By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, [...]]]> via LobeLog

By Robert E. Hunter

The devil is in the details.  This cliché is already being invoked regarding the deal concluded this past weekend between Iran and the so-called P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, along with the European Union’s High Representative, Baroness Ashton.

Devil and details, yes; but if there is such a thing, the “angel” is in the “big picture,” the fact of the agreement itself – interim, certainly; flawed, perhaps; but a basic break with the past, come-what-may.  It will now become much harder for Iran to get the bomb, even if it were hell-bent on doing so.  The risk of war has plummeted.  Israel is safer – along with the rest of the region and the world — even as Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu denies that fact.

This is the end of the Cold War with Iran, (accurately) defined as a state when it is not possible to distinguish between what is negotiable and what is not.  Going back to that parlous state would require a major act of Iranian bad faith, perfidy, or aggression, not at all in its self-interest.

In the last few days, the Middle East has become different from what it was before.  Indeed, that happened, if one needs to denote “moments of history,” when President Barack Obama picked up the phone to call Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, in the latter’s limousine on the way to Kennedy Airport.

Even that moment was months in the making.  But psychologically it set in train a sequence of events that is causing an earthquake in the region.  And like any good earthquake, the extent, the impact, and even the direction it travels will not be clear for some time.  But one thing is clear: much is now different, and despite serious down-side risks, that can be positive if people in power will make it so.  As said by John Kennedy, the 50^th anniversary of whose assassination also came this past week, “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.”

The struggle with Iran has never been just about “the bomb.”  Even putting aside the question whether Iran’s insistence on having a domestic nuclear energy program would ineluctably morph into a nuclear weapons capability (or threshold capability, a “screwdriver’s turn” away from a weapon), Iran has posed a problem for the Middle East, many of its neighbors, and outsiders in the West ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  That turned Iran from being a supporter of Western, especially American, interests – a so-called “regional influential” – to being a challenger of US hegemony, the more-or-less accepted predominance of Sunnis over Shiites in the heart of the Middle East, and the comfort level of close US partners among Arab oil-producing states and Israel.  That all happened well before Iran’s nuclear program became an issue.

Led by the United States, countries challenged by the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution fostered a policy of containing Iran.  It included diplomatic isolation, the introduction of economic sanctions, US support – some covert, some open – for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its war against Iran, and US buttressing of the military security of its regional partners, along with the plentiful supply of Western armaments.  There have also been widespread reports of external efforts to destabilize Iran, along with a US predilection, when not also a formal policy, for regime change in Iran, a goal which continues to have its adherents.  For example, see here.

Why Iran has now decided to negotiate seriously about its nuclear program will be long debated and will be variously ascribed to swingeing economic sanctions that have increased pressures by average Iranians on their government to do what is needed to get them lifted; to progressive loss of popular support for the mullah-led regime and a “mellowing” of ideology – factors analogous to the crumbling of Soviet and East European communism two decades ago; and to the election of an Iranian president with an agenda different from his predecessor – blessed, one has to emphasize, by the Supreme Leader for reasons he has not revealed.

The current state of possibilities was helped immeasurably by a US administration that has itself been prepared to negotiate seriously, unlike its two predecessors, from the time a decade ago when Iran put a positive offer on the table that went unanswered – as Secretary of State John Kerry noted in early Sunday morning (Geneva time) commentary.

At heart, what has happened in the last two months is that Iran is now back “in play” in the region and is beginning the march toward resuming a role in the international community – slow perhaps, abortive perhaps, but for now pointed in that direction.  Assuming that the issue of Iran’s nuclear program can be dealt with successfully – a big “assuming” — that is clearly in US interests.  While it is much too soon to “count chickens,” that could lead toward renewed US-Iranian cooperation, tacit or explicit, over Afghanistan, where complementary interests led Iran to support the US overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. The possibility of Iran’s potentially no longer being a pariah state could lead it to value stability in Iraq over the pursuit of major influence there, which itself is problematic, given historic tensions between the two countries that Shia co-fraternity between the leaderships in Baghdad and Teheran only partially obscures.

It is still a stretch, however, to see Iran’s working to reconcile with Israel (a quasi-ally before 1979), although Iran’s full reengagement in the outside world and especially in relations with the United States can never be completed without Iran’s reaching out to Israel (and vice versa), a feat far more difficult than the diplomacy that began to bear fruit last weekend in Geneva.  And for Iran to change its posture toward Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon would require not just alteration of Iran’s ambitions but also changes in policies by other states and groups.

