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Eye on the News
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WEDNESDAY MARCH 23 2016 -Hamal 04, 1395 HS
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ANDSF:
Nicholson
AT Monitoring Desk
KABUL: The current and former
leaders strongly condemned Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in the Belgian capital Brussels, calling terrorism as the common enemy of
the human-being.
“President Ashraf Ghani was
saddened by the terrorist attacks
took place in Brussels city,” the
president’s office said in a statement.
“These attacks once again
proved that terrorism knows no
border and is not confined to one
region. It is the enemy of the entire human-being,” Ghani was quoted by the statement as saying.
He said Afghans as the old victims of terrorism, feel the pains of
Belgians more than any other country, emphasizing on the need of a
KABUL: The Resolute Support
Commander Gen. John W. Nicholson on Tuesday visited Kunduz
province, where he held talks with
the provincial governor Assadullah Omarkhil and discussed the
mission’s commitment to the Afghan National Defense Security
Forces (ANDSF).
During discussion, Nicholson
assured Omarkhil of Resolute
Support’s commitment to the
ANDSF and said that the Resolute Support is committed to the
safety and security of the people
not only in Kunduz but across the
country.
The top US commander was
accompanied by the acting Defense
Minister, Mohammad Masoom
Stanikzai and acting Interior Minister, Taj Mohammad Jahid.
He assured of support to the
ANDS as they are getting prepare
to fight the upcoming spring offensive.
“You may have heard that the
Taliban want to take Kunduz again
– they will not,” Nicholson said in
a media statement.
“The Taliban want you to think
that your government and the coalition will abandon you – we will
not. The Taliban think that by
posing threats to you, the brave
people of Afghanistan that you
will surrender to them – you will
not,” he said.
“As commander, I wanted to
come to Kunduz personally and
stand before the families, and people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed
the hospital and caused the deaths
of the hospital staff, patients and
family members. I grieve with you
for your loss and suffering; and
humbly and respectfully ask for
your forgiveness,” the statement
quoted, Nicholson, as saying.
joint struggle against the “deadly
phenomenon”.
“Such attacks of terror prove
that terrorism is our common enemy and it must be uprooted wherever it comes from,” chief executive Abdullah Abdullah said on
Twitter.
Former President Hamid
Karzai in a statement said that the
terrorist attacks in Brussels caused
his deep regret and grief.
“I strongly condemn these terrorist attacks that killed and injured
a large number of Belgium citizens
and call the attacks an anti-humane
crime which is against all human
values,” Karzai said.
He expressed his condolences
to the families and dear ones of the
victims of the attacks.
“In my governmental exam I see myself as a conditional student,
because I couldn’t implement my pledges for supporting teachers. I hope to take the success mark this year,” Ghani says
AT News Report
KABUL: President Ashraf Ghani
and his predecessor Hamid Karzai
rang a school bell Tuesday to start
new education year.
Speaking at the ceremony held
in Amani High School in Kabul,
President Ghani criticized the current education system, saying that
the formation and policy in the
education scheme were not acceptable.
He said that the education had
experienced some changes in quantity in the past two years, while
there was no change in quality.
The president called the government responsible in bringing
fundamental reforms in the education for improvement in quality.
“We requested education minister to remove some unnecessary
of the 86 departments, but the
chiefs of departments stood
against that. We finally could remove 50 ones,” Ghani mentioned.
He asked religious scholars,
intellectuals, teachers and the civil
society to hold a national consensus for the establishment of a single viewpoint to rescue the education from political interferences.
He pointed out that the government would provide money and
resources to build new schools, but
the money was embezzled by the
provincial communities. “There is
no greater disloyalty in all the country than this.”
“We are responsible to the children; hence, the education ministry is mandated to keep transparency and accountability,” he said.
Ghani lamented that thousands of posts were vacant in the
education ministry, asking the minister to appoint competent people through a transparent process.
Ghani ordered telecommunication ministry to provide schools
with optic fiber internet system
to enhance students’ knowledge.
Asadullah Hanif Balkhi, education minister said that in the new
education year, 1.1 million children
with 41 per cent of them girls
would attend classes across the
country. He said 590 educational
centers including 387 schools, 168
religious schools, 11 teacher training centers, and 24 technical and
professional institutes would be
built this year.
“We plan to promote 515 primary schools to secondary and 278
secondary ones to high schools.
51,700 teachers will be trained,”
he mentioned.
He said 800 intelligent students would get scholarships in
India and Tajikistan.
At least 10
people killed
in Zabul,
Herat
QALAT/HERAT CITY: Five security personnel were killed in an
overnight roadside bombing in
southern Zabul province, an official said on Tuesday.
The explosion occurred on the
Arghandab-Qalat highway on
Monday night, Arghandab district
chief Mullah Zarif told Pajhwok
Afghan News. He said four police
and a National Directorate of Security (NDS) official were killed
in the blast that ripped through
their vehicle. Meanwhile, a former
police officer was killed in Khan
Village of Shah Joy district, a resident of the district, Abdul Matin,
said. A Taliban spokesman, Qari
Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed the fighters killed an Afghan Local Police
deputy commander in Shah Joy.
However, Zabul security officials have not yet commented regarding the incident.
Elsewhere, a Taliban’s shadow
district chief and three other militants were killed in Ghorian district of western Herat province.
DISSIDENT TALIBAN LEADER
RASOOL DETAINED IN PAKISTAN
PESHAWAR: A dissident Taliban
leader, who refused pledging allegiance to the movement’s new
head, has been detained by Pakistani security personnel, a claim
rejectd by the Taliban's splinter
group's spokesman.
Mullah Muhammad Rasool
was chosen as head of the breakaway faction in early November
by the Taliban opposed to Mullah
Akhtar Mansoor’s appointment as
the group’s supremo.
Rasool was arrested after he
had fled recent infighting in southern Zabul province, where dozens
of insurgents, including the break-
away faction’s deputy chief Mansoor Dadullah, were killed by
Mansoor’s loyalists.
Mullah Rasool and Abdul
Manan Niazi, managed to escape
to Pakistan as the fighting
intensified.“I can confirm that
Mullah Rasool has been arrested,”
one Taliban leader was quoted as
saying.
Mullah Abdul Manan, spokesman for Rasoul’s splinter wing of
the Taliban, strongly rejected the
claim of his leader arrest in Pakistan saying Mullah Rasoul was in
Afghanistan and the news of his
arrest was Pakistan’s propaganda
to confuse the minds of their supporters. He said Rasoul never visited Pakistan. (Pajhwok)
Water an Essential Element of Life
As an essential human
need, water plays an
important role in our life as
nobody can survive without
it. The overall living
thingson the earth are
deeply in need of water and
the environment is always
incomplete in the absence
of such endowed blessing
from Almighty Allah.
Located four kilometers
from the district market, the
Malaka village, Khoshi
district of Logar province is
consisted of 88 families.
Most of the residents of this
village earn their living from
agriculture as they cultivate
their lands twice a year,
considering the year-round
climate of the area. The
crops grown on the lands in
this part of the country
include wheat, rice, mung,
corn, etc.
For several years, the
residents of this village had
great difficulties accessing
safe water within the
village. The inaccessibility
to healthy water always
posed a serious threat to
the community health.
Ghulam Muhammad, the
Malaka Village CDC Head
35 and the father of three
daughters and one son,
revealed: “In the past, the
villagers got water with
difficulty. The average time
that we had to walk to
collect water from wells in
nearby villages was 15
minutes. After reaching the
wells, we had to stand in a
long queue, one behind the
other waiting for our turns
for several minutes. We
were pulling water from the
wells through a rope
tightened to a wheel at one
end and to a bucket at the
other.”
Nazir Ali, another villager
said: “We had a lot of
problems before the
National
Solidarity
Programme of the Ministry
of rural Rehabilitation and
Development (MRRD/
NSP) extended its coverage
to our community. We did
not have an adequate
amount of water in our
village.The only thing we
could do was to wait for
rain. Following the rain, we
were obliged to capture the
rainwater in trenches.
Inasmuch as 50% of the
water was muddy, we had
to wait for hoursto allow the
silt to settle at the bottom of
the trench.Following the
filtration of the water in
trenches, the villagers would
fill the flasks with water and
take it to their homes for
use. As the water wasn’t
healthy, it usually caused
numerous water-borne
diseases including diarrhea,
dysentery, amebiasis, etc in
villagers.”
Soon after the MRRD/NSP
covered the Malaka village
in its second round of block
grants disbursement, the
residents were provided with
an opportunity to establish
an independent Community
Development Council
(CDC), composed of
elected members through
a democratic election
process within the
community. As lack of safe
drinking water in the village
was amongst the most
indispensable needs, the
CDC
members
immediately included the
construction of a water
supply network in their
Community Development
Plan
(CDP).
The
successful completion of
the project at a cost of
AFN 968,000 funded by
the MRRD/NSP including
10%
community
contribution has enabled
the villagers to access
adequate safe water in
front of their houses.
Public Communications Department
National Solidarity Programme
Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development
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.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 23, 2016
AFGHANISTAN TIMES
Thousands of students in eastern Afghanistan are unable to attend school because the Islamic
State (IS) is keeping classrooms
shuttered.
According to Afghan Ministry of Education estimates,
around 33,000 students have been
deprived of education in 58
schools in the Achin, Haskamena, and Kot districts of Nangarhar province.
Over half of the 46 schools
in the Achin district remain
closed, and many students have
left with their families to neighboring areas where schools are
open.
“We have received a total of
450 new students including 200
of our own students who had
been displaced and 250 students
from other school [districts],” Sibghatullah, an administrator at Kahi
High School in Achin, told VOA.
Increase in IS violence
In recent months, there has
been an increase in IS violence in
Afghanistan, especially in Nangarhar province, where fighters
have launched multiple attacks on
Afghan security checkpoints.
