Salon.com > Matthias Gebauer

Detainee abuse continues at Bagram

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:22:00 +0000

The day that Raymond Azar was taken by force to Bagram was a quiet day in Kabul. There were no attacks and the sun was shining.

Azar, who is originally from Lebanon, is the manager of a construction company. He was on his way to Camp Eggers, the American military base near the presidential palace, when 10 armed FBI agents suddenly surrounded him.

The men, all wearing bulletproof vests, put him in handcuffs, tied him up and pushed him into an SUV. Two hours later, they unloaded Azar at the Bagram military prison 31 miles northeast of Kabul.

As Azar later testified, he was forced to sit for seven hours, his hands and feet tied to a chair. He spent the night in a cold metal container, and he received no food for 30 hours. He claimed that U.S. military officers showed him photos of his wife and four children, telling him that unless he cooperated he would never see his family again. He also said that he was photographed while naked and then given a jumpsuit to wear.

A need for this sort of place

Taliban attacks scare off voters

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:34:00 +0000

One would have to be an Afghan to categorize Thursday's elections in Afghanistan as a totally normal day. But despite reports of dozens of attacks, massive firing of rockets in different regions and the fact that polling stations couldn't even be opened in some parts of the country, Afghanistan's Electoral Commission did exactly that. "We did not face any major incidents," said commission chief Azizullah Ludin.

It's difficult to assess just how widespread the problems have been. The security situation makes access to many parts of Afghanistan difficult. But one thing is clear from reports from news agencies, television networks, descriptions given by Afghans on the Internet and telephone calls with dozens of reporters on the ground at different places around the country: The election has been massively disrupted by Taliban attracks. In some parts of the country, especially in northern and southern Afghanistan, it has been hindered entirely.

After the polls closed on Thursday afternoon, the Afghan government made its first assessment of the situation -- and it wasn't exactly flattering. President Hamid Karzai's authorities reported 73 direct attacks against polling stations in 15 provinces.

“If we kill schoolgirls, you shouldn’t be surprised”

Fri, 29 May 2009 10:22:00 +0000

When the deputy director of Aqtash High School talks of the government, he isn't referring to Hamid Karzai's central government in Kabul. Nor does he refer to the provincial administration in Kunduz. "The Taliban are our government," Bashir says. "They have taken over our region, their commanders give the orders here."

Bashir is standing in a dusty classroom on the ground floor of his modern school, roughly half an hour from Kunduz by car. As recently as just one month ago, he says, some 400 girls were still coming to the school in three daily shifts to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Figures and formula are still scrawled across the blackboard.

But now, the girls' classrooms have been left to deteriorate. The desks and chairs are still laid out in neat rows, but a film of dust has collected, and Bashir stands helplessly in the middle of the room. "Parents in Aqtash are afraid to send their girls to school anymore, after the death threats," he explains. The school director speaks quietly and carefully. He too is afraid, and several of his teachers double as informants for the Taliban. The bearded fighters, he says, would certainly not like it if they knew a reporter was at the school in Aqtash. "You should leave quickly if you want to get out of Aqtash alive," he whispers.

"Apprehended and killed"

Bashir's warning is hardly an exaggeration. Not 30 minutes after our arrival in Aqtash, located 15 kilometers northeast of Kunduz just off the main north-south arterial, a group of a dozen Taliban fighters, armed with AK-47s, gathers in front of the blue arch at the entrance to the school. "What do you want here?" one of the fighters calls. "This is our region, the Islamic Emirate of North Afghanistan."

The trip to the Aqtash school is a trip into the heart of the empire of the Taliban, which controls large areas around Kunduz. Minutes pass before the fighters clear out of the way, allowing us to leave.

The trip out of Aqtash is hardly any less dangerous and provides a look at the situation not 15 kilometers from the German military camp in Kunduz. There are Taliban checkpoints all over the roads, and they are well armed. The Taliban commander in the region is a man named Khalid Salim. He is young and has a reputation for brutality. Salim is on the most wanted list for the region surrounding Kunduz. "Those who work for the government or for the Western soldiers," says one of his men at a checkpoint, "are immediately apprehended and killed."

