Kabul’s seventh district is also called Sarzamine Sokhta in Dari (Burned Land). Nearly everyone here has lost a family member in the successive rounds of blood-letting witnessed by the city over the last three decades. In this testimony, Mir Abdul Wadood, now a teacher in a school in neighbouring Parwan, realls [...]]]> By Sohaila Weda Khamoosh

Kabul’s seventh district is also called Sarzamine Sokhta in Dari (Burned Land). Nearly everyone here has lost a family member in the successive rounds of blood-letting witnessed by the city over the last three decades. In this testimony, Mir Abdul Wadood, now a teacher in a school in neighbouring Parwan, realls the year 1999 when Taliban dragged away and shot nine of his family members. 

The green flags flags on the 10 graves in Parwan’s Laghmani village are visible from miles away. Credit: Killid

Among the dead that day were Wadood’s two grown-up sons, two nieces, two nephews and his wife’s two nephews. One other nephew, Abdul Hai, had a miraculous escape that allowed him to recount the story. Shot in the face, he managed to drag himself on to a road before collapsing. Passersby took him to Anaba Hospital in Panjsher, where he gained consciousness, and told them the exact location of the cold-blooded murder of nine other family members.

Wadood’s family, which hailed from Kabul and Karez Mir, north of the city, had sheltered in Parwan province to get away from the Taliban, who had formed the government in Kabul. But the Islamic fighters continued advancing north in pursuit of Ahmad Shah Massoud, an anti-soviet political and military leader who, together with his forces, had retreated to his stronghold in the Panjsher Valley.

On that fateful day in 1999, the Taliban arrived in a Datsun pickup truck Wadood’s home, and took away 10 young people, between the ages of 20 and 35 years. The captives, their hands tied behind their back, were take away and made to stand in a circle. Then, one by one they were dragged into the middle of the circle, and shot dead.

The dead, all between the ages of 25 and 35, were put to rest side-by-side in nine graves in Parwan’s Laghmani village. Today, the green flags that the family placed on the graves are visible from miles away, standing out between the yellow leaves of trees.

Killed by grief
“Unfortunately I was in Kabul at the time, and the way to Parwan was blocked,” says Wadood. “When I came back 40 days later, I went to the graves of the nine members of our family, including my two sons – one 29 and the other 25. I cried,” he says. “The graves were like swords in my eyes,” he adds.

But there was more bad news for Wadood. On his return from the graveyard he decided to visit his sister who herself had lost two sons and a daughter – to “share her grief,” he says.

“That is when relatives told me she had died. The fresh grave near the nine, which I had seen and prayed over, thinking it was a neighbour’s, was actually my sister’s. Her heart had failed from grief.”

Wadood gets up and shuts the door leading to an inside room where his wife is. He says she has been very disturbed ever since he told her that a journalist was coming to interview them about the death of their sons.

“My wife has never been the same since the deaths,” he says. “When the nine coffins were brought into the house everyone cried and screamed, but not my wife. Her voice was not heard. Her depression worsened when our elder son’s widow married again, leaving us to take care of their two children.”

Scarred forever
Wadood confides that their sons are never mentioned because it upsets his wife. “Laughter has left our house,” he says. “We never mention our sons. I have had to bury their remembrance along with them, I have no choice,” he adds.

Today, a third of his salary as a schoolteacher, which is roughly 6,000 Afs, or 110 U.S. dollars, is spent on medication for his wife.

His story is not unusual, Wadood says. Between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban and Massoud’s Northern Alliance fought for control of Parwan. Every time the Taliban won the province, the Shariah law was implemented. Parts of the province went back and forth from Taliban hands to Massoud’s. Hundreds of civilians died. The fighting ended with Massoud’s assassination by two suicide attackers believed to be al Qaida, on Sep 9, 2001 – two days before the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York.

Three months later, in December 2001, U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban starting a new chapter in the tumultuous history of Afghanistan and its civilian polulation.

* Sohaila Weda Khamoosh  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.

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

Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai writes 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.

This [...]]]> By Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai

Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai writes 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.

This testimony follows Mohammad Hasan, who says he had a good life before the breakout of war in the 1990s. But the fighting between mujaheddin factions between 1992 and 1996 rendered him a pauper. Two decades later, he has not recovered.