In Afghanistan, IS runs crossborder smuggling operations of
people, money and even timber,
according to reports. IS has also
advertised on its media sites how
it trains foreign recruits in Afghanistan.
The government said it is
making gains against IS in Nangarhar. Afghan government and
NATO forces recently launched
offensives against IS, and some
areas have been cleared of the
militants.
IS fighters are trying to make
a footprint in neighboring Kunar
province and turn it into its operation base, Afghan officials said
last week.
Lingering fear
The fear of IS remains in
Nangarhar schools.
Deh Sarak High School recently reopened after being occupied by IS for more than nine
months.
“They asked us not to come
to school,” Amanullah Khadim,
the school headmaster, told VOA.
“ They closed the school because
[according to IS], it belonged to
the [Afghan] government which
was an illegal regime.”
IS used the school as a military compound where leaders
made decisions about strategy
and executing prisoners.
Deh Sarak High School
housed around 3,000 students
before it was closed by IS militants. Administrators hope most
of the students will soon return.
But many are haunted by the
memory of IS occupying their
school
“We saw Daesh,” one student told VOA, using an Arab
acronym for the militant group.
“They would kill people.”
VOA
'Trade
volume with
Afghanistan
will be
doubled soon'
ISLAMABAD: Commerce
Minister Khurram Dastgir
Khan has said that Pakistan was
working on the prospects to
enhance trade volume with Afghanistan and bilateral trade
would be doubled in coming
years.
The government had vision
for share prosperity through
regional connectivity and economic integration for maintaining peace and prosperity in the
region, he said while addressing a roundtable on 'Pakistan Afghanistan Cooperation on
Trade' organised by Institute of
Strategic Studies Islamabad
(ISSI) on Monday.
He said the government
was quantifying the magnitude
of opportunities and removing
the infrastructural and procedural hurdles in the way of
trade and investment in Afghanistan.
He said regional connectivity was the key to fast economic development like European
Union (EU) countries. The government had focused on enhancing trans-regional trade and
that was also the vision of the
economic and trade policies of
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's
government, he said.
New Afghan drug treatment facility helps homeless addicts get clean
Below the Pol-e Sokhta bridge on
the western outskirts of the Afghan capital, hundreds of homeless drug addicts live in squalor.
The smell of human waste and
smoke from opium pipes fills the
air. Some people who do not live
in the filth cannot resist their curiosity, so they come by to stare.
Mohammad, 24, who like
many addicts would give only his
first name, was born and raised as
a refugee in neighboring Iran. He
lived under the bridge for three
years after he was deported to
Afghanistan, a place he barely
knew.
He says he became addicted
to crystal methamphetamine while
living in Iran and began smoking
heroin when he couldn't secure
work or a place to live.
"I knew that living there under
the bridge, through the rains and
the snow, surrounded by the putrid smells of garbage sitting atop
the dirt and mud wasn't life," Mohammad said. "It was like being an
animal in the wild."
Afghans leave their country
two years after U.S. withdrawal
When most American troops
departed in 2014 and the Obama
administration helped install a new
government, it was supposed to
set Afghanistan toward self-reliance after two decades of Taliban
rule and foreign military intervention.
But now Mohammad is
among the first group of homeless
addicts admitted to Ibn Sina, the
largest drug treatment facility in
Afghanistan, which has accepted
more than 650 people since opening in January.
The facility, formerly known
as Camp Phoenix, was one of the
largest U.S. military bases during
the war in Afghanistan after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but has
been converted by the Afghan government.
It can house up to 1,500 addicts for a 45-day detoxification
and rehabilitation program, said
Ahmad Fawad Osmani, director of
the Drug Demand Reduction Department of the Afghan Ministry
of Public Health.
The Afghan government estimates that up to 3 million people
— roughly 10% of the population
— are addicted to drugs, one of
the highest rates in the world.
The U.S. spent more than $8
billion on counter-narcotics programs in the country during the last
14 years. But Afghan officials and
experts say drug use is growing
and Afghan politicians, warlords
and Taliban leaders continue to
rake in huge sums from the cultivation and trafficking of opium,
which comes from the poppy
plant.
Drug traffickers make payoffs
to the Taliban to protect their farms
and smuggling routes, while the
Taliban generates revenue from taxing drugs that pass through areas
under its control, the State Department said in a recent report.
"The cultivation, production,
trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs flourish in Afghanistan,"
the State Department said in its
2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, submitted to
Congress this month.
Khalil Ahmad, 30, a mosaic
maker, said he has been addicted
for eight years. He suffered excruciating pain in his job, which required him to lift tiles weighing as
much as 150 pounds, and co-work-
ers encouraged him to take a few
puffs of opium to numb the pain.
Ahmad was soon hooked. As
his body grew used to the high, he
found himself in need of something
stronger. That's when he discovered heroin.
dren in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He traveled through
western Afghanistan before landing in Kabul, where he lived under
the Pol-e Sokhta bridge for eight
months.
Laila Haidari, who runs a pri-
diction as an illness, they still think
it's a crime," she said.
Halfway through the 45-day
treatment program, Ahmad said he
was on the path to reconnecting
with his family.
"If I knew it would be this easy
the drawdown in foreign forces in
Afghanistan. When the Health
Ministry took over the facility late
last year, officials were surprised
to see that the troops had left nothing behind — only empty buildings, cracked pavement and
As was the case with many
other patients at Ibn Sina, his addiction cost Ahmad his connection
to his family. In the four years since
he returned to Afghanistan after
being deported from Iran, he lost
contact with his wife and two chil-
vate drug treatment center in west
Kabul, said addicts such as Ahmad
are often cut off from their families primarily because of anachronistic assumptions surrounding
addiction.
"Our people still don't see ad-
to get clean, I would have done it a
long time ago," he said.
Afghan officials faced challenges in converting the former
U.S. Army-run training facility,
which had been vacant since U.S.
troops left in mid-2014 as part of
stripped electrical wires. "Everything was gone, we had to start at
zero," said Osmani, the Health
Ministry official. Workers had to
restore the facility, rebuilding doors
and fences and acquiring everything
from generators to electrical poles.
The joy of watching Afghanistan play
The journey of Afghanistan so far has evoked
tremendous passion and their unfiltered emotions
have injected exuberance once again.
Sport is meant to be fun, it should be played
with an unbridled attitude and with exuberance.
Very often in the current day and age it has been
confined to excess scrutiny and tactics that suck
the fun element away from the game. True, there
is much to a game than just fun and frolic but the
essence of playing a game seems to wither out
far too often.
Enter Afghanistan and welcome joy. Their
journey so far has evoked tremendous passion
and their unfiltered emotions have injected exuberance once again. They may not be as skillful
as the other teams around, but they are mighty
talented and are a great bunch of triers. These are
men who have whizzed past their own history
and continue to survive in a rather hostile environment in their own country, and yet when they
take the field, it is as if there is not a worry in
their world.
The bowlers run in every time and give it
their best, the batsman gives two hoots for the
reputation of the bowler and smash the ball if it
is anywhere in their arc. Mohammad Shahzad,
exemplifies what Afghanistan is. He backs away
and tries to fetch a ball that would be wide to
wide of square leg on one leg and then misses. He
does not throw his head back in disdain but gives
a smirk ann then tries a more outrageous shot
and gets the inside half of his bat through the
covers. He laughs once again and then conjures
all his might to belt the next ball again. And his
madness does have a method, he creates a platform more often than not. It is not for nothing
they are the most improved associate nations in
the current years and they have captured imaginations once again in the ongoing World T20. (
Also read: Mohammad Shahzad earns nasty sendoff, delivers own post-match sledge to Dale
Steyn)
And they are serious about the game can be
seen from the presence of Inzamam-ul-Haq and
Manoj Prabhakar in the support staff. They go
through their drills with intensity and yet there
are chinks in their armour that have been glaring.
For all their flamboyance with bat and ball, their
ground fielding is not anywhere close to par. They
need polishing and they need to tone down a bit on the field, no doubt,
but then their rise has been nothing short of a miracle and for the time
being it is best we enjoy them in an unabashed way.
And then there is the ICC, that needs to factor in recent performances and decide on their course of action for the Associates. For starters,
they need to rethink their World Cup plans. The Associate nations are
literally crying out for more matches, and the heartfelt appeal of Preston
Mommsen will echo for long. If only these teams get matches anywhere
close to what the full members get, the cricketing world will prosper.
There is support for the Afghan team, and there is hope that refuses
to die down. The general public is always ears for inspirational stories,
and Afganistan is that story unfolding before the eyes. Bear in mind,
they have results to show too, they bossed the qualifying stage, almost
choked Sri Lanka and then went on an amazing heist against South
Africa. The finishing line very often seems close and yet ios the most
difficult to breach, and experience to run that extra mile helps. ICC are
you listening, and most importantly are you watching?
.
AFGHANISTAN TIMES
Georgia deploys troops
to Afghanistan as part
of NATO's Resolute
Support Mission
These Georgian troops will soon
be in Afghanistan as part of
NATO's Resolute Support Mission.
Georgia is the second highest
troop-contributing nation after the
US.
Yash Holbrook, Nato Core
Team: "Georgians have been fighting and dying with the coalition
for years now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they have made a very
clear commitment to move closer
to NATO, and closer to Euro-Atlantic integration, and I think it's
the very least that we can do. It's
kind of a moral obligation to help
them in that decision."
NATO support is paticularly
important to Georgia given the existence on its territory of two
breakaway regions: South Ossetia
and Abkhazia.
South Ossetia broke away
from Georgia as the Soviet Union
collapsed in the early 1990s and
has depended heavily on Russian
support and subsidies to survive
ever since. Alongside Georgia's other renegade region of Abkhazia its
independence is not recognised by
the international community.