Syria is both symbol and substance of the core problem of Iran’s re-emergence as a serious player in the Middle East.  At one level is the slow-burning civil war between Sunnis and Shias that was reignited by the Iranian Revolution and then, when that fire began to be tamped down, by the US-led invasion of Iraq, which overthrew a Sunni minority government dominating a majority Shia population.  The war in Syria is at least in part an effort by Sunni states to “right the balance.”  In the process, however, Saudi Arabia in particular has been unwilling to control elements in its country that are both inspiring and arming the worst elements of Islamist extremism and which also fuel not just Al Qaeda and its ilk but also the Taliban.  They have been primary sources of destabilization in several regional states and have killed American soldiers and others in Afghanistan.

At another level is the state-centered competition for influence in the region – geopolitics. This is also linked to the relationships of regional states with the West and especially the United States.  In particular, Saudi Arabia and Israel each has a basic stake in their ties to, and support by, the United States; both stoutly oppose Iran’s reentry into that competition, however modest.  Of course, Israel is also concerned by the continuing risk that, somehow, the US (and others) will fail to trammel Iran’s capacity to get the bomb; and also that attention will again swing back to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  But Saudi Arabia faces no potential military threat from Iran.  Indeed, to the extent it and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf face a threat or challenge from Iran, it is denominated in terms of Sunni vs. Shia, cultural and economic penetration, and the greater vibrancy of Iranian society – none of which can be dealt with by the huge quantities of modern armaments these countries have accumulated.

Further, as Iran does again become a player and moves out from under crippling sanctions, in the process attracting massive foreign investments, uncertainties regarding Iranian power and potential challenges to its neighbors will lead the latter to cleave even more closely to the United States; and the US will have to continue being a critical strategic presence in the region – its desire to “pivot” to East Asia notwithstanding.

With all these stakes, it is not surprising that several regional states are opposing the US-led opening to Iran and have already signaled a no-holds-barred campaign, including in US domestic politics, if not to scuttle what has been achieved so far, at least to limit US (and P5+1) negotiating flexibility.  (Iranian hard-liners will also be working to undercut President Rouhani.)  Israel and others can rightly ask that the US not fall for a “sucker’s deal,” though, as Secretary Kerry correctly stated, “We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid.” But they are also worried that they will lose their long-unchallenged preeminence in Washington and with Western business interests.  This is not Washington’s problem. Indeed, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Syria and even to Israeli-Palestinian relations, drawing Iran constructively into the outside world – if that can be done and done safely – is very much in US interests.

Even as things stand now, at an early stage in moving beyond cold war with Iran, President Obama has earned his Nobel Peace Prize.

by Robert E. Hunter

Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.

I’ve [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Robert E. Hunter

Now, after careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.

I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress….this morning, I spoke with all four congressional leaders, and they’ve agreed to schedule a debate and then a vote as soon as Congress comes back into session.

–President Barack Obama, August 31, 2013

President Barack Obama’s announcement this weekend that he has “decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets” is remarkable for many reasons, in particular because he coupled it with a commitment to “seek authorization for the use of force from…Congress.”

The first remarkable element is that he has already taken the decision to strike before fully engaging Congress, instead of the usual practice of reserving judgment on possible military action until that process is complete. This immediately begs the question “What if Congress balks?” Does the president go ahead anyway? And if Congress turns him down — after all, he is not “consulting” but “seek[ing] authorization” — does that affect his (and America’s) credibility, as the author of the “red line” against the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government? Proponents of a military strike are already making that point, although, in this writer’ judgment, it is grossly overdrawn, and no one who wishes us ill should put much weight on this proposition.

The best counterargument is that, at a time when the UN and others are still assembling evidence on the use of chemical weapons (undeniable) and “who did it” (probably the Syrian government), waiting awhile is not a bad thing. Obama covered the point about risk of delay by citing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “…that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive; it will be effective tomorrow, or next week, or one month from now.” Taking the  time “to be sure” is thus useful; as is the value in trying to build support in Congress, especially given the clarity of memory about the process leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq a decade ago, when the intelligence “books” were “cooked” by Bush administration officials, as well as by the British government.

The second remarkable element is that the president did not ask Congress to reconvene in Washington in the next day or two, but is content to wait until members return on September 9^th. This provides time for the administration to build its case on Capitol Hill, supporting a decision the president says he has already taken; but it also risks diminishing the perceived sense of importance that his team, notably Secretary of State John Kerry, here and here, has been building about the enormity of what has been done.

A related factor is that the United States will not be responding to a direct assault on the United States or its people abroad, civilian or military, and the case for America’s taking the lead is less about our interests than what, at other times, has been called America’s role as the “indispensable nation.” As has been made clear by all and sundry, if the US does not act, no one else will shoulder the responsibility. But this lack of a direct threat to the nation heightens the president’s need to make his case that the US must take the lead.

The need to make the case to Congress was hammered home by the British parliament’s rejection of a UK role in any attack on Syria, despite the lead taken by Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary William Hague in pressing for military action — and thus helping to “box in” the US president. No doubt, what Parliament did influenced Obama’s decision to get the US Congress firmly on record in supporting his decision to act.

