Mediaboss Marketing

Sesame Street's new Afghan character, a 4-year-old Afghan boy puppet named Zeerak, performs during the taping for the sixth season of the Afghan version of Sesame Street, called Baghch-e-Simsim, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Rahmat GulAP

(KABUL, Afghanistan) Last year, Afghanistan's version of "Sesame Street" introduced a little girl character aimed at inspiring girls in the deeply conservative Muslim nation. Now a new muppet is joining the cast: her brother, who will show boys the importance of respecting women.

Zeerak, whose name means "Smart" in Afghanistan's two official languages, is a 4-year-old boy who enjoys studying and learning. He joins 6-year-old sister Zari, whose name means "Shimmering," on Afghanistan's version of the show, "Baghch-e-SimSim," or "Sesame Garden."

Both muppets wear traditional Afghan clothing the baggy trousers and long embroidered shirt known as a shalwar kameez for him and colorful native dresses and a cream-colored hijab, or headscarf, for her. They join the rest of "Sesame Street's" multi-cultural line-up, which includes muppets specially created for local versions of the program in Bangladesh, Egypt and India.

Massood Sanjer, the head of TOLO TV, which broadcasts the program in Afghanistan, said that after the overwhelmingly positive response to Zari from both parents and children, the goal was to create a boy character to emphasize the importance of gender equality and education in a country where the vast majority of girls don't go to school and the literacy rate for women is among the lowest in the world.

"In a male-dominant country like Afghanistan, I think you have to do some lessons for the males to respect the females. So by bringing a male character to the show who respects a female character, you teach the Afghan men that you have to respect your sister the same way as you do your brother," Sanjer said.

In keeping with that goal, Zeerak proclaimed in a recent episode of the program, "I love Zari so much and as much as I love Zari, I love her friends too."

It's an important message broadcast on a medium with a nationwide reach: While television in Afghanistan is largely restricted to urban areas, "Sesame Street" is also broadcast on radio in both official languages, Pashtun and Dari, expanding its audience to most of the country.

Both Zari and Zeerak were created in New York and their costumes incorporate fabrics and designs from all of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups to promote inclusiveness in a society racked by decades of conflict.

Afghanistan has been at war for almost 40 years, since the 1979 Soviet invasion and the subsequent mujahedeen war that lasted a decade. That was followed by a devastating civil war in which warlords drew lines based on ethnicity and killed tens of thousands of people in Kabul alone.

The Taliban took over in 1996, and their five-year rule was one of brutal extremism in which they banned women from work and girls from going to school, confining them to their homes. The radical Taliban regime was forced from power by the 2001 U.S. invasion that ushered in a democratic experiment and billions of dollars in international aid to help rebuild the country.

Ahmad Arubi, the producer of the local version of "Sesame Street," said he is hopeful that the new characters will eventually have a wider audience outside of Afghanistan.

"Possibly, in the coming years other Muslim countries, which are running this program, might use our characters, such as Zeerak and Zari. They might use our scripts, translate them in their own languages and use them in their countries," he said.

Read the original:
Muppet Promotes Respect for Women in Male-Dominant Afghanistan - TIME

U.S. troops killed the head of ISISs Afghanistan branch, known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), during a June 11 airstrike on the groups headquarters in the Kunar province, the Pentagon announced Friday. Abu Sayed took over as leader of the group after his predecessor, Abdul Hasib, was killed by Afghan and U.S. forces during a joint raid in April. Before Hasib, ISIS-K was run by Hafiz Sayed Khan, who died in a drone strike in late July 2016. In a statement, Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Tuesdays strike had also killed other ISIS-K members and will significantly disrupt the terror groups plans to expand its presence in Afghanistan.

Sayeds death marks a significant advancement in the U.S. effort to drive ISIS out of Afghanistan by the end of this year. While ISIS is predominately based in Iraq and Syria, the militant group extended its operations to Afghanistan in 2015. For now, ISIS retains limited territory in Afghanistan, with major strongholds in Kunar and the eastern province of Nangarhar. While the Pentagon estimated that around 2,500 ISIS fighters were stationed in Afghanistan in 2015, they have since reported that ISIS-K is now down to less than 1,000 militants. In addition to battling U.S. and Afghan forces, ISIS-K has also clashed with the Taliban, which maintains a much larger presence in the nation.

