We, Afghans, love Kabul, and we are hurt when this city is hurt. The terrorists have hurt it again. I am sick today and can’t write more. We just feel hurt!
Kabul attack in pictures.
5 dead, 38 wounded.
Updates on twitter
Video of the attack.
The other day, a former Bagram detainee told a very interesting story. We were talking about the innocent Afghans that are arrested by the international forces mistakenly or someone told on them for personal grudges, bounties etc. As majority of the prisoners arrested during the anti-terror war are from the southern and eastern Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan, they claim that their being Pashtun was a major factor that has been contributing to their atrocities during the arrest and post-arrest situations.
Then we talked about the problems of mistranslations and misinterpretations that often led several innocent people end up in Bagram or Guantanamo, the notorious detention U.S. Navel facility in Cuba.
The former Bagram detainee said that many of the detainees from the southern Afghan provinces – Kandahar, Zabul, Oruzgan, Helmand, and even Ghazni – had ended up in Bagram or Guantanamo just because the international forces and their American/European interpreters did not completely understand the local dialect. In many cases, a ‘ya’ is the detainee’s ticket to Bagram or Guantanamo!
The Pashto language has many dialects (click here for more details about this). Pashtuns from the Northern Pashtunkhwa (N.W.F.P.) province of Pakistan, the tribal areas, and from the eastern and central provinces in Afghanistan use the word ‘na’ for ‘no’ and ‘ho’ for ‘yes.’ But Pashtuns from Southern Pashtunkhwa (parts of Baluchistan including Quetta) province of Pakistan and from the southern provinces of Afghanistan use the word ‘ya’ for ‘no’ and ‘ho’ for ‘yes.’ Interpreters and translators who come to Afghanistan from the U.S. and Europe speak better English but don’t possess much knowledge about the local languages and the differences between the dialects. As a result, when they go to the remote areas of the country and question local people, they can’t convey the message properly to the locals and don’t understand their answers which then create problems for both the Afghans and the international forces.
Thus, when the forces raid a house in the south, and ask the men there: ‘Are you Taliban?’ Naturally, they will reply ‘ya.’ The international forces and their interpreters take this as ‘yes’ and arrest the innocent poor people. This is again repeated during the interrogation process. When the interrogators ask a detainee: ‘Do you have ties with the Taliban or insurgents?’ The detainee replies: ‘ya’. He means ‘no’ but because the interpreters don’t know this dialect difference, they take it as his confession and put him into jail. The poor people end up in Bagram or Guantanamo, subjected to torture and many years’ unlawful detention.
Dwellers of the camp show photos of victims.
Majority of these people are from the southern Helmand, Oruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul and other restive provinces where a ruthless insurgency supported by the global terrorism and a clueless international force against it have been trying to eliminate each other for past eight years without any apparent and effective success. Both sides claim to have been fighting for the peace and prosperity of the local people, but the local people don’t believe in this as they have seen nothing but their houses destroyed or bombarded, their properties looted, their people killed and the survivors displaced. They are in thousands, but we visited only few hundred in Chahar Rahi Qambar near Kabul city and found them living under more horrible conditions than before.
These people, dying for life or living with death, are victims of a global war in which the whole world is involved on one or the other side. They thought it was their fate that the war destroyed them, but they did not imagine that the world behind the war will also abandon them. Now struggling with life in these old grave-like half-mud, half-tent houses in the mid of a cold winter, their faces have been turned into living symbols of poverty, hunger, misery, various illnesses, disappointment and frustration.
‘Some of my family members died in bomb blasts and cross firing, others lost their lives in air strikes. We had no other choice but to leave the area,’ said Nur Mohammad after showing me the photos of some of the victims. He was from district Kajaki, in the most troubling Helmand province.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), ‘a November Oxfam report suggested that more than 250,000 people were internally displaced, while UNHCR reports there are 274,000 IDPs across the country.’ On Dec. 7, 2009, the IDMC reported that, Afghanistan’s internally displaced people (IDPs) face a harsh winter ahead with little humanitarian access reaching them. IDPs in informal settlements, mostly around regional towns and cities are struggling to survive with children particularly at risk or cold-related illnesses. They face a lack of food, shelter, healthcare, safe drinking water and sanitation.’
The camp we visited at Chahr Rahi Qambar is made of around 800 low-ceiling tents or mud-houses. Majority of the people we interviewed there said they had been living in the camp for a year or so. Many of them were wounded in the war, but could not afford buying medicines. Yet the main problem they constantly complained about was the lack of food and proper shelter. ‘I have nothing to feed my children today,’ cried an elderly man. Another said he could not sleep the whole night because he had nothing to keep his room warm. He was sick in the morning and visited the only clinic of the camp but got no medicine. Women and children of the camp told much more appalling stories of misery and poverty.
Though sometimes the government, some international aid agencies, and even some generous individuals distribute edibles and warm clothes among the dwellers of the camps, they never get enough food and support. In the start, when they arrived in Kabul, there was regular distribution of these things, but later pace slowed down incredibly despite the fact that majority of the refugees are old and sick men or women and young children who can’t do labor work. On Nov. 27, 2009, Al Jazeera reported:
‘Afghan refugees who fled the war-torn south have claimed they are so neglected by the government in Kabul that their children are dying from hypothermia for want of the most basic supplies.’
Following are some more reports about the displaced people across the country:
IDPs seek materials to deal with cold weather.
Internally Displaced Persons in Kabul.
Tens of thousands of people displaced by fighting and hunger.
Afghanistan Displaced from Helmand.
