tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14435569111197448992024-03-15T18:12:03.188-07:00Mountains of our Minds - AfghanistanBob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-26743449064794177702015-02-18T21:19:00.000-08:002015-02-18T21:20:24.398-08:00Afghan cricket steps onto the world stage.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I first saw cricket played in the streets of Jalalabad in 1994
when I was working in Afghanistan. It didn’t surprise me for I knew that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afghanistan<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>played<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hockey in the 1956
Olympics which showed the strong influence of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>leading sports in Pakistan and India, on their country.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2UFTdDU8TWoJFOsVMcPAiAdBbLQcMEYSxd9vr0mTfF-AOLRsTPhwgPS8RGqOH1ETAPvYx29wSIxdxL6w1LmHlpSoqH86vd08L12U8axl0hyYD8jegL6UJErwDNuJiYWWRIZqzL9cr0gu/s1600/afghan+crick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL2UFTdDU8TWoJFOsVMcPAiAdBbLQcMEYSxd9vr0mTfF-AOLRsTPhwgPS8RGqOH1ETAPvYx29wSIxdxL6w1LmHlpSoqH86vd08L12U8axl0hyYD8jegL6UJErwDNuJiYWWRIZqzL9cr0gu/s1600/afghan+crick.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a><br />
<b>Hamid Hassan could have had a wicket in the third over of their first World Cup match, if Afghanistan had been quicker to adapt to DRS <span class="copyright">© Getty Images</span>
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While I was living in Kabul during a period of total anarchy, I read in the
Peshawar newspapers that the Afghan Cricket Federation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>came into being and later became an affiliate
member of the ICC in 2001 and a member of the Asia Cricket Council in 2003. I was deeply moved and impressed by the article written by by<span class="name" itemprop="name"> Will Davies on February 17 2015, in the Wall street Journal which I copy below:</span>
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<a href="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-CO079_AFCRIC_J_20150217132454.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Afghan shopkeepers in Kabul watch a broadcast of a Cricket World Cup match." border="0" data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-CO079_AFCRIC_M_20150217132454.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-CO079_AFCRIC_P_20150217132454.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-CO079_AFCRIC_J_20150217132454.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/AI-CO079_AFCRIC_J_20150217132454.jpg" height="265" title="Afghan shopkeepers in Kabul watch a broadcast of a Cricket World Cup match." width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="wsj-article-headline" itemprop="headline" style="text-align: left;">
<span class="wsj-article-caption-content">Afghan shopkeepers in Kabul watch a broadcast of a Cricket World Cup match.</span>
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<h1 class="wsj-article-headline" itemprop="headline">
Afghans Find Passion in the Cricket World Cup</h1>
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For Afghanistan, the Cricket World Cup is a big stage, one that inspires hope among a war-weary people</h2>
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<span class="wsj-article-caption-content"></span><span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator"></span>Wednesday is a proud day for Afghanistan
as the country makes its first appearance in the Cricket World Cup.The
rise of Afghan cricket is astonishing. Two decades ago, the sport was
virtually unknown to Afghans. But in the midst of war, a love of cricket
somehow developed. A governing body was formed. Now, 11 Afghan men will
don the blue national team jersey and step out on the Manuka Oval in
Canberra in front of a capacity crowd and an Afghan television audience
of millions.“It is exciting, the start of the World Cup.
Everyone is waiting back home, the whole nation is waiting for the
match,” Afghanistan’s captain Mohammad Nabi said.Like some of
his teammates, Nabi learned to play cricket in a refugee camp near
Peshawar, Pakistan, where his family fled during Afghanistan’s war with
the Soviet Union. He is now ranked as the world’s eighth best
all-rounder, meaning he bats and bowls. He has scored more than 1,000
runs for his country.Some of those runs came in an October 2013 qualifying match against Kenya, when Nabi top-scored, <a class="icon none" href="http://http/blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/10/04/afghanistan-qualifies-for-cricket-world-cup/" target="_blank">helping Afghanistan book a place </a>in
this World Cup. Afghanistan has featured in international cricket
tournaments before, including the World Twenty20, but the World Cup is
the sport’s marquee event.Ahead of the Cricket World Cup in
Australia and New Zealand, The WSJ’s Will Davies puts on some pads and
tries to explain how the old English sport is played.
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Afghanistan has made progress in other major sports such as
soccer. The country, which is 144th in the FIFA world rankings, won the
South Asian Football Championship in 2013 with a <a class="icon none" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/09/12/afghanistan-wins-south-asia-football-title/" target="_self">2-0 win over India</a>
in the final in Katmandu. It also has an Olympic medalist in Rohullah
Nikpai, who won bronze in taekwondo at the 2008 Games in Beijing and in
London in 2012. <br />
For Afghanistan, the Cricket World Cup is a big
stage, one that inspires hope among a war-weary people. In Kabul, young
men gather to play cricket on muddy grounds covered with garbage,
longing for something to look up to. <br />
“I am so proud that
Afghanistan will be playing in the World Cup for the first time,” said
Abdul Manan, a 15-year-old who aspires to be a professional cricketer.
“I won’t miss a second of the game. Afghanistan will be playing
alongside the world’s strongest cricket nations.” <br />
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<img alt="Afghanistan's Afsar Khan Zazai plays a shot in front of India's Mahendra Singh Dhoni during a World Cup warm-up cricket match." data-enlarge="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-GZ558_afcric_M_20150217153303.jpg" data-in-at4units-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-GZ558_afcric_P_20150217153303.jpg" data-in-base-src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-GZ558_afcric_P_20150217153303.jpg" data-intent="" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-GZ558_afcric_P_20150217153303.jpg" height="266" title="Afghanistan's Afsar Khan Zazai plays a shot in front of India's Mahendra Singh Dhoni during..." width="400" /> <span class="image-enlarge"></span><b><span class="wsj-article-caption-content"> </span></b></div>
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<b><span class="wsj-article-caption-content">Afghanistan's Afsar Khan Zazai plays a shot in front of India's Mahendra Singh Dhoni during a World Cup warm-up cricket match.</span>
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Cricket has become the most popular sport in Afghanistan.
Nisar, a worker at a sports shop in Kabul who goes by only one name,
said sales of Afghanistan cricket team shirts have rocketed in recent
weeks. He is now selling 30 to 40 a day.The Afghanistan Cricket
Board even has a department dedicated to women’s cricket, though
progress there is slower. “The ACB…is striving to ensure that young
women and girls are able to enjoy and participate in the game. This
development, however, must necessarily take place in the context of a
traditional culture and history,” the board says, adding that the
women’s game must display “great sensitivity, discretion and diplomacy.Afghanistan
on Wednesday faces Bangladesh, a so-called full member of the
International Cricket Council. That means it also plays test cricket—the
five-day version of the game—placing it among the elite cricket
nations. Until 2000, Bangladesh was an associate member, as Afghanistan
is today.Bangladesh made its World Cup debut in 1999 and has
caused upsets over giants such as Pakistan, England, India, South Africa
and the West Indies. Bangladesh is ranked ninth in the one-day
international cricket rankings. Afghanistan is 12th, but is capable of
beating Bangladesh, as it did in the Asia Cup last March, the only
previous meeting between the two.“They (Afghanistan) are a good
team, it should be a really good match,” said former player Sunil
Gavaskar, one of India’s greatest batsmen and a member of the team that
won the 1983 World Cup. “It is great for cricket they are involved,” he
told The Wall Street Journal.Other teams in Afghanistan’s group include 2011 finalist Sri
Lanka, England and co-hosts New Zealand and Australia. Afghanistan plays
Australia on the rapid surface of the WACA in Perth, where fast bowlers
such as Mitchell Johnson will likely give Afghanistan players the test
of their cricketing lives. </div>
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<b> In their first game in the Cricket World Cup, the Afghan cricketers showed their passion for the game.</b></div>
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“The players are very excited. They
feel a real genuine honor to be here and they want to do well for the
public back home,” Afghanistan’s coach, Andy Moles, said Tuesday.<br />
“Bangladesh is a full member side. We respect them, but we’re certainly not scared of them,” the Englishman added.<br />
Canberra
couldn’t be further removed from Kabul and the camp near Peshawar where
Nabi learned to play cricket. The match on Wednesday is the first of
three that the quiet, clean Australian capital will host during the
World Cup. The Manuka Oval is a picturesque ground with grass banks for
spectators, in addition to the stands.<br />
The scene will surely
please Taj Malik, Afghanistan’s former coach and the man credited for
much of the nation’s rise in cricket. Malik’s role with Afghanistan is
dramatized in the 2010 documentary “Out of the Ashes,” which follows the
country’s attempt to qualify for the 2011 World Cup in the
Subcontinent.<br />
In an opening scene in a bus traveling through the
hectic streets of Kabul, Malik turns to the camera and says: “There is a
lot of problems in the world today. Everywhere there is conflict,
fighting and injustices happening. The solution of all the problems
is…cricket.”<br />
—Margherita Stancati in Kabul contributed to this article. </div>
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Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-50999711826268467432012-09-09T02:00:00.000-07:002012-09-09T02:00:02.124-07:00Sustaining peace after war, Afghanistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ShiZPFATabOoLH54KZbKQaJf1YZEAsxRPkCuLByaNaLhhTnET58p15l2-eHrsxTOq9HQKN_qFpnGmoFVJNvz-965SM1iXK0w0ioLC0GhiEj3-h7_SVcpJXl8-V4pgnTdFWJNRzlhF51v/s1600/kabul+winter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ShiZPFATabOoLH54KZbKQaJf1YZEAsxRPkCuLByaNaLhhTnET58p15l2-eHrsxTOq9HQKN_qFpnGmoFVJNvz-965SM1iXK0w0ioLC0GhiEj3-h7_SVcpJXl8-V4pgnTdFWJNRzlhF51v/s400/kabul+winter.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<strong>Kabul in winter, 1996. photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Over the years I have been saying that the US and its allies should have taken note of of the many thousands of years of recorded history on Afghanitsan to make sure they don't repeat mistakes made by other occupying powers.<br />
<br />
I was fascinated by the article I attach below written by Jonathan Power, foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune. I hope the leaders of countries with troops in Afghanistan read and understand this advice.<br />
<br />
<em>When it comes to creating a peace in Afghanistan sufficient for the US and NATO to pull their troops out with some degree of confidence in the country’s future stability history offers conflicting lessons. </em><br />
<br />
<em>The mantra is that war-shattered states must be guided into a liberal democracy and a market-orientated economic system. </em><br />
<br />
<em>Yet there is much evidence that the process of political and economic liberalisation can sometimes do more harm than good in states that have just emerged from civil war. Liberalisation doesn’t always foster peace. Both democracy and capitalism are built on a paradox- the notion that societal competition can limit inter-communal competition and dampen conflict.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Last week’s peaceful if biased election in Angola is a reminder of the 1992 election meant to end the civil war. In fact it polarised the combatants’ political parties even more and rekindled the fighting.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Liberalisation did not help Rwanda avoid the genocide of 1994. The partial liberalisation of the popular media following the Arusha Declaration helped reignite the conflict. The growth of a vibrant but irresponsible anti-government press appeared to reinforce the desire of the extremists of the ruling Hutus not to share power with the Tutsis nor to allow the promised elections to proceed.</em><br />
<br />
<em>In Bosnia political liberalisation seems to have worked against the goal of building a lasting peace. The Dayton accords, signed in November 1995, mandated elections. But the elections in the following year consolidated the power of extremists and nationalists, reinforcing the country’s division into separate ethnic conclaves. </em><br />
<br />
<em>In Central America following peace agreements that led to elections in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala it has been economic rather than political liberalisation that has caused destabilising effects. </em><br />
<br />
<em>In El Salvador there has been a sharp increase in criminal violence giving it the world’s highest murder rate with a greater number of deaths than in the civil war. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank initiated in return for future help a fast purge of subsidies, public ownership, trade barriers and high government spending and employment. Realing from the effects of war this was the coup de grace, hitting disproportionately hard the rural poor and the urban working class. Unemployment shot up. Income distribution, the general welfare of the society (longevity, infant mortality etc) and poverty worsened. Crime took over.</em><br />
<br />
<em>In Nicaragua the imposed “structural adjustment” in 1990 led to a 50% drop in wages and a 30% drop in per capita food consumption. The 90s became a “lost decade”. At the time the newly deregulated financial and export sectors thrived but only helped a small proportion of the population. Reduced government spending made it difficult for the government to fulfil its war-ending promises of land reform and increased credit and agricultural aid. Crime increased sharply. An editorial in the New York Times in March 1990 made the point that “Central America’s warring nations have essentially returned to the conditions of misery and inequality that caused the wars to begin with.”</em><br />
<br />
<em>Nevertheless, there are examples, such as Angola and Mozambique, where peace has broken out after harsh civil wars and has been sustained. </em><br />
<br />
<em>There are two reasons. Both countries are neighbours of South Africa. South Africa was the puppeteer of the wars and once it forsook that role the countries more easily turned to peace than the Central American ones. </em><br />
<br />
<em>The second explanation is the economic benefits they obtained from bordering South Africa. This gave them the much needed foreign investment which financed massive industrial and infrastructure projects and gave their economies a boost during the precarious, early period of economic reform. Both countries have had a fast rate of economic growth. </em><br />
<br />
<em>Third, they were ruled by strong men. In Angola’s case by a relatively benign dictator, Jose dos Santos, who last week finally asked for a popular mandate; in Mozambique’s case through continuous elections that gave enormous power for 19 years to a popular leader, Joaquim Chissano.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We learn from all these case studies- Mozambique is an exception- that in many situations both severe economic reform and elections should be delayed until poverty-reducing programmes and cross-factional political parties and media institutions are more solidly established. Successful candidates should also be required to win a minimum level of support from each of the warring groups. (In presidential votes in Nigeria aspirants have to win not only a majority but at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of the 19 states.) International lenders and financial institutions need to give more resources to improving income distribution and sustaining social programmes. This should come before or at the same time as “pruning” takes place.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We must learn from history and not make the same mistakes when negotiating and implementing the end of other bitter conflicts, including Afghanistan. It should not be forgotten that when Germany and Japan were defeated in the Second World War the allies enforced sensitive social and politically aware reforms. They seem to have lost their touch.</em><br />
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Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-8482300132814572322012-04-30T21:34:00.000-07:002012-04-30T21:36:52.384-07:00Reflections on a Red Cross colleague murdered in Pakistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What a brutal end to the life of a Red Cross colleague and friend. I struggle for words to describe one of the most callous acts of brutality I have read or seen on a harmless Red Cross (ICRC) worker in Quetta, a man providing health services to the poorest of the poor. When I worked in Afghanistan for the Red Cross (IFRC) between 1993 and 1996, I met with Khalil a few times and admired the outstanding health work he was doing with the ICRC. Professional, private, warm and dedicated is how I remember him.<br />
His close friend <a href="http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2012/04/29/in-memory-of-khalil-dale-my-gentle-compassionate-tolerant-friend-rip-290401/">Nick Harris wrote this moving piece about him.</a><br />
<br />
<em>I have been trying for much of the day, and failing, to write a proper tribute to Khalil Dale, my friend of 23 years, murdered in Pakistan.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We were at university together, shared a flat, played football (I persuaded him just the twice, he was even more rubbish than me), listened to the Stone Roses.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Some of the reports about his death have got details wrong. He wasn’t from Yemen, for example. He was a Manc. Many of his friends still know him as Ken; he converted to Islam decades ago and changed his name then.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We were both at the University of London (SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies), on the same course.</em><br />
<br />
<em>He was a mature student, late 30s at the time. He’d already spent years in war zones and famine regions: Iran, where he’d been tortured; Ethiopia; Kenya.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We were going to save the world, Khalil and me and Zia, who was the one who called me first thing this morning and said: ‘Nick, they’ve killed him.’</em><br />
<br />
<em>Khalil was working in Quetta in Pakistan for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) when he was taken off the street by unknown captors in January.</em><br />
<br />
<em>As soon as I heard of the kidnap, I called his mobile and left him a message, as if it might help.</em><br />
<br />
<em>I sent him another message on Facebook on the same day, 5 January. ‘Khalil man, call me when you escape. Rooting for you. N’.</em><br />
<br />
<em>We all hoped we’d hear from him. We couldn’t talk about him, for various reasons relating to the highly sensitive efforts to try to get him back alive.</em><br />
<br />
<em>I knew it might end badly. But I really didn’t expect it to be this brutal.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Khalil knew it could be. He’d been in some hairy scrapes before; Kalashnikov-toting bandits, Somali warlords, mujahideen.</em><br />
<br />
<em>You wouldn’t know if you met him that he had this inner steel. He was such a slight, gentle, compassionate, tolerant man. Unless you got him on the subject of Margaret Thatcher.</em><br />
<br />
A short time ago the International Committee of the Red Cross has spoken of its attempts to free kidnapped UK aid worker Khalil Dale before he was murdered.<br />
<br />
The 60-year-old was kidnapped in Quetta, Pakistan, in January. His body was found in the same town on Sunday. <br />
<br />
ICRC spokesman Sean Maguire said it had been in touch with his abductors "a number of times".<br />
<br />
Pakistan expert Professor Shaun Gregory said such a killing was "actually quite rare" in that country.<br />
<br />
Mr Maguire also said the death of Mr Dale, who was a Muslim convert, would weigh heavily on his colleagues. "It's a complex political reality on the ground in Pakistan," he said. "We're certainly not identifying who we were in touch with. <br />
<br />
"Often in these sorts of places people say they are something and it turns out that they're not quite what they say they are. <br />
<br />
"So we have to sift through the information; we have and try to come to understand what has happened and take what lessons there are to be learnt. <br />
<br />
"But his death will weigh heavily on colleagues working in Pakistan and colleagues working in headquarters who ultimately make the decisions about who goes where and who does what."<br />
<br />
I was sitting by the swimming pool late yesterday afternoon and flicking throught twitter and I got this news on AFP.<br />
<br />
<em> QUETTA, Pakistan - The body of a British Red Cross worker held captive in Pakistan since January was found in an orchard Sunday, his throat slit and a note attached to his body saying he was killed because no ransom was paid, police said.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Khalil Rasjed Dale, 60, was managing a health program in the city of Quetta in southwestern Pakistan when armed men seized him from a street close to his office. The identities of his captors are unknown, but the region is home to separatist and Islamist militants who have kidnapped for ransom before.</em><br />
<br />
<em>The director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross condemned the "barbaric act."</em><br />
<br />
<em>"All of us at the ICRC and at the British Red Cross share the grief and outrage of Khalil's family and friends," said Yves Daccord.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Dale's throat had been slit, according to Safdar Hussain, a doctor who examined the body.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Quetta police chief Ahsan Mahboob said the note attached to it read: "This is the body of Khalil who we have slaughtered for not paying a ransom."</em><br />
<br />
<em>Militants and criminal gangs often kidnap wealthy Pakistanis and less commonly, foreigners.</em><br />
<br />
<em>British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned Dale's killing, and said "tireless efforts" had been under way to secure his release after he was kidnapped.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Khalil had worked for the Red Cross for years, carrying out assignments in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the group said.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, lies close to the Afghan border and for decades has hosted thousands of refugees from that country. The Red Cross operates clinics in the city that treat people wounded in the war in Afghanistan, including Taliban insurgents.</em><br />
<br />
<em>A Pakistani foreign office statement condemned the crime, promising to bring its perpetrators to justice. However, arrests for this type of crime are rare.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Much of Baluchistan and the tribal regions close to Afghanistan are out of Pakistani government control, and make good places to keep hostages. Large ransoms are often paid to secure their release, but such payments are rarely confirmed.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Two Pakistani intelligence officials in Quetta said they were investigating whether this could be the work of the Pakistani Taliban. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.</em><br />
<br />
<em>There are at least four other foreigners being held in Pakistan.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Last August, a 70-year-old American humanitarian aid worker was kidnapped from his house in the Punjabi city of Lahore. Al-Qaida claimed to be holding the man, Warren Weinstein, and said in a video he would be released if the United States stopped airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.</em><br />
<br />
<em>In March, a Swiss couple held captive for eight months by the Taliban turned up at an army checkpoint close to the Afghan border. Insurgents have claimed a large ransom was paid to secure their freedom. That has not been confirmed by Pakistani or Swiss authorities, who are unlikely to acknowledge it even if they did.</em><br />
<br />
<em>The couple was kidnapped in Baluchistan.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Also Sunday, American missiles killed three suspected Islamist militants sheltering in an abandoned school in North Waziristan, said intelligence officials, who did not give their names because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Pakistan's government strongly condemned the attack. In a statement, it said such attacks violate international law and Pakistan's "territorial integrity and sovereignty."</em><br />
<br />
<em>The strike comes as the U.S. is trying to rebuild its relationship with Pakistan, which opposes the missile attacks and has demanded they stop. The frequency of the attacks, which critics say kill innocents and energize the insurgency, has dropped dramatically this year.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Associated Press Writer Rasool Dawar in Peshawar contributed to this report</em><br />
<br />
I put the news on facebook yesterday some of his friends put their comments on: .<br />
<br />
John Roche: "<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">an old colleague slained leaves me in shock."</span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Tony Maryon: "<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Very very sad news. Khalid was a member of my Federation team based in Baghdad in the mid nineties. Sincere condolences to his family." </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><a class="actorName" data-ft="{" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1081726836" href="http://www.facebook.com/schellbernd" type?:35,?tn?:?;?}?="">Bernd Schell</a> " <span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">I remember well an assessment mission with him to Iraq, he was such a committed and gentle guy, so sad to get this news."</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">John LaPointe: "<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">I'm just left speechless. My anger against people who would do such a thing knows no bounds. And neither does my sadness for his family, friends and colleagues"</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Tragically, the Afghanistan and the Pakistan border area has seen the death of a number of Red Cross workers. New Zealander Jock Sutherland was killed in late 1992 in Karabagh Pakistan, an Icelandic Red Cross delegate Jon Karlsson working for the ICRC was killed in Maiden Shah on April 12, 1992, and Ricardo </span><span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">Munguia (39), ICRC water engineer, was shot dead in southern Afghanistan on 27 March 2003 when I was visiting from Delhi, and was in Kabul the day later to receive his body. During my time in Afghanistan 1993-96, at least five Afghan Red Crescent workers/volunteers were killed in the course of their work.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">In addition, two colleagues I worked with in Afghanistan, Sheryl Thayer from New Zealand and , Reto Neuenschwander from Switzerland, were murdered in Chechnya and Congo in 1996.</span><br />
<br />
I know the Quetta landscape well having travelled from Kandahar (one of the oldest settlements in the world) to Chaman and Quetta a number of times, and can imagine Khalil being quite happy until his abduction. The last 3 or so months must have been a traumatic trial for him.<br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text">After the death of colleagues there is a mixed feeling of grieving, sadness and often anger as you ask why? I found this article very helpful to understand the current terror and abduction that is going on in Pakistan.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="commentBody" data-jsid="text"><strong>Pakistan: Terror By Abduction – Analysis</strong></span><br />
By Ambreen Agha<br />
<br />
Terrorist and extremist outfits in Pakistan have deepened their involvement in organised crimes, particularly including abduction-for-ransom and extortion, both to increase revenues and to push various illegitimate demands. A rampage of both high and low profile abductions across the country has provided the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Haqqani Network, the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, along with their various affiliates, with new ‘resources’ to fuel their politically and religiously motivated ‘jihad’, both within the country, and against the West and other ‘infidel’ states. According to information retrieved from slain al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, for instance, al Qaeda in Pakistan had turned to abduction-for-ransom to offset dwindling cash reserves.<br />
<br />
Reports indicate that all of Pakistan’s provinces are now under attack from armed abductors, with women and children, becoming the easiest targets. A report published by the Human Rights Commission South Asia (HRCSA) on February 19, 2012, estimated that some 7,000 children had been abducted in 2011 and, of this total, the largest number belonged to Karachi (Sindh). The report noted that kidnappings noticeably increased in 2011.<br />
<br />
<strong>Pakistan</strong><br />
<br />
The Citizens Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) has suggested military operations in militant strongholds have a trickledown effect, spurring abductions and extortion in other parts of the country, with particular focus on Karachi, one of Pakistan’s most volatile cities, owing to the sophisticated network of jihadi and criminal gangs in the country’s commercial capital. Similarly, Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) Director Amir Rana argues that Pakistan’s ‘military successes’ in tribal areas have “probably led to resources becoming closed for TTP, and smaller groups that affiliate themselves with the TTP and al Qaeda might be responsible for raising resources in cities across Pakistan, including Karachi.”<br />
<br />
The problem, however, goes way beyond Karachi. A March 22, 2012, media report indicated a swift rise in the number of abductions-for-ransom in the Lahore District of Punjab Province. According to the figures available in the report, at least 400 cases of abduction had been registered in the District in 2012, till March 20. Some 2,954 abductions were reported in 2011, while 2010 saw 2,831 abductions. The CPLC categorised the abduction gangs in Lahore into two groups – those operating from southern Punjab and affiliated with various terrorist outfits and others gangs operating principally on criminal-financial motives.<br />
<br />
Similarly, a fact finding report compiled by the Balochistan National Party-Awami (BNP-Awami), highlighting the plight of the Baloch people, released on March 22, 2012, alleged that as many as 1,047 people had been abducted in the Province over the preceding four years. Provincial Agriculture Minister Asadullah Baloch of BNP-Awami observed, “Abduction for ransom has become a lucrative business in Balochistan and people are joining this business en masse as Police and Law Enforcement Agencies have failed to book a single culprit.” There are also strong charges of political and establishment collusion in this rash of abductions and, on March 20, 2012, during the Balochistan Assembly session, provincial Ministers demanded that Home Minister Mir Zafarullah Zehri and the law enforcement agencies disclose the names of Ministers allegedly involved in abductions in the Province.<br />
<br />
According to partial data compiled by South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 664 persons were abducted between January 1, 2010, and April 8, 2012. 2010 recorded 242 abductions, 2011 and 2012 witnessed 328 and 94 respectively. During this period, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) witnessed the highest number of abductions (251) followed by Balochistan (183), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (179), Sindh (43) and Punjab (8). These figures are likely to be a sever under-estimate, as lesser incidents of abduction, involving low profile individuals and small numbers, have become quotidian occurrences, and often go unreported.<br />
<br />
The state’s negligence and complicity have led the entrenchment of major criminal- militant combines and their lesser affiliates. A January 2012 report by journalist Zia-ur-Rehman noted that the enforcement agencies in Karachi had discovered that several previously unknown militant outfits operating in the city were linked to TTP, and these provided access to local level logistics and manpower support to Pakistan’s major domestic terrorism combine. The head of Karachi’s Anti-Extremism Cell (AEC) Chowdhry Aslam, disclosed that one such group, al Mukhtar, basically a splinter cell of TTP’s Badar Mansoor group, was specially deployed in Karachi to collect extortion funds, carry out bank heists and abductions-for-ransom, as well as for terrorist activities and attacks. Sources in CPLC noted that abduction for ransom had become an easiest way to collect large sums of money.<br />
<br />
The terrorists have also found their targets among foreigners in the country, as well as across international borders, in Afghanistan. A huge ransom was paid in Pakistan, for instance, for the release of two French journalists, Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, who were abducted on December 30, 2009, by the Qari Baryal Afghan Taliban faction in Afghanistan’s Kapisa Province. An Afghan Taliban militant close to the group’s central command revealed, on condition of anonymity, “A ransom was paid — an enormous amount — millions of dollars. The money was handed over in Pakistan.” Significantly, the Haqqani Network and the Afghan Taliban work in close collaboration with TTP, both to launch terror attacks and in activities like abduction-for-ransom.<br />
<br />
Similarly, on July 1, 2011, TTP abducted a Swiss couple, Olivier David Och and Daniela Widmar, coming from Dera Ghazi Khan District in Punjab towards Quetta, Balochistan’s provincial capital, in the Killi Nigah area in Loralai District. The couple was taken to the neighbouring South Waziristan Agency of FATA. TTP ‘deputy chief’ Waliur Rehman demanded they be exchanged for Pakistani scientist, Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the US. On March 15, 2012, the Swiss couple was reported to have ‘escaped’ from captivity. However, a March 30, 2012, media report claimed that a massive ransom of PKR 1 billion was paid to the abductors for the release of the two Swiss tourists.<br />
<br />
Several cases involving foreigners, moreover, remain currently unresolved. The most significant among these include:<br />
<br />
January 19, 2012: Two Europeans, identified as Giovanni and Bernd, working with the Welthungerhilfe, a German International Non-Governmental Organisation for food rehabilitation, were abducted from Western Fort Colony of Qasim Bela area in Multan District of Punjab while returning from Kot Addu tehsil of Muzaffargarh District. The TTP claimed responsibility for the abduction and said that the two were being kept hostage near the Afghan border. Punjab Police Inspector General (IG) Javed Iqbal claimed that the aid workers were being held for ransom.<br />
<br />
January 5, 2012: Unidentified militants abducted a British official of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), identified as Doctor Khalil Ahmed Dale, from the Chaman Housing Society in Quetta. Later, the Police arrested up to 50 suspects for questioning in connection to the abduction, but to no avail.<br />
<br />
August 13, 2011: An American aid expert, identified as Warren Weinstein, was abducted after unidentified assailants stormed through the backdoor of his house in the Model Town area of Lahore and overpowered his guards. On March 16, 2012, al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri declared, “He (Weinstein) will not return to his family, by the will of Allah, until our demands are met, which include the release of Aafia Siddiqui, Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, the family of Shaikh Osama bin Laden, and every single person arrested on allegations of links with al Qaeda and Taliban.”<br />
<br />
Currently unresolved cases of abduction include two prominent Pakistanis as well.<br />
<br />
August 26, 2011: Shahbaz Taseer, son of assassinated Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, was kidnapped in broad daylight by armed abductors from Lahore District. Accusing TTP of being behind the crime, his brother Sheryar Taseer told the media a day after the abduction, “Our family has been receiving threats from the Taliban and extremist groups.” On October 17, 2011, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that the abductors were keeping Shahbaz Taseer in areas near the Pak-Afghan border and that he was alive. No demand letter has been received and his whereabouts are still not known. It is believed that Shahbaz Taseer is being held to force the family to accept a token financial compensation under Pakistan’s (Islamic) Diyyat law, so that the death sentence against his father’s assassin, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, is not executed.<br />
<br />
September 7, 2010: Doctor Ajmal Khan, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of the University of Peshawar, was abducted by TTP. Several videos have been released over the long period of one and half years, including footage of the VC making appeals for an acceptance of Taliban demands for his release, the latest of which was released on March 7, 2012. In response, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain stated that the Government was ready to concede the “just demands” of the TTP, but could not accept “unjust demands”, adding that conceding at this point would only encourage abductors to ‘lift’ more people for ransom, or for the fulfillment of other demands.<br />
<br />
Abduction with the motive of fulfilling demands, other than the payment of ransom, is another facet of the rising current trend. In one of the most prominent incidents of this nature, the TTP faction led by Maulana Faqir Muhammad abducted 30 children, on September 1, 2011, from the Mamoond tehsil of Bajaur Agency in FATA. The children were held against demands which included the release of women and children languishing in various Pakistani prisons, ending state instigation of tribesmen to form anti-TTP lashkars (tribal militia), and the disbanding of such lashkars and ‘peace committees’ in the Bajaur Agency of FATA. On October 30, 2011, two boys, identified as Amanullah and Abdullah, managed to escape and returned home more than 40 days after being abducted. Subsequently, after holding them captive for another three months, on January 4, 2012, TTP released 17 boys. Bajaur Administration official Islam Zeb noted, “Today, Taliban has released 17 of them; some 8-10 are yet in their custody.”<br />