In June, an anonymous U.S. administration official told the Associated Press that the Pentagon was planning to send an additional 4,000 troops into Afghanistan to train and advise Afghan forces, who many argue have reached a stalemate in their operations against the Taliban. There are currently around 8,500 U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan, who are divided between fighting against the Taliban and conducting counterterrorism missions against al-Qaeda and ISIS. The AP reports that the additional troops would be engaged in both operations.

In June, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress that we are not winning in Afghanistan right now, adding that he plans to correct this as soon as possible. The comments followed criticism from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, who said Mattis lacked a concrete strategy for victory. The death of Abu Sayed comes at a critical time in the war in Afghanistanespecially considering that battles against ISIS have diverted resources away from Taliban-focused operations.

It is obviously a victory on our side in terms of setting [ISIS-K] back. Its the right direction, Mattis told reporters on Friday, though he struggled to say how long the group would be thrown off by the loss of their leader. Mattis speculated that a death like Sayeds would place ISIS-K at a disadvantage for a day, a week, a month, depending on what kind of people are below [him]. On the same day, John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the deaths of three ISIS-K leaders in a single year emphasized that there is no safe haven for ISIS-K in Afghanistan."

Visit link:
Pentagon Says ISIS Leader in Afghanistan Is Dead - The Atlantic

A Pakistani politician said Pakistans wrong policies towards Afghanistan divided the people of the two neighboring countries.

On the second day of the 4th Afghanistan-Central Asia Dialogue conference in Bamiyan, Bushra Gohar, the senior vice-president of Pakistans Awami National Party, said that insurgency would harm Pakistan if Islamabad did not change its negative policies towards Afghanistan.

She said Pakistan has always vowed to help secure peace and stability in Afghanistan, but added that Islamabad has not delivered on its promises in this respect.

According to her, Pakistans wrong policy is the main reason which divides Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Same as (a Pakistani leader Khan Abdul) Wali Khan says if we throw stones to other houses we will not receive flowers in return. If we let our soil to be used by insurgent groups among whom there is no good (terrorists) and bad (terrorists), they will use our soil (for their own interests), she said.

She said peace with the Taliban would mean giving legitimacy to the group.

They (Taliban) do not deserve to be talked to; they are those whose hands are red with the blood of innocent people. They (the Taliban) must be isolated, she said in a response to question by TOLOnews reporter about talks with the Taliban.

At the same event, an advisor to Iran Foreign Ministry Sayed Rasul Musavi rejected Tehrans support to insurgents saying that insecurity in Afghanistan is not in favor of his country.

He also rejected Irans interference in Afghanistans affairs.

Our problems have increased whenever we had a negative situation in Afghanistan either migrants problems or border problems between Iran and Afghanistan, he said.

A member of the High Peace Council meanwhile labeled lack of rule of law and drugs mafia influence in government as the main reasons behind insecurity and instability in the country.

Those who have weapons they will have more power, those who have money they will have extra power. Unfortunately, the international community is involved in unjust distribution of money, the HPC deputy chief Habiba Sarabi said.

Representatives of at least 10 countries attended the two-day Afghanistan-Central Asia Dialogue conference in Bamiyan where they discussed ways to create coordination in the region in order to cope with the challenges on the ground, namely terrorism.

Read this article:
Islamabad Asked To Change Its 'Wrong Policies' Toward Afghanistan - TOLOnews

By Deborah Avant By Deborah Avant July 12

The New York Times reported July 10on meetings between President Trump, his top advisers and private military and security company (PMSC) magnates, Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater) and Stephen A. Feinberg (owner of DynCorp International) to discuss plans for having contractors take over U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The plans are said to hew closely to the Wall Street Journal op-ed Erik Prince published in June proposing a MacArthur solution to Afghanistan. Like the historical analogy it borrows from, the plan proposes a U.S. viceroy, but unlike MacArthur, the viceroy would carry out his plans with the help of a private army.