A third remarkable element, though not surprising, is that the administration has apparently given up on the United Nations. To be sure, Russia and China would veto in the Security Council any resolution calling for force; but it would have been common practice — and may yet be done — for the US to apply to the recognized court of world opinion by at least trying, loud and long, to establish an international legal basis for military action, even it fails to achieve UN agreement. There is precedent for this approach, notably over Kosovo in 1998, where the UN failed to act (threat of vetoes), but the US at least made a “college try” and demonstrated the point it sought to make. This made it easier for individual NATO allies to adopt the fudge that each member state could decide for itself the legal basis on which it was prepared to act.

But the most remarkable element of the President’s statement is the likely precedent he is setting in terms of engaging Congress in decisions about the use of force, not just through “consultations,” but in formal authorization. This gets into complex constitutional and legal territory, and will lead many in Congress (and elsewhere) to expect Obama — and his successors — to show such deference to Congress in the future, as, indeed, many members of Congress regularly demand.

But seeking authorization for the use of force from Congress as opposed to conducting consultations has long since become the exception rather than the rule. The last formal congressional declarations of war, called for by Article One of the Constitution, were against Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary on June 4, 1942. Since then, even when Congress has been engaged, it has either been through non-binding resolutions or under the provisions of the War Powers Resolution of November 1973. That congressional effort to regain some lost ground in decisions to send US forces into harm’s way was largely a response to administration actions in the Vietnam War, especially the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964, which was actually prepared in draft before the triggering incident. The War Powers Resolution does not prevent a president from using force on his own authority, but only imposes post facto requirements for gaining congressional approval or ending US military action. In the current circumstances, military strikes of a few days’ duration, those provisions would almost certainly not come into play.

There were two basic reasons for abandoning the constitutional provision of a formal declaration of war. One was that such a declaration, once turned on, would be hard to turn off, and could lead to a demand for unconditional surrender (as with Germany and Japan in World War II), even when that would not be in the nation’s interests — notably in the Korean War. The more compelling reason for ignoring this requirement was the felt need, during the Cold War, for the president to be able to respond almost instantly to a nuclear attack on the United States or on very short order to a conventional military attack on US and allied forces in Europe.

With the Cold War now on “the ash heap of history,” this second argument should long since have fallen by the wayside, but it has not.  Presidents are generally considered to have the power to commit US military forces, subject to the provisions of the War Powers Resolution, which have never been properly tested. But why? Even with the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland, the US did not respond immediately, but took time to build the necessary force and plans to overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (and, anyway, if President George W. Bush had asked on 9/12 for a declaration of war, he no doubt would have received it from Congress, very likely unanimously).

As times goes by, therefore, what President Obama said on August 29, 2013 could well be remembered less for what it will mean regarding the use of chemical weapons in Syria and more for what it implies for the reestablishment of a process of full deliberation and fully-shared responsibilities with the Congress for decisions of war-peace, as was the historic practice until 1950. This proposition will be much debated, as it should be; but if the president’s declaration does become precedent (as, in this author’s judgment, it should be, except in exceptional circumstances where a prompt military response is indeed in the national interest), he will have done an important and lasting service to the nation, including a potentially significant step in reducing the excessive militarization of US foreign policy.

There would be one added benefit: members of Congress, most of whom know little about the outside world and have not for decades had to take seriously their constitutional responsibilities for declaring war, would be required to become better-informed participants in some of the most consequential decisions the nation has to take, which, not incidentally, also involve risks to the lives of America’s fighting men and women.

Photo Credit: Truthout.org

Shah Barat was a zookeeper at the Kabul Zoo when Taliban fighters marched into the city. As tens of thousands fled he stayed on to look after the animals in the zoo. In this testimony*, Shah Barat remembers the zoo’s former glory and subsequent devastation.

Before the Taliban took over [...]]]> By Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai

Shah Barat was a zookeeper at the Kabul Zoo when Taliban fighters marched into the city. As tens of thousands fled he stayed on to look after the animals in the zoo. In this testimony*, Shah Barat remembers the zoo’s former glory and subsequent devastation.

Before the Taliban took over the city in 1996, Kabul Zoo was home to 37 species. There was Marjan, the zoo’s much-loved lion, an Indian elephant, deer, birds and numerous other animals.

Taliban fighters killed some for food. A few more escaped and were never traced. The zoo, which was established in 1966, and counted as among Asia’s best, was ravaged by war. That some of the animals survived was due to the dedication of zookeepers like Shah Barat.

The Kabul Zoo was counted among Asia’s finest before war ravaged Afghanistan. Credit: Killid

“I suffered many hardships, hunger and danger, but I did not let the animals in the zoo go hungry,” he says. “They are also the creatures of God and goodness to them is counted as being good in the eyes of God. Unfortunately the hard hearted people turned their guns on these dumb creatures.”

