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Article by Bette Dam quotes Sari Kouvo on the lack of progress in Afghanistan in the field of rule of law: the US and the international community are in ‘exit mode’ and are seeking stability at any cost. Many people who may be involved in atrocities, dubbed ‘spoilers’ in Afghanistan, are seen as either too dangerous to marginalise or as potentially important to the peace process.

http://www.ictj.org/en/news/coverage/article/4185.html

The 102 interpreters who have assisted the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan are angry. Although they have risked their lives for the country, the Netherlands has abandoned them. The Americans, by comparison, are allowing their interpreters and translators to apply for visas to travel to the United States.

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-military-abandon-afghan-helpers 

On our way to Deh Rawod, hometown of Mullah Berader

02-06-10 The article below came to my mind, following the peace jirga in Kabul. Where is Mullah Barader? 

Feb 2010, Radio Netherlands, Bette Dam: The Afghan authorities confirmed on Tuesday reports that the Taliban’s second-in-command, Mullah Baradar, has been arrested in Pakistan. But while the West considers the capture of such a ‘big fish’ a strategic victory, our correspondent points out that he was also the key to a possible diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Less than two months ago three Afghans accompanied me on a secret mission to Deh Rawod, Uruzgan’s second largest town. We set out in two old Toyotas without revealing our plans to anyone and without speaking about the trip on the phone. Treachery is everywhere in this country. The only people who knew of our journey were relatives who could offer us shelter along the way.

My Afghan driver was flustered when he began talking about the Taliban leader Mullah Baradar. We had taken every precaution and the second car travelled behind us. We let other vehicles travel in front of us before entering Deh Rawod in order to avoid roadside bombs.

Members of the same tribe
My Afghan colleague asked: “Do you know that you are about to ask some very troublesome questions?” I knew they were quite awkward. I was attempting to discover more about the secret relationship between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban’s operational leader. It is a story which began in Deh Rawod.

President Karzai’s closest allies live in the shadow of the Dutch Camp Hadrian. Mullah Baradar knows them all. Both leaders belong to the same tribe, the Popolzai.

Saved his life
President Karzai started to ask for Mullah Baradar's help in 2001. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Americans helped Karzai take control of ‘his’ region in Uruzgan from the Taliban. By talking and negotiating he convinced one tribal leader after another to support him.

When Karzai found himself in a life-threatening situation while in the Durji mountains he was rescued by Mullah Baradar, who was then the Taliban’s defence minister. In exchange, Karzai agreed not to punish Mullah Baradar for his role as a Taliban leader. Karzai assured him that he had nothing to worry about and that the Taliban would later be allowed to participate in the government. However things turned out differently. United States forces bombed Baradar’s house in Deh Rawod in spite of Karzai’s objections. Mullah Baradar fled the country and began operating in neighbouring Pakistan.

Powerful network
In Deh Rawod, our hosts closed the doors before we started talking. Everyone knew that Mullah Baradar was still on the West’s most-wanted list and associating with the Taliban is dangerous. However when I mentioned that I had spoken to President Karzai about his relationship with Mullah Baradar, our hosts lost their reservations. They explained that President Karzai’s influence is still strong here. And the same holds true for Mullah Baradar.

I had already heard in Kabul that there was contact between the two sides. Here, tribal contacts are more important than ideology. The Popolzai are more loyal to their own tribe than they are to the regime in Kabul or to the Taliban. One of my hosts told me that Mullah Baradar had been in Deh Rawod three months earlier thanks to the support of the Karzai network. When I attempted to dig deeper the man stopped talking, saying he had to go to a wedding and left.

Travelling in Afghanistan
One tribal leader from the region told me that Mullah Baradar travelled freely in Afghanistan. He passed Canadian and Dutch soldiers while travelling in an old car between the Pakistan border and his native town. He did this by ensuring that members of his tribe and people loyal to him would secure his safe passage as he made the trips.
 
After my return to Kabul I heard that after a visit to Deh Rawod, Mullah Baradar travelled to Kabul for talks with President Karzai. Informed sources in Kabul told me that Mullah Baradar would be the best-placed person to help the government with its plans to reach a peaceful agreement with the Taliban. President Karzai’s contacts with Mullah Baradar would enable him to reach the inner circles of the Taliban leadership.
 
