Afghanistan Tells Taliban: Peace Or We Will ‘Fight’

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Hamdullah Mohib

Hamdullah Mohib

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
October 1, 2019

As the smoke gradually cleared from an Afghan presidential election riled by Taliban threats over the weekend, the country’s national-security adviser, Hamdullah Mohib, issued a message to the hard-line Islamic insurgents that the government won’t back down from them.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly’s general debate in New York on September 30, Mohib said: “To the Taliban and their foreign sponsors, hear this now, a message from the Afghan people: Join us in peace, or we will continue to fight. This is a fight we can win.”

For the Afghan people, Mohib said, “peace is our common objective, and terrorists are our common enemy.”

However, peace cannot be rushed “at the risk of empowering” terrorists, he said.

His speech came two days after a little more than 2 million people voted in the presidential election, which was marred by a spate of militant attacks across the country and reports of problems at polling stations.

At the UN, Mohib said many people were deprived of their right to vote on September 28 because the country faced problems securing polling stations against the Taliban — the militants control or exert influence over about half the country and issued warnings to potential voters.

For those who did, Mohib said he was “proud,” saying they risked the “threat of terrorism” and their lives, while some voters had their fingers cut off by the Taliban during prior elections.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the country’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, have both claimed victory in the election, whose outcome is expected to be announced on November 7.

Yet the election transcended politics, Mohib said.

“We all voted not just for a president, but we also voted for democracy,” he said. “We voted for our constitution. We voted for freedom and sovereignty. We voted for prosperity and connectivity. We voted for peace. We voted for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.”

In a country where a generation has grown up knowing only war and not peace, “the opportunities afforded to us through the gains of the past 20 years have allowed us to change hope into something much more powerful — belief,” Mohib said.

Fighting continues in a war that is nearly 18 years old as peace remains elusive ever since the United States earlier in September withdrew from a lengthy series of talks with the Taliban whose main component was sealing a truce.

Still, Mohib thanked the country’s Western backers, “particularly NATO-member countries,” who have “stood by us over the past two decades as we recovered from war, as we rebuilt, as we reimagined a new Afghanistan.”

Their sacrificed lives were acknowledged as well.

“You invested heavily and dearly in our vision for an Afghan democracy, even with the lives of your own countrymen and women,” Mohib said.

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.

Taliban Kill 11 Policemen in Northern Afghanistan

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balkhAyesha Tanzeem
VOA News
October 1, 2019

KABUL – At least 11 Afghan police officers were killed in Balkh province in northern Afghanistan when the Taliban attacked police checkpoints Monday night, according to the governor’s spokesman, Monir Ahmad Farhad.

However, he rejected the Taliban’s claim it had captured the district. Balkh police spokesman Adil Shah Adil said only two security checkpoints had collapsed in the attacks.

Meanwhile, intense fighting continues in another province in the north, Jawzjan, where 30 police and armed locals, “including the district governor and the district police chief, have been held under siege by the Taliban for the past two days in the Darzab district,” according to local Tolo News outlet.

“Lotfullah Azizi, Jawzjan provincial governor, said that the district capital is under the Taliban’s control and that the Afghan forces are pinned down close to the district bazaar,” Tolo reported on its website.

The attack follows Taliban threats that contributed to a historic low turnout in the country’s fourth presidential election Saturday.

The country’s security forces were able to keep the situation under relative control but voters chose to stay home nonetheless. The process of collecting ballots and counting them in Afghanistan is long and complicated. Preliminary voting results are not expected for a couple of weeks. Final results are expected to be announced November 9.

However, fulfilling the worst fears of analysts and western officials, two leading candidates, incumbent President Ashraf Ghani and his chief rival, Abdullah and Abdullah, have already declared themselves winners.

“Anyone who declares himself a winner is preparing grounds for a crisis in Afghanistan,” Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency and himself one of 18 candidates registered to run for president, said at a Tuesday news conference.

He also indicated his dissatisfaction with the transparency of the process.

Abdullah and another important candidate, former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have already accused Ghani of fraud.

Afghanistan peace negotiations may be dead, but the war’s still very much alive

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us_army-soldiersMilitary Times: Nearly 18 years after U.S. forces first dropped into Afghanistan, yet another administration is struggling to get out of the quagmire. And the struggle is not going well. As much as he wanted to pull troops out, President Donald Trump, like his predecessors, has not found the way forward. Quite the opposite. Click here to read more (external link).