The young Shah Barat had sought employment in the zoo because of his love for animals from childhood. “I had a special sympathy for the animals in my village,” he says. “I had kept many in the house. Villagers knew me as an animal lover. When I saw a sick dog, I would take care of it. Actually my house was a small zoo!”

Ruined by war

Kabul was far from his village in Andar district, Ghazni province, but Shah Barat was determined to work only in a zoo. In 1988, he joined the Kabul Zoo. Five years later, at the time of the first major exodus of civilians from Kabul, he was considered one of the senior zookeepers with many staff members fleeing the incessant bombing by rival mujahedin factions jockeying for control. The mujahedin had formed the government after toppling the communist Najibullah regime in 1992. But the power-sharing arrangement was short-lived, and between 1993 and 1996 when the Taliban took over Kabul, power continuously shifted from one faction to the other.

“Every time a rocket was fired the animals were traumatised,” he recalls. “I never thought the great Kabul Zoo would be turned so soon into a ruin!”

The civil war years were a time when people cowered in their houses from fear, according to Shah Barat. The price of everything was sky high. Salaries were not paid on time, and when they were, it wasn’t enough for even a week. Still, the zoo keepers bought rations for the animals out of their own meager resources.  “I kept my 10 children and wife hungry, but the animals were never hungry,” he says.

He speaks particularly warmly about his relationship with Marjan (meaning coral in Dari and Arabic), the zoo’s only lion. “Marjan was a gift from the Cologne Zoo. People came from all over the country to see him. He was our only source of income,” he recalls.

The zoo’s fortunes further dipped with the Taliban takeover of the city. The fighters showed no mercy for the animals, as groups of gunmen entered the zoo to tease and shoot.

Cruelty to animals

He remembers the day a gunman foolishly entered the lion’s enclosure and was torn to pieces. The next day his friends returned and threw a grenade in Marjan’s den. The unsuspecting lion was horribly maimed. “Marjan became blind in one eye. His jaw was full of shrapnel. He lost several teeth, which meant that he could not tear the meat he was fed. He couldn’t smell. He lived for another 10 years but he was a pale shadow of his former regal self,” he says.

He fondly remembers a monkey that was a gift from Nepal. She had become tame in the zoo and would even “eat her food with a spoon much to everyone’s delight,” he says. When the war broke out, and rockets rained from the sky, the caged animals were frantic with fear. “The war made her wild, and she escaped,” he says of the monkey.

When one day a bomb landed on the deer enclosure, he ran to see the damage, only to find that “All the deer were bathed in their blood.”

A rocket killed the zoo’s sole elephant.

After U.S. troops drove out the Taliban at the end of 2001, the horrendous abuse of animals was widely reported. The one-eyed lion Marjan became world famous and many zoos and organisations sent teams of experts to help rehabilitate the zoo.

Marjan died in January 2002. Shah Barat, now 55, still works for Kabul Zoo, earning 6,000 Afs (roughly 110 USD).

*Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai writes  for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.

Kreshma Fakhri writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In this testimony, Zubaida from  the village of Qala Mullah recounts for [...]]]> by Kreshma Fakhri

Bala Hesar fort in Ghazni has survived the ravages of war. Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

Kreshma Fakhri writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In this testimony, Zubaida from  the village of Qala Mullah recounts for the firs time how she, thirty-two years ago, watched her husband being taken away by Soviet soldiers.

“It was the 2nd Sawr in 1359 (April 21, 1980),” Zubaida begins her account of the events that happened 32 years ago. “My husband was visiting us in Jaghatoo district, in Ghazni. A year before the communist government of Babrak Karmal had won power with the help of the Russians (then Soviet Union).” Many Afghans were angry, she said, and “drawn into a fight between Jihad and atheism” as she says – the one led by U.S.-supported mujaheddin, the other by the ruling government. 

A man named Sayed Jagran was the commander of the anti-government forces in Jaghtoo district, where they lived. “In my village, Qala Mullah, he was carrying out propaganda against the government. But few people had the time for him. Most people were working on Bande Sardeh (a dam 28 kilometres away in south Ghazni).” Zubaida’s husband Mohammad Ismail was one of those who would come home on Thursday after a week of hard work, and return early in the morning on Saturday.

“One Thursday he came back and never went back to Bande Sardeh,” she says. Russian soldiers swarmed Qala Mullah after the Ashrars (anti-government forces) had already left the area. Only defenceless people remained. “ ‘Come out of your houses,’ the Russians shouted. We trooped into a compound — my husband was the first person they led away.

Zubaida and her six children tried to stop them, but he was taken away to nearby Qala Qata. “They took him to the centre of the village and shot him for siding with the opposition,” she remembers “They had no pity on anyone. They went from house-to-house killing all the men.”