Gain or loss?
Sources within Western intelligence agencies say that Mullah Baradar was previously in Dubai for talks. Others say that President Karzai sometimes ensured that Mullah Baradar was able to cross the border, while the mullah at times did the president a favour.

This morning I was awoken by a phone call informing me that Mullah Baradar had been arrested. Many analysts consider this positive news. This will weaken the Taliban and is clearly a military success. However this is a short-term gain. But what does it mean for Kabul’s ambitious plans to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban? After all, wasn’t Mullah Baradar the key to peace in Afghanistan?

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/mullah-baradar-friend-or-foe

Just have a look on http://twitter.com/BetteDam on English and Dutch articles on the Dutch mission in Uruzgan. What will be the effect for Afghans now Dutch government collapsed and as a consequence, the troops will leave the province?

Beheaded by the Taleban? No, this time it was about sex

 

http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=561 

In Afghanistan, things are often more complicated than they look like at the first glance. Some armed fighting, for example, is motivated by local conflicts. But there are always people who are interested to present this as ‘Taleban’-driven. Our guest author BETTE DAM*, a Dutch journalist, pleads for more accuracy in reporting such incidents.

On New Year’s Day, six Afghans were beheaded in a village in Uruzgan province. Horrible news. The boys were young, some of them only 18 years old.

The New York Times was quick with the conclusion: the Taleban were behind it. They killed the men ‘because of their alliance with the Karzai government’. AFP told their readers they were killed ‘by the Taleban’, because of ‘spying’ for the Afghan government. Xinhua made it even more clear: the six beheaded Afghans were ‘ex-colleges’ from the Taleban who killed them. A Belgian newspaper presented the story like this: ‘A group of moderate Taleban held a meeting in a house and a terrorist Taleban-group came and beheaded them’, as provincial police commander Juma Gul told the journalist.

My first text message to an Afghan I work with in Tarinkot about what happened with the six victims was answered with: ‘Those people were madrassa Taleban’. For me that didn't explain anything; my experience is that you have to press a bit. Often the conflicts in the province seem too complex for the Afghans to take the effort to explain them to Westerners. Others find it much easier to blame the Taleban for everything and get away with it. Besides that, especially the young Afghans I work with feel sometimes ashamed to speak about differences between their tribal leaders.

But I've been working with this Afghan colleague for two years and I know I can try it again. So I did. ‘But who was interested in killing them?’, I texted, in the hope to get names of tribal leaders who had an enmity between each other, or maybe something else. And again I got an unclear answer: ‘The Taleban killed among each other’. I felt something uncommon was going on; most of the time he is more direct. So I tried ‘Why did they do that then? Is it rivalry between groups? Were the two groups both from Tarinkot?’ It took a while… and then he replied that he talked to the leader of the jail who arrested four of the killers, and he told him the reason: ‘To be honest - they fought about a boy friend’.

After talking to the governor and an aid worker in Tarinkot I got it confirmed. The fights for sex with a boy ended up in the newspaper as a clash between Taleban ‘who become more strong in the province’, as one newspaper added.

The governor was clear: ‘No, it’s not extremist Taleban, they were not fighters, just students. We are researching it’, he said, ‘but yes, the idea is that it was about a boyfriend’.

The aid worker started laughing uncomfortable when I asked him the same question. ‘How can I explain to you what happened’, he tried. ‘Is it a Taleban-fight? ’, I asked. He quickly denied. ‘No fighters, no Taleban, it has nothing to do with that.’ Then he found how to put it: ‘Here we have a habit of... they fought about misusing a boy for love’.

So, what happened according to my sources, was as follows: In a village ten kilometer west of Tarinkot, the fight started amongst three small madrassas. Two of them, the governor explained, are for adults. The other one is for boys under 18. Two adult groups wanted to take a ‘boyfriend’ from the children’s madrassa but a disagreement started between them. In the night, one adult group attacked the other adult group. They first killed their targets (some of them were sleeping, others were studying) and after that they beheaded them. ‘For Tarinkot, this is also very unusual”, the aid worker said.

It is the second time in a few weeks that media write about 'Taleban' responsible for certain killings while there seems to be a different reality. The latest suicide attack in Dehrawod in November – where 13 people got killed (see our blog about this incident here) - was also about two local groups who had a rivalry amongst each other for years now.

