Bamyan people protest on Shakila's raped and killed case

Photos by Star Bamiyan 

Top Afghans Tied to ’90s Carnage, Researchers Say

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

A human skull and bones at a mass grave near the Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif. Such graves still litter the countryside.

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The atrocities of the Afghan civil war in the 1990s are still recounted in whispers here — tales of horror born out of a scorched-earth ethnic and factional conflict in which civilians and captured combatants were frequently slaughtered en masse.

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Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

A mass grave, covered by the brick structure on bottom right, was found near Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.

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Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

Tarpaulin covers the site of the mass grave where, experts say, the remains of at least 16 victims were found.

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Clockwise from top left: Zaheeruddin Abdullah/Associated Press; Caren Firouz/Reuters; Ahmad Jamshid/Associated Press; Musadeq Sadeq/Associated Press

Clockwise from top left, Ahmed Shah Massoud, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum,Vice President Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim and SecondVice President Karim Khalili are named in the report.

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The New York Times

The mass graves that were found include sites in the Dasht-e-Leili desert, and at Dehdadi, Khalid Ibn al-Walid and Kefayet Square.

Stark evidence of such killings are held in the mass graves that still litter the Afghan countryside. One such site is outside Mazar-i-Sharif, in the north. It lies only half-excavated, with bones and the remains of clothing partially obscured by water and mud from recent flooding. Experts say at least 16 victims are here, and each skull that lies exposed is uniformly punctured by a single bullet-entry hole at the back.

The powerful men accused of responsibility for these deaths and tens of thousands of others — some said to be directly at their orders, others carried out by men in their chain of command — are named in the pages of a monumental 800-page report on human rights abuses in Afghanistan from the Soviet era in the ’80s to the fall of the Taliban in 2001, according to researchers and officials who helped compile the study over the past six years.

The list of names is a sort of who’s who of power players in Afghanistan: former and current warlords or officials, some now in very prominent positions in the national government, as well as in insurgent factions fighting it. Many of the named men were principals in the civil war era after the Soviet Union withdrew, and they are also frequently mentioned when talk here turns to fears of violence after the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014. Already, there is growing concern about a scramble for power and resources along ethnic and tribal lines.

But the report seeking to hold them accountable is unlikely to be released anytime soon, the researchers say, accusing senior Afghan officials of effectively suppressing the work and those responsible for it. For their part, human rights activists say the country is doomed to repeat its violent past if abuses are not brought to light and prosecuted.

At the same time, some officials here — including some American diplomats — express worry that releasing the report will actually trigger new civil strife.

Titled simply, “Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan Since 1978,” the study, prepared by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, details the locations and details of 180 mass graves of civilians or prisoners, many of the sites secret and none of them yet excavated properly. It compiles testimony from survivors and witnesses to the mass interments, and details other war crimes as well.

The study was commissioned as part of a reconciliation and justice effort ordered by President Hamid Karzai in 2005, and it was completed this past December. Some of the world’s top experts in forensics and what is called transitional justice advised the commission on the report and provided training and advice for the 40 researchers who worked on it over a six-year period.

Three Afghan and foreign human rights activists who worked as researchers and analysts on large sections of the report spoke about its contents on condition of anonymity, both out of fear of reprisal and because the commission had not authorized them to discuss it publicly.

According to Afghan rights advocates and Western officials, word that the report was near to being officially submitted to the president apparently prompted powerful former warlords, including the first vice president, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, to demand that Mr. Karzai dismiss the commissioner responsible, Ahmad Nader Nadery.

At a meeting on Dec. 21, including Mr. Karzai and other top officials, Marshal Fahim argued that dismissing Mr. Nadery would actually be too mild a punishment. “We should just shoot 30 holes in his face,” he said, according to one of those present. He later apologized to other officials for the remark, saying it was not meant in earnest.

Mr. Karzai did remove Mr. Nadery. But a spokesman for the president, Aimal Faizi, said it was “irresponsible and untrue” to say that the president fired Mr. Nadery because of the mass graves report or was trying to block its release. He also called the accounts of the Dec. 21 meeting with Marshal Fahim and other officials “totally baseless.”

Mr. Nadery had finished two five-year terms as a commissioner and the president was legally entitled to replace him, Mr. Faizi said. “This decision has nothing to do with any A.I.H.R.C. report on war atrocities,” he said. “We believe that if there is any such report by the A.I.H.R.C., sooner or later it will come up and will be published one day.”

The figures accused in the report of playing some role in mass killings include some of the most powerful figures in Afghanistan’s government and ethnic factions, including the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban in 2001.

Among them are First Vice President Fahim, a Tajik from the Jamiat Islami Party, and Second Vice President Karim Khalili, a Hazara leader from the Wahdat Party; Gen. Atta Mohammed Noor, a Tajik from the Jamiat Islami Party and now the governor of the important northern province of Balkh, of which Mazar-i-Sharif is capital; and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former Uzbek warlord from the Jumbush Party who holds the honorary title of chief of staff to the supreme commander of the Afghan Armed Forces, among many others.

