The much-awaited peace agreement between the Taliban and the US was finally signed after 18 months of negotiations on Feb. 29 in Doha, Qatar. The deal will pave the way for intra-Afghan dialogue as the country recovers from war.

Details of the Deal

The deal was signed by the U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad alongside the Taliban’s chief negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo present as the observer. The ceremony for the peace deal started at around 5:15 pm local time in Afghanistan, with the leaders of 30 countries present to witness through an agreement that will see the withdrawal of American forces.

The deal comes after the successful implementation of a week-long reduction in violence in Afghanistan and includes a draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan — a demand the Taliban has been very keen to achieve since the start of the conflict in 2001. The US will pull out 8,600 of 12,000 soldiers in the first 135 days after the sign of the agreement, and effect a complete withdrawal within 14 months.

Trump: ‘a Powerful Path Forward to End the War in Afghanistan and Bring Our Troops Home’

Both the US and the Taliban hailed the deal as a historic landmark, which they say is a major step toward achieving peace in Afghanistan.

“If the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan live up to these commitments, we will have a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home,” the US President Donald Trump said in a statement on Friday. “These commitments represent an important step to lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from Al Qaeda, ISIS, and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm,” the statement added.

Highlights of the US-Taliban agreement include:

• The US agrees to begin troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, initially reducing to 8,600 troops and with all foreign forces to be withdrawn eventually
• 5,000 Taliban prisoners to be released ahead of intra-Afghan talks
• Intra-Afghan peace talks to start by March 10 if the above condition is met
• Taliban to guarantee that Afghan soil will not be used to launch attacks on the US and its allies

In a joint statement issued on behalf of the US and the Afghan government, it was announced that American forces would withdraw completely from Afghanistan in 14 months, conditional on the Taliban upholding their end of the deal.

As the ceremony began in Doha, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani addressed a press conference in Kabul alongside US Secretary of Defense Secretary Mark Esper to express hopes that the Doha peace deal between the Taliban and the United States will lead to enduring peace.

Nonetheless, he emphasized that the US “will not hesitate to nullify” its historic deal with the Taliban if they renege on their security guarantees and commitment to hold talks with the Afghan government. Esper, who was in Kabul, warned that “should the Taliban fail to honor their commitments, they will forfeit their chance to sit with fellow Afghans and deliberate on the future of their country.”

The Taliban called the agreement the “end of occupation”.

L'articolo US and Taliban Sign Historic Deal: Will it Last? proviene da InsideOver.

“He was a doctor by profession, but he knew what we needed here. He turned a desert into a green and fertile land. He gave us jobs when there was nothing to make a living from, he gave us hope for a better future. Even now when we talk to people who went for work to Iran during drought, they don’t believe, we earn our living from Gambiri desert” said Gul Agha a farmer who owns a portion of land around the newly built water canal by Japanese Dr. Tetsu Nakamura.

On the 4th of December, a group of armed gunman opened fire in a broad daylight killing the Japanese physician, a devoted aid worker along with his four bodyguards and a driver. Dr. Nakamura who came as a health physician, realizing the need of the community which was suffering from drought, built a water canal in the east of Afghanistan to give the community the much-needed source of life, water. Dr. Nakamura was the head of Peace Japan Medical Services a Japanese NGO active in Afghanistan since the 1990s, Dr. Nakamura spent 30 years of his life serving people of Afghanistan.

For his great service, he had received honorary citizenship of Afghanistan. The Taliban Spokesman denied any involvement in the assassination of the Japanese doctor via his twitter: “Attack on Japanese national & head of PMS NGO in #Jalalabad city has no connection with the Mujahidin of IEA. NGOs operating in the reconstruction field have good relations with IEA & none are military targets for the Mujahidin.”

A couple of weeks before the assassination of Dr. Nakamura, a hand grenade was thrown in a vehicle used by UN staff killing several people, including a local staff and a foreign national working for the UN. The attacked was condemned by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan. No group claimed responsibility for either of the attacks.

But on occasions, the Taliban have deliberately attacked NGOs. On May 8, the Counterpart International – an NGO funded by USAID – was attacked at the center of Kabul. The Taliban claimed the responsibility via the official twitter account of the Taliban Spokesman: “#Breaking US network named Counterpart involved in harmful western activities inside Afghanistan under attack by IEA Mujahidin in Shahri Naw of #Kabul city. Site currently under deadly attacks. Mentioned NGO was established by USAID organization. The Taliban further added that “Around 40-50 foreign advisors occupied the US network under attack mentoring Kabul admin workers in various aspects of brutality, oppression, terror, anti-Islamic ideology & promotion of western culture”. The Taliban have always been against the NGOs working on specific issues that they called the “promoting western culture”.