In Repeat Of 2014, Both Rivals Claim Win In Afghan Presidential Election

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Ghani (left) and Abdulllah (right) - File photo

Ghani (left) and Abdulllah (right) – File photo

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 30, 2019

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the country’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, have both claimed victory in a weekend presidential election, a scene reminiscent of the last vote in 2014.

Though preliminary overall results aren’t expected for another three weeks, Abdullah told a news conference in Kabul on September 30 that by his count, he won such a clear-cut victory in the balloting that a second-round runoff won’t be needed.

That followed a claim by Ghani’s running mate, Amrullah Saleh, that the incumbent had won a clear first-ballot victory.

“The information that we have received shows that 60 to 70 percent of people voted [for] us,” Saleh was quoted by Voice of America as saying.

Neither side offered any evidence to back up their claims, raising concerns that the war-torn country is headed for a similar situation that arose from the 2014 election, where the same two candidates made competing claims of victory.

That led to months of turmoil that was ultimately settled through a power-sharing deal brokered by the United States that brought a deeply unpopular and fractured national-unity government to power.

“The situation in 2014 was different. We were the winning team at that time,” Abdullah said on September 30.

“Now it is 2019 and I have announced, and I am reiterating, that only legal votes will be accepted by us,” he added.

Fifteen candidates were on the ballot in the September 28 election, but the contest was widely seen as a two-horse race between Abdullah, 59, and Ghani, 70.

In a statement on September 30, EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini called on the candidates to respect the electoral timeline.

“We expect that the candidates exercise restraint, await the official announcement of preliminary and final results by [Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission, IEC] and submit any evidence-based complaints through the established institutional complaints mechanism,” Mogherini said.

Around 9.6 million Afghans were registered to vote in the election, the fourth presidential vote since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban in 2001.

The IEC said late on September 29 that it had counted more than 1.1 million votes in the election, which was marred by a spate of militant attacks across the country and reports of problems at polling stations.

The commission has said that an unofficial estimate of voter turnout in the election shows that a little more than 2 million voters cast ballots — a sharp drop from the roughly 7 million who turned out for the last presidential election in 2014.

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.

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FIFA Cuts Afghan Women’s Football Team From World Ranking

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soccerballTolo News: The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has eliminated the Afghan women’s national football team from the world women’s ranking, due to the team’s lack of activity. The Afghan Women’s National Football team was in the 108 place in the FIFA ranking. Click here to read more (external link).

China Spurns US Criticism of Economic Cooperation With Afghanistan

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china_afghanistanAyaz Gul
VOA News
September 29, 2019

ISLAMABAD – A regional Chinese diplomat has rebuked the United States for being “ignorant” about his country’s ongoing key economic contributions and cooperation with Afghanistan.

Arrangements are being worked out to enhance the cooperation with Kabul even under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Yao Jing, the Chinese ambassador to neighboring Pakistan told VOA.

He hailed Saturday’s successful Afghan presidential election, saying China hopes they will boost peace-building efforts in a country wrecked by years of conflicts.

“We hope that with the election in Afghanistan, with the peace development moving forward in Afghanistan, Afghans will finally achieve a peaceful period, achieve the stability,” said the Chinese diplomat, who served in Kabul prior to his posting in Islamabad.

Earlier this month, U.S. officials and lawmakers during a congressional hearing in Washington sharply criticized China for its lack of economic assistance to Afghan rebuilding efforts.

“I think it’s fair to say that China has not contributed to the economic development of Afghanistan. We have not seen any substantial assistance from China,” Alice Wells, U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, told lawmakers.

Wells, however, acknowledged that Beijing has worked with Washington on a way forward on peace as have other countries, including Russia and immediate neighbors of Afghanistan.

“She is a little ignorant about what China’s cooperation with Afghanistan is,” ambassador Yao said when asked to comment on the remarks made by Wells.

He recounted that Beijing late last year established a trade corridor with Kabul, which Afghan officials say have enabled local traders to directly export thousands of tons of pine nuts to the Chinese market annually, bringing much-needed dollars. Yao said a cargo train was also started in 2016 from eastern China to Afghanistan’s landlocked northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

China is also working on infrastructure projects, including the road linking Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad and the road between the central Afghan city of Bamiyan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Chinese companies, Yao, said are also helping in establishing transmission lines and other infrastructure being developed under the CASA-1000 electricity transmission project linking Central Asia to energy-starved South Asia nations through Afghanistan.

