Koofi
Tolo News: The Norwegian Peace Council has included Afghan politician Fawzia Koofi’s name among five Nobel Peace Prize favorites for 2020 for her continued efforts for women’s rights and the ongoing peace negotiations between in Doha. Click here to read more (external link).
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan
October 1, 2020
An Afghan official says at least nine people were killed when a suicide car bomber attacked a military checkpoint in the southern province of Helmand.
Four civilians, including two women, were among those who died in the late September 30 attack in the Nahri Sarah district, according to Omer Zwak, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
A child and three security personnel were also wounded.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants are in control of most of Helmand Province.
The suicide bombing comes as Taliban and Afghan government negotiators are meeting in Qatar to try to find a way to put an end to 19 years of war in the country.
Violence has continued across the country despite the peace talks in Doha, which kicked off on September 12, as the Taliban are refusing a nationwide cease-fire.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has documented more than 1,280 Afghan civilian deaths during the first half of 2020 — mainly as a result of fighting between Afghan government forces and Taliban militants.
With reporting by AP
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Tolo News: The US announced the delivery of a 100 ventilators to the Afghan Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) to help the country care for COVID-19 patients. Speaking at the related ceremony in Kabul on Thursday, the US embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires Ross Wilson said the aim is part of President Donald Trump’s assistance to help combat coronavirus in the world. The cost of the ventilators is estimated to be $1.5 million. Click here to read more (external link).
Stars and Stripes: A military program that gave troops advising and language training in an effort to develop cultural experts in Central Asia shut down Wednesday, the Pentagon said. The Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands program closed after more than a decade of training advisers in languages such as Dari, Pashto or Urdu, said Richard Osial, spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Click here to read more (externa link).
Hamid Karzai
The National (AE): Britain’s departing spy chief Alex Younger has revealed how he outmanoeuvred the CIA for audiences with Afghanistan’s then-president by giving him a regular supply of jam, in a move that “compensated for some billions of dollars of security assistance”. Click here to read more (external link).
By Ayesha Tanzeem
VOA News
September 30, 2020
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN – The man heading Afghanistan’s peace efforts said Iran did not attend the ceremony marking the opening of talks with the Taliban due to tensions with the United States.
“Iran was invited…Sometimes their relations with the United States which [are] under a lot of tension at the moment, those things affect their decisions [of] participating in a conference or not,” Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation told VOA in Islamabad toward the end of a three-day visit to Pakistan.
Despite that, Abdullah said, Iran supported the peace process. He also acknowledged that Iran had “legitimate concerns” and “legitimate interests” in Afghanistan as a neighbor that hosts millions of Afghan refugees.
He said Iran’s contacts with various Taliban groups could be used as an opportunity to advance peace efforts.
The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, told a Washington-based research group, the United States Institute of Peace, last week that the U.S.-Iran relations were getting in the way of Iran cooperating with Afghanistan’s peace process.
“Iran would like to keep us entangled in a conflict without winning or losing but paying a high price until there is an agreement between the U.S. and Iran,” he said.
Iran strongly refuted those claims and said it supported peace in Afghanistan, according to its official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA.
In the same story, IRNA quoted the deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Abbas Araghchi, as doubting the U.S. intentions in Afghanistan.
“We believe that the U.S. should not be trusted and that the U.S. presence in the region is dangerous and will cause a lot of discord in the region,” said Araghchi.
Abdullah’s Pakistan visit, in which he met with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, is being viewed as a major shift in his approach toward Pakistan.
As the chief executive of Afghanistan in the former administration, he declined several invitations to visit the country.
He said, however, that changes on the ground, including the fact that the Taliban and Afghan government were sitting across the table from each other in Doha, helped change his mind.
“I thought that with the prime minister, Imran Khan, as the prime minister of Pakistan, and the leadership, the political leadership, institutions, and establishment all being on the same page, giving messages of support for the peace process and also for the betterment of relations, then I decided it was necessary (for me to come here),” he said.