In the end, they killed 21 of her relatives. Except for one farmer who escaped there was no male left to bury the dead, she says. “We ferried the bodies in a wheelbarrow, and buried them in a pit.”

“I tied a piece of red cloth on a pole on the top of our house so the Russians would not bomb us.”

Noor Wali Shinwarai writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In this testimony, Khaled Noor remembers his father, a [...]]]> By Noor Wali Shinwarai

Noor Wali Shinwarai writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In this testimony, Khaled Noor remembers his father, a colonel in the Afghan army, who was imprisoned and killed for trying to restore republican rule.

In 1978, Eid al-Adha, one of the two main Muslim holidays, fell on a winter day, Khaled Noor remembers – perhaps less because of the festivities than the events that unfolded the night before.

As families prepared for the holiday, some 200 Afghan army officers gathered in great secrecy in the Asmar Division in Kunar province to discuss ways to restore the republic of Mohammed Daud Khan, Afghanistan’s first president, who had been overthrown in a coup d’etat by Noor Mohammad Taraki only six months before.

The division had an emergency airport, four residential blocks for army officers, many tanks, military vehicles and thousands of soldiers. But their attempt to restore republican rule, would be short-lived. 

Lawyer Khaled Noor sometimes wishes “Our father would walk through the door and give us a hug”. Credit: Killid

Rise and fall

The leadership of the division was in the hands of the highly decorated Colonel Ghulam Dastageer Khan, son of the leader of the Shinwari tribe – and Khaled Noor’s father.

Years before, in 1964, he had been given the onerous task of marking out the international border with China in the Pamir mountains – a two-year endeavor that earned him awards from both countries, followed by an appointment as assistant of Sardar Wali Khan, the son-in-law of the Afghan king.

In 1973, Daud Khan overthrew the last king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, and founded the republic of Afghanistan.

By the time the communist party seized power through a coup in 1978, Khaled Noor’s father had become a colonel under Daud Khan.

By cutting off communications between the presidential palace and Kandahar, the communists initially managed to keep the colonel and other friends of the president in the dark about the fall of the leader.

When 200 of them finally came together back at the Asmar Division, their attempt to restore the president was in vain — Taraki soon had them arrested, imprisoned and tortured horribly.

Daud Khan’s assassination the same year was to plunge the country into decades of bloodshed and turmoil.

Colonel Khan’s children – Khaled Noor, Sardar Khan, Bilal, Spinghar and Mirwais – were still young when their father was arrested that wintery night before Eid al-Adha.

There was great excitement in the house over the coming feast. Suddenly there was a great banging on the front door. A military commander loyal to their father had come with bad news. “He told me, ‘Your father and all his friends have been arrested,’” Noor remembers.

“Though we were small, we knew that arrest meant death — the arrested never returned to their family. Our family and all the other families did not wear new clothes that Eid.”

The family was forced to vacate their house. Their things were put in a truck, and taken to Jalalabad. Khaled Noor says since they had no relatives in the city they went to their village in Haska Mena, Nangarhar. Their relatives saved the family from starving by sharing wheat flour and other food that they grew.

In Kabul, Hafizullah Amin, the second leftist president, overthrew Taraki. A military man came to their house with a letter for their mother.

Badly tortured

Writing from prison, Khan said that all his friends were killed in front of his eyes. “He said he was opposed to the communists, and he would never obey them,” Noor says. “He told my elder brother to look after the family.”

The man who brought the letter said their father was in Jalalabad jail and the family went to visit the prison laden with gifts for their father. But he had been tortured a lot and he was very weak, his son remembers.

In 1980, the year Babrak Karmal became the third communist president of Afghanistan, Colonel Khan died in prison.

The family was in mourning when the Soviets bombarded their village in Haska Mena district.

They fled across the border to Hango in Pakistan, where the two eldest brothers worked and the other siblings, including Khaled Noor, went to school.

Now, Mirwais, the youngest, is the head of a school in Kabul. Khaled Noor, meanwhile, is a lawyer working in a communications company in Kabul. “Life is good for us, “ he says. “But we still wish our father would walk through the door, and give us a hug.”

by Jasmin Ramsey

Ahead of the technical-level nuclear talks that will take place in Istanbul on March 18 and the top-level talks that will be held in early April, Farideh Farhi, an Independent Scholar at the University of Hawaii and Lobe Log contributor, offers context and insight [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Jasmin Ramsey

Ahead of the technical-level nuclear talks that will take place in Istanbul on March 18 and the top-level talks that will be held in early April, Farideh Farhi, an Independent Scholar at the University of Hawaii and Lobe Log contributor, offers context and insight into what can reasonably be expected in terms of results.

Q): Considering the cautious optimism that was expressed by the Iranians after the Almaty talks (February 26-27), is there a better chance for a breakthrough during the March/April meetings?

