The US ambassador in Kabul said Tuesday that withdrawing from Afghanistan after 2014 and leaving behind no American troops was not in the interests of either country. …read more
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Afghanistan’s lawmakers have voted in favor of sacking the interior minister, blaming him for worsening security and especially violence along the main highway south of Kabul. …read more
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A customs dispute between the Afghan and US governments has disrupted the withdrawal of American military equipment, dramatically inflating the cost of the drawdown, defense officials said.
With Afghan authorities insisting the United States owes millions of dollars in customs fines and trucks carrying hardware being blocked at border crossings, the Americans have started flying out most equipment by air at great cost.
“The cost is five to seven times more” by aircraft than over land through neighboring Pakistan, a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The Afghan government is insisting that US forces pay $1,000 for each shipping container leaving the country that lacks what it calls a valid customs form.
And authorities now claim the Americans owe $70 million in fines, even though the United States contends that Kabul’s stance contradicts previous agreements, said US officials, confirming a report that first appeared in the Washington Post.
The US Congress was warned in May by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction that Kabul was exacting exorbitant customs fees and taxes in violation of previous agreements regulating imported goods and the status of US forces.
In some cases, Afghan officials were blocking commercial trucks from delivering food and fuel to US forces due to the customs dispute, the inspector general said.
Afghan authorities, however, claim that US contractors transporting equipment failed to file proper documents for large amounts of gear shipped into the country since 2010.
To collect fines that Washington allegedly owes Kabul, “the only way is to stop all trucks from crossing the border,” Najibullah Wardak, the director general of the Afghan Customs Department, told the Washington Post.
“What else can we do?”
The Pentagon in a statement acknowledged “challenges” with the withdrawal at Afghan border crossings.
The disputes are “typically centered on the interpretation of Afghan customs processes,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Bill Speaks said in the statement.
NATO-led force commanders are talking with Afghan officials and “we are confident that the situation will be resolved soon,” he said.
With a massive drawdown of military equipment due between now and the end of 2014, US officers had counted on moving most of the equipment by land routes through Pakistan.
Recent tensions with Pakistan have previously forced the US and its NATO allies to transport large amounts of cargo by air and by a longer, more expensive route through Central Asia.
Over the past month, only 36 percent of US equipment has been driven out by land routes, the Post wrote, citing a Pentagon official.
The disagreement over customs fines threatens to undermine difficult negotiations over a possible future US military presence after 2014. ddl/adm
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Pakistan is sending a top official to the Afghan capital this weekend to try to mend fences with its uneasy neighbor, and hanging in the balance are U.S. efforts to arrange peace talks with the Taliban.
The trip comes roughly two weeks after the Taliban closed their newly opened political office in the Gulf state of Qatar following angry complaints from Afghanistan that the Islamic militant movement had set it up as a virtual rival embassy, with a flag and sign harkening back to the days they ruled the country.
The political office was part of a U.S. plan to launch peace talks with the Taliban to end the protracted war, with American and other NATO combat troops scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of next year. But the talks ended before they could even begin amid the uproar last month.
Pakistan, which had helped persuade Taliban to agree to sit down with the Americans — and possibly with the Afghans after that — now contends that intransigence, suspicion and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reluctance to invite his political opponents at home to the negotiating table in Qatar is hobbling efforts to start the talks.
“They (Taliban) listen to us. We have some influence but we can’t control them,” Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s special adviser on national security and foreign affairs, told The Associated Press in advance of his trip to Kabul on Saturday.
“But they (Taliban) also say that the High Peace Council is not fully representative,” Aziz said, referring to Karzai’s 80-member negotiating team. “President Karzai should invite other people to join them.”
Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, a senior member of the Afghan High Peace Council, told the AP that if the Taliban were making wider representation on the negotiating team a condition to restarting talks, then it “would be worth considering.” But he was suspicious of Pakistan, wanting assurances first that the demand was from the Taliban and not Pakistan.
Rancor and suspicion between Pakistan and Afghanistan run deep. Kabul blames Islamabad for not cracking down on Taliban militants who use the border area as a base to carry out attacks on Afghans and international forces in Afghanistan. For its part, Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of sabotaging peace efforts with its provocative statements, overtures to India and refusal to acknowledge the bloody war Islamabad is waging in its border regions.
