Afghan Refugee Strategy a Big Mistake | UNHCR

In 2002 the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) embarked on an ambitious strategy to facilitate the return of Afghan refugees to their country.

Last Tuesday (December 27), Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan described the strategy as the “biggest mistake the UNHCR ever made”.

“The head of the UN refugee programme in Afghanistan on Tuesday described its strategy in the war-wracked country since 2002 as the "biggest mistake UNHCR ever made".

Almost a quarter of the population of Afghanistan is made up of refugees returning from Pakistan and Iran. Many find themselves homeless, or living in slums under tarpaulin.

But Peter Nicolaus, UNHCR representative in Afghanistan, said the international community had failed to help returnees find a means of earning a living and therefore reintegrating into society.”

…

"This is what the donor community constantly forgets. This has been overlooked and it's still overlooked. Nobody has taken this seriously. It's a tragedy.

"We are now -- for the first time -- bringing this up in the spring conference."

An international conference with Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the refugee agency is to be held in April to present the new long term strategy.

In November, The State Department Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan reported that U.S. economic and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan has peaked in 2010 at $4.1 billion and would be reduced to $2.5 billion this year.

Bringing Refugees Home, the challenge ahead spells out some of the recent history.

See this link for other resources - and poems - on Afghan refugees.

Afghan Taliban Publicly Embrace Talks

By Abubakar Siddique for Radio Free Europe.

- reproduced in full below -

After a decade of insurgency, the Afghan Taliban says it has reached preliminary agreement to set up a "political office" in Qatar and is willing to enter talks.

The group did not say when the office would open.

"We are now ready to open a political office outside the country [Afghanistan] along with our strong presence inside the country for negotiations with the international community," a Pashto-language statement issued to journalists said. "In this regard we have reached an agreement with Qatar and other relevant sides."

The Taliban office is seen by Western and Afghan officials as key to moving forward with efforts to reach a negotiated end to a decade of war in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, Afghan analyst Wahid Mozhdah called the move a good omen. "I think this is a good step because one of the major problems so far was that the Taliban did not have an address where they can be contacted and from where they can issue their statements and let their positions be known," he said. "It will pave the way for beginning the peace talks."

Mozhdah, a former Taliban diplomat, said many Taliban officials -- including former deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai and Tayyab Agha, a key political adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar -- are already in Qatar to oversee the opening of the office.

The Taliban statement, also issued on their purported website the "Voice of Jihad," said that the group is demanding the release of its prisoners from the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a form of prisoner exchange.

Kabul last month recalled its ambassador to Qatar for consultations over reports that the Taliban was planning to open an office in the Persian Gulf state.

But last week, President Hamid Karzai said his government would accept the Qatar location if the United States insisted on it -- adding that Saudi Arabia or Turkey would be preferable venues.

Since then, the head of the foreign relations department of the Afghan High Peace Council, Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar, has said negotiations with the Taliban could now move in the right direction.

"There are no differences of opinion over establishing a [Taliban] office in Qatar so that they have a known address," he told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on January 3. "[And this will help] in moving the negotiations forward with them."

The peace council is tasked with seeking a negotiated solution to the country's three-decade-old conflict.

But its efforts were hampered by the September assassination of its head and former Afghan President Burhannudin Rabbani. He was killed by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace envoy.

Arsala Rahmani, a top negotiator on the peace council, also welcomed the Taliban move.

"It is a gesture of good faith," he said. "The Taliban are blacklisted by the U.S. so it is very important for them to engage in talks with the U.S. "

The Taliban first emerged in 1994 in southern Afghanistan and controlled most of Afghanistan before the demise of their regime in late 2001. The group and its allies have been fighting President Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government and NATO-led troops during the past decade.

The hard-line Islamist movement vowed that it would not drop its goal of establishing a theocratic government.

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan [the Taliban] has always said that the occupation must end," the Taliban statement said. "And Afghans should be allowed to form an Islamic government that would not harm anybody."

What I Will | Suheir Hammad

A poem of resistance.

Suheir Hammad was born in Amman, Jordan to Palestinian refugee parents on October 25, 1973. Her family immigrated to Brooklyn NY when she was five years old. She is the author of three poetry collections and has written and performed with the Def Poetry Jam on Broadway hosted by Russell Simmons. Check out this tribute to her father. She also starred in the 2008 Cannes official selection film Salt of This Sea.

This recording is from a 9 December show in Philadelphia hosted by Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture. The center is dedicated to presenting and teaching the Arabic language, arts, and culture.






