Death threats to a war zone blogger – call for global help

We, his friends, need you.
First of all, read this all through.
A young guy, author of a journalistic blog about his country and its conflict, has been menaced of death by different fundamentalists.
It is months (and years) this situation has been going on – with him receiving daily threats.
However, threats became more frequent over the last weeks. This happened because he spoke up, because he chose to defend freedom of expression ideal.
His blogs have been hackered more than a time and now, since the intensification of these attacks and threats, we are afraid he could get finally killed. The whole thing sounds like a fictional movie, but it is mere reality.
We do need your help, we are seeking a way to get him out of his country for him to attend a University course. He is a good writer and photo reporter, his English skills are very good and he would love to study Journalism and Sociology.
Please, send this message around or publish it on your personal blog.
If you know anyone – person or organization – that could help with offering him a scholarship (or funding it since already found a University that could take him for a BA 3-years-course) or helping in solving the situation PLEASE DO CONTACT US.
You can contact us on this email address: spiralcultures@gmail.com

As sociologist Katz argued: “Internet has the potential to democratize the media”, and, perhaps, society. We call for a global civil society to answer this appeal.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Violence in Afghanistan is rising…

An alarming surge in suicide attacks has fuelled a 30% rise in violence in Afghanistan this year, according to the UN. This year has seen an average of 550 violent incidents a month compared with 425 in 2006, a report by the Department of Safety and Security said.

The past 10 days have been a sobering indicator of the trend – almost 300 people have died in coalition air strikes, roadside ambushes and suicide bombings.

The bloodshed is in stark contrast with Iraq, where the death rate has been steadily falling, partly due to a US troop surge. There are 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan and more than 175,000 in Iraq.

Brutality has become a hallmark of the insurgency. This week the Taliban hanged a 15-year-old boy from an electrical pole in Helmand, stuffing dollar bills into his mouth and accusing him of being a spy.

In Kabul last Saturday 30 people died after a suicide bomber boarded a bus transporting Afghan army recruits. A second attack on Tuesday killed 17 people on a police bus, including a mother and four children.

In the south, Nato and American-led forces are gaining large military victories, sometimes claiming hundreds of Taliban deaths a day. But the insurgents have adapted to the western military superiority by focusing on low-intensity, high-impact attacks in civilian areas. “The battles with western forces are incredibly lopsided. But the Taliban probably consider they are winning,” said Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation.

The UN report contradicts recent upbeat statements by President George Bush and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, in New York. Now Mr Karzai and western officials are discussing a previously unthinkable prospect – negotiation with the enemy.

Last Saturday Mr Karzai repeated his offer of talks with the Taliban’s one-eyed leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, referring to him as “esteemed” instead of the usual boilerplate “enemy of Afghanistan”. But the overture was swiftly rebuffed.

“The Taliban will never negotiate with the Afghan government in the presence of foreign troops,” spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told Associated Press. A Karzai spokesman said it was “a process that would take some time”.

Analysts say the Taliban have a two-pronged strategy: to re-establish their authority over the southern provinces around their former headquarters in Kandahar and to destabilise a ring of provinces around Kabul.

“They are trying to split Kandahar from the north,” said a western military official in the region. A senior British commander admitted to a recent visitor that Nato controlled “at most” 20% of southern Afghanistan.

Rear bases in Baluchistan in neighbouring Pakistan also play a key role. “To the degree there’s any central leadership it’s based out of Quetta,” said Mr Jones, referring to the Baluchi capital.

A western official with access to intelligence files said it was “absolutely true” that some Pakistani officials were helping the Taliban.

“There are clearly people in the ISI [intelligence agency] and the military who help out. They make it a romantic thing: the Pashtuns who haven’t been defeated since Alexander the Great,” he said.

But the official said that President General Pervez Musharraf had been a “pretty good ally” in the fight against militancy, and that the assistance to the Taliban was limited to a small number of officials.

Mr Karzai’s most urgent problem is his own lack of authority. Rampant drug smuggling and government corruption have badly eroded faith in his leadership in the worst affected areas.

“The Taliban are not particularly popular. It’s just that people are completely fed up with the government,” said Mr Jones.

Languages and politics

I am sorry to all my readers. I have been away for a while. I am back. I would like to celebrate my return with these words by George Orwell.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

NATO seeking to cut Afghan civilian casualties – they told Reuters

about time…..