Those men gave no response to verbal and written requests for comment about their naming in the report.

In all, the researchers said, more than 500 Afghans are named in the report as responsible for mass killings, including the country’s revered national martyr, Ahmed Shah Massoud, one of the last militia leaders to hold out against the Taliban sweep to power and who was assassinated by Al Qaeda just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The report also investigates killings of civilians and prisoners said to be carried out by the Taliban and other insurgents, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami insurgents.

Named specifically in the report as responsible for war crimes in massacres of prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif are two Taliban commanders now held at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp — Mullah Fazul Akhund and Mullah Khairullah Khirkawa — and whose release is thought to be a condition of negotiations with the insurgent group.

Entombed Evidence

As the report languishes, evidence in the graves is being destroyed, sometimes as a function of poor care of the sites and sometimes intentionally.

One mass grave containing more than 100 dead was discovered in the Kefayet Square area of Mazar-i-Sharif, where General Noor holds sway, during a road-building project in March. The half-dozen bodies that were turned up were simply relocated to a cemetery and the construction went on, bulldozing over most of the rest of the remains.

In 2007, two mass graves in the Khalid Ibn al-Walid township of Mazar were simply covered over by construction of a new residential complex that researchers said was developed and owned by General Noor.

A researcher for the Afghan rights commission who investigated both of the graves in Khalid Ibn al-Walid said the victims were killed by General Noor’s political party, which had what the researcher called a “human slaughterhouse” on the site in the 1990s, as well as by the Taliban, who later took over the same facility for the same purpose.

In the case of the grave with exposed skulls, it was discovered in January by American and Afghan workers during a United States Army Corps of Engineers construction project in Dehdadi District, six miles outside Mazar-i-Sharif — one of at least two graves found there so far. Human rights investigators said that grave dated from the period when General Dostum and his Hazara allies controlled the site; the victims, their wrists still bound in many cases with stout twine, included women and children, judging from the clothing found with them.

During the civil war period, after the Communists were defeated and before the Taliban took power, warlords like General Noor, General Dostum, and the Hazara leader Hajji Mohammad Mohaqiq fought bitterly among themselves as well as against the Taliban, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns. The conflict among these leaders, who had all fought in the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, was on both political and ethnic grounds.

For many Afghans, the warlords’ atrocities are taken as a given — old news better left unrevived.

“It will take us centuries to forget this,” said an Afghan National Army lieutenant colonel. “We don’t want to go back to those bad days again.”

In all, 13 mass graves have been identified in the Mazar-i-Sharif area, including one detailed by human rights workers in the Dasht-e-Leili desert in the neighboring Jawjzan Province, believed to contain 2,000 Taliban prisoners slaughtered by General Dostum’s forces.

“That grave was there and then suddenly it was not there,” said a second human rights worker who worked on the investigation in Jawjzan. “They just got rid of all the evidence.”

He said bulldozers were brought in during 2008 to remove the bodies, leaving huge pits behind. The remains were reportedly incinerated at a secret location, he said.

A Question of Will

Mr. Nadery would not discuss the contents of the mapping report except in the most general way. “You open the map in the report, you see there are dots everywhere,” he said. “Everyone should know that what they suffered was not unique. We should be able to tell our people: ‘This is our past, this is our history. It’s ugly, it’s bad, but we should be able to face it.’ ”

He said he still hoped that the commission would be able to submit the report, although he conceded that those prospects looked dim.

“I don’t want the report to become an event, just a headline for one day,” he said. Instead, he said, it needs to be presented officially so it can be acted on officially, whether by the Afghan government or by the international community.

He said the report tallied more than a million people killed in the conflict and 1.3 million disabled, although not all of those are necessarily victims of war crimes.

Other human-rights officials in Afghanistan also expressed urgency about releasing the report.

“There are lots of examples where a report like this was an important first step to bringing justice for the victims,” said Heather Barr, head of the Human Rights Watch office in Afghanistan. “It does put pressure on people who are named; it leads at least to marginalizing them.”

The volatility of the accusations was on full display in April, when a well-established but small political bloc, the Afghanistan Solidarity Party, held a demonstration against what it said were war criminals in government. “For us there is no difference between the Taliban and these war criminals,” said Hafizullah Rasikh, a party spokesman. “They are like twin brothers.”

Parliament responded with a declaration accusing the party of treason and demanding its disbandment.

A former mujahedeen commander, Abdul Hafiz Mansoor, who is now an editor of a weekly publication called Mujahed, did not deny that many atrocities took place, on all sides.

“One cannot make war with rosewater,” he said, referring to a popular ingredient in sweets and perfumes here. “If this war and all these killings were so bad, then why aren’t we putting their international backers on trial? If we talk about violation of human rights, we should accuse the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, who supported the mujahedeen at the time and now calls them warlords. Or President Ronald Reagan, who provided these warlords and human rights violators with Stinger missiles.”

