Afghan notebook: A voice silenced

By Harun Najafizada BBC Persian

Journalists remember Sardar Ahmad and his family at a candlelight vigil in Kabul

 

Journalists in Afghanistan have held a candlelight vigil in memory of Sardar Ahmad, the senior reporter for Agence France-Presse, who was killed in a Taliban attack on 20 March.

An experienced and popular journalist, Mr Ahmad was gunned down along with his wife and two of his young children at the Serena Hotel in Kabul. The BBC's Harun Najafizada remembers a colleague and friend.

I first met Sardar Ahmad in 2003 in the early days of the new Afghanistan.

It was a time of hope. The Taliban had gone, a new government was in place and our country seemed to be at the centre of the world's attention.

We had both just been recruited as reporters. Sardar was covering news coming out of Bagram, the largest US base in the country, while I was posted to Mazar-e Sharif in the north.

We often met in Kabul to chat about our stories and Afghan politics or just to listen to Hindi music that we both loved.

As the Taliban made a comeback and the security situation began to deteriorate we were both posted back to Kabul.

Sardar was a bright, energetic and committed journalist with eyes and ears always open.

With his charm and language skills, he built up an impressive network of contacts within the Afghan government, among international players, foreign journalists, local society and even within the insurgent networks.

He was key in covering Afghanistan for a world audience, always aware of the ups and downs of Afghan politics.

Sardar Ahmad in the AFP office in Kabul hours before he, his wife and two of his children were killed in the Serena hotel attack

 

And he was always full of fresh ideas - from the opening of a new bowling alley in Kabul, to police female commandos and most recently the fate of a pet lion he'd discovered being kept in a house in Kabul.

I last saw him in at an election rally here in Kabul, striding through the crowd with a camera on his shoulder. He smiled and waved to me from the other side of the Ghazi Stadium.

I thought to myself: 'I'll let him get on with his job and later in the week I'll go over to his place and we can go bowling.'

But a few days later, four teenage gunmen with pistols hidden in their socks penetrated several layers of security to attack the Serena Hotel in the centre of Kabul.

They shot my friend, his wife Humaira, his seven-year-old daughter Nilofar and his five-year-old son Omar from close range while they were having dinner to celebrate Nowruz, our New Year's eve.

Friends and family pray at Sardar's grave during his funeral in Kabul on 23 March

Shah Mohammad, Sardar's older brother bends down to kiss the picture of his niece Nilofar during the funeral ceremony in Kabul \

 

They also shot his younger son Abozar at least three times, but he survived and is now recovering to keep Sardar's name alive.

As details of the attack emerged later, Afghan officials said they did not believe Sardar was the target. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We began to worry when the usually regular tweets from Pressistan, the local news agency he founded, suddenly stopped.

We all wondered why Sardar was silent when such a big news story was happening in our city.

The next morning we found out that he had been silenced forever.

Like many other Afghan journalists, Sardar had many opportunities to leave the country and seek a better life abroad.

But he wanted to stay and be part of the transition process. He hoped that one day Afghanistan would leave violence and chaos behind and he looked forward to reporting on a more normal life.

Friends and family cover the grave of one of Sardar's children with soil during the funeral. Hundreds of well-wishers turned out in the pouring rain

Sardar's brother, Bashir Ahmad cries during the funeral ceremony in Kabul

 

When I first heard the news about his death I hoped against hope that it wasn't true. I felt shocked, angry and frustrated.

For many of us journalists in Kabul, Sardar's death has suddenly brought home the grim reality of the relentless violence in our country.

It's given a human face to civilian casualties that we have been reporting on for more than a decade.

It's one tragedy against the background of so many all across Afghanistan. But it's left everyone - not just the media community, feeling deeply shocked.

We will all miss Sardar very much.

Sardar Ahmad poses for a photograph with his daughter Nilofar and son Omar at the AFP office in Kabul in 2012

From refugee camps to Kabul: The story of Afghan cricket

From refugee camps to Kabul: The story of Afghan cricket

Despite neighbouring some of the titans of international cricket, Afghanistan does not have a long tradition of its own in the sport. But now cricket, long neglected and viewed as a foreign import in Afghanistan, is gaining in popularity and helping unite the country, as the BBC's Jafar Haand explains.

Last October thousands of people turned out in cities across Afghanistan in jubilation to celebrate a sporting victory - not a victory in football, as they had had in September, but in cricket. It was the first time Afghanistan had ever qualified for the Cricket World Cup, to be held in Australia and New Zealand in 2015.

No mean feat for a country where cricket has not always been a popular sport and people are struggling with the legacy of decades of war. So how has Afghanistan been able to take its place at the sport's top table?

The answer, like much of Afghanistan's recent history, lies in the refugee camps established in Pakistan by Afghans fleeing the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.

