Taliban

By Mujib Mashal in Asia on December 5th, 2011
Sultan Mohamed has sold books for over two decades

"How can you care for books when you lose friends?" explained Wasim, a bookseller in Kabul's largest book market as he spoke of the impact that four decades of violence and turmoil has left on readership in the Afghan capital.

He and his young son, who looked no older than eight, were surrounded by stacks of books covered in dust: textbooks, thick collections of poetry and volumes of English stories with translations in local languages, a commodity in high demand for the thousands of Afghans trying to learn English – a language that can take you far in the job market.

Wasim's family has been selling books for generations.

"During the Taliban, perhaps we sold more books than ever. But it was a particular kind of books," he said, explaining that Taliban fighters would stop by to buy a volume or two of religious books before heading to battle.

By Jennifer Glasse in Asia on October 7th, 2011
Distrust is to be expected a country where a number of high-level officials have been murdered in their own homes [AFP]

Tahmina's enduring memory of living under the Taliban was crying all night just before Eid, one of the biggest celebrations in the Muslim calendar, because she couldn't go to the market in Kandahar with her mother to get treats.

The Taliban didn't allow women or girls out like that. She was then 11 years old and said she asked her mother that night why Afghanistan was the way it was.

Now 21, Tahmina is studying to be a midwife, taking a business-development course and has also learned English.

"We have good luck now,” she says. “Today we can come out of our homes, we can work, but we will always have security problems."

Tahmina covered her face, all except for her eyes, to speak to us on camera, reflecting the still-conservative attitudes here.

Despite threats against her school, and taunts by men in the street, she remains undaunted.

By Kamal Hyder in Asia on June 23rd, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

In less than a month’s time, US forces will begin pulling out of Afghanistan.

By Kamal Hyder in Asia on May 12th, 2011

Within years after Russian forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia sent in billions of dollars to help the mujahideen, or holy warriors, in their uphill struggle against Russian forces. As the battles for control of Afghanistan got under way, thousands of Arab and other foreign volunteers made a beeline for Pakistan to join the Afghan mujahideen and cross into Afghanistan to wage jihad against the brutal occupation of Afghanistan.

By Sue Turton in Asia on March 21st, 2011
Photo by Reuters
Ask Afghan army and police commanders from Kandahar to Bamyan if they are ready to take charge of security in their own province and the answer is always the same: not without better equipment and the support of a proper Afghan airforce.
 
Bamyan is on the list of provinces first for transition that president Hamid Karzai will announce on Tuesday. The colonel in charge of recruitment in this, the country's most peaceful province, told me they had little to defend themselves with should fighters, well entrenched in neighbouring provinces, decide to cross the border.
 
Mark Sedwill, NATO's civilian representative here, had talked about concerns that those first for transition would get an instant bull's eye on the province.
By Kamal Hyder in Asia on February 10th, 2011

When the Taliban movement took off in the mid 1990’s they had no support from Osama Bin Laden or his outfit al-Qaeda.
The Taliban agenda was introverted and interested only in restoring security and stability within the confines of the Afghan frontiers.

However, al-Qaeda’s agenda was more regional or perhaps even global.

Many Arab Mujahideen, or Holy Warriors as they were known by the US, came from far away lands in North Africa, including Algeria, Morocco, Libya and even Egypt.

The Afghan war provided a window of opportunity for the despotic Arab regimes to send their trouble-makers to fight a war in a distant land, and please Washington in supplying the fighters for America’s holy war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

It was like killing two birds with one stone.

After a heroic struggle, and with help from the Arab fighters, the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan and the country plunged into civil war.

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on December 16th, 2010
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Al Jazeera's senior political analyst comments on the US administration's review of its military strategy in Afghanistan.

Why a review of the military strategy in Afghanistan?

Releasing the review is an exercise in public diplomacy; it marks the first year anniversary of President Barack Obama's speech last year that laid out his surge strategy to avoid losing the war in Afghanistan. During long and difficult deliberation with his national security team in 2009, the president was sceptical of the generals and hardliners' argument for surge of troops without clear benchmarks and for a major escalation without exist strategy, according to Bob Woodward inside account of the White House meetings in Obama's Wars. Today, his administration is offering what is deemed balance sheet that shows "progress" but also difficult challenges ahead.

By Zeina Khodr in Asia on December 4th, 2010
Photo by Reuters

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani couldn't have been more blunt when he said a few weeks ago that: "Nothing can happen in Afghan peace talks with the Taliban without us. We are part of the solution. We are not part of the problem."

For some in Afghanistan, however, Pakistan is a part of the problem – blocking any attempt to find a political solution to the conflict that doesn't secure its strategic interests at home.

Last February, I was in Kabul when news of the arrest of the Taliban's Mullah Brader emerged. Second-in-command only to the Afghan Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Omar, his capture in the Pakistani city of Karachi was described as a success.

In Afghanistan, government sources told us that it was a setback to peace efforts.

Mullah Brader was reportedly involved in secret negotiations with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, albeit without Pakistan’s consent. His arrest was a clear message from Islamabad.

By Imran Khan in Asia on November 12th, 2010
Paramilitary soldiers keep guard around the destroyed CID building [Reuters]

I first reached the bomb site as the day began to break over Karachi. Just hours earlier, a truck carrying 1000kg of explosives had destroyed almost a whole city block.

The work of the Pakistani Taliban.

The scene was a gruesome reminder that Pakistan teeters on the edge of collapse, perhaps saved only by the extraordinary resilience of its citizens.

Resilience that seems to be turning to acceptance. Acceptance that bombings are now part of the country's every day.

My driver Maqbool actually heard the blast. Chain smoking and without a hint of nervousness, he tells me what happened.

"The noise was like a thunderbolt going off inside my head. I was asleep kilometres away from the site, but I heard it. I thought the bomb had gone off in my street. I ran outside and only saw others as confused as me," he recalled.

"In the end it's only God that decides who lives and who dies. We live our lives and put our faith in God.

By Kamal Hyder in Asia on November 1st, 2010
Photo from AFP

Just a couple of years ago, Barack Obama appeared as the great hope for a modern America, one that was willing to admit its mistakes and to do some soul-searching as to whether they were fighting a just war in Iraq. It was that debate that perhaps led Obama to become president. He also promised hope for an economy on the brink of ruin. And his promise to bring back the troops from Iraq struck a chord with the voters eager for a change of policy from the Neo conservative-dominated US administration to a more liberal one willing to consider toning down America’s costly foreign wars that have, according to some estimates, crossed the three trillion dollar mark.

Despite that the wars in the far away lands have been showing no signs of a breakthrough - perhaps because of the extra baggage inherited from the Bush administration.

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