The American Embassy here has been another source of objection to the mass-graves report. American officials say releasing the report would be a bad idea, at least until after Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential election — which is also when the NATO combat withdrawal should be complete. “I have to tell you frankly on the mapping thing, when I first learned about it, it scared me,” said a senior American official, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of embassy policy. “There will be a time for it, but I’m not persuaded this is the time.”

“It’s going to reopen all the old wounds,” the official said, noting that several men who were bitter rivals during the civil war were at least nominally working together in the government now.

For its part, the United Nations has supported release of the report. “The U.N. position has always been that such reports should always be released publicly,” said Georgette Gagnon, the top human rights officer for the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. “But it’s up to the commission and we would support whatever they decide to do.”

Of the 180 graves documented in the report, only one has so far been exhumed forensically because the Afghan authorities lack the facilities to carry out DNA testing and the sort of scientific identification of remains that was done systematically in Bosnia.

That one was a grave on the grounds of the Interior Ministry in Kabul, according to M. Ashraf Bakhteyari, head of the Forensic Science Organization, a foreign-trained group that carried out the exhumation. Mr. Bakhteyari said he was ordered by the Interior Ministry not to divulge who the victims were. “It is classified information,” he said.

He is frank, though, about the prospects for investigating the rest of Afghanistan’s mass graves. “It is impossible to prosecute those who are responsible for the mass graves,” Mr. Bakhteyari said. “Neither the international community nor the Afghan government have the will to do that.”

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

By ROD NORDLAND

We Must not Abandon our Commitment to Afghan Women

">The conference pledged over £10bn in funds for development in Afghanistan, with the UK one of the largest donors. This money will be vital in helping to shore up the fragile gains made over infrastructural development and human rights during the past 10 years. In particular, after the fresh horror of the video apparently showing the public execution of a young Afghan woman for adultery by Taliban gunmen, fears for the future of Afghanistan's women are growing.

Understandably women in Afghanistan are scared. They are scared that in all the political horse-trading that will occur as the international community begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, their rights will be sacrificed in the rush for the exit.

Let's not forget, significant progress on women's rights has been made. We can already be proud that UK aid to Afghanistan means that it is now possible for many girls to go to school and for women to take part in public life. And in case anyone thinks this money might be disappearing into some warlord's pocket - take a look at the numbers. Women now make up 27% of the Afghan parliament (it's 22% in our own parliament, in case you were wondering) and some 2.7 million girls are now at school in Afghanistan (under the Taliban it was virtually zero).

;">It must never be forgotten in all our rhetoric about a political solution that during their five years in power, the Taliban imposed a reign of terror on Afghan women. Women and girls were prisoners in their own homes, communities and towns. Afghanistan was hostile territory for women simply because they were women. The horrific abuses these women faced on a daily basis under the Taliban shocked the world and were one of the primary justifications for military interventions in 2001.

Without doubt progress has been hard-won, through bloody and tragic sacrifices made often by our own servicemen and women in combat, and often by brave Afghan civil rights campaigners both male and female - but during the past decade women's rights in Afghanistan have made great strides. There is no doubt, however, the job is not finished and the underlying statistics still make for grim reading and show just how easily all this work and promise could be undone if we don't get the leaving right. Because even now, Afghanistan remains one of the world's most dangerous places to be a woman. The maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world - an Afghan woman dies every two hours due to pregnancy-related causes. According to UN figures, a staggering 87% of Afghan women suffer domestic violence, and the scandal of marrying off very young daughters to much older, often abusive, men continues.

The Taliban and other armed groups have by no means relinquished control and still cast a dark shadow over women's lives in many parts of Afghanistan. Women in rural areas, particularly in the more conservative southern provinces and areas under de facto Taliban control, are being denied employment, freedom of movement and political participation.

High-profile female officials and human rights defenders have been killed simply for exercising their own rights or for defending the rights of others. These have included Malalai Kakar, the highest-ranking female police officer in Kandahar (she led a ten-woman police unit focused on domestic violence) shot dead by the Taliban on her way to work early one morning in 2008.

On top of targeted killings much-needed legislation like 2009's Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women is unfortunately having virtually no impact, with little or no willingness to implement them from the police or courts. In fact, women who report violence face being accused of crimes themselves. The most infamous case is that of Gulnaz, a young woman raped by her cousin's husband and then jailed for 12 years after she became pregnant. Like an estimated 400 women in Afghanistan, Gulnaz was imprisoned for a so-called "moral crime" and it took an unprecedented international campaign to win this one woman a presidential pardon last year.

As the date for the withdrawal of troops draws nearer and the jostling for political positions intensifies, the situation for women in Afghanistan has deteriorated. Hard-won gains are under sustained attack from conservative officials, religious bodies and insurgent groups. In the provinces of Ghazni, Logar and Wardak, for example, Amnesty International has talked to female officials who say that the direct threats from the Taliban are preventing them from travelling outside of the provincial centres and that most of the progress in girls' education and women's access to basic government services has been reversed.