Could such a plan actually improve counterinsurgency, leading to the success that has thus eluded the U.S. (and NATO)? In a word: no. And the plan is much more than a different strategy; it reformulates (one might say privatizes) U.S. goals.

General studies of PMSCs (though not focused on counterinsurgency, per se) begin to shed light on their overall impact on war. Looking at civil wars in Africa, only when there is competition among companies do PMSCs working for government and rebels have a positive effect on civil war termination. This suggests that we may not want the unified effort Prince envisions.

Data from Iraq show that competition is not enough. Only when there is competition joined by contracts with particular performance incentives do PMSCs reduce violence in an area. And using the Private Security Database (PSD) to focus on contracts between governments and PMSCs in failed or failing states notably applicable for Afghanistan is shown to increase conflict severity.

More detailed studies show that PMSCs work differently than military forces and should increase our skepticism of their counterinsurgency value. Different recruitment, motivation, rules, training and flexibility all contribute to a number of well-known concerns over misbehavior by individuals, PMSCs and the governments (and other clients) that contract with them. The International Code of Conduct (ICoC), Private Security Standardsand other transnational regulatory efforts the U.S. has supported all limit PMSC behavior in ways that address these concerns by drawing PMSCs closer to common rules for public forces. (It is worth mentioning that a PMSC could not do some of what Prince calls for, like fighting alongside Afghan forces, without violating these regulations and the regulations are now required for private security providers working for the Pentagon in contingency operations abroad.)

Beyond all of this, evaluating Princes plan as an attempt to improve counterinsurgency has three significant difficulties. First, it would not solve the thorniest problem: working with the Afghan government. Just as U.S. and NATO leaders do, the viceroy would have to work closely with the Afghan government. My guess is that the Afghan government might not react warmly to this new viceroy what then?

Second, everything we know about successful counterinsurgency tells us that it requires close integration between political goals and forces. It is the tethering of force to common and shared concerns that begin to build its legitimacy and thus the political buy-in on which stable governance is built. But with PMSCs you often trade integration away. This has been particularly true with U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Third, though Prince is right that hiring locals might be cheaper and also provide contextual knowledge, which can be critical to successful counterinsurgency when local knowledge is used to satisfy the concerns of external or private patrons rather than common concerns, it contributes to warlordism. Warlordism is the worst form of rentier state, neither stable nor legitimate. A viceroy, working to secure Afghanistans resources, threatens to do just this. (By the way, the East India Company that Prince touts as a model also generally yielded warlords and to the extent that it achieved the stability Prince claims, it was only due to continual intervention by British forces.)

These shortcomings are why many similar plans that Prince has touted over the past 10 years such as those for private forces to replace NATOor the U.N.(Prince actually visited me at my George Washington University office to pitch the latter), respond to the genocide in Darfurand more have been politely refused by previous U.S. administrations. They also explain why Gens. MacMaster and Mattis are reportedly less than supportive.

But the plan Prince describes is not just unlikely to improve the United States ability to conduct counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, it reflect entirely different of U.S. goals. Instead of an albeit flawed policy aimed at building a legitimate government willing to be part of the international community, this plan aims only to secure resources (and it is not even clear for whom).

On that count, it is strikingly similar to news this month that the Kremlin is now rewarding PMSCs that seize oil and mining facilities from the Islamic State in Syria with profits from those same facilities. Princes MacArthur strategy aims not to help Afghanistan reach its potential, but to protect its resources. Had the U.S. had such goals in post-World War II Japan, its unlikely that we would remember the MacArthur strategy with the same reverence.

Deborah Avant is a professor and director of the Si Chou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denvers Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

More here:
Private military contractors aren't going to do a better job in ... - Washington Post

The manicured emerald pitch at Lords in London, where Afghanistan played for the first time ever Tuesday, is a world away from the border refugee camps where the country found its love for cricket.