Russia's backing for the territories was cemented during a 5day war with Georgia in 2008.
Moscow said at the time it was
intervening to protect Russian
speakers. It made similar claims
when it annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014. A weak response by the international community to the Kremlin's actions in
Georgia has been credited with
encouraging Russia to seize the
Black Sea region.
Georgians appear to be aware
of the dangers.
Colonel Omar Begoidze, Deputy Chief of Staff: "Georgia is not
a member of any alliance. That is
why we need to rely on ourselves
first. For this purpose, we need
the support from allies in providing Georgia with the tools to defend ourselves."
NATO is investing in projects
to help Georgia improve its defensive capability. The alliance calls
this The Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, or SNGP.
It contains 13 projects tackling areas such as cyber defence
and strategic communications. it is
hoped the project will both help
Georgia defend itself and strengthen security in the region.
Tinatin Khidasheli, Minister
of Defence of Georgia: "SNGP is
the full picture of what is it that
Georgia needs in order to become
a comparable state to NATO countries, to become more advanced in
its defence capabilities, to become
closer to NATO."
Whether armed conflict, cyber
threat or hybrid warfare, ?Georgia? and NATO hope they will be
ready for whatever comes next.
More than 80,000 Afghans will
need to be deported from Europe
“in the near future” under a secret
EU plan, amid warnings of a new
influx as parts of the country fall
back under Taliban control.
The European Commission
should threaten to reduce aid that
provides 40 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP unless the "difficult"
Kabul government agrees to the
mass removal of tens of thousands
of failed asylum migrants, a leaked
document suggests. It admits the
threat, if carried through, could result in the collapse of the fragile
state.
The Afghan elite will be rewarded with university places in
Europe, under a new EU strategy
to use aid and trade as “incentives”
to secure deportation agreements
for economic migrants from "safe"
areas of Afghanistan.
The plan is revealed in a joint
“non-paper” discussion document, marked EU Restricted,
which was prepared by the European Commission and its foreign
policy arm, the External Action
Service, and sent to national ambassadors on March 3.
Record violence amid a Taliban insurgency, with 11,000 civilian casualties last year, and economic failure means there is a “high
risk of further migratory flows to
Europe,” it warns. There are 1.1
million internally displaced Afghans and 5.4 million sheltering in
Pakistan and Iran, whose situation
is "precarious without reliable
long-term perspectives."
A migrant man from Afghanistan carrying a baby cries during a
demonstration at the GreeceMacedonia border near the village
of Idomeni, northern Greece
A man from Afghanistan carrying a baby cries during a demonstration at the Greece-Macedonia
border near the village of Idomeni,
northern Greece Photo: AFP
In October, the European
Union is hosting an international
donor summit for Afghanistan,
with the intention of raising enough
aid for the period 2017-20 to keep
flows at their current levels.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s officials
propose using the summit as “leverage” to secure a deportation deal,
noting that the EU has pledged
more to Afghanistan than any other country with €1.4 billion earmarked until 2020.
“The EU should stress that to
reach the objective of the Brussels
Conference to raise financial commitments ‘at or near current levels’ it is critical that substantial
EMERGENCY
CALLS
Police
100 - 119
Hospitals
FMIC Hospital
Behind Kabul Medical
University:
0202500200-+93793275595
Rabia-i-Balkhi Hospital
Pule Bagh-e- Umomi
070263672
progress has been made in the negotiations with the Afghan Government on migration by early
summer, giving the member states
and other donors the confidence
that Afghanistan is a reliable partner able to deliver,” it says.
Under a section entitled “Afghan interests,” it says President
Ghani’s government is “highly aid
dependent”. “Without the continued high levels of international
transfers… [it] is unlikely to prevail, as it is being faced by multiple security, economic and political challenges”.
An Afghan migrant girl holds
the hand of a woman as they arrive on a beach on the Greek island
of Kos
An Afghan migrant girl holds
the hand of a woman as they arrive on a beach on the Greek island
of Kos Photo: AFP/Angelos
Tzortzinis
Some 176,000 Afghans claimed
asylum in the EU last year, with
around six in ten eligible, a rate that
has risen as the security situation
deteriorates. They make up a quarter of refugees landing in Greece.
The paper, which was obtained by the Statewatch civil liberties website, says the EU’s cooperation with Afghanistan so far
has been “difficult and uneven".
Despite President Ghani’s public
statements, “other members of the
Government do not appear to facilitate the return of irregular migrants, while attempting to re-negotiate conditions to restrict the
acceptance of returnees.”
In exchange for accepting
“forced returns” of economic migrants from designated “safe areas”
of the country, European universities could offer places to Afghan
students and researchers under the
Erasmus+ scholarship scheme, the
paper says, under a section entitled: "Possible components of EU
incentives package".
The document cautions, however, that “the risk that those students apply for asylum once in the
EU and make their outmost not to
return is however very high, as
demonstrated by several cases recently.”
The CAPD development deal,
which commits the EU to help in
rural development, health, education and counter-drugs programs
for a decade, could also be used as
a bargaining chip to get a deportation agreement, the document says.
The EU will also provide training and healthcare to those who
are deported.
Afghan President Ashraf
Ghani (R) shakes hands with British Prime Minister David Cameron
during a press conference at the
Presidential palace in Kabul
It admits that identifying the
safe areas of Afghanistan when
processing asylum claims is “not
obvious, given the rising insecurity in many provinces”.
biggest migrant crisis since 1945.
The proposed deal appears
similar to a gambit rejected by African leaders in Malta last year, in
which the EU offered €1.8 billion
in aid , university places and looser conditions for holders of diplomatic passports in exchange for
accepting the forcible deportation
of hundreds of thousands of Afri-
Khairkhana Hospital
0799-321007
2401352
Indira Gandhi Children
Hospital, Wazir Akbar
Khan, Kabul 2301372
Ibn-e- Seena
Pul-e-Artan, Kabul
2100359
Wazir Akbar Khan
Hospital
2301741, 2301743
Ali Abad
Shahrara, Kabul
2100439
The plan also suggests using
the laissez passer, a legally controversial deporting document issued by the EU to migrants who
have lost or destroyed their own
papers.
The EU has publicly embraced
a strategy of chequebook diplomacy as it struggles to contain the
can economic migrants. In the end,
leaders settled on a voluntary
scheme of returns.It follows a controversial deal on Friday with Turkey, which was awarded €6 billion
and visa liberalisation in exchange
for the near-automatic return of all
asylum seekers reaching the Greek
islands. telegraph.co.uk
UN strengthening health
infrastructure in Bamyan
The United Nations (UN) says
it is working to improve the
health infrastructure in central
Bamyan province of Afghanistan.
The world body’s fund for
children (UNICEF) which promotes the rights of children and
women says it will provide
training to medical staff of the
provincial public health department of Bamyan on the medical equipment it lately provided to the department.
The equipment which includes incubators, baby warmers, defibrillators, sterilizers,
ventilators, electrosurgical and
cardiograph machines are designed to reduce mother and
child mortality.
Min-Whee Kang, Head of
UNICEF’s central region field
office, said the equipment —
which will be used in the provincial hospital and three district hospitals in remote areas
of the province – is key to saving lives in critical cases.
“We hope to see a gradual
improvement of survival rates
and a decline in mortality rates
of new born and mothers,” said
Ms. Kang.
At the same time, in light
of attacks on access to healthcare facilities, UNAMA has
reminded all parties to the conflict in Afghanistan of their obligation to always respect the
provision of healthcare, never
to harm medical personnel or
patients, and to ensure that the
protected status of medical facilities is respected.
Mark Bowden, the UN’s
Humanitarian Coordinator and
the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for
Afghanistan, said medical facilities, medical personnel, and
those who are receiving treatment, for disease or conflictrelated injuries, must never be
placed at risk, let alone subject
to attack.
“The work that humanitarian and medical personnel carry out must not be restricted,
and all parties to the conflict
must abstain from actions that
may place these persons or facilities at risk,” said the UN
envoy.
New Zabul governor to
fight graft, land-grabbing
QALAT: The new governor of southern Zabul province on Tuesday identified fighting administrative
corruption, land-grabbing and lawlessness as his top
priority.
Appointed by President Ashraf Ghani as the
governor of Zabul, Bismillah Afghanmal took charge
at a gathering attended by government officials, lawmakers and common people here.
Afghanmal in his address to the gathering said
proper work had not been done in the province over
the past few years and as a result, the people of
Zabul faced a number of problems.
The governor said he would try to give equal
representation to all tribes in his administration in
order no one felt deprived.
“I will seriously fight against corruption, landgrabbing and illegal activities and in this regard I demand tribal elders’ cooperation.”
Speaking on the occasion, provincial council chief
Atta Jan Haqbayan said no development activity
had been carried out in Zabul over the past few
years.
“This province has been without university so
far. Zabul borders Pakistan, but has no customs office. There are many areas where nothing special has
been done so far,” the public representative said.
Senator Dr. Zalmai Zabuli told Pajhwok Afghan
News government officials subjected the people of
Zabul to a step-motherly treatment.
“Many residents of Zabul are eligible to work in
government departments, but the government is not
giving them a chance,” the lawmaker said.
Bismillah Afghanmal replaces Mohammad Anwar Ishaqzai, who served as Zabul governor for eight
months, and has been reappointed as the governor
of Badghis province. (Pajhwok)
Malalai Maternity
Hospital
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Banks
Da Afghanistan Bank
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Bakhtar Bank
0776777000
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0799 700900
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020 22 22 222
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Exchange Rate
Purchase:
One US$ =
68.78Afs
One Pound Sterling=
98.50Afs
One Euro =
76.78Afs
1000 Pak Rs =
638Afs
Sale:
One US$ =
68.98 Afs
One Pound Sterling=
99.30Afs
One Euro=
77.38 Afs
1000 Pak Rs= 646Afs
.
