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Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani addresses U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and his delegation at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan April 24, 2017.

The clock is ticking for President Ashraf Ghani to protect the rights of the Afghanistans many torture victims.

In March, the government finally enacted the Anti-Torture Law after years of political and bureaucratic battles. However, the law left out a system for restitution, rehabilitation, and compensation for victims of torture by state security forces. This Redress Annex, drafted by the Justice Ministry in cooperation with nongovernmental organizations in the Detention Working Group, was completed July. It is an essential element missing from the Anti-Torture Law, and President Ghani can rectify the error by adding it by decree.

This annex is sorely needed. Torture by Afghan security forces is routine and systematic. The United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan issued a report in April that is a damning indictment of the governments failure to take effective action against torture and other ill-treatment. The report found that the highest levels of torture of conflict-related detainees in police custody since it began monitoring detentions in 2010 was in 2015-16. Police in Kandahar province tortured or mistreated a staggering 91 percent of detainees by forcibly pumping water into their stomachs, crushing their testicles with clamps, suffocating them to the point of losing consciousness, and applying electric current to their genitals, among other practices.

In May, the UN Committee Against Torture, armed with the new UN report, questioned an Afghan government delegation about why very few police officers are ever disciplined for abuse, and why not a single senior officer in the Afghan police or National Directorate for Security intelligence agency has been prosecuted for torture or other mistreatment. The committee also asked the delegation about the governments failure to provide statistics on complaints of torture and torture investigations. The committee also wondered why the governments written response neglected to mention accountability at all given the delegations claim that ending impunity was a priority.

The pervasiveness of torture in Afghanistan makes its criminalization and the prosecution of alleged torturers an urgent priority. But the government also needs to enshrine in law the rights of torture victims to redress for their suffering. While waiting for prosecutors to act, a compensation system would create a new avenue for holding the government accountable. President Ghani should prevent any further delays by making sure that happens.

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Afghanistan's Torture Victims Deserve Redress - Human Rights Watch

Erik Prince Published 7:02 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2017

Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL officer and founder of Blackwater USA. He is chairman of the Frontier Services Group, a logistics company focused on Africa and South Asia.(Photo: Oxford Union, REX, Shutterstock, via AP)

The war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. Despite the loss of more than 2,400 American lives and costs of $1 trillion, the United States is losing. Even Defense Secretary James Mattis confirms that coalition forces are not winning.

President Trump inherited the quagmire and has the complex task of sorting it out and bringing our troops home.

The option to simply abandon Afghanistan is enticing but in the long run would be a foreign policy disaster. The Kabul government would collapse. Afghanistan would be a rallying cry for global jihadists.

The present conventional strategy has proved ineffective. Repeating the prior troop surge also has appeal. The surge reduced Taliban influence, but the Taliban returned as troops withdrew. Furthermore, it is simply too expensive to maintain a long-term, large-scale military presence. Luckily, there is a another option.

The president can restructure the war, similar to a bankruptcy reorganization. By aligning U.S. efforts under a presidential envoy, all strategic decisions regarding humanitarian aid, military support and intelligence become laser-focused on creating a stable, self-supporting Afghanistan. Stability would give our troops an exit ramp. The envoys focus would be to support Afghan security forces from within, providing professional military leadership, reliable air support and business administration assistance. Those resources would be procured in precisely the way U.S. forces acquire material and manpower support. They hire it.

OUR VIEW:President Trump, U.S. troops need Afghanistan War strategy

This has already proved effective in Afghanistan. U.S. special operations teams have created effective commando battalions by embedding and working with them. The same can be done on a larger scale, but the U.S. Army lacks enough special forces to do this and maintain mission readiness. Outside assistance is required.

This approach would cost less than 20% of the $48 billion being spent in Afghanistan this year. Trump was hired to remake our government. There is no greater need for a restructuring than in Afghanistan.

Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL officer and founder of Blackwater USA. He is chairman of the Frontier Services Group, a logistics company focused on Africa and South Asia.

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Erik Prince: 'Restructure' the Afghanistan War - USA TODAY

A U.S. Marine, left, watches Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers during training in Helmand province, Afghanistan on July 5, 2017. Omar Sobhani / Reuters

There are currently more than 300 Marines assigned to Task Force Southwest, and the total additional force is less than 100 marines, the officials said. The Marines will deploy from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force Crisis Response Central Command, already based in the region. The officials would not say where the marines would deploy from specifically, with one saying, "we are redirecting them from where they're at now to help with the mission."

The officials said this deployment is not

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In June President Trump delegated the authority to deploy troops to Afghanistan to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, but in this case Mattis did not need to sign off on the deployment, one of the officials said.

"The commander on the ground has the authority to move people in theater around," the official said.