The fate of the school in Aqtash, which received a new roof just one year ago, paid for out of German development funds, is hardly unique. At least 10 girls' sections of schools located near Kunduz have been closed down in the last three weeks after receiving threats from the Taliban. Parents simply stopped sending their children to school because of the danger. And the closures haven't just been in the region of Char Dara southwest of Kunduz, a well-known Taliban hot spot. Schools in three other districts have likewise ceased operation.

No German soldiers

It didn't take long for news of the school closures to reach the highest echelons of government in both Kabul and Berlin. Stories about schools buckling to the Taliban are exactly what they hoped to avoid. On the one hand, it shows that the Taliban is increasingly gaining the upper hand right outside the front gates of the German military camp in Kunduz. Neither the German army, the Bundeswehr, nor the local police force are effective against the Islamist extremists. At the most, they can temporarily dislodge the Taliban, but they then move on to terrorize other areas where there are no German soldiers.

Most of all, though, the closures threaten one of the few successes that the Germans have had in Afghanistan. It is an achievement that has been repeatedly trumpeted by those in favor of continued engagement; hardly a German politician has refrained from mentioning how encouraging it is to visit a girls' school in Afghanistan. Now, though, the schools -- just like in the south where recent acid attacks against schoolgirls have hit the headlines -- have become a potent propaganda tool for the Taliban. Western troops, so goes the message, can't do anything to stop the Islamist fighters.

The tactics used by the Taliban are shockingly simple. Dozens of so-called night letters, which are affixed to the doors of schools in the dead of night, are piled on Muqim Halimi's huge desk. Halimi is the commissioner of education for the Kunduz province and a crowd of men are waiting outside his office, most of them hoping to be able to bribe their way into good grades for their children. But when Halimi hears that a German reporter wants to talk about the closure of the girls' schools, he clears the room so he can talk undisturbed.

After confirming the closures, he reads aloud from the Taliban night letters, as simply formulated as they are explicit. "As of today," he reads from a message from Aqtash, "girls are no longer allowed to attend school." The letter is marked with a logo of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan -- in English, yet another indication of just how well organized the Taliban are in the German area of operation.

"If we now kill schoolgirls ..."

Another threat letter depicts a schoolgirl at the gallows. "We have warned you," reads the message. "If we now kill schoolgirls, you shouldn't be surprised."

Halimi is open in his description of the precarious situation the schools find themselves in. "There is no police there and even the army is afraid to go there," he says. "What should I do, as a civilian, against the Taliban?"

Alarmed about the reports, Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar has rebuked the Kunduz police chief over the phone. The school closures are a "disgrace for Afghanistan," he says, demanding that something be done. But police chief Abdul Racak also doesn't know what to do. Last week he tried to send a police patrol to Aqtash, but they came under fire almost as soon as they turned off the main road. Two police officers were killed in the attack.

The reaction from the German camp in Kunduz is also a mixture of dismay and helplessness. The security situation is so poor at the moment that neither the military nor their civilian assistants can visit Aqtash themselves. Realistically, though, there isn't much they can do to combat the threats of the Taliban. There are some 650 schools in the region surrounding Kunduz and the German theater of operation is almost the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. With a German contingent of just 667 soldiers, security simply cannot be guaranteed.

Reports about the closures of the girls' schools aren't the only indications that the Kunduz region is at risk. The German military has noted that the Taliban threats began at the exact same time as attacks against German soldiers began to increase in both number and sophistication. Since the end of April, 19 patrols have come under attack, with one soldier losing his life in an April 29 attack. So far in May there have been four well-organized assaults with soldiers wary that the next one could come at any time. Nobody believes that the correlation between the school threats and the attacks is a coincidence.

The reaction to the threats has become almost routine in recent months. The Afghans, so goes the formula, have to use their army to establish security in threatened areas like Aqtash. The Germans have held talks with their Afghan partners in the hopes that they will launch an offensive in Aqtash. German troops will support the operation, but Afghan troops should be the ones at the front.