 "When I started thinking about making a national team, I went to every Afghan player that I knew and encouraged them to come to Kabul”  

Taj Malook Former national coach

 

 

Unlike in other countries in South Asia, the British did not leave a strong legacy of cricket in Afghanistan. But I remember coming into contact with it as a child for the first time in the Jalozai camp near the Pakistani city of Peshawar.

In 1992, Pakistan won the Cricket World Cup and an already cricket-mad nation celebrated by taking to the game with a renewed fervour. In every street and every park in the country there was a cricket match going on - and before long, we in the camps were joining in too.

Karim Sadiq, one of the Afghan national team's opening batsmen, was also a child in one of the Pakistani camps, Kacha Kara, when he got the cricketing bug. He would work in a match factory by night and play cricket by day, such was the enthusiasm among the youth in the camps for the new game.

It was that sort of commitment that Taj Malook, the father of Afghan cricket, was looking for in the 1990s when he dreamt of setting up an Afghan national cricket team.

"We were living in Kacha Kara camp," Mr Malook remembers. "I was running an Afghan team playing alongside with my three brothers, we were crazy fans of cricket, following every international match.

"I was thinking that if we keep on playing cricket, we will have a national team representing our own country."

Mr Malook went between the different camps in Afghanistan looking for good players, and scouted for talent among Afghans who had made it into Pakistani teams.

But not everyone was as keen.

"When I started thinking about making a national team, I went to every Afghan player that I knew and encouraged them to come to Kabul. But their fathers came to our home and warned me not to do that. They told me that cricket kills the time of their sons," Mr Malook says.

Batsman Karim Sadiq has similar memories. "We did not even have money to eat, so I was under pressure from my family because I wasn't earning," he says.

More and more Afghans have been playing the game over the past ten years

As In neighbouring countries, any patch of free space can become a pitch

Young people inside Afghanistan have now started playing the game too

Plans are afoot to encourage more cricket in schools, and girls have also been able to participate

However, Mr Malook persevered and by 1995, the Afghan Cricket Federation had been established in Kabul under the auspices of the country's Olympic committee.

This was despite the rise of the Islamist Taliban movement, who had banned other sports being played in public.

But where footballers' shorts were deemed by the Taliban to be un-Islamic, the more modest cricket whites posed no such problem. Besides, many Taliban, who had also spent time in the camps in Pakistan, had also acquired a liking for the game.

I was even present at some matches where Taliban officials would hand out awards to the players.

 

 

"I am very happy that we have raised our national flag in every part of the world, and showed a positive picture of our country” 

Karim Sadiq Opening batsman in the Afghan national team

 

 

 

Once the game had made it back to Afghanistan, it still faced many obstacles. After the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, Mr Malook appealed to the new government in Kabul for support for the fledgling cricket scene.

"They said to us: 'We won't give you any money for this, it's a foreign game'," Mr Malook remembers, saying the team had to turn to friends for funds.

Nevertheless, the sport has continued to grow in Afghanistan, with only a few provinces without active local teams.

The International Cricket Council is now helping provide resources, and more and more of the country's talent is being nurtured inside Afghanistan, as shown by the country's thriving youth teams.

Cricket first took root in the Pashtun-majority provinces bordering Pakistan, and it has a reputation as being a Pashtun sport in Afghanistan, but even this is changing, with members of many of Afghanistan's other communities now represented in the national team.

When the team had its crucial World Cup qualifier match, it wasn't just Pashtuns who were praying for an Afghan victory - all of us Afghans were.

And it wasn't just Pashtuns who were out celebrating and dancing in the streets after the victory - Hazaras, Uzbeks and Tajiks were too.

Mr Sadiq says he is proud that proud that "our victory and cricket brought happiness to our county" and that the sport has "changed his life totally".

"I am very happy that we have raised our national flag in every part of the world, and showed a positive picture of our country to the rest of world that Afghanistan is not just a country of war and drugs, it's a county of love and sports," he says.

Afghans were united in celebration when the team qualified for the World Cup

Pakistan mob kills woman, girls, over 'blasphemous' Facebook post

Pakistan mob kills woman, girls, over 'blasphemous' Facebook post (in other words - I don't like you so I'm going to kill you and your family')

 

EPA: Muhammad Owais

Police arrive at the houses of Ahmadis after they were torched by a mob following accusations of blasphemy in Gujranwala, Pakistan.

14 hr ago By Syed Raza Hassan of Reuters

 

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani mob killed a woman member of a religious sect and two of her granddaughters after a sect member was accused of posting blasphemous material on Facebook, police said Monday, the latest instance of growing violence against minorities.

