MORSi ROAStS IRAN - Kuwait Times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012
CHAR DARAH: Fahima had just arrived
home from school when members of
the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a UStrained
militia charged with making
Afghans in Taleban strongholds feel
more secure, started hammering on
the front door searching for her father.
They elbowed it open and, frustrated at
not finding him, started beating her
younger brother, prompting 17-yearold
Fahima to intervene. One of the
men turned and shot her dead.
“She was in her first days as an
eleventh grade student,” said Fahima’s
father, Khuja, who believes the killing
was score settling over an old land dispute.
“Offenders are still serving as
local policemen and they are free.
Police say the killer has escaped but
he’s walking in public with his gun and
no one is able to catch him.” The ALP
was set up in 2010 in villages where the
national force is weak, a flagship project
of U.S. General David Petraeus, who
stepped down as commander of foreign
forces in Afghanistan in 2011.
The government began recruiting
everyone from farmers to shopkeepers
for the militia, hoping to take the edge
away from the Taleban in their rural
bastions. American officials have hailed
the ALP as an effective homegrown
force which has restricted the ability of
the Taleban to move in the countryside.
In northern Kunduz province’s
Char Darah district, a Taleban stronghold
until recently, people credit the
ALP for making it safer to travel and
send children to school against frequent
insurgent opposition to education,
especially for girls.
“The Taleban here were demanding
money from local people, beating
them if they refused. Now we don’t let
them do it,” said Gul Ahmad, an ALP
commander in Sarak Bala village. But
security gains made by the now
20,000-strong militia are often overshadowed
by mounting accusations of
abuses, including rape and murder.
Human rights groups say ALP members
sometimes act like warlords, demanding
bribes, skimming contracts and
committing the kind of atrocities that
rattled Afghanistan in a civil war that
killed 50,000 people before the Taleban
took over in 1996. Afghans already have
enough to worry about. Many fear the
United States and other Western allies
will abandon Afghanistan after 2014,
when most NATO combat troops will
have gone, leaving them at the mercy
of the Taleban. There is widespread talk
of another civil war. The ALP was supposed
to ease public anxiety, not fuel it.
Uniforms, a salary,
but little discipline
Duties range from manning checkpoints
and running patrols to providing
security forces with intelligence on
insurgents. Each member gets a
monthly salary and food worth about
$180 and are issued brown uniforms
and an AK-47 rifle. Some acquire heavier
weapons like machineguns or rock-
et-propelled grenades on their own
and prefer the traditional flowing shirt
and baggy trousers to mix in with the
population in farming villages with
mudbrick homes. Many complain they
are underpaid and have to borrow or
steal from the poor locals they are
meant to protect.
“My father works as a farmer and I
have to help him live. If I don’t get
enough money then I’ll have an eye on
other local people’s pockets,” said
Lutfullah, 28. Their pasts often don’t
inspire confidence either. Rights
groups say some were former Taleban
fighters or members of militias that
wreaked havoc in Afghanistan for
decades. There are reports of the ALP
joining the Taleban.
“Some of them are guilty of repeated
killings,” said Hussain Ali Moin, coordinator
for the Afghanistan’s Independent
Human Rights Commission. More than
100 ALP members have been jailed for
crimes including murder, bombings,
rapes, beatings and robbery, according
to chief military prosecutor Mohammad
Rahim Hanifi.
In one of the most high-profile cases,
an ALP commander and four of his
men entered a house in Kunduz
province, assaulted a family and
abducted their 18-year-old daughter,
Lal Bibi, in May. She told her family she
was chained to a wall and repeatedly
raped before being brought home a
week later.
“She says if she does not get justice
International
Abuse allegations mount against Afghan police force
JAMNAGAR, India: Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel and volunteers pull the wreckage to
look for survivors after two air force helicopters collided and crashed at a field in Sarmat
village yesterday. — AP
9 killed as Indian
helicopters collide
NEW DELHI: Nine Indian air force personnel
were killed yesterday when two Russiandesigned
military helicopters apparently collided
in mid-air, the military and police said.
Air force spokesman Wing Commander
Gerard Galway said the two Mi-17 helicopters
were “flying in close formation” over a
firing range in the western state of Gujarat
when they crashed. “It is likely it was a midair
collision,” Galway told AFP, confirming
that all nine on board the two aircraft had
died.