But it would surprise no one were further girls' schools to shut their doors by the time such an operation is launched.

Still, the news isn't all bad. At the girls' school in Qosh Tappeh, likewise near Kunduz, the school director, a veteran of the mujahedeen, took things into his own hands. When the Taliban showed up to his school for the second time to present their threats, he found a uniquely Afghan solution to the problem. He told his visitors that, when it comes to fighting to the death, he is much more experienced than they. Should they like to find out for sure, he offered, he would be happy to accommodate them.

His threat seemed to have worked. The girls in Qosh Tappeh continue to attend school.

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement with Salon. For more from Europe's most-read newsmagazine, visit Spiegel Online or subscribe to the daily newsletter.

Karzai won’t leave

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:50:00 +0000

The news that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was considering resignation caused considerable agitation in Western capitals late last week. It was a sudden shift. The Afghan president, once installed by the United States and lauded as a torchbearer, is now identified as the scapegoat for the West's lack of success in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, no one in the West has any idea how things could proceed without him.

The reports of his departure were more than just another product of the Kabul rumor mill. In their classified reports, intelligence agencies noted that something was cooking in Kabul, and yet they were unable to predict exactly what was about to happen there.

The uncertainty was finally laid to rest on Saturday afternoon, when Karzai issued a decree announcing his intention to hold the presidential elections in the spring, by April 21 at the latest. Always the statesman, the president, who lacks even the power necessary to protect Kabul from the Taliban, explained that he is bound to respect the Afghan constitution. Under Article 61, the election must take place at least one month prior to the end of a sitting president's term. Karzai's term ends on May 21.

Does NATO want out of Afghanistan?

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:05:00 +0000

So far, little has remained behind closed doors at the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania. Almost every cough from every negotiating session has found its way into the press. But there is one document that has remained largely in the shadows. NATO diplomats have been working on a far-reaching strategy paper for the ongoing mission in Afghanistan.

The secrecy, some say, is necessary, as the dossier contains details that could compromise the safety of NATO troops in Afghanistan. Others have been a bit more direct, saying that the paper is simply too controversial to be made public.

According to diplomats, there are indeed some interesting details to be found. The paper illustrates a new train of thought developing within NATO: For the first time, a step-by-step outline has been sketched -- with substantial help from Germany -- for when the 47,000 NATO troops currently in Afghanistan might be pulled out. According to diplomats, concrete benchmarks are laid out -- though any withdrawal, they make clear, would not be immediate.

Living in the shadow of climate change

Thu, 03 May 2007 10:00:00 +0000

Shahidul Mullah really doesn't have any time. Along with his friends from the island Char Bangla, he's perched on the bamboo frame of a roof that will eventually cover a new barn he is building for his cows and chickens. But time is a luxury Shahidul doesn't have. As he knows all too well, monsoon season is on its way -- and when it arrives, virtually the entire island will be flooded. The barn has to be ready by then, especially the thatched roof.

During the flood season, Shahidul and his family will hold out for weeks on the meter-high clay plateau on which his hut and new barn stand. Once the waters recede, they will then plant chili peppers and turnips in the fertile mud left behind. It's been like this as long as Shahidul Mullah has lived here. So he has to hurry.

Freed CIA prisoner renders his version of the truth

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:44:00 +0000

Osama Hussein Nasr comes downstairs to show the way to his house in Alexandria, which is difficult to find amid the chaos of narrow alleys with open sewers. Suddenly he's standing there, in front of a small cafe -- a diminutive man with a long, scruffy beard and a round white cap on his head. After a brief handshake, the man better known as Abu Omar urges us to follow him back upstairs. It's better to talk there, he says: "They're everywhere down here on the street, the security people."