AFGHANISTAN TIMES
News-in-Brief
Castro and Obama
trade barbs over
human rights
Trump appoints
Lebanese
academic as
foreign policy
advisor
Controversial US presidential
candidate Donald Trump has
revealed the first members of
his foreign policy team, including a Lebanese academic
Walid Phares.
The team, meant to counsel Trump on foreign affairs,
consists of experts on the
Middle East and energy issues.
Republican Senator Jeff
Sessions leads the team along
with: Keith Kellogg, Carter
Page, George Papadopoulos,
Walid Phares and Joseph E.
Schmitz, according to a report
by the Washington Post.
The appointment of
Phares - a Lebanese academic
who immigrated to the United States 20 years ago – was
announced during the same
time he was being interviewed
on Al Arabiya’s sister al-Hadath Channel.
Phares told Al Arabiya in
Washington that he met
Trump last December while
he was offering consultancy
to five candidates from the
Republican Party. Trump was
one of them.
He also said Trump’s
campaign team contacted him
last week and asked him to
join the advising team, adding
that he accepted “because
Trump can do what others
cannot.”
Phares clarified that he
would like to focus on opposing the Iranian nuclear deal,
which Trump has previously
voiced his opposition to.
The Lebanese academic
believes the Iranian deal
should be reconsidered, because Iran earned billions of
dollars due to the lifting of
sanctions.
Hezbollah vows
to keeping
fighting on in
Syria
Syria’s peace talks hit a fresh
impasse over President Bashar
al-Assad Monday, as the head
of Lebanon’s Hezbollah vowed
his Shiite movement would
keep fighting alongside the regime until ISIS were defeated.
Hezbollah first announced
it was fighting alongside Assad’s troops in 2013 and has
since sent thousands of fighters to battle Syria’s rebels, who
are backed by its arch rival Saudi Arabia and a US-led coalition.
Its support has been crucial for keeping the regime in
power, but the opposition has
insisted the president’s departure must be part of any peace
deal agreed at the talks.
A partial ceasefire brought
in last month had raised hopes
for an end to the violence, which
were further fuelled when Russia - a key backer of Assad announced last week it would
withdraw most of its troops
from Syria.
But tensions have flared
since, with Moscow accusing
the US of “unacceptable” delays in agreeing how to punish
those who break the ceasefire
and warning it could resort to
force against violators.
Two explosions have hit Brussels'
Zaventem airport, killing up to 13
people and injuring dozens, hospital sources told local media.
Shortly after the airport blasts
on Tuesday morning, an explosion
also struck the Maelbeek metro
station in the centre of the Belgian
capital, killing 15 people, Belgian
media reported. The station is close
to European Union institutions.
The Belgian federal prosecu-
tor told state media the explosion
at the airport was probably a suicide attack.
Footage from the airport - the
country's largest - showed people
running from the terminal building
as plumes of smoke rose to the
sky.
The powerful blasts caused
parts of the ceiling to fall down
and windows were shattered.
All metro lines were shut
down after the attacks. Witnesses
at the Maelbeek station said people with blood on their faces were
seen at the scene. Ian McCafferty,
a witness at the station, said the
blast happened during busy rush
hour traffic. People started running
when they saw smoke coming," he
said. "The point of these attacks
is to make you live in fear, but I
refuse to."
The interior ministry raised
the country's terror alert to the
highest level after the blasts and
Brussels' crisis centre told people:
"Stay where you are".
The interior minister said 600
additional police had been deployed.
Reuters news agency said
shots were fired before the explosions at the airport.
Local media reported the blasts
happened near the American Air-
lines counter as hundreds of people were checking in.
"When I heard the first explosion, lots of people started screaming and running," Tom, an intern
working at the airport, told Al
Jazeera. "When I heard the second
explosion, which was about 30
seconds after the first one, everything got chaotic. I could see panic
on everyone’s face, blood on their
bodies."
Myanmar's Aung San Amnesty urges US, UK to stop
Suu Kyi nominated for arming Saudis in Yemen war
cabinet post
Myanmar's president-elect has
nominated members of his government, including his party leader
Aung San Suu Kyi.
Htin Kyaw submitted a list of
18 ministers to the country's parliament on Monday in the capital,
Naypyitaw.
Notable, and top on the list is
Aung San Suu Kyi, who was not
able to become president because
of a constitutional block, even
though she led her National League
for Democracy party (NLD) to a
landslide win in general elections
last November.
The names will be reviewed by
the parliament and the speaker of
the parliament will ask the legislators on Wednesday to approve the
names. If any legislator disagrees
with a name, it will be reviewed.
There have been reports that
Aung San Suu Kyi will become the
foreign minister, but if she were to
take that post she would have to
give up her parliament seat and end
party activities. "I doubt that Aung
San Suu Kyi would take the position of the foreign minister," said
Toe Kyaw Hlaing, a political analyst. "Also, working as a foreign
minister requires a lot of time trav-
elling around the world. She will
have to do a lot of international
relations and overseas trips, and
she won't have the time to exercise
control over the government," he
told The Associated Press.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner
said in the past that she will be in
charge of the government.
Her ban from the presidency
has been a thorn in the side of her
party since it was allowed a space
in parliament under the outgoing
quasi-civilian government led by
President Thein Sein, a retired general.
She is barred from the post
because her children have British
citizenship.
Another key challenge will be
smoothing relations with the army
that locked up Aung San Suu Kyi
and other NLD politicians for
years during their struggle against
oppressive junta rule.
The military still holds strong
political sway under a charter that
reserves a quarter of parliament
seats for unelected soldiers and
grants the army chief direct control over three key ministries;
home affairs, border affairs and
defence.
Amnesty International has called
on the United States and Britain
to halt their arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia, as Riyadh continues its
brutal military campaign against
Yemen.
The UK-based rights group in
a statement on Tuesday urged the
US and the UK, the two largest
arms suppliers to Riyadh, to halt
the “reckless” transfer of “arms
for use in the Yemen conflict,”
which was leading to a rise in civilian deaths.
According to Amnesty’s International regional deputy director,
James Lynch, Saudi Arabis’ foreign
allies have been instigating current
tensions by “flooding the region
with arms” which could be used
for serious violations.
Amnesty also criticized Riy-
adh for “repeatedly” using prohibited cluster munitions in attacks
that have “killed and maimed civilians.”
The watchdog said it had recorded at least 32 airstrikes committed by Riyadh in violation of
international humanitarian law,
since the start of the Saudi campaign in Yemen last March. The
Human Rights Watch has also accused Saudi Arabia of committing
violations.
Saudi Arabia has not responded to reports of violations.
The Human Rights Watch has
also called for an arms embargo on
Saudi Arabia, calling on the US, the
UK, France and all other nations
to suspend the sale of arms to Riyadh until it “not only curtails its
unlawful airstrikes in Yemen but
also credibly investigates alleged
violations.”
Last month, the European Parliament called for a European
Union-wide arms embargo against
Riyadh.
Yemen has been under military
attacks by Saudi Arabia since late
March last year. At least 8,400
people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed so far and
16,015 others have sustained injuries.
The regime in Riyadh has come
under fire for committing a war
crime by dropping cluster bombs
on residential areas of Yemen. The
Saudi military has not even spared
hospitals run by France-based
medical charity Doctors Without
Borders.
Indonesia's
Jakarta shut
down by taxidriver protest
Thousands of taxi and motorised rickshaw drivers have
brought the Indonesian capital
Jakarta to a standstill in a rowdy protest against what they
say is unfair competition from
ride-hailing apps.
Convoys of blue and white
taxis operated by PT Blue Bird
and PT Express Transindo Utama blocked the city's main thoroughfares on Tuesday, while
clashes broke out between some
drivers of traditional taxis and
motorbike riders working for the
online apps.
The drivers are angry that
services such as Uber, Grab and
Go-Jek are offering rides at lower prices, claiming they are not
paying taxes and are operating
without official permits.
"Right now there are legal
taxis and illegal taxis," said Mat
Ali, 54, who drives an Express
taxi and says his monthly income has fallen 60 percent since
app-based taxis became popular. "We are not allergic to competition with Uber and Grab ...
but we just want them to meet
the government's requirements." Tuesday’s protest is the
second major demonstration by
taxi drivers in Jakarta this
month, who say that competition from ride-hailing apps has
severely reduced their income.
Four North Korea cargo ships removed from UN blacklist
The US permanent mission to the
UN informed several US embassies of the decision via a diplomatic cable issued on February 16,
Reuters quoted unnamed officials
as saying on Tuesday.
The ships were among 31 vessels banned by UN Security Council (UNSC) on March 2, because
of ties to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean
shipping firm suspected of transporting arms and other illicit goods
for the secretive state.
The cable showed talks between American and Chinese officials in the lead up to the bans removal, with Beijing securing assurances that the vessels would not
be operated by North Korean
crews.
“We discovered that they are
not OMM ships,” said Liu Jieyi,
the Chinese ambassador to the
UN.
Among the four ships was the
Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by
the Philippines shortly after the
sanctions took effect.
Reacting to the report, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry said the
UN lifting of sanctions on the ships
are in line with Security Council
sanctions committee rules.
“This newest and most recent
adjustment made by the United
Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee to the list of sanctions reflects the consensus by all
parties, and is also in line with the
rules of procedure of the sanctions
committee,” said the ministry’s
spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
A US official welcomed the
move, saying it showed a “productive working relationship with
China” on North Korea while
proving the “instant real-world
effects” of the sanctions regime.
The move comes weeks after
the US and China formed a front
in the UN to slap new sanctions
on Pyongyang following its fourth
nuclear test in January and an alleged satellite launch the next
month.