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A spokesperson for Marine Corps Forces Central Command would not confirm the deployment, saying, "The repositioning and movement of forces in the CENTCOM [area of responsibility], to include presently deployed Marines, happen at the discretion of the CENTCOM Commander," adding "at this time there are no plans to deploy CONUS based Marines into Afghanistan," using the acronym for Continental United States.

The defense officials said there is also a request for more U.S. air support in Afghanistan, but none of them would provide detail on what is needed and why. The additional air assets have not yet been deployed.

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US Is Sending More Marines to Afghanistan - NBCNews.com

NEW DELHI: The Afghanistan government has requested India to launch a special satellite exclusively for its use, three months after India launched the South Asian Satellite. The Afghan Ministry of Telecommunications and Technology recently made such a request to the Indian government, officials in the Afghan government told ET.

Afghanistan minister Syed Ahmad Shah Sadat recently met Indian Ambassador Manpreet Vohra in Kabul to make the request. It is not yet clear if Kabul wants to use a dedicated satellite to track terrorist hideouts. The minister and the Indian envoy discussed opening of a terminal for Afghanistan in the South Asia Satellite, another special satellite and India-assisted small development projects.

A MoU would be signed soon to let Afghanistan benefit from South Asia Satellite. Two of the 12 transponders will be provided to Afghanistan and the satellite will be used in areas of telecommunications, television services, agriculture, mines and other sectors. A special satellite station in Kabul is also under construction.

In May this year, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had joined other South Asian leaders in welcoming the launch of a South Asian Satellite by India for South Asian nations, calling it a major step in regional cooperation.

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Kabul requests India to launch exclusive satellite for Afghanistan - Economic Times

A camerawomen films footage for a Zan TV show. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

After a city-wide billboard campaign featuring a group of young women standing with arms folded, the womens media network Zan TV launched in Kabul, Afghanistan, three months ago, with a panel discussion about the right to vote and a Facebook cover photo that read: We mirror you all. Zan, meaning women in Arabic, is the first TV station in Afghanistan to be made for and run entirely by women. Its a radical initiative for a country where the television industry is run solely by men and where just 16 years ago, journalism and even access to education for women were banned. We want women to have an active role in politics and society, says Nasrine Nawa, 26, Zans director of news programming. Were empowering them to lead independent lives outside the home.

Nawas mission is to train the next generation of female Afghan journalists. Fifty women aged 17 to 28 work for Zan; half are qualified, half are learning on the job. Many trained journalists are jobless because most TV stations wont employ women, so we do. We also want to train young women who might not have access to education because of where they live or their family, says Nawa. Zan also employs 10 men to train women in operating cameras and editing film. It posts jobs on its Facebook page, which had an average of 8,000 likes a day in May.

The TV station was founded by the media entrepreneur Hamid Samar, who saw a gap in the market when going through dozens of job applications from women at another TV station. The Afghan media landscape is already packed, with about 70 satellite TV stations, and competition for ratings is rife. Zans task is to build an audience by developing cutting-edge shows on the issues affecting millennial Afghan women, such as negotiating Islam as a feminist, reproductive rights, managing finances and careers. The most popular shows are the Daily News show hosted by Yasamin Yarmal and a weekly evening show that features conversations with radical Afghan women such as the politician and activist Fareeda Kuchi Balkhi, from Afghanistans nomadic Kuchi tribe. Zan also runs a daytime cookery programme on how to make speedy healthy meals. In the evening, the hour-long entertainment show In Focus recently showcased an all-female orchestra.

What makes us stand out is that we talk about everything that has touched womens lives, says Nawa. Women have been a marginalised community for so long in Afghanistan. We want to prove they have the power to take control and change their lives, if they want.

For a new TV station, the ratings are impressive. According to Samar, an average of 90,000 people are tuning into the morning news programme.

Mehria Azali, 22, is a journalist and presenter at Zan. She is keen to introduce a strong female narrative to the Afghan news agenda and explore issues such as underage marriage, rape and access to education. During the Talibans rule, women were wanted in the home to satisfy male needs, she says. Things have got better, but rights for women are still very bad, especially outside Kabul. When they watch TV, Afghan women dont see issues that affect them being talked about. We want to change that.

In 2015, research by the NGO Global Rights found that nearly nine out of 10 women in Afghanistan were subjected to physical, sexual or psychological violence. Now, Nawa and her team are talking directly to those women. A lot of abuse towards women is hidden by police, so we have a whole programme about justice for women, says Azali. She is looking for a lawyer to come in and talk about rape within marriage. We want to lead by example of what women can be, she says. Increasing their economic potential by showing them a new set of options.

Azali and Nawa also want to challenge the Afghan view of feminism. Some TV stations in Afghanistan prepare reports about the abuse of women, says Nawa, but they dont report everything as they dont want to be accused of being feminist. Most forms of womens empowerment are seen as divisive and anti-men, but we want to remove the negative attitude to womens issues in this country.

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Inside Zan TV: Afghanistan's first all-female station - The Guardian