment Support Agency’s Sayed Mubin Shah, of the 647 million dollars invested here since 2001, only 3 percent has gone to the agriculture sector.

U.S. officials have pledged to contribute to agriculture by replacing poppies with alternative, sustainable crops and by development work in rural areas. However, development work in such areas has been plagued with corruption and inefficiency in the past.

According to the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, the U.S. has pledged 10.4 billion dollars in development aid since 2002, but has only delivered half of that. In fact, according to the institute, this constitutes only 2 percent of the total amount the U.S. is spending here (the rest goes towards the military effort). In addition, the U.S. employs a system where most reconstruction tasks undertaken by its development agency, USAID, are contracted only to American companies.

“These companies subcontract the job out to other companies, and by the time the work is actually done the Afghan company gets a tiny fraction of the original amount,” says one official with the U.N., who requested anonymity. “In many cases, there is no oversight and the job is done poorly or not at all.”

Representatives at USAID here in Kabul say that the work must be done this way because of American regulations. And U.S. officials say that they will work to ensure more transparency and accountability in the development process, but declined to provide specifics.

Without development and jobs, resentment towards the government and the foreigners will grow, experts say. Analyst Ruhullah Amin says that “if the international community tackles the current crisis and creates job opportunities, many of those young Afghans who have joined the insurgency will stop fighting and get regular jobs.”

“We want what every other human being in the world wants: a job and security,” says Taliban fighter Fazlullah, from Kapisa province. “If we have these things we will stop fighting.”

It has become conventional thinking in Washington policy circles that Afghanistan’s problems cannot be solved without addressing the crises in Pakistan. Senior Obama administration officials have openly declared that the Taliban and other insurgents are trained and equipped on Pakistani soil. Some analysts see this as a promising sign.

Abdul Ghafor Liwal of the Afghanistan Research Center says that “the previous U.S. administration had no clue where the origin of the problems lay, but the new administration clearly recognises that the problems lie across the border.”

But others say that despite such proclamations, the U.S. is still supporting the Pakistani government. Washington has earmarked 1.5 billion dollars per year in aid to the Pakistani state in the hopes that Islamabad will confront the growing militancy there. But there are no guarantees that some of this money won’t go to supporting the Afghan insurgency, critics charge.

Habibullah Rafeh, a policy analyst with the Afghan Academy of Sciences, says that the Pakistani government uses this aid as a source of income, and therefore benefits from the instability in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan.

Although critics allege that Obama’s new strategy is little but an intensification of Bush’s policy, U.S. officials point to a new programme that they say highlights their efforts to empower Afghans to protect themselves: the Afghan Public Protection Force.

In an interview with Killid, U.S. and NATO forces commander General David McKiernan says that the U.S. government is supporting the creation of local militias, starting in Wardak province. These forces are tasked with guarding local installations, such as schools, highways, etc.

But locals and militia members say that the force is not shaping up in the ways they expected. In Jalrez district, the majority of the militiamen are from the Hazara ethnic group, even though the locals are mostly Pashtun.

“This creates the danger of ethnic conflict between groups, something we want to avoid for the sake of national unity,” says Waliullah Rahmani of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies.

In other places, the militiamen have been guarding U.S. patrol convoys, even though this was not part of their original job description. Recently a few militiamen were killed during such a patrol.

Moreover, critics allege that even this programme isn’t entirely new. A similar scheme was attempted in the south during 2006. That plan, called the Afghan Auxiliary Police, consisted of arming and outfitting locals. But NATO abandoned the programme last year after many of the militiamen simply absconded with the weapons and others became involved in drug smuggling. In the rugged valleys near Maydan Shahr, in central Wardak province, the locals are saying that they are growing weary of the American presence.

“If the Americans are going to be here, they should offer us something new,” says Wardak resident Fazel Wali. The danger in perpetuating the same strategy, critics say, is that the insurgency will only grow stronger.

However, some Afghans have their own proposals for a new strategy for Afghanistan. “We don’t want 30,000 more troops,” says parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai. “Send us 30,000 more teachers, or 30,000 engineers.”

She pauses, and then adds, “we need a fundamental change here.”

(*Killid is an independent Afghan media group which has been an IPS partner since 2004. This is the second of a two-part investigative report published by Killid Weekly.)

Life in the quaint, muddied town of Maydan Shahr appears to be going on as it has for years. Wrinkled, wizened men manage under-stocked shops in the sleepy central bazaar, while jobless youths idle nearby.

