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Growing up in Canada, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ariel Nasr was always "hungry for imagery" of his father's home country of Afghanistan, but nothing was available.

"All his photographs, all the kind of visual heritage of my family was lost in the war, which is quite a common story there," Montreal-based Nasr told The Current's Matt Galloway.

On top of that destruction of personal effects, the Taliban had decreed many forms of cultural expression to be heretical when they took power in the mid-1990s. They burned books and films and destroyed the country's museums and collections of art.

But after Nasr moved there to make documentaries in 2008, he discovered that a treasure trove of Afghan films dating back to the 1920s had escaped the Taliban's pyres.

Those films and how they survived are the subject of his film The Forbidden Reel, airing online this week as part of the Hot Docs film festival.

He told Galloway that in 1996, a Taliban official named Isaac Nezami secretly tipped off the country's national film production institute, Afghan Film. He warned them that radical fighters were on their way to destroy the archive.

"[The archivists] were able to hide the films, and what they did as an act of subterfuge was actually offered them films that were less valuable," said Nasr.

While those substitute films copies of U.S. and Bollywood films ended up on a bonfire, while the Afghan originals were secreted behind a false wall.

"They burned those films and thought that they had destroyed Afghanistan's film heritage," he said.

But he said the films that survived are "beautiful works of art, and they're shot on the background of Afghan history."

"They show images that you would never see images that just weren't documented by Western cameras."

Two decades later, he tracked down the official, who was still living in Kabul, and brought him back to the film institute, where he was given a "hero's welcome."

"He said'I did not agree that the films should be burned. Whether they were good or bad, they're part of history, they're part of our heritage,'" said Nasr, recalling the visit.

"He felt that whether their contents were religiously orthodox or not, he felt strongly that heritage should not be destroyed."

Both the official and the Afghan Film workers were risking their lives, and would have been killed if they had been discovered, he said.

He thinks it's an example of people overcoming their differences that he sees recurring in Afghan history.

"Even though there's different ideologies, people from different sides were still able to co-operate over things that were essential to them."

The collection of films that were saved "really runs the gamut," Nasr said.

"There's historical films about an Afghan queen, for example, who many centuries ago was persecuted for having an affair with her slave," he said.

"There's even a musical film that looks very much like Bollywood."

There are also documentaries, painting Afghanistan as "at one time a place where violence was not part of the everyday experience," he said.

The films also show a time where women had a very different role in society, with "women officials giving speeches in front of hundreds of people you see women soldiers, you see women bus drivers," he said.

"I think overall, what you learn is that Afghan history is much more complex than what we've been led to believe," he told Galloway.

He hopes that his film "will help them complicate the picture, by bringing images that were shot by Afghans that show a much more complex reality."

Now, the films are "locked away" in an archive within the presidential compound, but Nasr wants them to be digitized and made available to the public.

"They should be a click of a mouse away, ideally," he said.

"I really feel strongly that in order to kind of imagine a future for Afghanistan, it's really powerful and really important to have some visual evidence of the past."

Written by Padraig Moran. Produced by Julie Crysler.

Read more:
How the Taliban tried to destroy Afghanistan's film heritage, and the secret plan to stop them - CBC.ca

WASHINGTON: Battle losses and desertions have reduced the strong Daesh militant force in Afghanistan to a rag-tag group of about 200 fighters, said a UN report released this week.

The eastern province of Nangarhar has been the main stronghold of this group known as the Islamic State of Khorasan or ISIL-K ever since it came to Afghanistan more than a decade ago.

From September to November 2019, the number of ISIL-K operatives in Nangarhar was reduced from 1,750 armed fighters and a leadership council of 22 spread over seven districts, to fewer than 200 fighters [living] under siege in the Takhto area of Achin District, it stated.

The report prepared by UN monitors and their Afghan interlocutors reviews the current situation in Afghanistan in the backdrop of a peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban, which hopes to bring Taliban militants into the Afghan mainstream.

In addition to their handling of any threat posed by al-Qaida, the Talibans credibility as a counter-terrorism partner for the international community will rest on their success in countering the threat from ISIL-K, the UN report observed.

The number of foreign terrorist fighters in search of a purpose and livelihood in Afghanistan, including up to 6,500 Pakistanis, will render this a complex challenge, which will require careful monitoring, the report added.

Most of these Pakistanis are associated with Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIL-K and used their bases in Afghanistan for attacking targets inside Pakistan. In December 2014, six TTP terrorists attacked a public school in Peshawar, killing 149 people, including 132 children.

The UN report noted that Pakistani militant groups have their bases in the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangarhar and Nuristan, where they operate under the umbrella of the Afghan Taliban.