In dusty Pakistani camps like Khurasan, young barefoot cricketers have no pitch, no kit, no wickets, no helmets, no gloves and no shade -- only the hunger that helped catapult Afghanistan into the elite group of Test nations last month.

Millions of Afghans fleeing war have sought refuge for nearly 40 years in camps outside Pakistans border city of Peshawar, where they have been exposed to the cricketing fever that has gripped their neighbouring nation since Britain colonised the sub-continent centuries ago.

We learned cricket here and we took this cricket with us to Afghanistan, and now Afghanistan has a team which plays on a world level and the entire world has recognised it, 35-year-old Abdul Wahid, a refugee from Kunar province, tells AFP.

He and a generation of Afghans spent years cheering for the Pakistani team before daring to dream of more.

Wahid, who missed out on a spot in the national team but now coaches refugees, says his contemporaries in the camps learned to play with tennis balls. The best of them would go on to join academies in Peshawar, where they encountered the hard cricket ball for the first time.

Faridullah Shah, a coach with the Pakistan Cricket Board, remembers the fierce determination of the Afghan players who reached the academies.

They used to work as labourers until the afternoon and were later playing cricket here... The team of Afghan players was named the Team of Chickens as many were trying to survive by supplying poultry in Peshawar, he says.

They worried about how to afford kit but played every day, Shah recalls. They had extreme eagerness -- more than our players -- and that was the reason for their success.

Surviving on biscuits

At the Islamia Cricket Academy, selector Qazi Shafiq, a former first class player, agrees.

Afghans are quick learners -- if you pinpoint a mistake, he understands ... then he will work hard on that, Shafiq says.

I will not mention his name but one Afghan national player told me that he had to borrow money to reach here... and then he could only afford a 10-rupee (10-cent) packet of biscuits a day on which to survive.

Afghanistan cricket team have achieved great success in the international stage, having recently drawn an ODI series in the West Indies. (Getty Images)

Asghar Khan, a coach and twice the president of the Peshawar district cricket association, remembers Afghan players as the beauty of tournaments here.

He rattles off a list of names, from Mohammad Nabi -- whom Khan praises for his long, long sixes -- up to Asghar Stanikzai, captain of the Afghan cricket team. All learned in Peshawar, Khan says, with many like Shapoor Zadran beginning in the refugee camps.

A picture of Afghan cricket star Muhammad Shahzad from his days as a club player in Peshawar is still on display in Gymkhana, the biggest of the citys cricket academies -- testament to his entertaining playing style even as he faces an ICC suspension for failing a drug test.

Fans in the Taliban

Today, the number of Afghan cricketers training in the Peshawar academies is dwindling, officials say.

Pakistan launched a controversial bid to drive refugees back into Afghanistan last year which has seen hundreds of thousands of people flow back over the porous border, while new restrictions imposed by both Islamabad and Kabul are also affecting the players.

Rashid Khan has created several records for Afghanistan and he has been the key behind the teams success. (AFP)

Whether the changes will stall the countrys meteoric rise remains to be seen.

Cricket in Afghanistan struggled under the hardline Islamist Taliban, which viewed sports as a distraction from religious duties.

But now even members of the Taliban -- whose regime was toppled 16 years ago but is now surging again, dealing stinging blows to Afghan forces -- have caught the cricketing bug, one insurgent commander tells AFP.

Now, not only do they listen to cricket on radio, but they even play it when they have spare time, the commander says.

The ecstasy with which Afghans greeted the news they had been granted Test status, and the enthusiasm with which fans watched the Lords match -- even though it was rained out, leaving the players without a result -- suggests a brighter future for cricket players, even as insecurity spirals once more.

Arshad Khan, a 17-year-old left arm spin bowler from eastern Nangarhar province who now trains at the Islamia academy, says he has made a commitment to himself that one day he will play for Afghanistan.

I am hopeful that I will be selected, the young refugee says.

The rest is here:
Afghanistan cricket team's meteoric rise: From refugee camps to Lord's - Hindustan Times