The state of women's rights in Afghanistan is now at a critical crossroads. Surveys show there is widespread fear among Afghan women that their government and its international partners will trade away their rights in a cynical attempt to barter some kind of political settlement with insurgent groups ahead of the international military pull-out in 2014. The UK has a pivotal role to play. We have pledged to put women and girls at the heart of our international aid strategy. There is no other place where it is more critical to do so than Afghanistan. The Tokyo Conference is a vital opportunity for the UK to prove that our commitment to the women of Afghanistan in 2001 was not simply empty rhetoric.

Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides

Taliban publicly execute woman near Kabul: officials

 A man Afghan officials say is a member of the Taliban shot dead a woman accused of adultery in front of a crowd near Kabul, a video obtained by Reuters showed, a sign that the austere Islamist group dictates law even near the Afghan capital.

In the three-minute video, a turban-clad man approaches a woman kneeling in the dirt and shoots her five times at close range with an automatic rifle, to cheers of jubilation from the 150 or so men watching in a village in Parwan province.

"Allah warns us not to get close to adultery because it's the wrong way," another man says as the shooter gets closer to the woman. "It is the order of Allah that she be executed".

Provincial Governor Basir Salangi said the video, obtained on Saturday, was shot a week ago in the village of Qimchok in Shinwari district, about an hour's drive from Kabul.

Such rare public punishment was a painful reminder to Afghan authorities of the Taliban's 1996-2001 period in power, and it raised concern about the treatment of Afghan women 11 years into the NATO-led war against Taliban insurgents.

"When I saw this video, I closed my eyes ... The woman was not guilty; the Taliban are guilty," Salangi told Reuters.

When the unnamed woman, most of her body tightly wrapped in a shawl, fell sideways after being shot several times in the head, the spectators chanted: "Long live the Afghan mujahideen! (Islamist fighters)", a name the Taliban use for themselves.

The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

Despite the presence of over 130,000 foreign troops and 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, the Taliban have managed to resurge beyond their traditional bastions of the south and east, extending their reach into once more peaceful areas like Parwan.

HARD-WON WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN JEOPARDY?

Afghan women have won back basic rights in education, voting and work since the Taliban, who deemed them un-Islamic for women, were toppled by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001.

But fears are rising among Afghan women, some lawmakers and rights activists that such freedoms could be traded away as the Afghan government and the United States pursue talks with the Taliban to secure a peaceful end to the war.

Violence against women has increased sharply in the past year, according to Afghanistan's independent human rights commission. Activists say there is waning interest in women's rights on the part of President Hamid Karzai's government.

"After 10 years (of foreign intervention), and only a few kilometres from Kabul... how could this happen in front of all these people?" female lawmaker Fawzia Koofi said of the public execution in Parwan.

"This is happening under a government that claims to have made so much progress in women's rights, claims to have changed women's lives, and this is unacceptable. It is a huge step backwards," said Koofi, a campaigner for girls' education who wants to run in the 2014 presidential election.

Salangi said two Taliban commanders were sexually involved with the woman in Parwan, either through rape or romantically, and decided to torture her and then kill her to settle a dispute between the two of them.

"They are outlaws, murderers, and like savages they killed the woman," he said, adding that the Taliban exerted considerable sway in his province.

Earlier this week a 30-year-old woman and two of her children were beheaded in easternAfghanistan by a man police said was her divorced husband, the latest of a string of so-called "honour killings".

Some Afghans still refer to Taliban courts for settling disputes, viewing government bodies as corrupt or unreliable. The courts use sharia (Islamic law), which prescribes punishments such as stonings and executions.

(Additional reporting and writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Man kills three member of his family

Local officials in Ghazni said a man in an unprecedented crime in Ghazni province killed his wife, son and daughter by knife.
Shukrea Wali, head of provincial women affairs department by confirming the incident said that the victims include a 30 year old divorced woman, Hakim an eight year old boy and Setara the ten year old girl.

Head of women affairs department of Ghazni province said “dead bodies have been taken to hospital” she added that the woman and her son’s and girl’s are likely to have been murdered by her husband.
Chief of provincial women affairs department said “the women had been beaten by her husband last year which let to divorce between them”. She adds that it has been a year that the woman was living with her three children in the Third plan are of Ghazni city.
Head of provincial women affairs department said “woman`s husband is an addicted and he also had beaten her wife many times last year”
Meanwhile, Baz Mohammad Hemmat, head of Ghazni civilian hospital in a news conference said that the dead bodies were taken to hospital at early hours of morning today.
Earlier, Mohammad Hussain, head of Ghazni police told Bokhdi News Agency that the escaped father of the family is the accused and police department is trying to arrest him and hand him over to justice.  

Justice Minister Apologises for Derogatory Remarks on Women Shelters

Afghanistan's Minister of Justice Habibullah Ghaleb apologised for statements he made last week calling women's shelters "centers of misconduct" and suggesting that women residing in them were prostitutes.

Ghaleb expressed his regrets for his provocative remarks at a press conference in Kabul.