The 15-member UNSC has
confirmed the act and will make an
official announcement in a press
release, according to Reuters.
Both the US mission at the UN
and the US Treasury Department
which observes the implementation of the sanctions refused to
comment on the matter.
Last week, US President
Barack Obama signed a new executive order that tightens the US
trade embargo on North Korea
over the country’s recent nuclear
and missile tests.
However, North Korea says
it will not relinquish its nuclear
deterrence unless Washington ends
its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves its military command in South Korea.
Cuban President Raul Castro and
US leader Barack Obama prodded
each other over human rights and
the long-standing US economic
embargo, even as the two men
pledged to set aside their decadeslong differences and move forward
with normalising ties.
Following a historic meeting in
Havana on Monday, Obama welcomed what he called a "new day"
in relations between the two countries, but repeatedly pushed Castro to take steps to address Cuba's
human rights record.
"America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of
speech and freedom of assembly
and freedom of religion are not just
American values but are universal
values," Obama said, standing
alongside Castro after their meeting at Havana's Palace of the Revolution.
Yet, Castro, who took the rare
step of taking questions from journalists, hit back at what he called
US "double standards", saying
Cuba found it "inconceivable" for
a government to fail to ensure
healthcare, education, food and
social security for its people - a
clear reference to the US.
"We defend human rights,"
Castro said. "In our view, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights are indivisible, interdependent and universal."
When asked about political
prisoners in Cuba, Castro pushed
back aggressively, saying if the journalist could offer names of anyone
improperly imprisoned, "they will
be released before tonight ends".
"Give me a list of the political
prisoners and I will release them
immediately. Just mention the list.
What political prisoners?" said
Castro.
The Cuban leader praised
Obama's recent steps to relax controls on his country as "positive",
but deemed them insufficient. He
called anew for the US to return
its naval base at Guantanamo Bay
to Cuba and to lift the US trade
embargo.
"That is essential, because the
blockade remains in place, and it
contains discouraging elements,"
Castro said.
The main sticking point for
bilateral relations is the devastating trade embargo imposed on Havana in 1962 by former US President John F Kennedy.
In the same year, the movement of nuclear missiles from the
Soviet Union to Cuba brought the
countries close to nuclear war.
"The embargo is going to end exactly when I can't be sure,"
Obama told the news conference,
noting it was up to the US Congress to finish it.
Obama came to Cuba pledging
to press its leaders on human
rights and political freedoms, and
vowing that the mere fact of a visit
by an American leader would promote those values on the island.
He responded to Castro's remarks about the human rights of
the US by saying that his country
should not be immune or afraid of
criticism, and he welcomed the
Cuban leader's comments on areas
where the United States is "falling
short".
Obama said he had raised "very
serious differences" the US has
with Cuba on democracy and human rights, but portrayed those
difficult conversations as a prerequisite to closer relations.
Crediting Cuba for making
progress as a nation, Obama said
part of normalising relations between the two countries means
"we discuss these differences directly".
"The future of Cuba will be
decided by Cubans - not by anybody else," Obama said. "At the
same time, as we do wherever we
go around the world, I made it clear
the US will continue to speak up
about democracy, including the
right of the Cuban people to decide their own future."
As Castro prepares to step
down in 2018, he has held firm
against any changes to Cuba's oneparty political system.
Cubans expressed shock at
seeing Castro answer questions
from reporters live on state TV.
"It's very significant to hear
this from our president, for him to
recognise that not all human rights
are respected in Cuba," Raul Rios,
a 47-year-old driver, told the AP
news agency.
Rios said he agreed with Castro's argument that no country is
perfect and all should strive to do
better.
Marlene Pino, 47, an engineer,
said: "This is pure history and I
never thought I'd see something like
this. It's difficult to quickly assimilate what's happening here. For
me it's extraordinary to see this."
.
AFGHANISTANTIMES
We a r e a n a t io n a l in st it u t io n a n d n o t t h e v o ice o f a go v t o r a p r iv a t e o r ga n iza t io n
AFGHANISTAN TIMES
Editor: Abdul Saboor Sarir
Phone No: +93-772364666
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Photojournalist: M. Sadiq Yusufi
Advisory editorial board
Saduddin Shpoon, Dr. Sharif Fayez, Dr. Sultana Parvanta, Dr. Sharifa Sharif,
Dr. Omar Zakhilwal, Setara Delawari, Ahmad Takal
Graphic-Designers:
Edriss Akbari and Bilal Yusufi
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Printed at Afghanistan Times Printing Press
Richard Javad Heydarian
"God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change
the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,"
the 20th-century theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr once famously wrote. Arguably, this
very much sums up the United
States President Barack
Obama's foreign policy doctrine and his valuation of American priorities in various regions.
In fact, the president has
been always open about the
profound influence of Niebuhr's works, affectionately de-
well and truly mugged by reality".
Multiple crises, from Russia's annexation of Crimea to
the rise of Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL, also
known as ISIS), seemed to have
undermined the US power, and
extinguished Obama's hopeful
vision of an orderly, rule-based
international order.
Asia is simultaneously a region where there is the greatest opportunity for expanded
trade and investments and also
where the US confronts its
greatest rival, China.
In the Middle East, the
rivalry, he has even encouraged
Arab allies "to find an effective
way to share the neighbourhood [with Iran] and institute
some sort of cold peace", giving birth to a post-American
order in the region.
OPINION: Finalising the
TPP - critical step for East Asia
Instead, Obama, who was
raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,
has been primarily interested in
augmenting US strategic footprint in the Asia-Pacific region,
where "[the US] can do really
big, important stuff", which
have "ramifications across the
board."
expanded trade and investments and also where the US
confronts its greatest rival,
China.
There are, however, concerns that the US may have
missed the train, for it faces an
uphill battle in maintaining its
hegemony in Asia, especially
as a resurgent Beijing gradually carves out a new Sino-centric order in East Asia.
In economic terms, China is
the leading trading partner of
almost all East-Asian countries,
while it is set to transform into
the pillar of infrastructure development in Asia, thanks to
claring in an interview, "I love
him. He's one of my favourite
philosophers."
Obama saw himself as a
perfect antithesis to the George
W Bush administration, which
combined coercive unilateralism with a missionary zeal to
supposedly spread US-style
democracy in the Middle East
and beyond.
Analysis: Obama and Xi
and the future of US-China relations
The Bush era disasters
heavily undermined neoconservatism, paving the way for
the rise of more calibrated realists such as Obama, who appreciated the limits of US power and the virtues of strategic
patience.
As the Obama administration enters its twilight months
in office, questions over its legacy and long-term historical
significance have gained momentum.
The most salient aspect of
Obama's foreign policy, one
could argue, is his gradual retrenchment from the Middle
East, where the US has been
hopelessly overstretched, in
favour of an accelerating pivot
to Asia, where booming economies and a rising China are
reshaping the global order.
Extending the olive branch
Not long ago, prominent
journalists such as James
Traub were quick to portray
Obama as a deflated, demoralised idealist, who "has been
Arab winter and the deadlock
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations swept away the wellspring of optimism generated
by Obama's historic Cairo
speech, where he unsuccessfully promised a new relationship between the US and the
Muslim world. But soon it became clear that Obama had
some foreign policy tricks up
his sleeve.
Obama managed to pull off
an improbable and highly controversial nuclear agreement
with Iran, while normalising relations with communist Cuba
and becoming the first US president to visit Cuba in almost a
century.
True to his early promise of
reaching out to historical foes,
Obama oversaw a qualitative
shift in Washington's approach
to former foes such as Tehran.
But as Obama admits in his
long interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg, he has been committed to decouple from the conflict-ridden Middle East.
Recognising the US failures
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, where its military interventions have created failed states
and havens for extremism,
Obama refused to even enforce
his own redline on Syria, when
the Bashar al-Assad regime
was accused of using chemical
weapons against its own population. Clearly, he had little appetite for additional US military
entanglements in the region.
Amid rising Saudi-Iranian
Under Obama, who has visited Asia more than any of his
predecessors in recent memory, the US has established cordial ties with former foes such
as Vietnam and Myanmar, built
strategic partnership with key
Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, upgraded high-level dialogue with
China, negotiated a major regional trade pacts - the TransPacific Partnership agreement
- and overseen a major improvement in its approval ratings.
The Pacific president
The revived interest of the
US in Asia is based on a belief
that "the relationship between
itself and China is going to be
the most critical" in the 21st
century. More fundamentally,
Obama believes that the future
of the US and the world will be
decided in the Asia-Pacific region, which is "filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people".
Exasperated by persistent
anti-Americanism in the Middle East, Obama enthusiastically cites how Asians are pragmatists who are willing to work
with the US and are committed
to "build businesses and get
education and find jobs and
build infrastructure."
OPINION: Why Obama
fails the leadership test in the
Middle East
In short, Asia is, simultaneously, a region where there
is the greatest opportunity for
major development initiatives
such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the
Maritime Silk Road plan. China
is the new economic pivot
around which Asia revolves.
Overseeing decades of rapid military modernisation,
Beijing is also progressively
pushing US naval forces out of
its adjacent waters, upending
centuries of Western military
hegemony in Asia.
Some of Obama's likely successors are far from helpful.
Demagogues such as Donald
Trump, who is calling for a return to 19th-century American
mercantilism, is undermining
Asia's confidence in the US and
its reliability as a superpower.
Ultimately, it remains to be
seen whether Obama's renewed
focus on the region has been
enough to prevent a postAmerican order in Asia. Yet one
should credit him for becoming
the first truly Pacific president
in the White House, reorienting US foreign policy from the
troubled Middle East to a promising Asia. This will be his
greatest foreign policy legacy.
Richard Javad Heydarian is
a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author
of Asia's New Battlefield: US,
China, and the Struggle for
Western Pacific.
