FIFA Bans Former Afghan Soccer Official For Violations Relating To Sexual-Abuse Complaints

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Sayed Aghazada

Sayed Aghazada

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 11, 2019

FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, has banned the former general secretary of the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) for five years for violations concerning the abuse of female players.

FIFA said in a statement on October 11 that Sayed Aghazada was guilty of “various violations” of the FIFA Code of Ethics for failing to report sexual-abuse complaints lodged by several Afghan female soccer players against Keramuudin Karim, the former president of the AFF.

“In its decision, the adjudicatory chamber ruled that Mr. Aghazada was aware of this abuse and had the duty to report and prevent it according to the FIFA Code of Ethics,” the statement said.

Karim was banned for life in June following a FIFA investigation that found him guilty of having abused his position and for sexually abusing “various female players.”

In addition to a ban from all soccer-related activity at both the national and international level for five years, Aghazada was also fined 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,016), FIFA said.

“The FIFA Ethics Committee is still looking into the allegations that have been made against other individuals in connection to the same investigation and to their positions as football officials,” it said.

Aghazada was also a FIFA Standing Committee member and Asian Football Confederation Executive Committee member, according to the statement.

Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Former Afghan Warlord Hekmatyar Claims Two-Thirds of Ghani Votes Fraudulent

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Hekmatyar (left) and Ghani (right)

Hekmatyar (left) and Ghani (right)

By Ayesha Tanzeem
VOA News
October 10, 2019

KABUL – Two-thirds of the votes cast for incumbent Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in last month’s presidential election were cast without proper biometric verification and fraudulent, a leading rival candidate, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said Oct. 7, joining a chorus of candidates making similar accusations.

“This election has no winner in the first round. Both teams [Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah] claiming victory are lying. If only biometric votes are considered valid and the rest discarded, I can say with confidence that Ghani’s team will be in the third position,” he told VOA in an interview in the sprawling Kabul house where he has been living since he moved to the city in 2017 after making a peace deal with the government of his now political rival, Ghani.

He also expressed his willingness to join hands with other candidates alleging fraud, including Ghani’s chief rival, Abdullah. Such a move could give significant momentum to allegations of pre- and post-poll rigging primarily targeting Ghani.

Ghani’s team rejects such allegations and Ghani himself, in his polling day speech, urged the electoral bodies to thoroughly investigate any complaints.

Independent analysts, like those of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network, have also questioned at least some of the turnout data presented publicly so far, calling some of the numbers “implausible.”

The province of Nangarhar, “which reported a turnout of 22,813 votes from 309 polling centres on Saturday, a day later, suddenly reported 254,871 votes from 390 polling centres – more than ten times the number reported on E-Day,” an AAN analysis on its website pointed to as one of several examples.

Such observations have increased pressure on Afghanistan’s two electoral bodies, the Independent Election Commission and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission, which are responsible for handling the vote count and complaints respectively.

The initial results from the September 28 polls are not expected till later this month. Final results are expected next month. The IEC has run into technical and logistical issues in gathering and transferring biometric data to its servers from over 26,000 biometric devices used to record fingerprints and pictures of voters, which may delay the results.

The winning candidate is required to get more than 50% of the votes cast. If no candidate fulfills this criterion, the election goes to a second round in which the two leading candidates compete.

However, Abdullah and Ghani, two of the stronger candidates out of the 18 registered, have already declared victory. Ghani’s running mate, Amrullah Saleh, told VOA Pashto the day after the polls that their ticket had received more than 60% of the vote.

In response, Abdullah said in a press conference the same week that his total votes were “the highest in the election, and the election will not go to a second round.”

Two others, Hekmatyar and former Afghan intelligence head Rahmatullah Nabil, have hinted at a win but have not declared victory outright .

A disagreement between Ghani and Abdullah in the last presidential election, in 2014, led to a crisis so destabilizing that then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had to step in and help negotiate a deal between the two rivals.

International stakeholders in Kabul have been urging all sides to abstain from creating a similar situation. The American and British embassies, as well as the European Union delegation, have been tweeting their support for the electoral bodies and asking all candidates to be patient.

“Calling on everyone to respect the time required for @AfghanistanIEC and @ECCAfghanistan to deliver accurate and transparent election results for brave #Afghan voters,” tweeted the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

In a similar tweet, the British Embassy asked everyone to give the electoral bodies “time & space to deliver robust & transparent results.”

The IEC and IECC have indicated that they will follow procedures and weed out all unverified votes. That would likely deliver a more transparent and accurate result, but if the vote count, already at a historical low, falls further, it could run into a different set of problems.

“This election had a very low turnout. Any government formed from such a low voter participation will have no legitimacy. It will be a weak government that will not be able to control the situation,” Hekmatyar claimed.

The Afghan Constitution and election law do not require a minimum number of votes to declare the election credible.