Galway said an inquiry would establish
exactly how the accident occurred. An air offi-
cial who did not want to be named said the
two helicopters were practising firing over the
range near a military airbase in Jamnagar district
when the accident happened. Jamnagar
police chief Harikrishna Patil told AFP by telephone
from the accident site that the aircraft
appeared to have collided before they came
down in cotton fields near a village.
“One of the helicopters also caught fire
after hitting a high-tension power cable,” he
said. India plans to buy up to 400 helicopters,
worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to
replace its ageing fleet of Russian- and Britishsupplied
aircraft. — AFP
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani intelligence officials
confirmed yesterday that a US drone strike last
week near the Afghan border killed the son of
the founder of the powerful Haqqani militant
network, a major blow to one of the most
feared groups fighting American troops in
Afghanistan. Badruddin Haqqani, who has
been described as the organization’s day-today
operations commander, was killed on Aug.
24 in one of three strikes that hit militant hideouts
in the Shawal Valley in
Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal area, said
two senior intelligence officials, speaking on
condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to talk to the media. The presence of
the mostly Afghan Haqqani network in North
Waziristan has been a major source of friction
between Pakistan and the US. The Obama
administration has repeatedly demanded
Pakistan prevent the group from using its territory
to launch attacks in Afghanistan, but
Islamabad has refused - a stance many analysts
believe is driven by the country’s strong historical
ties to the Haqqani network’s founder,
Jalaluddin Haqqani.
The Pakistani intelligence officials didn’t
specify which strike on Aug. 24 killed
Badruddin, but said he was leaving a hideout
when the US missiles hit. The confirmation of
his death came from their sources within the
Taleban, which is allied with the Haqqani network,
and agents on the ground, they said. But
neither the officials nor their sources have
actually seen Badruddin’s body.
Pakistani intelligence officials previously
said they were 90 percent sure Badruddin was
killed in a drone strike in a different part of
North Waziristan on Aug 21. It’s unclear what
caused the discrepancy. Afghanistan’s intelligence
agency said several days ago that its
operatives had confirmed Badruddin’s death,
she will set herself on fire,” her 56-yearold
father, Hajji Rustam, told Reuters.
The trauma was so severe, it made him
long for the days when rapists were
publicly stoned to death or flogged
under Taleban rule. “The Taleban were
better than the ALP,” he said. “At least
they respected our honour. They
opposed only women’s activities in
public, but these people assault us in
our homes.”
Stricter vetting
The problems may multiply, with
plans to boost the force to 30,000 and
make it operational over most of the
country. Some of the attacks allegedly
committed by the ALP also seem to be
motivated by sectarian rivalries, which
could complicate efforts to tame the
force. In southern Uruzgan province, an
ALP commander belonging to the
Hazara minority ethnic group in late
July gunned down 15 Pashtun civilians
in Khas Uruzgan, a day after the
Pashtun Taleban killed two of his
friends, officials said.
“Commander Abdul Hakim Shujahi
took nine villagers out of their houses
and took them to the Matakzai area of
the village and killed them with stones
and gunshots,” said Mohammad Waris
Faizi, who heads the Independent
Human Rights Commission investigation
office in the province. “Then he
and his people arrested six villagers
from the Khak Afghan area and killed
them too,” Faizi said. — AFP
Pakistani officials confirm
death of crucial militant
but did not provide any details. A senior
Taleban commander has also confirmed the
militant’s death. A Taleban spokesman in
Afghanistan, Zabiullah Mujahid, has however
rejected reports of Badruddin’s death, calling
them “propaganda of the enemy.” The US does
not often comment publicly on the covert CIA
drone program in Pakistan and has not said
whether Badruddin was killed.
The areas where the American drone strikes
generally occur are extremely remote and dangerous,
making it difficult for reporters or others
to verify a particular person’s death.
Badruddin is considered a vital part of the
Haqqani structure. He is believed to be the network’s
day-to-day operations commander,
according to a report by the Institute for the
Study of War. — AP
HYDERABAD: Indian policemen detain
activists of various student organizations
during a protest yesterday. The students
were protesting against the Andhra Pradesh
state government’s decision to put a cap of
35,000 rupees ($625)on funds released under
the fee reimbursement scheme for engineering
and other professional courses. — AFP