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DOHA, Qatar The Taliban and the Afghan government began historic peace talks in Qatar on Saturday, aimed at shaping a power-sharing government that would end decades of war that have consumed Afghanistan and left millions dead and displaced.

If realized, a peace deal would be the first time in generations that a new form of Afghan government was not being established at the point of a gun: The current model was ushered in by the American invasion that toppled the Talibans harsh Islamic regime in 2001, and each previous one back to the 1979 Soviet invasion was set off by coup, collapse or conquest.

But as the Qatar talks begin, against the backdrop of an American troop pullout and grievous violence against Afghan officials and civilians, some critics of the process argued that the Taliban insurgency was still, in essence, holding a gun to the governments head.

The peace talks opened on Saturday morning in Doha, the Qatari capital, with formal ceremonies held under tight security and strict coronavirus measures. The negotiations will be complicated at every turn by the threat of continued insurgent assaults, deep political divisions after a disputed election, decades of loss and grievance, and by foreign powers pulling Afghan factions in opposing directions.

Still, the fact that delegations from the two sides are finally coming to the table, after repeated delays, offers the nation a rare opportunity in its recent history: a chance to find a formula of lasting coexistence before the withdrawal of another foreign military creates a vacuum, potentially repeating the countrys cycle of misfortune.

We have come here with the good will and good intention to stop the 40 years of bloodshed and achieve a countrywide and lasting peace, Abdullah Abdullah, the chairman of Afghanistans High Council for National Reconciliation and the leader of the delegation from Kabul, said at the opening ceremony. The current conflict has no winner through war and military means, but there will be no loser if this crisis is resolved politically and peacefully through submission to the will of the people.

The Talibans deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said the insurgents would participate in the talks with full sincerity, and he urged both sides to exercise calm and patience.

Mullah Baradar offered little detail about the Talibans vision for a future Afghanistan, except in broad strokes. But many on the Afghan negotiating team said that his tone in contrast to previous Taliban speeches in public forums was measured and offered hope.

We seek an Afghanistan that is independent, sovereign, united, developed and free an Afghanistan with an Islamic system in which all people of the nation can participate without discrimination and live harmoniously with each other in an atmosphere of brotherhood, he said.

The direct negotiations became possible after the United States signed a deal with the Taliban in February that began a phased, 14-month withdrawal of the remaining American troops from Afghanistan and pressured the Afghan government to free 5,000 of the Talibans prisoners.

Because the Taliban had long insisted on not holding direct, exclusive talks with the Afghan government, which they consider illegitimate, Mr. Abdullahs delegation includes not just government officials but opposition politicians and other figures outside the administration.

Members of Mr. Abdullahs team said their priority was to get to a lasting cease-fire a silencing of the guns, as one delegate, Nader Nadery, put it. The violence, whose total daily death toll on all sides often surpasses 50 lives, is exacting an enormous cost on the nation of just over 30 million.

The war is also devastating the Afghan economy, with about 90 percent of the population living below a poverty line of $2 a day, President Ashraf Ghani recently said all while billions of dollars a year in foreign aid, mostly from the United States, holds the national budget together.

The Taliban have been so singly focused on securing the withdrawal of U.S. troops that they have provided little clarity on how they envision the countrys political future beyond broad statements about establishing an Islamic government. When in power in the 1990s, they curtailed civil liberties and deprived women and minorities of basic rights.

While many in the Taliban indicate that they have learned from the experience of struggling to govern in the 1990s, others fear that the intervening decades of fighting may have propped up an even more hard-line generation of insurgents, limiting their negotiators ability to compromise.

Diplomats and officials said that getting the Taliban to agree to a permanent cease-fire right away would be difficult, as the insurgents will be reluctant to give up their main leverage before a political settlement is finalized. Right on the eve of the talks, the insurgents carried out attacks in 18 of the countrys 34 provinces, Afghanistans defense ministry said.

But many officials suggested that the sides could agree to an immediate humanitarian cease-fire what Mr. Abdullah mentioned in his remarks to create more space for negotiating a settlement that will include a permanent cease-fire.

The U.S. deal with the Taliban, under pressure from President Trump to get American troops out, has been criticized by many Afghan officials as having been rushed and giving the Taliban too much without assurances in return.

The American troop withdrawal began on the Talibans promise that they would negotiate with the Afghan government and not let terrorist groups use Afghan territory as a haven and staging ground for international attacks. But in the months since, some international observers have questioned the Talibans commitment to their vow to abandon their allies in Al Qaeda and other such groups.