The dead, including a seven-year-old girl and her baby sister, were Ahmadis, who consider themselves Muslim but believe in a prophet after Mohammed. A 1984 Pakistani law declared them non-Muslims and many Pakistanis consider them heretics.
Police said the late Sunday violence in the town of Gujranwala, 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital, Islamabad, started with an altercation between young men, one of whom was an Ahmadi accused of posting "objectionable material".
"Later, a crowd of 150 people came to the police station demanding the registration of a blasphemy case against the accused," said one police officer who declined to be identified.
"As police were negotiating with the crowd, another mob attacked and started burning the houses of Ahmadis."
The youth accused of making the Facebook post had not been injured, he said.
Under Pakistani law, Ahmadis are banned from using Muslim greetings, saying Muslim prayers or referring to his place of worship as a mosque.
Salim ud Din, a spokesman for the Ahmadi community, said it was the worst attack on the community since simultaneous attacks on Ahmadi places of worship killed 86 Ahmadis four years ago.
"Police were there but just watching the burning. They didn't do anything to stop the mob," he said. "First they looted their homes and shops and then they burnt the homes."
The police officer said they had tried to stop the mob.
Accusations of blasphemy are rocketing in Pakistan, from one in 2011 to at least 68 last year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. About 100 people have been accused of blasphemy this year.
Human rights workers say the accusations are increasingly used to settle personal vendettas or to grab the property of the accused.
(Additional reporting, writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Shining a spotlight on multi-billion dollar waste in Afghanistan

Speedboats for a landlocked nation, a soybean planting program in a country that eats wheat, airplanes rusting on the tarmac — there has been a litany of waste from the $103 billion spent by the US in Afghanistan.

Putting it into context, blunt-speaking independent watchdog John Sopko says by the end of this year the United States will have spent since 2001 "more money on reconstruction in Afghanistan than we did on the entire Marshall Plan" which was put into action after World War II to rebuild European economies.

Since becoming Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) two years ago, Sopko and his 200-strong team have been skewering US agencies for pouring money down the drain, as well as shining a light on Afghan and US officials for shameless corruption.

"A lot of the money's been spent wisely, but a lot has not... It's probably billions of dollars that have been wasted," Sopko told AFP in an interview.  "We've built schools that have fallen down, clinics that there are no doctors for, we've built roads that are falling apart. It's massive."  "We spent too much money, too fast, in too small a country with little oversight."

No-one asks the Afghans

The $34.4 million spent on a project to grow soybeans is for Sopko symptomatic of such waste and an overbearing US attitude that "we know what's best for Afghans."  "We came up with a brillant idea, but we never talked to the Afghans. The Afghans don't grow it, they don't like it, they don't eat it, there's no market for it."
The fear is now that as international troops leave by late 2016 there will be even less oversight of US spending despite Washington's pledge to keep up support to help rebuild the nation wracked by decades of war.  With another $20 billion still in the pipeline, some $6 billion to $8 billion is expected to flood annually into the country for the foreseeable future.

Speaking passionately about his mission from his office with stunning views over Capitol Hill and the White House, Sopko says he's not out to cut funds to the Afghan people.  Indeed he is warning US lawmakers not to go "cold turkey."  "If we stop the reconstruction suddenly, we run some really grave risk because the Afghans can't afford the government we've provided for them," he said.
"They cannot currently pay for their police, pay for their military, pay for their hospitals, pay for the roads, pay the salaries... So if we suddenly end this, our intentions, our initial reason for going in there, could be really put at risk."

But as US troops withdraw, so will the 40 SIGAR staff based around Afghanistan as they cannot be left without protection amid the deadly ongoing Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgency.  All US government agencies should already be putting into place contingencies for keeping eyes on the funds, Sopko said, voicing surprise at the lack of urgency he has detected.  Oversight has "got to be mission critical, it's got to be built into your program," he said, adding "it can't just be a blackhole."

Opium 'cancer'

But he voiced optimism that despite the audit of disputed presidential elections, a new government could emerge willing to crackdown on corruption as well as the opium trade.  The US counter-narcotics program inside Afghanistan "has been a failure," said Sopko, a former prosecutor.  Since the US invasion in 2001 "there's more hectares under cultivation, the production of opium has gone up, you look at the numbers on exports, that has gone up. You look at drug usage in Afghanistan that has gone up."  "As a result, you have a growing cancer inside Afghanistan. In many areas there's a rival to the government, and it's not the insurgency, it's the narco-traffickers."  Experts estimate that as much as 90 percent of the world's global opium supply comes from Afghan poppy fields.

And Sopko brushes off criticism that he is overzealous, saying it is not his job to be "a cheerleader" for US programs in Afghanistan, but to protect both tax-payer dollars and the Afghan people.
"The Afghan people know exactly how the money is being spent or not being spent. And that is the real shame of this. It's almost like a dirty trick... The people who really hurt are the people we are supposed to be helping."