In the documentary by NHK world about Dr. Nakamura, he says “many foreigners come here, promise to respect the culture of Afghanistan but, they do not always do so but we keep our promises”. “Even if I die, we will continue, the work we have started won’t stop” promised Dr. Nakamura.

The Afghans who work with humanitarian agencies face severe problems in their daily lives, which almost goes unnoticed by the media. Last year an Afghan couple were working in the eastern province of Laghman with one of the few NGOs active there were threatening to abandon their duties. After not paying much attention to the warning letters they received from the Insurgents, Jan Mohammad (name changed) who worked as a local staff with the NGO was killed. His widow who was working as a local employee with the same NGO was fired due to the security threat she posed to the NGO. The NGO told her “we don’t want to put our staff and the compound in risk by keeping you,” the victim who preferred her identity to remain unidentified said.

A Swedish Committee operated clinic was raided and bombed by the US-Afghan forces in Wardak province on the 8th of July killing local staffs and a patient, who was suffering from Appendicitis. A local resident who goes by the name of Ahmad Shah said the government forces attacked and blamed the clinic for treating the Taliban fighters. “It is a health clinic providing services to the people in need, how the clinic could deny a dying person help based on which side he is? He added”

In the year 2019, there have been 133 Attacks on health workers or facilities impacting humanitarian access and health services. The number of aid workers killed  was 27, while another 31 were injured and 33 were abducted in 2019. The delivering of humanitarian assistance in a conflict zone comes with a heavy price to everyone involved as well as the people in need.

L'articolo The Precarious Lives of Aid Workers in Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.

On September 19, US forces conducted 30 strikes, one of the 30 strikes by US drones targeted and killed at least 30 people resting after a long day of labour collecting Pine Nuts shells in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Around 200 people had come from local villages and neighbouring provinces to collect Pine Nuts harvest from Spin Ghar Mountain foothills, located in Wazir Tang, Khogeyani District of Nangarhar, an area contested regularly between the Taliban, the ISIS and the Government. The local traders commissioning the Pine Nuts labourer had “obtained an authorization letter from the government informing them of their activities in the contested area”, said Waheed Mozhdah a political analyst based in Kabul.

Pine Nuts collecting is a seasonal job, where the labourers usually earn from 350 to 1500 Afs (equal to 5-25 USD) per day.

On September 23, US forces conducted 42 strikes, twelve targeted different locations in Helmand Province. On the night of 23 September in an attack in Helmand province, the government forces killed at least 70 people. The government forces raided and bombed a house where a wedding ceremony was ongoing.

The residence of Helmand province protested the killing of civilians. The government confirmed the attack and claimed to have killed the Al-Qaeda operatives.

Abdul Majid Akhundzadah, a member of the provincial council of Helmand province said: “last night Afghan National Security Forces raided a wedding ceremony in Musa Qala district, 40 civilians and 6 militants killed”.

“We are saddened and devasted to hear that civilians have lost their lives in an incident in Helmand despite President Ghani’s repeated call for extra cautions in conducting military operations. Helmand Governor has been instructed to send an investigation team to the area.” tweeted Sediq Sediqqi spokesperson for the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

In both the attacks the government is claimed to have targeted foreign fighters, in particular in the Wazir Tangi area the target was ISIS.

Violence at its Highest level in Afghanistan

The number of US strikes in Afghanistan rose drastically in August, with official military data showing that US forces carried out more than 800 strikes compared with 537 the month before. The number was even greater in the following month, in September the US Forces in Afghanistan bombed terror and security targets with a total of 1,113 strikes.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,  “the rising number of strikes is probably linked to US efforts to put pressure on the Taliban as both sides negotiated a possible peace deal.”

As a result of the recent uptake in the violence by both sides, the Afghan forces backed by the US artillery and Airpower, the Taliban and other terror groups’, figures released by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) show record-high levels of civilian casualties in the third quarter of 2019. In the first nine months of 2019, UNAMA recorded 8,239 civilian casualties (2,563 killed and 5,676 injured). In the latest quarter, UNAMA documented an unprecedented number of civilian casualties, verified civilian casualties from 1 July to 30 September increased by 42 per cent in comparison to the same period in 2018, 4,313 civilian casualties (1,174 deaths and 3,139 injured.

There is also the increase from 1 January to 30 September of civilian casualties caused by aerial and search operations undertaken by pro-government forces.

Previously, BBC findings show that August was the deadliest as the peace negotiations were ongoing at the time.