Before the talks began, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that international forces would continue to support the Afghan forces on the battlefield and make clear to them that their sacrifice is not lost on us.

But in Doha, as hundreds of diplomats and dignitaries took their seats in the large ballroom General Miller, in uniform, walked under the chandeliers and across the hall to the Taliban side and offered greetings an image that made clear his direct war with the Taliban was largely over.

The Taliban team includes some of the delegates who negotiated the deal with the United States. But they have brought in a new chief negotiator: Mawlawi Abdul Hakim Haqqani, an influential religious scholar who has led the Talibans network of Islamic courts in recent years.

The 20-member negotiating team that came from Kabul, led by Mr. Ghanis former spy chief Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai, includes only three women not five, as earlier believed underscoring how Afghan women have struggled for equality since the Taliban were driven from power, despite various promises.

The careers of the three female delegates reflect the hard-fought gains that women have made in Afghanistans patriarchal culture gains that they must now convince the Taliban to accept in a future system. One delegate, Habiba Sarabi, was the first female governor of an Afghan province. Another, Fawzia Koofi, a single mother, fought her way to the deputy speakership of Afghanistans Parliament; the third, Sharifa Zurmati, was a journalist before switching to politics and entering Parliament.

During speeches by about 20 foreign ministers and other dignitaries, many of them given via video conference because of coronavirus travel restrictions, Ms. Zurmati said she was taking note of which country made a point of stressing the protection of civil liberties and womens rights in the future political system.

Afghanistan is deeply dependent on foreign aid. The Taliban, who struggled to govern because of cash shortages when in power, have said they would want foreign aid to continue even after the Western military coalition leaves. Some diplomats see that as leverage to get the Taliban to soften some of their positions.

As you make your decisions, you should keep in mind that your choices and conduct will affect both the size and scope of future U.S. assistance, said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was at the event.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan peace, said there was still an opportunity for the country to reach some sort of equilibrium. A veteran diplomat, Mr. Khalilzad was an adviser to the American government during the Cold War when the United States was funding insurgents to push Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.

The Afghan tragedy has been not being able to get to an agreement on a formula and then stick to it, Mr. Khalilzad said. There was a great victory after the Soviet departure, the Afghans had this great victory. The rest of the world benefited from it a lot: we became the only superpower, Eastern Europe got liberated, Central Asia got freed. But Afghanistan continued this disintegration. The Afghans they won, but they lost.

But now they have another chance to get to a formula where imposing one groups will on the rest with the force of arms has not been a successful formula. The historic record is not encouraging, but the lessons could be instructive for them.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Najim Rahim contributed reporting from Kabul.

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Afghanistan Peace Talks Open in Qatar, Seeking End to Decades of War - The New York Times

September 16, 2020

By Sandy Feinzig

This weekthe Taliban and the Afghan government beganpeace talksin Qatar with the goal of shaping a power-sharing government to end decades of war. One issue at the heart of those talks is whether Afghanistan will hold on to the gains women have made in the past two decades. Another issue is the economy, decimated by the ongoing war, and a population 90 percent of whom live below the poverty line.

Against this daunting backdrop, Covid-19 in Afghanistan continues to have serious consequences for this struggling country. While just 37,676 cases have been officially reported in a population of approximately 37 million, international aid groups report that at least 80 percent of infections nationwide are likely going untested. The fragile healthcare system, the devastated economy, and the legacy of decades of conflict leave Afghanistan uniquely unprepared for a deadly pandemic, and a national lockdown in the initial months of the outbreak was quickly loosened when the economy went into free fall.

The economic consequences of the pandemic may be more severe than the public health crisis. The World Bank has projected an economic contraction of 5.5 to 7.4 percent in 2020, which could push the poverty rate as high as 72 percent by the end of the year and trigger a sharp decline in government revenues. Restricted imports, falling customs revenues, and the ripple effects on the manufacturing, construction, and service sectors are further stressing the brittle economy. Households that rely on daily labor for their livelihoods are among the most economically vulnerable. The World Bank has committed $380 million in support for Afghanistan, including food distribution programs, although desperate households might prefer cash subsidies to more flexibly meet their own needs.

For Afghan women and children, poverty, home confinement, lack of healthcare, and high levels of domestic violence are additional burdens. The incidence of violence has been on the rise as children have stayed home from school, and lost livelihoods and worsening poverty have exacerbated household tensions.

Unfortunately, women and girls have not had equal access to healthcare during this time of crisis. Afghanistans Ministry of Public Health reported in July that fewer than one-third of confirmed cases of Covid-19 were women, a perplexing figure that officials attribute to womens lack of access to healthcare in a deeply conservative society.