In his talks with Pakistan’s army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa Tuesday, Abdullah said they discussed how to make “all the right efforts so peace is materialized,” which he added was in the interest of both countries.
He also emphasized that in Afghanistan, in the region, and the world, the peace process had gained momentum, but some things, like the high level of violence, could be disruptive. In his meetings with Pakistani leaders, he said, he asked them to use “all the influence” over the Taliban, including public messaging, to help the process.
A day earlier, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that reduction in violence leading to a cease-fire was a prerequisite for the Doha talks.
Abdullah brushed aside suggestions that Afghans were politically divided compared to the Taliban, saying their side was “very diverse and much more sophisticated” with people who had exercised democracy in the last two decades.
He said all Afghans favored the idea of peace and any differences were technical rather than ideological.
Abdullah said if the U.S. decided to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan, it would have an impact but the urgency it created could be translated into an opportunity for a quick resolution to the conflict.
“But eventually it is us who have to find a way of working together, living together in peace, without posing a threat to our own citizens, or to the neighborhood, or to the rest of the international community,” he said.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 30, 2020
Afghanistan’s top peace negotiator says Afghanistan and Pakistan are on the threshold of a new relationship characterized by “mutual respect, sincere cooperation, and shared prosperity.”
Abdullah Abdullah, who is on a bridge-building mission to Pakistan, said the neighboring countries should shun the suspicion, rhetoric, and conspiracy theories that have dogged relations in the past.
Abdullah met both Prime Minister Imran Khan and the powerful chief of the army. In a statement following his talks with Abdullah, Khan vowed Pakistan’s support for a postwar Afghanistan.
Khan said in his meeting with Abdullah he “underscored that all Afghan parties must work for reduction in violence leading to cease-fire,” according to the statement.
There was no immediate comment from Pakistan’s military following Abdullah’s meeting with Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Earlier in the day Abdullah told the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad that he believes that after “many troubling years” the two countries “need to go beyond the usual stale rhetoric and shadowy conspiracy theories that have held us back.”
He said people are demanding “fresh approaches” and it is more urgent than ever “to look to our region as one region.”
Afghanistan has long had troubled relations with Pakistan, which Kabul and Washington accuse of harboring and aiding the Taliban leadership, a claim Islamabad has denied.
Pakistan claims its influence over the Taliban is overstated but says it is willing to do whatever is possible for peace in Afghanistan.
Abdullah’s visit comes as intra-Afghan peace negotiations are under way in the Gulf state of Qatar.
Negotiators from the Afghan government and the Taliban have been locked in talks since September 12 but have been unable to agree a framework for the negotiations aimed at ending the 19-year war.
Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, a body that oversees the peace talks, arrived in Islamabad on September 28 for a three-day visit.
He said the current intra-Afghan talks offer the best hope to put the war in the past. He said Afghanistan does not want a “terrorist footprint” within its borders or any entity in Afghanistan to pose a threat to any other nation.
Despite the efforts for peace, violence continues in Afghanistan. On September 29, a roadside bomb killed at least 14 civilians in the central province of Daikundi.
The provincial governor’s spokesman, Nasrullah Ghori, told RFE/RL that seven women, five children, and two men died when their vehicle was hit by the explosion. Three other passengers were wounded in the blast, he said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, but Interior Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian blamed the Taliban.
The talks in Qatar follow a landmark deal signed between the United States and the Taliban in February. Under the deal, foreign forces will leave Afghanistan by May 2021 in exchange for counterterrorism guarantees from the Taliban, which agreed to negotiate a permanent cease-fire and a power-sharing formula with the Afghan government.
Pakistan faces its own challenges after most major opposition parties demanded the country’s powerful generals surrender their stranglehold over politics and withdraw support for Khan’s administration.
The newly formed Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) on September 29 announced it would kick off a nationwide protest campaign on October 11 RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reported.
Based on reporting by AP
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