Ambassador Yao noted that China and Afghanistan signed a memorandum of understanding on BRI cooperation, identifying several major projects of connectivity.

“But the only problem is that the security situation pose a little challenge. So, that is why China and Pakistan and all the regional countries, we are working so hard trying to support or facilitate peace in Afghanistan,” he said.

For her part, Ambassador Wells told U.S. lawmakers that China’s BRI is a “slogan” and “not any reality” in Afghanistan. “They have just tried to lockdown lucrative mining contracts but not following through with investment or real resources,” she noted.

Wells said that Washington continues to warn its partners, including the Afghan government about “falling prey to predatory loans or loans that are designed to benefit only the Chinese State.”

U.S. officials are generally critical of BRI for “known problems with corruption, debt distress, environmental damage, and a lack of transparency.” The projects aims to link China by sea and land through an infrastructure network with southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

But Yao rejected those concerns and cited the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a pilot project of BRI, which has brought around $20 billion in Chinese investment to Pakistan within the past six years. It has helped Islamabad build roads and power plants, helping the country overcome its crippling electricity shortages, improve its transportation network and operationalize the strategic deep-sea Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea.

Vote Count Under Way In Afghan Presidential Election After Low Turnout

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ballot_boxRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
September 29, 2019

An member of Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said that an unofficial estimate of voter turnout in the country’s September 28 presidential election shows that a little more than 2 million voters cast ballots — a sharp drop from roughly 7 million who turned out for the last presidential election in 2014.

With 9.57 million Afghans registered to vote on September 28, the estimate indicates that turnout was just over 20 percent.

Observers from the Afghan Independent Rights Commission said turnout appeared to be especially low among women.

Early on September 29, the IEC said it had counted more than 1.1 million votes in the election, which was marred by a spate of militant attacks across the country and reports of problems at polling stations.

That vote count included ballots tallied from 2,597 polling stations — just over half of the 4,905 official polling places.

More than 500 polling stations were closed due to threats of militant attacks.

Fifteen candidates were on the ballot, but the election was widely seen as a two-horse race between President Ashraf Ghani, who is seeking another five-year term, and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah.

If no candidate receives a majority in the first-round vote, a second round will be held between the top two finishers on November 23.

Preliminary overall results for the September 28 vote are expected on October 19, allowing electoral bodies to process complaints and tally votes sent to Kabul from remote areas of the mountainous country.

Final results are expected to be announced on November 7.

Violence Reported

Violence was reported soon after polls opened on September 28 with an explosion at a mosque in the southern city of Kandahar that was being used as a polling station. Local hospital officials later said at least 15 people were wounded by the blast, three seriously.

The government bolstered security to try to ensure what could be the second-ever democratic transition of power in the war-wracked country of 35 million people.

Some 72,000 security personnel were deployed to secure polling centers across the country. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and were originally scheduled to close at 3 p.m., but the IEC later extended voting by two hours.

Besides the incident in Kanadahar, there were also reports of sporadic rocket attacks elsewhere in the country on September 28.

Reuters reported explosions near polling stations in Kabul, Ghazni, and Jalalabad.

There were reports of militants firing mortars into the northern city of Kunduz.

Ghulam Rabani Rabani, a council member for Kunduz Province, said Taliban militants also attacked Afghan security forces in two locations outside the city, sparking gun battles.

Officials said five security officials were killed in those attacks and 37 civilians wounded.

“The enemy carried out 68 attacks against election sites across the country…but security forces repelled most of the attacks,” acting Defense Minister Asadullah Khalid said.

Yousef Rashid, the head of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan, said voting generally went smoother than in the past, but difficulties were reported across the country, including problems with the biometric voting devices meant to combat voter fraud.

Ghani, 70, and Abdullah, 59, have led a deeply unpopular and fractured national-unity government since a U.S.-brokered power-sharing agreement following a disputed, fraud-marred presidential election in 2014.

A Pashtun, Ghani is from the largest ethnic group. He is a Western-educated technocrat who has served as finance minister. Abdullah, a trained ophthalmologist, was a senior member of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and has support among ethnic Tajiks, the country’s second-largest group.

The factors underlying fraud during the 2014 elections — systemic corruption, widespread insecurity, and a problematic electoral system – have not been been addressed and many observers have warned of another potential dispute.

That scenario could ignite a protracted political crisis and raise the threat of civil war in the multiethnic country.

Observers say the fear of violence and the potential for another disputed election sapped enthusiasm for the vote.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and Tolo News

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.

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