<br />
More worryingly, children have been abducted to create ‘a trained breed of jihadis’, and to serve as ‘live bombs’. The US State Department report, Trafficking in Persons, dated June 27, 2011, also noted that militant groups in Pakistan used children to act as spies, to fight and to carry out suicide bombings: “Non-state militant groups abduct children or coerce parents with fraudulent promises into giving away children as young as 12, to spy, fight, or die as suicide bombers in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” The report also noted that militants often sexually and physically abuse the children and use psychological coercion to convince them that the acts they commit are justified. In one such case, on June 20, 2011, Police said that terrorists abducted a nine-year-old girl, Sohana Jawed, on her way to school and forced her to wear a suicide bomb vest. Quoting the rescued girl, the Police claimed that she managed to escape her captors when they directed her to attack a paramilitary checkpoint in Timergarah town of Lower Dir District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.<br />
<br />
Abductions have also overlapped sectarian faultlines in Pakistan, and on March 25, 2011, for instance, at least 33 Shias belonging to the Turi tribe were abducted by TTP militants in an attack on a convoy of passenger vehicles in the Kurram Agency of FATA. Later on April 25, 2011, one of the abducted tribesmen, Haji Asghar Hussain Turi, was released after the militants received PKR 5.4 million as ransom. Three months later, on June 22, 2011, another 22 were released after paying a ransom of PKR 30 million. According to media reports, the remaining 10, who were in the custody of a local TTP commander ‘Noor’, had been killed and buried somewhere near the Pak-Afghan border. Their coffins, with the names of the dead inscribed on them, were sent to Parachinar two months later.<br />
<br />
Adding to the growing threat of terrorism is the state’s negligence, collusion and consequent impunity with which the terrorists act. In one prominent case, a key al Qaeda operative and former Pakistan Army commando, Major Haroon Ashiq, accused in several cases of murder and of abduction-for-ransom, was set free from Rawalpindi Jail on March 21, 2012 because witnesses withdrew their testimonies for fear of reprisals, and the prosecution failed to furnish any further material evidence. According to media reports, Haroon is a close associate of Illyas Kashmiri, the founder of Brigade 313, later an operational arm of al Qaeda, and a member of the jihadist outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). With such coloured action, and the visible impotence or collusion of state agencies to act effectively against the perpetrators of the current and rising epidemic of abductions, as well as against the wider acts of terrorism that create its context, it is unlikely that the people of Pakistan – across all Provinces – will secure any early relief from this scourge.<br />
<br />
Thanks to Ambreen Agha<br />
<br />
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management for permission to run this article.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-12600648369207462342012-03-30T21:24:00.000-07:002012-03-30T21:24:13.128-07:00Snowboarding in Afghanistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The skiing in Afghanistan is superb due to the cold winters and for most of the time, lovely crisp powder snow. I did quite a bit of skiing and climbing in Afghanistan between 1993 and 1996 and have written many <a href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2010/08/detailed-description-of-hindu-kush-and.html">articles</a>. The previous link gives a good description of the Hindu Kush and the people.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TrFFD6ztP64RQE5tvg0Nl_hT4e1VdofDP6LhA8yejIPldYmR4Chbq_nc46Xd1SGih85jNamAd6BtDjAMn_Qzhg7vBMHwwUykU93Xg8hyphenhyphenyJM3JVaJtasJ_jGPyoCBItUHNj7q5f40V_us/s1600/Skiing+Hindu+Kush.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-TrFFD6ztP64RQE5tvg0Nl_hT4e1VdofDP6LhA8yejIPldYmR4Chbq_nc46Xd1SGih85jNamAd6BtDjAMn_Qzhg7vBMHwwUykU93Xg8hyphenhyphenyJM3JVaJtasJ_jGPyoCBItUHNj7q5f40V_us/s400/Skiing+Hindu+Kush.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<b>Skiing near the Salang Pass Afghanistan in early 1996. Photo: Bob McKerrow collection.</b><br />
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Therefore I was delighted to read in the New Zealand website stuff.co.nz, that a group of young New Zealanders have been snow boarding in Bamiyan. This must be a snowboarders heaven. Here is their story.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX0GuOgmVPWCwp2on3mKcUO9oK9QjOrdmH0Mmij_WCNiQqLYsUPG4O0JtvNbKq5O21I8uWkVYgjiT2AplCsS3PCpVATBj93XRoo0p-3Qw2b9_ilq7NR_9XU7JcbUmXtSp6teXQDh0cUkfq/s1600/Bam+aerial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX0GuOgmVPWCwp2on3mKcUO9oK9QjOrdmH0Mmij_WCNiQqLYsUPG4O0JtvNbKq5O21I8uWkVYgjiT2AplCsS3PCpVATBj93XRoo0p-3Qw2b9_ilq7NR_9XU7JcbUmXtSp6teXQDh0cUkfq/s400/Bam+aerial.jpg" width="400" /></a><b> </b><br />
<b>AIR RAID: Kiwi snowboarder Clint Allan jumps over a house in Koh-e-Baba mountains, Bamiyan province, Afghanistan, a province wracked by war since 2002.</b><br />
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A gaggle of villagers deep in the mountains of central Afghanistan stared in wonder as a professional snowboarder from New Zealand launched himself over half a dozen young children, two of them perched atop donkeys. <br />
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It was one of the oddest interactions between foreigners and Afghans in the decade since US-led forces invaded the country, and the result of a surprising tourism push in a country at war. <br />
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International aid workers and enterprising locals are trying to attract snowboarders and skiers to the untouched slopes of the Koh-e-Baba mountains to improve the fortunes of Bamiyan province - the site of towering Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, and one of Afghanistan's poorest provinces. <br />
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It's no surprise that challenges abound. <br />
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Though Bamiyan is largely peaceful, it's tough to convince any but the most adventurous travellers to come to war-torn Afghanistan. Once visitors land in the capital, Kabul, they face the tricky prospect of catching a diplomatic or humanitarian flight since no commercial airlines fly to Bamiyan. A few hardy foreigners have braved the six-hour drive despite the threat of robbery and kidnapping. <br />
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There are no ski lifts, so every ascent requires a lung-busting climb up snow-covered mountains that rise to more than 5000 metres. Skiers climb up using "skins" - pieces of rough fabric stuck on the bottom of skis for traction. Snowboarders use special boards that split down the middle and then lock back together for the downhill. <br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZoZe6Xv81yu6uqxruygY3cvCeu9cgWSQEAfMx0nqTGcwtiYadp7fhAh19bSslxxf6zifnLyrCP_BBmo6GRK75-XEoaAOEpJLu4VH4vZo49vKAiMxDvLQB3G1VwQ_JF5PXtf1HqjhxM3y_/s1600/bam+small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZoZe6Xv81yu6uqxruygY3cvCeu9cgWSQEAfMx0nqTGcwtiYadp7fhAh19bSslxxf6zifnLyrCP_BBmo6GRK75-XEoaAOEpJLu4VH4vZo49vKAiMxDvLQB3G1VwQ_JF5PXtf1HqjhxM3y_/s400/bam+small.jpg" width="280" /></a><br />
<b>LEAP OF FAITH: Kiwi snowboarder Mitch Allan launches himself over a bunch of locals in Koh-e-Baba mountains, Bamiyan province, Afghanistan.</b><br />
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The writers of the definitive (and only) guide to skiing in Bamiyan also suggest the "donkey lift" - hiring a villager's donkey to carry you up the mountain. <br />
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The commercial guest houses open in the winter provide little more than a bed and a traditional wood-burning stove, and "apres ski" is limited to tea, kebabs and parlour games. <br />
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But the mountains are spectacular and provide seemingly endless runs down pristine slopes filled with nothing but the sound of the wind and the rush of skis against snow - a far cry from the crowded trails of American and European ski resorts. <br />
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This was the draw for a group of professional snowboarders from New Zealand and Australia who travelled to Bamiyan in late February to film a documentary. They were terrified when they arrived in Kabul, especially because of violent protests against US soldiers burning Korans that left more than 30 people dead. <br />
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"The amount of guns and razor wire that I saw on my way to the guest house from the airport only confirmed what I expected," said Alex Cameron, 22, editor of a snowboarding magazine in Sydney. "But stepping off the plane in Bamiyan, I felt completely safe." <br />
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Arriving in Bamiyan does feel a bit like being enveloped in a pastoral painting. The flight into Bamiyan city first makes a flyby of the gravel runway to make sure it is clear of animals and people. The plane lands with views on one side of the snow-covered Hindu Kush mountains, and the niches of the Buddha statues carved into sheer red cliffs on the other. <br />
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The snowboarders spent a week travelling with a local guide down Bamiyan's bumpy roads past clusters of mud brick houses looking for steep slopes to shoot down and things to jump, including cliffs, houses and, yes, donkeys - although it took some time to convince the animals' owner it was a good idea. <br />
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Once permission was secured, Clint Allan, 26, and his 24-year-old brother, Mitch, leapt off a jump built in the snow and soared about three metres in the air over the animals and local children. <br />
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The two tried to ride the donkeys afterward, provoking howls of laughter. They didn't have much luck getting the stubborn animals to move until a local kid started whacking the animals with a stick. <br />
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"It was sweet!" said the elder Allan. <br />
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Bamiyan attracted thousands of foreigners every year until the Soviet invasion in 1979 plunged the country into more than three decades of war. Tourists came to trek through the mountains, to picnic at dazzlingly blue Band-e-Amir lake and marvel at the Buddhas. But tourism was mainly limited to the summer, and skiing was unknown in the area. <br />
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There was some skiing near the capital, where a few enterprising Afghan skiers built tow ropes in the hills just outside Kabul. But they were abandoned after the Soviets invaded. <br />
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The push to make Bamiyan a skiing destination started in 2010, when the Geneva-based Aga Khan Foundation sponsored two Americans to write a guidebook. It has also trained locals to ski and hired internationally certified ski guides to take tourists into the mountains. <br />
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The new ski industry has had some economic benefit, although the numbers are still fairly small. <br />
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Gull Hussein, a 28-year-old entrepreneur, started a tourism company last year that offers a three-day ski package for US$315 ($NZ384). The deal includes lodging, local transport, ski rental and an international ski guide. About 70 foreigners have taken him up on the offer, most of whom travelled from Kabul. <br />
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Ali Shah Farhang has also benefited as Bamiyan's first local ski guide. The 20-year-old student started skiing about a year ago under the tutelage of an Italian guide brought by Aga Khan and has begun leading foreign clients into the mountains, including the professional snowboarders. <br />
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He receives $100 a month from Aga Khan and $30 per day when he is guiding clients, a significant sum in a country where a typical government bureaucrat in the capital makes $200 a month. For rural Bamiyan, it's a fortune. <br />
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"Foreign people are usually fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but in Bamiyan they are comfortable, they are skiing," Farhang said. <br />
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</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-45585309212242105152012-03-08T02:04:00.000-08:002012-03-08T02:04:49.027-08:00Did our letter have an influence on President Obama?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvwR3_VuHckWq-3kU-QiRwq_hR1qGaoTfHwdPPVMgDHDOIfES8gcJeSTvpBsdVqEZVX9iUl9rumpxTesjZe2bOnxKK8glmbx8FEnEYpsKSCRan__OG1kzbFIe2BKMxWOX5axLAY_4S5hQ/s1600/obama_and_afghanistan1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvwR3_VuHckWq-3kU-QiRwq_hR1qGaoTfHwdPPVMgDHDOIfES8gcJeSTvpBsdVqEZVX9iUl9rumpxTesjZe2bOnxKK8glmbx8FEnEYpsKSCRan__OG1kzbFIe2BKMxWOX5axLAY_4S5hQ/s400/obama_and_afghanistan1.jpg" uda="true" width="400" /></a><br />
<strong>Amid fresh concerns over the safety of American forces, President Barack Obama says the accidental burning of Korans in Afghanistan and the retaliatory killings of US troops gave new credence to the need to end the war.</strong><br />
<strong>I am wondering if the letter I, and a group of writers and experts on Afghanistan wrote to Obama of December 17, 2010, had any influence on him. See letter below or <a href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-ten-years-on-my-memories-of-that.html">this link.</a> </strong><strong>To the President of the United States: December 17, 2010</strong><br />
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"I think that it is an indication of the challenges in that environment, and it's an indication that now is the time for us to transition," Obama said during a White House news conference. <br />
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Obama announced no speeding up of the NATO-backed plan to end combat missions in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, saying "that continues to be the plan". But he said the violence aimed at Americans in Afghanistan that followed the accidental burning of Korans on a US base was "unacceptable". <br />
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Six Americans were killed in retaliatory violence. Obama offered his apologies to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a move that was roundly criticised by his Republican presidential rivals as weak and unnecessary. <br />
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From Congress, Obama was getting tugged from another direction. A letter calling for Obama to accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan had the backing of 23 senators, mostly Democrats but including two conservative Republicans, Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky. <br />
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HERE IS THE LETTER WE WROTE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA.<br />
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Mr. President,<br />
<br />
We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organisations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone.<br />
<br />
This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.<br />
<br />
Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.<br />
<br />
Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralised constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.<br />
<br />
The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilising Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.<br />
<br />
The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure. Military action may produce local and temporary improvements in security, but those improvements are neither going to last nor be replicable in the vast areas not garrisoned by Western forces without a political settlement.<br />
<br />
The 2014 deadline to put the Afghan National Army in command of security is not realistic. Considering the quick disappearance of the state structure at a district level, it is difficult to envision a strong army standing alone without any other state institutions around. Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape, and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate, and it is in our interests to talk to them. In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think – a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more – are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system. The negotiations with the insurgents could be extended to all groups in Afghanistan and regional powers.<br />
<br />
The current contacts between the Karzai government and the Taliban are not enough. The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account. In addition, from the point of view of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable populations – women and ethnic minorities, for instance – as well as with respect to the limited but real gains made since 2001, it is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year. This is why we ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan. A ceasefire and the return of the insurgency leadership in Afghanistan could be part of a de-escalation process leading to a coalition government. Without any chance for a military victory, the current policy will put the United States in a very difficult position.<br />
<br />
For a process of political negotiation to have a chance of addressing the significant core grievances and political inequalities it must occur on multiple levels – among the countries that neighbour Afghanistan as well as down to the provincial and subdistrict. These various tables around which negotiations need to be held are important to reinforce the message – and the reality – that discussions about Afghanistan’s political future must include all parties and not just be a quick-fix deal with members of the insurgency.<br />
<br />
We believe that mediation can help achieve a settlement which brings peace to Afghanistan, enables the Taliban to become a responsible actor in the Afghan political order, ensures that Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for international terrorism, protects the Afghan people’s hard-won freedoms, helps stabilise the region, renders the large scale presence of international troops in Afghanistan unnecessary and provides the basis of an enduring relationship between Afghanistan and the international community. All the political and diplomatic ingenuity that the United States can muster will be required to achieve this positive outcome. It is time to implement an alternative strategy that would allow the United States to exit Afghanistan while safeguarding its legitimate security interests.<br />
<br />
Respectfully,<br />
<br />
Matthieu Aikins Journalist<br />
<br />
Scott Atran Anthropologist (University of Michigan) and author of Talking to the Enemy<br />
<br />
Rupert Talbot Chetwynd Author of Yesterday’s Enemy – Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?<br />
<br />
Robert Abdul Hayy Darr Author of The Spy of the Heart and humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s.<br />
<br />
Gilles Dorronsoro Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and author of Revolution Unending<br />
<br />
David B. Edwards Anthropologist (Williams College) and author of Before Taliban <br />
<br />
Jason Elliot Author of An Unexpected Light<br />
<br />
Antonio Giustozzi Author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop and editor of Decoding the New Taliban<br />
<br />
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi Associate Professor, James Madison University<br />
<br />
Daniel Korski Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations<br />
<br />
Felix Kuehn Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
<br />
Minna Jarvenpaa Former Head of Analysis and Policy Planning, UNAMA<br />
<br />
Anatol Lieven Professor, War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country<br />
<br />
Bob McKerrow Author of Mountains of our Minds – Afghanistan<br />
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Alessandro Monsutti Research Director, Transnational Studies/Development Studies at The Graduate Institute, Geneva<br />
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Ahmed Rashid Journalist and author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos<br />
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Nir Rosen Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security<br />
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Gerard Russell Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University<br />
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Alex Strick van Linschoten Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
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Astri Surkhe Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway<br />
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Yama Torabi Co-Director, Integrity Watch Afghanistan<br />
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Jere van Dyk Author of In Afghanistan and Captive<br />
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Matt Waldman Afghanistan Analyst<br />
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</P></DIV></script></div></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-8726443291894939332012-02-04T00:14:00.000-08:002012-02-04T00:14:18.583-08:00My Queen of Kabul - Nancy Dupree<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivRXSTmmYqy7whnXtXZz0f2myxOmFXAalfUkzFn00yCMR3Mk0shhzK8mnLdVTfLbplEL-G8wM4VZpAMva3hkBoLc8ps_ebtFsHnGpXgdfEoh6T3dzfHoIykr9mHBHF2MBSa_NRw3EPhk4D/s1600/kABUL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivRXSTmmYqy7whnXtXZz0f2myxOmFXAalfUkzFn00yCMR3Mk0shhzK8mnLdVTfLbplEL-G8wM4VZpAMva3hkBoLc8ps_ebtFsHnGpXgdfEoh6T3dzfHoIykr9mHBHF2MBSa_NRw3EPhk4D/s400/kABUL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>Kabul, the city Nancy Dupree wrote a book on and fell in love with. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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It has been most enjoyable and productive having Ebrahim Faghihi working with us on a Sri Lanka Red Cross flood recovery operation. Over dinner last night we spoke of those wonderful days in 95-96 when we spent time exploring Kabul with Nancy Dupree the great historian on Afghanistan and author of so many books on the country. Here is a photo I took of Ebrahim with Nancy in 1996 on the outskirts of Kabul..<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWn2ksYX-UOyUDEM7w1W2dS7Hh1C6LuoaCC7vqPApeqDQ7_2-ZtroJHLkQaEi7UTxosadCpuv8RAOZVB29swGb_Ns8dRQ-xmVSP-6x_UIe_NRdCgWozfoT5rbxUO-qr3RstWUYI7cGg2qN/s1600/Nancy+Dupree+and+Ebrahim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWn2ksYX-UOyUDEM7w1W2dS7Hh1C6LuoaCC7vqPApeqDQ7_2-ZtroJHLkQaEi7UTxosadCpuv8RAOZVB29swGb_Ns8dRQ-xmVSP-6x_UIe_NRdCgWozfoT5rbxUO-qr3RstWUYI7cGg2qN/s400/Nancy+Dupree+and+Ebrahim.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I knew got to know Nancy in those difficult days in Kabul between 1993-96 when Nancy was living in Peshawar. She stayed at my house in Kabul on visits to Afghanistan a number of times and Ebrahim and I often did day tours of Kabul with her where she explained in minute details, every scrap of history she knew of. <br />
Although working for the International Red Cross, I gave a lot of my spare time working with her and colleagues, rescuing treasures from the Kabul museum which was coming under bombing by the Talibans and looting from other warring factions. We also worked together on preserving the British (Foreigners) cemetary<br />
in Kabul which hid a rich history from the time of the early Ango Afghan wars.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUPvZtNkTFI1tCiv_sXpiBAV0klNigjGCf8miT4rVZ2pae3X-_1oyUqo8tQc2apc4ZGHxfNZMA0U6LhArB0hFU2FU6mB70sllDtgVLapoOtP-yMCn0V6PJEzNgUP3tm-Nw51H4ZqWDpnY/s1600/nancy+kabul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYUPvZtNkTFI1tCiv_sXpiBAV0klNigjGCf8miT4rVZ2pae3X-_1oyUqo8tQc2apc4ZGHxfNZMA0U6LhArB0hFU2FU6mB70sllDtgVLapoOtP-yMCn0V6PJEzNgUP3tm-Nw51H4ZqWDpnY/s400/nancy+kabul.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>Honouring 45 years since the death of the great archaeologist Aurel Stein at his grave in the Kabul cemetary. Tim Johnston AFP (2nd from left) and Ahmed Gizo (right). We invited Nancy Dupree but was unable to make because of fighting in Kabul. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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As I was able to travel freely in Afghanistan in the course of my work, I took photographs for Nancy of historic sites her and Louis thirty years earlier and brought her back photographs. She was so grateful and could never thank me enough.<br />
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When I published my book on Afghanistan in 2003 I dedicated it to "My Queen of Kabul, Nancy Dupree."<br />
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She was grateful to get a copy of my book but I much more grateful to have autographed copies of all her books, which guided me through Afghanistan.<br />
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She would tell me over a wine at nights of her love affair with Afghanistan and her late husband Louis Dupree. These were romantic evenings around a log fire in Kabul, with a woman 20 years older than me, recounting her early and carefree days of the 1960s.<br />
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<strong>Kabul the city that Nancy Dupree fell in love with. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
I haven't seen Nancy for 14 years but we kept in touch by email for a long time. Who better to tell her love story than C.M. Sennott from the GlobalPost who published this article in June 2009.<br />
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Enter the steel gates that lead to the courtyard and well-tended gardens of a faded, but still elegant, manse where Nancy Hatch Dupree greets us on the steps.<br />
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For a moment, you feel what it must have been like to live here in the early 1960s.<br />
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That’s when Dupree first arrived in Kabul and where she would meet the two great loves of her life. The first was her husband, Louis Dupree, the dashing American paratrooper turned world-famous archeologist. The second love was one they both shared: the cultural and historic riches of the rugged, magical landscape of Afghanistan and its people.<br />
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</strong><br />
As an archeologist and ethnologist, Afghanistan has been the focus of their life’s work.<br />
She and Louis, who passed away in 1989, lived through it all and suffered with the Afghans through the wars and celebrated the life that has gone on in between. She survived the dark days of the civil war here in the early 1990s and the even darker days of the Taliban. Through it all, she studied and worked to protect and preserve the country’s culture and heritage. Today, there is no Westerner who knows the Afghan people like Nancy.<br />
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Some 45 years after her arrival here, I meet with Dupree on a sunny day in the late afternoon shadows of the once-grand home where she lives part of the year in downtown Kabul.<br />
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The rest of the year she lives just across the border in Peshawar, Pakistan, still writing and researching at the age of 83. She divides her time between the two cities, tending an archive that is housed at Kabul University. The archive, an idea inspired by Louis, is dedicated to creating a resource center for all the different aid workers and Afghan experts who could no longer travel freely in war-torn Afghanistan.<br />
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She looks heartsick when she talks about the Taliban’s destruction of the two giant Buddha carvings of Bamayan. She also wants to set the record straight that she was negotiating with the Taliban leadership to protect the Buddhas, and believes the decision to dynamite them was made by a militant fringe closely connected to Al Qaeda. She insists that many in the Taliban government were opposed to the destruction, but the militants had run away with the Taliban movement.<br />
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<strong>I did day trips with Nancy out towards the Jebal Seraj in winter to view the mighty Hindu Kush. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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She holds the secrets to so much of the politics that has gone on in Afghanistan, but at every turn the conversation comes back to the Afghan people and her love for and fascination with them and their history. <br />
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"I’m a people person," says Nancy, who apologizes that she doesn’t have much time to talk as she is heading out to a party at the embassy to meet the newly appointed American Ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, who also served as the commanding general in Afghanistan.<br />
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Right away, she wants to get into it.<br />
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Nancy still has a lot of fire in her voice and she has some stern criticism of the U.S. military and diplomatic approach in Afghanistan.<br />
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"They make strategies for people who they don’t talk to," she says, sitting on a couch in the parlor where we are talking and leaning forward with intensity.<br />
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"They sit behind the fortress with razor wire walls of the Embassy. And the rest make their strategy from behind desks thousands of miles away … They don’t seem to realize that the strategy has to be about the people," she says.<br />
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She checks her watch and says, "Sorry, I have to go put on my face now and get ready for all the diplomats. Too many of them, if you ask me."<br />
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Moments later she heads out through the steel gate, looking elegant in a long, traditional embroidered gown. She slides into the back seat and she and her driver head out down the crowded, chaotic and sometimes-perilous streets of Kabul, the city she loves.<script type="text/javascript">
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<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9F5CjjfijXC71J7hl4Bn6N6dD0oP3tH5KgIryfgBMEc3Lgtgn5rwGVeZcuakhEY0gRMh6HVBXSSen6GaHs9S8UcZkmv8H6RVP0hzV2pAxXiNOiBQR5-KVeE3TS9oapgcqoelzpgF5eHYn/s1600/Subzak+La.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9F5CjjfijXC71J7hl4Bn6N6dD0oP3tH5KgIryfgBMEc3Lgtgn5rwGVeZcuakhEY0gRMh6HVBXSSen6GaHs9S8UcZkmv8H6RVP0hzV2pAxXiNOiBQR5-KVeE3TS9oapgcqoelzpgF5eHYn/s400/Subzak+La.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>On top of the Subzak Pass in 1994. The passes of the Paropamisus in the west are relatively low, averaging around 600 meters; the most well-known of these is the Sabzak between the Herat and Badghis provinces, which links the western and northwestern parts of Afghanistan. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmHJbVnxL95nKOKDClnQWKRTjnP0MuBUWHevBdqjAYZdc43XgwPzpftFBLb8NQpfj5nP-OhxwxCABOduaHV4r-OV2lVbweEjWjEqL7i4Hqo5rosgVllH-eR4IO2S4rHGa10ygVdCB9tGC/s1600/kABUL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmHJbVnxL95nKOKDClnQWKRTjnP0MuBUWHevBdqjAYZdc43XgwPzpftFBLb8NQpfj5nP-OhxwxCABOduaHV4r-OV2lVbweEjWjEqL7i4Hqo5rosgVllH-eR4IO2S4rHGa10ygVdCB9tGC/s400/kABUL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong> Kabul in early winter 1996. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnJgTRywLY0BeqJcAvR-FE0R2m0DyTdDJXu35Li62sdYGFSIc2WiEYqjJJo9ukD2O1PmVcO2VHEN1lKcn4p_ba9z7JRdT3D8SfGrKea29EpvSuy8QNpf1tKZEB7iTwNIODATg3meulpB2/s1600/Lola.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnJgTRywLY0BeqJcAvR-FE0R2m0DyTdDJXu35Li62sdYGFSIc2WiEYqjJJo9ukD2O1PmVcO2VHEN1lKcn4p_ba9z7JRdT3D8SfGrKea29EpvSuy8QNpf1tKZEB7iTwNIODATg3meulpB2/s400/Lola.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>Coming down from the Khawak Pass in the footsteps of Alexander the Great with my good friend Lola. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcWZJBdU0vHn2CsDqW4wkQQ_6RiLlAYuE9Zg1IH7Gy_7ASVxFPqEECufbBBy70HOrnYu5gQOS3Snc4KVE4kndy-i0yUVuDoubsm1Fr_ommymz5mMjASqbHY3wjDCBabI63ss5cwN40FGl/s1600/Kabul+damage..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqcWZJBdU0vHn2CsDqW4wkQQ_6RiLlAYuE9Zg1IH7Gy_7ASVxFPqEECufbBBy70HOrnYu5gQOS3Snc4KVE4kndy-i0yUVuDoubsm1Fr_ommymz5mMjASqbHY3wjDCBabI63ss5cwN40FGl/s400/Kabul+damage..jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>The damage that was caused in Kabul was tragic to witness in the early 1990s. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidf6b_FQ8491hF-NTOD03aG2nQIEjJPq73i8XgfFRcqOk2hOgzvCthMrEmRkIjh07MIBhdnVHqD4kG6k6Qos2gGIJ_8KRCJ9u0lF7VwaaSlsZv9hMETJer7GDXYmhIrBkgX1l84a_Ue_xu/s1600/IMG_6649.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gda="true" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidf6b_FQ8491hF-NTOD03aG2nQIEjJPq73i8XgfFRcqOk2hOgzvCthMrEmRkIjh07MIBhdnVHqD4kG6k6Qos2gGIJ_8KRCJ9u0lF7VwaaSlsZv9hMETJer7GDXYmhIrBkgX1l84a_Ue_xu/s400/IMG_6649.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>I first visited Afghanistan in 1976 when I was working with the Red Cross in Geneva to assist the Afghan Red Crescent on an earthquake relief operation in Samanghan. here I am in the bazaar in Herat. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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</div></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-66224537389739083862011-12-15T05:54:00.000-08:002011-12-15T05:56:22.785-08:00Who is killing Afghanistan?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div id="cse-search-results"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyvFP79GqbqV00tNCx_lxvrz56Z31xENSy3eotZRBTQSzBi1Vqj9QmY3iCW0rD6vgZuNlvAmwPFvB5lc129MueC7-agYOrYiO7vdc3W8cTnmn88WJjY3Ym0xhngI68eaMxqyC_GVHpD9n/s1600/Now+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dda="true" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyvFP79GqbqV00tNCx_lxvrz56Z31xENSy3eotZRBTQSzBi1Vqj9QmY3iCW0rD6vgZuNlvAmwPFvB5lc129MueC7-agYOrYiO7vdc3W8cTnmn88WJjY3Ym0xhngI68eaMxqyC_GVHpD9n/s400/Now+5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>The Blue Mosque in Mazar-I-Sharif which is a Shrine to Ali </strong><strong>and revered by the Shia Muslims. Taken in 1976 when I was working for the Red Cross after a major earthquake in the north. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Bombs kill 58 in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. The BBC's Quentin Sommerville: "It seems this was a co-ordinated attack; it certainly seems to have a sectarian element"<br />
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Twin attacks apparently targeting Shia Muslims have killed at least 58 people in Afghanistan.<br />
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In the deadliest incident, a suspected suicide bomb struck a shrine packed with worshippers in the capital, Kabul, killing at least 54. <br />
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Another blast hit the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif at about the same time, killing four people.<br />
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The attacks appear to be of a sectarian nature unprecedented in recent Afghan history, correspondents say. <br />
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They coincided with the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura - the most important day in the Shia calendar and marked with a public holiday in Afghanistan. <br />
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Ashura is the climax of Muharram, the month of mourning for the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.<br />
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The police have cordoned off all roads to the blast site in the medieval Murad Khani district where many Shias had gathered to commemorate Ashura at the Abu Fazal mosque.<br />
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Here, at an emergency surgical centre just 10 minutes from the site, people are gathered crying and wailing. I have heard women shouting: "My son is dead, my son is dead." I have seen people with charred clothing.<br />
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Security forces have been ferrying victims to waiting ambulances. There are many wounded too. Those who were there say there are a lot of casualties. People are gathering in front of the hospital and the police are on the streets around here controlling the traffic. <br />
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Though tensions exist between Afghanistan's Sunni and minority Shia Muslims, most attacks in Afghanistan in recent years have targeted government officials or international forces, correspondents say.<br />
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<strong>When I lived for three years in Afghanistan (1993-96) I visited the Abu Fazal mosque in Kabul one of the places of today's atrocities, and the Blue Mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif. The book I wrote on Afghanistan provides prose, poetry and photographs of my favourite country and the peaceful nature of the people. Why this today?</strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Children hit</span></strong><br />
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The near-simultaneous explosions happened at about midday (07:30 GMT).<br />
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In Kabul, the bomb went off near a gathering of hundreds of Shias singing at the Abu Fazal shrine.<br />
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Fifty-four people were killed in the blast, said health ministry spokesman Norughli Kargar, while 150 were injured. <br />
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"It was very loud. My ears went deaf and I was blown three metres [yards]," Mustafa, who uses only one name, told Associated Press news agency. <br />
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"There was smoke and red blood on the floor of the shrine. There were people lying everywhere."<br />
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Amid the chaos straight after the blast, a young girl, dressed in a green shalwar kameez (traditional dress) smeared in blood, stood shrieking, surrounded by the crumpled, piled-up bodies of children, AFP reported.<br />
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke of the unprecedented nature of the attack, saying it was "the first time that, on such an important religious day in Afghanistan, terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place".<br />
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No-one had claimed to have carried out the attacks, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's criminal investigation department. <br />