One …read more
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Afghanistan’s only Olympic medallist, taekwondo star and national hero Rohullah Nikpa, announced Tuesday that he would boycott international competition unless reforms root out discrimination and mismanagement within the sport in his country.
The 26-year-old said he would not compete in this week’s WTF World Taekwondo Championships in Puebla, Mexico, to protest against poor management and discrimination within Afghanistan’s Taekwondo Federation (ATF).
“It has been there, discrimination and mismanagment. It is like a clique, a group of people have taken over the ATF and are doing whatever they want with no regard to athletes’ needs,” Nikpa told AFP.
“This situation has negatively affected our abilities – both physically and psychologically… I hereby announce I will no longer represent Afghanistan on the international stage unless serious reforms are made in the ATF,” he added.
The decision by the twice Olympic bronze medallist will be viewed as a step backwards for the war-torn country. As a member of the minority Hazara community, he is seen by Afghans as a unifying figure.
The ATF rejected Nikpa’s allegations, saying that the athlete had informed the organisation a month ago that he would not go to Mexico because of injury.
No Afghans are competing in Mexico, because they were denied visas in India, officials have confirmed.
“All his wins since 2009 were under the current ATF leadership. We cannot understand why he is making these accusations,” secretary general Mirwais Bahawi told AFP.
Nikpa denies pulling out due to injury, saying that a recurring knee problem did not stop him from competing and winning a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics.
Trainer Mohammed Bashir Taraki also resigned recently, telling AFP it was to protest against mismanagement, favouritism and poor selection decisions within in the ATF.
“He (the head of the ATF) brings people from his own taekwondo club to the federation regardless of their capabilties and professionalism, and sends fighters fom his own club to take part in international competitions, not the people who really deserve it,” he said.
The ATF says it has documents to disprove all the allegations.
Nikpa is a fairytale hero in a war-ravaged country.
As a 10-year-old obsessed with Bruce Lee and martial arts movies, he followed his brother to the taekwondo club while civil war raged in Afghanistan.
He was 14 when the Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001 and began training in Kabul in earnest while a bloody insurgency against the government and its NATO allies raged throughout the country.
Partly thanks to Nikpa, taekwondo has become one of the most popular sports in Afghanistan. Around 25,000 competitors — up to 38,000 according to Bahawi — practise in hundreds of clubs around the country, though facilities are sometimes basic.
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An Afghan accused of torturing and murdering civilians while working for US special forces denies the charges and says he followed American orders, according to a report obtained by AFP on Tuesday.
Zakrya Kandahari, who worked as an interpreter, was arrested by Afghanistan’s premier intelligence agency around six weeks ago.
According to a copy of a report confirmed as authentic by a security official, intelligence agents have a video showing Kandahari beating a prisoner.
Afghan authorities are investigating allegations that armed Afghans working with US special forces harassed, tortured and murdered civilians in Wardak province, a Taliban flashpoint on the doorstep of Kabul.
President Hamid Karzai ordered US special forces to leave Wardak in February, although a compromise deal later announced that they would leave only Nerkh, one of eight districts in Wardak and the district where Kandahari worked.
“Zakrya himself has denied the accusations, saying he was under the command of others,” said a copy of the report obtained by AFP.
Instead he blamed the murders on three Americans, whom he named as Dave, Hagen and Chris, and whom he said were fluent in Afghanistan’s two main languages Dari and Pashto.
“‘I was simply a low-rank translator and did not have authorisation to roam around inside the base, or (go) to interrogation sections,” the report quoted Kandahari as saying.
Kandahari told interrogators that he had worked for foreigners for nine years, most recently as an interpreter for US special forces in Nerkh.
He was picked up in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban, and moved to Kabul for interrogation, officials said.
US investigations have found “no credible evidence” to substantiate any allegations of abuse by either NATO or US forces, a military spokesman told AFP on Tuesday.
But the military is co-operating with the Afghan government and US Army criminal investigators are also looking into the claims, said Lieutenant Colonel Will Griffin from the US-led NATO force.
“The allegations were taken very seriously and we just want to ensure that every possible outcome is thoroughly investigated,” Griffin told AFP.
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In Kabul, many streets have no name and houses often have no number, meaning that postmen already braving the constant threat of suicide bombings must play detective to deliver mail.
Mohammad Rahim makes his rounds on the tattered, hilly streets of the Afghan capital riding an old bicycle. After 10 years on the job he is undaunted by even the vaguest addresses on letters.