Afghan women and girls have continued during the pandemic to suffer from some of the worlds highest rates of gender-based violence, which affects a reported 87 percent of the female population, making Afghanistan one of the most dangerous countries for women and girls in the world.

Women who work outside the home have also faced disproportionate economic struggles. Confined to their houses at the beginning of the pandemic, many seeking to return to work are now finding that their jobs have disappeared in the ailing economy. Women entrepreneurs are also finding it difficult to reactivate their businesses in the face of the same obstacles as their male counterparts: lack of customers, closed borders, suspension of transportation, and lack of resources. Nearly half of the female-owned businesses in Balkh Province, which previously employed more than 2,000 women, were still shuttered weeks after coronavirus restrictions were lifted. Those that have reopened are operating at a fraction of their previous level, and many women have simply lost their livelihoods.

More research and data are needed. The Asia Foundation is now in the process of conducting a series of surveys, the Flash Surveys on Perceptions of Peace, the Economy, and Covid-19 in Afghanistan, which will make quarterly assessments of the rolling crisis and guide the humanitarian response. The Foundation will also be conducting a study on the effects of Covid-19 on vulnerable groups in Afghanistans border areas. Since the early 2000s, The Asia Foundation has conducted the annual Survey of the Afghan People, with in-person polling in all 34 provinces. The global health crisis has made that impossible this year, but the Flash Surveys will be stepping into the breach.

As we await the data, and the insights that will be gleaned from these surveys, there are some actions to take now, particularly for Afghan women. Afghanistan has been unable to effectively combat gender-based violence in the past, and the hardships and dislocations of the pandemic have made the situation of women and girls even more challenging. Civil society must mobilize to direct resources to women-led organizations, which have developed local networks and mechanisms to provide services such as womens support centers and shelters. Donors must connect with these civil society groups to address womens special needs and concerns. Stakeholders should identify what has been effective so far in helping women and girls during this crisis. The Asia Foundation has already identified several smaller, local organizations that have mobilized quickly and effectively to provide relief, and our implementing partners have identified others. This information should be shared with all stakeholders.

When supporting community-based interventions, international organizations must avoid approaches that may look great on paper but require technology or connectivity that are just not available, or that may run afoul of Afghan social norms.

Jails and prisons have been hotbeds of Covid-19 around the world, and many women and girls convicted of moral crimes continue to be imprisoned under deplorable conditions. Turning our backs on this population means giving tacit support to a system that perpetuates gender-based violence, and international organizations should work with legal-aid groups and the Afghanistan Independent Bar Association to petition the Presidents Office on their behalf. Efforts should be made to identify women who can safely be released, either to homes, halfway houses, or shelters.

There are some institutions, such as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, headed by a woman, that can be effective partners to help mobilize civil society and coordinate with local government.

To move forward collaboratively, we must identify and empower more Afghan women who can lead the wayand they are out there! This global tragedy represents a singular opportunity for women to stand up and become agents of changeto be leaders as well as followers. Afghan women can rise to the occasion, but they must have the space and the place to do so, and the resources and support of the international development and humanitarian communities.

Sandy Feinzig is The Asia Foundations deputy country representative in Afghanistan. She can be reached at sandra.feinzig@asiafoundation.org. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author, not those of The Asia Foundation.

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Afghanistan Flash Surveys to Glean Data on Perceptions of Women, Peace, the Economy, and Covid-19 - The Asia Foundation - In Asia

That said, the right question, now as always, is: Whats next?

As the need for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan declines, they should be redeployed for other missions. Because America is a global power with global interests and responsibilities, there is plenty of other work on the to-do list. Moreover, the military has to train and prepare for future missions.

What is key is that the withdrawal of U.S. forces has to be based on real-world conditions, not managed by the calendar. The Trump administration has taken that approach. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has consulted with the host nations, which have agreed that the troop drawdowns make sense.

In neither case is the United States abandoning our friends or responsibilities. This is important in Afghanistan, where the United States has made clear to the Taliban that the future of American troop levels will be determined by progress in the talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The Taliban are dead wrong if they think the United States simply will forget the Afghan people and walk away.

Likewise, the United States has no interest in ceding ground in the Middle East to Iran. The United States will continue to partner with the Iraqi people to continue strengthening both their security and economy.

Indeed, the next steps for really advancing U.S. interests and regional peace in the Middle East and South Asia will not be focused on the size of U.S. forces in the regions.

