Azaranica is a non-biased news aggregator on Hazaras. The main aim is to promote understanding and respect for cultural identities by highlighting the realities they face on daily basis...Hazaras have been the victim of active persecution and discrimination and one of the reasons among many has been the lack of information, awareness, and disinformation.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

SAIL asks Rs 45K cr interest-free loans to develop Hajigak mines

Priyadarshi Siddhanta

Posted: Mon Dec 12 2011, 00:08 hrs
New Delhi:

A consortium led by state-owned steel giant SAIL has suddenly turned around and demanded that the government provide interest-free loans to the tune of Rs 45,000 crore to develop the prized Hajigak mines in Afghanistan and build a steel plant. The Afghan government had recently awarded the seven member consortium B, C and D blocks of the Hajigak mines in the Bamiyan province, located about 130 km west of Kabul. The three blocks together have reserves of 1.28 billion tonne.

Winning the bid has enabled the consortium called AFISCO (Afghan Iron & Steel Consortium) to commence formal negotiations with the Hamid Karzai government following which it would be granted licence for mineral concessions for Hajigak. The syndicate has also offered to set up a 6 MT steel plant adjacent to the mines and build the entire evacuation infrastructure and a 200 km of railroad network till the Iranian border city of Zahedan.

Indian Express

Further darkening of the horizon

Continued violence in Afghanistan seems to queer the pitch for US-Pakistan relations even as the Bonn conference fails to offer any potent solution

By Tanvir Ahmad Khan, Special to Gulf News

This was to be the season of hope in and around Afghanistan, but what we have instead is a further darkening of the horizon. Relations between Pakistan and the United States remain severely strained. The long awaited Bonn Conference has not even remotely lived up to its promise. No less ominously, violence in Afghanistan suddenly wore a new garb on the Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram.

It is probably an index of personal shock that I turn to the third factor first. Having lived in Kabul for four years and followed events in Afghanistan professionally for the last three decades, I am all too aware of ethnic and other divisions in the diversely constituted Afghan society, but sectarian violence was never a significant fault line.

In the social hierarchy, perpetuated by the Durrani state created by Ahmad Shah Abd Ali in the mid-18th century, social groups such as the Hazaras, who practice Shiite Islam, got relegated to a lower order only on ethnic and linguistic grounds. The American military intervention in 2001 reversed this trend as it dispossessed the predominantly Pashtun tribes of power and upgraded other ethnic groups. The backlash and resistance from Pashtun Taliban, however, articulated itself in political terrorism and not sectarian violence.

It has been a battle of turf and not of sects during the last decade. Unlike Iraq, where mysterious forces transformed the post-Baathist conflict into deadly sectarian combat, the Taliban fought the US, Nato and the Karzai government in the name of Islam and national sovereignty. They were quick to dissociate themselves from the most extraordinary attacks on Shiite gatherings in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar that left 59 dead this Ashura.

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Pakistan has faced a similar phenomenon in recent years though the government mounted a huge security operation this year and ensured total peace for the large, emotionally charged, Muharram processions.

Unsubstantiated claim

Unable to provide any other explanation, President Hamid Karzai made an unsubstantiated claim that the unprecedented sectarian violence in Afghanistan was the work of a banned extremist Sunni organisation rooted in the Punjab province of Pakistan. He offered no explanation how this outfit could operate as far away from Pakistan as Mazar-e-Sharif.

Pakistani analysts stopped taking Karzai's allegations seriously some time ago, but remain deeply preoccupied with the possibility that an invisible hand is stoking a sectarian fire now in Afghanistan. There was the carnage in Iraq. Pakistan itself was rocked by sectarian tensions despite a long history of Shiite-Sunni harmony. Iran produced evidence that a small militant Sunni group, Jundullah, was using Pakistani soil to launch murderous attacks in Iran at the behest of CIA.

Western think tanks regularly underline the supposed fragility of the oil-bearing eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia because of their Shiite population.

Last but not the least, the current Syrian harshness is being increasingly portrayed as rooted in a sectarian Alawite vs Sunni contest for power. It seems the region will hear a lot more of the so-called Shiite-Sunni "contradiction" in the months ahead.

Despite a decade that separated it from the earlier path-breaking Bonn 1, the Bonn Conference of December 5 (Bonn2) ended with an impressive communique, but little measurable progress towards reconciliation and reconstruction.

Not enough progress

Not enough, if any, progress had been made in contacts with the Taliban to seat them amongst the 90 states and 15 international organisations.

Reeling under a lethal Nato Special Forces attack that obliterated a Pakistani check post near the Afghan border, an attack noted for its duration and precise targeting of all the 49 Pakistani soldiers — Pakistan had stayed away from Bonn 2. In its simplest formulation, the conference looked stalemated between the American doctrine of "fight, talk and build" and the rest of the world, including the otherwise absent Pakistan and most of the European powers, veering round to a new approach described as "talk, talk and talk" after a futile 10-year old military campaign. Pakistan is still maintaining a stoppage of Nato supplies imposed after the destruction of its Salala check post.