Beat-up Corollas trundle over craggy, unpaved roads, and there are very few police to be seen anywhere.

Maydan Shahr in Afghanistan’s Wardak province has seen one change though: more of the U.S. There are now more troops, more U.S. humvees, and more American aid dollars directed towards this underserved province.

It is an example of the Obama administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan – more of everything. But critics allege that such a strategy is unclear and incapable of ending the war, despite the high hopes in Washington.

“The Americans are promising more of this and that,” says a taxi driver from Maydan Shahr, “but really they are giving us more of the same.”

The new U.S. strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan was unveiled in late March. A central focus of the strategy will be the injection of 17,000 new troops in the country, with an additional 4,000 slated to train the Afghan security forces. The plan also calls for the increased capability of the Afghans in restoring and maintaining security.

Officials are also promising to increase the amount of aid delivered to Afghans. After decrying the rampant graft and inefficiency of the Afghan government, some officials suggest that they will bypass Kabul and administer aid directly to the provinces.

The Obama administration has repeatedly stated that more troops are necessary to stem to growing tide of violence.

In the last few years, insurgents have made tremendous gains throughout the country. Almost all of the south and east, and parts of the north and west, have a heavy insurgent presence. In many areas, the insurgents enjoy outright control, manning checkpoints and administrating justice in parallel courts.

The Bush administration recognised this problem and increased the number of troops by nearly 50 percent from 2006 to 2008. But according to data from the Ministry of Interior, the amount of insurgent-induced violence also increased in that period – by 50 percent.

Critics say that Obama’s military plans offer very little that is different from Bush. “First, it is not fully clear what is this new strategy about; secondly without changing the military strategy we can not bring an end to the Afghanistan crisis,” says Fahim Dashti, editor-in-chief of the Kabul Weekly.

In Wardak province, for example, the U.S. has sent 1,400 new troops in February. But insurgent-initiated violence in the central province has increased three-fold (through Apr. 5), according to statistics obtained from the private firm Tundra Security, which tracks such trends.

Similarly, Logar has seen the introduction of 1,500 new troops, and a concomitant 250 percent rise in insurgent attacks. In some cases, U.S. forces have been able to bring security to one district (such as Jalrez), only to see an immediate rise in insecurity in a neighbouring district, as the insurgents leave one locality for the next.

But more than just being unable to bring security, many Afghans say that they are most concerned about civilian casualties and house raids.

In Logar, for example, locals have staged numerous demonstrations after incidents where foreign soldiers entered houses and killed the occupants. “They search houses and arrest people without consulting the governor or the Afghan security forces,” says Muhammad Tahir Sidiqi, chairman of the Culture and Information department of Logar.

“They are harassing people by not letting the civilian vehicles pass them on the road,” says Sana Ul-Haq, a local from Nangrahar province. “If there is a sick woman or kid he or she will die.”

The U.S. military says that it does not intentionally kill civilians, and that house searches are necessary to find insurgents. Moreover, they say that their behaviour on the roads is necessary in order to protect against the threat of IEDs.

Although the U.S. has acknowledged that they must work to lessen civilian casualties, analysts say that there is very little in the new military strategy that will do so.

“Sending more troops will increase both the civilian and military casualties there,” says British analyst John Rice in an interview with al-Mohit. (International Security Assistance Force has tightened its rules of engagement in an attempt to minimise such casualties, but U.S. forces have not).

Analysts say that the major flaw of the new strategy is that it privileges military considerations over political ones, despite the fact that Obama has claimed that there is no military solution to the Afghanistan problem.

“As before, the new strategy is insisting on a military approach,” says Waheed Muzhda, a Kabul-based expert on political affairs. “The increase of troops means an expansion of the war.”

The new strategy also calls for the continued build-up of the Afghan security forces – a move many Afghans welcome. But the U.S. has struggled to build up these forces to the required strength and competency – especially in the case of the Afghan police-and observers worry that the new strategy does not specify a way to change this trend.

Moreover, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has asked Washington to help bring its forces to a strength of 400,000 in five years, according to MOD chairman of the Public Affairs Office Muhammad Ishaq Payman.

But analyst Muzhda asks, “If the U.S. couldn’t increase the number of security forces to more than 150,000 in seven years, then how is it possible to reach 400,000 in the next five years?”

(*Killid is an independent Afghan media group which has been an IPS partner since 2004. This is the first of a two-part investigative report published by Killid Weekly.)