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A Taliban statement said the group had not been behind either incident.<br />
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Police said they foiled another attack elsewhere in the capital.<script type="text/javascript">
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<strong><em>Thanks to the BBC for permission to run this article.</em></strong></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-5035946387518513022011-09-04T07:01:00.000-07:002011-09-04T07:04:51.326-07:009/ll 2001- My recollections of that day and the aftermath<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div closure_uid_smgxto="285"></div><div closure_uid_smgxto="311" dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b><span closure_uid_smgxto="307" closure_uid_w1td56="1650" style="font-size: medium;">9/11- 2001, Ferney Voltaire, France</span></b> <br />
10 September 2001 (9/10)<br />
I had just come back from a walk past soft yellow corn fields, caressed by the early morning sun, with the Jura mountains as a backdrop on my right, and Mont Blanc on the other side of the path<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55e6jbEyzp93NdWKFXrHIMhA27Ie39JltVEYrqMNfdNhjC-VSVXd2Ff36aU1ER7RVoTl913IFh4vwk9vAEVsdXaWTfSRo38OARXpJKUA5dLo-Qpy1eaEXznOHPyPNl4IvhoCLw-TQcoeu/s1600/Massoud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55e6jbEyzp93NdWKFXrHIMhA27Ie39JltVEYrqMNfdNhjC-VSVXd2Ff36aU1ER7RVoTl913IFh4vwk9vAEVsdXaWTfSRo38OARXpJKUA5dLo-Qpy1eaEXznOHPyPNl4IvhoCLw-TQcoeu/s200/Massoud.jpg" width="200" xaa="true" /></a><br />
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On my return to my hotel I got a message from a close friend of mine in Kabul informing me that Ahmed Shah Massoud (pictured right with Bob McKerrow) is either dead or dying. He is one of Afghanistan’s greatest leaders of the last century. Some news reports say it could be the work of Osama bin Laden.<br />
My friend Azem was also killed and Massood Khalili badly injured, the Ambassador to India and son of the great Afghan poet.<br />
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I thought at the time that something sinister was unfolding.<br />
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I think of the times I met Massoud during my stay in Afghanistan between 1993 and 96, and the hour interview I had with him before I left in August 1996. I wrote in my diary that night. “My heart bleeds for you Afghanistan; the pain and hurt you've been through. Penalised by your geographic location and the pawn of superpowers for so long.”<br />
<div closure_uid_smgxto="315"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeuVutiV_U6aPOCaS6GDd3YAsjMblDc9eXVn0X41k-2hS3_srhoXshIAYd8sxik37WND5erx889y7LVOyRsi-FeSyqmU3E6yyoCb9q0Cb2KZCSpsuJ9sRC1AIwlQmQasHWcCpzzghLSTlv/s1600/twin+towers+ny.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeuVutiV_U6aPOCaS6GDd3YAsjMblDc9eXVn0X41k-2hS3_srhoXshIAYd8sxik37WND5erx889y7LVOyRsi-FeSyqmU3E6yyoCb9q0Cb2KZCSpsuJ9sRC1AIwlQmQasHWcCpzzghLSTlv/s400/twin+towers+ny.jpg" width="400" xaa="true" /></a></div><strong>Flight 175 crashes at about 590 mph into the south face of the South Tower of the World Trade Centre, hitting the building between floors 77 and 85. All 65 people on board are killed. Parts of the plane leave the building from its east and north sides, falling to the ground as far as six blocks away.</strong><br />
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I was in Ferny Voltaire France, for a Red Cross training course when this drama began unfolding.. <br />
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The next day, <strong>11 September (9/11) </strong>my mind kept going back to Ahmed Shah Massoud and his senseless killing by hired killers posing as Arab TV cameramen. Just before 4 pm, we broke for afternoon tea. As I picked up a cup of tea, the manager came running and shouting in French, something about a disaster in America. A group formed at the TV in the bar and watched an interviewer talking about a plane hitting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, then seconds later we saw the most spine-chilling metal and human bomb plough into the second tower Later the full story was told, Two planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. A third was flown into the Pentagon in the state of Virginia. A fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.<br />
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In my diary that night I wrote in capitals A DAY WHICH MAY CHANGE THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND THE NATURE OF TERRORISM.<br />
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I wrote on 9/11, "Massoud gone, many thousands of lives lost in the four plane hijacks......"<br />
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The scenarios began to build up in my mind; retaliations on Afghanistan yet again. Alexander the Great, The Arabs, The Turks, Chengis Khan, Timur, Persians, The British x 3, Soviet Union and now a US led westerncoalition is there.<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjGU42zFCSiYmdoyR4ee0duDXfd_PHcGBM41RhdqyZE9qmj3VK_FXHRKS6o3W8aEMgQK5Ey8hELI5QvtsK9g8ysAkRU4Gqrx1BX8UIb7xhgkQ206_q6HSMI2G2QUbbvrNxjzTOOR1fGkXc/s1600/twin+towers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjGU42zFCSiYmdoyR4ee0duDXfd_PHcGBM41RhdqyZE9qmj3VK_FXHRKS6o3W8aEMgQK5Ey8hELI5QvtsK9g8ysAkRU4Gqrx1BX8UIb7xhgkQ206_q6HSMI2G2QUbbvrNxjzTOOR1fGkXc/s400/twin+towers.jpg" width="332" xaa="true" /></a><br />
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</div><div closure_uid_efhu52="327"><strong closure_uid_smgxto="320">TERROR ATTACK: The first World Trade Centre tower begins to implode in New York on September 11, 2001.<script type="text/javascript">
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One week later (18 September) I am in Pakistan appointed to lead the International Red Cross operation as refugees from Afghanistan were beginning to come across the border. Predictions were that at least a million were expected to cross.<br />
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It was a very busy time working with the Pakistan Red Crescent getting relief supplies out to border camps, setting up reception camps and putting in water and sanitation facilities, reinforcing existing medical clincs.. I recall having outstanding colleagues like Naoki Kokawa, Patrick Fuller, Dr. Moin, Dr. Burki, Fred Grimm and John LaPointe. I remember interviews with Lyse Doucet from the BBC, John Burns LA Times and hordes of others. Here is a press release dated 21 September, 2001.<br />
<div closure_uid_w1td56="1652"><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: medium;">Pakistan Red Crescent gear up to respond to Afghan refugee crisis</span></strong></div><br />
As uncertainty continues to prevail in Afghanistan, thousands of Afghans are evacuating the country's major cities such as Kabul and Kandahar. Many are heading for the safety of mountainous areas in the interior of the country whilst tens of thousands have reportedly crossed into Pakistan despite the border remaining officially closed. <br />
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As anticipation of ever increasing numbers of Afghan refugees crossing into Pakistan grows, the Pakistan Red Crescent has already taken measures to respond to the crisis. An initial plan of action has been drawn up in consultation with the Federation and the ICRC and the first relief stocks have already left the Pakistan Red Crescent warehouses in Islamabad destined for the Baluchistan provincial branch headquarters in Quetta. <br />
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"Pakistan shares a border with Afghanistan that is over 2,000 kms long and it is relatively porous in some areas particularly the stretch adjacent to Baluchistan," says Bob McKerrow, Federations Head of delegation for South Asia. "We know that there are thousands of people waiting on the other side of the border for the chance to cross. Our immediate priority is to help those who have already crossed as well as monitoring relief supplies in the event of a major exodus." <br />
<div closure_uid_smgxto="323"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVz-fpVLVAgDLmRL4SF5bJkTJVUbSR5vCkWznCMSgcXlkhtSDEIdLrQX3BEBlWGKTJgHved8O-3pYdvBe_312WSI2eA2yANEl4rpIFB21Hbcx2ruNDInZBb3YE1wO6jXjXaYVOaoSa8e3/s1600/PRCS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVz-fpVLVAgDLmRL4SF5bJkTJVUbSR5vCkWznCMSgcXlkhtSDEIdLrQX3BEBlWGKTJgHved8O-3pYdvBe_312WSI2eA2yANEl4rpIFB21Hbcx2ruNDInZBb3YE1wO6jXjXaYVOaoSa8e3/s400/PRCS.jpg" width="400" xaa="true" /></a></div>This week the Red Crescent sent 1,000 tents, 10,000 blankets and 3,000 plastic water containers from Islamabad to Quetta. A further 2,000 blankets were also sent to Quetta from the Sind provincial branch headquarters in Karachi. <br />
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"At this point we plan to assist 120,000 refugees through our branches in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. It will be a major logistical challenge but we have already set up an operations room in our headquarters in Islamabad and we are identifying new warehousing space in Quetta," explains Dr. A. R Burki, Secretary General of the Pakistan Red Crescent. <br />
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The Pakistan Red Crescent is also planning to provide medical support to the refugees. Discussions are underway with government authorities in Quetta where a vacant hospital facility could be utilised by the Red Crescent. The Baluchistan branch already have four mobile health teams on standby. These teams were established with support from ECHO as part of the Red Crescent's response to the chronic drought which has affected the province for the past three years.In Peshawar the PRCS is considering utilising the Hayatabad paraplegic centre which was originally established in 1973 by the ICRC to rehabilitate war-wounded patients who had been evacuated from the conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan. The centre was handed over to the Pakistan Red CS in 1996 and has a range of facilities including ultrasound and x-ray, two fully functional operating theatres a physiotherapy unit and a workshop which produces items such as calipers, crutches and artificial limbs. <br />
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To support their work and that of other Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, the Federation has launched an appeal for nearly 8.8 million Swiss francs (5.5 million US dollars) to beef up its state of readiness to respond to the needs of large population movements following the recent attacks in the United States. <br />
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The primary focus of the appeal is to provide shelter, health care, clean water and food for up to 300,000 people both in the five countries bordering Afghanistan (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Pakistan) and elsewhere if the need arises. <br />
Finish of Press release<br />
<div closure_uid_w1td56="1805"><br />
There were many of us who had worked in Afghanistan, written extensively on Afghanistan, and we were <em closure_uid_27id6h="1594">deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future.</em><br />
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So on on December 17, 2010, I was one of a number of writers who wrote an open letter to President Obama <em closure_uid_27id6h="1593" closure_uid_w1td56="1808"> </em></div><br />
<strong>To the President of the United States: </strong><br />
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Mr. President,<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguUbbkHOVzS7WiOuuF9A8-w-ACXuKF_DsX5p-K2roSIJGvmcjAiwIS58N3OZ6T7u8C-MW7Bov6uhS7Wf-DzjsrJ8mGexSPwHzxw6CU8ABeAQ9njGmgNhP400ntudXZL7d0-0fzykmtnCh2/s1600/obama_and_afghanistan1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguUbbkHOVzS7WiOuuF9A8-w-ACXuKF_DsX5p-K2roSIJGvmcjAiwIS58N3OZ6T7u8C-MW7Bov6uhS7Wf-DzjsrJ8mGexSPwHzxw6CU8ABeAQ9njGmgNhP400ntudXZL7d0-0fzykmtnCh2/s1600/obama_and_afghanistan1.jpg" xaa="true" /></a></div><em closure_uid_w1td56="1806">We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organisations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone.</em><br />
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<em closure_uid_smgxto="401">This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em closure_uid_smgxto="402">Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.</em><br />
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<em></em><br />
<em>Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralised constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.</em><br />
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<em></em><br />
<em>The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilising Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.</em><br />
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<em></em><br />
<em>The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure. Military action may produce local and temporary improvements in security, but those improvements are neither going to last nor be replicable in the vast areas not garrisoned by Western forces without a political settlement.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>The 2014 deadline to put the Afghan National Army in command of security is not realistic. Considering the quick disappearance of the state structure at a district level, it is difficult to envision a strong army standing alone without any other state institutions around. Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape, and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate, and it is in our interests to talk to them. In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think – a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more – are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system. The negotiations with the insurgents could be extended to all groups in Afghanistan and regional powers.</em><br />
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<em closure_uid_smgxto="403">The current contacts between the Karzai government and the Taliban are not enough. The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account. In addition, from the point of view of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable populations – women and ethnic minorities, for instance – as well as with respect to the limited but real gains made since 2001, it is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year. This is why we ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan. A ceasefire and the return of the insurgency leadership in Afghanistan could be part of a de-escalation process leading to a coalition government. Without any chance for a military victory, the current policy will put the United States in a very difficult position.</em><br />
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<em></em><br />
<em>For a process of political negotiation to have a chance of addressing the significant core grievances and political inequalities it must occur on multiple levels – among the countries that neighbour Afghanistan as well as down to the provincial and subdistrict. These various tables around which negotiations need to be held are important to reinforce the message – and the reality – that discussions about Afghanistan’s political future must include all parties and not just be a quick-fix deal with members of the insurgency.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>We believe that mediation can help achieve a settlement which brings peace to Afghanistan, enables the Taliban to become a responsible actor in the Afghan political order, ensures that Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for international terrorism, protects the Afghan people’s hard-won freedoms, helps stabilise the region, renders the large scale presence of international troops in Afghanistan unnecessary and provides the basis of an enduring relationship between Afghanistan and the international community. All the political and diplomatic ingenuity that the United States can muster will be required to achieve this positive outcome. It is time to implement an alternative strategy that would allow the United States to exit Afghanistan while safeguarding its legitimate security interests.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Respectfully,</em><br />
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Matthieu Aikins Journalist<br />
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Scott Atran Anthropologist (University of Michigan) and author of Talking to the Enemy<br />
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Rupert Talbot Chetwynd Author of Yesterday’s Enemy – Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?<br />
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Robert Abdul Hayy Darr Author of The Spy of the Heart and humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s.<br />
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Gilles Dorronsoro Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and author of Revolution Unending<br />
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David B. Edwards Anthropologist (Williams College) and author of Before Taliban Jason Elliot Author of An Unexpected Light<br />
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Antonio Giustozzi Author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop and editor of Decoding the New Taliban<br />
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Shah Mahmoud Hanifi Associate Professor, James Madison University<br />
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Daniel Korski Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relatio<br />
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Felix Kuehn Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
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Minna Jarvenpaa Former Head of Analysis and Policy Planning, UNAMA<br />
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Anatol Lieven Professor, War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country<br />
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Bob McKerrow Author of Mountains of our Minds – Afghanistan<br />
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Alessandro Monsutti Research Director, Transnational Studies/Development Studies at The Graduate Institute, Geneva<br />
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Ahmed Rashid Journalist and author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos<br />
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Nir Rosen Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security<br />
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Gerard Russell Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University<br />
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Alex Strick van Linschoten Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
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Astri Surkhe Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway<br />
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Yama Torabi Co-Director, Integrity Watch Afghanistan<br />
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Jere van Dyk Author of In Afghanistan and Captive<br />
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Matt Waldman Afghanistan Analyst</div></div></div></div></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-37405471619943675442011-08-19T01:40:00.000-07:002011-08-19T01:40:54.082-07:00Never ask a Frenchman to buy food for a mountaineering expedition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div closure_uid_vkyx1u="345" dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8XdolQTIBb-PrdX8ETLz_2QBntCGCpMuHVer0OSY-pe4IY0j6yW8Lh5M-FHmh5_vZI_JgIq7CQnUEaZNwWlgFQQXSOy4ThoC_DUbFuK1Jh-ZuTfP5FI-qLQyMR1pJAQv1yO3GkGAWAG3/s1600/anjuman+tent.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="408" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8XdolQTIBb-PrdX8ETLz_2QBntCGCpMuHVer0OSY-pe4IY0j6yW8Lh5M-FHmh5_vZI_JgIq7CQnUEaZNwWlgFQQXSOy4ThoC_DUbFuK1Jh-ZuTfP5FI-qLQyMR1pJAQv1yO3GkGAWAG3/s640/anjuman+tent.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
<strong>Our camp on Kohe Jalgya at 4300 metres. The peak is at the top left. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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My last climb in Afghanistan was in June 1996. I got a group of mountaineers together; Mathias Luft from France, Ross Everson an Australian, and Bruce Watson an old friend from New Zealand. In the previous three years of living and working in Afghanistan, I had done a number of trips in the Hindu Kush, and somehow I was attracted to a group of peaks known as Koh-e-Jalgya. Here was my last opportunity for my last trip into the Hindu Kush before I finished my contract<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxtPFLd8g9lXfcQJhOJioQJ84q7_YMaHp9DTIzWrAnV-iOBsl0UB1oZuNJB0JJBUg99GFGBqdL5PuuPGvR_JOFPmvEGWe2IMRUUo7wMGh3EZ9PnBTCwdGyY1gtSaLOJyUXTgA2p0qe64h/s1600/anjuman+menJPG.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglxtPFLd8g9lXfcQJhOJioQJ84q7_YMaHp9DTIzWrAnV-iOBsl0UB1oZuNJB0JJBUg99GFGBqdL5PuuPGvR_JOFPmvEGWe2IMRUUo7wMGh3EZ9PnBTCwdGyY1gtSaLOJyUXTgA2p0qe64h/s320/anjuman+menJPG.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
<strong>A group of local bandits I photographed and some days later they stole some of our equipment. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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This was quite an expedition and the first mistake made, was letting a Frenchman buy the food without supervision. We ended up with pasta, stale and hard bread, rice, onions sugar and tea. There were no breakfast food, no milk powder, no salt, nuts, meat, chocolate meat or sardines. I wrote in my diary after six days we were starving. A group of armed locals stole equipment from us and Mathias was threatened by a soldier with an AK 47.<br />
<div closure_uid_vkyx1u="344"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDVi8oGiSBen7mJ1D9oah5vqTc1C1BsQz9Mc3OKJ6-al7C56ChRJU4C2FE7w780Sy0-JIPZ-wLoZC2JBoU0GCsxFGMjWmnHRCFNFL9YXaseqj0gMPtxhwEKngtDZz2lsMm55qI0UIByl4o/s1600/anjuman+clarke.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDVi8oGiSBen7mJ1D9oah5vqTc1C1BsQz9Mc3OKJ6-al7C56ChRJU4C2FE7w780Sy0-JIPZ-wLoZC2JBoU0GCsxFGMjWmnHRCFNFL9YXaseqj0gMPtxhwEKngtDZz2lsMm55qI0UIByl4o/s640/anjuman+clarke.JPG" width="411" /></a></div><strong>Approaching the Anjoman Pass from the Panjcher side of the Hindu Kush. In the background are peaks of Nuristan and Mir Sami to the right of centre. photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<br />
It took us five days to cross from the Panjcher Valley over Kotali Anjoman, down to Anjoman village, where we turned a sharp right up a side valley called Darrahe Paghar and set up a base camp at 4300 metres under Kohe Jalgya. The Anjoman Pass seperates Parwan province from Badakhshan province.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhzAr0Ak5Nas3m9hlsybi4bh4IpH6jEE9IvvVGe80ZYDFRx8i6Wm08dlkAZABDZ8w3h3RfzaaNmm4ZlNAkc1Y0CjxGIFuzbU9q2bpA0Fjr2w_7xFan6al0Zu5PcKim8M0SrcCat-Xbkoh/s1600/Anjuman+lake.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="410" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuhzAr0Ak5Nas3m9hlsybi4bh4IpH6jEE9IvvVGe80ZYDFRx8i6Wm08dlkAZABDZ8w3h3RfzaaNmm4ZlNAkc1Y0CjxGIFuzbU9q2bpA0Fjr2w_7xFan6al0Zu5PcKim8M0SrcCat-Xbkoh/s640/Anjuman+lake.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
<br />
<strong closure_uid_vkyx1u="377">Our camp on the northern side of the Hindu Kush with Anjoman Pass the low depression to the right of centre. We spent a day here recovereing from a tiring crossing of the pass. Photio: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<br />
We soon realised that Kohe Jalgya was quite a technical climb and we didn’t have enough climbing equipment for such an ice climb. So Ross and Mathias headed for Kohe Jalgya and Bruce and I for another less technical climb, an unnamed peak at 5,300 metres.<br />
<div closure_uid_vkyx1u="378"><br />
</div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHa9jjK1vWwJoZyngdqoFCX3OpkxIIlukq-dn2XE98AG96kPSvk6oFuj90BljcyzFaOOae4aKbJjdnMrc8gIwTy51RyHjnrEmDemUkohOGun6hlxjMeiFCY8g9c1SRRzF2W-cNw32BWQgA/s1600/anjuman+bruce.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="260" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHa9jjK1vWwJoZyngdqoFCX3OpkxIIlukq-dn2XE98AG96kPSvk6oFuj90BljcyzFaOOae4aKbJjdnMrc8gIwTy51RyHjnrEmDemUkohOGun6hlxjMeiFCY8g9c1SRRzF2W-cNw32BWQgA/s400/anjuman+bruce.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
<strong>Bruce Watson on a high point about 4800 metres near to Kohe Jalgya. The range in the background is part of the Jalgya massif. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<br />
On the ascent of Kohe Jalgya, Ross and Mathias spent a night half way up the peak. They made good progress the next day but found the ice climbing difficult. After negotiating the hardest part of the climb, they came to a small snow field where they had to plug through waist-deep snow near the summit. They turned back at 4 pm on the 6th of June as the weather closed in. The descent turned into an epic in worsening weather. Mathias had two axes for front pointing down the face, but Ross only had one which slowed him down. Mathias gave Ross one of his ice axes, and he used one axe and an ice screw as a dagger, to descend. About 9 pm, Mathias lost footing and fell down an icy coliour and tumbled head over heals for 300 metres, just coming to a stop before a rocky bluff. Although cut and bruised, he was able to wal on alone trying to find the tent. Meanwhile Ross continued descending alone in the dark on steep ice. Now seperated by 300 metres, Mathias managed to stagger back to their tent situated on a snow ledge. Ross kept down climbing on ice another two hours, reaching the tent at midnight. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile at base camp, Bruce and I were anxiously waiting, for they were a day late. We had eaten our last spoon of milk powder, and had no food left, not even a cooker to make tea. <br />
<br />
So on Saturday 8 June, Bruce and I left a note and emergency equipment under a rock cairn, and said we were leaving for the valley to buy a sheep, cook it and come up with some locals to effect a rescu<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizL8rGrCdqi5Ql28EvbN_C7DShW3JcnKNRuOkuu4gDRgv0WynlhCxGAmshp8FwY50d1AdXxn_fmrEpz1SHC901OPJoj5Y3urw0_zytlRb-1CxM2cnDzJk4XuDQWhpCWWgWo6ITwj54YBVd/s1600/anjuman+donkey+boy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizL8rGrCdqi5Ql28EvbN_C7DShW3JcnKNRuOkuu4gDRgv0WynlhCxGAmshp8FwY50d1AdXxn_fmrEpz1SHC901OPJoj5Y3urw0_zytlRb-1CxM2cnDzJk4XuDQWhpCWWgWo6ITwj54YBVd/s400/anjuman+donkey+boy.JPG" width="258" /></a><br />
<strong>A young boy and his donkey in the Darrahe Paghar valley at the foot of Kohe Japgya. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<br />
We got down to a small hamlet in the valley about 4.30 pm and I glanced back at the mountain, and saw two specks slowly moving on the lower snow slopes of the mountain. It could only be Ross and Mathias. Bruce and I were elated. They were alive! We bought a stringy old female sheep and got the farmer to skin it, cut it up and boil it, preparing a feast for Ross and Mathias. Four hours later Mathias and Ross crossed the rising river, and joined us for a feast of mutton. Four days later we were back in Kabul.<script type="text/javascript">
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<div closure_uid_g5yv8e="1532" closure_uid_vkyx1u="386"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ2a_XVqciXnflFL_eeHUdFY1owszWF5jZ94pTizm-S-PHQjtMWE3605dWUQ1dnSico_d39j1E5ij8ZarMksWxGZVYVQFn2B-lkki6ds3k4c1SR6p7Ob6KdHBiugGuSvcUIB0T6XLVrMUt/s1600/anjuman+pass.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ2a_XVqciXnflFL_eeHUdFY1owszWF5jZ94pTizm-S-PHQjtMWE3605dWUQ1dnSico_d39j1E5ij8ZarMksWxGZVYVQFn2B-lkki6ds3k4c1SR6p7Ob6KdHBiugGuSvcUIB0T6XLVrMUt/s400/anjuman+pass.JPG" width="400" /></a><br />
<strong closure_uid_vkyx1u="387">Climbing up to the Anjoman Pass from the Badakhshan side. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<div closure_uid_ueffrk="1601" closure_uid_vkyx1u="430"><br />
<strong>For further information on mountaineering in Afghanistan, try this:<a href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2011/08/climbing-and-exploring-in-hindu-kush.html">http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2011/08/climbing-and-exploring-in-hindu-kush.html</a></strong><br />
<br />
<a closure_uid_otsnfl="1613" href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2010/08/detailed-description-of-hindu-kush-and.html">or this</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2009/03/from-american-alpine-club-journal-1995.html">even better</a></div></div></div></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-74184697757010979292011-08-17T21:08:00.000-07:002011-08-17T21:08:43.633-07:00Two New Zealand Women climb new route on Koh-e-Baba-Tangi in Afghanistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div closure_uid_qmb5wm="286"><div closure_uid_qmb5wm="299"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOODyiJ6wP1r8cJSagVraZa9AvA5izYOWFWv4Ur_a0lMAO6emeSnh45AwJwHxcJEu3f3ihmp7VkpRQAbdYv8ZsnZg5smH9JetHwkmUhfYR336ZjsldusZBq7AS9rYo975bSp2tC81lRrVn/s1600/Wakhan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOODyiJ6wP1r8cJSagVraZa9AvA5izYOWFWv4Ur_a0lMAO6emeSnh45AwJwHxcJEu3f3ihmp7VkpRQAbdYv8ZsnZg5smH9JetHwkmUhfYR336ZjsldusZBq7AS9rYo975bSp2tC81lRrVn/s200/Wakhan.jpg" width="150" /></a></div></div>My heart leapt today when I got the news that sisters Patricia Deavoll and Christine Byrch climbed Koh-e-Baba-Tangi in Afghanistan. What a magnificent achievement ! I know the Wakhan well and saw it from inside Afghanistan, and different views from Tajikistan when I worked in both countries in the 1990s.<br />
<br />
Here is the news first hand from Pat:<br />
<br />
Christine and I summitted Koh-e-Baba-Tangi (6515m) in the Wakhan Corridor (Afgahnistan) on the 9th August. Five days to the summit with some good steep ice, then 2 days to decend the West Ridge (line of the original 1963 ascent). Ours is only the second climb of the mountain, done via a new route up the N'NW ridge. <br />
<br />
Took a lot out of us...but we are very pleased.The Wakhan is a beautiful remote area unlike anywhere ive been.<br />
<br />
Now back in Khorog, Tajikistan, on our way home.<br />
<br />
Here is further information on ttheir amazing expedition<br />
<div closure_uid_qmb5wm="323"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcboJEf-il3dtLRDvfz1iiqY-b1P0L9-sCY671QOa9Zrtue-AFvA9mZWIJx0tJt1okXCvVQO1o1fPuYDLD8LlsNiPz0lwWccdo2A8d4WHhNU1d3dOsDbsaSxtD-D6Jlu_0A-6djntiSk1F/s1600/Wakhan-Corridor-for-blog-300x224.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcboJEf-il3dtLRDvfz1iiqY-b1P0L9-sCY671QOa9Zrtue-AFvA9mZWIJx0tJt1okXCvVQO1o1fPuYDLD8LlsNiPz0lwWccdo2A8d4WHhNU1d3dOsDbsaSxtD-D6Jlu_0A-6djntiSk1F/s400/Wakhan-Corridor-for-blog-300x224.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>An aerial view of the Wakhan corridor, Afghanistan.</strong><br />
<div closure_uid_qmb5wm="333"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;"><strong closure_uid_v5gd2h="1785">2010 New Zealand Women’s Mountaineering Expedition </strong><strong closure_uid_v5gd2h="1725">to the Wakhan Corridor,</strong></span><br />
<div closure_uid_qmb5wm="332"><br />
</div><div closure_uid_qmb5wm="332"><strong closure_uid_qmb5wm="334" closure_uid_v5gd2h="1726">Afghanistan</strong></div><br />
<em closure_uid_qmb5wm="335">Patricia Deavoll and Christine Byrch</em> <br />
<br />
To make the first ascent of the North West Ridge of Koh-e-Baba-Tangi (6516m) in the Wakhan Corridor<br />
<br />
Hindu Kush Range,Northern Afghanistan<br />
<br />
<strong closure_uid_v5gd2h="1729">Objective:</strong> <br />
<br />
Koh-e-Baba Tangi is in the upper Kezget Valley, at the far end of the Wakhan Corridor and is considered by many mountaineers to be the most fascinating peak in the Afghan Hindu Kush. It was first climbed by an Italian team via the West Ridge. There are accounts of this expedition in:<br />
<br />
• The American Alpine Club Journal 1964. pp 324-235<br />
• The British AC Journal No. 308 May 1964. <br />
<br />
Pat and Christine wish to make the second ascent of the mountain via the unclimbed North West Ridge, which will take them into an area rarely visited by climbers, and which has certainly not had a visit in the last thirty years. If the North West Ridge doesn’t offer a safe climbing option they will make their attempt via either the unclimbed East Ridge, or via the West Ridge (route of the first ascentionists).<br />
<br />
Members: <br />
<br />
Pat Deavoll<br />
Christine Byrch<br />
<br />
Pat and Christine are sisters.<br />
<br />
Expedition duration: 15th July 2011- 30th August 2011.<br />
<br />
Background:<br />
<br />
The mountains of Afghanistan’s High Hindu Kush are located in the north east of the country, in the long finger of land known as the Wakhan Corridor, which separates Pakistan and Tajikistan. These mountains are gradually being revisited by climbers, who report the area to be remote, safe and worlds apart from the on-going war with the Taliban. Peaks in the Wakhan Corridor were hugely popular in the 1960’s and 70’s, particularly among European climbers who would often reach the area overland via the “hippy trail.” They were enticed by generally easier access than found in other parts of the Himalaya/ Karakoram, more stable weather and the ability to climb without the constraints of a restrictive permit system. But after the coup d’etat in 1978 and the Soviet Invasion in 1979 the climbing became strictly off-limits and remained so for<br />
almost 30 years.<br />
<br />
However in 2003 Carlo Alberto Pinelli, an Italian mountaineer who in the 1960’s climbed extensively in the area (and was one of the first ascentionists of Koh-e-Baba Tangi) organised an expedition he called the Oxuz: Mountains for Peace, with the objective of climbing Noshaq (7492m), Afghanistan’s highest mountain. He wanted to let the Afghan’s know they had not been forgotten by the climbers who had benefited from their generous hospitality. The successful expedition effectively marked the beginning of a new era of climbing in the region. Over the past five years a steadily increasing number of expeditions have, once again, enjoyed the superb climbing in the Afghan Hindu Kush.<br />
<br />
Distinctive aims and objectives of the expedition:<br />
<br />
• For two sisters from New Zealand to make the first ascent of the North West Ridge of Koh-e-Baba Tangi (6516m) in the Wahkan Corridor of the Hindu Kush Range of Afghanistan (second ascent of mountain)<br />
<br />
• To showcase this neglected but fascinating region to other climbers worldwide and to determine its renewed safety as a mountaineering destination.<br />
<br />
• To show solidarity towards the people of the Wakhan Corridor by supporting their economy, which has suffered over the past three decades with the demise of tourism.<br />
<br />
• To showcase the abilities of strong female mountaineers in a male-dominant sport. Koh-e-Baba Tangi from Kezget<br />
<br />
• To run an environmentally sound and socially conscientious expedition.<br />
<br />
• To make a short amateur documentary on the expedition to be gifted to Wakhan Tourism for the promotion of future tourism in the area. We are hoping that a film of two western women travelling and climbing in Afghanistan will be of use to the organisation.<br />
<br />
• To produce feature articles for leading outdoor publication on the expedition with the intention of promoting: a) the Afghan Hindu Kush as an area to climb, and b) the abilities of strong female mountaineers.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWFGNULayOTkmzKLbWj-FBBMYWIfSOcfgH0jQHRYOipi7e8sRf2JqoA2OtlFDnsNt9nOeHyyB7cUFWrxcVFopiFuU6ZbxPdEZU8PNbC0AeO8UUNMCspJJQ-KYdG5L90gdFXgQt9cejx7r/s1600/Wakhan+route.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" naa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWFGNULayOTkmzKLbWj-FBBMYWIfSOcfgH0jQHRYOipi7e8sRf2JqoA2OtlFDnsNt9nOeHyyB7cUFWrxcVFopiFuU6ZbxPdEZU8PNbC0AeO8UUNMCspJJQ-KYdG5L90gdFXgQt9cejx7r/s320/Wakhan+route.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
Intended route on Koh-e-Baba-Tangi<br />
<br />
Description of North West Ridge Route from Guide Book (Peaks of Silver and Jade)<br />
<br />
“The ascent of the Nth/Nth/West Spur…seems to be particularly attractive. It is a varied and hard route, but probably not to dangerous, alternating stretched of rock, mixed terrain and ice. Nothing is known about the bergschrund. A rock promontory protrudes from the glacier followed by an almost vertical ice dip. On top of it the slopes are less steep but then they straighten up once more along a small rocky ridge. From here a long crossing to the right could be attempted towards a large well visible ramp that takes you near the Western Ridge… It looks like and easy route. However it is partially exposed to the possible collapse of an overhanging barrier of seracs.<br />
<br />
Above the little rocky ridge you proceed to your left on a second ridge until you land on a small snow plateau. The plateau ends at a spur of mixed terrain. Once you have negotiated this spur, you are soon on the summit.”<br />
<br />
Detailed itinerary/schedule:<br />
<br />
• Day 1: Arrive in Kabul<br />
<br />
• Day 2: Shopping for food and equipment.<br />
<br />
• Day 3: Fly to Faizabad.<br />
<br />
• Day 4-5-6: Organisation with Wakhan Tourism and Mountain Unity.<br />
<br />
• Day 7: Drive to village of Ishakashum .<br />
<br />
• Day 9: Drive to Kandud<br />
<br />
• Day 10: Drive to Kezget.<br />
<br />
• Day 12-13: Trek to Basecamp (with expedition staff and porters/horses)<br />
<br />
• Day 14-32: Acclimatization and climbing of Koh-e-Baba Tangi (6516m)<br />
<br />
• Day 32-33: Trek to Kezget.<br />
<br />
• Day 34-35: Drive to Ishakasum<br />
<br />
• Day 36-40: Site seeing and liaison with Mountain Unity and Wakhan Tourism.<br />
<br />
• Day 41: Flight to Kabul.<br />
<br />
• Day 42: Leave Kabul for New Zealand<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Why Pat and Christine think they will be successful:</strong><br />
<br />
Pat and Christine are two highly accomplished mountaineers; between them they have over fifty years of climbing experience. Pat has been on ten expeditions to Asia in the past nine years, all to climb mountains between 6000m and 7000m in height. Three of these (2007, 2008, 2009) have been to Afghanistan’s close neighbour, Pakistan, thus she is very aware of the risks of traveling in a Muslim country during periods of political unrest. Christine has also travelled extensively in Pakistan; therefore both women know how to conduct themselves as western women in an Islamic culture.<br />
<br />
As a mountaineering partnership they climb well together, due mainly to the fact they are sisters and have known each other for ever! They are both extremely fit, despite their age. They have chosen Koh-e-Baba Tangi because it is a mountain of moderate height (6516m) and looks to be technically within their capabilities, but also, due to its position at the far end of the Wahkan Corridor, because it offers an exciting adventure just in reaching its base.<br />
<br />
Both are confident they can summit Koh-e-Baba Tangi, if not by the North West Ridge, then via the East or West Ridge options.<br />
<br />
For more, see Pat's blog: <a href="http://www.patdeavoll.co.nz/?page_id=697">http://www.patdeavoll.co.nz/?page_id=697</a><br />
<br />
My heartiest congratulations Pat and to your sister Christine. I am proud to be a Kiwi.<br />
<br />
HERE IS SOME FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE WAKHAN<br />
<br />
ALPINE EXPLORATION OF THE WAKHAN , .authored by HENRI AGRESTI published in 1972 <br />
<br />