What I Will
by Suheir Hammad

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.

Here is the Def Poetry version from 2007.

Justice Seekers | A Profile by Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly writing from Kabul-

"Arab Spring, European Summer, American Autumn, and now the challenge of winter. Here in Kabul, Afghanistan, the travelers of our small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation share an apartment with several of the creative and determined “Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers” who’ve risked so much for peace here and befriended us so warmly over the past two years.

…

Yesterday, I met with three young people who’ve sustained an inspiring example of community formation. Weeda Ahamd directs the Social Association for Afghan Justice Seekers, with help from Basir and Riha, her co-workers.

…

During their University years, Weeda and her colleagues had become impassioned on behalf of achieving social justice for those brutalized and bereaved by the violent forces at work within Afghanistan. “We realized that many young people who were thinkers had sacrificed their lives” said Weeda. “They refused to say anything but the truth, and there are so many of them to remember. Whereas the war criminals in power will not remember any of these people, we will hold up the pictures in walks. Some of them are people whom family members have not seen for a long time. These are the heroes whom people of Afghanistan should remember.”

Since 2007, Weeda and her colleagues have worked to gather information about people killed, imprisoned or disappeared by armed forces. They go to villages and talk to families who have lost loved ones to Taliban fighters, US/NATO forces, warlords and druglords. They carefully preserve the data. Once it became public that they intended to issue their report, they received threats from several warlords. The report should appear in the near future.

Not only do Weeda and her co-workers assemble stories, documents and pictures from the families of victims of war, they also help build supportive communities amongst the families whose trust they have gained through their repeated visits. Then they invite the families to form larger networks and come together for public protests and demonstrations, demanding an end to the wars. Grassroots democracy is even harder work at gunpoint.

“It’s always a present reality that we could die tomorrow or be killed,” said Basir, “but we would rather do that than have people remember us in the future as people who didn’t live in a principled way. We hold on to truth and justice principles. We’d rather live this way than live under the control of those who commit the crimes.”

“Crimes are not only crimes of the past,” Weeda explains. “War criminals are continuing to commit the crimes, and the US and NATO give military, political and financial support to the war criminals. Their militaries commit crimes as well.

“If a government were formed by the people of Afghanistan,” says Weeda, “we wouldn’t find Afghans easily accepting permanent military bases. Nor would they accept warlords in positions of power.”

“America is in Afghanistan to gain strategic control against China, Iran and regional countries,” she continues. “On top of power and strategic control, we know that America is here to tap on resources that may be present in Afghanistan, or Afghanistan may be a strategic route for the transport and sale of raw materials.” Estimates say these materials may have a net worth of one trillion per year.

She wishes that activists beyond Afghanistan, whose governments are occupying and fighting in her country, would pressure their own governments to stop interfering in the affairs of other countries.

“Any human with a conscience needs to consider himself or herself as a member of the larger human family,” says her colleague, Basir. “I feel I am a member of every family that has become a victim of war. Hundreds of mothers have buried their children with the beautiful white burial cloth. Hundreds walk the streets without a father.”

Weeda is aware that a solution is not easy. She says it may take a long time and insists it must come from the people themselves. Uprisings in the Middle East have encouraged her. “We need to get out into the streets,” she says, recalling images from Cairo. “There, people filled the streets as far as you could see.” Smiling softly, she mentioned the “Occupy” movement. “Maybe they will highlight the crimes that their governments are committing here,” she said, “and speak out against them — call on them to end complicity with war criminals.”

It’s hard work in the winter, and it seems like winter everywhere, but we create small patches of warmth to get us through the winter. All around us, people are finding hope in new connections and in their own startling example of the determination to create hope for others; fear is being traded in for ardent compassionate service; visions are being exchanged, seeds planted beneath the snow, crossing borders and creating new, unprecedented circumstances.

The warmth we keep alive now, the fires we stoke in a dark season, are small, but they’re everywhere. There is simply no predicting what we may be building with the work we do now to keep ours lit, guarding precious human warmth as we move towards another astonishing Spring."

Additional Resource:
Social Association of Afghan Justice Seekers

Scraps of men do not exist | Alberto Cairo

Alberto Cairo heads the orthopaedic program for the International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent Society in Afghanistan. He has lived there for 21 years.

Over the years, he and his teams have enabled more than 100,000 Afghan landmine victims to go on with their life, to become agents for change.

