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AFGHANISTAN TOUR OF ZIMBABWE, 2017

Cricbuzz StaffLast updated on Fri, 24 Feb, 2017, 06:33 PM

Representational Image: Graeme Cremer took two wickets for Zimbabwe. AFP

Unlike most One-Day Internationals happening across the world, where 300-plus totals are the norm, the ongoing series between Zimbabwe and Afghanistan has brought in quite a change. It has been a series where batsmen have found the going tough. With rain interrupting play time and again, and the soggy outfield slowing the ball down, batsmen have found it difficult to score freely. Coming in to the fourth encounter of the series, none of the batsmen from either sides had aggregated 100 runs in three matches.

Friday (February 24) was no different, with Chris Mpofu snaring three and Tendai Chatara and Graeme Cremer bagging two wickets each to bowl Zimbabwe for 111.

Asghar Stanikzai, Afghanistan skipper, won the toss and elected to bat. It took little time for the hosts to take a commanding position in the match, with Chatara striking twice in his first five overs to remove opener Ihsanullah Janat (0) and Rahmat Shah (1). The start itself was quiet with Zimbabwe's new ball pair of Chatara and Richard Ngarava conceding only five runs off the first eight overs.

Before the 10th over, even the hard-hitting wicketkeeper-batsman Mohammad Shahzad made his way back when he inside edged a slog to short midwicket off Ngarava. At 12 for 3, in the 10th over, Hashmatullah Shahidi and Stanikzai came together to put up the best partnership of Afghanistan's innings. The duo looked to hit their way out of pressure. The effort paid off with a 28-ball 29-run stand for the fourth wicket, before the skipper edged Mpofu to the keeper.

Wickets continued to tumble at a regular pace from thereon with Shahidi too departing in a similar fashion. There were handy contributions from the lower order with Samiullah Shenwari (13), Mohammad Nabi (17), Gulbadin Naib (10) and Rashid Khan (11) registering double-figure scores. The adjusted target of 105 from 42 may not be big, but given how the series has panned out, it has given the tourists little hope to defend and seal the series.

Brief Scores: Afghanistan 111 in 38.5 overs (Asghar Stanikzai 19, Mohammad Nabi 17; Chris Mpofu 3-25, Graeme Cremer 2-12) vs Zimbabwe

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Mpofu's triple strike bundles out Afghanistan for 111 - Cricbuzz

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Pakistan blames Afghanistan for a spate of terrorist attacks - The Economist

BEIJING

China's Defense Ministry on Thursday dismissed reports Chinese military vehicles were patrolling inside Afghanistan, saying the two countries were only carrying out counter-terrorism operations along their common border.

This month, the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst think tank said in a report on its website that Chinese troops were on Afghan soil conducting joint patrols with their Afghan counterparts. That followed a similar report in an Indian media outlet in November.

Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said Chinese public security departments had counter-terrorism cooperation along the China-Afghanistan border.

"This is law enforcement bodies from China and Afghanistan, in accordance with a bilateral agreement on strengthening border law enforcement, conducting cooperation along the border so as to jointly carry out counter-terrorism and to fight against cross-border crime," Ren told a monthly news briefing.

"Reports in foreign media of Chinese military vehicles patrolling inside Afghanistan do not accord with the facts," he added, largely repeating a similar ministry statement from November.

China and Afghanistan share a 76-km (50 mile) stretch of border in a remote, mountainous corner of central Asia.

China has long been concerned that instability in Afghanistan could spill over into the violence-prone Xinjiang region in china's far west, home to the Muslim Uighur people, where hundreds of people have died in recent years in unrest blamed by China on Islamist militants.

China has also worked with Pakistan and the United States to broker peace talks to end Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency that has raged there for 15 years.

Excerpt from:
China Again Dismisses Reports of Military Patrols in Afghanistan - Voice of America

BBC News

Said Jamal from Afghanistan on cusp of Castleford Tigers spot BBC News A boy who fled war-torn Afghanistan after his father was killed by the Taliban is on the cusp of a professional rugby league career. Said Jamal, 15, arrived in the UK and settled in Rotherham, South Yorkshire about four years ago. He played school ...

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Said Jamal from Afghanistan on cusp of Castleford Tigers spot - BBC News

Progress has been excruciatingly slow but the governments involved remain optimistic.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI) is a grand idea to bring gas from Turkmenistan which has ample supply to South Asia which has immense demand. In between is Afghanistan, a war-torn country which stands to make millions in transit fees should the project ever be realized.

Recently, as Tolo Newsreported, the Afghan Gas Enterprise and ILF, an international engineering consulting firm, settled an agreement for the Afghan legs engineering design. At a signing ceremony attended by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other high-ranking officials, acting mines minister, Ghezal Habibyar said the project would have two phases which would take about four years to complete.

The first phase of the project which includes the security of the project, agreements, design, social and environmental study, demining, a survey of the pipelines route and expropriation will be completed in one year, he said. The construction would presumably take the other three years to complete putting operation of the pipeline somewhere past 2021. That is if the deadlines arent extended and that seems like a very real possibility, given that the projects long history is short on met deadlines.

The 1,735 kilometer pipeline, estimated to cost upwards of $10 billion, is planned to carry 33 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually from the Galkynysh field in Turkmenistan to markets in Pakistan and India.

Afghanistan stands to make $400 million annually from the pipeline. According to a late 2015 Integrity Watch Afghanistan report, the countrys national budget for 2016 was set at $7.331 billion. Since 2001, foreign aid has supplied about 70 percent of the annual Afghan budget. An extra $400 million in revenue would be much appreciated in Kabuls coffers.

Habibyar said at the ceremony, The pipeline will change Afghanistan into a transit hub for Central Asia. It will be an important economic corridor for Afghanistan because other projects like a power transmission project, a railway project, industrial parts and an optic fiber project will be built along the TAPI pipeline route.

Optimism has always surrounded TAPI, at least on the part of the governments involved. Turkmenistan is endlessly hopeful about the project, despite murky funding schemes and little evidence of actual on-the-ground progress. In December 2015, Turkmenistan broke ground on the pipelines construction, or so the state claimed. Pakistani media have carried reports recently that the country will begin its own work this month on design surveys and feasibility studies.

A major concern regarding the Afghan leg of the pipeline has been security. While only time will truly tell, its worth mentioning that in December the Taliban pledged to project infrastructure projects, like TAPI, in the country. The argument could be made that the Taliban which still harbors dreams of once again running the country is sincere in wanting these projects to proceed. If the Taliban find themselves in power in Kabul once again, they too will relish the extra $400 million.

The ADB last Spring said the project was doable.

A doability verdict and effusive government optimism are not completely worthless, but they arent sufficient to convince the projects skeptics (myself, admittedly, among them). With Afghanistan and Pakistan just now beginning serious feasibility and design studies, not to mention the onerous task of demining and maintaining enough security to allow for construction, talk of deadlines is dealing with meaningless numbers.

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Afghanistan Shouldn't Start Counting TAPI Revenue Just Yet - The Diplomat