Published in Dawn, June 5th, 2020

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Foreign fighters still have presence in Afghanistan: UN - DAWN.com

The Wall Street Journal editorial board warned that Trump might be goaded by the Taliban into making an impulsive decision to precipitously withdraw U.S. Forces from Afghanistan. The best chance for a U.S. exit with honor, the board claimed, was to make clear to the Taliban that the U.S. wont force its allies to accept a bad deal.

However, predicting a U.S. withdrawal on a Taliban-Kabul agreement will guarantee Americas longest war continues unabated, deepening the unacceptable cost to the U.S.

Trump appears to see the situation in similar terms. He was quick to share his displeasure when he tweeted to the Journal that we have been there for 19 years, and thus no, I am not acting impulsively. Though it would be ideal if the Taliban and Afghan government could come to a sustainable peace agreement, such an outcome is not necessary for the U.S. to finally withdraw.

Before Obamas 2009 surge in Afghanistan, there were already back-channel secret negotiations going on between the Afghan government and the Talibans number two leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. The cleric communicated that the Taliban was willing to negotiate an end to the conflict.

In January 2010, howeverthe same month Obamas surge began Baradar was captured in a joint raid conducted by the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) and the CIA, ending any chance at negotiations.

At the time of the capture, the operation was hailed as a breakthrough and evidence of Pakistans willingness to work with the United States to end the war. As was later revealed, however, the ISI knew full well where Baradar had been all along and only facilitated his capture because, as a New York Times investigation revealed, [the ISI] wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Talibans longtime backer.

American officials undoubtedly knew Baradar had been seeking a negotiated settlement to end the war but many top American leaders believed the ongoing surge could compel the Taliban to sue for peace once they realized they could not defeat the U.S. coalition. Washington preferred an American military victory to a less-satisfying negotiated end.

A year after Baradar's capture, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told CNN the Taliban wouldnt sincerely negotiate until they felt themselves under military pressure" by winter 2011. Gates said he had sympathy for those Americans who were war-weary, but encouraged them to have more patience. This war would end, he claimed, essentially the same way that it ended in Iraq-with us playing a key role for some period of time. We would be able to withdraw the U.S. military when the Afghan government was able to keep control of their own country so that al Qaeda can no longer find a safe haven in Afghanistan.

Gates words are very instructive in todays situation.

He implied that after just a little more coercion with more military power, the Taliban would recognize it couldnt win and be forced to sue for peace. Obama gave Gates a force of 140,000 U.S. and NATO troops and years of high-intensity kinetic operations to bring the Taliban to its knees, but the group never capitulated.

Advocates of prolonging the war seem oblivious to this failed past when making almost the same argument today: we just need a little more time and more military effort and then well have peace. That thinking was demonstrably flawed when Gates made his comments in 2011; time has only made more painfully clear how bankrupt such beliefs are.

If Trump does not act on his instincts and end this war on our terms, we will still be having this conversation in another decade, and no doubt advocates at that time will be repeating the same discredited claims. It is time we stop hoping for the unattainable while paying exorbitant prices in American blood and treasure. Its time finally to leave Afghanistan.

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments. Follow him on Twitter: @DanielLDavis1.

Read more from the original source:
Time to acknowledge reality and end America's expensive forever-war in Afghanistan | TheHill - The Hill

Written by Khaled Ahmed | Updated: May 23, 2020 9:25:02 am Sectarianism in Pakistan has complicated its relations with Iran.

The recent violence in Afghanistan has highlighted its multi-pronged conflict. The IS or Islamic State may hate Shias just as the Taliban does but they hate each other too. Pakistan may hate the Pakistani Taliban that the Afghan Taliban doesnt hate but it can hardly get the friendly Haqqani Group to be an arbiter in the Afghanistan negotiations. Its own suppression of Pashtuns will not endear it to anyone in the Pashtun south in Afghanistan. India, recently rejected as a party to talk to by the Afghan Taliban, is all over the place with its investment in projects that the Afghans cant ignore.

What is happening in Afghanistan is going to affect Pakistan and since Pakistan is no longer clear whom it can support, the coming post-US withdrawal days will mean trouble for it. Because the Americans leaned on it for getting the Taliban to talk peace, Pakistan appears to outsiders as a strong influence in Afghanistan. But one should sit back and ask: Who is being backed by Pakistan in Afghanistan in these days of utter chaos?

