Afghan Voices Reflect on 9/11 | Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil

Writing for Al Jazeera, Mujib Mashal profiles a number of Afghan political and civil society leaders. The responses are frank, insightful, and often self-critical. You see the divisions that exist and the inspiring work being done to create a better future.

Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, former Taliban Foreign Minister

"The attacks that happened in New York were of deep concern to us. At the time, when I heard the news, I was at the ministry of foreign affairs in Kabul. Then I spoke to our leader, Mullah Saheb Omer.

Afghanistan was one of the first few governments that condemned the attacks. Both for the US and Afghanistan-and the Afghan people-the attacks were not a good thing. Because subsequent to those attacks, many more people have died here in Afghanistan.
That attack was a disaster on civilians, and on the pretext of that attack, disasters have been afflicted on the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is no doubt that the stance of the Emirate [Taliban government] and the views of some of the Arab activists here differed. We condemned the attacks because the people targeted were defenceless civilians, women, children, Muslim and non-muslim. But al-Qaeda praised it. We had our own reasons and they theirs. Al Qaeda, at the time, did not claim direct responsibility, but rather praised the attack. Those are two different things.

Al Qaeda were people from the time of Jihad against the Soviets, and Ustad Rabbani [who came to power after Soviet withdrawal] brought them back into the country from Sudan. The Taliban simply inherited them.

After the attacks, the Emirate gathered over 1500 religious scholars from all over Afghanistan at the continental hotel to discuss the Bin Laden issue. They concluded that the Islamic Emirate should ask him that he voluntarily leave Afghanistan and go somewhere else. This proposal, too, could not bring about any change in the attitude of the Americans. They kept demanding him dead or alive.

They began an unequal war on the Islamic Emirate. Our government collapsed, and in the presence of some Afghans—not all—they decided on a new government in Bonn.

This war has continued in such a way that they have refused to accept the Taliban as a government or a movement. The only option left was to die or to be arrested. Nobody wants to be imprisoned by someone, or killed. So the Taliban defended, and as a result they have gotten stronger.

Yes, it would have been difficult for the Taliban to join the new government and become part of the new process. But the historical mistake made by the Americans and those who considered themselves representatives of the Afghans was that they refused to extend an invitation to the Taliban at Bonn or to leave them a reserved seat.

And in the subsequent years, during the interim and transitional governments, the same mistake was made. Even today, as they prepare for a second Bonn conference ten years on, they say Taliban should not be coming to it.

When they speak of a peace process today they are giving wrong advice. In the past, they said finish the Taliban as a movement. Now the advice is that you should weaken the Taliban first, and then speak to them from a position of strength. The reality is that as they push with more force, the Taliban reaction is also a show of more force.

I don't agree with those who say life has gotten better in the past ten years. If there is no security in the country and the war continues, you cant enjoy the benefits of life. Security is the mother of all things.

Yes, progress is true in certain areas—but that is because embargos have been broken. In the past, there was no foreign aid, but there was always foreign criticism. Now there is a lot of international aid, but they have made a parallel government to the Afghan one through which they distribute this aid.

We have also seen a difference in the quantity of education as well as in the growth of one-sided media. They call it free media, but I can't call it that because the other side neither has the right to picture nor voice. The freedom of the press is one-sided, but it is a relative achievement. Highways have been built, which are crucial for military purposes, but Afghan people benefit as well.

But in return for all this, we have many negatives. During the Emirate, there was security, and there was no corruption then because we had punishments for it."

* Today (9 September) is also significant. Marking ten years since the assassination of Mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud by al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists. He fought Soviet troops and their allies in the 1980s and led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the 1990s.

Afghan Voices Reflect on 9/11 | Dr Mahyuddin Mehdi

Writing for Al Jazeera, Mujib Mashal profiles a number of Afghan political and civil society leaders. The responses are frank, insightful, and often self-critical. You see the divisions that exist and the inspiring work being done to create a better future.

Dr Mahyuddin Mehdi, MP from Baghlan, former anti-Taliban resistance leader

"I was in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, as the spokesman for the United Front [anti-Taliban resistance] when the attacks happened. It was 2am that the defence attaché at our embassy called me and asked me to turn on the TV, which was showing the pictures live.

We had kept the news of Ahmad Shah Massoud's death away from the press for two days because we thought everything was over with his death. The resistance would be crushed right away.