"I again emphasise that if the women, who are my daughters and sisters, have been upset by me, I as their father and older brother apologise, not once, but a thousand times," he said on Sunday.

Ghaleb had made the comment on the shelters at a conference organised by the Afghan parliament's Women's Affairs Committee.

He told delegates that the 250 women living in foreign-funded shelters across the country were being encouraged to disobey their parents.

"Mostly they were encouraging girls, saying, 'If your father says anything bad to you don't listen to him, if your mother says anything to you don't listen to them.

There are safe houses for you where you can stay.' What safe houses? What sort of immorality and prostitution is happening at these places?" he said.

His comments received widespread condemnation from women-related organisations across Afghanistan and calls for President Hamid Karzai to sack him.

EU foreign minister Baroness Ashton said last week that she was "deeply troubled" by Ghaleb's comments which had only served to undermine efforts to protect women from violence and sexual abuse.

"Too many Afghan women have experienced violence, gender based and sexual, often on a repeated basis," she said in a statement. "Women forced to resort to shelters are amongst the bravest Afghans we know."

Taliban killed five family members in Helmand province

Most of the time when the local people cooperate with the central government or receive any help from the government they come under the attack of the Taliban.

In the recent incident in Sangin district of southern province of Helamand Taliban killed five members of a family.
Dawood Ahmadi provincial governor spokesman confirmed and told Bokhdi News Agency: “last night Taliban entered in a residential house in this district shot and killed five members of this family”.
It comes the time that this family one day prior to this as they were killed received a few bags of formed seed on behalf of Helmand Agriculture and Irrigation Department. 
Ahmadi added initial investigation show the reason behind this incident is the distribution of formed seed but he declined to give further details onward and said, it needs more investigation.
Helmand province is located in the south part of the country and in its some part the Taliban groups have active presence.
Most of the time when the local people cooperate with the central government or receive any help from the government they come under the attack of the Taliban. 
Recently Helmand agriculture and irrigation department distributed a few bags of formed seed of wheat among the residential people of Sangin district to encourage the people to do not cultivate poppy in their farmland.
Elham Sorosh-Helmand

Top Afghan lawyer Kabir Ranjbar arrested on rape charge

A PROMINENT Afghan lawyer close to a possible presidential candidate has been arrested on charges of kidnapping and raping a woman.

Kabir Ranjbar, the president of the Afghan Lawyers' Union and a former member of parliament, was detained on Saturday, deputy attorney-general Rahmatullah Nazari said.

Mr Nazari said the woman, now aged 20, was kidnapped from Dehsabz district, northeast of Kabul, about two and a half years ago and held at the home of Mr Ranjbar's niece.

Mr Ranjbar, a familiar face on Afghan television talk shows, allegedly got the woman drunk and raped her, the prosecutor said, and two months ago she gave birth to his child.

"I can confirm Kabir Ranjbar, a former Kabul MP in the lower house of parliament, has been arrested by the attorney-general's office yesterday, accused of kidnapping and raping a girl," Mr Nazari said, adding that the investigation was at an early stage.

Mr Ranjbar is a key member of the Right and Justice Party, led by ex-interior minister Hanif Atmar, who is seen as a potential candidate for the presidential election in 2014

Afghanistan bombs kill 58 in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif

Twin attacks apparently targeting Shia Muslims have killed at least 58 people in Afghanistan. In the deadliest incident, a suspected suicide bomb struck a shrine packed with worshippers in the capital, Kabul, killing at least 54.

BBC

Another blast hit the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif at about the same time, killing four people.

The attacks appear to be of a sectarian nature unprecedented in recent Afghan history, correspondents say.

They coincided with the Shia Muslim festival of Ashura - the most important day in the Shia calendar and marked with a public holiday in Afghanistan.

Ashura is the climax of Muharram, the month of mourning for the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

The police have cordoned off all roads to the blast site in the medieval Murad Khani district where many Shias had gathered to commemorate Ashura at the Abu Fazal mosque.

Here, at an emergency surgical centre just 10 minutes from the site, people are gathered crying and wailing. I have heard women shouting: "My son is dead, my son is dead." I have seen people with charred clothing.

Security forces have been ferrying victims to waiting ambulances. There are many wounded too. Those who were there say there are a lot of casualties. People are gathering in front of the hospital and the police are on the streets around here controlling the traffic.

Children hit

The near-simultaneous explosions happened at about midday (07:30 GMT).

In Kabul, the bomb went off near a gathering of hundreds of Shias singing at the Abu Fazal shrine.

Fifty-four people were killed in the blast, said health ministry spokesman Norughli Kargar, while 150 were injured.

"It was very loud. My ears went deaf and I was blown three metres [yards]," Mustafa, who uses only one name, told Associated Press news agency.

"There was smoke and red blood on the floor of the shrine. There were people lying everywhere."

Amid the chaos straight after the blast, a young girl, dressed in a green shalwar kameez (traditional dress) smeared in blood, stood shrieking, surrounded by the crumpled, piled-up bodies of children, AFP reported.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke of the unprecedented nature of the attack, saying it was "the first time that, on such an important religious day in Afghanistan, terrorism of that horrible nature is taking place".