There were days when the Afghan Taliban was in North Waziristan with al Qaeda. The latter could be led by Pakistanis like the erstwhile champion of Kashmir jihad, Ilyas Kashmiri, who then blew up the naval base in Karachi because the Pakistani naval chief was not releasing several navy men more loyal to al Qaeda than to Pakistan. (Mehran naval base was destroyed and all the terrorists involved in the action were naval employees.)

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There was a time when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan favoured the Pakistani Taliban against the US, declaring himself against the American war in Afghanistan. In time, he was disembarrassed when the Pakistani Taliban attacked an army public school and killed over a hundred children there. Pakistani and Afghan Taliban were then ousted from North Waziristan and forced to take refuge in Afghanistan, and there is no proof that they have been spurned by the Afghan Taliban to retain Pakistans friendship.

The IS in Afghanistan is killing Shias there and in Pakistan, and it doesnt get along with the Taliban. This doesnt mean that the IS is free of all kinds of warriors, including Pakistanis who have links back home through such Shia-killing outfits as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. ISIL and al Qaeda are both in Afghanistan and are at cross-purposes while fighting the American Satan. Both contain terrorists from other nationalities like Sinkiang Uighurs and Indian Muslims, which gets both China and India worried about what Pakistan will do next.

The US counted on Pakistan to deliver the Taliban especially the powerful Haqqani Group that has influence with the Taliban movement but Pakistan is not certain whether in a crunch even the Haqqanis will stand by it. The vulnerability comes from madrasas in Pakistan spawning jihadi militias and owing loyalty to the Taliban-al Qaeda combine. Pakistan has to work to break this nexus made strong by the penetrability of the 2,430-km Durand Line. While threatened by the Taliban, Pakistan also makes a deal over their availability in peace talks with the US. In Afghanistan, no one believes in this arrangement.

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Sectarianism in Pakistan has complicated its relations with Iran. The other factor is Irans outreach to India with the construction of the Chabahar Port on the Iranian coast next to Pakistan. The highway that goes up from Chabahar to Afghanistan worries Pakistan and is one of the reasons it is fencing its borders. Pakistan has been attacked through the Iran-Pakistan border by groups who have targeted both Pakistans strategic port of Gwadar in Balochistan and Karachi in the south through agents said to be on the take from India. Last week, a group of policemen acting as alleged Indian agents were arrested in Karachi.

Indian influence in the Gulf, Iran and Afghanistan is palpable and there is a promise of extending it to the friendly Central Asian states through Chabahar and potentially through Pakistan. In normal times, the moment would have been ripe for an Indo-Pak normalisation and opening up of trade routes to ward off the economic uncertainties of a changing global order.

This article first appeared in the print section of May 23, 2020, under the title Question in search of answer. The writer is consulting editor, Newsweek Pakistan

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Who is being backed by Pakistan in Afghanistan in these days of chaos? - The Indian Express

Elham Mansoori, member of Afghan Dreamers, an all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan, works on their prototype of a ventilator. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

In Afghanistan, a group of teenage girls are trying to build a mechanized, hand-operated ventilator for coronavirus patients, using a design from M.I.T. and parts from old Toyota Corollas.

It sounds like an impossible dream, but then again, the all-girls robotics team in question is called the "Afghan Dreamers." Living a country where two-thirds of adolescent girls cannot read or write, they're used to overcoming challenges.

The team of some dozen girls aged 15 to 17 was formed three years ago by Roya Mahboob, an Afghan tech entrepreneur who heads the Digital Citizen Fund, a group that runs classes for girls in STEM and robotics and oversees and funds the Afghan Dreamers. "I'm really proud of these young girls [who are] feeling that they have to help their community," says Mahboob. "It's amazing and hopeful for the future of Afghanistan."

The virus most likely entered the country in early March as hundreds of thousands of Afghan workers fled the coronavirus outbreak in neighboring Iran. They came through the western province of Herat, where the Afghan Dreamers live.

In fighting the pandemic, Afghanistan is at a disadvantage."You are talking about a country that is now struck by COVID-19, which comes on top of ongoing war and abject poverty," says Toby Lanzer, the humanitarian coordinator for U.N. agencies working in Afghanistan.

The country only has capacity to test 1,000 people a day, so the number of confirmed cases, at over 7,000 is considered an undercount, says Lanzer. And there's only about 200 working ventilators for a country of 35 million people, he estimates.

To deal with the shortfall, on March 26, the then-governor [he has since stepped down] of Herat, Abdul Qayoum Rahimi, gathered two doctors, university graduates, local industrialists and the Afghan Dreamers.

The doctors presented them with a challenge: to help mechanize their hand-operated ventilators, also known as bag-valve-masks. This type of ventilator is a large inflatable bag attached to a mask that slips over the nose and mouth. A health worker manually squeezes the bag to get air into the lungs. They're quite cheap and common they're used in ambulances and in emergency care to help patients breathe until they can be ventilated on a machine.