Before the war, Hasan, 67, was a motor mechanic in a village near Ghazni. “I was a popular mechanic, and I had a good life. I had 80 barrels of oil in my shop. I had a truck,” he says with great pride.

But then the war arrived — one day gunmen came to his shop, beat him up and drove off in his truck piled high with everything he owned. 

“They left me with just the clothes I was wearing. They took away whatever I had including money, and the old truck,” he says, shaking his head sadly.

Hasan borrowed some money from people, and left with his family for Kabul Dehbori. “I was an indigent in Kabul,” he recalls. “I was remorseful about leaving the village. People took pity on us, and donated some pots in charity.”

Hasan calls the nineties a time of trouble for even the rich in their palaces. Life was like sipping from a poisoned chalice, he says. The poor saw death as a relief, he adds.

The tenth grave

In Kabul, Hasan and his family first sheltered in a mosque, before finding a house in Dasht Barchi. But the ouse was close to a mujaheddin gun post targeted by rival fighters.  Hasan recalls a rocket caming down on a nearby house and killing seven people, “One of them had married only 10 days back.”

When a barrage of rockets hit the gun post, killing nine, Hasan decidee to dig graves for the men.

Just as he was finishing, news arrived of his own family being in peril. “A rocket had come down on our house. When I got there, my 22-year-old son was dead,” he says gruffly, trying to hide his grief.

The tenth grave he dug that day was for his son.

Everywhere that night, in the cover of darkness, people dug graves and washed bodies, preparing the dead for burial. Five people had died in Hasan’s neighbour’s house.

He found a mullah who agreed to a mass funeral. All the bodies were brought to the graveyard. But just then there was another round of rockets, and people fled including the cleric.

“I remained alone among the bodies,” says Hasan. “At midnight I knocked on some doors and found three other people and together we buried the bodies.”

But sadness was not through with Hasan that night. When he got home his wife told him their daughter Nilofar had been badly injured and taken to the hospital by neighbours.

Outside his window, war was not about to stop. When an explosion hit nearby, Hasan climed the roof to find his neighbour’s house in flames.  Fortunately no one was killed, he says.

It wasn’t long before a piece of rocket pierced Hasan’s arm, leaving blood pouring out of his arm. As people screamed to get him to climb down, Hasan fainted and fell from the roof to the street below.

While Hasan recovered except for the use of his right hand, his daughter returned from the hospital  unnable to ever walk again.

“She is alive but does not leave the house. She cries all the time,” he says.

Hasan has not been able to reconcile with his present.  “I am tired of life,” he says. “I was not poor like I am now.” He has found work as a poorly-paid watchman, staying awake all night to earn bread for his family. “I am a victim of war — it is the war that has made me poor.”

Hasan wants to see the gunmen of the Kabul war punished in this life — but he is certain punishment awaits them in the court of God. 

Noor Wali Sayeed 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.

For this testimony, Shinwarai [...]]]> By Noor Wali Saeed Shinwarai

Noor Wali Sayeed 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.

For this testimony, Shinwarai interviewed Farid Ahmad, who was a child when his father was badly injured in a rocket attack, forcing Farid to become the breadwinner for the family. 

“When I was born, the country was in the control of Russians. Then the parties (mujaheddin groups) got power and nobody could go out of the house. The war among the parties was going on every day. Unarmed civilians were being killed. Kabul city looked like a graveyard,” said Farid Ahmad.

He was 10 years old when his father was seriously injured. Schools had been closed for a long time because of the war between fighters of Shura-e-Nezar (the group led by Ahmad Shah Massoud) and Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. The war, which started in 1993, was called the “hard war” in Kabul. Rockets fell through the day and night. One fell on a factory building in Qasaba where Farid’s father, Marjan, was at work as a welder.

“My father was not a political person, he was just a welder,” said Farid. “He got such serious wounds that no clinic or doctor in Qasaba would treat him. My father had become blind,” he added.

The family lost their sole breadwinner, and no relative offered to look after them. “The people in our tribe help in hard times but my uncles in Laghman did not help us, nor did our aunts in Jalalabad ask about us,” he said.

The family starved for nine days. Every night they went to bed hungry. There was no money to buy food or candles. “We spent night after night in the dark,” he recalled.

It was not easy to flee Kabul either, because everywhere warlords had set up barriers, which could be crossed only on paying a toll. Anyone caught sneaking across would be beaten or killed.