An expedition in the Hindu Kush combines the delight of high mountain, the loveliness of the journey and exploration. That huge massif which stretches over nearly 1,000 km. can be divided into three parts—the occidental part is 5,143 m. high at Koh-e-Baba. The central Hindu Kush with its highest part in the Koh-e-Bandakor (6,600 m.) and which presents considerable interest for mountaineering but is rather well known nowadays. The best part for the alpinist is the high Hindu Kush which groups most of the seven-thousanders and numerous six-thousanders— its culminating point is Tirich Mir (7,706 m.) ascended in 1950 by the Norwegians from the valley of Chitral in Pakistan. We are not going to refer to that area of the high Hindu Kush attainable from the south, but only about the less known part—the Wakhan. In fact, Wakhan is the narrow gully which separates the Hindu Kush from the mountains of the Soviet Pamir, but that same term is also used to characterize the northern’ part of the Hindu Kush attainable from Afghanistan. <br />
<br />
In the whole of the Hindu Kush, the Wakhan is the part which has remained the least known up to now. The first expedition took place only in 1960. The reason why it has been so are simple. Before 1963 the access to the Wakhan was difficult because of the lack of roads. Even now, it depends on the summer season—when the torrents don’t cut the track, one can go as far as Quala Panja by jeep and by other vehicles; on the other hand, the permit to go to that region is not delivered every year so that some summers no climbing has been done, as has been the case in 1961 and 1967.<br />
<br />
In 1960 a Japanese expedition climbed Noshaq (7 492 m) the second highest summit in Hindu Kush and the highest in Afghanistan—some days later a Polish expedition succeeded in the second ascent of the same summit. The two expeditions began the ascents of the Wakhan mountains and explored the most western part of the massif near its entrance.<br />
<br />
1 This is a translation of one of the articles printed in an excellent booklet ‘Montagne arides du Wakhan’ by the author<br />
<br />
In 1962 the second Polish expedition joined by four Frenchmen (Moreau, Ginat, Bruneau and Langevin) explored the valleys of Mandaras and of Urgen-Bala, climbing Koh-e-Tez (6,800 m.) and Koh-e-Mandaras (6,600 m.).<br />
<br />
The year 1963 is one of the most important in the discovery of these mountains. Six expeditions were given the permit to get to them, and for the first time, a group of alpinists penetrated far to the east, towards the plateau of Pamir. After having explored the different valleys, among which was the valley of Lunkho, the Italians climbed Baba-Tangi (6,513 m.). However, it is once more in the region of Noshaq that the main activity of alpinists could be seen. Two Austrian expeditions, one directed by Dr. Gruber and the other by Pilz, ascended the western crest and went over the ridge to Noshaq, thus realizing the third ascent of that summit. The same year a third Austrian expedition climbed Kishmi-Khan (6,700 m.) twice.<br />
<br />
The same summer the third Polish expedition succeeded in the first ascent of Languta-e-Barfi and the third and fourth of Kishmi- Khan after a rather elaborate attempt on the northern spur of Shakhaur (7,000 m.). That attempt foreshadowed the advent of the 6 Sporting era’ in the Wakhan. To complete the year 1963, let us mention a Swiss expedition led by Eiselin. Over and above the seven-thousander Urgen, that expedition climbed Shash-Dhar (6,550 m.) and Urup (5,650 m.). At the end of 1963 the occidental part of Wakhan was well explored, but a lot of things had to be done further to the east. There numerous summits, often difficult, but not reaching more than 7,000 m. rose along over a hundred kilometres losing height gradually as it approached the plateau of Pamir—the crossroads where the Hindu Kush meets the Pamirs, the Tien-shan and the Kara- korams. If the present political situation remains unchanged these frontier massifs will, no doubt, remain difficult of access to the alpinists for a long time.<br />
<br />
In 1964 a German expedition directed by Von Dobeneck climbed the 7,000 m. high Langar. Then because of the persistent bad weather—which is likely to be rather rare on a massif not subject to the monsoon—undertook the longest penetration to the east ever realized up to that time by alpinists—as far as the Chinese frontier. Their account, thrilling from the exploration and adventure standpoint, contains precious details about those mountains of Asia which are still very little known.<br />
<br />
The following year an important Czech expedition climbed seventeen summits in the Ishmurgh valley at the foot of Lunkho.<br />
<br />
It left untouched the main problem of that part, but revealed the existence of beautiful mountains with huge and very steep face which can be compared to the north face of the Grandes Jorasses, but twice as high and reaching to about 7,000 m.<br />
<br />
The weather was still rather bad and it prevented the Czechs from their great realizations in this area.<br />
<br />
In 1966 again, only one expedition obtained permit to get to the Wakhan, for only the first twenty kilometres of the valley. It’s in that way that the fourth Polish expedition, joined by a Belgian, J. Bourgeois, and two French, my wife and myself, succeeded in the ascent of Noshaq (7,492 m.) by the Austrians’ route and different virgin summits of no great importance such as the Sad-Istragh (5,800 m.), M. 10 (6,000 m.), Chap Zom (5,400 m.)… During an attempt on a seven-thousander, Barban Zom near Noshaq, Potocki disappears in an avalanche. Bourgeois and Heinrich succeed in returning to the main camp after a week of superhuman efforts and thanks to much luck.<br />
<br />
Before 1968, the discovery of the Wakhan developed fairly well in the occidental part, the central and eastern valleys, in spite of some incursions, kept their problems unresolved. All the ambitions were directed in fact towards the Lunkho region and it is in this region that five out of the six expeditions of 1968 were made. The sixth one, a group of Frenchmen led by L. Dubost, climbed Koh-e-Lakhsh (5,786 m.) at the entrance of Wakhan from its northern spur.<br />
<br />
Going on to the east we find in the Yamit valley an Italo- Polish expedition which is said to have climbed the western ramparts of Lunkho and different summits of less importance in this valley as well as some in Khandud.<br />
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In the Khandud valley two expeditions—an Austrian and a Yugoslavian—succeeded together on the same day the ascent of Lunkho-e-Dosare (6,868 m.); a few days later, on 13 August the Austrians succeeded in climbing the central tongue of Lunkho- e-Hawar (6,872 m.). They also made the first ascents of the summits of Wala No. 321 (6,450 m.) and No. 353 (6,434 m.), as well as the second ascent of Koh-e-Hevad (6,849 m.) and with the Yugoslavians the second ascent of the Koh-e-Myani (5,632 m.). In the Ishmurgh valley where a Czech expedition went in 1965, a Scottish expedition, directed by Ian Rowe, climbed the northern spur of Lunkho-e-Hawar, but did not reach the top and had to stop 100 to 200 metres lower. During that difficult climbing, Alan North lost his left foot toes. More to the east we find in the Quala Panja valley, our expedition. The 1968 year has then been very important in the discovery and conquest of the central part of the Wakhan mountains, namely all the summits around Lunkho. Thus as far as Quala Panja all the valleys are known. Most of the summits have been reached. More to the east, however, all the summits are virgin, except for Baba-Tangi.<br />
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In 1969 seven groups went to the Wakhan. An American team (Hechtel) and an Austrian (Axt) went to Noshaq. A French group (Dabos) climbed Kishmi-Khan by opening a new route by its south-west pillar, while a Franco-Swiss group (Dittert) went to the region of Mandaras and climbed some five- thousanders. Isabelle and I went back for the third time to the Wakhan with a team from Lyon. We climbed the northern pillar of Shakhaur. A Japanese group went to the Pegish valley, and a French group to the Quala Panja valley to try Koh-e-Wakhan, the first ascent of which has been realized on the same date from the Pakistani side by Helga and Rudolph Lindner.[1]<br />
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Some summits are still waiting for lovers of beautiful problems. Lunkho-e-Hawar (6,872 m.) presents a wall 1,000-2,000 m. high and which stretches over several kilometres to the east as far as the Uparisina and to the west as far as the Lunkho-e-Dosare. More to the east, the Quala-e-Ust (6,300 m.)[2] is virgin. The seven-thousanders have often been climbed only by a single route—walls of over 2,000 m. are not rare—around Shakhaur they reach 3,000 m. Beautiful granite pillars which remind you of the southern aspects of Mont Blanc but rise to 6,000-7,000 m. here and there. Let us mention for instance those we have seen on the Sad-Istragh, the Koh-e-Setara, the Saraghrar…<br />
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Notes on Summit Identification by Dr. A. Diemberger<br />
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Rahezom Zom North = Koh-e-Wakhan<br />
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In 1968 Henry and Isabella Agresti also reconnoitred Koh-e- Wakhan, the imposing summit in the south-east corner of the east glacier of the valley of Quala Panja. For this purpose they climbed two summits beside Col. Est (5,650 m.).<br />
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Southwards from Koh-e-Wakhan, and separated by a Col, towers another high peak which appears to belong to the system of Koh-e-Wakhan. Dr. Gerald Gruber names, in OAZ Fg. 1365, these two peaks Rahezom Zom North and South Height according to Agresti: North peak 6,400 m. South peak 6,636 m. Height according to Gruber: North peak 6,535 m. South peak 6,502 m. (taken from quarter inch and from Wala maps).<br />
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In 1969 Helga and Rudolf Lindner attacked both peaks from the south, from Chitral. From the Chi-Gari glacier, that is from south-west, they reached by step cutting, the big Col between the north and south peaks. They named this beautiful and broad Col ‘Silver Saddle’.<br />
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From Silver Saddle they scaled first on 4.8.69 the North peak and thereafter on 6.8.69 the South peak. They found that the South peak was higher than the North peak. The altitude meter showed a difference of approx 120 m. It would have been purposeful—and H. Agresti and G. Gruber would have agreed to it—to give the name Koh-e-Wakhan to the North peak. It lies on the border ridge between Wakhan and Chitral and is accessible from Wakhan. The name Rahezom Zom could be for the South peak which exists totally independent of the North peak It is pushed towards Chitral. Provisional height approx: Koh- e-Wakhan above 6,400 m., Rahezom Zom about 6,550 m The Lindners found no sign of any previous climbing on the North peak. On the peak edge one could only ride. Clear peak photos show, in the east Ouala Wust, above 6,300 m„ and Baba-Tangi above 6,500 m.<br />
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An Alpine Magazine reported a scaling of Koh-e-Wakhan from the north side on 2.8.69. That is, two days before the scaling of the Lindner team. Now the problem has been cleared. On 2.8.69 a French team came from north side up to the cornices below the summit of Koh-e-Wakhan, but could not reach the summit.<br />
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Further notes on the article by Henri Agresti in the Himalayan Journal, Vol. XXIX, 1969, by Dr. A. Diemberger.<br />
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The credit to Henry Agresti regarding the opening up of the Ouala Panja Valley cannot be sufficiently stressed. A few more remarks on the article on pp. 65 and 66, and on the ridge sketch.<br />
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1. The first summit north of Koh-e-Tirma (5,950 m ) is Koh-e-Andaval, approx. 5,640 m. In 1968 it was scaled by a Scottish Team from the Ishmurgh Valley.<br />
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2. Between Koh-e-Tirma and Koh-e-Setara (6,050 m.), a group of three summits lie, one said to have a height of 6,150 m.<br />
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H. Agresti takes all these three summits under a provisional name Koh-e-Bakera. The western one is a neve summit, the eastern one a complex of rock towers. These summits have not been scaled yet (1970) and deserve an ascent.<br />
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3. Further references:<br />
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(a) H.J., Vol. XXIX, 1969, pp. 65-66, 67-69, 69-70, 71-74 (the first three being reprints from A.J., 1969).<br />
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(b) A.J., 1970, pp. 169-172 (Austrian Expedition, 1969), p. 173 (American Expedition, 1969), pp. 173-174 (French Expedition, 1969), pp. 174-175 (Franco-Swiss Expedition, 1969), pp. 175-176 (French ascent of Shakhaur, 1669) (reprinted in H.J., Vol. XXX, 1970 pp. 275-277).<br />
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(c) H.J., Vol. XXX, 1970, pp. 264-269 (Austrian Expedition, 1969), pp. 282-300 (Review of Scottish Expeditions, 1965-1970).<br />
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(d) AJ., 1971, pp. 213-214 (British Expedition, 1970), pp. 214-216 (Austrian Expedition, 1970).<br />
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(e) A.AJ., 1971, pp. 456-461 (Various Expeditions of 1970).<br />
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[1] See Dr. A. Diemberger’s notes which immediately follow this article regarding Koh-e-Wakhan and the 1968 French Expedition to Quala Panja.<br />
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[2] Also spelt Quala Wust.</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-20150535127568711742011-08-14T07:06:00.000-07:002015-06-10T00:49:00.105-07:00Expeditions and climbs in the Hindu Kush - Afghanistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Today I took time to update various climbs and expeditions I went on in Afghanistan during the period, 1993-1996.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhafaGkTEA7N_oumK_X3_ts6j-TDw3-VCJGSE-nESREuSZ-6ZuwFxGshwGz9PtlaiAZCDlOu5qD_RblrNjUM3IQl9LaKPh8lEJd7hXw0vTHFW-Q8_Ikb1NPoAj4rrNGJR_M6Xmd82XmUAxu/s1600-h/Mir.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315481281566000866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhafaGkTEA7N_oumK_X3_ts6j-TDw3-VCJGSE-nESREuSZ-6ZuwFxGshwGz9PtlaiAZCDlOu5qD_RblrNjUM3IQl9LaKPh8lEJd7hXw0vTHFW-Q8_Ikb1NPoAj4rrNGJR_M6Xmd82XmUAxu/s400/Mir.jpg" style="display: block; height: 263px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> <strong>John Tinker (l) and Ian Clarke with Mir Samir in the background. The route they attempted was a ridge on the face just to the left of centre to the left of a small avalanche in a snow gulley: Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<strong>FROM THE AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL 1995</strong><br />
<em closure_uid_ynpzfq="1531">Mir Samir and ascent of P5000.</em> After years when it was too dangerous to enter the mountains of Afghanistan, New Zealander Bob McKerrow and Englishmen Ian Clarke and Jon Tinker headed for Mir Samir in the Hindu Kush. McKerrow is head of the International Red Cross in Afghanistan and Clarke is a former Royal Marine, now head of the Halo Trust mine clearance organisation in Afghanistan.<br />
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Tinker has worked in the country a number of times in the last seven years.The three climbers set out from Kabul on September 23, 1994, acclimatizing near the Salang Pass before setting out for Parian in the upper Panjchir.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwwyG4im8jXv17KA8t_b8a86fZyCgQ2fXeI8opFk1EW0PvMvOWh6esqfGUO9jxGUNnNt1QNzrTrhCDEsxhig1h_Q9xbbHLEhwnYvY35NOZvyqFuHL32eLrz_7-L0_KxRHkwEL135yFuRj8/s1600/Bobs+peak.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwwyG4im8jXv17KA8t_b8a86fZyCgQ2fXeI8opFk1EW0PvMvOWh6esqfGUO9jxGUNnNt1QNzrTrhCDEsxhig1h_Q9xbbHLEhwnYvY35NOZvyqFuHL32eLrz_7-L0_KxRHkwEL135yFuRj8/s320/Bobs+peak.JPG" width="206" /></a></div>
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<strong>Above, he peak climbed solo by Bob McKerrow on 1 October 1994. The peak was named P5000 by the American Alpine Journal 1995. The photo is taken from the Chamar Valley. </strong><br />
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There four horses were hired to carry food and equipment up the Chamar valley to base camp at 3,400 m. Clarke's skills were put to the test when the saw air-dropped scatterable anti-personnel mines.</div>
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They established a high camp at 4,300 m on September 29.Because of the deep snow, the two Englishmen made slow progress the next day to bivouac at 4,900 meters on an unclimbed snow route on the southwest face of Mir Samir. On October 1 they made While Clarke and Tinker were climbing Mir Samir, McKerrow climbed an unclimbed peak at approximately 5000 metres, a prominent feature when viewed from the Chamar Valley. a summit attempt.but unseasonable deep snow turned the back at 5200 meters, some 600 meters from the summit.(end of article from American Alpine Club Journal, 1995)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5slFVTwMBjTsxkzbDx-QSxWC2s4n1WwFMTn2q0bALaXl0AyhsQ-Jr7ulKtq4Ab0dl5f-NtlbgypKDyu6J2Oq-nMLt773RS9tERabi5lbgJl0891IJQ5yueqmIH8c_YEaICGkD1_zwBeat/s1600-h/Mir+gun.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315480462546171490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5slFVTwMBjTsxkzbDx-QSxWC2s4n1WwFMTn2q0bALaXl0AyhsQ-Jr7ulKtq4Ab0dl5f-NtlbgypKDyu6J2Oq-nMLt773RS9tERabi5lbgJl0891IJQ5yueqmIH8c_YEaICGkD1_zwBeat/s400/Mir+gun.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 259px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> <strong closure_uid_ynpzfq="1532">We spent a few night in the Panjcher valley. This trigger-happy commander put us up for a few nights free. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHkSaQYYU3Qz_nGAUBgQXZdwmaiyL6ip9zz0R73BE1KlwsfcmxCcu1bmqAxBJzu7UQy3uouw0v4QDAwG26cwE4KPi7xsSQSHyzuwa0Zx9aOMKZxx40csV_9JAgaTHfkM__-1srQuzA-wr/s1600-h/Mir+Min.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315480821726237586" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHkSaQYYU3Qz_nGAUBgQXZdwmaiyL6ip9zz0R73BE1KlwsfcmxCcu1bmqAxBJzu7UQy3uouw0v4QDAwG26cwE4KPi7xsSQSHyzuwa0Zx9aOMKZxx40csV_9JAgaTHfkM__-1srQuzA-wr/s400/Mir+Min.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 259px;" /></a><br />
<strong>Tinker with parts of land mines which we found scattered through the region. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbeN99b1YCGL8l3ERSFEoUf9sysO3pGLL5rQIlY2YRgx4dk1YZMBpnghSxTnQRfO5-5T2GX1sWBu1HmxhH7rSpV7r-2zutY81kDvHRZ0EvpLTe_g8X0rHFk2Qnw50onoIAn3GMDSb_u8SR/s1600-h/aaMirBob.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316193844258994450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbeN99b1YCGL8l3ERSFEoUf9sysO3pGLL5rQIlY2YRgx4dk1YZMBpnghSxTnQRfO5-5T2GX1sWBu1HmxhH7rSpV7r-2zutY81kDvHRZ0EvpLTe_g8X0rHFk2Qnw50onoIAn3GMDSb_u8SR/s400/aaMirBob.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 258px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> Bob McKerrow (l) with John Tinker at Base Camp on Mir Samir. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg70ZTuEcWxr6CyPFPVmS1pgiPFMgfft7k4vNcGfF0WEEYL4HT_F8oCmRjtGz4q458kdsuYGjtsvo99BxzCFFGtvaUgD43WtBXU2Pve4SlUrV9ltqwpFX1XAtK6ZoS3w2-bzBlJeqD7ITks/s1600-h/Mi+donk.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315479689767776034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg70ZTuEcWxr6CyPFPVmS1pgiPFMgfft7k4vNcGfF0WEEYL4HT_F8oCmRjtGz4q458kdsuYGjtsvo99BxzCFFGtvaUgD43WtBXU2Pve4SlUrV9ltqwpFX1XAtK6ZoS3w2-bzBlJeqD7ITks/s400/Mi+donk.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 260px;" /></a> <strong closure_uid_ynpzfq="1533">The donkey that carried our supplies in with Mir Samir in the background. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKy2FQzcPRQ5nurWtdw-Jq9s87CoZndjRZw6DN8qToHZdWFKKrCm5bZUj5AHVPKirsdfnXHBrH1WB_v_pPeYu7tW1JPP5kHzsYytDbgfFU2_6afCDBC4sDX6hGUqe9pjRoR-ohZmoMx7Bj/s1600-h/newby.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281239115564677762" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKy2FQzcPRQ5nurWtdw-Jq9s87CoZndjRZw6DN8qToHZdWFKKrCm5bZUj5AHVPKirsdfnXHBrH1WB_v_pPeYu7tW1JPP5kHzsYytDbgfFU2_6afCDBC4sDX6hGUqe9pjRoR-ohZmoMx7Bj/s400/newby.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 252px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 190px;" /></a><strong> I couldn't resist putting the photo of Eric Newby taken on their attempt on Mir Samir in 1956 and an extract from his obituary in the New York Times, October 24, 2006.</strong></div>
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Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1956, Mr. Newby set out on the trip that would make him famous: a voyage by station wagon, foot and horseback to climb Mir Samir, a 20,000-foot peak in Nuristan, a wild region in northeastern Afghanistan. The fact that he had never climbed a mountain did not deter him in the slightest.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN8V7m7WztGXomMllDLdxQLUizv8GmyA96bTFs8SItuvqCuT4u0InG12RLlIjupja_1am0NfOZRWelBr89dmCgFnKHWUs-UPlNXm7RIHrVLHZOTT3d_lRR7V7t5MwUKL3WKcozJzROAa5D/s1600-h/aaMir.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316192792028105714" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN8V7m7WztGXomMllDLdxQLUizv8GmyA96bTFs8SItuvqCuT4u0InG12RLlIjupja_1am0NfOZRWelBr89dmCgFnKHWUs-UPlNXm7RIHrVLHZOTT3d_lRR7V7t5MwUKL3WKcozJzROAa5D/s400/aaMir.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 242px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> Mir Samir. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Mr. Newby chronicled the trip in “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush,” published in Britain by Secker & Warburg in 1958 and in the United States by Doubleday the next year. As in all his work, the narrative was marked by genial self-effacement and overwhelming understatement.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZq4EN1MEgDrFU6B84NK2tW1jCLSs07JCjUyYqT65jIbv0lsyCoLNdJKhrHXOCuz__gWeTt-8wloD7ZA5xTbP0ZpoV6sLF2jvazQ7SHaQrY4aO4J3nNTixG_808JtskmeDx0Yl3fWg4uq/s1600-h/mir+bob.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315479711788329842" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxZq4EN1MEgDrFU6B84NK2tW1jCLSs07JCjUyYqT65jIbv0lsyCoLNdJKhrHXOCuz__gWeTt-8wloD7ZA5xTbP0ZpoV6sLF2jvazQ7SHaQrY4aO4J3nNTixG_808JtskmeDx0Yl3fWg4uq/s400/mir+bob.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 259px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> <strong>Bob McKerrow reading some pages from Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush to children whose Grandfathers helped Newby. We retraced a large part of their journey, Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review in 1959, William O. Douglas, a noted travel memoirist who by day was a justice of the United States Supreme Court, called the book “a chatty, humorous and perceptive account.” He added: “Even the unsanitary hotel accommodations, the infected drinking water, the unpalatable food, the inevitable dysentery are lively, amusing, laughable episodes.”<br />
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<strong closure_uid_ynpzfq="1535"><span style="font-size: large;">Here is the article I wrote on various climbs in Afghanistan we did between 1993 and 1996.</span></strong><br />
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No foreigners have climbed in Afghanistan since the Soviets arrived in late 1978. I had heard about the passes and valleys strewn with land mines so it was with some trepidation I embarked from Kabul in October 1994 on what was probably the first expedition into the Hindu Kush for at least 17 years.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv7YJ3s4aw3H-L_vcbF_2dNmzAHOMJwhcaTSP4G5MbNo0aRBGsBjRkKmfvkJF5k4gLPV6yC2t_pl1z0Ey6FQzI-g4H_fpgPSMCjnBF2WdFREb7ilQnN4O4csRkdQ-jSkK9KAVg4RuPRnIp/s1600-h/aamirRC.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316193853236297378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv7YJ3s4aw3H-L_vcbF_2dNmzAHOMJwhcaTSP4G5MbNo0aRBGsBjRkKmfvkJF5k4gLPV6yC2t_pl1z0Ey6FQzI-g4H_fpgPSMCjnBF2WdFREb7ilQnN4O4csRkdQ-jSkK9KAVg4RuPRnIp/s400/aamirRC.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 258px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> Roads in the Hindu Kush are difficult to negotiate in winter. We are heading up to the Salang Tunnel which is the only tunnel through the Hindu Kush. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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I travelled with two British climbers, Ian Clarke and John Tinker, to the Chamar valley for an attempt Mir Samir, a peak made famous by Eric Newby in his book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Tinker was fresh off an ascent of Everest by a new route on the north side and Clarke was head of a British Mine clearance organisation in Afghanistan and was a necessary companion as the area had received large amounts of small scatterable mines, dropped from Soviet aircrafts to prevent the freedom fighters crossing the mountain passes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUBn9JW-4EN6mrhDg8_k6hvXtEGenTZXgH3B8jhPx3sW1s5JDcTrE-3PhUutn-Y644nnUX405Y2hZlnCOQYkKNDS-0I_ICuaOTmPYo95efF7VYBIK7vX5454bmvidvSAdynN8hgxEdDsNn/s1600-h/mir+vlarke.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315480831533364242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUBn9JW-4EN6mrhDg8_k6hvXtEGenTZXgH3B8jhPx3sW1s5JDcTrE-3PhUutn-Y644nnUX405Y2hZlnCOQYkKNDS-0I_ICuaOTmPYo95efF7VYBIK7vX5454bmvidvSAdynN8hgxEdDsNn/s400/mir+vlarke.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 257px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> <strong>Having lunch at our base camp with a bunch of Pashtoon soldiers returning from just being released from prison in the north, to their home in the east of Afghanistan, a journey of 400 km through remote wild mountain areas. John Tinker left, and Ian Clarke 3rd from left. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Our safety was dependent on his knowledge of mines and where battles had taken place. Tinker and Clarke attempted an unclimbed face on Mir Samir and got surprising high considering the unseasonably soft snow that had fallen.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2k3L2jSF_JmlSFuJd-ZR5qXByp-39vpUO02I7qkKn7uQu4N0s00SX6iA1VHyVCRM2i8GKJpj4lvgHlkW90P8kjh4D8Kk7_ukTEldj2KW3AWtGD_lrB55mM4jZvW1cUtYkzS9jluOYgc1/s1600-h/Mir+left.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315480463841219938" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV2k3L2jSF_JmlSFuJd-ZR5qXByp-39vpUO02I7qkKn7uQu4N0s00SX6iA1VHyVCRM2i8GKJpj4lvgHlkW90P8kjh4D8Kk7_ukTEldj2KW3AWtGD_lrB55mM4jZvW1cUtYkzS9jluOYgc1/s400/Mir+left.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 257px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> The mountains to the extreme left of Mir Samir at the head of the Chamar Valley. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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While the others were attempting Mir Samir, I climbed an <strong>unnamed peak around 5000 metres</strong> and looked over to the enticing mountains of Nuristan, formerly Kafirstan. We explored a number of neighbouring regions with the hope of returning to do further climbing. .In June 1995 I did another trip was Clarke, crossing from the Panjcher valley to southern Badakshan by way of the 4260 m Anjuman Pass.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBuLZpWYJIitwn8kYypbM6JPHpEO8mPFOtZSedBhHGo5Ei0MHYSBkmHRFh-70h2vgLAEpWZHVkW_p3UMrlEo4r0S0dpNWXMWrvfRLANMSOIiUgNduI1aO6QFVNHAubAVbWMiO9_lIcwaxV/s1600-h/Mir+Anju.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315479707716099218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBuLZpWYJIitwn8kYypbM6JPHpEO8mPFOtZSedBhHGo5Ei0MHYSBkmHRFh-70h2vgLAEpWZHVkW_p3UMrlEo4r0S0dpNWXMWrvfRLANMSOIiUgNduI1aO6QFVNHAubAVbWMiO9_lIcwaxV/s400/Mir+Anju.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 258px;" /></a><strong>Early 1995, Ian Clarke and I did another trip over the Anjuman Pass on a journey towards the Wakhan Corridor. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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It was a unique opportunity to explore this spectacular part of the Hindu Kush and check routes on the major peaks in the area ranging from 5900 to 6500 metres.<br />
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<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315480460322485042" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKG7GasXootrNpwpYl7blsrbQpE-KlXh-7hk7h7Z3hq9V6Bu4Op5MapNINWu6qY53FCr8-ElJeWzImB65cp02nVYwHDI0M9C3clYAIOrOS9nhyXD1na2Zeq-qRFtYKm4IVLXdL2U8KTgV/s400/Mir+dub.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 257px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /><strong>A rather dubious group we came across. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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One of the best peaks in the area in Kohi Bandak. The highlight of the trip was when returning back over the Anjuman Pass when at about 3400 metres in high alpine pastures we met about 50 Kuchi (nomad) families on their annual journey to this area. Some were on the move, other camping in their black, low-slung goat hair tents. We passed strings of camels with babies and young children with intricately embroidered bonnets, tied on the backs.<br />
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<strong>Camped at a lake on the northern side of the Hindu Kush. We crossed by Kotali Anjuman, the low pass on the right. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNHvPh84eJ3zFZAgTCz4TnhssHEtqhcQLS9lcYtmBq142O14YoKWM71zstn4flBtMNEY0EbwI8qN3QrEIgcvX4hW-IcT2SYZl8poitfMkr3e0Lz6CRpR6QpUJ1JrCxS0VYNOviSr1Y9zON/s1600-h/kuchi+1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316004035234678418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNHvPh84eJ3zFZAgTCz4TnhssHEtqhcQLS9lcYtmBq142O14YoKWM71zstn4flBtMNEY0EbwI8qN3QrEIgcvX4hW-IcT2SYZl8poitfMkr3e0Lz6CRpR6QpUJ1JrCxS0VYNOviSr1Y9zON/s400/kuchi+1.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 260px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<strong>Kuchi nomads wending their way through the Hindu Kush.</strong><br />
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Young girls with page-boy style hair cuts, flashed their shy blue eyes at us as we passed.<br />
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We stopped in tents to share pots of tea and watched how they cared for their animals. Young goats were inside the tent, sheltering from the hot sun, women tenderly carried young lambs in their arms, and an old lame sheep, rode past on the back of a camel. Over the hillsides women and children were gathering alpine herbs, wood, leaves and wild vegetables. Nearby an old women was weaving a carpet. This is what the mountains of Afghanistan are about, tough friendly mountain people who have a symbiotic relations with the hills. They name their children after the mountains, names such as ‘Kohzad’, meaning of the mountains.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0n1dP7zDAd5hjNL_e2gHF5MLLFwQZQvALGtq7G2MO9gEce9Yf1lsjMyBeTh2b8nWnYmHI87F_h038uXsGzkJSxLlzseX9hMw2Y47OL6r4NUnhTUij-NGhAWFw2OJyfSX9ReHGXmXKA28I/s1600-h/kuchis+on+move.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316004166646397538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0n1dP7zDAd5hjNL_e2gHF5MLLFwQZQvALGtq7G2MO9gEce9Yf1lsjMyBeTh2b8nWnYmHI87F_h038uXsGzkJSxLlzseX9hMw2Y47OL6r4NUnhTUij-NGhAWFw2OJyfSX9ReHGXmXKA28I/s400/kuchis+on+move.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 249px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><br />
<strong>Kuchi nomads on the move.</strong><br />
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Despite the warmth of the people, many disasters befall them. Thousands are killed annually by avalanches and landslides. In late March word reached Kabul that a massive landslides had hit the village of Qarluk, situated high in the mountains of Badakhshan.<br />
I was part of a Red Cross survey team that walked and rode by horse to the site. The whole village had been engulfed killing 350 people, all women and children. The landslide occurred at 11 am when the men and boys were out in the fields and the women. We arrived to find only one female survivor, 11 year old Gulnesa Beg, her arm broken in two places and with her good arm, hugging her father. A whole village wiped out by nature. Here we spent weeks running a relief operation to assist during the emergency phase and started helping these rugged Hazara people put their lives back together again.<br />
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In August 1996, the highlight of my time in Afghanistan was a trip to Nuristan, the legendary 'land of light'.</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEg2EMZpOBwVmUIJqK1Q1pdGXhJPLUHjYXTTEZaCyMj8WvLDf-n-bIOFmbCoB-EtIc-yP1wI9NEaVLVHwgsRMHVNLupO1FP2k6qHafinlTdjEVOSXE0cnqFFkoWepSOJ9HrEZFsp3Xkt_k/s1600-h/aaNur.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316193857272544786" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEg2EMZpOBwVmUIJqK1Q1pdGXhJPLUHjYXTTEZaCyMj8WvLDf-n-bIOFmbCoB-EtIc-yP1wI9NEaVLVHwgsRMHVNLupO1FP2k6qHafinlTdjEVOSXE0cnqFFkoWepSOJ9HrEZFsp3Xkt_k/s400/aaNur.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 258px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> Parun Valley, Nuristan. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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The Afghan Red Cross is establishing a medical clinic in the Parun valley and I went with our medical staff. Nuristan hugs the southern side of the Hindu Kush and is been isolated from the rest of the country. Six main valleys make up Nuristan each with their own language and for four to five months of the year, the mountain passes in and out of Nuristan are blocked. In is an area where snow panthers, wolves and fox thrive in forests almost untouched by human hand, this is paradise on earth. These blue-eyed and sometimes blond haired people claim they are either descendants of the original Aryans, while others say they are descendants of Alexander the Great. In 1895 they were forcibly converted to Islam and even today their are remnants of their former pagan past. Nuristani villages cling to mountain sides, sometimes perched on peak-tops. a legacy of the past to avoid invaders. Like the mountain Tajiks, the Nuristanis are true mountaineers. In 1889 George Robertson the author of the book ‘Kafirs of the Hindu Kush’, described the Nuristanis as" 'magnificent mountaineers<-"' because of their mountain skills, fitness and agility.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWA8lyyZ3MqtIFfYFXEj1QAwjZcaBvGK0dq0sTz6EyDVJTdpp1VNbC8RkqEhHlkga8TbhSBwahevzFtGeY1vgvt6lBJeUiBXElFzSrVfk3M0hoP-lLgTLXNSWZVil8UVdVDBtKL4UNUuM/s1600-h/Skiing_Hindu_Kush.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281239231433716402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWA8lyyZ3MqtIFfYFXEj1QAwjZcaBvGK0dq0sTz6EyDVJTdpp1VNbC8RkqEhHlkga8TbhSBwahevzFtGeY1vgvt6lBJeUiBXElFzSrVfk3M0hoP-lLgTLXNSWZVil8UVdVDBtKL4UNUuM/s400/Skiing_Hindu_Kush.jpg" style="display: block; height: 300px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a></div>
<strong>Skiing near the Salang Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJK7Ns-l2e7KcH8EWCHaywDDg1bPnPGjjm7_dc9VmGOBKm80yrG4d9g3Y01RUB-6LZcbTPmNppSvzA2YigQXNSjrf5armP7xwGOgPSwuIdUZbkv_ZTGCtgVBZFfa-pJqp2rc8C9jVgKBOm/s1600-h/aamirtunnel.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316202136297614610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJK7Ns-l2e7KcH8EWCHaywDDg1bPnPGjjm7_dc9VmGOBKm80yrG4d9g3Y01RUB-6LZcbTPmNppSvzA2YigQXNSjrf5armP7xwGOgPSwuIdUZbkv_ZTGCtgVBZFfa-pJqp2rc8C9jVgKBOm/s400/aamirtunnel.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 257px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a> <strong>The northern entrance to the Salang Tunnel and the men who keep the road open. February 1996. Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<strong> </strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKLLxc24ycR_j_D-smXTMVCtA2NS02UAWpsqOvm5DZtGybZrTBA5KkWV9am9911Jjay9IzXXCZbWK0EFxLvrsfOfki66arkMZkpvQVlCoXDdlvZIFU0q9N2m70IVYXAZjAe6mp0IUfAdd/s1600-h/aaMir+Base+camp.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316192783294012130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKLLxc24ycR_j_D-smXTMVCtA2NS02UAWpsqOvm5DZtGybZrTBA5KkWV9am9911Jjay9IzXXCZbWK0EFxLvrsfOfki66arkMZkpvQVlCoXDdlvZIFU0q9N2m70IVYXAZjAe6mp0IUfAdd/s400/aaMir+Base+camp.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 258px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong closure_uid_ag6e5u="1510"> McKerrow and Tinker sorting out gear at Base Camp in 1994. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho6lJBDxaFTnwydSf3-wIY-NtIRnGpXEFiyejI7t0HAN9GC6k0BULtEOfz5RmXYRRighgMWUxk54mEAIPhw5gBMOe3YTsQMqDt1hP4kt8JDntKH727kMbEk46HPSd6oYSCCRmLwGxQu4mR/s1600-h/aa+Mir+tank.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316192779710214082" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho6lJBDxaFTnwydSf3-wIY-NtIRnGpXEFiyejI7t0HAN9GC6k0BULtEOfz5RmXYRRighgMWUxk54mEAIPhw5gBMOe3YTsQMqDt1hP4kt8JDntKH727kMbEk46HPSd6oYSCCRmLwGxQu4mR/s400/aa+Mir+tank.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 260px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong> The writer sitting on an old Soviet tank. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2Cig8w4Qx39vd-pxTz65UpIX0g6MRhxnTYrlwTuQfJJuPdblcVpfeJZV1PeibBhLp2yZW7jcJsLcENNmBwzwfMyT3T-h87u2ARO6M-zjdcQeF4yZu5lpj3QbVGMnNHZ19X4DwOPND3lj/s1600-h/aamirlast+climb.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5316193852919668514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2Cig8w4Qx39vd-pxTz65UpIX0g6MRhxnTYrlwTuQfJJuPdblcVpfeJZV1PeibBhLp2yZW7jcJsLcENNmBwzwfMyT3T-h87u2ARO6M-zjdcQeF4yZu5lpj3QbVGMnNHZ19X4DwOPND3lj/s400/aamirlast+climb.jpg" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 256px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><strong closure_uid_oqrfci="1502" closure_uid_uqvq2="1541" closure_uid_ynpzfq="1528"> Our last climbs in Afghanistan were in June 1996. I went with Mathias Luft, Ross Everson and Bruce Watson. Mathias and Ross climbed Kohe Jalgya 6260m, the peak in the background in the photo above. Bruce and I climbed a 5300 m peak. Photo: Bob McKerrow </strong></div>
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This was quite a difficult expedition and the first mistake made, was letting a Frenchman buy the food without supervision. We ended up with pasta, stale and hard bread, rice, onions sugar and tea. There were no breakfast food, no milk powder, no salt, nuts, meat, chocolate meat or sardines. I wrote in my diary after six days we were starving. A group of armed locals stole equipment from us and Mathias was threatened by a soldier with an AK 47.</div>
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<strong closure_uid_7nvkdr="1702">Bruce Watson on our Kohe Jalgya expedition at about 4,800 metres, just above our base camp. Photo: Bob McKerrow </strong><br />
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It took us five days to cross from the Panjcher Valley over Kotali Anjoman, down to Anjoman village, where we turned a sharp right up a side valley called Darrahe Paghar and set up a base camp at 4300 metres under Kohe Jalgya.<br />
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We soon realised that Kohe Jalgya was quite a technical climb and we didn’t have enough climbing equipment for such an ice climb. So Ross and Mathias head for Kohe Jalgya and Bruce and I for another less technical climb, an unnamed peak at 5,300 metres. <br />