The views expressed in this
article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al
Jazeera's editorial policy.
The constitution says
Article 160
Article One Hundred Sixty: The first President-Elect shall, according to provisions of this
Constitution, commence work thirty days after election results are declared. Multilateral efforts shall
be made to hold presidential as well as National Assembly elections concurrently and simultaneously.
Pending the establishment of the National Assembly, its powers, enshrined in this Constitution, shall
be submitted to the government, and the interim Supreme Court shall be established by presidential
decree.
Apolitical education system
Afghanistan direly requires modern and quality education system
to scale new heights of progress and prosperity. Nearly, thirty-six
years of war, most of the time civil strife, had hardly left any
infrastructure intact. The ruined infrastructure made it extremely
difficult to provide better future to the current and coming generations. What remained was burnt to the ground by the strategic
assets of the super powers of the bipolar era, some neighboring
and Gulf countries. After fall of the Taliban regime, the democratic government did well to achieve key objectives—rebuilding the
foundation of a modern state system and strengthening national
unity.
The nation and the government did their jobs well then, but it is
time to focus on other important sectors such as agriculture, economy, education and healthcare. These are the milestones which
should be followed to reach the target. This journey shall not be
interrupted by corruption, insecurity, mismanagement, red-tapism
and politics. Unfortunately, opportunists are in abundance in the
country. Like other sectors, these elements seek benefits in flawed
education system. President Ashraf Ghani acknowledges the problems and underlines importance of quality education in his address to teachers. If he succeeds in rescuing the education system from opportunists and making it apolitical, no doubt it would
be a big achievement for the country. Indeed, he will need support of teachers and other relevant groups.
It is also true that education sector has failed to get due attention of the policymakers as huge portion of the donations and
state budget is spent on security sector or wasted in meeting
other unnecessary expenses such as large cabinet and protocols.
Spending on security apparatus is need of the hour. There should
be no excuses in this regard because only strong security forces
could defend the country against aggressors. However, the leaders cannot blame insecurity for the poor condition of education
system. It is politics and inattention crippling the education sector. For several months, students were attending classes without
having textbooks. Moreover, the syllabus is outdated. We are not
keeping pace with the modern world. Those students who are
interested in arts and those who want to become engineers and
doctors are reading same textbooks for twelve years. New educational year began on Tuesday but the dilemma continues.
Sadly, our teachers are also not getting respect and attention
that they deserve. They are treated like second-class citizens. The
president surely knows that what a teacher means in the developed world and why the west is developed. Therefore, the government should accelerate efforts to empower teachers. It will be
a first but significant step in improving the education system.
Second, the leaders shall overhaul the system. Without reforms
and studying education system of developed countries it would
not be possible.
Progress is possible if the relevant ministry improves the teaching
process and learning outcomes. Better planning, monitoring and
evaluation at different levels will improve quality of our rusted
education system.
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AFGHANISTANTIMES
We a r e a n a t io n a l in st it u t io n a n d n o t t h e v o ice o f a go v t o r a p r iv a t e o r ga n iza t io n
AFGHANISTAN TIMES
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Richard Javad Heydarian
"God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change
the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,"
the 20th-century theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr once famously wrote. Arguably, this
very much sums up the United
States President Barack
Obama's foreign policy doctrine and his valuation of American priorities in various regions.
In fact, the president has
been always open about the
profound influence of Niebuhr's works, affectionately de-
well and truly mugged by reality".
Multiple crises, from Russia's annexation of Crimea to
the rise of Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL, also
known as ISIS), seemed to have
undermined the US power, and
extinguished Obama's hopeful
vision of an orderly, rule-based
international order.
Asia is simultaneously a region where there is the greatest opportunity for expanded
trade and investments and also
where the US confronts its
greatest rival, China.
In the Middle East, the
rivalry, he has even encouraged
Arab allies "to find an effective
way to share the neighbourhood [with Iran] and institute
some sort of cold peace", giving birth to a post-American
order in the region.
OPINION: Finalising the
TPP - critical step for East Asia
Instead, Obama, who was
raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,
has been primarily interested in
augmenting US strategic footprint in the Asia-Pacific region,
where "[the US] can do really
big, important stuff", which
have "ramifications across the
board."
expanded trade and investments and also where the US
confronts its greatest rival,
China.
There are, however, concerns that the US may have
missed the train, for it faces an
uphill battle in maintaining its
hegemony in Asia, especially
as a resurgent Beijing gradually carves out a new Sino-centric order in East Asia.
In economic terms, China is
the leading trading partner of
almost all East-Asian countries,
while it is set to transform into
the pillar of infrastructure development in Asia, thanks to
claring in an interview, "I love
him. He's one of my favourite
philosophers."
Obama saw himself as a
perfect antithesis to the George
W Bush administration, which
combined coercive unilateralism with a missionary zeal to
supposedly spread US-style
democracy in the Middle East
and beyond.
Analysis: Obama and Xi
and the future of US-China relations
The Bush era disasters
heavily undermined neoconservatism, paving the way for
the rise of more calibrated realists such as Obama, who appreciated the limits of US power and the virtues of strategic
patience.
As the Obama administration enters its twilight months
in office, questions over its legacy and long-term historical
significance have gained momentum.
The most salient aspect of
Obama's foreign policy, one
could argue, is his gradual retrenchment from the Middle
East, where the US has been
hopelessly overstretched, in
favour of an accelerating pivot
to Asia, where booming economies and a rising China are
reshaping the global order.
Extending the olive branch
Not long ago, prominent
journalists such as James
Traub were quick to portray
Obama as a deflated, demoralised idealist, who "has been
Arab winter and the deadlock
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations swept away the wellspring of optimism generated
by Obama's historic Cairo
speech, where he unsuccessfully promised a new relationship between the US and the
Muslim world. But soon it became clear that Obama had
some foreign policy tricks up
his sleeve.
Obama managed to pull off
an improbable and highly controversial nuclear agreement
with Iran, while normalising relations with communist Cuba
and becoming the first US president to visit Cuba in almost a
century.
True to his early promise of
reaching out to historical foes,
Obama oversaw a qualitative
shift in Washington's approach
to former foes such as Tehran.
But as Obama admits in his
long interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg, he has been committed to decouple from the conflict-ridden Middle East.
Recognising the US failures
in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, where its military interventions have created failed states
and havens for extremism,
Obama refused to even enforce
his own redline on Syria, when
the Bashar al-Assad regime
was accused of using chemical
weapons against its own population. Clearly, he had little appetite for additional US military
entanglements in the region.
Amid rising Saudi-Iranian
Under Obama, who has visited Asia more than any of his
predecessors in recent memory, the US has established cordial ties with former foes such
as Vietnam and Myanmar, built
strategic partnership with key
Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, upgraded high-level dialogue with
China, negotiated a major regional trade pacts - the TransPacific Partnership agreement
- and overseen a major improvement in its approval ratings.
The Pacific president
The revived interest of the
US in Asia is based on a belief
that "the relationship between
itself and China is going to be
the most critical" in the 21st
century. More fundamentally,
Obama believes that the future
of the US and the world will be
decided in the Asia-Pacific region, which is "filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people".
Exasperated by persistent
anti-Americanism in the Middle East, Obama enthusiastically cites how Asians are pragmatists who are willing to work
with the US and are committed
to "build businesses and get
education and find jobs and
build infrastructure."
OPINION: Why Obama
fails the leadership test in the
Middle East
In short, Asia is, simultaneously, a region where there
is the greatest opportunity for
major development initiatives
such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the
Maritime Silk Road plan. China
is the new economic pivot
around which Asia revolves.
Overseeing decades of rapid military modernisation,
Beijing is also progressively
pushing US naval forces out of
its adjacent waters, upending
centuries of Western military
hegemony in Asia.
Some of Obama's likely successors are far from helpful.
Demagogues such as Donald
Trump, who is calling for a return to 19th-century American
mercantilism, is undermining
Asia's confidence in the US and
its reliability as a superpower.
Ultimately, it remains to be
seen whether Obama's renewed
focus on the region has been
enough to prevent a postAmerican order in Asia. Yet one
should credit him for becoming
the first truly Pacific president
in the White House, reorienting US foreign policy from the
troubled Middle East to a promising Asia. This will be his
greatest foreign policy legacy.
Richard Javad Heydarian is
a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author
of Asia's New Battlefield: US,
China, and the Struggle for
Western Pacific.
article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al
Jazeera's editorial policy.
The constitution says
Article 160
Article One Hundred Sixty: The first President-Elect shall, according to provisions of this
Constitution, commence work thirty days after election results are declared. Multilateral efforts shall
be made to hold presidential as well as National Assembly elections concurrently and simultaneously.
Pending the establishment of the National Assembly, its powers, enshrined in this Constitution, shall
be submitted to the government, and the interim Supreme Court shall be established by presidential
decree.
Apolitical education system
Afghanistan direly requires modern and quality education system
to scale new heights of progress and prosperity. Nearly, thirty-six
years of war, most of the time civil strife, had hardly left any
infrastructure intact. The ruined infrastructure made it extremely
difficult to provide better future to the current and coming generations. What remained was burnt to the ground by the strategic
assets of the super powers of the bipolar era, some neighboring
and Gulf countries. After fall of the Taliban regime, the democratic government did well to achieve key objectives—rebuilding the
foundation of a modern state system and strengthening national
unity.
The nation and the government did their jobs well then, but it is
time to focus on other important sectors such as agriculture, economy, education and healthcare. These are the milestones which
should be followed to reach the target. This journey shall not be
interrupted by corruption, insecurity, mismanagement, red-tapism
and politics. Unfortunately, opportunists are in abundance in the
country. Like other sectors, these elements seek benefits in flawed
education system. President Ashraf Ghani acknowledges the problems and underlines importance of quality education in his address to teachers. If he succeeds in rescuing the education system from opportunists and making it apolitical, no doubt it would
be a big achievement for the country. Indeed, he will need support of teachers and other relevant groups.