Hard times

But early on the tenth day there was good news. The war stopped for 24 hours. Rival sides had agreed to a ceasefire. The family loaded their few belongings in an old truck, and left Kabul for Jalalabad. “My brothers and sisters were all younger than me. My father, who had not gotten any treatment, was lying on the floor of the truck. We got to Jalalabad with difficulty,” he recalled.

In Jalalabad, the 10-year-old took his father to the public hospital, and his siblings to the house of an aunt. He went to the city’s Hesar Sahahi refugee camp where many thousands of families were sheltering in tents. In a corner of the camp, Farid made a make-shift shelter out of waste. The family was brought to live there. “The weather was hot in the day. There was no water. We would eat once a day, ” said Farid. “My father slowly recovered, but not his eye sight.”

The camp would be their home until 1996, when the Taliban pushed the mujaheddin out of Kabul.

“Believe me we, didn’t know what Eid was – we could never afford to celebrate.” Farid remembers the one time his younger brothers found a handful of henna, traditionally used for body decorations to mark the celebration of the end of Ramadan, which traditionally involves lavish dispays of food and festivities.

A school was opened in the camp, allowing his brothers and sisters to get an education. Meanwhile, Farid worked as a day labourer, leaving early in the morning, day after day to find work.

Signs of hope

Like so many others, Farid, though still a teenager, had become the breadwinner of the family. He said there were times when he wanted to cry and scream loudly out of frustration but he was careful not to upset his parents. “My father was enduring the pain of blindness. Everything was dark for him. I felt that I, too, should endure the pain and go to work.”

In 1996, the family moved back to Kabul, but life did not get any better. “Untill 2002, when the Taliban fell and Karzai assumed power, nobody in the family knew whether we would have tears for dinner or vegetables,” he said.

Things have gradually improved over the last decade. Farid has found work with a non-governmental organisation. His brothers have reached university. “One can read and write four languages – Dari, Pashto, English and French,” he said, proudly. “I had not seen a smile on my mother’s face for years. Now she smiles, and my father has reconciled to being blind.”

Three years ago Farid, who had saved enough money, got married. “God has lit the candles in our house once again. My daughter is one and a half years old, and my son is one month old.

My father put his hand on his face and named him Sulaiman.”

The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:

A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present [...]]]> via Lobe Log

The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:

A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition. In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim. The electoral process is mired in bureaucratic confusion, institutional duplication and political machinations. Electoral officials indicate that security and financial concerns will force the 2013 provincial council polls to 2014. There are alarming signs Karzai hopes to stack the deck for a favoured proxy. Demonstrating at least will to ensure clean elections could forge a degree of national consensus and boost popular confidence, but steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out.

Institutional rivalries, conflicts over local authority and clashes over the role of Islam in governance have caused the country to lurch from one constitutional crisis to the next for nearly a decade. As foreign aid and investment decline with the approach of the 2014 drawdown, so, too, will political cohesion in the capital.

…. Although Karzai has signalled his intent to exit gracefully, fears remain that he may, directly or indirectly, act to ensure his family’s continued majority ownership stake in the political status quo. This must be avoided. It is critical to keep discord over election results to a minimum; any move to declare a state of emergency in the event of a prolonged electoral dispute would be catastrophic. The political system is too fragile to withstand an extension of Karzai’s mandate or an electoral outcome that appears to expand his family’s dynastic ambitions. Either would risk harming negotiations for a political settlement with the armed and unarmed opposition. It is highly unlikely a Karzai-brokered deal would survive under the current constitutional scheme, in which conflicts persist over judicial review, distribution of local political power and the role of Islamic law in shaping state authority and citizenship. Karzai has considerable sway over the system, but his ability to leverage the process to his advantage beyond 2014 has limits. The elections must be viewed as an opportunity to break with the past and advance reconciliation.

Quiet planning should, nonetheless, begin now for the contingencies of postponed elections and/or imposition of a state of emergency in the run up to or during the presidential campaign season in 2014. The international community must work with the government to develop an action plan for the possibility that elections are significantly delayed or that polling results lead to prolonged disputes or a run-off. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should likewise be prepared to organise additional support to Afghan forces as needed in the event of an election postponement or state of emergency; its leadership would also do well to assess its own force protection needs in such an event well in advance of the election.