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On the ascent of Kohe Jalgya, Ross and Mathias spent a night half way up the peak. They made good progress the next day but found the ice climbing difficult. After negotiating the hardest part of the climb, they came to a small snow field where they had to plug through waist-deep snow near the summit. They turned back at 4 pm on the 6th of June as the weather closed in. The descent turned into an epic in worsening weather. Mathias had two axes for front pointing down the face, but Ross only had one which slowed him down. Mathias gave Ross one of his ice axes, and he used one axe and an ice screw as a dagger, to descend. About 9 pm, Mathias lost footing and fell down an icy coliour and tumbled head over heals for 300 metres, just coming to a stop before a rocky bluff. Although cut and bruised, he was able to walk. Meanwhile Ross continued descending alone in the dark on steep ice. Now seperated by 300 metres, Mathias managed to stagger back to their tent situated on a snow ledge. Ross kept down climbing on ice another two hours, reaching the tent at midnight. <br />
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Meanwhile at base camp, Bruce and I were anxiously waiting, for they were a day late. We had eaten our last spoon of milk powder, and had no food left, not even a cooker to make tea. <br />
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So on Saturday 8 June, Bruce and I left a note and emergency equipment under a rock cairn, and said we were leaving for the valley to buy a sheep, cook it and come up with some locals to effect a rescue.<br />
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We got down to a small hamlet in the valley about 4.30 pm and I glanced back at the mountain, and saw two specks slowly moving on the lower snow slopes of the mountain. It could only be Ross and Mathias. Bruce and I were elated. They were alive! We bought a stringy old female sheep and got the farmer to skin it, cut it up and boil it, preparing a feast for Ross and Mathias. Four hours later Mathias and Ross crossed the rising river, and joined us for a feast of mutton. Four days later we were back in Kabul.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVj7ZQhbqnLvRLFLciUGoAmO_X3irP_zWqY6Ya-9vjJ0QxTrwouuZeD75rRhkvvPZ604MmwE-hfjTTLdeCFDWQ-0u-2cOJZh0UwYTvXrApTQTRep2ZpUViMVUdJSJrWFjh93hdCy7gYGlY/s1600/Hk+clarke+tinker.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="412" qaa="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVj7ZQhbqnLvRLFLciUGoAmO_X3irP_zWqY6Ya-9vjJ0QxTrwouuZeD75rRhkvvPZ604MmwE-hfjTTLdeCFDWQ-0u-2cOJZh0UwYTvXrApTQTRep2ZpUViMVUdJSJrWFjh93hdCy7gYGlY/s640/Hk+clarke+tinker.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<strong closure_uid_7nvkdr="1732">Two of the best ! Over the years i have climbed with many high competent mountaineers but John Tinker (left) and Ian Clarke (right) are two of the best I have climbed with. We did an expedition to Mir Samir together and Clarke and I did a recce of the Anjuman Pass area in 1995, trying to reach the Wakhan. The central Hindu Kuah in the background.</strong></div>
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So during the three years I lived and worked in Afghanistan, (1993-96), I was fortunate to get out to many parts of the Hindu Kush, and explore, trek and climb. With the difficult security situation today, I am so grateful to have taken that opportunity.<script type="text/javascript">
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</script> On reflection, I suppose it was minefield mountaineering. Thanks to Ian Clarke for giving me the confidence to travel in a country that was heavily mined, and teaching me what was safe and what was not.</div>
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Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-25403641932858125062011-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:002011-06-26T18:30:12.752-07:00Scientific Expedition to study glaciers on Mir Samir Afghanistan - 1965<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Yesterday I got this message from Howard Horsely about going to Afghanistan as a young man.<br />
<br />
<em><strong>"I was the youngest member of a scientific expedition to study the glaciers on Mir Samir in 1965. Such glaciers provide almost all the water to sustain most of the agriculture in Afghanistan. We climbed a number of neighbouring peaks and while we were there a Japanese team mounted a successful ascent of Mir Samir."</strong></em><br />
<em><strong></strong></em><br />
<em><br />
<strong></strong></em><br />
<em><strong>Howard Horsley </strong></em><br />
<br />
I found this very interesting article about Howard in the New Statesman. <br />
<br />
<strong>Aid to Africa: who's counting?</strong> <br />
<br />
<br />
Rosie Waterhouse<br />
<br />
Published 12 September 2005<br />
<br />
<br />
Howard Horsley is an idealist, committed to overseas aid. Over the years he has worked as a volunteer, a paid teacher and a VSO field officer in Africa. Then, in 1999, at the age of 54 and with a successful career as a headteacher in England behind him, he applied for a job with the Department for International Development (DfID). "I was thrilled by the expansion of the overseas aid programme under the newly elected Labour government and keen to make my expertise available," he recalls.<br />
<br />
In May that year he took up a post managing the education field office (EFO) in Ghana, administering a British aid programme worth £50m over five years. He liked Accra, the capital, and made plans for his wife to join him, but within a few weeks he began to notice things at work that he didn't like. As months passed, he grew more and more concerned about what he describes as "lax financial controls, unchecked powers of patronage and the potential for mismanagement and corruption". He reported these concerns to DfID in London in e-mails, memos and telephone conversations. Yet, instead of seeing them investigated, Horsley was summarily sacked and denied a reference.<br />
<br />
It was a personal calamity. For the past five years, this former head of a tough Grimsby comprehensive, who has a glowing Ofsted report on his record, has been unable to find work. With the vigorous support of the MP Austin Mitchell, who describes his treatment as "monstrous", Horsley has fought to have his case reviewed and his complaints investigated. Now he has decided to tell his story.<br />
<br />
It is a story that raises important questions about DfID's control over aid spending - at a time when the G8 summit has just agreed to double aid to Africa by 2010, and when our government is assuring us that our aid money is not seeping away through corruption and poor management. And, while the government insists it has done nothing wrong, uncertainty remains about its past procedures and about the fate of no less than £18m in aid. More worrying still, it is now clear that Horsley was not the first British aid official in Accra to raise doubts about financial control.<br />
<br />
At the time he went to Accra, Britain's policy for distributing aid had shifted from big projects to local programmes administered through the Ghana Education Service, with staff at the British education field office working alongside officials in the Ghanaian education ministry. Horsley soon heard complaints from other aid agencies, and from the Ghanaian minister and his officials, about the way money was spent and contracts awarded without adequate accounting or monitoring by DfID. Incidents included a request to authorise spending of £32,000 on office furniture, when the furniture had already been bought; the failure of DfID to provide the Ghanaian education minister with a full statement of how education aid was being spent, and the potential use of aid as, in Horsley's words, "a means of dispensing personal favours".<br />
<br />
The most mysterious incident came after Horsley was told by the Ghanaian deputy education minister in August 1999 that Clare Short, the then secretary of state for international development, had pledged an extra £18m in aid. When none of this money turned up, Horsley made inquiries with the Ghanaian accountant general - who, he says, confirmed in September 1999 that it had been received by the government.<br />
<br />
The money, however, did not find its way into the usual education aid channels, so Horsley, alarmed about the fate of such a sum and about the other problems he had found, wrote to London requesting a formal, independent investigation of the conduct of DfID affairs in Ghana.<br />
<br />
<br />
Soon afterwards, on a working trip to northern Ghana, he caught typhoid and returned to Britain to recuperate. On his recovery he was called to a meeting at DfID headquarters on 6 January 2000. He thought this was to discuss the investigation he had requested and also to complete his midterm performance review, but he arrived to find that it was a disciplinary hearing. It didn't last long. Blamed for a breakdown in communication and a lack of coherence in the presentation of policy, he was sacked with immediate effect.<br />
<br />
Horsley strenuously denied the charges and received strong support from international colleagues, but, when he returned to Ghana to assemble evidence for his appeal, he found that his filing cabinets had been emptied and his computer files professionally wiped. DfID then withdrew his formal right of appeal and threatened him with the Official Secrets Act if he spoke out.<br />
<br />
Claiming protection as a whistle-blower under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, Horsley sought to have his dismissal investigated first by DfID itself and then at an employment tribunal. The tribunal said it had no jurisdiction because he had not been employed for long enough and had not lodged his Public Interest Disclosure Act claim soon enough. The civil service commissioners brushed him off, too, saying they could not investigate as DfID claimed he was employed on contract, not as a civil servant. <br />
<br />
The case has outraged Austin Mitchell, who raised it in the House of Commons and has written to Hilary Benn, the current Secretary of State of International Development, asking for an independent inquiry. Mitchell told the New Statesman: "As a result of his attempt to blow the whistle on financial inadequacies and possible maladministration, this man has been out of a job for nearly six years and that's a monstrous way for DfID to behave. They made Howard a sacrificial victim. He was an embarrassment in raising these concerns. The proper procedure should have been to investigate complaints and tighten up procedures. They didn't do that."<br />
<br />
<br />
One body that has investigated DfID aid to Ghana is the National Audit Office (NAO), which reported in a letter to Mitchell: "At no point . . . has any evidence emerged to suggest that financial impropriety or mismanagement occurred within DfID." But the letter added that "investigations revealed areas where the department might usefully tighten up its procedures and controls, which they are doing".<br />
<br />
<br />
As for the mysterious £18m, the audit office initially said that DfID claimed no such amount had been paid to Ghana in 1999. Then, in May 2003, the NAO admitted that £18m had been paid, in 2000, as "budgetary support". It explained: "It follows that for payments of budgetary support it is not possible directly to answer the questions 'What was it for?' or 'How was it spent?', except to say that it added to the resources available to the government of Ghana." This is a remarkable admission: put bluntly, it means that neither DfID nor the NAO could say what became of £18m of British taxpayers' money.<br />
<br />
Since that investigation, the NAO has tightened up accounting procedures for aid spending in general and for "budgetary support" in particular. Howard Horsley is entitled to some credit for this, though he has had no thanks for his efforts.<br />
<br />
DfID maintains that any weaknesses in its financial procedures have been addressed and that Horsley's dismissal was "wholly related to his performance, which did not meet the requirements of the job". It says: "All parties across Whitehall have been satisfied that DfID acted correctly in relation to Mr Horsley's dismissal and found no evidence of financial impropriety."<br />
<br />
Horsley authorised DfID to release documents to the New Statesman to clarify the grounds for dismissal. He says they prove that DfID never carried out the investigation he requested weeks before his dismissal and also that it ignored its own disciplinary procedures in sacking him.<br />
<br />
But the story does not end there, for, in the course of his campaign, Horsley discovered he was not alone in raising concerns about aid to Ghana. His predecessor there had raised similar doubts about an "absence of checks and balances". Howard Tyers, who now works at Westminster University, has confirmed to the New Statesman that in his time at the Accra EFO he made "a number of complaints" about payments for an expensive office and also for Land Cruisers of an unnecessarily high specification, purchased without the usual tendering process.<br />
<br />
Worryingly, after these complaints Tyers's tenure in Ghana also ended strangely. His contract ended in March 1999, but he asked for a three-month extension because he had to remain resident in Ghana, as his daughter was completing her A-levels. This request was rejected in London, and it was only after an appeal by the Ghanaian education ministry that he was allowed to stay. However, he was sidelined to a research project and denied access to the EFO. And, like Horsley, he found his computer files wiped.<br />
<br />
The experiences of Horsley and his predecessor raise questions that should worry anyone who cares about aid. Does DfID respond properly to concerns about financial management? Does it ensure that new aid is spent wisely, with transparency and adequate financial controls? DfID says yes, but unless whistle-blowers are encouraged and protected, how can we be sure?<br />
<br />
How does Horsley feel? "Angry that DfID has still held no one accountable for what was going on in Ghana; that no one has been held accountable for my entirely unjustified dismissal; that there has been no hearing, anywhere, on the merits of my case. And appalled that DfID can demand good governance in other countries and still fail to meet the most basic standards of good governance in its own internal practices." He is angry, too, at the waste of years of his career. Despite the emotional and financial costs, he remains determined not to let the matter drop.<br />
<br />
Transparency International, which campaigns against corruption in aid and trade, would not comment on the case, but its executive director, Chandrashekhar Krishnan, was clear about one thing: "Any development organisation should have a policy of encouraging whistle-blowers and of ensuring that, if someone has suspicions to report, there is a mechanism to allow that person to express those concerns in a way which will not attract recriminations." The Horsley case does not seem to match that standard and it will deter, not encourage, future whistle-blowers.</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-45780999477478223862011-06-12T00:54:00.000-07:002012-03-24T19:45:26.637-07:00Meaningless Language and Lessons Learned.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There are many disaster practicioners out there who have been through thick and thin, and are totally committed to Lesson's Learned. But who is charged with following through on Lessons Learned? Do we have Ministers of Lessons Learned? Do we have Permanent Secretaries of Lessons Learned? Do international organistions have people in charge of Lessons Learned?<br />
<br />
My former colleague Michael Stone, an authority on Afghanistan, Cantral Asia and, a man who knows disaster relief and recovery. Here is a lecture he gave recently.<br />
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<strong>IMPROVING EMERGENCY RESPONSE</strong><br />
<br />
1. What I am about to say comes from directing emergency operations with the United Nations, Red Cross and NGOs in Afghanistan, Pakistan, former Yugoslavia, Georgia and Iraq. Also, I have chaired a number of coordination bodies, and reviewed emergency programmes in many parts of the world. <br />
<br />
2. In this brief presentation, I want to introduce 5 areas of serious common error in needs assessments. Remember, if we get it wrong, people can die – in extreme cases, we may even kill them. I will then provide solutions for these errors, developed from my own experience, and conclude with something I am working on now which needs to be incorporated in all needs assessments.<br />
<br />
3. The most serious errors:<br />
<br />
A. Meaningless Language.<br />
<br />
B. Failure to Distinguish Means from Ends.<br />
<br />
C. Observation Altering Reality.<br />
<br />
D. Lessons Not Learned.<br />
<br />
E. Coordination Failure.<br />
<br />
<strong>LANGUAGE.</strong> <br />
<br />
a. If I could receive a euro for every report I’ve read, every appeal document, and especially every evaluation, I would be rich. English is my first language, and I’m good at it, but document after document contains phrases, indeed whole paragraphs, which are meaningless. Oh yes, there is great pressure on me to pretend I understand, otherwise I may give the impression I am thick. But no, so often the phrases and paragraphs are meaningless.<br />
<br />
<strong>COLUMN 1</strong> <strong>COLUMN 2</strong> <strong>COLUMN 3</strong><br />
STRATEGIC COST-BASED CAPACITY BUILDING<br />
INTERACTIVE LOGISTICAL ALLIANCE<br />
RESPONSIVE DISCRETIONARY RE-ENGINEERING<br />
RECIPROCAL EMPOWERING VALUES<br />
BENEFICIARY VISIONARY BENCHMARK<br />
FUNCTIONAL PARTICIPATORY PARADIGM<br />
<br />
The above words are taken from recent reports. Moving right to left, in any combination, they give the appearance of sense, but are meaningless e.g. “responsive logistical alliance”, “functional empowering capacity building”, “strategic visionary benchmark”. They can even be reversed e.g. “benchmark empowering functional”<br />
<br />
Meaningless language itself encourages illogical or impractical thinking. The following chart, informally called the Mother of All Charts, relates to the new US surge in Afghanistan. The chart was prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a leading international firm of management consultants.<br />
<br />
<strong>The chart is mind-bogglingly awesome</strong> in its complexity and utter uselessness, and demonstrates admirably the problem of meaningless language encouraging illogical and impractical thinking.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mxAOAYULxvLXj5aHWYVCqfv0wQxvH8FmnV31RXnNnFvUh-jdAkqq20Le2zfDoPc_B7A0gTDuY-P_SeapmHWfMOJyiKf-MIoYQmBVwkX3tv3QaFbx5V8vV_P2IZuX6PY5Y7qicufhrVRV/s1600/chart.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mxAOAYULxvLXj5aHWYVCqfv0wQxvH8FmnV31RXnNnFvUh-jdAkqq20Le2zfDoPc_B7A0gTDuY-P_SeapmHWfMOJyiKf-MIoYQmBVwkX3tv3QaFbx5V8vV_P2IZuX6PY5Y7qicufhrVRV/s400/chart.JPG" t8="true" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"> </shapetype></span>a. The problem, it seems to me, is that some of us don’t <br />
Know what we are talking about. We think we do, but we don’t. The consequence can be formidable for the vulnerable in emergencies e.g. the failure of internationals to provide enough helicopters for the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir is partly the result of unintelligible needs assessments.<br />
<br />
b. Language is important. For example, in recent years we have tended to talk of beneficiaries, rather than the most vulnerable. The two are not necessarily the same. A food distribution in an emergency, reported as reaching all beneficiaries, may have targeted millionaires!<br />
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<strong>ENDS AND MEANS.</strong><br />
<br />
a. In our world, we are here for one thing, to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, often in an emergency. That is the end. The means are the funds from donors, the structured organisation we may be part of, the tents, the medicines, the food and the vehicles for their delivery. But how often are the two confused! Some reports, some evaluations, and more seriously TORs, make no mention whatsoever of the most vulnerable.<br />
<br />
b. This happens in development too. Recently I reviewed a counter narcotics programme for which $800m had been pledged. Initially, people said they were too busy to see us, but they had to, we reported directly to the donors. Yes, they were busy. About 300 were involved in various ways, working six days a week, firing <br />
endless e mails at each other, meeting all hours of the day. But after two years, only $2m had been spent, <br />
and most of this wasted. The mushroom project, for example, most unsuitable anyway, yielded a crop costing $27,000 a kilo! The end – to encourage farmers to turn away from the poppy – had been forgotten. The means dominated everything.<br />
<br />
<strong>OBSERVATION ALTERING REALITY.</strong><br />
<br />
A. Here I would like to introduce my own adaptation of the Heisenberg Principle. Heisenberg, a father of Quantum Mechanics, made a disturbing discovery in the 1920s. That by looking at something, you alter its behaviour. His analogy was an atom under a microscope, the objective being to see the path of electrons around the nucleus. When you turn light on the slide to see the atom, the photons from the light knock the electrons into different orbits. Hence, his law that the act of observation alters what is seen.<br />
<br />
B. We see this in so many ways in relation to needs assessments:<br />
<br />
1. The Questionnaire, with the leading questions, encouraging one answer more than another.<br />
<br />
2. The interviewer arriving at a destroyed village in a chauffer driven land cruiser, so obviously rich, powerful, foreign – it is all too likely the vulnerable people will provide the answer they think you want to hear.<br />
<br />
3. The fact Finding Mission, so often a mix of relevant and irrelevant organisations for the situation, who strive for a consensus which signifies nothing. A UN response to an emergency I reviewed took three months to assemble 23 senior people from 10 different agencies. The recommendations came far too late for action, and were wrong anyway – they were based on a distorted timetable arranged by a Minister. <br />
<br />
You know the sort of thing – with most funds going to a particular organisation for orphans, which just so happens to be run by the Minister’s brother.<br />
<br />
In all these instances, and many others, the observer is altering reality, indeed creating a false reality. So many needs assessments are based on false realities as the act of observation altered what was seen.<br />
<br />
<strong>LESSONS LEARNED.</strong><br />
<br />
A. No, they are not. I have seen this time and time again as a Consultant reviewing programmes, in particular on behalf of donors. The reasons are threefold.<br />
<br />
1. Most organisations have no mechanism at an appropriate level for considering Report recommendations.<br />
<br />
2. On the rare occasions when they do exist, there is no system for implementation of recommendations agreed. Some people don’t even make the distinction between agreement and implementation. To paraphrase Cervantes “It is a far cry from agreement to implementation”.<br />
<br />
A third problem, arises from the meaningless language <br />
<br />
I have already mentioned. Most recommendations are meaningless themselves. Like a bar of wet soap which <br />
slips out of your hand. You know the sort of thing: “It is recommended steps are taken towards increasing <br />
advocacy, enhancing synergy, promoting empowerment…” The list goes on. You can do absolutely nothing at all, and no one can prove you haven’t implemented such recommendations.<br />
<br />
3. The general failure to learn and implement lessons results in the humanitarian and development world being littered by a repetition of mistakes. The wrong food in an emergency, the wrong medicines, clothes for the wrong season – or projects which destroy livelihoods e.g over supply of boats and nylon fishing nets. In a review I did on the tsunami, the mantra from so many beneficiaries was“First tsunami, then the foreigners”. <br />
<br />
For those like me with some grey hair it is so frustrating to see the wheel continuously being reinvented, with the same mistakes being made that we made twenty years ago. A common definition of insanity is repeating the same, and expecting a different result.<br />
<br />
<strong>COORDINATION.</strong><br />
<br />
1. We talk about it a lot. To outsiders, it looks as if it is happening. Generally, it is not. For two years I chaired the UN NGO coordination body for Afghanistan. So it seems to me, I know what I am talking about!<br />
<br />
2. There are 2 key realities preventing real coordination:<br />
a. Factually, the term itself implies some authority external to the organisation. From UN Agencies to the smallest of NGOs, each has its own constitution, its own sovereignty, an independent board to which most ultimately report. They cannot be told what to do by others.<br />
<br />
b. Egos. Often, they are enormous. We have all met directors of operations, large and small, who are in love with power, and seek only their own glory. Shakespeare called this “the insolence of office”. They have to be the first into some emergency, they dominate coordination meetings if they attend them at all - often it is some junior. They claim in their reports to provide everything that is needed to all those in need e.g. I once led a major evaluation into the international response to the Kosovo crisis. Kosovo has a population of 2m. Adding reports of key players together, who mostly claimed comprehensive support to all beneficiaries, there had to be a population of about 22 million.<br />
<br />
c. Real coordination, and the synergy which follows for the most vulnerable, is far more rare than is presented. Where it does happen, it usually comes down to the sociability, the friendliness and the hearts of key individuals. <br />
<br />
<strong>SOLUTIONS.</strong><br />
<br />
1. I have spent some time on the problems of needs evaluation for two reasons:<br />
<br />
a. It’s no use coordinating and integrating emergency assessments of different organisations if they are wrong. <br />
<br />
b. The solutions are contained within the problems I have outlined.<br />
<br />
2. Briefly:<br />
<br />
a. With regard to unclear language: Let us be simple and clear. I know this is more difficult than being complex and long winded, but let us never speak or write an unclear sentence again, especially if we don’t understand it ourselves. Remember the old Chinese saying: “The less matter there is, the more substance there will be”.<br />
<br />
b. With regard to means becoming more important than ends. Let us always keep in mind that we are here to identify and help the most vulnerable. So often, organisations work from their head offices to the most <br />
vulnerable. They should work backwards, from the most vulnerable to the head office. Begin with the end <br />
in mind. I always try to remember, that the most senior person in any humanitarian organisation is employed by the poorest, the most vulnerable people on earth. In a perfect world, their jobs would not exist. No one is <br />
more important than the most vulnerable. <br />
<br />
In an emergency, the whole point of our work is to meet a vulnerable person’s request. This may be <br />
typified as “I need X goods in this quantity now” and “I will need X + Y + possibly z in this quantity for this <br />
period”. Remember the words of the philosopher Diderot: “It is not enough to do good. Good must be <br />
done well”.<br />
<br />
c. In relation to our observation altering reality. Be conscious of the Heisenberg Principle in all we do. Watch those questionnaires to ensure each question is entirely objective, culturally sensitive and retains human dignity. Park your land cruisers on the edge of the village, walk in, be informal, go individually, listen – they know what they need far better than we do.<br />
<br />
d. With regard to lessons not being learned. Let us not continue the mistake identified by the writer G.B. Shaw “Man learns from history that he learns nothing from history” For emergency needs assessments, appoint staff who have experience of running operations themselves, and who are capable of producing, with speed, clear and practical recommendations. Appoint consultants for evaluations with the same qualities. In relation to evaluations, take them seriously. <br />
<br />
Establish a standing committee at director level for consideration of all evaluation recommendations. Clearly accept, perhaps with modification, or reject specific recommendations. Task mangers to implement recommendations with instructions to report to the standing committee on specific progress in three month’s time. <br />
<br />
e. With regard to coordination, appreciate that agencies, organisations, NGOS have their own sovereignties. Get rid of the word coordination. Use cooperation instead. You will find this word emphasises the voluntary nature of working together, and works so much better.<br />
<br />
In relation to egos. Remember Dostoyevsky’s immortal words: “Everybody is responsible to everyone for everything”. Appoint directors and mangers who are friendly, open, intelligent and with hearts. Those who realise they are there to help the most vulnerable and not themselves – who understand the enormous synergy, increasing significantly the impact of all we do, which arises from cooperation.<br />
<br />
<strong>COMPOUND CRISIS.</strong> <br />
<br />
1. I would like to conclude with a few words on something I am currently working on. It attempts to correct a serious failure in emergency needs assessments. I call it the Compound Crisis. <br />
<br />
2. We respond usually to emergencies on an individual basis, as if they are one off. We are mistaken. Very often one disaster causes another, the second and third disasters often being more devastating than the first. Mathematics best illustrates the power of compounding. <br />
<br />
THE POWER OF COMPOUNDING<br />
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If offered a million Euros now, or one Euro which doubles every day for only a month, most of us would choose the former. We are wrong. One Euro doubling for a month is worth far, far more than Euro one million. The figure amounts to over one billion!<br />
<br />
3. I saw the impact of compounding most recently in Tajikistan where I was UN Emergency Coordinator. An unprecedented cold winter with record snow falls caused a food and heating emergency. This was followed, in the spring, by a second emergency, sizeable floods and landslides. By the time summer came, agricultural output was at its lowest because of substantial seed destruction and high livestock mortality in winter. Unprecedented low rainfalls then encouraged an explosion of locusts. Record high locust storms destroyed record low agricultural production.<br />
<br />
4. It is the poor who are hit by disaster, not the rich. With the compound effect of one disaster leading to another, the same people are being hit each time. It is like being a boxer, winning one fight, and then another opponent enters the ring – you survive, but then another and another enters the ring. The ability to survive each disaster diminishes. In the end, many will die.<br />
<br />
5. As donations for humanitarian assistance are nearly always linked to newsworthy visibility, a Compound Crisis will be unnoticed internationally, and receive little or no funding. Yet, it may be compared to a silent tsunami. In the context of global warming, the Compound Crisis will need to receive significant attention.<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<br />
Michael Stone</div>
</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-57902341360083321662011-05-04T19:23:00.000-07:002011-05-04T19:37:18.881-07:00Abbottabad, where Osama bin Laden was killed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I met Osama bin Laden in early 1996 in Laghman province in Afghanistan. <br />
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This tall, and quite handsome man seemed a serious and likeable man. As is the Afghan tradition, when a foreigner is in an area, he called me over to his table in a small, dirty tea shop to join him and his group for tea. He asked me what I had been doing and I told him that I had been into the mountains of Nuristan with my Afghan Red Crescent colleagues where we were building a clinic, two days walk from the road. I said women die in child birth because they don't even have basic facilities and now we have a trained doctor and nurse who run the recently-opened clinic.. He congratulated us. I didn't know much about this man, but he left an impression on me. Little was I to know his future doings.<br />
<br />
But some years later I got to know more about this man.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>11 September 2001, Ferney Voltaire, France (Quote from my diary)</strong><br />
<br />
I've just come back from a walk past soft yellow corn fields with the the Jura mountains as a backdrop and Mont Blanc on the other side of the path.<br />
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I'm hurting today because it seems Ahmed Shah Massoud is either dead or dying. Some say it could be the work of Osama bin Laden. I think of the times I met Massoud during my stay in Afghanistan between 93 and 96, and the hour interview I had with him before I left in August 1996. My friend Azem was killed too and Massood Khalili badly injured, the Ambassador to India and son of the great Afghan poet.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhec8BU056GBOTtf5HdQnqLZpX0V8gMh5_Ftiulx2dlyKRvyJy04H7MuTCVA0z2DsFxbNKROScDytgnNqngDvnxPg_wrKPTucYtFhiPmFXiJsq4dCsuMJpZAKhTPjrfAyV7rL4FfhMqMnPU/s1600/Massoud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhec8BU056GBOTtf5HdQnqLZpX0V8gMh5_Ftiulx2dlyKRvyJy04H7MuTCVA0z2DsFxbNKROScDytgnNqngDvnxPg_wrKPTucYtFhiPmFXiJsq4dCsuMJpZAKhTPjrfAyV7rL4FfhMqMnPU/s400/Massoud.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<strong>Meeting with Ahmed Shah Massoud in Kabul, in 1996.</strong><br />
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My heart bleeds for you Afghanistan; the pain and hurt you've been through. Penalised by your geographic location and the pawn of superpowers.<br />
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During the day in the workshop in Ferney-Voltaire. my mind kept going back to Ahmed Shah Massoud and his senseless killing by hired killers posing as cameramen. Just before 4 pm, we broke for afternoon tea. As I picked up a cup of tea, the ,manager came running and shouting in French, something about a disaster in America. A group formed at the TV in the bar and watched an interviewer talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Tower, then seconds later we saw the most spine-chilling metal and human bomb plough into the second tower.<br />
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In my diary that night I wrote in capitals <strong>A DAY WHICH MAY CHANGE THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND THE NATURE OF TERRORISM.</strong><br />
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Massoud gone, many thousands of lives lost in the four plane hijacks......<br />
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The scenarios began tio build up in my mind; retaliations on Afghanistan yet again. Alexander the Great, The Arabs, The Turks, Chengis Khan, Timur, Persians, The British x 3, Soviet Union and now a US led western coalition. FINISH QUOTE FROM MY DIARY ON 9/11<br />
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<strong>Today Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad</strong>, which I recall after many visits to this beautiful town beween 1994 and 2006, as a peaceful place. I visited there in May 2006 to run a disaster preparedness workshop with Irja Sandberg and Ilyas Khan, and then when the tragic earthquake struck in this region in October 2005, Abbottabad was badly affected. but the worse damage was to the north. I spent over a month in this region after the earthquak in 2005 which killed over 75,000 people.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_qMHMJInheFeg16ufrtA_OasDEr5xmfrGq8YycIpIIfH0Az5Fe0VDkzkGq66Dm5nYHoK8NFRqVSBUmKaRCWIt1Kj_0vKPRbAtO2HHfl6e4M5DQ-JxnVmXhnyPPCIS_06HUK4FgRRLQlv/s1600/PAK+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4_qMHMJInheFeg16ufrtA_OasDEr5xmfrGq8YycIpIIfH0Az5Fe0VDkzkGq66Dm5nYHoK8NFRqVSBUmKaRCWIt1Kj_0vKPRbAtO2HHfl6e4M5DQ-JxnVmXhnyPPCIS_06HUK4FgRRLQlv/s400/PAK+1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<strong>Villagers carry relief supplies during the 2005 earthquake near Abbottabad:</strong><br />
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Abbottabad is home to at least one regiment of the Pakistani army, is dotted with military buildings and home to thousands of army personnel and many Universities and institutes. Surrounded by hills and with mountains in the distance, it is less than half a day's drive from the border region with Afghanistan.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSepEPV60XwMr8FlaTAJ8GkBD1YEnYkUjZRBygvXesi2sTNXGWEtgW5WL-WXFLfx05N31K8J4a0c4_E_XgH-jsmwP9sHs1f3G__lc2MqZb7aw4e068nafetmN9Bf326IaDAjA3Pw5w5iQ/s1600/Abbotabad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPSepEPV60XwMr8FlaTAJ8GkBD1YEnYkUjZRBygvXesi2sTNXGWEtgW5WL-WXFLfx05N31K8J4a0c4_E_XgH-jsmwP9sHs1f3G__lc2MqZb7aw4e068nafetmN9Bf326IaDAjA3Pw5w5iQ/s320/Abbotabad.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<strong>On the outskirts of Abbottabad, en route to the high Karakoram ranges</strong> <br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>Where did the name Abbottabad come from?</strong></span><br />
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Although, Abbottabad today is a thriving business and tourism city, it is traditionally a military city. Besides the prestigious Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) in a nearby village of Kakul, Abbottabad is home to three regimental centres of Pakistan Army and Army School of Music. The PMA provided fame to Abbottabad for many years, prior to the recent development of the city, from a non-industrial backward area, to a busy modern business, economic and academic centre. The city takes it roots from the British India, when Major James Abbott came this way in 1853 after the annexation of Punjab into the British dominion and laid the foundation of a military cantonment. He also became the first Deputy Commissioner of Hazara Division. By 1901 the population of the town and cantonment had grown to around 7,764, which today stands at 300,000. Abbottabad remained the dominating district till 1976, when one of its tehsils Mansehra was given the status of district, which now consist of Mansehra and Batagram Tehsils. Subsequently in July 1991, Haripur Tehsil was separated from Abbottabad and made district. Thus only the Tehsil Abbottabad remained, which was declared as district. Major Abbott was so mesmerized by the beauty of the area that when leaving Abbottabad with a nostalgia a, he wrote a poem expressing his love and affection for the place he founded.<br />
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What a quirk of fate.<br />