BRUSSELS, July 30 (Reuters) – NATO plans more restrained tactics in its war against Taliban guerrillas, including smaller bomb loads on aircraft, in an effort to cut civilian casualties, the alliance’s head said in an interview published on Monday.
The Financial Times said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had acknowledged that mounting Afghan civilian casualties had hurt support for NATO, and had said commanders had ordered troops to hold off on attacks in some situations where civilians were at risk.
“We realise that, if we cannot neutralise our enemy today without harming civilians, our enemy will give us the opportunity tomorrow,” the paper quoted him as saying in an interview.
“If that means going after the Taliban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then.”
De Hoop Scheffer said that while it was impossible to avoid civilian casualties entirely, NATO was “working with weapons load on aircraft to reduce collateral damage”.
More than 330 civilians have been killed in operations involving foreign troops in Afghanistan this year, according to Afghan officials and Western aid workers.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has warned that the casualties could damage support for the presence of foreign forces in his country.
The Financial Times quoted a NATO diplomat as saying that using smaller bombs could cut civilian casualties. “If you put a 250 kg bomb rather than a 500 kg bomb on the plane, that could make a huge amount of difference,” the unnamed diplomat said.
The paper quoted other NATO officials as saying the alliance would increasingly leave house-to-house searches to the Afghan army to avoid confrontations.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan in the past 18 months, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban’s government in 2001.

Warlord gives up arms for politics

The Afghan warlord Hekmatyar gives up armed conflict and goes in for politics

written by Enrico Piovesana, taken from PeaceReporter.

“The Hezb-i-Islami members (the Islamic Party, editor’s note) have stopped brothers’ killing and have chosen politics instead. Americans, like English and Russians in the past, will be off. Now we must join to build a system in tune with Islam and start a political commitment in order to guarantee a quiet living and peace to our Muslim citizens”. With this statement, broadcast by a private Afghan TV, the jihad veteran Gulbuddin Hekmatyar announced his permanent abandonment of armed conflict in favour of political commitment.

A foretold turn. The decision of this powerful warlord – one of the most important, bloodthirsty and fickle characters of the recent Afghan history – has been around for months.
Already last March, during a video interview granted to Associated Press, Hekmatyar announced his permanent break-up with Talibans the almost complete stop of armed conflict and to be open to dialogue with Karzai, at the condition that the Karzai government would define an ultimate date for the withdrawals of foreign troops. Furthermore, between May and June his party, already regularly registered and with about thirty militants elected in Parliament, started opening bases all over the country – Kabul, Jalabad and Herat have been the first – and resumed the publication of its newspaper, the Shahadat (Martyrdom) with the editorial staff based in Peshawar (Pakistan).

A political challenge to Talibans. Hekmatyar, who has his strongholds in eastern provinces and in those around Kabul, tried since 2002 to build a common front with Talibans who are active in southern provinces around Kandahar. But mullah Omar always refused flatly and so during 2006 he tried to compete with the “Koranic students” playing the al Qaeda’s ace – during May 2006 he declared he received orders from Osama bin Laden – and calling the Afghan people to jihad. A disastrous strategy: for Hekmatyar’s militias was by then impossible to compete with the Taliban’s military power. Hence the decision of Hezb-i-Islami’s leader to bring the challenge to his everlasting rival, mullah Omar, on political grounds leaving his Talibans to carry out the country “Liberation” and hoping to be able to present himself as future leader of a super-Islamic, but not Taliban, Afghanistan.

Also a personal issue. Hekmatyar, who is as good as the Talibans when it comes to fundamentalism and disdain for human rights, is competing with mullah Omar since when Pakistan and US intelligence services, after having generously financed him during the anti-Soviet jihad in the 80s, decided to bet on the Talibans instead of Hezb-i-Islami to take control of Afghanistan. On February 14th, 1995, mullah Omar’s army attacked and harshly defeated Hekmatyar forces that were besieging and bombing Kabul from his strongholds in Charasayab and Maidanshahr.
Hekmatyar escaped to Iran where he stayed until 2002, when he was expelled by the government as a troublesome visitor. An humiliation that “the engineer” – as he was named after because his academic studies before the war – always wanted to be redeemed from, trying to steal the scene to mullah Omar. Without ever succeeding.

30 or 120 deads?

My google alerts this morning told me that the victims of a NATO raid were 30. Apparently, local people counted 120 deads.

Written by Cecilia Strada, taken by Kabul – 120 dead, say villages’ people, perhaps more, in the most violent NATO air raid. The massacre took place in Ghor, in the southern province of Helmand.
A nurse of the NGO Emergency said that this could be the worse massacre of civilians of the last years of the war. He said: “That were people escaping, they fired on people escaping.”
He added: “It happened in our district, in Ghor village, close Hayderabat”
“Friday, people of Ghor saw british troops arriving, and saw the movements of soldiers. They feared the would be squeezed between NATO and Taliban fights, they took cars, tracks and burubakhair, and they left. However, while they were leaving nato planes arrived and started bombing. They fired on the cars – it was a massacre of 120 deads.”
Civil victims have been confirmed by a spokesman of NATO, who told to be very sad by the dead of civilians who are always trapped between non moral Taliban military actions and NATO answers.
Lask week Grishk distric was theatre of another massacre. NATO raid had killed 25 people, 9 women and many children.
Emergency’s nurse said: “They were all civilians too. People from the closest village had taken them on cars to show them in the capital town of the district. They wanted to show them what NATO bombs do.”
However, Afghan soldiers had stop them and did not allow them to reach Grishk.
One of the people from the village took a video and gave it to TV; in the night everyone allover the country could see that massacre.”