Farideh Farhi: It is too soon to think of breakthrough at this point. But the decision on the part of Iran’s negotiating team to portray the slight move on the part of the United States [to offer slight sanctions relief] as a turning point, has given the leadership in Tehran room to sell an initial confidence-building measure in the next couple of months as a “win-win situation,” something the Iranians have always claimed to be interested in. Having room to maneuver domestically, however, does not necessarily mean that it will happen. In the next couple of months we just have to wait and see the extent to which opponents of any kind of deal in both Tehran and Washington will be able to prevent the optimism that’s been expressed from turning into a process of give and take.

At this point, though, it is noteworthy that the first signs of opposition to what happened in Almaty occurred in Washington and not Tehran (see this Washington Post editorial.) In Iran, the questioning that has since emerged is about whether the positive portrayal of a US shift, for example by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, is justified by an actual shift in Almaty, which some deem as not sufficient to warrant an agreement; at least not yet.

Q): CNN reported on March 2 that Iran was open to direct talks, but Iran has made similar statements before and you’ve pointed out that direct talks have already taken place back in October 2009. What happened during that meeting?

Farideh Farhi: I have written about what happened then here, but in short, during the October 2009 Geneva meeting, which occurred while Iran was in the midst of post-election turmoil, hopes were raised by the Saeed Jalili-led nuclear team, after he met with US negotiator William Burns, that a breakthrough had happened and the US had accepted Iran’s right to enrich uranium in exchange for the transfer of uranium out of Iran (later to be returned to Iran in the transformed form of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor). But Iran’s tumultuous post-election environment, combined with a lack of transparency regarding the agreement’s details, led to opposition across the political spectrum. Rightly or wrongly, there was a sense in the public that the hard-line power leaders were making a behind-the-scenes-deal with outside powers in order to continue repression at home. Eventually the inability of both Jalili and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to convince others in Iran that the agreement included an explicit acceptance of Iran’s enrichment program led to Leader Ali Khamenei’s withdrawal of support for the agreement.

Q: Why do you think the administration is so focused on direct talks right now while Congress seems to be operating on a completely different beat, and what needs to happen for direct talks to happen again.

Farideh Farhi: The insistence on direct talks, I assume, is about receiving a signal from the Leader that he is interested in resolving the nuclear issue. The problem is that there is also a lack of trust on his side and he needs to be assured that the United States is interested in a process of give and take. He, along with quite a few others in Iran, need to be convinced that bilateral talks are not a trap intended to reignite the international consensus for the further squeezing of Iran, which the Obama Administration has been unable to sustain due to Russian and Chinese refusal to buy in at the United Nations.

In addition, many in Iran, rightly or wrongly, have come to believe that the US interest in direct talks is only about exacting concessions from Iran or serving its own interests without any attention to Iran’s needs and interests. Experiences such as Iran’s engagement with the US over Afghanistan in 2001, and the three rounds of talk over Iraq in 2006-07, have given the impression that there is no equivalency between what the US demands and what it’s willing to offer. In Iraq, for instance, the US wanted Iran’s help for the resolution of everyday security challenges that the US was facing without acknowledging that Iran also has interests in shaping the political direction of Iraq. There are other examples but the end result has always been Tehran’s increased caution regarding direct dealings with the US.

As of now, the two countries are still far from finding a common language to talk to each other with. Washington is still focused on the resolution of immediate issues of concern, be it Iran’s nuclear program or figuring out a way of getting Iran’s help — or at least reducing Iran’s incentive to create trouble — as it tries to untangle itself from Afghanistan. Tehran, on the other hand, is focused on longer-term strategic issues and the consolidation of its role in the region. For Tehran to enter into a direct conversation with the US, it has to be convinced that it will also get something tangible out of it.

Q: What needs to happen on both sides to increase the chances for progress during the March/April talks, and if you believe that nothing will happen on the Iranian side before the election, what needs to happen generally.

I fall into the category of people who think that something can happen before the election. The fact that the Iranians agreed to have technical talks so soon confirms my belief. The unambiguous signal from Tehran is that the nuclear issue is a systemic matter and will not be affected by the result of the election. Meanwhile, the decision by the United States to shift a bit before the election also signals to Iran’s leadership that it’s not betting on or hoping for the victory of any particular candidate in the election. If it’s sustained, this move, unlike the dynamics we saw during the 2009 election, will take the question of potential talks with the US out of the Iranian electoral equation because some form of them are already taking place.

What needs to happen in the next few months is a demonstration on the part of Tehran that it’s willing to suspend part of its enrichment program in exchange for the suspension of some sanctions on the part of the United States and Europe. Neither of these suspensions need to be consequential or major in terms of broader demands that both sides have on each other. But the acceptance of a mini-step as a first step is by itself a sign that a process — based on a more realistic understanding and expectation of what can be given and taken from both sides — has begun. If this happens — given the contentious dynamics in both countries and ferocious opposition by a number of regional players to any kind of talks between Iran and the United States — it’s a very big deal, even it it continues to occur within the P5+1 frame.