We knew that Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Pakistanis on the otherside of the Kokcha river would cross and end it all for us if they learned of Massoud's death. So September 11 was a relief for us—such a relief that I did not sleep from happiness all night. It was as if a knife placed on my throat had been lifted.

I knew right away that the world would break its silence on Afghanistan and blame al-Qaeda on the attacks because of previous experience. When the attacks on Tanzinia and Kenya happened, I was in hospital in Germany. I watched pictures of Osama all over the TV screen from my hospital bed and there was tremendous international condemnation.

I think the initial contact made with the United Front was 42 days after the attacks of 9/11, through the US embassy in Uzbekistan. They informed us that they wanted to see [Qasim] Fahim [who replaced Massoud as the resistance leader] urgently. This was the beginning of the contacts, before the US military operations began.

Subsequently, I think the wrong system was put in place here. I have always had issue with this centralised system because it gives the authority to one person, which then translates to the authority of one tribe. Karzai, for example, did not emerge based on his merits, but rather through the recommendation of one tribe. Centralised power is problematic. Authority needs to be distributed, shared. There needs to be a prime minister that is accountable to the parliament.

There is no question progress has been made in the past ten years. Before then, if a king died, his son would take power. Now, we have a constitution that says the country's leader needs to be elected by the people. This is the result of long years of struggle.

But if the international forces leave today, I think all this will falter within a week. Nothing has been institutionalised. People lack trust in these structures, because governments actions have made them question everything from elections to the parliament. Our security forces are not strong enough to cope with the enemy at a time when the threat remains the same threat of ten years ago. The situation is not much different from when the Soviets were about to withdraw. A similar vacuum would be left."

* Today (9 September) is also significant. Marking ten years since the assassination of Mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud by al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists. He fought Soviet troops and their allies in the 1980s and led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the 1990s.

Afghan Voices Reflect on 9/11 | Sahera Sharif

Writing for Al Jazeera, Mujib Mashal profiles a number of Afghan political and civil society leaders. The responses are frank, insightful, and often self-critical. You see the divisions that exist and the inspiring work being done to create a better future.

Sahera Sharif, MP from eastern Khost province

"At the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was living as a refugee in Pakistan, where I held different jobs: as a teacher, as an activist, then as an editor for one of the local papers in Peshawar.

The night before 9/11, I dreamt that a big change was on the way. In my dream, I saw Afghanistan as a large building with UN and other flags around it. I can't recall the exact details now. But when we heard about the attacks in New York and later that there would be war launched in Afghanistan, I told my dream to my family. No one would believe me.

We did not consider the US intervention as illegitimate. For years, war and oppression had worn people out. We saw it as a window of hope that would bring fresh political air into the country.

A year after the US intervention, my husband went to Khost province to get a job as a university professor and I went a long with him. I was offered the job as the provincial head of woman affairs. I started at the post three days after I had given birth to my child. Unlike other women, I did not wear the burqa. People thought I was either crazy, or a foreigner.

No such office [Directorate for Women's Affairs] existed there before, so the first space that we were given was almost like a barn where animals had been kept. We started from scratch, by repainting the place and building a vibrant office out of nothing.

The struggle was that the women did not want to take the risk of working with me. I had to find ways of encouraging them. One such way was to hire their husbands as drivers or cooks and such, and then convince them to bring their wives to work with them.

But things got better, and we expanded our activities outside the provincial capital.

At the end of the first Karzai term, I remember visiting a mosque in one of the villages. Over 250 women gathered there. In those days, we did not even carry bodyguards and weapons during those visits.

But last year, when I returned to campaign for re-election, I had to go under cover. I switched houses every night, and I could not manage to hold even one public rally.

During the past decade, we have definitely made progress in certain areas—the fact that we have a constitution, a system of governance, freedom of the press, the number of children going to school etc. But security has deteriorated in many areas and remains a big concern.

We have not made the best use of the opportunity provided to us. People are discontent with the central government— people have been distanced. And the foreigners, too, have made big mistakes. They barged into people's homes in the middle of the night, and dragged them out without giving them an opportunity to put their shirt on. I remember visiting my constituents held by intelligence agencies who only had their under shirt on. One of them had only one sandal on and wasn't even given the chance to find the second. Such things leave a mark on the Afghan people.

Undoubtedly, the foreigners have made sacrifices here— both in terms of lives, but also financially. But they have also made big mistakes and have been weak in their coordination."