No-one had claimed to have carried out the attacks, said Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul's criminal investigation department.

A Taliban statement said the group had not been behind either incident.

Police said they foiled another attack elsewhere in the capital.

The bomb which exploded near the main mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif was apparently strapped to a bicycle, and went off shortly after the Kabul blast.

Balkh province Deputy Police Chief Abdul Raouf Taj said the device exploded as a convoy of Shias, shouting in celebration of Ashura, passed by, AP reported.

At least 17 people were injured.

Elsewhere, police said at least three people were wounded by a motorcycle bomb in the southern city of Kandahar, the Taliban's heartland - but it appears to have been unconnected to the other two attacks.

Rarity

Mohammad Bakir Shaikzada, the top Shiite cleric in Kabul, said he could not remember a similar attack on such a scale.

"This is a crime against Muslims during the holy day of Ashura," he told AP.

"We Muslims will never forget these attacks. It is the enemy of the Muslims who are carrying them out," he said, though he would not speculate on who might be responsible.

There are tensions between Sunni and minority Shia Muslims in Afghanistan, but violence of the type seen in Pakistan or Iraq is rare, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says.

Over the past decade Shias in Afghanistan have celebrated their festivals more confidently, openly and on a bigger scale than ever before.

The attacks come a day after an international conference on Afghanistan's future was held, in the German city of Bonn.

Pakistan boycotted the conference, after a Nato attack killed 24 of its troops at a checkpoint near the Afghan border last month.

Afghan security officials held their breath during the conference, our correspondent says, fearing there might an attack in Kabul to divert attention.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the bomb attacks.

Are you in Kabul? Were you in the area? Did you witness anything? Send us your comments and experiences.

US Soldiers Killing Civilians

Statement attributable to the Secretary-General

Statement attributable to the Secretary-General 
concerning the attack against the UNAMA compound in Mazar-i-Sharif

1 April 2011 - I condemn in the strongest terms the outrageous and cowardly attack against the United Nations office in Mazar-i-Sharif in Afghanistan. Our reports are still preliminary, but it appears that three United Nations international staff as well as four international security officers were killed in the attack. My Special Representative, Staffan de Mistura, has travelled to Mazar-i-Sharif and is personally overseeing the investigation.

Those who lost their lives in today’s attack were dedicated to the cause of peace in Afghanistan and to a better life for all Afghans. These brave men and women were working in the best tradition of the United Nations and gave their lives in the service of humanity.

I express my sincere condolences to the families and colleagues of those who were lost and call on the Afghan Government to thoroughly investigate this incident and bring its perpetrators to justice.

Nairobi/New York; 1 April 2011

UN staff killed during protest in northern Afghanistan

At least seven foreign UN workers have been killed after protesters stormed a UN compound in the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, officials say.

The compound was set alight as hundreds protested over the burning of the Koran in a US church last month. Several demonstrators were killed by guards.

Witnesses said the protest began peacefully but suddenly turned violent.

A local police spokesman told the BBC the city was now under control and a number of people had been arrested.

Dan McNorton, spokesman for the UN mission in Afghanistan, said: "Three international Unama (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) staff members were killed, and four international armed security guards were killed."

Initial reports said eight foreign UN workers had died.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt later confirmed that one of the dead was a Swede, 27-year-old UN worker Joakim Dungel.

The Norwegian defence ministry said another of those killed was Lt Col Siri Skare, a 53-year-old female pilot. The other foreign victims are believed to be a Romanian and four Nepalese guards.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described it as "an outrageous and cowardly attack".

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

Bilal Sarwary
BBC News
Mazar-e Sharif is one of Afghanistan's largest cities - as well as one of its safest. Just last week, thousands peacefully celebrated the Persian new year.

The city is on a list of areas to be handed to full Afghan security control later this year. The attack on the UN compound raises serious questions about that plan.

A state of emergency has now been declared in the city, Afghan intelligence sources told the BBC. All roads in and out of Mazar have been blocked and cars are being checked. Special army and police units have been deployed to prevent further unrest.

The authorities are well aware of the dangers of protests spreading. In 2006, anger at cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper swept across Afghanistan. Dozens were killed or injured.

US President Barack Obama also condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms", saying the work of the UN "is essential to building a stronger Afghanistan".

The top UN representative in Afghanistan, Staffan De Mistura, has flown to the area to handle the matter.

Weapons seized
Witnesses said a crowd of several hundred staged a protest outside the Blue Mosque in the city after Friday prayers.

The crowds moved to outside the UN compound, where a small group broke away.

Munir Ahmad Farhad, a spokesman for Balkh province, said the group seized weapons from the guards and opened fire before storming the building.

Local police spokesman Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai told the BBC the attackers had used guns and knives.

He also told reporters that two of the dead UN staff were beheaded.

However, police Gen Abdul Rafu Taj said that "according to the initial reports... none were beheaded". He said they were shot in the head.