“Here we have a letter for a man who lives near Doctor Hashmat’s house,” Rahim, 46, says. “I don’t know the address, so let’s see, how can we find the right place?”
His only clues are the addressee Mohammad Naeem, the doctor’s name and instructions on the back of the envelope saying “Kart-e-Sakhi hilltop, behind the agricultural ministry”.
Wearing a black fur hat, blue jeans and a violet T-shirt, he cuts a familiar figure and is often recognised by Kabul residents. He sets off from the neighbourhood post office to start asking people for help.
“Brother, can you tell me — where is Doctor Hashmat’s house?” Rahim shouts at a shopkeeper.
“Go up the hill, and turn right,” comes the reply, so Rahim sets off up the rocky road.
Further on, another man tells him: “Turn right and it is the third house on the left.”
After waiting outside the gate, a woman in her 40s comes out: Mohammad Naeem’s wife, who takes the letter for her husband.
“We have received letters from the US, Canada, Germany and Pakistan, and the postman always brings them safely and on time,” she says.
Rahim delivers dozens of letters every day across west and southwest Kabul, a city reduced almost to ruins in the brutal 1992-96 civil war.
The Kabul population has boomed to five million as people have flooded in seeking employment and an escape from the fight against the Taliban, but much of the recent expansion is illegal, with many houses and shacks built on contested land or without planning permission.
But the days of confusion over addresses could soon be over, as last month the communications ministry signed an agreement with the city authorities to create a comprehensive new address system.
All streets and houses will be coded, numbered and mapped in a two-year project that the government hopes to expand to other cities.
The scheme — which will use global positioning system (GPS) surveying — should help Rahim, and fellow postmen such as Khan Agha, 42, who works in a post office in the central Shar-e-Naw district.
For now Agha, who first started delivering mail 22 years ago, says the chaotic street mapping makes it “the most difficult job in the world”.
“We don’t care about traffic, summer or winter, smog or rain but there are many vague addresses, though a telephone number on the back of the envelope can help,” he says.
“We ring them up and they say ‘I’m standing here’ so we go and hand over the letter.
“I do my best to treat people well. We see on television that postmen are admired in foreign society, because we connect the sender and receiver.”
The job is even more challenging for …read more
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Dah Yaya is an Afghan village set in stony hills and steeped in traditions that limit women to second-class status in this desperately poor country ravaged by Taliban insurgency.
But in a school set up by an Afghan-American woman named a 2012 top 10 hero by TV network CNN, girls are learning to dream of a different future, of saying “no” to the dictats of their elders.
Just a 40-minute drive from Kabul, the village feels as if it’s in the middle of nowhere. The road winds through the arid, dusty hills that encircle the Afghan capital, past mud-brick homes.
Women and girls wear burqas. Only once they are safely behind the gates of the Zabuli Education Center, do school girls take them off and leave them hanging on a banister.
Founded by Razia Jan as part of her battle to educate girls in rural Afghanistan, the school wants to exact change in a country notorious for dreadful women’s rights.
“I have 400 girls,” says Jan, who founded the school in 2008. Funded by private donors, it offers a free education to pupils.
“We made these girls speak for themselves, so that if something terrible happens in their life and they don’t want it, they fight it, they have the force to say no, no, no,” she added.
“The more education there is, the more doors open for them.”
A massive increase in the number of girls going to school since the fall of the repressive Taliban regime in 2001 is touted as one of the biggest achievements of Western intervention in the country.
From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban banned girls from going out to school. According to the Afghan education ministry, 42 percent of children in school are girls.
But poor attendance and absenteeism are major problems. Regular, high-profile cases of abuse, intimidation and violence underscore that for many women in parts of the country, little has changed.
But the Zabuli Education Center provides girls with better than average teaching. Girls learn English as young as four, and they also have access to computers and to the Internet.
Some profess to being fans of US superstar Jennifer Lopez and Canadian heart throb Justin Bieber — pop singers far beyond the traditional horizons of Afghan culture.
Zuhal Ansaari, 15, is passionate about art and is convinced that one day she can realise her dreams of becoming a teacher.
“Women and men have the same rights,” she told AFP.
“If a woman is educated, her role in the family becomes more important, she can teach her children and have a better life, because she knows at least the same thing as her husband.”