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If you want to read a more complete story on my meeting with Osama bin Laden check this link: <a href="http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2008/05/late-morning-tea-with-osama-bin-laden.html">http://bobmckerrow.blogspot.com/2008/05/late-morning-tea-with-osama-bin-laden.html</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWKWAMYSZ6RbUxmU0BIi3BGG71yF-6l_jw1xJYo46EXcqEdGTxRX2DbSNr73NbCFTEmyGe1MpoaJYPlGzXVBdn9R5fXw6wkodwQQHN2z6f7P1guWw94MICwlXTylfqLY8Ec5WY3UTwhOS/s1600/PAK+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" j8="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWKWAMYSZ6RbUxmU0BIi3BGG71yF-6l_jw1xJYo46EXcqEdGTxRX2DbSNr73NbCFTEmyGe1MpoaJYPlGzXVBdn9R5fXw6wkodwQQHN2z6f7P1guWw94MICwlXTylfqLY8Ec5WY3UTwhOS/s320/PAK+2.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<strong>Pakistan Red Crescent medical team walking into remote earthquake villages</strong> <strong> carrying medical supplies to treat people affected by the earthquake in October 2005, which killed over 75,000. This photo is taken in the hills north of Abbottabad.</strong><br />
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</div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-5668787195999738592011-04-14T06:01:00.000-07:002011-04-14T06:01:14.991-07:00KIWI BRINGS LIGHT TO AFGHANISTAN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/jvLdkZvw7QM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br />
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A New Zealander is winning big play on American media this week for the way he has taken solar and wind power to the people of Afghanistan. <br />
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Tony Woods, originally of Wellington, has featured on CNN and Public Broadcasting in the US, as well as in leading magazines. <br />
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Owner and director of Sustainable Energy Services Afghanistan (SESA), he has used US$4.8 million to bring electricity to remote villages and create a model of local development.<br />
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"What our clients purchase is not solar power or wind power - they actually don't give a shit about solar," he told the latest issue of Fast Company magazine in the US. <br />
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''It's a means to an end - to stability, to employment, to growth." <br />
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The Wellington man was biking through Pakistan, en route to South Africa and China, when he noticed failed micro hydropower generators. <br />
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He asked New Zealand Aid for help and they hired him to fix the generators. <br />
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In 1999 he visited Afghanistan and realised it was perfect for renewable energy. <br />
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The northeast region had abundant water, the west has steady wind, and the south strong sunshine. <br />
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So in 2007 he moved to Kabul and started SESA and with US funding began developing solar panels and windmills. <br />
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Woods team does the installation, which doesn't require much wiring since everything stays local, and the training. </div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-2628907393270758272011-03-04T22:33:00.000-08:002011-03-05T05:58:04.847-08:00Skiing in Afghanistan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">In 1976 when I first worked in Afghanistan, and again from 1993-96 when I l,ived permanently for three years, I got to trek, climb and ski extensively in the Hindu Kush. In 1997 I tried to persuade my good friends Murray and Pat Reedy, to run trips to Afghanistan as I said it contained some of the best skiing, trekking and climbing in the world. Murray and Pat run trips to the Silk Route region: <a href="http://www.silkroad.co.nz/">http://www.silkroad.co.nz/</a>. Today, commercial skiing in Afghanistan may soon be a possibility. Let me tell you the story.<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSc2KZztki4wspQWuawfz_JxU1dC-lY_Oby8N2CgACKFfXxse_6y2ECJN_vQ9y3bfedcyhf_l1dXRpwsvJXmjmRxk-g-oQR6cBp4ootu6TtzfUtZtrInUCzr7yvSrviM2giccErPa4K0/s1600/Pic00+(13).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhSc2KZztki4wspQWuawfz_JxU1dC-lY_Oby8N2CgACKFfXxse_6y2ECJN_vQ9y3bfedcyhf_l1dXRpwsvJXmjmRxk-g-oQR6cBp4ootu6TtzfUtZtrInUCzr7yvSrviM2giccErPa4K0/s640/Pic00+(13).jpg" width="436" /></a><br />
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<strong>Mette-Sophie, a Norwegian aid worker accompanied me on one trip in January 1996 into the Hindu Kush. She was on cross country skiis and I used traditional skii's with touring bindings. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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No foreigners had climbed in Afghanistan since the Soviets arrived in late 1978. I had heard about the passes and valleys strewn with land mines so it was with some trepidation I embarked from Kabul in October 1994 on what was probably the first expedition into the Hindu Kush for at least 17 years. I travelled with two British climbers, Ian Clarke and John Tinker, to the Chamar valley for an attempt on Mir Samir, a peak made famous by Eric Newby in his book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL3JY9OVdmZ8L0tPVkKwRGSijq9s20gwPF5BygX5m9A8r_eJl1vwKJCVa2rbMj67QsRH_l4yom4_19INpL-7KpRVVf19J9id2MSjpqZkmkhOnOK34kOcQJL9m-U_IuCJfnpOydUarPFXp9/s1600/Bob+Afgh+mount.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" l6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL3JY9OVdmZ8L0tPVkKwRGSijq9s20gwPF5BygX5m9A8r_eJl1vwKJCVa2rbMj67QsRH_l4yom4_19INpL-7KpRVVf19J9id2MSjpqZkmkhOnOK34kOcQJL9m-U_IuCJfnpOydUarPFXp9/s400/Bob+Afgh+mount.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><strong>John Tinker (right) and I at on one of our camps in the Chamar valley on the way to Mir Samir. Photo: Ian Clarke</strong><br />
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Tinker was fresh off an ascent of Everest by a new route on the north side and Clarke was head of a British Mine clearance organisation (Halo trust) in Afghanistan and was a necessary companion as the area had received large amounts of small scatterable mines, dropped from Soviet aircrafts to prevent the freedom fighters crossing the mountain passes. Our safety was dependent on his knowledge of mines and where battles had taken place. Tinker and Clarke attempted an unclimbed face on Mir Samir and got surprising high considering the unseasonably soft snow that had fallen. While the others were attempting Mir Samir, I climbed an unnamed peak around 5000 metres and looked over to the enticing mountains of Nuristan, formerly Kafirstan. As I sat on this probably unclimbed, and unnamed peak, I thought to myself " this is skiing country and what huge ptential."<br />
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. It was this trip with Clarke and Tinker that gave me the confidence to venture out on further climbing and skiing trips.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0Gv-rjEnZZkU60Y72vdJqi-FEShVgasDoDA6l0NeH7nEhi6E8FMB52fiNfFaAJ8lyskgYGTD6OXHKBJPb8BZ9Hl9iGhTXtMSepBvdQt8RPx00Rc6vj8-GEfdcQ1FoItC9fEbePXMtQw/s1600/Pic00+(3).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0Gv-rjEnZZkU60Y72vdJqi-FEShVgasDoDA6l0NeH7nEhi6E8FMB52fiNfFaAJ8lyskgYGTD6OXHKBJPb8BZ9Hl9iGhTXtMSepBvdQt8RPx00Rc6vj8-GEfdcQ1FoItC9fEbePXMtQw/s640/Pic00+(3).jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<strong>On skiis in the Hindu Kush, near the Salang Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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From 1993-96 when I lived in Kabul, on Friday, the only day off during the week, it was possible to climb among the various 4000 metres peaks in the Paghman range from where you get spectacular views of the Hindu Kush and Hazarajat area. Climbing 4000 metre peaks in a day made living in Kabul a joy. Also for the enthusiastic skier, a two hour drive takes you to the Salang Pass at 3,878 metres an excellent ski-mountaineering area. My good friend Ian Clarke the mine clearance expert gave the opinion that when the area is likely to have land-mines, if it is covered with snow, and you are on skis, it is almost impossible to trigger of a mine as the body-weight is evenly distributed. Clarke did a lot of telemark skiing in the area between 1993 and 1995 in the Salang Pass are before taking up a ski-instructors job at Cadrona, near Wanaka, for the New Zealand winter of 1995.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_Az_2A48LojcuXnIZIaDxXpyYdFv19B_nvHxgyCzT20yWQwND9AUKQFRGRaNSrwW7kLcnV0Blpi4IqEGG3qdIj9TSpU2YJo164ycq20IPd8GElwFWw7Wi3hRpZ1CaRCzVjc6zFQYXQs/s1600/Pic00+(17).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_Az_2A48LojcuXnIZIaDxXpyYdFv19B_nvHxgyCzT20yWQwND9AUKQFRGRaNSrwW7kLcnV0Blpi4IqEGG3qdIj9TSpU2YJo164ycq20IPd8GElwFWw7Wi3hRpZ1CaRCzVjc6zFQYXQs/s640/Pic00+(17).jpg" width="442" /></a><br />
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<strong>So in 1995, I started skiiing in the Hindu Kush, not far from the Salang Pass, which was an hour and a half from Kabul. Above on skiis with the mighty Hindu Kush behind me. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjotCS1s3hr97u9rHvTGQGp7rbFxSs3kVDfMdkx5bXyvmpqO4xOKWq-PYQgTqUdREFJc_Y4qvPOrA_GiZMa9js-KYxmd_G6PmOshOARwFUby0z9Ns46ZREPVB-jk9zP1EaXLeozFILE0pc/s1600/Pic00+(21).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><strong><img border="0" gu="true" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjotCS1s3hr97u9rHvTGQGp7rbFxSs3kVDfMdkx5bXyvmpqO4xOKWq-PYQgTqUdREFJc_Y4qvPOrA_GiZMa9js-KYxmd_G6PmOshOARwFUby0z9Ns46ZREPVB-jk9zP1EaXLeozFILE0pc/s640/Pic00+(21).jpg" width="428" /></strong></a><br />
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<strong>Mette-Sphie on her cross country skiis in the Hindu Kush. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijy6jlDOek1JF7qDfmnTVCpeCe_hWAfOGrZ-bJpG1X3zykRi5acXM1AG8-BNFpy-vQbvWVA4rzrrfrHKo6HbrVE7Mvd1WnuW-YUBzvmWcjnb-7bTKBjmCkh5GMyOIu4XpgrucrQm8izdM/s1600/Pic00+(23).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijy6jlDOek1JF7qDfmnTVCpeCe_hWAfOGrZ-bJpG1X3zykRi5acXM1AG8-BNFpy-vQbvWVA4rzrrfrHKo6HbrVE7Mvd1WnuW-YUBzvmWcjnb-7bTKBjmCkh5GMyOIu4XpgrucrQm8izdM/s640/Pic00+(23).jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<strong>Good snow conditions and a wonderful mountain backdrop, the mighty Hindu Kush: Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdy3QNzXigFC3sZOoYYrkPEQF0C3C4qXs2w-CipKfDyMqVg7lr7y0t95WM8E-3XBRR-Nvho9lrwncVwV-N265tbQq4lCue2Uf83JF1aJrJNU8mOnZhPpVHs-_7gx15d8KNQTAKlsGMGM/s1600/Pic00+(25).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdy3QNzXigFC3sZOoYYrkPEQF0C3C4qXs2w-CipKfDyMqVg7lr7y0t95WM8E-3XBRR-Nvho9lrwncVwV-N265tbQq4lCue2Uf83JF1aJrJNU8mOnZhPpVHs-_7gx15d8KNQTAKlsGMGM/s640/Pic00+(25).jpg" width="436" /></a><br />
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<strong>Mette Sophie skiing down from the Salang Pass. January 1996. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvxb2Or7maNstv3gkxMz26CdQbHOs4Y1YITpyf8Ky6uN72BPtDTjPwwGPgAqiJ0Ci3uPzAivu1Y-pyJ1hD8pU-zGh6tfcwWb2esIEiXxKuDV9R5zocoDQURwq1eucPNvozeyO3P8shkIk/s1600/Pic00+(34).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvxb2Or7maNstv3gkxMz26CdQbHOs4Y1YITpyf8Ky6uN72BPtDTjPwwGPgAqiJ0Ci3uPzAivu1Y-pyJ1hD8pU-zGh6tfcwWb2esIEiXxKuDV9R5zocoDQURwq1eucPNvozeyO3P8shkIk/s640/Pic00+(34).jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<strong>The author, Bob McKerrow, skiing near the Salang Pass. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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Last week I came across this article in the Guardian written by Jon Boone <a href="http://guardian.co.uk/">guardian.co.uk</a>, Tuesday 27 April 2010 and I was delighted that commercial skiing may soon become possible in the Hindu Kush at Bamiyan.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXNnsc0XjylsycA5ulHFMSD2rqnRrGUNnvgaox6GEnHbwBTMSK-JBMhKhtiUOrDl_U2NWjGOu7UMj_KPPvrxJ3TESOM5_qAO8DhrbO5MJ8eGF-A3njZ_DliLX0QgN6nVrK_P0JbhCw73F/s1600/The-Bamiyan-valley-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" j6="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjXNnsc0XjylsycA5ulHFMSD2rqnRrGUNnvgaox6GEnHbwBTMSK-JBMhKhtiUOrDl_U2NWjGOu7UMj_KPPvrxJ3TESOM5_qAO8DhrbO5MJ8eGF-A3njZ_DliLX0QgN6nVrK_P0JbhCw73F/s400/The-Bamiyan-valley-006.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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<strong>The Bamiyan valley offers 'challenging skiing' reckons its first ski tourist after some hairy moments involving avalanches. Photograph: Chad Dear</strong><br />
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In a classroom just a few hundred metres from the towering niche that once housed a giant Buddha statue, someone has pinned up a poster detailing the attributes of a good ski guide: optimistic, articulate, patient, reliable, active, cheerful, punctual and extroverted.</div><br />
Sitting around a table in the middle of the room, the 10 young men who hope to become Afghanistan's first ski guides are being taught how to avoid avalanches, and the importance of taking enough food and water on trips up the snow-capped mountains that loom over the town of Bamiyan.<br />
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They have all the poster's key attributes in spades. Indeed, it's hard to think of a more agreeable bunch of enthusiastic young men, who chatter in excellent English. The only problem is the one characteristic they all lack: the ability to ski.<br />
<br />
Last week, they had their first taste of the rapidly melting spring snow, out on the slopes of the stunning Koh-e-Baba mountain range. Their motley collection of borrowed and secondhand skis had been carted up the lush valley on the back of a donkey. The rookie skiers had ignored the classroom guidance to layer up, and hit the slopes wearing jeans and fake designer tops. Soon they were shivering.<br />
<br />
They had just half a dozen pairs of skis, two pairs of which were borrowed from an American couple, Chad Dear and Laurie Ashley, ski consultants who believe central Afghanistan has some of the best "outback skiing" in the world. The shortage of equipment is a problem, and the mix of Telemark and alpine skis had been partly supplemented by a few pairs of "bazaar skis", lethal wooden planks knocked up by enthusiastic local carpenters. With the bindings little more than a few leather straps and the undersurface wrapped with metal, the overall effect is terrifying, as I discovered when I tried them.<br />
<br />
"Jon, you've never done this either!" was the crushing verdict of Abdullah Mahmood, a 25-year-old novice skier, after he had watched me flounder around for a traumatic 10 minutes during which I wondered whether, despite decades of skiing experience, the sport was finally about to claim a broken leg from me.<br />
<br />
These are the deeply humble beginnings out of which Bamiyan, an overished but heart-stoppingly beautiful province, hopes to develop a robust ski industry. There is serious weight behind the plan to encourage winter "ecotourism" here, including the province's governor, the Aga Khan Development Network and the New Zealand government (the country has troops in the province).<br />
<br />
Dear, a development worker from Montana, says that in a few years' time Bamiyan could boast ski-rental businesses (which will probably rely, at least to start with, on the charity of the big ski manufacturers), a nursery slope with a simple tow-lift to drag beginners to the top, and maybe even some heliskiing. To start with, it is hoped that a mix of Afghans and foreigners working in Kabul will help pump-prime a ski industry, after which Bamiyan will be ready for the world. "We hope that people in Europe and the US will put it on their five-year wish list," Dear says.<br />
<br />
He and Ashley are currently spending several days a week exploring Bamiyan's unskied peaks, with the aim of publishing a guidebook later in the year giving adventure skiers some basic information on what the Koh-e-Baba range has to offer. And while it would be easy to be cynical about trying to establish skiing in a war zone, after spending a few days with Dear, Ashley and the would-be ski guides, I am soon swept up in their enthusiasm.<br />
<br />
For a particular type of tourist, Bamiyan is quite a draw. But it will never appeal to those who like the chairlifts, restaurants and creature comforts of a European or American mega-resort. In Bamiyan, if you want to get to the top of slope you have to propel yourself, using Telemark skis where the ankle is free to move up and down and synthetic skins are attached to the bottom. It's the sort of old-school skiing that would have been familiar to skiers in the Alps in the 1950s: a day of gruelling ascent for perhaps just one or two runs back down to the bottom. But it's worth it, says Dear: "The terrain here is just fantastic in so many ways, and we have only been exploring the eight valleys that are closest to Bamiyan centre. There are literally thousands of opportunities for beginners and experts."<br />
<br />
Dear thinks many tourists will elect to stay above the snowline for days, skiing over huge areas, overnighting in shelters used by farmers in the summer that could be converted into winter refuges. And it's a fair bet that Bamiyan's apres-ski scene will never boast beery Brits, downing glühwein at the bottom of the chairlifts as the sun sets over the mountains. Instead it's chai, and maybe some rice, naan and greasy meat on the roof of a farmer's house.<br />
<br />
What Dear calls the "apres-tea" experience would be worth a holiday in itself. First of all, the scenery is extraordinary. Below the snowy peaks, farmers living in mud houses busily plough their fields with ox teams. The sense of time travel is only broken with the occasional sighting of a satellite dish, a sign that, after years of neglect, things are starting to pick up here. And that is the other benefit of skiing in Bamiyan – contributing much-needed cash to subsistence farmers in the high, isolated valleys of a poor and neglected province that could use all the help it can get. Not only were the famous giant Buddhas blown up by the Taliban in 2001; the fundamentalist militia was also responsible for massacres of the largely Hazara population (Afghanistan's most put-upon ethnic group).<br />
<br />
Today Bamiyan is an island of security in a country where insurgency has spread like a virus, and the valley is Afghanistan's main (or rather, only) tourist attraction. Visitors don't come simply for the World Heritage site where the Buddhas used to stand, but also the lakes and extraordinary natural dams of Band-e-Amir. The young men who aspire to be ski guides already try to make ends meet by showing tourists the main sites in the summer.<br />
<br />
But despite Bamiyan's considerable charms, the summer tourism market does not add up to much: last year its historic sites were visited by 1,560 Afghans and 756 foreigners (slightly down on 2008, probably because of disruption caused by last year's presidential election). Even those low numbers generates around $250,000 a year in the three hotels the tourist authorities have information on.<br />
<br />
But Amir Foladi, manager of the Bamiyan ecotourism programme, wants to see that increase. He hopes that by 2015 the 116 hotel beds currently available will have increased to 1,000, creating at least 1,000 jobs. He expects 10,000 foreign visitors and 100,000 Afghans to come each year, generating around $5m for the valley, excluding income from drivers, restaurants and handicraft shops.<br />
<br />
That's big money for Bamiyan, and it would make tourism its third major source of income, behind agriculture and mining. "It's all about getting Bamiyan ready, helping hotel owners improve their facilities, so that when we are ready to receive more tourists it will be the people of Bamiyan who benefit and not outsiders," says Foladi.<br />
<br />
And the wind is in Bamiyan's sails, with various plans to make the valley more accessible. Currently there are two main land routes from Kabul: the slow but safe road via the Sibher Pass, which despite being only 200km [124 miles] takes a gruelling eight hours, or the relatively fast but potentially lethal four-hour road trip through Taliban territory to the south.<br />
<br />
The Sibher Pass route, which takes travellers through some unforgettable landscapes, is currently being flattened and widened by hundreds of workers, most of whom were last week inexplicably wearing fluorescent orange Royal Mail jackets. When the road is finished and covered with asphalt, the whole journey should take less than four hours – a much more attractive proposition for weekenders from Kabul who want a few days' skiing.<br />
<br />
The country's airlines are being lobbied to start commercial flights, which may one day land at a new airport out of town. That will replace the current dirt airstrip – among the hazards of flying into Bamiyan is livestock wandering on to the runway.<br />
<br />
And it's just possible that Bamiyan may get its Buddhas back – although this is currently the subject of a debate among conservationists, over whether the statues should be pieced back together from recovered fragments, or rebuilt afresh. Foladi says he favours the reconstruction of one Buddha, leaving one empty niche as a permanent reminder of unhappier times.<br />
<br />
But will Bamiyan ever become more than a summer destination, even with these improvements? Ken Adams, Bamiyan's first ever ski tourist, thinks so. A former ski industry worker in the French Alps, he is now a project manager for an NGO in Kabul. Paying just $30 a night for a hotel room, he skied for seven days in Bamiyan this spring. Despite some hairy moments involving avalanches, he reckons Bamiyan is the place for anyone who wants "some pretty challenging skiing".<br />
<br />
"For everyone else, there is just the sheer amount of snow and a season that in a normal year should continue until late May or early June," he says.<br />
<br />
The big unknown is whether Afghans will take up skiing in any numbers. Dear and Ashley say the locals, who are already fond of sledding on homemade yakhmolaks and other winter games, have been enthusiastic. With everything under snow for five months of the year, they could certainly do with more winter distractions, says Foladi.<br />
<br />
And skiing is not totally unknown in Afghanistan. Afghans got involved in the sport back in the 1960s and 70s, when it was last popularised by foreigners. In those days Kabul's diplomatic classes headed for the slopes at weekends at a mini-resort close to the capital. The piste even had its own basic rope-tow and was serviced by restaurants, tea shops and even a sunbathing area for the foreigners. Various ski clubs, including one run by the ministry of education and another by Kabul University, raced against each other. With the Soviet invasion of 1979, and the national resistance that rose up to fight it, the area was soon seeded with landmines and became unusable.<br />
<br />
Mohammad Yousuf Kargar first encountered skiing as a young boy when he saw a German employee of Siemens throwing himself down a hill in Kabul. He has kept the sport going, at least within his own family. Now the national football team coach, Kargar tested the slopes of Bamiyan for the first time this winter. But he believes Bamiyan is still too far away from Kabul to be the focus of a skiing rebirth. Instead he takes his family to the Salang, a mountain pass north of Kabul. "The government really needs to take a strong decision to redevelop the old piste outside Kabul," he says. "In the meantime I am taking my family in the Salang because I don't want this sport to die in Afghanistan."<br />
<br />
Even though Bamiyan is so untouched by violence that it feels like another country, Dear's hope that it might be ready for foreign visitors in five years seems optimistic at a time when the Taliban insurgency continues to strengthen.<br />
<br />
Around the time I was embarrassing myself on the wooden skis, Kandahar city was rocked by a massive vehicle bomb parked outside a hotel. I was blissfully unaware of another terrible day in Afghanistan's second city as we trudged down muddy fields towards our apres-ski lunch. Later that day, a compound housing foreign contractors was attacked by an even bigger bomb.<br />
<br />
Adams wonders whether it might be possible to fly into Kabul airport and then transfer directly on to a Bamiyan flight – essentially isolating the province from the rest of the country as far as foreign tourists are concerned. But, as Dear says, Bamiyan can only remain a bubble for so long. "You've just got to have hope that things are going to get better in Afghanistan. If the country goes down, Bamiyan will go with it.</div></div></div></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-47099748613233264252010-12-10T18:05:00.000-08:002010-12-10T18:05:02.002-08:00To the President of the United States: An Open Letter on AfghanistanMr. President, <br />
<br />
We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organizations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone. This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.<br />
<br />
Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5keU1xBDmuknrYYPABDEmZ7H9a4FN9VnPAJAD_tACw3cUBe8Ln11bahAV192sDJOmEivQK-dUn-zQVSE5tue1oOR-vMNf0CiQa_oNnLXJ0d2pOGTTVRgi2cVdXxIbRx2kyANwDSmPYTg/s1600/Afgsnow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5keU1xBDmuknrYYPABDEmZ7H9a4FN9VnPAJAD_tACw3cUBe8Ln11bahAV192sDJOmEivQK-dUn-zQVSE5tue1oOR-vMNf0CiQa_oNnLXJ0d2pOGTTVRgi2cVdXxIbRx2kyANwDSmPYTg/s400/Afgsnow.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralized constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.<br />
<br />
The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilizing Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.<br />
<br />
The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure. Military action may produce local and temporary improvements in security, but those improvements are neither going to last nor be replicable in the vast areas not garrisoned by Western forces without a political settlement.<br />
<br />
The 2014 deadline to put the Afghan National Army in command of security is not realistic. Considering the quick disappearance of the state structure at a district level, it is difficult to envision a strong army standing alone without any other state institutions around. Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape, and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate, and it is in our interests to talk to them. In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think -- a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with Al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more -- are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system. The negotiations with the insurgents could be extended to all groups in Afghanistan and regional powers.<br />
<br />
The current contacts between the Karzai government and the Taliban are not enough. The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account. In addition, from the point of view of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable populations – women and ethnic minorities, for instance – as well as with respect to the limited but real gains made since 2001, it is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year. This is why we ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan. A ceasefire and the return of the insurgency leadership in Afghanistan could be part of a de-escalation process leading to a coalition government. Without any chance for a military victory, the current policy will put the United States in a very difficult position.<br />
<br />
For a process of political negotiation to have a chance of addressing the significant core grievances and political inequalities it must occur on multiple levels – among the countries that neighbour Afghanistan as well as down to the provincial and sub-district. These various tables around which negotiations need to be held are important to reinforce the message -- and the reality -- that discussions about Afghanistan’s political future must include all parties and not just be a quick-fix deal with members of the insurgency.<br />
<br />
We believe that mediation can help achieve a settlement which brings peace to Afghanistan, enables the Taliban to become a responsible actor in the Afghan political order, ensures that Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for international terrorism, protects the Afghan people’s hard-won freedoms, helps stabilize the region, renders the large scale presence of international troops in Afghanistan unnecessary and provides the basis of an enduring relationship between Afghanistan and the international community. All the political and diplomatic ingenuity that the United States can muster will be required to achieve this positive outcome. It is time to implement an alternative strategy that would allow the United States to exit Afghanistan while safeguarding its legitimate security interests.<br />
<br />
Respectfully,<br />
<br />
Matthieu Aikins<br />
Journalist<br />
<br />
Scott Atran<br />
Anthropologist (University of Michigan) and author of Talking to the Enemy <br />
<br />
Rupert Talbot Chetwynd<br />
Author of Yesterday’s Enemy - Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?<br />
<br />
Robert Abdul Hayy Darr<br />
Author of The Spy of the Heart and humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s.<br />
<br />
Gilles Dorronsoro<br />
Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and author of Revolution Unending<br />
<br />
David B. Edwards<br />
Anthropologist (Williams College) and author of Before Taliban<br />
<br />
Jason Elliot<br />
Author of An Unexpected Light<br />
<br />
Antonio Giustozzi<br />
Author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop and editor of Decoding the New Taliban<br />
<br />
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi<br />
Associate Professor, James Madison University<br />
<br />
Daniel Korski<br />
Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations<br />
<br />
Felix Kuehn<br />
Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
<br />
Minna Jarvenpaa<br />
Former Head of Analysis and Policy Planning, UNAMA<br />
<br />
Anatol Lieven<br />
Professor, War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country<br />
<br />
Bob McKerrow<br />
Author of Mountains of our Minds – Afghanistan<br />
<br />
Alessandro Monsutti<br />
Research Director, Transnational Studies/Development Studies at The Graduate Institute, Geneva<br />
<br />
Ahmed Rashid<br />
Journalist and author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos<br />
<br />
Nir Rosen<br />
Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security<br />
<br />
Gerard Russell<br />
Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University<br />
<br />
Alex Strick van Linschoten<br />
Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban<br />
<br />
<br />
Astri Surkhe<br />
Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway<br />
<br />
Yama Torabi<br />
Co-Director, Integrity Watch Afghanistan<br />
<br />
Jere van Dyk<br />
Author of In Afghanistan and Captive<br />
<br />
Matt Waldman<br />
Afghanistan Analyst<br />
--------<br />
<br />
Alex Strick van Linschoten<br />
Writer/Researcher<br />
UK Mobile --- +44-7794-263019<br />
Afghan mobile --- +93-799-667356<br />
USA Mobile --- +1-646-338-1275<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.alexstrick.com/">http://www.alexstrick.com/</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.mylifewiththetaliban.com/">http://www.mylifewiththetaliban.com/</a><br />
<br />
skype: strickvl<br />
<br />
twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/strickvl">http://www.twitter.com/strickvl</a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58p8Oa7_meOorAKC3vKYJwRdFQu3psxfeRLYzMKh89xK5BtrI0ya5l96W6L2Wjf_7OMP-yanh0EObvGbgBu9GnHiFF45W-JWbY1nchBY6ympF4ixtfwBsHiDySVSng-8f8l06Quxq77k/s1600/afghan-war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58p8Oa7_meOorAKC3vKYJwRdFQu3psxfeRLYzMKh89xK5BtrI0ya5l96W6L2Wjf_7OMP-yanh0EObvGbgBu9GnHiFF45W-JWbY1nchBY6ympF4ixtfwBsHiDySVSng-8f8l06Quxq77k/s400/afghan-war.jpg" width="383" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<script type="text/javascript">
</P><p>
Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.</P><p>
Politically, the settlement resulting from the 2001 intervention is unsustainable because the constituencies of whom the Taliban are the most violent expression are not represented, and because the highly centralized constitution goes against the grain of Afghan tradition, for example in specifying national elections in fourteen of the next twenty years.</P><p>
The operations in the south of Afghanistan, in Kandahar and in Helmand provinces are not going well. What was supposed to be a population-centred strategy is now a full-scale military campaign causing civilian casualties and destruction of property. Night raids have become the main weapon to eliminate suspected Taliban, but much of the Afghan population sees these methods as illegitimate. Due to the violence of the military operations, we are losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Pashtun countryside, with a direct effect on the sustainability of the war. These measures, beyond their debatable military results, foster grievance. With Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban, it is not realistic to bet on a military solution. Drone strikes in Pakistan have a marginal effect on the insurgency but are destabilizing Pakistan. The losses of the insurgency are compensated by new recruits who are often more radical than their predecessors.</P><p>
The military campaign is suppressing, locally and temporarily, the symptoms of the disease, but fails to offer a cure. Military action may produce local and temporary improvements in security, but those improvements are neither going to last nor be replicable in the vast areas not garrisoned by Western forces without a political settlement.</P><p>
The 2014 deadline to put the Afghan National Army in command of security is not realistic. Considering the quick disappearance of the state structure at a district level, it is difficult to envision a strong army standing alone without any other state institutions around. Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape, and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban’s leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate, and it is in our interests to talk to them. In fact, the Taliban are primarily concerned about the future of Afghanistan and not – contrary to what some may think -- a broader global Islamic jihad. Their links with Al-Qaeda – which is not, in any case, in Afghanistan any more -- are weak. We need to at least try to seriously explore the possibility of a political settlement in which the Taliban are part of the Afghan political system. The negotiations with the insurgents could be extended to all groups in Afghanistan and regional powers.</P><p>
The current contacts between the Karzai government and the Taliban are not enough. The United States must take the initiative to start negotiations with the insurgents and frame the discussion in such a way that American security interests are taken into account. In addition, from the point of view of Afghanistan’s most vulnerable populations – women and ethnic minorities, for instance – as well as with respect to the limited but real gains made since 2001, it is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year. This is why we ask you to sanction and support a direct dialogue and negotiation with the Afghan Taliban leadership residing in Pakistan. A ceasefire and the return of the insurgency leadership in Afghanistan could be part of a de-escalation process leading to a coalition government. Without any chance for a military victory, the current policy will put the United States in a very difficult position.</P><p>
For a process of political negotiation to have a chance of addressing the significant core grievances and political inequalities it must occur on multiple levels – among the countries that neighbour Afghanistan as well as down to the provincial and sub-district. These various tables around which negotiations need to be held are important to reinforce the message -- and the reality -- that discussions about Afghanistan’s political future must include all parties and not just be a quick-fix deal with members of the insurgency.</P><p>
We believe that mediation can help achieve a settlement which brings peace to Afghanistan, enables the Taliban to become a responsible actor in the Afghan political order, ensures that Afghanistan cannot be used as a base for international terrorism, protects the Afghan people’s hard-won freedoms, helps stabilize the region, renders the large scale presence of international troops in Afghanistan unnecessary and provides the basis of an enduring relationship between Afghanistan and the international community. All the political and diplomatic ingenuity that the United States can muster will be required to achieve this positive outcome. It is time to implement an alternative strategy that would allow the United States to exit Afghanistan while safeguarding its legitimate security interests.</P><p>
Respectfully,</P><p>
Matthieu Aikins</P><p>
Journalist</P><p>
Scott Atran</P><p>
Anthropologist (University of Michigan) and author of Talking to the Enemy</P><p>
Rupert Talbot Chetwynd</P><p>
Author of Yesterday’s Enemy - Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?</P><p>
</P><p>
Robert Abdul Hayy Darr</P><p>
Author of The Spy of the Heart and humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s.</P><p>
Visiting Scholar (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and author of Revolution Unending</P><p>
David B. Edwards</P><p>
Anthropologist (Williams College) and author of Before Taliban</P><p>
Jason Elliot</P><p>
Author of An Unexpected Light</P><p>
Antonio Giustozzi</P><p>
Author of Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop and editor of Decoding the New Taliban</P><p>
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi</P><p>
Associate Professor, James Madison University</P><p>
Daniel Korski</P><p>
Senior Policy Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations</P><p>
Felix Kuehn</P><p>
Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban</P><p>
Minna Jarvenpaa</P><p>
Former Head of Analysis and Policy Planning, UNAMA</P><p>
Anatol Lieven</P><p>
Professor, War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country</P><p>
Bob McKerrow</P><p>
Author of Mountains of our Minds – Afghanistan</P><p>
Alessandro Monsutti</P><p>
Research Director, Transnational Studies/Development Studies at The Graduate Institute, Geneva</P><p>
Ahmed Rashid</P><p>
Journalist and author of Taliban and Descent into Chaos</P><p>
Nir Rosen</P><p>
Fellow, New York University Center on Law and Security</P><p>
Gerard Russell</P><p>
Research Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University</P><p>
Alex Strick van Linschoten</P><p>
Kandahar-based writer/researcher, co-editor of My Life With the Taliban</P><p>
Astri Surkhe</P><p>
Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway</P><p>
Yama Torabi</P><p>
Co-Director, Integrity Watch Afghanistan</P><p>
Jere van Dyk</P><p>
Author of In Afghanistan and Captive</P><p>
Matt Waldman</P><p>
Afghanistan Analyst</P><p>
* * *</P><p>
If you are an author, analyst or researcher and wish to add your name/signature to this letter, please email contact@afghanistancalltoreason.com</P><p>
</P></script>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-76202981924661530842010-10-27T06:21:00.001-07:002010-10-27T06:21:50.723-07:00From Kabul with love - the remarkable story of Afghan, Howard Harper<div id="cse-search-results"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGtqPJR8kdp4o2NCiV_qjWDUCnNaJGlpFHNaqdchLbNvLj0XJSwDKvegCMUAXNF3qdgrbX0JqLkpiBWqScDxa9URXEpFcHHnbqdTgktYs9APt8lj_sjtfrPjzATjAADZoZVnww0aIzyS8/s1600/love+from+kabul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGtqPJR8kdp4o2NCiV_qjWDUCnNaJGlpFHNaqdchLbNvLj0XJSwDKvegCMUAXNF3qdgrbX0JqLkpiBWqScDxa9URXEpFcHHnbqdTgktYs9APt8lj_sjtfrPjzATjAADZoZVnww0aIzyS8/s400/love+from+kabul.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>The last thing he would want is publicity, but former New Zealander Howard Harper, is at last getting some publicity for being one of the most committed humanitarians I have evry known. <strong><em>From Kabul with Love</em></strong> is an utterly unique book – it follows the adventures of New Zealander Howard Harper, as he embarks as a medical worker into Pakistan and Afghanistan.<br />