To give them a hope, to ease their misery, to give them a feeling that they are not forgotten, to tell them that they will be taken care of until they are able to return their villages with peace, to help and enable them to struggle with life, we have been planning to establish a systematic way to support, or at least feed, them on a regular base. Any kind of help is welcomed.
For help and donations contact: ahhairan@gmail.com Ph. 077-5075635
Bank account
Name: Abdulhadi Hairan
Account Number: 05057 0200 1872 814 USD
re: Displaced Persons
Afghanistan International Bank (AIB)
Swift Code: AFIBAFKA
The Taliban insurgents have claimed that the attack which killed 8 CIA agents on Wednesday in the eastern Afghan province Khost was carried out by an Afghan army officer they have identified as Samiullah.
According to a news claim posted by the movement’s purported spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, on their website’s Pashto page, www.alemarah.info, the CIA officers were present in a fitness center in civilian clothes when the army officer, wearing a suicide vest, entered the club and blew himself up.
Mujahid in his claim put the number of the killed CIA agents as 20 and added that 25 more were injured. However, the international media, quoting reliable sources, has confirmed the killing of at least 8 CIA agents. Initially the reports said that 8 civilian Americans were killed in the attack.
The fatal attack, described as the single deadliest attack on the American intelligence, took place in Forward Operating Base Champan in Khost, near Pak-Afghan border, where the CIA officers mostly plan attacks on the Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants across the border where they have safe havens and allegedly receive support from Pakistani intelligence.
The officials in the US did not release further information about the attack and how the bomber entered the heavily fortified base. And the claim made by the Taliban is confirmed by neither the Afghan and American officials nor the independent sources, which of course is impossible because the independent sources often don’t have access to these areas. However, if there is ample evidence that the attack was carried out by an Afghan army officer, then this is a signal of an increasingly dangerous situation for the international forces working with the Afghan officials as this is not the first time that an attack of this kind takes place. Just two days ago, an Afghan soldier killed one American soldier and wounded two Italians in the western Afghan province, Badghis. Similarly, an Afghan soldier, named Gulbuddin, killed 5 British soldiers in southern Helmand province on November 4, 2009. Before that, similar attacks have been occurred in many other provinces.
Elsewhere, in the southern Kandahar province, a bomb explosion on Wednesday killed 5 Canadian soldiers and one journalist accompanying them. The year 2009 is going to end with horrible stories of attacks on the forces in Afghanistan.
The Taliban militants in Afghanistan questioned the Media Club of Afghanistan’s (MCA) decision for asking the national and international media to boycott all news reports and claims provided by the insurgents for three days over the death of an Afghan journalist, Sultan Munadi, who was killed in a rescue operation on September 09. The MCA had also asked the Taliban to apologize for the abduction.
Sultan Munadi, a 34 year-old Afghan journalist working with the New York Times, along with the NY Times’ reporter, Stephen Farrell, was abducted by the militants in the Chahar Dara district of northern Kanduz province four days prior to his death. They were visiting the site of a NATO airstrike on two captured oil tankers which had left nearly 100 people dead, several among whom were reported as civilians.
The official spokesman of the Taliban insurgents, Zabiullah Mujahdi, denied the abduction immediately after the news was out. However, a Taliban commander in the area called local journalists and took responsibility of the abduction. Mr. Farrell’s account of the four days’ abduction also clearly indicates that they were taken as hostages by the Taliban who have a strong presence in many districts of the province. On September 09, the British commandos conducted a rescue operation which saved Mr. Farrell’s life but left a British soldier, Mr. Munadi, and two Afghans dead. The rescue operation was widely criticized locally and internationally.
Though it is hard to confirm who killed Munadi, several groups of the journalists working in Afghanistan condemned his death as ‘brutal and inhumane.’ They condemned the attitude of both the Taliban militants and the international forces towards the kidnapped Afghan journalists who often get killed while their foreigner colleagues get freed, exchanged or rescued. According to Mr. Farrell’s account, Mr. Munadi had told him that their kidnappers had warned Munadi that he would be killed and the British reporter would be exchanged for prisoners.
On September 10, a newly constituted body of newsmen, the Media Club of Afghanistan (MCA) condemned the death and asked the national and international media outlets to boycott the news reports and claims provided by the Taliban for three days.
On Monday, the purported spokesman of the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, in an email sent to www.abdulhadihairan.com, questioned this decision and said they had proofs that Munadi was killed by the British commandos ‘to motivate newsmen and reporters against the Mujahedeen.’
In a detailed email written in Pashto, the spokesman said he thought these media organizations were not independent and worked for the ‘invaders.’ He claimed that the decision was symbolic and can’t affect their media campaign.
Officials in the eastern Laghman province confirmed that Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, Deputy Director of the National Directorate of Intelligence, was among the dead. Other officials killed in the attack include Head of the Provincial Council and Head of the Religious Affairs Directorate in the province, said spokesman of the provincial governor.
Initially there were reports that Provincial Governor, Lutfullah Mashal, was also killed but the spokesman rejected these as false rumors. Eyewitnesses said the bomber was on foot.
The bomber blew himself up in a ceremony held for inauguration of a central mosque in Mehtar Lam, the provincial capital. Sources said that several of the provincial officials and PRT commanders were present at the ceremony.
The spokesman said more than 20 people, including police and civilians, were killed and over 40 wounded in the attack. The purported spokesman of the Taliban insurgents, Zabiullah Mujahid, while calling from an undisclosed location, took the responsibility for the attack and said his fighters will continue carrying out more similar attacks in the future.
From twitter