Nazaneen Jahd, 14, even believes that one day a woman could lead the country if she is properly educated and gets the chance.
“I hope that very soon there will be one,” she said.
According to the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, the literacy rate for Afghan women aged 15-24 is 18 percent, compared to 50 percent for boys, and only 13 percent of girls complete primary school.
It quotes statistics estimating the mean age of marriage …read more
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A suicide bomber targeted an Afghan police checkpost on the outskirts of Kabul, killing one person and wounding two others on the first Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, police said.
The attack came on the third day of the Muslim holy month in the war-torn country, where Taliban-led insurgents are fighting against the Western-backed government.
“This morning, a suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest detonated his explosives outside the city of Kabul,” Kabul police chief, Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP.
“The bomber was in a passenger Toyota sedan. Police stopped the vehicle and wanted to search everyone. The bomber ran away and blew himself up. As a result of the explosion, one passenger was killed and two others wounded,” Salangi said.
Kabul crime branch chief, General Mohammad Zahir, said the attack happened in Mir Bacha Kot district, on the outskirts of Kabul. Two people were wounded, he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Taliban last Friday vowed to increase their attacks during Ramadan. The insurgents have stepped up attacks on Afghan forces since they took responsibility for national security last month.
Some 100,000 US-led NATO troops in Afghanistan are preparing to withdraw from the country by the end of next year.
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The Taliban on Saturday announced the start of their spring offensive, signaling plans to step up attacks as the weather warms across Afghanistan, making both travel and fighting easier.
The statement comes toward the end of a month that already has been the deadliest of the year.
The militant group’s leadership vowed that “every possible tactic will be utilized in order to detain or inflict heavy casualties on the foreign transgressors.”
It said that will include more so-called insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces against their colleagues or foreign troops.
Such attacks threaten the strength of the Afghan forces as they work to take over responsibility from international forces. The latest one occurred in March, when a member of Afghanistan‘s government-backed militia program shot and killed five of his colleagues in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan.
In a sign of Taliban’s determination to replace Afghanistan‘s government with one promoting a stricter interpretation of Islamic law, they named their new offensive after a legendary Muslim military commander, Khalid ibn al-Walid. Also known as “the Drawn Sword of God,” he was a companion of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
U.S.-backed efforts to try to reconcile the Islamic militant movement with the Afghan government have so far failed.
Insurgents intensified attacks this spring as they try to position themselves for power ahead of national elections and the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and other foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
April has already been the worst month for combat deaths so far this year. According to an Associated Press tally, 257 people — including civilians, Afghan security forces and foreign troops — have been killed in violence around the nation. During that time 217 insurgents have died.
Last year during the month of April, 179 civilians, foreign troops and Afghan security forces were killed and 268 insurgents.
Still, the top U.S. commander in Kabul, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, said Wednesday that the security situation has improved across the country.
“As the traditional fighting season begins, the insurgency will confront a combined ” Afghan force of 350,000 soldiers and police, he said.
“The insurgency can no longer use the justification that it is fighting foreign occupiers — that message rings hollow,” Dunford said in a statement.
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By The Huffington Post News Editors
KABUL, Afghanistan — Officials say a helicopter owned by an Afghan company has made an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people who were aboard hostage.
A district administrator in the area says the helicopter landed on Sunday afternoon in strong winds and rain in a village of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and about 30 kilometers (or 20 miles) from the Pakistan border.
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/taliban-hostages-afghanistan_n_3129779.html
Officials say a helicopter owned by an Afghan company has made an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people who were aboard hostage.
A district administrator in the area says the helicopter landed on Sunday afternoon in strong winds and rain in a village of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and about 30 kilometers (or 20 miles) from the Pakistan border.
Hamidullah Hamid said on Monday that the Taliban captured all nine aboard the aircraft and took them from the area. He says the crew and passengers are all civilian.
Logar deputy police chief, Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai, says the helicopter is owned by the Khaorasan company. He didn’t know what cargo it was carrying or where it was heading.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/SLRGO4ubNXE/
Germany has offered to provide 600-800 soldiers for a NATO training mission in Afghanistan after U.S. and other foreign combat troops leave the country by the end of next year.
Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the German troops would likely be stationed in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for a two-year period starting in 2015.
The final decision must be taken by the next German government following national elections in September, but polls show Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s center-right coalition will be the likely winner.
Germany currently has about 4,170 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in the north.