Especially these days, when thousands of American soldiers prepare themselves for ‘war’ in Afghanistan, it is important for the media to take the lead and ask the question: What is really going on in Afghanistan? Is there ‘increasing Taleban influence’ and where? What is the real background of local conflicts? Who exactly is the enemy the soldiers are going to fight? At the same time it is not sufficient to use Afghanistan’s complexity as a pretext for superficial reporting: As it is shown here, the background of incidents like the one in the Tarinkot madrassa can be discovered relatively easily, with a bit of patience and leaving behind the black-and-white picture about the Taleban. This way, the public gets to know what Afghanistan really is about and what the soldiers stand for when they depart to the country any time soon.

* Bette Dam is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands, traveling regularly to Afghanistan, in particular to Uruzgan. She is the author of the book ‘Expeditie Uruzgan: De weg van Hamid Karzai naar het paleis’ (Expedition Uruzgan: Hamid Karzai’s way into his palace, Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam and Antwerpen 2009).

Bette Dam is in Amsterdam right now (Jan 30 2010)

You can reach her at bettedam@gmail.com

On our way to Deh Rawod, hometown of Mullah Berader

EXPEDITION URUZGAN: the Road of Hamid Karzai to the Palace by Bette Dam

Tpb, 220pp. Journalistic non-fiction. Bette Dam tells the story of a rather unknown Afghan who – after 09/11-  took two satellite phones, organized a group of close tribal leaders crossed the border on a motor cycle and tried to free Afghanistan from his rivals: The Taliban. They way this man - Hamid Karzai - organized his tribal rebellion by leaving the weapons behind and talking his way through the South with the help of USSpecial Forces, is a lesson for the today decision makers on how to deal with this complex country.

Dam interviewed more then 60 eyewitnesses of these historic events: the proud relatives of Karzai, the American special forces, the Taliban members, as well as diplomats and experts on Afghanistan. She spent hours talking to the President about his role in the turbulent months following the events of 9/11, what his ambitions were, what he wanted to be as a leader and how he thinks Afghanistan works.

The result is not only an exciting reconstruction about an ordinary Afghan who becomes the president. It’s much more then that. By following his road to the palace people get to know the power sharing game in this complex network of the tribal society. For the first time so many Afghans tell openly about how they survive in this environment, how they see amnesty, reconciliation, deal makings and when they use their weapons. With sometimes the sphere of the Kiterunner, Afghans are explaining their story, how they see the world, how they act and why.  After publishing the book, ministers, generals of the army and the directors of NGO’s – eager to find a solution for Afghanistan - all invited Dam to talk about her findings in this complex world that is called Afghanistan (The Dutch are participating in ISAF in the Southern province Uruzgan). Especially now, at a time decision makers try to rethink their strategy  about a country that is becoming more dangerous, year after year, they use this book to understand the Afghans.

Bette Dam (1979) is a freelance journalist and political analyst. Besides her stays in Afghanistan. she reported from  Iraq, Syria and the Lebanon. . Website (in English): http://www.bettedam.eu

Quotes:

BBC World

"What happened in Afghanistan in 2001 still matters today. Bette Dam was determined to find out what really happened." Lyse Doucet, BBC

“A must have for all military”, until 2008 chief of Defense staff Dutch Army, Dick Berlijn.

Leading newspaper in Holland, NRC Handelsblad:

“Dam showed a great insight in the power of shared history in Afganistan”

Leading newspaper in Belgium, De Standaard:

“Dam shows why Hamid Karzai takes decisions that frustrate diplomats... Everybody who wants to understand Afghansitan, should read this.”

Dam quotes in the Sydney Herald Tribune:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/doing-the-bidding-of-organised-crime-20090821-ett6.html

Book reveals CIA role in 2001 uprising in southern Afghanistan

http://blogs.rnw.nl/vredeenveiligheid/?ibegin_share_action=get_content&id=1525

On our way to Deh Rawod, hometown of Mullah Berader

Goede recensie http://archief.nrc.nl/?modus=l

" ..Dit boek helpt begrijpen waarom de provincie bijna niet onder centraal gezag te brengen is, en doet vrezen dat de Nederlanders er hooguit een officiële schaduwregering in het zadel kunnen helpen." 

On our way to Deh Rawod, hometown of Mullah Berader

" Bette Dam heeft iets gepresteerd wat maar weinig collega’s kunnen of durven." 

Lees de recensie: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/select/boeken/artikel.php?id=1332