A number of suspected attackers have been arrested.

Officials have declared an emergency in the city - major roads in and out have been blocked.

'Hunted down'
Kieran Dwyer, director of communications for the UN mission in Afghanistan, said the UN workers had been trapped inside the compound and "hunted down" in what was an "overwhelming situation".

"These are civilian people, unarmed, here to do human rights work, to work for peace in Afghanistan - they were not prepared for this situation," he told the BBC.

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Farhan Haq of the UN said the organisation was still trying to establish the circumstances on the ground
Mr Dwyer said it was too early to tell how the attack happened or why the UN was targeted, but that the organisation would now take extra security measures.

But he added: "The UN is here to stay. We're here to work with the people to help them achieve peace, and this sort of thing just highlights how important that is."

On 20 March, Pastor Wayne Sapp set light to a copy of the Koran at a church in Florida.

The burning took place under the supervision of Terry Jones, another US pastor who last year drew condemnation over his aborted plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Protests were held in several other Afghan cities on Friday - which demonstrators in Herat had called a "day of anger", Afghanistan's Noor TV channel reports.

The BBC's Paul Wood in Kabul says Mazar-e Sharif is known to be a relatively peaceful part of the country, but that the Florida incident will raise questions of whether the city will be able to make the transition from foreign to Afghan security control later this year.

Our correspondent says that in a deeply religiously conservative country such as Afghanistan, that act has the power to inflame passions in otherwise peaceful areas.

Mr Jones told the BBC he was not responsible for the actions of the protesters.

The Kill Team, kill Haji

How U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan murdered innocent civilians and mutilated their corpses – and how their officers failed to stop them. Plus: An exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon.

Mark Boal

Early last year, after six hard months soldiering in Afghanistan, a group of American infantrymen reached a momentous decision: It was finally time to kill a haji. Among the men of Bravo Company, the notion of killing an Afghan civilian had been the subject of countless conversations, during lunchtime chats and late-night bull sessions. For weeks, they had weighed the ethics of bagging "savages" and debated the probability of getting caught. Some of them agonized over the idea; others were gung-ho from the start. But not long after the New Year, as winter descended on the arid plains of Kandahar Province, they agreed to stop talking and actually pull the trigger. Bravo Company had been stationed in the area since summer, struggling, with little success, to root out the Taliban and establish an American presence in one of the most violent and lawless regions of the country. On the morning of January 15th, the company's 3rd Platoon – part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, based out of Tacoma, Washington – left the mini-metropolis of tents and trailers at Forward Operating Base Ramrod in a convoy of armored Stryker troop carriers. The massive, eight-wheeled trucks surged across wide, vacant stretches of desert, until they came to La Mohammad Kalay, an isolated farming village tucked away behind a few poppy fields. to provide perimeter security, the soldiers parked the Strykers at the outskirts of the settlement, which was nothing more than a warren of mud-and-straw compounds. Then they set out on foot. Local villagers were suspected of supporting the Taliban, providing a safe haven for strikes against U.S. troops. But as the soldiers of 3rd Platoon walked through the alleys of La Mohammad Kalay, they saw no armed fighters, no evidence of enemy positions. Instead, they were greeted by a frustratingly familiar sight: destitute Afghan farmers living without electricity or running water; bearded men with poor teeth in tattered traditional clothes; young kids eager for candy and money. It was impossible to tell which, if any, of the villagers were sympathetic to the Taliban. The insurgents, for their part, preferred to stay hidden from American troops, striking from a distance with IEDs. While the officers of 3rd Platoon peeled off to talk to a village elder inside a compound, two soldiers walked away from the unit until they reached the far edge of the village. There, in a nearby poppy field, they began looking for someone to kill. "The general consensus was, if we are going to do something that fucking crazy, no one wanted anybody around to witness it," one of the men later told Army investigators. The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution. He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.