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<br />
The story is told through letters sent between Howard and Monika Harper, and Howard’s father, Auckland Pharmacist, Stan Harper.<br />
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Howard sets off as a young man in the 1950s first of all to Pakistan, and then to study medicine in England. In England he meets and marries a young nurse, Monika, before heading back to Pakistan – driving overland from England with a caravan in tow. Their adventures eventually take them to Afghanistan in the 1960s to work with the blind and provide relief aid.<br />
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What is remarkable about this book is the honesty of the letters. They reveal the human face of life in extremely challenging environments and of those at home in 1950s and 60s New Zealand.<br />
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Publication of this book coincides with Howard Harper being awarded the prestigious 2010 Augusta Award from Auckland Grammar School. Past winners have included many well-known New Zealanders, including Sir Ed Hillary.<br />
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For Castle Books, the other thing that has made this project unique is that it has been a truly international effort. Howard and Monika currently live in the UK. The compiler of the book, Howard and Monika’s daughter, Dr Faith Goldberg, lives in Israel. Meanwhile, the book is being published here in New Zealand and is printing in both NZ and the UK.<br />
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With an article about Howard appearing in <strong>The Listener</strong> this week, and other coverage surrounding his award, we’re looking forward to more people finding out about about this remarkable New Zealander and reading From Kabul with Love.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqiRBvV4s4rPEPwJmrYxAMRXDA1lKiobP-5odhBiqHimeBQZNKs9qKQYByGBymBM9kl5TTFfRGOrqUhaWj0E9H5V0GH9BaDum_zyjTIUaN9YZ9qLHYrucyCOprb9N5erg__CsA1fZF-Bg/s1600/parwan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqiRBvV4s4rPEPwJmrYxAMRXDA1lKiobP-5odhBiqHimeBQZNKs9qKQYByGBymBM9kl5TTFfRGOrqUhaWj0E9H5V0GH9BaDum_zyjTIUaN9YZ9qLHYrucyCOprb9N5erg__CsA1fZF-Bg/s640/parwan.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><strong>Parwan, an hour's drive from Kabul where Howard, Monika and children would have spent some family outings. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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<strong>Here is David Lomas'</strong> article which is running cover story this week (October 23 to 29 October 2010) in the New Zealand Listener. <br />
<br />
Why would a New Zealander want to have an Afghani passport? Clare de Lore profiles a remarkable eye surgeon who has dedicated his life to helping people <br />
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<br />
in one of the world’s most dangerous countries.<br />
<br />
When Howard Harper filled out papers for his Afghani citizenship, the locals were astounded. Some laughed, others shook their heads. Whereas most Afghans he knew dreamed of leaving, the New Zealand eye surgeon and humanitarian was fighting to stay in the country he calls home.<br />
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The year was 2002. After decades of living and working in Afghanistan and surrounding countries, Harper had been offered a medal for his services to Afghanistan. During an audience with the Father of the Nation – previously the King – Harper pressed his case for citizenship and the passport he now proudly carries. <br />
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“I told the King, ‘I don’t want a medal, I want an Afghani passport,’” says Harper. “Because otherwise it is difficult to get in and out, and I don’t know when I might next be slung out. I did not want to be dependent on one person’s goodwill.<br />
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“After a long to-do, my name was published in the paper and finally there was an announcement in the newspaper and on the radio that Dr Harper had been given the passport and citizenship. I can vote, buy property, and I try to faithfully fulfil the obligations of a citizen.” He is one of only two foreigners granted this status.<br />
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Harper is one of New Zealand’s least-known but most impressive sons. Immaculately dressed at all times, this tall, silver-haired, modest son of Te Kuiti and Auckland displays all the grit, integrity and selflessness so admired in our better-known heroes.<br />
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During his time in central Asia, he’s seen the Russians invade and then retreat, the rise, demise and resurgence of the Taleban and the arrival of the American-led forces; he has funded and built eye hospitals, seen one of them destroyed and rebuilt it, built two schools, trained dozens of eye doctors and restored sight to many thousands of people. <br />
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Along the way, he married Monika, a Polish nurse who shares his passion for the poor. They’ve raised three daughters, in often primitive conditions. He has witnessed cruelty and kindness in equal measure and remains steadfast in his faith in God and human nature. He is loved by, and loves, the Afghan people.<br />
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Harper is currently in the UK where he has been, successfully to date, undergoing treatment for cancer. At nearly 80, he knows time is running out to complete his life’s work – his reaction is to simply work harder and faster. His sights are firmly set, health willing, on a return to Kabul.<br />
<br />
His life has taken him a long way from Te Kuiti, where he was born in 1930 to Blyth and Esther Harper, his father a pharmacist and mother a teacher. The family moved to Auckland when Harper was a young boy, his father relocating his business to Karangahape Rd.<br />
<br />
A bright but restless Harper left Auckland Grammar School after just two years’ secondary education. He found work in a large joinery factory where he “learnt quite a lot about bare-knuckle fighting with the other boys working there”. A building apprenticeship followed, and to this day Harper uses the experience acquired there alongside his surgical skills. After that came a stint in retail, including at two Auckland menswear stores. All the while, the young Harper was reading voraciously.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRUQGvRKQOsI0sNCdi7wCtoeeaqn3_0CJ46NrUGMmA7zxei3b15PDoi3ySNorwousTDybWCABWH50rhZA5PzkKzXGxFE5Zxd_VuYczMDn8U5ny7sauu4iAlv33hM4LOXOUSvm8qqbngwk/s1600/AA+AFG+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRUQGvRKQOsI0sNCdi7wCtoeeaqn3_0CJ46NrUGMmA7zxei3b15PDoi3ySNorwousTDybWCABWH50rhZA5PzkKzXGxFE5Zxd_VuYczMDn8U5ny7sauu4iAlv33hM4LOXOUSvm8qqbngwk/s400/AA+AFG+2.jpg" width="258" /></a></div><br />
Dad gave me a book about a man called George Hunter, a Scotsman who lived all his adult life in China. That was fascinating for me. He spent his life helping people, especially in the Xinjiang province, and that inspired me.”<br />
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Harper persuaded a friend to accompany him on what was to become the trip of a lifetime. “I felt called to go to central Asia. At this point there were few openings, as the Russians had occupied most of central Asia, and the Chinese had taken over Xinjiang. The only open part was Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.”<br />
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In 1953, the two young Kiwis left Auckland on the Wanganella for Sydney, changed to a P&O liner headed for Bombay, and eventually made it to Karachi.<br />
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They headed to a language school in Muree, a hill station near Islamabad and set about learning Urdu. (Harper and his wife were later to learn Persian, Pashto, Russian and some Mongolian.)<br />
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An old Farsi man was persuaded to part with his trusty Sunbeam motorbike, giving the Kiwis the freedom to explore. “We headed up toward Gilgit on the north-western frontier and had a wonderful time sleeping in the old dak bungalows, like the old British India resting places. One night we ended up in Balakot. The next day we came across an old tribesman leading his horse, both of them lame. He pleaded with me to help him and his horse. I could do nothing for either of them.<br />
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“Then, across the river, the next thing that stirred me was a large hospital. I went in and found it full of leprosy patients, many of them with terrible deformities. There was a man trying to run the place and he told me it was an old British Empire Leprosy Relief Association hospital, abandoned by the British for several years. No one had come to help them since, apart from a small amount of money from the Government for food. There was no treatment, and I determined then that I would come back and help.”<br />
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At 23, Harper headed to England, where he knew he had a better chance of being able to train as a doctor than he had of making the cut for New Zealand’s only medical school at the University of Otago. He says his decision to leave Auckland Grammar early was a mistake, as he lost valuable time coming up to speed to meet admission standards.<br />
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In addition to his medical studies in London, he studied Urdu at the School of Oriental and African Studies, as well as Islamic law. “I was always the odd one out during my student days, slightly older, and I had something the other students did not: a clear and detailed ambition.”<br />
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It was at this time he also found Monika – the love of his life and his closest medical partner. When Monika was six and her sister four, they lost their mother during World War II. They were on the run from the advancing Russians, packed tightly into a train, when Monika’s mother suffered a panic attack and was thrown off onto a platform. The little girls never saw her again and fended for themselves for a while, with some kindness from strangers, until reunited with their father after the war. Monika determined to help children throughout her life. She was in London, improving her English so she could work among the poor, when she and Harper met. Monika had already gained specialist nursing qualifications at London’s famed Moorfields Eye Hospital and persuaded Harper to specialise in eye surgery.<br />
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The following years were to be an adventure in some of the least explored parts of the world. Harper and his bride set off from England for Afghanistan in a second-hand diesel Land-Rover towing an old caravan. <br />
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“We moved slowly through the rich European panorama until we finally ran out of roads in eastern Greece. As we entered the unmade roads of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, we discovered Monika was pregnant with Naomi. I thought this was too much to ask of her, to bump along dusty miles with poor food and restless sleep, but she stuck it out.” Not so the caravan, which literally fell apart on the rocky trails. It was abandoned just before Christmas 1962, last seen in the desert outside Baghdad with camels gazing curiously into it.<br />
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Naomi was born soon after in New Zealand and was just six weeks old when Harper took up a position at Taxila Hospital in Iran with Norval Christy, a Harvard Medical School graduate who had set up a clinic to treat anyone needing help. <br />
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“We would start operating at three in the morning. It was too hot in the daytime – the temperature would be well over 100°F. There would sometimes be more than a hundred people who turned up, and that dictated our day. We stopped for breakfast at nine, having done 100 operations, and then saw about 400 more before lunch and a nap. It was hard work but also a joy to see a patient who has been blind for years suddenly see loved ones again.”<br />
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Cataracts affect more than half the people 50 and over living in central Asia. Harper says no one knows why they are so prevalent, but cataract operations have always dominated his work.<br />
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“We would do the operation, and then after two or three days we would send them away with thick spectacles so they could see again. Each operation took just five minutes, but that was before lenses – we were just removing cataracts. Later, inserting a lens, it took about 15 minutes.” At the end of his first full year working with Christy, Harper had notched up more than 1000 cataract operations, as well as other types of eye surgery.<br />
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The Noor Eye Hospital at Darulaman in Kabul was one of Harper’s biggest and earliest projects. Built in 1966, it was badly damaged in the 1990s and Harper has since rebuilt it. In 1973, while working at his shiny new hospital, Harper was accused of “anti-State activities”. There were to be major repercussions, and not just for Harper.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2UBf6HqdagX08IpOULdIkiswgORyz2srpTrnGijsyVABGj5YyRl2eu3PudGFtlfJBxedmg4gMxAHfozwBCOxuSGAR4bC3HOcAfMv41lt3_uto2P8Bv2xl4ezj5UYYPi4H5NlYeIQB8Nk/s1600/kuchi+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2UBf6HqdagX08IpOULdIkiswgORyz2srpTrnGijsyVABGj5YyRl2eu3PudGFtlfJBxedmg4gMxAHfozwBCOxuSGAR4bC3HOcAfMv41lt3_uto2P8Bv2xl4ezj5UYYPi4H5NlYeIQB8Nk/s640/kuchi+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><strong>Kuchi nomads in Afghanistan in the Central Highlands.</strong><br />
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“Over the years they realised we would not participate in bribery and corruption – we did not live up to the ideals of the country. The King’s Government of the time had a particularly difficult Prime Minister and he ordered us to leave the country. So we did, and just as we were leaving, we looked up and there was a plane lumbering along overhead. We found out this was taking the King to see an eye doctor I knew in London, a retinal specialist. The King had been playing ball with his grandson and been hit in the eye and it had haemorrhaged. Normally he would have come to me, but I was being slung out so he had to lumber along in an old Russian plane to see the doctor in London. He never got back to Afghanistan as King. There was a rebellion by his cousin Daoud, who took over the country as dictator.”<br />
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Within months Harper slipped back into Afghanistan, working with some Americans at a small university in Jellalabad. Most of the people he was working among were Muslim – a relationship that worked well, despite cultural and religious differences. Women and children were seen first, a practice unheard of in Afghanistan, but it paid off. He was respected within the community. <br />
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“At the time [the 60s and 70s] people were scared stiff of going out at night, but I said I never felt more safe in any country than travelling in Afghanistan at night. People asked me how that could be, and it was that everyone knew when I was travelling and where I was going. They have an amazing bush telegraph in which people pass information to one another alone the lines of ‘this Harper, he is going here and there’, and when you got to your final destination, there would be a crowd waiting to greet you.”<br />
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He thought he’d escaped Daoud’s attention but after about a year was discovered and thrown out again. He and his family went to Iran, where he worked as professor of ophthalmology at the Mashhad University medical school before moving to the UK in 1977. They spent 15 or so years there so their three daughters (Naomi, Joy and Faith) could attend secondary schools and experience Western culture.<br />
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Monika Harper has nothing but praise for the New Zealand Correspondence School, which saw the girls through their early schooling in central Asia. They would sometimes be set tasks, such as an essay about a day at the beach – none of the girls had seen a beach, so they would write instead about a night in the desert.<br />
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Monika says her husband always saw the UK move as temporary and continued his work in central Asia. “We would go to various regions of Pakistan during those years in England. Howard built a clinic in Gilgit, which is still operating today. He had six weeks’ annual holiday – we worked for four weeks and took a break in the other two.” <br />
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Harper took up a post as consultant ophthalmologist at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, established the first cataract day-surgery clinic there, and wrote texts in English and Urdu on ophthalmology still in use today.<br />
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Harper’s big break – the chance of a permanent return to central Asia – came when he saw, on television, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife being shot. It was Christmas Day 1989.<br />
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“After that, I knew it was all over for the communists in central Asia. I knew if you could shoot a dictator like that and get away with it, the whole system would come down. I immediately formed what is Vision International [his registered charity]. I knew medical services would drop once they pushed the Russians out, and in many places there were none.”<br />
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He negotiated agreements – effectively permission to stay and work – in Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. More were to follow covering Mongolia and Tashkent. Each agreement was worth about $1 million to the country concerned if Harper was allowed to get on with his fund-raising, building and training. <br />
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After leaving the UK’s National Health Service in 1995, Harper was given surplus NHS equipment, which he transported to Mongolia through Russia. In the end, it was more trouble than it was worth, he says, laughing.<br />
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“Going via Russia was like being in a den of thieves. The truck, with all this wonderful equipment, would be stopped and effectively arrested. They would claim it was overloaded, and then unload things and just steal what they wanted. By the time this happened three or four times, the load was certainly lighter. I made a big fuss, wrote letters about this and so they had a record of who I was. Next time I arrived at the border, they took me away and I ended up in prison for the night. Eventually, I gave up going through Russia.”<br />
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In more recent times, Harper says, there have always been ways of getting in and out of Afghanistan and getting around the country, and he has come to accept the risks of doing so.<br />
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Abdul is an Afghani friend of the Harpers. He agreed to comment on their work but his name has been changed to protect his identity.<br />
“Howard’s deep love and passion for the Afghan people has led him to fluency in the language, and a deep understanding of the mindset and culture. He is trusted and Afghans have opened their lives to him. Despite his Western appearance, his attitude was always different from other foreigners in that he felt at home with Afghans and shared freely with us.”<br />
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Abdul says the Harpers took on a mammoth task in providing services to the sight-impaired.<br />
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“Their work has affected thousands of people over the decades. Howard’s name and face are familiar to many Afghans living in even the rural areas of the country as he has serviced them with his mobile eye clinics despite great hardship and danger.”<br />
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All the while, Howard and Monika lived in circumstances most New Zealanders would find intolerable. This is Harper’s own description of their house in Kabul: “A simple two-storey brick and mortar house, in one of the better districts of Kabul, close to the Parliament. We have no running water, but a pump and a polluted shallow well for water. We have to boil and filter our drinking water, as attacks of dysentery are common.<br />
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“There are scorpions of all shapes and sizes, and it is important not to run outside in bare feet! We have electricity sometimes every third day, so we don’t have a refrigerator but a small electric generator for light in the evening. Apart from a few drawbacks, we find it a good place to live.”<br />
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The couple have been sensible about personal security but argue that having security guards attracts more attention than it’s worth. Besides, they just didn’t have the money. Harper usually moves around Kabul in a car with two Afghan friends but sometimes ventures out alone.<br />
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There have been close calls. In 2009, he was alone, driving the car, after dropping a friend at Kabul Airport. “It was at the time that they changed the guard protecting the airport. I noticed an old guy going along in a shaky way in a car and I knew there would shortly be a busload of troops leaving.<br />
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“I thought, ‘I bet he is going to blow that up’, and I knew I should just keep going. I’ve learnt to think and act like an Afghan. Sure enough, there was a huge explosion and people were killed.<br />
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“If we were people trying to make money or connected to the military, the Afghans would attack us. But if they feel you are on their side and not political or military, they will be friendly in many ways you would not get in New Zealand.<br />
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“I have a friend, for example, a Pathan with a long woolly beard, and he knows every Taleban leader there is. He and I have worked together for a number of years. When I ran short of money on one of my projects, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I will borrow it for you.’ He went around his relatives, some of them high up in the Government and got 5000 here, 5000 there, and ‘here it is, use it’.<br />
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“They did want it back again – they could not afford to give it outright. This is the astonishing thing about Afghans – they will kill you if they mistrust you or think you are their enemy, but in other ways they will support you in ways you would not easily find in New Zealand or in England.”<br />
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The Harpers live on an NHS pension. Harper sold a house he owned in Algies Bay, north of Auckland, to fund one of his hospitals, his family help when they can, and he has a network of committed supporters in New Zealand and abroad who contribute from time to time. He has received large one-off donations from funding organisations in the US, Japan, Germany and the UK, but says he really relies on private donations of sums as little as $20.<br />
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Harper’s legacy includes the Noor Eye Hospital, a newly completed day eye clinic alongside it and at least a dozen self-sustaining eye clinics throughout central Asia, many of them now operating for 30 or more years, and two schools. He says there is much more to be done.<br />
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“The eye clinic we recently completed cost us about US$200,000. Our aim is to build up a team of Afghan nurses and doctors, as well as foreigners, and gradually get it self-sustaining. That means literally getting a very small fee from each patient, perhaps $50, with free treatment for the very poorest, about a quarter of them. We will take them on our own shoulders.” <br />
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Hamish McMaster heads New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Middle East and Africa Division. In early 2009, while he was our man in Iran and accredited to Kabul, he heard of Harper’s work and visited his clinic as it was being built. A long-time diplomat, McMaster describes his arrival at the dusty building site in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.<br />
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“Imagine cement bags lying on the ground, piles of bricks and Afghan workers doing their thing. In the middle of this a beautifully laid table, vinyl cloth, with china teacups and saucers, and some bread to eat. I recall Dr Harper was wearing a bow tie. And my abiding memory is of a little New Zealand flag sitting right in the middle of the table.”<br />
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McMaster says he has met other New Zealanders working in Afghanistan, but Harper stands out. And he says there’s a very good reason Harper has kept a low profile both in Afghanistan and in New Zealand.<br />
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“I would say it has been essential for him to keep under the radar in order to stay and survive so long. It is uncommon for someone to live there for that length of time, and he has survived the vagaries of Afghanistan through his humility and determination.”<br />
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McMaster rates Harper’s work in improving the lot of Afghanis on a par with efforts to improve security via construction of schools and repairing roads and other infrastructure. A New Zealand Government grant of $50,000 was personally authorised by Foreign Minister Murray McCully after he visited Afghanistan and met Harper. <br />
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“When Dr Harper’s work was brought to my attention, I took the chance, during a visit to Afghanistan last year, to include him in an official dinner. I was struck by his remarkable determination. He’s made a huge humanitarian contribution in very difficult circumstances. It’s a tough place to visit, let alone live,” says McCully.<br />
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Abdul, the Harpers’ Kabul-based friend, vouches for Harper’s standing in the community.<br />
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“He is highly respected by all Afghan people regardless of ethnic persuasion. He is honourable, someone to be trusted at all times. On one occasion the King was reported to have said we need more foreigners of his calibre to serve Afghanistan.”<br />
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While he and Monika were living in unaccustomed comfort in the UK, the Taleban gained control in Afghanistan. Harper made a week-long visit in 1997, and says he was sad to see how miserable life had become. The Noor Eye Hospital had been severely damaged, and human rights were under daily attack.<br />
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“You would talk to respectable young girls and women who were whipped for even showing a tiny bit of skin on their foot.<br />
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“I went to visit the then Minister of Health to talk about resuming work there. When I met him, I was surprised – he was an uneducated man, which was very odd for the Afghans. He looked like a cross between a mullah and a butcher. He got down on his knees, though, and begged me to start work again. I said I would only do so once things settled down a bit and he accepted that.”<br />
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In 2002, the Harpers returned “home” to Kabul.<br />
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“It was vital to get back into Afghanistan after the Taleban were defeated. They had been particularly destructive. I had never seen a country brought down to such a level. They had destroyed the infrastructure, education, the freedom of women, and there was a very narrow version of Islam that even banned music.”<br />
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Harper says the arrival of the US-led forces brought about some improvements, but they are unlikely to last. “I am always optimistic as far as the people are concerned, but once the Americans and Brits pull out, who knows what will happen? The Afghans are wonderful, but once they start fighting they are quite ruthless. <br />
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“Elections have never worked for them. They need strong leadership, almost autocratic. There is little love lost between the various tribal elements. My impression is that Afghanistan is naturally two countries, one Persian-speaking, including Kabul, and the other a Pashto-speaking country – the south-east including the north-western frontier of Pakistan, centred on Peshawar.<br />
<br />
“Corruption is endemic in Afghanistan. Most people think if they are given a position of power, it is for them and their family’s benefit. That will never change. There are, however, some people, like the late King, who besides looking after themselves, will also consider the good of their people and look after them. That’s the best we can hope for – find these good but usually flawed men and work with them.”<br />
<br />
Despite the poverty, corruption and danger, Harper says there is a very simple explanation for spending a lifetime in the service of strangers in some of the most hostile places on earth.<br />
<br />
“I spent a lot of time getting a very sophisticated education in New Zealand and England. I somehow owe something back, so therefore while other people may want to stop at age 60 or 65, I feel as long as you’re in good nick and your mind is working, your hands are able and you can think straight, there is no reason not to go on longer. I take this a year at a time.<br />
<br />
“I might not have much money, but I’ve had a very rich life.”<br />
<br />
Howard Harper will be honoured by his alma mater, Auckland Grammar School, at a dinner in Auckland in November.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWhtAMYbYr7EYYCsmQxyALUMP9dvjCW7pTt9q5Ay8b8rxUycf_cY_UqwxkG0yCtAHT16flBkf-8UD3BivcuKNDV_zISMNKpjgEcdLhkhtmY1vnsIDt3CZNBL8SgSDu6hsMvBzbzivgt0/s1600/love+from+kabul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihWhtAMYbYr7EYYCsmQxyALUMP9dvjCW7pTt9q5Ay8b8rxUycf_cY_UqwxkG0yCtAHT16flBkf-8UD3BivcuKNDV_zISMNKpjgEcdLhkhtmY1vnsIDt3CZNBL8SgSDu6hsMvBzbzivgt0/s1600/love+from+kabul.jpg" /></a></div>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-28185960944992990762010-09-09T18:42:00.000-07:002010-09-12T15:56:29.757-07:00RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAWAre the Taliban a resistance movement or what ? There have been many debates and publications on this subject and today I came across this interesting article by W. J. Ford in the International Review the Red Cross in 1967. Here is the link: http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/RC_Nov-1967.pdf<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>14. Practice of War</b><br />
A number of instances will now be given to show the status accorded to persons taking part in fighting without being members of the regular forces.<br />
<b>The Boer War (1899-1902) 2</b><br />
In this war the British troops found themselves confronted with Boers who had united to form commandos. They were under the command of persons appointed by the government; some of them wore uniforms and they carried their arms openly. According to Spaight the Boers observed the rules of the law of war. From reports, both from the British and from the Boers, it may be deduced that the Boers were treated as prisoners of war, provided they were captured before the British proclaimed that they had annexed the Boer Republics. The British authorities took the view that after the annexation the belligerents could no longer be regarded as regular combatants but only as rebels. Theoretically, this point of view was correct but it is doubtful whether the actual<br />
1 Continued from our October issue.<br />
• J. M. Spaight, War Rights on Land, 1911.<br />
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RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
situation warranted the annexation. At the moment annexation was proclaimed there was no peace treaty in which annexation had been agreed upon. Nor were the facts such as to warrant the unilateral British proclamation.<br />
The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) 1<br />
Both parties reported incidents which were judged under the provisions of Articles 1 and 2 of the Hague Regulations. In one case the Japanese court martial refused to recognize the right of prisoners to invoke Article 2 of the Hague Regulations, because it felt that the prisoners concerned could not be regarded as patriotic citizens, since they were convicts. The court ruled that such persons could not be expected to observe the law of war. Against this it may be argued that there is no rule depriving members of resistance movements of the status of privileged combatants because they have been convicted by a national court.<br />
World JVar 1<br />
In 1915 the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a report on the manner in which the Belgian population had resisted the German forces. 2 It was particularly the operations of the , garde civique ' that were considered to be unlawful. The Germans considered that Article 1 was not applicable, since the resistance fighters had not been placed under the command of a person who was responsible for his subordinates. Moreover, they did not wear any distinguishing mark. According to the German report, Article 2, could not be invoked either, since this Article recognizes a levy en masse only in non-occupied territory. This line of reasoning condemned<br />
the resistance in towns like Aerschot, Andenne and Louvain.<br />
In 1916 Belgium officially responded to the German publication<br />
3. According to the Belgian authorities a distinction should be made between the garde civique active and the garde civique<br />
1 Nagao Ariga, La guerre Russo-Japonaise au point de vue continental et Ie droit international d'apres les documents officiels du grand Etat-major japonais, 1908.<br />
2 Die volkerrechtswidrige FilhrulIg des belgischen Volkskl'iegs.<br />
3 Reply to the German White Book of May 10, 1915 .. Die volkerrechtswidrige Fuhrung des belgischen Volkskriegs", 1916.<br />
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RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATlONAL LAW<br />
non active. The former were regarded as constituting an armed force. The latter had to be regarded as militias who could be-and were---called up by Royal Decree. Members of the garde civique non active had to subject themselves to the rules of Article 1 of the Hague Regulations. Although the garde civique non active were originally intended to playa part in the defence of national indepedence,<br />
their eventual task amounted to little more than policing the non-occupied part of the country. Since the garde civique non active were no Jonger regarded as militias it was no longer necessary for them to comply with the requirements of Article 1 of the Hague Regulations.<br />
World War II<br />
France. -In the course of 1943 the Forces fran~aises de l'interieur<br />
(F.F.I.) were organized in such a way that they were ready to carry out strategic duties. In its ordinance of 9 June 1944 the Comite fran~ais de la Liberation nationale defines the F.F.I. in the following manner:<br />
Les forces fran~aises de l'interieur {( F.F.I. », sont constituees par J'ensemble des unites combattantes ou de leurs services qui prennent part a la lutte contre l'ennemi sur Ie territoire metropolitain, dont l'organisation est reconnue par Ie Gouvernement,<br />
et qui servent sous les ordres de chefs reconnus par lui comme responsables. Ces forces armees font partie integrante de l'armee fran~aise et beneficient de tous les droits et avalltages reconnus aux militaires par les lois en vigueur. Elles repondent aux conditions generales fixees par Ie reglement annexe a la convention de la Haye du 18 octobre 1907 concernant les lois et coutumes de la guerre sur terre.<br />
The German military authorities stated in a proclamation that captured members of the F.F.I. would be executed in accordance with the rules of military criminal law. The provisional government of the French Republic pointed out that Article I of the Hague Regulations of 1907 were being observed and that captured members<br />
of the F.F.!. would therefore have to be treated as prisoners of war. General Einsenhower decreed:<br />
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
"1. The French Forces of the Interior constitute a combatant force commanded and directed by General Koenig, and form an integral part of the Allied Expeditionary Force.<br />
2. The French Forces of the Interior in the maquis bear arms openly against the enemy and are instructed to conduct their operations against him in accordance with the rules of war. They are provided with a distinctive emblem and are regarded by General Eisenhower as an army under his command."<br />
The ICRC intervened1 and the German authorities declared orally that members of th~ EF.1. would be treated as prisoners of war. This oral declaration was never confirmed in writing.<br />
Italy. -After the armistice of September 1943 groups of partisans<br />
sprang up in Northern Italy. They took up arms against the Germans. The ICRC tried to induce the German authorities to regard captured partisans as prisoners of war, but their attempts failed.<br />
Netherlands. -The resistance undertaken in the Netherlands was unique. Fighting against the Germans was restricted to smallscale<br />
skirmishes like in Belgium. In addition the underground resistance movement performed acts of sabotage. The legal status of the underground army, the Forces of the Interior, was established on 5 September 1944 (Royal Decree). The Decree ruled that every one actively engaged in repelling the enemy was from then on a member of the Royal Netherlands Army. This decision removed any uncertainty as to the status of the persons concerned under the law of war.<br />
Poland and Slovakia. -In October 1944 the German authorities declared that captured members of the Polish underground army would be treated as prisoners of war.! Under the provisions of the Warsaw capitulation agreement, captured Polish partisans were regarded as prisoners of war: they were subject to the 1929 Red Cross Convention. (cf. Schmid)<br />
1 Schmid, Die volkerrechtliche Stellung del' Partisanen im Kl'iege, 1956.<br />
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RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
Slovak partisans were treated differently. It was decided that the 1929 Red Cross Convention did not apply to them and when captured they were not regarded as prisoners of war but were deported to Germany.<br />