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JAMES JAY CARAFANO: U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan show progress in resolving endless wars - SCNow

Rashid Khan has made a name for himself due to his consistent performances in the shortest format of the game. He plays in almost every T20 league around the world and is one of the first names on the team sheet. Even in the Indian Premier League, Sunrisers Hyderabad shelled out big bucks for him and they havent been disappointed. He has always helped raise the profile of cricket in Afghanistan.

The nation now has a full-fledged cricket team that often challenges the top teams in the world. Rashid along with Mohammad Nabi, Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, and Gulbadin Naib have made the team a fighting outfit who regularly play in ICC tournaments.

Also read:Five penalty runs will stop teams from Mankading, says Muttiah Muralitharan

However, Rashid doesnt just want to play the ICC tournaments. He wants to win them for his country. Rashid believes Afghanistan has the talent and skills to achieve the feat and only needs regular cricket against top nations to get there.

I think the biggest achievement (for Afghanistan) should be, right now, what the team is looking for, what the country is expecting is, to win the T20 World Cup, Khan, the countrys biggest cricketer, said.

The leg-break bowler was speaking to Ravichandran Ashwin during the show, DRS with Ash, hosted by the India off-spinner.

We have all the skills, talent, and we just need to have that belief in ourselves that we can do it. Talent-wise we are so good, we have the spinners, we have the fast bowlers, we have the batting skills as well. But what took us down in that Test (against India) was our experience against big teams, because we didnt play enough cricket with them.

Afghanistan became part of the ICC 16 years ago, produced some fine wins in limited-overs cricket, and won two of the four-Test matches they have played so far. One of the Test wins came against a far more experienced Bangladesh team.

Also read:Five penalty runs will stop teams from Mankading, says Muttiah Muralitharan

A little more than two years ago, in their first-ever Test outing, India beat Afghanistan by an innings and 262 runs at the Chinnaswami Stadium in Bengaluru. Recalling their maiden Test match, the Afghanistan captain said,

The biggest dream of the whole country was to be called a Full Member team and to play a Test game.

When we were playing against you guys in our first Test game, we didnt know what we were doing. Everyone was just counting - Im going to be the first one to hit a four, the first one to hit a six, the first one to take a single. It wasnt the best game for us, but there were so many things we learned.

He said the country needs to play more against bigger teams to become better.

The moment we play more series with them, we can become a better team. We are very famous for T20 players, but inshallah, that is a dream of mine and a dream of the country that one day we will win the T20 title and that will be the biggest achievement for Afghanistan cricket and for us as well, Khan said.

(with PTI inputs)

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A dream of the country: Rashid Khan explains what will be Afghanistan Crickets biggest achieveme... - Hindustan Times

Mohammad Akbar, known as Afghanistans saffron father, died on September 14 at the age of 83 in his home province of Herat in the countrys west.

Akbar was one of the first Afghan farmers to pioneer the cultivation of saffron in the country and was later dubbed the saffron father by former Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his lifelong efforts in growing and promoting the aromatic spice extracted from flowers.

In March 2009, he received the medal of Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan, Afghanistans highest governmental award, for his service and contribution to agriculture.

Akbar spent his life in Herats central Pashtun Zarghun district. He began cultivating saffron in 1993 in the Golmir area, where fertile soil, mild winters, and dry summers favored the crop.

His eldest son, Jalil Ahmad, says his father dedicated his entire life to farming. Ahmad tells Radio Free Afghanistan, My father spent nearly two decades in the cultivation and production of saffron. Sadly, he died of a stroke last night.

Akbar was known for encouraging farmers to plant saffron, a lucrative crop, as he anticipated its major role on the global market years later.

Saffron is the worlds most expensive spice, sometimes called red gold for its high value. On Western markets, it has the potential to sell up to $1,500 a kilogram. The spice is used in many ways including traditional medicines, food, tea, and infused in perfumes and toiletries.

Many farmers and business owners in Afghanistan see the benefits of investing in the versatile crop, an alternative to producing opium poppy, which is used to produce much of the worlds heroin.

The Kabul government and international aid organizations are supporting saffron production through financial assistance programs, and its production has been beneficial for Afghan women, who are the main harvesters of the flower.

The labor-intensive process of harvesting saffron begins in October and early November in Afghanistan. The provinces of Herat, Kandahar, Sar-e-Pol, and Balkh are home to some of the most saffron farmlands in the country.

Nilly Kohzad wrote this story based on Shapoor Sabers reporting from Herat, Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan Bids Farewell To Saffron Father - Gandhara