* Today (9 September) is also significant. Marking ten years since the assassination of Mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud by al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists. He fought Soviet troops and their allies in the 1980s and led the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the 1990s.

Afghan Video Shorts | Abdul Majeed Zharand

Water Ways

Neighboring villages – one with access to water and one without – offer very different prospects to their residents. The farmers without water are stuck; unable to feed their families, they turn to work as day laborers. However, working a day job keeps them from solving their water problems. Down the road, villagers have easier access to water and have used assistance from the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Program to improve their lives. Unfortunately, tensions could arise between these villages over access to water. 11 min.

Abdul Majeed Zharand, lives in Ghazni and works in Wardack province. He is a reporter for the Afghan War Reporters Agency (AWRA) and Afghan Daily Times. A poet and novelist, Abdul has also volunteered as a local school teacher for the last 7 years.

Afghan Video Shorts | Mona Haidari

Bearing the Weight

Bearing the Weight - Full Version

Not long after marrying at twenty-one, Shafiqa lost her husband, her newly born daughter, and her leg in a rocket attack. The war in Afghanistan has left some 700,000 disabled. Many – especially disabled women and children – are hidden from view, trapped by their culture. Shafiqa overcame the “paralysis of her soul” and found a way to take care of herself, her two sons, and her community. 13 min.

Mona Haidari, is from Wardack and lives in Kabul. The focus of her works has shifted from painting, to photography, to documentary filmmaking. She is the assistant producer of Focus Reports, a program on social issues, for Negah TV. Mona also participated in cinéma vérité training with Atelier Varan.

Click here for a page with all the films.

The Rise of the New American Security State

On Friday the Washington Post excerpted a chapter from the book Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.

The book grew out of a two year investigative study into government secrecy following 9/11 by reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin.

"The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 9/11, this secretive group of men (and a few women) has grown tenfold while sustaining a level of obscurity that not even the CIA has managed. “We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a strapping Navy SEAL, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in describing his unit."

Details on the Joint Special Operations Command. The command became flagship of the US counterterrorism arsenal under General Stanley McChrystal who took over in the fall of 2003. Some quotes below.

"The president has given JSOC the rare authority to select individuals for its kill list — and then to kill, rather than capture, them. Critics charge that this individual man-hunting mission amounts to assassination, a practice prohibited by U.S. law. JSOC’s list is not usually coordinated with the CIA, which maintains a similar but shorter roster of names."

"Created in 1980 but reinvented in recent years, JSOC has grown from 1,800 troops prior to 9/11 to as many as 25,000, a number that fluctuates according to its mission. It has its own intelligence division, its own drones and reconnaissance planes, even its own dedicated satellites. It also has its own cyberwarriors, who, on Sept. 11, 2008, shut down every jihadist Web site they knew."

"JSOC’s lethality was evident in its body counts: In 2008, in Afghanistan alone, JSOC commandos struck 550 targets and killed roughly a thousand people, officials said. In 2009, they executed 464 operations and killed 400 to 500 enemy forces. As Iraq descended into chaos in the summer of 2005, JSOC conducted 300 raids a month. More than 50 percent of JSOC Army Delta Force commandos now have Purple Hearts."

How The CIA Became A Killing Machine

Spencer Ackerman asks some big questions about the role of the post-9/11 CIA. Outlining the aggressive steps that have been taken in the last decade.

On April 14, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet looked so impotent he might have starred in a Viagra commercial. Tenet had come before the 9/11 Commission for what was sure to be a public flogging. In response, he alternately apologized for the agency’s failure to stop 9/11 and explained it away. Finally, the exhausted panelists posed him a bottom-line question: how long would it take Tenet to get the CIA in a position to counterattack al-Qaida?

“It’s going to take another five years,” Tenet confessed, ”to build the clandestine service the way the human intelligence capability of this country needs to be run.”

Seven years later, no one views the CIA as anything resembling impotent. The drone strikes it operates are the most important counterterrorism tool the Obama administration uses, battering a relatively small section of Pakistan so intensely that in 2010 they struck an average of once every three days. Osama bin Laden is dead as the result of a military operation the CIA commanded, highlighting the unprecedented coordination between CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). In the words of the head of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, its central nervous system for counterterrorism: “We are killing these sons of bitches faster than they can grow them now.”

Full article.