It is also true that education sector has failed to get due attention of the policymakers as huge portion of the donations and
state budget is spent on security sector or wasted in meeting
other unnecessary expenses such as large cabinet and protocols.
Spending on security apparatus is need of the hour. There should
be no excuses in this regard because only strong security forces
could defend the country against aggressors. However, the leaders cannot blame insecurity for the poor condition of education
system. It is politics and inattention crippling the education sector. For several months, students were attending classes without
having textbooks. Moreover, the syllabus is outdated. We are not
keeping pace with the modern world. Those students who are
interested in arts and those who want to become engineers and
doctors are reading same textbooks for twelve years. New educational year began on Tuesday but the dilemma continues.
Sadly, our teachers are also not getting respect and attention
that they deserve. They are treated like second-class citizens. The
president surely knows that what a teacher means in the developed world and why the west is developed. Therefore, the government should accelerate efforts to empower teachers. It will be
a first but significant step in improving the education system.
Second, the leaders shall overhaul the system. Without reforms
and studying education system of developed countries it would
not be possible.
Progress is possible if the relevant ministry improves the teaching
process and learning outcomes. Better planning, monitoring and
evaluation at different levels will improve quality of our rusted
education system.
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Afg: 3600
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AFGHANISTANTIMES
By Adam Hochschild
This piece has been adapted
from Adam Hochschild’s new
book, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War,
1936-1939.]
“Merchants have no country,”
wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1814.
“The mere spot they stand on does
not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw
their gains.” The former president
was ruing the way New England
traders and shipowners, fearing the
loss of lucrative transatlantic commerce, failed to rally to their country in the War of 1812.
Today, with the places from
which “merchants” draw their
gains spread across the planet, corporations are even less likely to
feel loyalty to any country in particular. Some of them have found
it profitable to reincorporate in tax
havens overseas. Giant multinationals, sometimes with annual
earnings greater than the combined
total gross national products of
several dozen of the world’s poorer countries, are often more powerful than national governments,
while their CEOs wield the kind
of political clout many prime ministers and presidents only dream
of.
No corporations have been
more aggressive in forging their
own foreign policies than the big
oil companies. With operations
spanning the world, they — and
not the governments who weakly
try to tax or regulate them — largely decide whom they do business
with and how. In its quest for oil
in the anarchic Niger Delta, according to journalist Steve Coll, ExxonMobil, for example, gave boats
to the Nigerian navy, and recruited
and supplied part of the country’s
army, while local police sported
the company’s red flying horse logo
on their uniforms. Jane Mayer’s
new book, Dark Money, on how
the brothers and oil magnates
Charles and David Koch spent
hundreds of millions of dollars to
buy the Republican Party and
America’s democratic politics, offers a vivid account of the way their
father Fred launched the energy
business they would inherit. It
was a classic case of not letting
“attachments” stand in the way of
gain. Fred happily set up oil installations for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin before the United
States recognized the Soviet Union
in 1933, and then helped Adolf
Hitler build one of Nazi Germany’s largest oil refineries that
would later supply fuel to its air
force, the Luftwaffe.
His unsavory tale is now part
of the historical record, thanks to
Mayer. That of another American
oil tycoon of the 1930s, who quietly lent a helping hand to a different grim dictator, has, however,
gone almost unnoticed. In our
world where the big oil outfits have
become powerful forces and his
company, Texaco, became part of
the oil giant Chevron, it’s an instructive tale. He helped determine the course of a war that would
shape our world for decades to
come.
Flying the Skull and Crossbones Atop an Empire of Oil
From its beginning in 1936
until it ended early in 1939, some
400,000 deaths later, the Spanish
Civil War would rivet the world’s
attention. For those who no longer remember, here’s a thumbnail
sketch of what happened. A group
of right-wing army officers calling
themselves Nationalists, with a
ruthless young general named Francisco Franco emerging as their leader, went into revolt against the
elected government of the Spanish
Republic. They fought with a brutality that would soon become far
more common and global. Newspapers around the world reported
on the deadly aid that Franco received from Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy. Squadrons of aircraft
on loan from Adolf Hitler infamously bombed the town of Guernica into ruins and leveled whole
blocks of Madrid and Barcelona,
killing thousands of civilians, something that was shockingly new at
the time.
By war’s end, Italian Fascist
dictator Benito Mussolini had dispatched 80,000 Italian troops to
fight for the Nationalists. Hitler
and Mussolini would supply them
with weaponry ranging from the
latest tanks and artillery to submarines. Totally ignored by the
world’s press, however, would be
one of Franco’s crucial allies, a man
who lived neither in Berlin nor
Rome. With a globe on his desk
and roll-down maps on the wall of
his elegantly wainscotted office, he
could be found high in the iconic
Chrysler Building in the heart of
New York City.
Not one of the hundreds of
foreign correspondents who chronicled the bombing of Madrid
looked up at the ominous Vshaped formations of Hitler’s
bombers and wondered: Whose
fuel is powering those aircraft? The
oilman who supplied that fuel
would, in fact, prove to be the best
American friend a Fascist dictator
could have. He would provide the
Nationalists not only with oil, but
with an astonishing hidden subsidy of money, a generous and elastic line of credit, and a stream of
strategic intelligence.
Torkild Rieber was a barrelchested, square-jawed figure
whose presence dominated any
occasion. At elegant gathering
spots, like New York’s 21 Club,
where a hamburger-and-egg dish on
the menu was named after him, he
captivated listeners with tales of
his rugged past. Born in Norway,
he had gone to sea at 15 as a deckhand on a full-rigged clipper ship
that took six months to make its
way from Europe around Cape
Horn to San Francisco. For the next
two years, he signed on with ships
carrying indentured laborers from
Calcutta, India, to the sugar plantations of the British West Indies.
In his deep, gravelly voice, Rieber
would tell stories for the rest of
his life about climbing to a yardarm to furl sails far above a rolling,
pitching deck, and riding out Atlantic hurricanes with a shipload
of desperately seasick Indian laborers. On shore years later, however, his dress of choice wasn’t a
sailor’s. He liked to wear a tuxedo
when he went out to dinner at “21”
and elsewhere because, as he said,
“that’s the way the Brits ran the
colony in Calcutta.”
At the age of 22, having survived a knifing by a drunken crewman, he would be naturalized as
an American citizen and become
the captain of an oil tanker. Forever after, his friends would call him
“Cap.” The tanker he commanded
was later bought by the Texas
Company, better known by its
service station brand name, Texaco. That was when he realized
that, in the oil business, the biggest money was to be made on dry
land. As the company expanded
and the red Texaco star with its
green “T” spread to gas stations
across the world, he would marry
his boss’s secretary and climb the
corporate ladder to become, in
1935, CEO.
“He cannot sit at a desk,”
wrote an awestruck reporter from
Life magazine, who visited him at
Texaco’s New York headquarters.
“He bounces up and down, fidgets and jumps up to pace the floor
as if it were a deck. He is perpetually restless, on a terrestrial scale.
He cannot stay long in one office
or in one city or on one continent.”
Life’s sister magazine, Time, was
no less susceptible to his roughdiamond charm, calling him a
“hard-headed, steel-willed” corporate chieftain with “horse sense, a
command of men, and the driving
force of a triple-expansion engine.”
At the time, Texaco had a reputation as the brashest, most aggressive of the big oil companies;
its founder, who first hired Rieber, flew a skull-and-crossbones
flag atop his office building. “If I
were dying at a Texaco filling-station,” a Shell executive once said,
“I’d ask to be dragged across the
road.”
For the company, Rieber muscled his way into oilfields around
the world, making deals with local
strongmen. In Colombia, a new
city called Petrólea arose in the
midst of the Rhode Island-sized
expanse of land where Texaco had
won the right to drill. To pump
the oil to a port where tankers
could collect it meant building a
263-mile pipeline across the Andes
at Captain Rieber Pass.
Beneath his broad shoulders,
iron handshake, sailors’ oaths, and
up-from-the-lower-decks persona,
however, lay something far darker. Although not particularly antiSemitic by the standards of the time
— “Why,” he would say, “some
of my best friends are goddam
Jews, like Bernie Gimbel and Solomon Guggenheim” — he was an
admirer of Adolf Hitler.
“He always thought it was
much better to deal with autocrats
than democracies,” a friend recalled. “He said with an autocrat
you really only have to bribe him
once. With democracies you have
to keep doing it over and over.”
Becoming Franco’s Banker
In 1935, the Spanish Republic
signed a contract with Rieber’s
Texaco, turning the company into
its major oil supplier. The next
year, after Franco and his allies
made their grab for power, however, Rieber suddenly changed
course and bet on them. Knowing
that military trucks, tanks, and aircraft need not just fuel, but a range
of engine oils and other lubricants,
the Texaco CEO quickly ordered a
supply at the French port of Bordeaux to be loaded into a company
tanker and shipped to the hardpressed Nationalists. It was a gesture that Franco would never forget.
From Nationalist officials
came messages explaining that,
much as they urgently needed Texaco’s oil for their military, they
were painfully short on cash. Rieber instantly replied with a telegram — “Don’t worry about payments” — that became legendary
in the dictator’s inner circles. Not
surprisingly, soon after that, he was
invited to Burgos, headquarters of
the Nationalist insurgency, where
he promptly agreed to cut off fuel
sales to the Republic, while guaranteeing Franco all the oil he needed.
Few were paying the slightest
attention to where Franco’s bounteous supply of oil was coming
from. Not a single investigation on
the subject appeared in any major
American newspaper at a time
when the civil war in Spain was
front-page news almost daily. Yet
the question should have been obvious, as more than 60% of the oil
going to both sides in the bitter
conflict was being consumed by
the rival armed forces and Germany and Italy were incapable of offering Franco any oil, since both
were petroleum importers.