Officials feared there would not be enough health workers to hand-operate the equipment in the event of an outbreak. They hoped the Afghan Dreamers could build a prototype of a mechanized ventilator that could be replicated and mass produced, says Mahboob.

And amid a global demand, officials also worried that impoverished Afghanistan could not compete with wealthy countries to buy fully automated ventilators typically used in ICU rooms.

A ventilator typically costs around $50,000, says Douglas Chin, a Harvard-educated surgeon who has been helping the Afghan Dreamers with their prototype. By comparison, he says, producing a mechanized hand-operated ventilator could cost around $500.

Elham Mansori, Florence Poya, Nahida Khajazadeh and Somaya Farooqi, members of the Afghan Dreamers, are building a mechanized version of the hand-operated ventilator. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

Elham Mansori, Florence Poya, Nahida Khajazadeh and Somaya Farooqi, members of the Afghan Dreamers, are building a mechanized version of the hand-operated ventilator.

After the meeting with the governor, a team of four Afghan Dreamers began looking online for open-source design ventilators. Mahboob and Somaya Farooqi, the 17-year-old team captain, came across a design released by MIT for a low-cost, low-tech ventilator called the MIT E-Vent.

"They found us," says Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, whose team released the design in March.

The design is deliberately low-tech so it can be replicated using locally sourced products around the world. For instance, it calls for installing a microprocessor, usually included in robotics kits for kids and teens. And it can be built out of widely available machine parts.

The MIT team on their website says their design "cannot replace an FDA-approved ICU ventilator in terms of functionality, flexibility and clinical efficacy" but that it could help in "life-or-death situations where there is no other option."

Slocum estimates about a dozen teams, from places as diverse as Chile to Iran are building ventilators using the design. The Afghan Dreamers, he says, is the only all-female team he is aware of, and they come from the poorest country.

They were also the first to figure out that windshield wiper motors could be finagled into powering a working ventilator.

"So I just hope no one gets mad at us, or them, in particular when the rainy season comes and they go to their car and there's no wipers," says Slocum, jokingly.

The Afghan Dreamers have had a number of challenges while building the prototype. For one, they're working while fasting it's the Muslim month of Ramadan. They also have to keep safe amid the pandemic, says Farooqi. "Each of us work on a separate part of the ventilator. When we get together, we wear masks and gloves."

A prototype of the Afghan Dreamers' ventilator. Raw materials included car parts from Toyota Corollas. The Digital Citizen Fund hide caption

And because Herat is largely shut down due to COVID, Farooqi says the team had to be ingenious about sourcing parts. "Most of the material we are using is actually from Toyota Corolla car parts" from nearby secondhand markets, such as the windshield wipers, a gear box and motor, along with some motorbike parts.

Corollas are a common type of car in Afghanistan, so if this prototype works, the ventilator should be cheap and easy to replicate using parts likely to be available at car shops, says Mahboob.

The girls are now trying to get the machine to be able to sense a patient's breathing pattern and adjust the amount of air they get accordingly.

For the ventilator to do that, the team needs two parts a "pressure transducer" a sensor that converts pressure measurements from breath into electrical signals and a microprocessor to process those signals into a pump of air.

Both parts cost about $50 each but the team can't source them locally or ship them into Afghanistan. There is no mail service that the women can access. And so six weeks into building their ventilator, the women are now trying to find a way get these last parts.

Some health officials in Afghanistan are doubtful that the girls will succeed. "We appreciate this idea," says Muhammad Rafiq Sherzai, spokesman for the Herat Public Health Department. But he notes the need to have the machines approved by appropriate organizations.

Indeed, once the team builds a successful prototype, it has to be tested and approved by the health ministry in Herat, and then in the capital Kabul. Once they have that approval, local factories can replicate the machine.

The team is optimistic. They've overcome other hurdles.

They first came to international attention three years ago, when they were refused visas twice to enter the U.S. for a robotics competition. Many visit visas are denied because some Afghans have used them to stay in the U.S. and never return to Afghanistan.

After an international outcry, President Donald Trump intervened and let them in.

They made it to the competition and even won an award for courage for their can-do attitude under difficult circumstances.

"That award was a result of our hard work. And it's made us work even harder," says Farooqi. Speaking of the ventilator her team is building, she adds, "even if it saves just one patient's life, I'll be happy.

Read more from the original source:
Afghan Girls Robotics Team Aims To Build Low-Tech, Low-Cost Ventilator : Goats and Soda - NPR