Efforts are afoot to de-escalate tensions between Islamabad and Washington, but are regularly endangered by Washington peppering up peaceful overtures with gratuitous threats.
Meanwhile, issues between the two so-called allies have unleashed undercurrents that endanger the stability of Pakistan's elected government. An act as natural as President Asif Ali Zardari seeking medical treatment in the tranquillity of Dubai has let loose a storm of rumours, each darker than the other.

But of that, another day, another column.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary and ambassador of Pakistan. He is currently the chairman and director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

Gulf News

Afghan Shias Are The Best By Daneshmand

(AFP) Death toll from Afghan holy day bombs reaches 80

KABUL — Afghanistan said Sunday the death toll from bombings targeting the Shiite Muslim holy day of Ashura, which raised fears the nation could face an eruption of sectarian violence, has climbed to 80....Continue Reading......

Sesame Street: Can it save Afghanistan?

Sesame Street brings its message of tolerance and hope to a war-torn nation.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The team that was crowded into a slightly down-at-heel office in central Kabul could not look more ordinary. There was Zubaid, a young man in a sweater with a knitted cap pulled low over his head, Ali, in a suit, tall with cropped hair; Ferishta, in a typical long black coat-dress and blue headscarf. They and the others in the room were a bit shy, smiling politely.

But put them in a sound studio and they are transformed: this is the uniquely talented crew that is now bringing the characters of Sesame Street to life for thousands, perhaps millions, of Afghan children.

Supported by a grant from the US Embassy in Kabul, the Kaboora production house has worked for the past 10 months to make Shahpar and Kachkool — Big Bird and Grover, to most — household names in Afghanistan.

The show premiered just one week ago, and has attracted a lot of attention in a country starved for some good news for a change.

According one Kabul parent, whose 3-year-old is a finicky eater, Sesame Street has already proved a boon.

“Once he saw the characters, our little Hamsa sat right down and ate his cereal,” laughed Inayat.

Others were similarly impressed.

“My 5-year-old nephew was stuck to the television until the end of the show,” said Fazel Oria, a Kabul resident. “I did not feel it was a foreign show at all.”

The style might take some getting used to, though.

“I did not think it was attractive,” said Huzzein Hazara, a Kabul resident who watched the show with his daughters. “While it was on my daughters were asking me to find Tom and Jerry.”

Tania Farzana, the Afghan-American executive producer of the show, is hoping that Sesame Street will do more than make children behave. She has set herself the mission of bringing a new vision to a generation that has known nothing but war.

More from GlobalPost: Spa Kabul: In search of respite in a war zone

“I was the luckiest child in the world,” said Farzana, who was born in Kabul in the 1970s, before leaving for the United States at the age of nine. “There was so much comfort and warmth, a sense of security. Children now cannot even imagine a Kabul like that.”

Coming back after close to 30 years was a shock.

“The first three months broke my heart,” she confessed. “Nothing was the way I remembered it.”

Farzana recalls a Kabul where her mother rode a bike to university, where women were free to do what they liked.

“My mother never even wore one of these,” she said, flicking at the white headscarf that covered her dark hair.

Through Sesame Street, Farzana wants to give children back a sense of wonder.

“I am hoping we can give them the right to use their imaginations,” she said. “This instills empathy, the ability to identify with others.”

This, in turn, could help to reduce some of the religious, ethnic, and regional divides that exist among Afghans.

The project is an ambitious one. While much of the footage is archival stock straight from New York, giving the Sesame Street Muppets their own Afghan identity has been a challenge.

“We interviewed over 600 applicants for 15 characters,” Farzana said. “The voices had to be dead-on. I wanted them to be perfect.”

It is not just a matter of translating the original dialogue into Dari or Pashto, she added. The language has to be pitched just right for the age group — three to seven — and, in addition, has to have the same number of syllables as the English text, so that the famous Sesame Street mouth flaps will match the new words.

“Our actors have become co-creators in making the dialogues work,” she said.

In addition to the familiar character pieces, though, Farzana is making 26 original films about Afghan life and society, to insert into the half-hour show.

These will cover topics as diverse as the first day of school and kite flying.

The first day of school will feature a little Hazara girl. The choice was not accidental.

“Many people call Hazaras, who are mainly Shia, ‘infidels,’” she said. “We wanted to show that this little girl’s mother blessed her with the Quran as she left the house, just as millions of mothers do every day. We want a Pashtun child in the south, a Tajik or Uzbek child in the north, to watch the film and say ‘that girl is just like me.’”

Farzana’s message is particularly important in the wake of a horrific attack on Shiites in Kabul on Dec. 6, as they marked their holy day of Ashura. More than50 people were killed, and many feared a new round of ethnic or sectarian violence in the country.

Sesame Street, or Bagch-e-Simsim, as it is called here, wants to put those fears to rest.

But as Afghan culture rubs up against Sesame Street rules, sparks begin to fly.