In early September the U.S President Donald Trump tweeted a few days after the cancellation of peace talks, “the Taliban has never been hit harder than it is being hit right now. Killing 12 people, including one great American soldier, was not a good idea. There are much better ways to set up a negotiation. The Taliban knows they made a big mistake, and they have no idea how to recover”.

On the other hand, the Taliban said in a statement “our struggle for the past eighteen years will prove to the US that we will not be convinced until we will end our occupation of the country as a whole and that the Afghans will be left to their ends. We continue our Jihad and firmly believe in the ultimate victory”.

“The war is imposed on us and we are ready to fight it for 100 years”, the spokesperson for the Taliban delegation in Doha Stanikzi said.

“We held productive negotiations with the US negotiation team and finalized an agreement, and both sides began making preparations for the announcement and signing of the agreement” The Taliban further added in a statement.

“Now, as President of the United States has announced the suspension of negotiations with the Islamic Emirate, this will harm America more than anyone else. It will damage its reputation, unmask its anti-peace policy to the world, even more, increase its loss of life and treasure and present its political interactions as erratic” the statement further added.

The US-Taliban peace talks ended in September when Donald Trump tweeted to call off the meeting with the Taliban Delegation who were planning to meet at Camp David.

Last week a prisoner’s swap has taken place between the Taliban and the Afghan government aiming at confidence-building measures to ensure reduction in violence and restart of the peace negotiations.

L'articolo US Bombing their way to a Peace Deal in Afghanistan proviene da InsideOver.

The fourth presidential election after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was held on September 28. The use of Biometrics Voters Verification (BVV) and voter lists were the most distinctively novel features of the 2019 presidential election.

Around 9.6 million people registered to vote and the Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (AEIC) had set October 19 to announce the preliminary result of the election. However, despite the euphoria of having the technology to ensure transparency and efficiency in the election, It is almost more than a month since the election was held and neither the exact number of the credible voters nor the preliminary results have been announced.

Shocking news soon leaked into the country revealing that the locks of the doors of the Data Server of AIEC, where biometric data was kept, were found broken. 

Initially, the Independent Election Commission had denied any such incident. However, a day later on October 22 the AIEC member, Raheema Zarifi, announced the confirmation of the intrusion into the Data Server room of biometric devices at a press conference, and said that an investigation into the incident had been launched.

The presidential candidates blamed the incumbent President Ashraf Ghani, who is attempting to hold the office for another five-year term. Speaking at a press conference, Ali Ahmad Osmani, the head of the opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s election campaign claimed that “members of the rival team have also accompanied the security forces while they have entered into the data centre”.

Weeks later, November 14 was determined as the new day for the preliminary result announcement, by the Head of Afghanistan Independent Election Commission, Hawa Alam Nuristani. The delay in announcing the preliminary result of the presidential election frustrated the candidates and people, raising their suspicions about potential behind-the-door manipulation of the final result.

The technology in use

The previous presidential elections were marred with massive fraud and ballot stuffing. For example, the presidential election in 2014 was damaged by extensive systematic fraud, which resulted in a powering sharing deal between the two top candidates.

To create transparency and accountability in voting, the political parties deemed the use of BVV imperative to prevent any fraud in the election. The idea of using BVV technology guarantees the candidates that the election will be transparent and provides the people who are risking their lives, defying the Taliban threats and voting to elect the candidate of their choice with reassurance that their vote is fairly administered and meaningful.

The method used in the 2019 election is a combination of manual voting and the BVV machines. The BVV did not replace the old system, but has been applied as an additional anti-fraud measure.

At the polling station, a voter’s biometric data is registered before the voters cast their votes. The data is then entered into a central database, printed and attached in encrypted form to the ballot paper. According to the IEC, this will enable them to identify those who vote more than once and to invalidate duplicate votes and ballots that are without biometric verification sticker or that have fraudulent voter details.

Elections since 2001

The election of the president in Afghanistan may have shortcomings, though it has achieved a tremendous goal of rooting out the use of violence to resolve political conflict to some extent. The presidential election in 2004 was destroyed by violence and allegations of fraud. In the presidential election 2004, millions of voters were listed with around 11,612,771 registered and the final voters’ turnout recorded as 8,128,940. Out of which 60 per cent were men and 40 per cent were women. Nonetheless, the fraud perpetrated failed to receive as much attention both nationally and internationally as it did in 2009. Hence, President Hamid Karzai was declared as the victor.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah who claimed to have succeeded in the 2019 election first appeared as a presidential candidate in the presidential election held in Afghanistan on 20 August 2009. The 2009 election was characterised by a lack of security, low voter turnout and the electorate’s little knowledge about the election process. Cases of widespread corruption, intimidation, and other electoral fraud, forced a second-round run-off vote, under the heavy US and ally pressure. However, the runoff was canceled after Abdullah refused to participate citing the lack of transparency in the election process. The voter’s turn out in the 2009 Presidential Election was 4,823,090.