Abu Omar isn't allowed to receive visits from Western journalists. He says his "friends" -- the Egyptian authorities -- have "strongly advised" him to observe this prohibition. Abu Omar is nervous. The 46-year-old was released from jail on Feb. 11 and has been free, at least officially, ever since. The authorities have dropped all charges against him. Nevertheless, he is violating his orders by meeting with us. "I have two options," he says. "Either I can keep quiet, do what I'm told and live a quiet life -- or I can tell my story to the world and risk running into a lot of problems."

Is Israel facing a quagmire?

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:00:00 +0000

On the map the war looks so straightforward. An Israeli commander has marked Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon red for the purposes of our briefing -- lately practically all of the towns north of the Israeli border are colored red. Marked with blue crosses are the strategically important positions, mostly crossroads, now controlled by Israel. "Now we have to just go in and deal with the Hezbollah boys," the commander, who asked not to be identified, said. "There isn't much more to say."

Only a few hundred meters from Bokim Battalion's base -- a unit dispatched to Avivim in northern Israel for the battle against Hezbollah -- lies Lebanon. For the past few days the Israeli army has been launching a series of compact commando missions, at the most comprising a few tanks and a couple of dozen men, across the border. The idea is to weaken Hezbollah, putting a stop to the nearly 100 small missiles fired at Israel every day and leading ultimately to victory in the war against the Islamist militia.

Hunkered down in Israel, again

Fri, 21 Jul 2006 11:30:00 +0000

Never mind the Katyusha rockets overhead, down here it's just plain hot. The humid air reeks with the smell of too many people, crammed into the 150-square-foot cellar right on the beachfront of the northern Israeli resort town of Nahariya. Mattresses are stacked up against the white walls during the day, and Hamwa Shoshan can't stand the bunker anymore. Though she's afraid of the Hezbollah attacks, she'd rather take her chances and sit with her friend Rachel at the entrance.

But there's not much to see in front of official bunker No. 516 either. Nahariya's normally packed beach promenade is empty these days as the conflict in the Middle East has turned the community of 56,000 into a ghost town. Only 9 kilometers from the Lebanese border, those residents who could leave Nahariya did so shortly after the first Katyushas hit here early in the morning a week ago.

The Pakistan powder keg

Sat, 23 Jul 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The investigation into the July 7 terrorist bombings in London quickly revealed connections to Pakistan. But what role if any did the country run by Gen. Pervez Musharraf play in the attacks? Pakistani journalist and scholar Ahmed Rashid tells us.

After the London bombings, police quickly revealed that most of the bombers were British citizens of Pakistani origin and that they might have traveled to Pakistan to receive instructions and training prior to the July 7 attacks. Was this a surprise to you?

People in Pakistan were very apprehensive after the bombing, but the connection with Pakistan did not come as a surprise. It was clear there was a great danger that the Pakistani community in London would carry out such an attack. It is well known that the Muslim community there is very radical -- at least some of them. People also knew many of them had connections in Pakistan.

There have been a number of arrests in Pakistan in recent days. Were the roots of the London attacks in Britain, or were they in Pakistan?

Temple of death

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 00:25:00 +0000

No one knows what to do with all the bodies. In death, they're all the same -- natives, foreign workers, Western tourists. They're lined up next to each other around the golden temple of Lom Kaen in the small community of Khao Lak. No one knows how many bodies there are. Several hundred, certainly. Out of necessity and the need to keep them from getting too much exposure to sun, relief workers have wrapped the corpses in makeshift shrouds and tied them with cords. But not even the provisional packing can dampen the biting and pervasive smell of death. Every few minutes, a new pickup truck arrives with red blinking lights to deliver another load of bodies.

On Wednesday, the first fires were started. "There are just too many bodies," a policeman said. He jabbed at the fire with a branch, hoping to speed the impromptu cremation along. The official death count for the region is close to 2,000. In preparation for the corpses that arrive at frequent intervals, people have collected wood and as much gasoline as they can round up. The temple is surrounded with the stuff. Before each corpse is burned, a photo is taken in hopes that it can later be identified. But many of the bodies are so disfigured that it's nearly impossible to recognize anyone as he or she was in life.