The U.S. is expected to keep between 9,000 and 10,000 in Afghanistan as a residual force after 2014, but no final decision has been made.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/dCZai9ul4kc/
The International Committee of the Red Cross is warning that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating because warm spring weather has led to a surge in violence.
Gherardo Pontrandolfi, head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul, also appealed on the warring parties to respect civilians caught up in the fighting. Pontrandolfi spoke on Thursday.
So far, April has been the deadliest month this year. According to an Associated Press tally, 186 people — including civilians, security forces and foreign troops — have been killed in violence around the nation. Additionally, more than 150 insurgents have also died, according to the tally.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/Ae2JduQ1aHQ/
The bloody scene looked more like Kabul or Baghdad Monday afternoon. But it was downtown Boston on a bright, shiny holiday at the finish line for the Boston Marathon. There, two trash can bombs went off, injuring scores and killing three, including an eight-year-old boy.
The awful spectacle was doubly shocking to Americans because, Fort Hood aside, homeland terrorism has been largely thwarted since 9/11. To maximize the impact of their deadly cowardice, terrorists plan their deeds not for, say Mile 18 of a marathon. But at the finish line, where the explosions and ensuing mayhem will be captured on video for replay a gazillion times in the early absence of concrete info.
In a helpful forensic twist, however, those videos and ever-more ubiquitous surveillance cameras may have fortuitously caught the perp(s) before the explosions.
Hats off again to the first responders who can be seen within seconds running toward the smoke and blood without knowing if there were more bombs ticking.
Hats off too to city officials who, by and large, have learned the importance of talking to the public and media quickly and getting the tip-line phone numbers out there immediately (1-800-CALL-FBI). Even if most of their answers were of the variety: “This is an active investigation, so I’m not at liberty to answer that now.”
Read More at investors.com . By Andrew Malcolm.
From: http://www.westernjournalism.com/were-safe-now-obamas-been-briefed-on-boston/
The homespun Afghan burqa is under siege from east and west these days — cut-price competition from China, and Western influences that are leading many urban women to exchange the full-body cloak for a simple headscarf.
The decline is most noticeable in Kabul, the capital, where women began joining the work force and adopting Western dress soon after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the puritanical Taliban. Demand for burqas appears strongest in the provinces, where family pressures and the power of conservative warlords continue to enforce a stricter Islamic code.
Alim Nazery, who has traded in burqas in Kabul for 27 years, remembers selling at least 50 burqas a day when the Taliban were in charge. Now he says he sells 20 a day, mostly to women from the provinces.
On one wall of his store in the Old Town market hang Afghan-made burqas costing from 1,000 to 3,000 Afghanis (about $20-$60), and on the other wall Chinese-made robes for 500-800 Afghanis ($10-$15).
“We are selling more Chinese burqas because they are cheaper and people can buy more of them,” Nazery said, taking a break from haggling with a burqa-clad pregnant woman as her husband waited outside. Another woman emerged from a fitting room screened off by a row of burqas, asking for something with less embroidery.
In the countryside, where kidnapping and rape are a constant threat, a burqa gives its wearer the safety of anonymity.
But in Kabul, say clothiers, demand is declining as young women go to school and take office jobs — pursuits that were impossible during the six years that the Taliban ran the country. But women’s rights activists caution against reading too much into the burqa situation.
They say it’s the least of their problems as they continue to battle such issues as domestic violence and forced marriages.
“The current progress and the current achievements for Afghan women are very cosmetic and anything gained can be lost easily,” said Selay Ghaffar, executive director of the Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWACA), a non-governmental group. She said she herself wears a burqa when traveling in insecure areas.
“Freedom from … the burqa does not mean the real liberalization of women. I should have rights according to the law. I should be
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/lHYziREvb3g/
Gen. Mohammad Sharif Yaftali, commander of Afghanistan‘s 203rd Thunder Corps, looked happy as he sat down for lunch in his eastern command post near the border with Pakistan.
He had every reason to be smiling, as did his U.S. advisers.
His troops, he said, had just successfully completed a large-scale operation — code-named Azadi, or “freedom” — aimed at securing strategic highways leading out of Kabul and at clearing a region around the capital. Over the course of the 13-day sweep, his forces battled Taliban and other insurgents 20 times, killing at least 20.