Ebrahim Mahdawi writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.

In this testimony, Seventy-year-old Abdul Husain from Deh Afghan remembers a [...]]]> By Ebrahim Mahdawi

Graves on Tapa e Karez, the hill of martyrs. Photo credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

Ebrahim Mahdawi writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.

In this testimony, Seventy-year-old Abdul Husain from Deh Afghan remembers a Russian attack on his  village in the Nahoor district. Today, Nahoor, in Ghazni province, is picture postcard pretty: green with plentiful water from streams and rain. There are orchards of apricots, plums, prunes and other fruit. But three decades ago it was the site of a bloodbath. 

The worst year was 1981, two years after the Soviet army rolled across the border into Afghanistan. Russian soldiers tried to fight their way into Nahoor through the Qeyagh pass. They bombed Deh Afghan and Sokhta Alawdani, the two villages closest to the border.

“The murdered people were all my relatives – one of my brothers, four cousins and so many others,” says Husain.

There are families who don’t know what happened to loved ones, while in village after village, the many physically challenged survivors are daily reminders of the bombings and killings.

Nahoor with its majority Hazara population was on the frontline of the war between Soviet soldiers and mujaheddin. Power in Kabul rested in the hands of Babrak Karmal, the third communist party president. Nahoor was the first district the Afghan fighters had wrested from the “Russians” as the Soviets were called. The Soviet army bombarded Nahoor from the air and with heavy artillery.

Terror everywhere

According to Husain, who is also known as Malak Abdul, even people in remote and mountainous areas of Nahoor were not safe from Russian “barbarity”. The terror was everywhere. There was no peace for civilians. Those who objected were tortured, and thrown in prison.

Russians entered people’s houses, and stripped it of all belongings. Buildings were demolished. Families fled the fighting and killing. The only people who remained were the mujaheddin.

“I also took my family to a safe area hoping to come back when it was safe,” says Husain.

While his younger brother and his family left, his elder brother and relatives stayed to defend the village. “My brother knew the Russians were coming but he was not aware they had already entered the village. He tried to save himself by moving to Ghara, a village adjacent to ours. But he did not make it,” he says.

Husain and his brother, their families and others from the village, kept walking. But there was no escaping the whine of fighter planes and pounding of shells. “It was terrifying. We did not know how to get away. We decided to go to the Siah Qul area where we thought it would be safer and out of the enemy’s line of firing,” he says.

Gunned down

One kilometre short of Siah Qul, a barren valley in the desert, the Soviet soldiers caught up with the fleeing civilians. “There was one kilometre to get to Siah Qul. Suddenly the desert erupted with the sound of tanks. The Russians had besieged the desert.

“We didn’t know the mountains above Siah Qul were the hideout of mujaheddin,” says Husain.

Russian tanks trained their guns on the winding procession of fleeing civilians. In the bloodbath that followed, only those who ran up the mountainsides survived.

“We were still in the middle of the desert when the Russian tanks started firing toward us from three sides. We ran as fast as we could toward Sia Qul valley. The only hope of escape lay in going into the mountains where the mujaheddin were hiding,” he recalls.

“My brother Jan Ali and some others were running helter skelter to save themselves. The group had scattered. But no one was able to save themselves. Russian tanks got them all in the end,” he says.

Sole survivor

The first one to go down was a relative called Sultan. A shot first got him in the leg. He was screaming, but the Russians had no pity, says Husain. “They sprayed him with bullets,”. Bodies littered the ground.

Husain still cannot fathom how he was the only person who escaped. “The invaders killed all of them. They fired hundreds of shots,” he says.

The Soviet soldiers eventually retreated after 24 hours in nearby Sokhta Alawdani, and men started trickling back into the village. “Women and children stayed away because there was still the possibility of the Russians returning,” he says. “We gathered together all the bodies of the dead.” They decided to bury the martyrs in one place, on a hill called Tapa e Karez. “It wasn’t a graveyard. The hill is called the hill of martyrs,” he says.

The Russians never came back to Nahoor and the village remained in mujaheddin hands until the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.

Jamshed Malakzai writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.

In April 1987, Afghanistan ratified the UN Convention against Torture. [...]]]> By Jamshed Malakzai

Jamshed Malakzai writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.

In April 1987, Afghanistan ratified the UN Convention against Torture. But it did not stop the government nor its opponents from using torture to punish and extract information from political rivals. The crimes were never probed; the victims were never compensated.

Nayeem Jan, 46, a resident of Shewa district in Nangarhar province, was nearly beaten to death in a prison run by a mujaheddin commander. Death would have been an escape from the torture, he says. 