War of Afghanistan

Planting Trees, Burning Candles

by Steve Clemens In the morning we walked in groups of five for about 30-45 minutes through our area of Kabul en route to our morning activity. I awoke at 4 AM to use the bathroom and when the call to prayer was broadcast from the nearby mosque about 40 minutes later, I knew it was time to get up because the dogs on the street also joined the chorus. The city is fairly dirty (what does one expect in one of the poorest countries in the world which is at war with the world’s largest military machines?) and the traffic has no street lights or road striping so the cars switch invisible lanes as the pedestrians dodge and move between them. Vendors crowd the sidewalk selling fruit, live chickens, freshly butchered meat, nuts, beans, and a multitude of other items. We travel in groups of 4 or 5 – always escorted by one of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers. I know I shouldn’t have favorites - they are all so wonderful and helpful – but I can’t help but respond most to 13 year-old Gholami, the youngest and smallest of the 8 who have joined us for several days. We walk in small groups so we blend in a little more than if we all walk together. About half of the International Peace Delegation is staying at a hotel, others of us are sleeping on the floor in the office building of a non-profit organization that has joined with AYPV in inviting us. After walking down two main streets, we branch off into what seems to be a side street which more resembles an alley with an open sewer/gutter on one side. As cars or trucks pass us they blow their horns so we can step aside. Vans come by with other delegates from the hotel and we are offered rides but Simon and I prefer to walk with several of the boys, enjoying the sunshine and “fresh air”. Actually, the air is often quite polluted with fumes from older, untuned vehicles. We walk purposefully and deliberately so as to not draw undue attention, despite our pale complexions. (Simon, from Australia, is fairer-skinned than me.) Since most of the others arrived before us, we missed part of the presentation at the private school which was our destination. Lena, the teacher who addressed our group at the school, was a young woman who described the school and answered our questions. We had “one cup of tea” (we could have had more if we wished – even 3 Cups of Tea) but were told what Afghanistan needs is not more money to build schools but rather to have teachers properly trained. Having school buildings does no good without trained teachers. And teachers have to be paid a wage they can live with. The public school teachers are not paid enough and often have class sizes of 50-70 students – an impossible situation to help students learn at the grade school level. This private school had 20-25 students per class and it appeared to me at the recess time that the predominance was girls at this school. When asked about whether the US military is needed for security, both the school’s principal and the teacher quickly said they wanted the US troops to leave. Lena added that “we need to make peace by ourselves” – it is not something that can be imposed from the outside. She continued, “Instead of waging war [here], the US could concentrate on education instead”, using the incredible amounts of money to train teachers. The AYPV had picked this school for the tree-planting opportunity as a way to symbolically celebrate the New Year which would begin two days hence on the first day of Spring. Afghans are about to begin Year 1390 – their calendar, like that it many other Muslim-dominated nations, is dated from the time of their Prophet Mohammad. Students at the school drew or painted pictures of trees as an art project to celebrate the tree-planting event in their schoolyard. Before we moved to the schoolyard to plant the trees, Hakim and the AYPV boys recited a poem they wrote the night before, “We Need a Different Tree” – a moving statement of choosing peace over war. It lamented how “power and privilege oppress the people – it is perfected in war. … Why would an Afghan mother want a tree that kills? … War is not a tree we want to plant – so, if we wish to live without war, we need to plant a different tree.” Then 55 trees, almond, poplar, plum, apricot, and apple, were placed in the already-dug holes provided. A local man pruned them after they were planted and watered. As we finished, the children were let out of the classrooms for recess/exercise and they were enamored at the visitors to their school; some loved posing for photos, other avoided our cameras. The school principal announced that the garden/schoolyard would be re-named “The Friendship Garden.” The van ride back to our office space –like all rides in the Kabul traffic – was another adventure. Just when you think the driver will hit a bike rider or pedestrian, scrape an on-coming car or one that you are passing, the brakes are applied or the steering wheel turned to prevent the accident. Any insurance agency would have to be crazy to cover someone for collision –although I don’t seem much beyond very close calls. It makes rush hour in the Twin Cities look positively relaxing. Next on the day’s list (after a light lunch) was to drive to the Emergency Medical Hospital for civilian war casualties operated by an Italian NGO to donate our blood. (Ironically, I was told in Minneapolis before I left that I will not be able to donate platelets for a full year if I travel to Afghanistan due to threat of malaria – even though the threat doesn’t arrive until May, long after I’ve left.) My group had some difficulty getting a taxi to the hospital so we missed most of the tour and discovered that they only needed O negative blood that day. Two of us met that requirement but Kathy, who was one of the two, was asked to wait a couple of weeks since she gave at that hospital only several weeks before. She will donate again before she returns to Chicago in a couple of weeks. Returning to the office, we had a convoy of 5 huge armored tan vehicles of the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) pass us. Even though there were no US markings, it is clear to everyone who is in sight that these behemoths are the dinosaurs of the crumbling American empire – unfortunately still very deadly in its decline. Later in the afternoon, we walked to the 3rd Eye Photojournalism Center, the host organization for the candlelight vigil in remembrance of the victims of war. A stunning gallery of wonderful photos taken from all over Afghanistan graced the walls of the four rooms and a table with candles encircling a banner reading “For the War’s Victims” in both English and Dari. After a few moving talks and the reading of the names of the 7 boys who were killed earlier this month in one of the northern provinces, the AYPV boys lit candles and passed them to all of us and we observed 2 minutes of silence in memory of all of war’s victims. Many of us felt tears welling up knowing that two of the boys present had lost their father to the Taliban several years ago. I am amazed at their courage and commitment. At dinner afterward, I had a great conversation with Zahra, yesterday’s moving speaker from the Open Society, deeply moved by this 23 year old women who refuses to wear the veil except when she is outdoors. She has many questions for me – why I came here, what do I think about Afghanistan, what other Americans think about the war, … . I’m sure we will have several more conversations before our week’s end. Having gotten up before dawn, I was very grateful for the air mattress and sleeping bag at 9 PM. I am so grateful for so many friends who have supported me/us on this pilgrimage/journey for peace.