Even in Kabul people are commenting about todays facts. An old guy, Said, said: “Hanim, teflin, baba!They were all women and children!All civilians under the bombs”
“Now Karzai will say some words just to protest a bit, good just for TV, till a new massacre will take place.”

Free, at last

taken from peacereporter written by Cecilia Strada

Afghanistan – Kabul – 19.6.2007
Rahmatullah Hanefi is a free man again. At 4 p.m. afghan time, he got out of the prison door

Kabul. Rahmatullah Hanefi is again a free man. Today at 4 p.m, on a sunny afternoon, Rahmatullah got out of the door of the Investigation Department 17. Exhaustion in his eyes, dressed in a white shawar kameez. “Salam Rahmat!”.
“How are you?” asks Gino Strada, who went to collect him at the prison. “Alive”, answers in pashtu. Then, in italian, he adds: “I’m fine”.
A quick hug, then they hurry to the Emergency staff facilities. There, they wait anxiously, after preparing festoons with red plastic roses.

“He’s here with us, he’s free”: Gino Strada hastily communicates the news to the headquarters of Emergency in Milan. From the other side of the wire, shouts and applauses are heard. Abdullah, Rahmat’s cousin, dials the number of their home in Lashkar-Gah, in the heart of Helmand province, in the last months the epicentre of the war. He hands the phone to Rahmat who, after three months, can speak to his wife. Emergency facilities are close to the hospital of the Ngo, in the central Shar-e-naw street. When the cars arrive, green tea is already on the table, together with raisins and toasted almonds.

Rahmat’s beard is very short. He smiles and sighs, while drinking a tonic water and calling home again. Gino Strada is radiant: “It’s a beautiful day, a day of joy, not only for Rahmat and Emergency, but also, I believe, for many afghans and italians”.

After three months of anxiety and fear, the situation has come to a turning point last saturday. Rahmat’s family and colleagues smile. Adjmal Hodman, the attorney who handled the case of Emergency manager, has received the sentence from the attorney general: acquitted of all charges. In Afghanistan it’s an outburst of ‘Allah i karim’, god is merciful; in Italy the corks of sparkling wine pop up. Gino Strada leavese the heart surgery center in Khartoum, bound to Kabul. Then the wait begins again. “Only a signature on the prisone leave paper is missing”, says the attorney. Rahmat spends another night in the hospital of the afghan security, where he had been admitted for a kidney failure.

Sunday morning, under a pall of smog, Kabul starts its day with a blast. An explosion hits a bus full of afghan police in the town centre: it’s the second attack in two days. At least thirtyfive casualties, many policemen and many civilians. Tens of injured. There’s traffic in town, the atmosphere is tense: it’s the worse attack in the capital since the beginning of this war. Meanwhile, in Emergency facilities a phone call is awaited. Rahmat’s cousin keeps lifting the wristband of his white shawar kameez to check the time: it seems the watch goes too slow. Hodman the attorney sits composed, dressed in a dark green western suit, some white hair in his pitch black beard. Time goes by, tens of green tea cups are drunk, the cofee-machine is working all the time. Gino Strada smokes and speaks continuously on the phone, trying to understand at what stage is the whole bureaucratic procedure of prints, letters, signatures. The Emergency facilities are a microcosm of afghan, pashtun, pajshiri, hazara. The most loyal are ready to welcome Rahmat, but the telephone is not ringing. In the first hours of the afternoon, some blasts are heard instead. “Did you hear? Two rockets.. three, four”: Koko Jalil numbers the explosion pointin his finger towards east. Other phone calls. “The Attorney general put his signature, now it’s the turn of the security chief: another postponement, and the last hours of wait make everyone nervous, now that the matter seems to be coming to an end. The sun sets, and Rahmatullah is not out yet: fardò, they say, tomorrw. Fardò, inshallah.

Monday, same story. The procedures should be close to an end, only the president’s signature is missing. More green tea, more cigarettes, more phone calls to check if there’s a problem. “How long do they take to put a signature?” is the question rebounding here and there, mostly to let out the anxiety instead of getting a proper reply. “The Cabinet is on course”, they say, “the president might be busy…”. “As long as another day doesn’t expire: it’s three o’ clock, and if they are still long to sign, it will get dark soon…”. In town, they comment on the massacre of children in the madrasa of Paktika, in the east. Rahmat stops looking at the watch: it’s dark again. Let’s talk about it again tomorrow”.