He was the star pupil of his school, Sayed Jamaludin High School, and a good trader before the war came to Shewa.

“I graduated in 1977 (two years before the Soviet troops entered Afghanistan). I had many dreams like my peers. I wanted to join the government, and be a good officer, but luck did not favour me and I got into business like my father,” he says.

He continued to do business through most of the Soviet years. In 1988, Shewa district was captured by mujaheddin, and his life changed forever.

“I was sleeping deeply – it was 5 o’clock early morning that the war started in the district,” he recalls. “We thought of fleeing but nobody could move. The mujaheddin had already entered the district governor’s building,” he adds.

He had no idea which faction of the mujaheddin had captured the district, he says. At nine o’clock the next morning he saw the flag of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar hanging in one of the towers of the district building. “We were very fearful,” he recalls. “The mujaheddin were searching the houses and asking for guns. They kicked down the door to our house, and a group of armed people entered.”

Ruined by war

The next hour was going to be the most tragic in his life. “My 13-year-old sister was injured seriously. They took my elder brother, two uncles and me. They put my two uncles in a room full of hay and set it on fire, killing both. They said my uncles were communists. Both of them were teachers,” he says, sadly.

The mujaheddin commander kept Jan in a private jail in the Mohammad Gat area of Kunar province. During his two-months imprisonment guards tortured him to force a confession.

“They were asking me to confess (to being a communist), but as I had not done anything wrong I had to deny. They kept beating me till I fainted. I had heard terrible stories of torture of communists, but the torture by this commander was unimaginable. You can still see the marks on my body,” he says.

Jan’s family had a good name in Shewa district. “We had good flocks (of sheep and goats) and business, we had a bus. But the armed men took everything.”

The family left Shewa district for Jalalabad city and later Peshawar, where Jan bought a horse and drove a buggy. “My brother started work in an iron factory and my father was working as a daily labourer wherever he could find work,” he says.

One more move and eight years of poverty later, Nayeem’s parentls had both died, now making him head of a family that included his much younger sisters, and his own five children.

When the family returned to Afghanistan in 1999, “The country was hell,” he recalls. “There was nothing but war. So we went back to Pakistan, and we became vegetable and fruit hawkers. We would push a cart the whole day,” he says. 

No reprieve

In 2003, he heard about the new government in Kabul on the radio. He heard stories of how people were being rehabilitated. Almost overnight the family packed their bags and pnce again returned to Afghanistan. Jan hoped he would get a “good job”. But it was not to be so.

Now his sons and he eke out a living as daily wage workers. “I wish there had been no revolution,” he says.

The Najibullah government at least was giving food rations to all its officers, Jan remembers. Today, “No one is giving us anything…”

Suhaila Weda Khamoosh and Ali Arash write for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war crimes through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In [...]]]> By Suhaila Weda Khamoosh and Ali Arash

Suhaila Weda Khamoosh and Ali Arash write for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war crimes through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In this experiences, Nooria Wesal of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission’s Wesal  recounts experience that turned her into an activist.

Credit: Najibullah Musafer/Killid

It was 1983 and Nooria Wesal was designing a letter at home in Jamal Mena, Kabul, when her house was besieged.

“Intelligence agents arrested me and confiscated all the anti-Communist material,” she recalls. “They took me to the interrogation centre in Shah Darak.” 

Nooria was still a schoolgirl at the Rabiya Balki High School when she was arrested. A member of the Hezb-e Wahdat-affiliated youth party, Nasr, she was in charge of printing bulletins and distributing material to students at universities and union members.

For the next three months in Shah Darak prison she saw neither sunrise nor sunset. Like her fellow prisoners, she was beaten, starved and tortured. “I faced sleep-deprivation, electric shocks, beating and kicking,” she recalls.

Sentenced to two years in prison for anti-Communist party activities she was transferred to the dreaded Pol-e-Charkhi prison. She describes the prison as the “most frightening in the world”.

She was imprisoned in a cell, where she could neither stand nor lie down, she said. “The goal of the jailers was to face political prisoners with gradual death,” she said.

For the first six months she was not allowed to even comb her hair, cut her nails or receive visitors. Later, she was moved to a room with nomadic Kuchi prisoners who were accused of transporting weapons for the mujaheddin. “I had not talked to anyone for six months. My jaws hurt trying to talk. I thought I had lost the ability to speak,” she says.

There were old women, pregnant women and even newly married women prisoners in the jail. “All of them were not against the government or linked with the mujaheddin — there were many innocent women,” says Nooria. “There was a teacher from the Ayesha Durani High School. Her crime was that she told her students that we were gradually losing our country.”

In 1985, Nooria was released in a prisoner swap by Ahmad Shah Massoud, a central figure in the resistance against Soviet occupation.

Anything but ordinary