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Head of TEFA claims he received death threats from Ghani’s team

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pres_ashraf_ghani

Ariana: The head of Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA), a Kabul-based election monitoring organization, claimed on Wednesday that he is threatened to death by the ruling electoral team. “We are being threatened and those who have threatened me can hear my voice. I’m concerned because I have no protection and there is no mechanism in place for our protection,” said Naeem Ayoubzada, the CEO of TEFA while speaking at a press conference in Kabul. Apparently, pointing the accusation on President Ashraf Ghani’s “State-Builder” team, Mr. Ayoubzada said that he was threatened to death because of providing information about Afghan presidential election that took place on September 28 across the country. Click here to read more (external link).

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AIHRC Calls For Complete Ban Of Virginity Test In Afghanistan

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Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission

Ariana: The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) asked for unconditional ban of virginity tests in the country. In a statement released on Tuesday, AIHRC said that virginity test is a violence against humanity and an example of “torture of women.” “In order to maintain women’s human dignity and to comply with international human rights standards that prohibit any compulsory medical examination and counts it as an example of torture, the AIHRC believes that forensic medical examinations of virginity have no medical or scientific basis to prove a crime,” read the statement. Click here to read more (external link).

Germany Deports 44 Afghan Asylum Seekers

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germanyRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 9, 2019

Germany has deported another group of failed Afghan asylum seekers to their home country, according to the dpa news agency.

Forty-four Afghans arrived in Kabul on October 9 — the 28th such group that has been deported in less than three years.

Since December 2016, 720 Afghans have been flown back to Afghanistan.

Such deportations are controversial in Germany, where critics say the war-torn country remains too dangerous to send asylum seekers back.

In the first six months of this year, 1,366 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict, according to UN data.

On October 7, at least 10 civilians, including a child, were killed after explosives placed in a rickshaw blew up next to a bus carrying Afghan Army recruits in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar Province.

Ataullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said 27 other people were wounded in the attack in the provincial capital, Jalalabad.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Both the Islamic State militant group and the Taliban are active in Nangarhar.

Meanwhile, a child rights group has said that every single child born and raised in Afghanistan in the past 18 years has experienced and been affected by war and conflict.

The Save the Children statement was issued on October 7, the day marking 18 years since the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan that followed the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Based on reporting by dpa

Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

UN: Unlawful Anti-Drugs US Air Strikes Killed 30 Afghan Civilians

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unamaAyaz Gul
VOA News
October 9, 2019

ISLAMABAD – The United Nations said Wednesday recent U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug-processing facilities in Afghanistan that killed more than 30 civilians, including children, were “not lawful.”

The casualties occurred last May in western Farah and adjoining Nimroz provinces where the U.S. bombed more than 60 sites, identifying them as drug-production plants, according to “extensive fact-finding” into the incident by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The report said investigators have confirmed 30 deaths and at least four injuries in Farah.

“UNAMA has received reliable and credible information to substantiate at least a further 37 additional civilian casualties [30 deaths and seven injured], the majority of whom were women and children. It is working to further verify these civilian casualties,” the report said.

The U.S. military swiftly disputed the charges, questioning the methods and credibility of the sources used by UNAMA.

“The precision strikes against Taliban methamphetamine labs and Taliban combatants in the early hours of May 5, 2019 accurately targeted and struck sources of Taliban revenues used to fund ongoing indiscriminate violence against innocent Afghans,” the military noted in a written statement.

In addition to imagery collection during the precision strikes, the U.S. military conducted “exhaustive assessments” of the facilities and surrounding areas after the strikes, it explained.

But UNAMA insisted in its report that the victims inside the facilities were non-combatants because they were not involved in hostile activities and were entitled to protection against such attacks.

“However, according to international humanitarian law, including international customary law, facilities that contribute economically or financially to the war effort of a party to a conflict are considered civilian objectives,” UNAMA insisted in its report.

U.S. forces also have targeted drug-production facilities in Afghanistan to try disrupt what is believed to be a major source of revenues for the Taliban.

UNAMA emphasized in its report, however, this was the first time it has received reports of a large number of civilian casualties resulting from such an operation.

American forces launched counter-narcotics airstrikes between 2017 and 2018 in opium-poppy producing southern Afghan provinces where the Taliban controls large swaths of territory. Critics say however the campaign has had little impact and ave drawn strong criticism from Afghan farmers who mostly rely on earnings from poppy cultivation to support their families.

Ghani: We Must Avoid 2014 Election Chaos

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Ashraf Ghani

Ashraf Ghani

Tolo News: In an interview with Germany’s Spiegel news agency published on Monday, President Ghani said he has not claimed victory in the elections.  “My team and I are strictly abiding by the rules and will wait up to the moment the election committee announces the results. Anything before that are predictions and claims that are not helpful,” Ghani said. His team is excited by initial numbers, Ghani said, but “we will wait for the final results.” Click here to read more (external link).

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