“We had some amazing footage of children flying kites on rooftops,” Farzana said. “This happens all over Afghanistan. But Sesame Street said we could not use it because it was against their safety rules.”

Sesame Street sets great store by teaching children how to protect themselves, and did not want young Afghans encouraged to take up such a dangerous activity.

The compromise: Farzana’s team added a graphic fence to the film.

More problematic is the season’s final show, in which Farzana wants to show a father taking his 6-year-old daughter to Friday prayer. But Sesame Street in New York, with its resolutely secular message, balked.

“I told them this is not about religion,” she said. “It is about community. In Afghanistan, social life revolves around the mosque; you go there to meet old friends and make new ones; you go to feel that you are never alone.”

She got a tentative go-ahead from New York, but then ran into trouble on the Afghan side.

“So many people did not want me to show a father taking his daughter to the mosque. ‘She’s a girl!’ they said. But I answered, ‘she’s a child!’”

The issue is still not resolved, but Farzana, a woman of prodigious energy and enthusiasm, vows that the segment will be shown.

“I will have a film on Friday prayer,” she said firmly.

In the meantime, she is content with the progress she is making. Her team, she points out, has forged strong bonds, overcoming all the obstacles that Afghanistan’s post-war society puts in their way.

“Look at these two,” she said, gesturing at Zubaid and Ali. “One is Pashtun, one is Kizlbash. One speaks Pashto, the other Dari. One is from the north, the other from the south. There is so much that divides them, but they are the best of friends. Yesterday they went horseback riding together.”

Asked if Bagch-e-Simsim had helped them to get past their surface differences, Zubaid answered with a wry smile.

“Yes,” he said. “When we were out there riding, it was Zubaid, Ali, Big Bird and Grover, all together.”

Kabul-based journalist Abdul Qayum Suroush contributed to this report.

Global Post

Saturday, December 10, 2011

(BBC) New Afghan group claims shrine attack part of campaign

At least 71 Shia worshippers died in Afghanistan's first significant sectarian attack in years

Tuesday's bombing of a Kabul shrine was part of a campaign to target Shia Muslims in Afghanistan, a man claiming to lead a new Afghan group says.

The man, who gave his name as Ali Sher-e-Khuda, told the BBC his group was inspired by Pakistan's Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organisation.

He said the group had not officially sanctioned the Kabul attack, but did not deny his men carried it out.

It has raised fears of a wave of new sectarian violence in Afghanistan.

Afghan officials say the attack was the work of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, but they have cast doubt there is a new Afghan group active in the country with formal links to it.

The killing of at least 71 Shia worshippers earlier this week was the first significant sectarian attack in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

Despite suffering years of violence, the country has not seen the attacks between Sunni and Shia Muslims that have been common in Pakistan and Iraq.

'Fighting discrimination'
Ali Sher-e-Khuda spoke to the BBC's Shoaib Hasan at a secret location in the Pakistani border province of Balochistan.

He said his group - which he called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan - is relatively new and operated on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border.

He said the organisation was made up of Afghans who are targeting Afghanistan's Shia minority.

I know all about Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. I am totally unaware of any Afghan affiliate. I personally doubt very much that there is such a thing”

Ryan Crocker
US ambassador to Afghanistan
"I was born in Nimroz and am of Afghan Pashtun origin," he said.

"[I] set up the organisation with other like-minded young men from Afghanistan. Most of them hail from the provinces around Bamiyan - especially Wardak and Ghazni provinces," he said.

Mr Sher-e-Khuda said Tuesday's bombing was about fighting discrimination by "Afghanistan's ruling Shia elite".

When challenged on the tactic of murdering dozens of innocent worshippers, the militant leader argued it was the only way to counter what he described as "criminal behaviour" by Shias - such as displaying Shia banners in Sunni areas.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others believe the attack was mounted by one the established militant groups based inside Pakistan.

"Our information and sources show that the Kabul attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," Afghan intelligence agency spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said.

Our correspondent says Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is one of Pakistan's deadliest militant groups. As well as being blamed for the killing of thousands of Shias, it has also been linked to a string of high-profile attacks, including the 2002 murder of US reporter Daniel Pearl.

Afghan caution

Mr Mashal said that as far as the National Directorate of Security was concerned, there was no such group as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Afghanistan.

He said the claim was a tactic by Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to create sectarian tensions as the shrine attack had failed in its goal "to create a rift between Sunnis and Shias" in Afghanistan.

The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, said it was not clear who carried out the attack.

"I served in Pakistan for three years, I know all about Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. I am totally unaware of any Afghan affiliate," he said. "I personally doubt very much that there is such a thing."

BBC

Danger in spread of sectarian conflict

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Syria have taken a turn for the worse, with developments that are likely to go far beyond those countries.
Today new Defence Secretary Philip Hammond delivers his first major speech - about how Britain intends to prepare its forces for security at home and abroad. Already there is talk of moving on from success in Libya to other hot spots....Continue Reading.......