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Ben calls from Afghanistan

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WASHINGTON, April 16 (UPI) -- Confidential assessments by the U.S. State Department indicate Afghanistan is not prepared to govern itself after the United States withdraws its troops.

The report by the U.S. Agency for International Development suggested billions of dollars of spending in Afghanistan has not yet created a sustainable civilian government and has often been diverted to corrupt politicians and to insurgents intent on destabilizing the country.

USAID officials said the corruption and waste in Afghanistan has long been known, noting that dramatic progress has been made in a country that had no stability only a dozen years ago.

The report, researched in 2012 and 2013 and known in foreign aid circles as Stage II Risk Assessment Reports, was obtained by the Washington Times, leading to questions regarding why they were not publicly released earlier.

USAID spokesman Matt Herrick said, We strongly reject all claims that we have improperly withheld information.

The documents focus on Afghan ministries overseeing the nations finance, mining, utilities, communications, education, health and agriculture sectors. Only in the Afghan Ministry of Finance did auditors conclude the systems was adequate to properly manage and account for money provided by Washington.

[Washington Times]

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Afghanistan not ready to govern on its own, State Dept. assessments say

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two security incidents within 24 hours involving Afghan government officials have taken some of the glimmer off of this months generally successful presidential election and renewed concerns about safety in Kabul.

Hours after unknown gunmen kidnapped a deputy minister in President Hamid Karzais government, a police officer engaged in an argument with a female member of parliament opened fire and wounded the lawmaker in the leg, officials said Wednesday.

The lawmaker, Maryam Koofi, was in stable condition at a local hospital, according to a statement from the Afghan Interior Ministry. The police officer was detained and is under investigation, officials said.

The shooting took place around 10 p.m. local time Tuesday near Koofis home in Arya City, a housing complex normally regarded as one of Kabuls safest. Hashmat Stanikzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police, said the officer fired one or two bullets. The cause of the argument wasnt immediately known.

Koofi is a lawmaker from Takhar province, in northern Afghanistan, and is the older sister of the prominent lawmaker and womens rights activist Fawzia Koofi.

Earlier Tuesday, a group of gunmen abducted Ahmad Shah Wahid, the deputy minister of public works, as he was riding in his car on his way to work shortly after 7 a.m. The gunmen pulled his car off the road, pulled him into their vehicle and drove off, said Sohail Kakar, a spokesman for the Public Works Ministry.

Wahids driver was shot and injured when he tried to evade the kidnappers, Kakar said.

Officials said they did not know who was behind the kidnapping, and a spokesman for the Taliban said the group wasnt responsible.

Although abductions of high-ranking officials in Kabul are rare, government figures are routinely targeted for attacks by Taliban insurgents. The capital has been under tight security for much of the last several weeks due to the April 5 presidential election, which saw high voter turnout and no major Taliban attacks.

Ballots are still being counted but a preliminary tally released by election officials over the weekend showed a close race between former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and former World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani.

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Afghanistan official shot, another kidnapped in Kabul

KANDAHAR (Afghanistan): Framed by her blue shawl, the solemn, bespectacled face of Serena Faizi peers out from anelection campaignposter at a Kandahar city roundabout, while Afghanistan approaches its own crossroads as Western troops prepare to go home.

When theUnited Statesfirst deployed forces inAfghanistanto fight the Taliban and hunt Osama bin Laden, Faizi was barely a teenager.

Having grown up in a city on the front line of the insurgency, she has entered politics, the most dangerous arena of all for a woman in Afghanistan. She is beginning political life just as the West, which has championed womens rights, has begun to disengage.

While the country awaits the outcome of the larger contest to see who succeeds Hamid Karzai as president after 12 years in power, Faizi is awaiting results of the April 5 election to find out whether she has won a seat in Kandahars provincial council.

Contesting meant becoming a potential target for the Taliban. Police insisted on giving her an armed escort home on the night of the ballot as the risk became more real.

I was scared, admitted Faizi, a formermedia relations officerin the provincial governors administration.

We are like a challenge. They tell me: Serena, you cant do that. I say: I can, she told Reuters in rapid-fire English perfected through lessons taken over Skype.

If men can do it, women can also do the same thing.

Named New Generation and campaigning for equal rights for women, Faizi says her political movement has only a few hundred followers, but they are determined to take on reactionary Afghan attitudes to women by seeking to be both seen and heard.

Some of credit for that sense of empowerment must go to the promotion of democracy and education for girls, which became hallmarks of U.S. policy in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

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Afghan women stand to be counted as West begins to disengage

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