The 2014 presidential election was a big landmark in the nascent democratic system in Afghanistan with its first projected peaceful transfer of power from President Hamid Karzai to an elected successor since 2001. The 2014 election saw an increase in voter participation across the country, with an additional 1,302,143 votes cast for a total of 7,947,527 votes. With a total voting population of approximately 25,354,494, Afghanistan witnessed a 31.35% voter turnout for the runoff election, versus 26.2 per cent during the first election.

After the runoff election, Afghanistan descended into chaos as both Ghani and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, accused each other of fraud, which sent the US Secretary of State John Kerry to work out a compromise solution. Thus the top two contenders Dr. Ghani and Dr.Abdullah formed the “unity government” sharing power; Ghani was made President and Abdullah was made the country’s newly created position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

2019 Presidential Election

On October 3, the Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (AIEC) reported that the number of votes cast on September 28 throughout Afghanistan were 2,695,890. They added: “the numbers could change after the verification of invalidated biometric votes”.

After failing to announce the preliminary result on time, Hawa Alam Nuristani Head of Afghanistan Election Commission said “We are not sacrificing quality for the sake of speed. We are committed to the quality result of the presidential election in 2019.”

Although it was criticized by the presidential candidates, however, the US Ambassador John R. Bass wrote on his twitter that the Afghanistan IEC “is fully implementing anti-fraud measures before announcing preliminary results in the #AfghanElections. We agree it is better to release an accurate result instead of a rushed one. Urge all candidates to support the independence of the process”.

On October 26, AIEC member Mawlana Mohammad Abdullah announced that around 900,000 to 770,000  of the votes cast would be invalidated based on the electoral law of Afghanistan, which lacked legal biometrics. The German company Dermalog which provided the BVV technology sent all voter information to the IEC. On the same day, the commission released new vote numbers, saying that the Dermalog Company had identified 1,843,107 valid votes out of the 1,929,333 votes already transferred to the commission’s central database.

Officials in the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said on October 31 that 47,000 cases of underage, duplicate photos, and photos taken of photos had been detected by the Dermalog server and shared with the IEC which would further be invalidated as well. Speaking at a press conference, Mawlana Abdullah said the commission is now waiting for cases of duplicate fingerprints and biometric data captured before 7 am and 5 pm.

According to presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah’s campaign team, “there are 137,000 fraudulent votes and they must invalidate”. But the Election Commission said Dermalog will provide an explanation on the 137,000 votes in the next two days. “These 137,000 votes were sent to the commission’s database only one day after the elections, and these votes are fake” added a member of the campaign team.

“The Council of Presidential Candidates believes that if there is even one fraudulent vote and someone makes his way to the president’s office with that fake vote then this will not be acceptable,” said presidential candidate Shahab Hakimi.

Could technology restore the lost faith in the Election Commission?

Although the biometric technology was brought to end corruption and to ensure the voters that their votes would bring the most voted candidate to the Office, the scenarios unfolding and the delays make the actions of the AIEC more dubious. The utilization of biometric devices was not without any problem, the first was the lack of awareness of how to use it. The second was a number of biometric devices were lost only to be found later.

One of the election observers who goes only by first name Mansoor said “despite the BVV technology being used, the voter’s turnout was very low”, “one could see in every 10 to 15 minutes a voter would come up in a polling centre”, he further added. “The voting procedure has substantially improved, but it will be interesting to see what the final result will be and how the AIEC will handle the outcome” he further added.

“Even though the biometric device was used it will be very difficult to restore the people’s confidence in the Election Commission especially with the way they handle the current election,” said a political and security analyst who preferred to remain anonymous. “The voter’s turnout was the lowest since 2001, nonetheless, the AIEC has still not been able to announce the initial result.” “Initially the turnout numbers were around two million 600 thousand, it has since reduced to 1.8 million, it will further cut by few hundred thousand and the actual number will be just slightly above a million vote”, he further added.

The number of people registered to vote was around 9.6 million people, it the lowest percentage of a voter casting their vote on Election Day since 2004. Had the AIEC managed the election in a professional and timely manner, it would have helped in building confidence over the institutions but it has further made people uncertain about the progressive transfer of power in Afghanistan.

L'articolo Election and Technology: Will the Biometric Voting Save Democracy in Afghanistan? proviene da InsideOver.