All this will require more action by parliament, less interference from the president and greater clarity from the judiciary. Failure to move on these fronts could indirectly lead to a political impasse that would provide a pretext for the declaration of a state of emergency, a situation that would likely lead to full state collapse. Afghan leaders must recognise that the best guarantee of the state’s stability is its ability to guarantee the rule of law during the political and military transition in 2013-2014. If they fail at this, that crucial period will at best result in deep divisions and conflicts within the ruling elite that the Afghan insurgency will exploit. At worst, it could trigger extensive unrest, fragmentation of the security services and perhaps even a much wider civil war. Some possibilities for genuine progress remain, but the window for action is narrowing.

Both the Obama Administration and Romney campaign have committed themselves to completing the handover by 2014.

Just as the fall of Kabul and Baghdad ignited a spate of jubilation and self-vindication from proponents of intervention in those countries, the fall of Tripoli has reincarnated this pattern, both from humanitarian interventionists and their U.S.-interest minded counterparts. And now that the Qaddafi regime has completely eroded, even skeptics [...]]]> By Reza Sanati

Just as the fall of Kabul and Baghdad ignited a spate of jubilation and self-vindication from proponents of intervention in those countries, the fall of Tripoli has reincarnated this pattern, both from humanitarian interventionists and their U.S.-interest minded counterparts. And now that the Qaddafi regime has completely eroded, even skeptics of the war are grudgingly offering recommendations which, they argue, will enhance the situation in Libya for the Transitional National Council (TNC) and Western interests.

Nevertheless, beneath the veneer of what is now touted as a success for the Obama administration’s approach to the Middle East, lies the severity of unanswered questions related to the future of Libya for at least the next 5-10 years.

These uncertainties, much like those which resulted after the collapse of the Iraqi Baathist enterprise or the Afghan Taliban, need to be dissected and openly addressed.

For now, the most glaring queries about the situation in Libya are as follows:

1) Does the TNC actually represent the rebel fighters on the ground? In other words, will the rebels, who have essentially been armed and trained by NATO advisers, remain loyal to the TNC – which, by the way, is largely made up of former officials within the Qaddafi power structure? In recent days, the Islamist strand of rebel fighters has openly called the prior assumption of a united Libyan opposition into question.

2) If, for whatever reason, the answer to the previous question is not a definitive “yes”, what then? Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, initially an opponent of the intervention, has recently come out in favor of foreign troops on the ground, ostensibly to prevent chaos. Yet if one assumes that the TNC and the rebels are united, meaning the former have functional control over the latter, Haass’’s prescription would seem redundant, unless the TNC and rebel fighters were only linked by the tentative and tactical goal of removing Qaddafi.

3) Equally important and related to the prior two, considering that small arms have now proliferated throughout Libya proper, is the question of how disarmament of the civilian fighters will be carried out. If there is no broad-ranging political understanding between the commanding rebels on the ground and the TNC, then more conflict may be looming. More probable though – assuming that an agreement between the rebels and the TNC is not reached – is a scenario where the rebels try to bypass the higher echelon of the TNC, replacing them with officials that are more representative of the fighters on the ground. What will NATO’s response be in such a circumstance?

4) It is estimated that the post-uprising sanctions upon Qaddafi’s regime left approximately $160 billions dollars of Libyan assets abroad frozen. The Atlantic has rightly stated that due to the “many layers of national and international law” Libya will have to go through a “long, tedious legal struggle” to recover those funds. However, some funds have recently been released this past week under “humanitarian grounds”, but only a pittance of the overall sum. If the real goal is to help the Libyan people’s cause, would it not make sense to place the releasing of these assets on a much faster track? While the Atlantic argued that certain aspects of international law and intrastate “red-tape” will make it difficult for Libya to obtain the frozen assets, the country’s extraordinary circumstances would render the releasing of those funds to the TNC in a much smoother and faster pace far more justifiable. So why the delay?

5) Lastly, what will happen if there is chaos? Fears of Baghdad 2.0 have always been present and if there is no political arrangement that is credible and sustainable for the population at large, the possibility for low-grade and sustained violence will be quite high. This dynamic could invite far more intervention than what has already been witnessed.

The downfall of Muammar Qaddafi has brought hope to millions who suffered under his rule, but his departure from the political scene was by no means natural. It therefore remains to be seen whether out of an inorganic situation, a new, indigenous political framework within Libya can be constructed and sustained. If it cannot, then even more questions are bound to arise.