Along the way, his officers sat down with tribal elders to win support for the military and set up local police forces to defend their villages from the Taliban. Separately, his troops successfully freed two Afghan soldiers kidnapped by militants.
It was all done without international troops. “We did the planning and everything ourselves,” Yaftali beamed. “The coalition was there, but they did not fight with us. They just gave us advice. We are in the lead, we are no longer shoulder-to-shoulder.”
Unlike past operations where American and coalition forces were fighting alongside Afghan soldiers or going into the field alone, both sides expressed a confidence in Afghanistan‘s army that was not present as little as one year ago.
There have been deep questions about the ability of the Afghan army to take the fight to the insurgency with international combat troops due to leave the country by the end of 2014.
It is not certain that the performance of the 203rd can be replicated in all the army corps around Afghanistan, or even at the brigade and battalion level. But if its ability to successfully carry out large-scale operations can be replicated across the army, then it offers hope the Afghans may be able to hold their own against the insurgency after 2014.
U.S. and coalition military officials say that overall, the nascent force is surpassing many of their expectations. They say it is far better prepared to fight alone than many people think and should be able to take over.
Canadian Brig. Gen. Thomas Putt, the director of the U.S.-led coalition’s program for development of the Afghan security forces, said the Afghan troops were accelerating in their preparedness and “we have to rush
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/wbdaiDHMk38/
By The Huffington Post News Editors
KABUL — Lost and alone in a strange city Mariam called the only person she knew, her husband’s cousin. She worried he wouldn’t help her because she had left her home in Afghanistan‘s northern Kunduz province, fleeting to the capital Kabul to escape his relentless and increasingly vicious beatings. But he promised to help. Too busy to come himself he sent a friend who took her to “some house”, held a gun to her head and raped her.
Finished with her he settled in front of a TV set, the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam picked up the gun shot her assailant in the head and turned the gun on herself.
Read More…
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The 21-year-old Afghan woman said she fled her abusive husband only to be raped at gunpoint by a stranger who was supposed to help her.
The man then settled in front of a TV set, putting the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam grabbed it and shot her assailant in the head, then turned the gun on herself.
“Three days later I woke up in the hospital,” said Mariam, shyly removing a scarf from her head to reveal a partially shaved head and a long jagged scar that ran almost the length of her head where the bullet grazed her scalp.
From the hospital, Mariam was sent to a police station and from there to Afghanistan‘s main women’s prison, Badam Bagh, which in Pashto means Almond Garden. She is one of 202 inmates in a jail mostly filled with women serving time for so-called “moral” crimes. Many had sought justice for domestic violence or tried to run away from an abusive situation.
Under international pressure, Afghanistan has made some progress in advancing women’s rights after years of repressive Taliban rule that banned girls from going to school and forced women to wear all-encompassing burqas and leave their homes only when accompanied by a male relative. But the country remains a deeply conservative society run by men who most often turn to tribal jirgas that routinely hand down rulings offering up girls and women to settle debts and disputes.
Nowhere is this more evident than at the Badam Bagh prison, built by the Italian government six years ago to house female inmates from the Kabul area. The Associated Press recently was given rare access to the facility.
More than two-thirds of the 202 inmates are serving sentences of up to seven years for leaving their husbands, refusing to accept an arranged marriage, or leaving their parents’ home with a man of their choice, according to the prison’s director, Zaref Jan Naebi. The rest face theft, assault or narcotics charges. Two women are in jail on murder.
Some of the women were jailed while pregnant, others with their small children. Naebi said 62 children are living with their imprisoned mothers, sharing the same gray, steel bunk beds and napping in the afternoon behind a sheet draped from the upper bunk, oblivious to the chatter and the crackling noises from the small TV sets shoved off to one side of the rooms.
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Afghanistan‘s Interior Ministry says a French freelance photographer kidnapped nearly four months ago in Kabul has been freed.
Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi on Monday confirmed the release of 30-year-old Pierre Borghi, but provided no other details.
He referred all questions to the French government. There was no immediate comment from the Foreign Ministry in Paris.
Unknown gunmen kidnapped Borghi in late November in a residential area of the Afghan capital, Kabul. A French aid worker was later kidnapped in the same area but was subsequently freed.
It was unclear if Borghi had been taken by insurgents, the Taliban or criminal gangs.
Kidnappings, mostly of wealthy Afghans, have been on the rise around the country, and foreigners living in Kabul also are seen as targets.
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