U.S.S.R. -Russian partisans did not wear any definite uniforms.!<br />
Those who had been in the army wore their old uniforms or parts of them. According to a political commissar assigned to a partisan unit the partisans were members of the Red Army. They were instructed to operate in the rear of the enemy.<br />
Trainin asserts that Soviet warfare was not a private affair of volunteers.2 According to Trainin the population, which belonged either to the regular army or to partisan units, used all the defensive and offensive methods in defending their country. The Russian author goes on to say that this emphasized the fact that the struggle against fascism was a people's war. Therefore the leaders of resistance<br />
groups subordinated their operations to those of the Red Army, Soviet Russia's main military machine. They were accountable<br />
to the people, i.e. to the Red Army and its General Staff. Trainin emphasizes the fact that the orders of the highest commander,<br />
field-marshal Stalin, were directed not only to the Red Army but also to the men and women fighting in the partisan units.<br />
Yugoslavia. -The struggle carried on in the Balkans by the partisans partook of the nature of military operations. The centre of Yugoslav resistance was in Serbia. The resistance fighters carried out surprise raids on the German occupation forces to capture arms, food and clothing. There was no uniformity whatsoever in the way the partisans dressed. A newcomer was instantly recognizable as such because his clothes marked him as a farmer or as a townsman.<br />
But after a few weeks he was wearing a German fatigue cap or an Italian tunic. However, they all wore the Red Star on their fatigue caps. By 1943 their number had increased to 250,000. The German and affiliated forces undertook seven large-scale offensives against the Yugoslav partisans in all. The fifth was carried out in<br />
1 S. A. Kovpak, Les partisans sovietiques, 1945.<br />
• I. P. Trainin, " Questions of guerilla warfare in the law of war ", Am. Journal 0/ Int. Law, Vol. 40, 1946.<br />
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RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
the latter half of May and in the first few days of June 1943. During<br />
this offensive General Kuebler, commander of the German 118th<br />
division, issued an order that every partisan taken prisoner was to be<br />
shot immediately and that all wells be poisoned. According to<br />
Marshal Tito, leader of the partisans, wounded partisans were<br />
mercilessly killed.<br />
It may be gathered from the foregoing that the fighting of the<br />
partisans was not as a rule limited to incidental resistance operations.<br />
More often than not their resistance consisted of large-scale,<br />
well-organized operations carried out by disciplined combatants.<br />
This should have induced the Germans to control themselves when<br />
dealing with captured partisans. Instead prisoners were shot. There<br />
is no evidence that captured partisans were tried and granted all<br />
the rights essential to the proper administration of justice.<br />
15. Practice in armed conflicts not of an international character<br />
The subject of the preceding chapter was the status of combatants<br />
not belonging to regular armies in international conflicts. The present chapter deals with the status to be accorded to combatants<br />
in armed conflicts not of an international character.<br />
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).<br />
The fact that the conflict was essentially a civil war made the parties to the conflict decide not to apply the law of war. Siotis reports that hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers were killed and executed.1 Hostages were shot and women and children were not spared. The parties to the conflict treated one another as murderers. The insurgents were not accorded the status of belligerents,<br />
because the government feared that by doing so they would weaken the position of the Spanish Republic. People may wonder whether the position of the Spanish Republic was really at stake and whether it would not have been better to recognize the rebels as belligerents, because it would probably have had a moderating effect on the fighting, which went far beyond local disturbances. This<br />
1 Jean Siotis, Le droit de fa guerre et les conj!its armes d'un caraetere 1I0ninternational.<br />
584<br />
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
alternative would have been all the more apposite, since the position of the Spanish Republic would not have suffered if its opponents had been accorded the status of belligerents. Had been possible to grant the insurgents the minimum rights provided for in Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, it is reasonable to assume that many lives would have been saved on both sides.<br />
The Greek Civil War (1946-1949)<br />
According to Siotis the law of war was completely ignored during the conflict in Greece. Aiding the insurgents was a crime punishable by death. Insurgents captured with weapons in their hands were brought up before a court martial. Most of them were sentenced to death. Prisoners who refused to join the insurgents met with the same fate. The ICRC attempted to mitigate the conflict by invoking the resolution of the Preparatory Conference of Red Cross Societies of 1946. In this resolution it was suggested thatinthe case ofanarmedconflict notofaninternationalcharacter the convention be equally applied by each of the parties unless one of them explicitly refused to do so. According to Siotis, the Greek Government argued that the conflict was not a civil war. The ICRC persisted in its view and by its tenacity succeeded in securing<br />
certain results. The Greek Government allowed the Committee to do its humanitarian work for the Greek people, which actually took the form of aid to the Hellenic Red Cross Society. The JCRe launched a large-scale drive to help people taken prisoner by Government<br />
troops. Attempts to organize similar activities among the insurgents failed, their leader claiming that war time conditions prevented him from getting into contact with the ICRC direct.<br />
Vietnam (1946-1954)<br />
In spite of the fact that Vietnam was " un Etat libre ayant son gouvernement, son parlement, son armee et ses finances" the conflict was regarded as an " armed conflict not of an international character" because Vietnam was not an independent state in the international intercourse of states. France prevented Vietnam from having contact with other powers. According to Siotis the parties to the conflict seem to have been prepared, at all events initially,<br />
585<br />
RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
to apply the rules of the law of war. But this gradually faded when it became apparent that it was impossible to reach a compromise. The ICRC could not properly perform its duties, such as visiting and exchanging prisoners, because of material and other difficulties. Although the conflict was regarded as an armed conflict not of an international character, the French authorities felt that it did not fall entirely outside the scope of the rules of international law.<br />
Guatemala (1954)<br />
An international struggle broke out in Guatemala in 1954. Right from the beginning the extent of the conflict was such as to make the Red Cross Society of Guatemala accept intervention by the ICRC. This intervention consisted mainly of activities after the short-lived conflict proper had come to an end. They included visits to prisons and the submission of a report on these visits to the Minister of the Interior of Guatemala. This procedure constituted a precedent for intervention by the ICRC during and after hostilities.<br />
Algeria<br />
At first the Algerian conflict was just a matter of maintaining public order but soon its scope widened, so that the regular French army began to take part in the fighting. The result was that measures<br />
based on criminal law no longer sufficed and that the conflict developed into an armed conflict not of an international character to which Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions was applicable. The French Government recognized this development and, according<br />
to Siotis, the Algerian nationalists, too, declared that they intended to apply the Geneva Conventions. This meant that both parties had pronounced themselves in favour of applying Article 3 to this armed conflict not of an international character.<br />
But Siotis reports that in actual practice things left much to be desired. The two parties committed many acts that were contrary to the humanitarian principles on which Article 3 was based. But the two parties repeatedly urged the persons concerned to observe the provisions of Article 3. The violations of Article 3 caused Siotis to state that the new rules of conventional law contained in this article<br />
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REsISTANCE MOVEMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL LAW<br />
were "en derniere analyse" not regarded as having obligatory force. This standpoint does not seem very satisfactory as the obligatory force of legal provisions does not depend on the number of times these provisions are violated. The competent authorities that accept the rules contained in Article 3 may be expected to be able to ensure their practical application and enforcement, which may be interpreted as proof of discipline and organisational maturity.<br />
The rules of Article 3 are of considerable importance in the case of an armed conflict not of an international character, because the national legislations, which are adapted to normal conditions, may prove to be inadequate in the event of internal disturbances, so the possibility of excesses must not be ruled out.<br />
(To be continued).<br />
Dr. W. J. FORD<br />
587Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-33256450698063696962010-09-09T04:01:00.000-07:002010-09-09T04:01:51.869-07:009/11 AND THE 9-YEAR WAR<i>I received this very interesting article written by George Friedman which I post below. Food for thought ?<br />
</i><br />
It has now been nine years since al Qaeda attacked the United States. It has been nine years in which the primary focus of the United States has been on the Islamic world. In addition to a massive investment in homeland security, the United States has engaged in two multi-year, multi-divisional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, inserted forces in other countries in smaller operations and conducted a global covert campaign against al Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups.<br />
<br />
In order to understand the last nine years you must understand the first 24 hours of the war -- and recall your own feelings in those 24 hours. First, the attack was a shock, its audaciousness frightening. Second, we did not know what was coming next. The attack had destroyed the right to complacent assumptions. Were there other cells standing by in the United States? Did they have capabilities even more substantial than what they showed on Sept. 11? Could they be detected and stopped? Any American not frightened on Sept. 12 was not in touch with reality. Many who are now claiming that the United States overreacted are forgetting their own sense of panic. We are all calm and collected nine years after.<br />
<br />
At the root of all of this was a profound lack of understanding of al Qaeda, particularly its capabilities and intentions. Since we did not know what was possible, our only prudent course was to prepare for the worst. That is what the Bush administration did. Nothing symbolized this more than the fear that al Qaeda had acquired nuclear weapons and that they would use them against the United States. The evidence was minimal, but the consequences would be overwhelming. Bush crafted a strategy based on the worst-case scenario.<br />
<br />
Bush was the victim of a decade of failure in the intelligence community to understand what al Qaeda was and wasn't. I am not merely talking about the failure to predict the 9/11 attack. Regardless of assertions afterwards, the intelligence community provided only vague warnings that lacked the kind of specificity that makes for actionable intelligence. To a certain degree, this is understandable. Al Qaeda learned from Soviet, Saudi, Pakistani and American intelligence during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and knew how to launch attacks without tipping off the target. The greatest failure of American intelligence was not the lack of a clear warning about 9/11 but the lack, on Sept. 12, of a clear picture of al Qaeda's global structure, capabilities, weaknesses and intentions. Without such information, implementing U.S. policy was like piloting an airplane with faulty instruments in a snowstorm at night.<br />
<br />
The president had to do three things: First, he had to assure the public that he knew what he was doing. Second, he had to do something that appeared decisive. Third, he had to gear up an intelligence and security apparatus to tell him what the threats actually were and what he ought to do. American policy became ready, fire, aim.<br />
<br />
In looking back at the past nine years, two conclusions can be drawn: There were no more large-scale attacks on the United States by militant Islamists, and the United States was left with the legacy of responses that took place in the first two years after 9/11. This legacy is no longer useful, if it ever was, to the primary mission of defeating al Qaeda, and it represents an effort that is retrospectively out of proportion to the threat.<br />
<br />
If I had been told on Sept.12, 2001, that the attack the day before would be the last major attack for at least nine years, I would not have believed it. In looking at the complexity of the security and execution of the 9/11 attack, I would have assumed that an organization capable of acting once in such a way could act again even more effectively. My assumption was wrong. Al Qaeda did not have the resources to mount other operations, and the U.S. response, in many ways clumsy and misguided and in other ways clever and targeted, disrupted any preparations in which al Qaeda might have been engaged to conduct follow-on attacks.<br />
<br />
Knowing that about al Qaeda in 2001 was impossible. Knowing which operations were helpful in the effort to block them was impossible, in the context of what Americans knew in the first years after the war began. Therefore, Washington wound up in the contradictory situation in which American military and covert operations surged while new attacks failed to materialize. This created a massive political problem. Rather than appearing to be the cause for the lack of attacks, U.S. military operations were perceived by many as being unnecessary or actually increasing the threat of attack. Even in hindsight, aligning U.S. actions with the apparent outcome is difficult and controversial. But still we know two things: It has been nine years since Sept. 11, 2001, and the war goes on.<br />
<br />
What happened was that an act of terrorism was allowed to redefine U.S. grand strategy. The United States operates with a grand strategy derived from the British strategy in Europe -- maintaining the balance of power. For the United Kingdom, maintaining the balance of power in Europe protected any one power from emerging that could unite Europe and build a fleet to invade the United Kingdom or block its access to its empire. British strategy was to help create coalitions to block emerging hegemons such as Spain, France or Germany. Using overt and covert means, the United Kingdom aimed to ensure that no hegemonic power could emerge.<br />
<br />
The Americans inherited that grand strategy from the British but elevated it to a global rather than regional level. Having blocked the Soviet Union from hegemony over Europe and Asia, the United States proceeded with a strategy whose goal, like that of the United Kingdom, was to nip potential regional hegemons in the bud. The U.S. war with Iraq in 1990-91 and the war with Serbia/Yugoslavia in 1999 were examples of this strategy. It involved coalition warfare, shifting America's weight from side to side and using minimal force to disrupt the plans of regional aspirants to gain power. This U.S. strategy also was cloaked in the ideology of global liberalism and human rights.<br />
<br />
The key to this strategy was its global nature. The emergence of a hegemonic contender that could challenge the United States globally, as the Soviet Union had done, was the worst-case scenario. Therefore, the containment of emerging powers wherever they might emerge was the centerpiece of American balance-of-power strategy.<br />
<br />
The most significant effect of 9/11 was that it knocked the United States off its strategy. Rather than adapting its standing global strategy to better address the counterterrorism issue, the United States became obsessed with a single region, the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. Within that region, the United States operated with a balance-of-power strategy. It played off all of the nations in the region against each other. It did the same with ethnic and religious groups throughout the region and particularly within Iraq and Afghanistan, the main theaters of the war. In both cases, the United States sought to take advantage of internal divisions, shifting its support in various directions to create a balance of power. That, in the end, was what the surge strategy was all about.<br />
<br />
The American obsession with this region in the wake of 9/11 is understandable. Nine years later, with no clear end in sight, the question is whether this continued focus is strategically rational for the United States. Given the uncertainties of the first few years, obsession and uncertainty are understandable, but as a long-term U.S. strategy -- the long war that the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for -- it leaves the rest of the world uncovered.<br />
<br />
Consider that the Russians have used the American absorption in this region as a window of opportunity to work to reconstruct their geopolitical position. When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, an American ally, the United States did not have the forces with which to make a prudent intervention. Similarly, the Chinese have had a degree of freedom of action they could not have expected to enjoy prior to 9/11. The single most important result of 9/11 was that it shifted the United States from a global stance to a regional one, allowing other powers to take advantage of this focus to create significant potential challenges to the United States.<br />
<br />
One can make the case, as I have, that whatever the origin of the Iraq war, remaining in Iraq to contain Iran is necessary. It is difficult to make a similar case for Afghanistan. Its strategic interest to the United States is minimal. The only justification for the war is that al Qaeda launched its attacks on the United States from Afghanistan. But that justification is no longer valid. Al Qaeda can launch attacks from Yemen or other countries. The fact that Afghanistan was the base from which the attacks were launched does not mean that al Qaeda depends on Afghanistan to launch attacks. And given that the apex leadership of al Qaeda has not launched attacks in a while, the question is whether al Qaeda is capable of launching such attacks any longer. In any case, managing al Qaeda today does not require nation building in Afghanistan.<br />
<br />
But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world's only global power cannot be captive to this single threat.<br />
<br />
The initial response was understandable and necessary. The United States must continue its intelligence gathering and covert operations against militant Islamists throughout the world. The intelligence failures of the 1990s must not be repeated. But waging a multi-divisional war in Afghanistan makes no strategic sense. The balance-of-power strategy must be used. Pakistan will intervene and discover the Russians and Iranians. The great game will continue. As for Iran, regional counters must be supported at limited cost to the United States. The United States should not be patrolling the far reaches of the region. It should be supporting a balance of power among the native powers of the region.<br />
<br />
The United States is a global power and, as such, it must have a global view. It has interests and challenges beyond this region and certainly beyond Afghanistan. The issue there is not whether the United States can or can't win, however that is defined. The issue is whether it is worth the effort considering what is going on in the rest of the world. Gen. David Petraeus cast the war in terms of whether the United States can win it. That's reasonable; he's the commander. But American strategy has to ask another question: What does the United States lose elsewhere while it focuses on the future of Kandahar?<br />
<br />
The 9/11 attack shocked the United States and made counterterrorism the centerpiece of American foreign policy. That is too narrow a basis on which to base U.S. foreign policy. It is certainly an important strand of that policy, and it must be addressed, but it should be addressed through the regional balance of power. It is the good fortune of the United States that the Islamic world is torn by internal rivalries.<br />
<br />
This is not dismissing the threat of terror. It is recognizing that the United States has done well in suppressing it over the past nine years but at a cost in other regions, a cost that can't be sustained indefinitely and a cost that could well result in challenges more threatening than a rising Islamist militancy. The United States must now settle into a long-term strategy of managing terrorism as best as it can while not neglecting the rest of its interests.<br />
<br />
After nine years, the issue is not what to do in Afghanistan but how the global power can return to managing all of its global interests, along with the war on al Qaeda.<br />
<br />
<br />
This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com.<br />
<br />
Copyright 2010 STRATFOR.Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-7122484042069549812010-09-08T17:55:00.000-07:002010-09-08T18:10:02.978-07:00Mullah Omar says Afghan Taliban close to victoryI woke up this morning and the first article I read was about Mullah Omar<br />
saying the Afghan Taliban are close to victory. Mullah Omar says his fighters are winning the war in Afghanistan and that the Nato-led campaign has been "a complete failure". I find this hard to believe although one has to acknowledge the Talibans are growing in number and achieving small victories here and there. Soldiers defending their own country always have a huge advantage, and add the religious fervour they have, one has to take Omar's statement seriously.<br />
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In a rare statement, the shadowy leader called on US President Barack Obama to withdraw his troops "unconditionally and as soon as possible".<br />
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Nato has boosted its presence in Afghanistan to 150,000 soldiers in a bid to finally defeat militants. <br />
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Mullah Omar's statement, which marked the end of the Muslim festival of Ramadan, was posted on jihadist websites and relayed by the Site Intelligence Group.<br />
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"The victory of our Islamic nation over the invading infidels is now imminent and the driving force behind this is the belief in the help of Allah and unity among ourselves," he said.<br />
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"In the time to come, we will try to establish an Islamic, independent, perfect and strong system."<br />
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He claimed that those behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan which overthrew the Taliban "admit themselves that all their strategies are nothing but a complete failure".<br />
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He also commanded his fighters to observe the Taliban's code of conduct and avoid harming civilians.<br />
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<b>Spiritual head</b><br />
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Mullah Omar is still considered the spiritual head of the Taliban in Afghanistan, although others are believed to be in day-to-day command of the hardline movement.<br />
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President Obama ordered a further 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan last December following a review of the war.<br />
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Gen David Petraeus, who commands US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, said last month he saw "areas of progress" in the war and that momentum by the militants had been checked in their strongholds of Kandahar and Helmand.<br />
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He has made winning civilian hearts and minds a key part of his strategy to defeat the Taliban. <br />
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However, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that civilian casualties were undermining the counter-insurgency in his country.<br />
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He also said that US plans to begin withdrawing troops next year have given the Taliban "a morale boost". <br />
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PERMISSION GRANTED FROM BBC TO RUN THIS ARTICLE.Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-86520390213112462672010-09-01T21:09:00.001-07:002010-09-01T21:10:38.407-07:00Check this link out about mountaineering in Afghanistan<a href="http://visitafghanistan.blogspot.com/2010/02/afghanistan-tourism-promotes-its-virgin.html">http://visitafghanistan.blogspot.com/2010/02/afghanistan-tourism-promotes-its-virgin.html<a href="http://"></a></a>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-27535599053370586322010-08-29T07:10:00.000-07:002010-08-29T07:10:25.792-07:00A hit off the action, a walk on the dark sideFrequently I get asked about war and the people I meet in the course of my work in conflict or post conflict. My heart, my prayers and empathy goes out to those who are caught up in wars, such as the civilian population, and those who have no choice such as conscripted soldiers, child soldiers; but the others ? <br />
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"Men and women who venture to someone else’s war through choice do so in a variety of guises. UN general, BBC correspondent, aid worker, mercenary: in the final analysis they all want to do the same thing, a hit off the action, a walk on the dark side. It’s just a question of how slick a cover you give yourself, and how far you want to go.. If you find a cause later then hold on to it, but never blind yourself with your own disguise,” writes Anthony Lloyd.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOh4kjHkqDZSRPFNy2gjVjnHnxn3gG6wt0fuLlVfgdCa_HB21rQMXw_OJ8B2pj6VaW8BS2Y1vp9fZSYas80Ms4iyZYd5hqBKa5TvBXCGdHEH0S7nFwJ4VRcI0jR32jxvq_Z_Qzb5yQAjpc/s1600/jason+elliot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOh4kjHkqDZSRPFNy2gjVjnHnxn3gG6wt0fuLlVfgdCa_HB21rQMXw_OJ8B2pj6VaW8BS2Y1vp9fZSYas80Ms4iyZYd5hqBKa5TvBXCGdHEH0S7nFwJ4VRcI0jR32jxvq_Z_Qzb5yQAjpc/s400/jason+elliot.jpg" width="369" /></a></div><br />
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<strong>Author on the war in Afghanistan, Jason Elliot, goes to Afghanistan as an 18 year old English school boy during the Soviet occupation.</strong><br />
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<strong>Photo: Jason Elliot</strong>.<br />
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In the winter of 1996 when the Taliban were bombing the little life left in Kabul, (Jan-Feb) Anthony Lloyd stayed with me in my house. He and an English cameraman lived in the bunker in our house. We travelled to Khord Kabul where the British were routed in their retreat from Kabul in 1859. This was the front line and we were with Masoud’s troops and could see plainly, Talban soldiers moving about with RPGs. Over 300 British troops had been slaughtered in this valley in 1859.<br />
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A few years ago, Lloyd published a book called “ <strong>My War Gone By, I Miss It So,</strong> about the wars in former Yugoslavia. It's a remarkable book where a young misfit goes to war as a correspondent. He writes:<br />
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<em>‘ Listen, said Peter, the Dutchman, ‘we don’t fight for the money, and we’re not in it for the killing. It’s about camaraderie and, sure it’s about excitement. Some are bullshitters, some are psychotics. We are neither. We are here because we want to be, and if there is a price to pay, then we are ready for that too.’</em><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxI4gcEvme8IZQNF3zcdBklXBojxBxZIFb9SdlXWnBJquLT_peA-IwOlLT-ePYHvMXdJzlzDm5p6zZc2RhLVx9dEAOmi6ndglhnnx0lP7B8VlB6fg6_XLPjHOwo5gEjiOPEXaPAOR7IMI/s1600/vietnam+tank.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxI4gcEvme8IZQNF3zcdBklXBojxBxZIFb9SdlXWnBJquLT_peA-IwOlLT-ePYHvMXdJzlzDm5p6zZc2RhLVx9dEAOmi6ndglhnnx0lP7B8VlB6fg6_XLPjHOwo5gEjiOPEXaPAOR7IMI/s400/vietnam+tank.bmp" width="400" /></a><br />
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<strong>US Armed PCs during the Vietnam war. Photo: Bob McKerrow</strong><br />
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"There was very little difference between them and anyone else who goes to war voluntarily. In their case they had taken a side and were ultimately prepared to kill. Though my reasoning for being there was still in flux, at its simplist I was there to watch, and that gave neither of us the higher moral ground. Men and women who venture to someone else’s war through choice do so in a variety of guises. UN general, BBC correspondent, aid worker, mercenary: in the final analysis they all want to do the same thing, a hit off the action, a walk on the dark side. It’s just a question of how slick a cover you give yourself, and far you want to go.. If you find a cause later then hold on to it, but never blind yourself with your own disguise.”<br />
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<strong>STOREHOUSES OF SORROW</strong><br />
Sometimes I wonder why I have spent so much time in conflict or post conflict regions and the answer comes to mind when I read Nicolas Bouvier, a Swiss writer and artist, He said, “ My belief is that one must have passed through fire oneself....to be able to sort out...the contents of those storehouses of sorrow, where fortunately we can also find, more often than we might have dared to expect...enough small miracles to motivate and encourage those in the field who are so often compelled, to quote a mediaeval Japanese poem, ‘to bear the unbearable and tolerate the intolerable.’<script type="text/javascript">
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</script>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1443556911119744899.post-44015814251777236142010-08-18T20:24:00.000-07:002010-08-18T20:25:14.541-07:00New Zealand troops involved in torture in AfghanistanI have worked in too many conflict situations in Asia and Africa, seen and heard of the use of torture, to believe the words of politicians such as John Key's response to allegations that the New Zealand SAS are handing over prisoners to the Afghan secret police, where they are likely to be tortured? <br />
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My fellow blogger No Right Turn, an experienced analyist I respect says this:<br />
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"Mr Key said when New Zealand troops handed over someone they had detained they made sure that person would not be tortured later on. <br />
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+Where the New Zealand SAS worked alongside the unit in Kabul it was not the detaining force, Mr Key told NewstalkZB. <br />
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"In that instance, it's not our responsibility when it comes to those people that are detained." <br />
"This is simply bullshit. Kiwi soldiers are helping to capture these people. Therefore we bear moral responsibility for what happens to them. We cannot simply wipe our hands of that responsibility by drawing an arbitrary box around it and saying "not our problem", says Right Turn.<br />
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New Zealand is a better country than this. Our response to Afghan torture should be to protect people from it, not enable it. And if the SAS cannot serve in Afghanistan without colluding in torture, then they should not be there. It is that simple<br />
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So what is the background on this issue ? Questions have been raised about whether New Zealand's SAS may have handed over prisoners to an Afghan unit that is believed to use torture.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDK_vgGSfgBmpZqd-vZslsAb_bcqRBkQb7-lrU-ZaF8YF9LU2O2XqD-p2AGhOx6wj5JIPUqE6_8MXGxlnRf-oKSVsEEXyliCVG2-CPYvdi0-3mSV9sTHeYcmCHI-V7JHrATlEh4jm6JzQ/s1600/SAS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDK_vgGSfgBmpZqd-vZslsAb_bcqRBkQb7-lrU-ZaF8YF9LU2O2XqD-p2AGhOx6wj5JIPUqE6_8MXGxlnRf-oKSVsEEXyliCVG2-CPYvdi0-3mSV9sTHeYcmCHI-V7JHrATlEh4jm6JzQ/s400/SAS.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<strong>SAS members on patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan.</strong><br />
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The British military has been banned from handing prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security as it is so notorious for torture. <br />
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The Government has said the SAS worked with Afghanistan's Crisis Response Unit in Kabul, but was not directly responsible for any prisoners captured by the unit because it was not the head of the unit. <br />
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Prime Minister John Key said the SAS were not involved in torture of prisoners in Afghanistan. <br />
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If New Zealand troops detained someone there were clear written protocols about how that was done and those protocols honoured the Geneva Convention, he said. <br />
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The Geneva Convention sets out the standards for the humanitarian treatment of prisoners of war. <br />
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Mr Key said when New Zealand troops handed over someone they had detained they made sure that person would not be tortured later on. <br />
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Where the New Zealand SAS worked alongside the unit in Kabul it was not the detaining force, Mr Key told NewstalkZB. <br />
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"In that instance, it's not our responsibility when it comes to those people that are detained." <br />
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However, the SAS recorded the name of every person detained by the unit and those names were freely available to international agencies, he said. <br />
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Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said the SAS worked with the unit to capture insurgents. <br />
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"It's likely some are [transferred to the Afghan National Directorate of Security], yes," he told the Sunday Star-Times. <br />
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He was understood to be looking into the situation. <br />
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Green Party MP Keith Locke said the New Zealand Defence Force had to share responsibility for what happened to insurgents it captured. <br />
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He supported the withdrawal of the SAS from Afghanistan. <br />
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"We don't want New Zealand's good name muddied by links for the torture of prisoners, which is reputed to include beatings, electric shock treatment, and sleep, food and water deprivation." <br />
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My fellow blogger <strong>No right turn at:</strong><br />
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<a href="http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/08/keys-sophistry-on-afghan-torture.html">http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/08/keys-sophistry-on-afghan-torture.html</a><br />
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wrote this last Sunday :<br />
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"<em>The Sunday Star-Times has a major news story this morning: the New Zealand SAS are turning over prisoners to the Afghan secret police. Those secret police are known torturers, who use amputations, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, starvation, beatings and burns to extract "confessions". So basically kiwi soldiers are turning people over to be tortured. </em><br />
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<em>Our Defence Minister's response to this? The prisoners are "an Afghan responsibility". So he's basically washing his hands of the whole matter. </em><br />
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<em>Fortunately, he can't. New Zealand has specific obligations under both international and domestic law to prevent torture and not turn people over in this way. The Convention Against Torture is pretty clear: </em><br />
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<em>No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. </em><br />
<em>While phrased in terms of immigration law, its application is wider, and applies to any transfer of any form. Domestically, the Bill of Rights Act affirms that </em><br />
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<em>Everyone has the right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, degrading, or disproportionately severe treatment or punishment. </em><br />
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<em>The government's obligation to uphold this right is not limited geographically; it applies to any act or omission by any branch of the New Zealand government, whether it is done in Wellington or Kabul. If the SAS turns people over to an organisation which uses torture, or assists in their capture so they may be turned over, then they are violating it. That's exactly what the UK High Court found, under an almost identical provision in the UK Human Rights Act, when they banned the British armed forces from transferring prisoners to the NDS facility in Kabul - the same facility the SAS are sending people to. </em><br />
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<em>If the government won't do the decent thing here, and ban the SAS from transferring any prisoners, then we will have to make them. The Bill of Rights Act gives us one lever for doing so. Amnesty or some other human rights group should bring a case. </em><br />
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<em>(Another option is a complaint to the Ombudsman. This has the advantage that it is free, and if taken up would likely have the same result. But it would hinge on the questions of whether a decision to turn someone over to torture was "a matter of administration", and on whether anyone other than a victim of such mistreatment had standing to complain. And it would need more information than is contained in the SST story to back it up. But if any human rights group can build a case, I'd urge them to pursue this avenue as well).</em>Bob McKerrow - Wayfarerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13832128768908667724noreply@blogger.com0