In a country where the disabled are generally given pity but no rights, Cairo found a way -- through micro-loans, local employment solutions and home schooling -- to give tens of thousands of disabled Afghans a job and a sense of dignity and pride.

Listen and you will be rewarded.

Civil Society | Transitional Justice | Removing HR Monitors

Last week three of the nine members of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) were removed from their posts. The commission is one of the most successful, outspoken and respected institutions of post-Taleban Afghanistan.


This is how it is described by Patricia Grossman yesterday in an NYT Op-Ed.

“Watershed moments in Afghanistan happen by stealth. Last weekend — the anniversary of the Soviet invasion 32 years ago — President Hamid Karzai rid himself of his most outspoken critic, a prominent official with one of the few government institutions in Afghanistan that actually performs well — the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The move, announced Thursday, seems intended not only to silence a critic but bury the truth about the crimes of the past.”

Kabul's Stealth Attack on Human Rights



Thomas Ruttig details the impact this will have on the work of the organization.

“Nader Nadery and Fahim Hakim have been part of the AIHRC since its establishment, and driving forces for human rights and democratic development in Afghanistan. Some of our members know Nader from pre-AIHRC times already when he and friends were operating a small human rights organisation from a ramshackle office in a not very inviting part of Peshawar while the Taleban were still in power. From there, they regularly travelled into Afghanistan, contributing to our knowledge about the situation in the country. Nader also came to the 2001 Bonn conference as part of a fifth delegation, composed from pro-democracy activists in the Afghan underground and in exile which was excluded from the conference table at the last hour in order ‘to reduce the number of actors’ (Lakhdar Brahimi).

As commissioner for the AIHRC, Nader has had a particular focus on transitional justice, as well as on war crimes (civilian casualties) committed as part of the current conflict. He managed the national consultations that resulted in the A Call for Justice report documenting opinions about how to deal with the legacies of conflict and was the commissioner most keenly involved in developing the government Action Plan for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation. For the past three years, he has managed the commission’s documentation of war crimes covering the period 1978 to 2001, the commission’s contribution to the implementation of the government action plan.”

Another Blow to Justice: Three Commissioners Fired from the AIHRC



Some background from last year by Sari Kouvo.

“In 2003, the UNHCHR initiated a much more modest mapping exercise in Afghanistan. Based on open source material, most of it the UN’s own, a team of three consultants compiled a 300 page report on human rights violations and war crimes in Afghanistan in the civil war years between 1978 and 2001. The report contains detailed accounts of indiscriminate bombings, massacres, illegal detention, torture, rape and looting from the communist period to the fall of the Taliban regime. In January 2005, then UNHCHR Louise Arbour travelled to Kabul to release the mapping report simultaneously with the release of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission’s national consultation about Afghans’ opinions about how to deal with legacies of human rights violations and war crimes, entitled “A Call for Justice”. At the eleventh hour a decision was taken not to release the UN mapping report. The UNHCHR participated in the launch of the AIHRC’s “A Call for Justice” report, and handed a copy of her report to the Commission as a basis for future documentation work. Commissioner Arbour then met with President Karzai and presented him with a copy of the report. The report has to date not been officially released, but copies of it have done the rounds of human rights organizations, embassies, web sites etc.”

Facts for Reconciliation: Human Rights Documentation Needed

Additional Resources:

UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Violations and War Crimes (1979 – 2001)

Violence Increases 21% | We Are Not Leaving

Mural Image: The Forgotten,
Elise Bonail, Narbonne, France

From the traveling mural exhibit Windows and Mirrors.

Afghanistan has become more insecure in 2011 from a year ago, with a sharp rise in security incidents and higher numbers of civilian casualties, displaced people and complex suicide attacks. These are the findings of the U.N. quarterly report to the Security Council released yesterday.

The total number of security incidents recorded for the first eleven months of the year represented a 21 percent rise from the same period of 2010. There is no doubt that 2011 will be the most dangerous year for Afghans since the invasion of 2001.

It has been an upward trend since 2005.

The September quarterly report documented an increase of 39%

The most recent report was released one day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Fareed Zakaria that "we are negotiating with the United States towards an enduring partnership." A partnership that many suspect will involve involve US troops far beyond 2014.

Also on Sunday, the top commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan warned Taliban and other forces in the region that there was no date certain for the withdrawal of US forces. Saying "[I]f you been waiting for us to go, we're not leaving."

Click here for additional posts on civilian casualties.