The U.S. neutrality legislation
of the time made it difficult for
American corporations to sell even
non-military goods to a country at
war, and posed two major obstacles for Franco’s Nationalists. The
law banned such cargo from being
transported in American ships -and the Nationalists had no tankers. In addition, it was illegal to
supply a warring country with
credit — and the Nationalists had
little money. Spain’s gold reserves
were in the hands of the Republic.
It didn’t take long for American customs agents to discover that
Texaco tankers were breaking the
law. They would leave the company’s pipeline terminal at Port
Arthur, Texas, with cargo manifests showing their destinations as
Antwerp, Rotterdam, or Amsterdam. At sea, their captains would
open sealed orders redirecting them
to ports in Nationalist Spain. Rieber was also violating the law in
yet another way — by extending
credit to a government at war.
Nominally, the credit was for 90
days (startlingly lenient terms for
the oil business of that era). The
real terms were far more generous.
As one Nationalist oil official later
explained, “We paid what we could
when we could.” In effect, an American oil company CEO had become
Franco’s banker. Unknown to
American authorities, Texaco was
also acting as a purchasing agent
when the Nationalists needed oil
products not in the company’s inventory.
FBI agents did indeed question
Rieber about those tankers, but
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
was leery of getting drawn into the
Spanish Civil War in any way, even
by prosecuting such a conspicuous violation of American law. Instead, Texaco received no more
than a slap on the wrist, eventually paying a fine of $22,000 for extending credit to a belligerent government. Years later, when oil companies began issuing credit cards
to consumers, a joke began making
the rounds among industry insiders: Who did Texaco give its first
credit card to? Francisco Franco.
How to Sink a Republic
President Roosevelt continued
to maintain a studied neutrality
toward the Spanish Civil War that
he would later regret. Texaco, on
the other hand, went to war.
In recent years, in the archives
of the Nationalist oil monopoly, a
Spanish scholar, Guillem Martínez Molinos, made a discovery. Not
only did Texaco ship its oil illegally to Franco, but that oil was priced
as if the Nationalists had transported it, not the company’s fleet
of tankers.
Nor was that the end of the
gifts Rieber offered. Mussolini had
put Italian submarines in the Mediterranean to work attacking ships
carrying supplies to Republican
Spain. Franco had his own vessels
and planes doing this as well. Commanders directing these submarines, bombers, and surface ships
were always remarkably well informed on the travels of tankers
bound for the Spanish Republic.
These were, of course, a prime target for the Nationalists and during
the war at least 29 of them were
either damaged, sunk, or captured.
The risk became so great that, in
the summer of 1937, insurance
rates for tankers in the Mediterranean abruptly quadrupled. One
reason those waters became so
dangerous: the Nationalists had
access to Texaco’s international
maritime intelligence network.
The company had offices and
sales agents across the world.
Thanks to Rieber, its Paris office
began collecting information from
port cities about oil tankers headed for the Spanish Republic. His
Paris associate William M. Brewster coordinated this flow of intelligence, passing on to the Nationalists data he received from London, Istanbul, Marseille, and elsewhere. Brewster’s messages often
listed the quantity and type of fuel
a tanker was carrying and how
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
IDPs dilemma
Insecurity in different parts of the country compelled thousands of families to leave their homes. Most of the internally displaced
people (IDPs) are living under tent with meager resources in some relatively peaceful areas. They are afraid that they will lose their
children if they did not receive necessary aids. The IDPs must be provided with essential daily needs as they might lose their children
of anger.
Therefore, the National Unity Government as well as welfare organizations should join hands and provide humanitarian aid to the
displace families. This is also the duty of people and national traders to support the IDPs. The government should also devise plans
to pave the ground for return of the families to their areas.
Sam im Kh a n , Ka bu l, Afgh an ista n
Letter to editor will be edited for policy, content and clarity. All letters must have the writer’s name and
address. You may send your letters to: [email protected]
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the author(s)
and do not reflect the views or opinions of the Afghanistan Times.
much had been paid for it, intelligence that would help the Nationalists in assessing Republican supplies and finances. Whenever he
could, however, he also delighted
in relaying information useful to
bomber pilots or submarine captains looking for targets.
On July 2, 1937, for example,
he sent a telegram to the chief of
the Nationalist oil monopoly
about the S.S. Campoamor, a Republican tanker a Texaco agent had
spotted at Le Verdon, a French port
near Bordeaux. It had covered its
name, hull, and funnel with new
coats of black paint, and was preparing to sail soon under a British
flag. It had already twice left its
anchorage and returned because of
reports of Nationalist ships and
submarines lying in wait outside
Santander, the Republican-held
port where it was supposed to
deliver its cargo of 10,000 tons of
aviation fuel. The news of that repainting and re-flagging would have
been useful to the commanders of
Nationalist naval vessels. As it
happened, though, an even more
valuable piece of information was
included in Brewster’s message:
much of the crew left the ship “almost every evening.” Four days
later, with many of the crew attending a dance on shore, the Campoamor was boarded near midnight
by an armed Nationalist raiding
party, which quickly sailed it to a
port held by Franco.
Rieber traveled to Nationalist
Spain twice during the war, at one
point getting a VIP tour of the front
lines near Madrid. By April 1939,
Franco had won the war and Rieber was assured that the gamble he
had made would pay off big time.
Texaco’s coffers would at last receive the money for the nearly
three years’ worth of fuel he had
supplied on credit. In total, he sold
the Nationalists at least $20 million worth of oil during the war,
the equivalent of more than $325
million today. Texaco’s tankers
took 225 trips to Spain, and ships
the company chartered another
156. Franco later made Rieber a
Knight of the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, one of Spain’s
highest honors.
After the Spanish war ended,
Texaco continued to make its own
foreign policy. Even after Germany went to war with Britain and
France in September 1939, Rieber
made no secret of his enthusiasm
for Hitler. He sometimes joked
with friends that the Führer’s antiSemitism might be a touch excessive, but he was just the sort of
strong, anti-communist leader with
whom one could do business. This
Rieber did, with gusto, selling Texaco oil to the Nazis, ordering tankers built in Hamburg shipyards,
and traveling to Germany after the
Polish Blitzkrieg so that Hermann
Göring could take him on a tour
by air of key industrial sites. On
that trip he spent a weekend at the
Luftwaffe commander’s country
estate, Carinhall, soon to be extravagantly decorated with art treasures looted from across Europe.
Eventually, Rieber’s love of
dictators got him in trouble. In
1940, it was revealed, among other things, that several Germans he
had hired were Nazi spies using
Texaco’s internal communications
to transmit intelligence information
to Berlin. Rieber lost his job, but
thanks to a grateful Franco the deposed tycoon landed on his feet:
the dictator made him chief American buyer for the Spanish government’s oil company. He went on
to a succession of other high-paying positions and directorships in
the oil industry and shipbuilding
and died a wealthy man in 1968, at
the age of 86.
Rieber is long forgotten, but
we still live in a world he had such
a hand in shaping.
Texaco oil helped Franco win
the Spanish Civil War and so be in
a position to aid the Nazis in the
far larger war that followed. Untold numbers of American sailors
lost their lives thanks to the 21
German U-Boats based on Spain’s
Atlantic coast.
Forty-five thousand Spaniards volunteered for Hitler’s army
and air force, and Spain supplied
an essential stream of strategic
minerals to Germany’s war industry. In the United States three quarters of a century later, well-funded climate change deniers and the
political network supported by the
Koch brothers are testimony to the
enduring power of the oil industry.—(Top Dispatch)
Adam Hochschild, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley. He
is the author of eight books, including King Leopold’s Ghost and
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918.
This piece is adapted from his new
book, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War,
1936-1939 (Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt).
Hong Kong and
China: A special
relationship
Tim Summers
Recent developments in Hong
Kong - from the violent disturbances in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district on the first day of the Chinese new year to the disappearance of publisher Lee Bo - have
taken concerns about political risk
in Hong Kong to a new level, both
in the city and beyond.
The dominant explanation for
Hong Kong's political problems in
much of the international media and
among some Hong Kongers is that
they are the result of the central
authorities (Beijing) tightening its
grip on Hong Kong politics and
society.
But if anything, the "occupy"
movement of autumn 2014 and
debates since it have demonstrated the limits to Beijing's ability to
influence, let alone control, events
in Hong Kong.
Voting in Hong Kong after
mass protests
China's impact on HK
The reality is that a complex
mix of local, national and global
factors explain the underlying
trends in Hong Kong.
Significant stresses lie within
Hong Kong itself rather than in the
relationship between Hong Kong
and Beijing. Socioeconomic forces
are a key driver, in particular the
growth in income inequality, rising prices of housing and other
basic commodities, and the effect
of increased immigration, especially from the rest of China.
Governance challenges result
from a constitutional arrangement
whereby a legislature - which is
substantially elected effectively acts as opposition to an unelected
executive. And although a sense of
dysfunction has grown since Leung Chun-ying's administration
took charge in 2012, the roots of
the current governance challenges
predate his administration.
Combined with growing socioeconomic divisions in Hong Kong,
the impact of China's economic rise
has fuelled new forces in Hong
Kong politics, which in turn tap
into long-standing antipathy to
China's ruling Communist Party
from a sizeable proportion of Hong
Kong people.
Global politics is also a factor,
with some arguing that the Hong
Kong protests of 2014 should be
seen as part of a global wave of
protest; the "Sunflower Movement" in Taiwan in early 2014 certainly appears to have inspired
some of Hong Kong's "occupy"
protesters.
Another structural factor
needs more consideration. Although tensions had begun to appear in the first decade after the
1997 handover from Britain to
China, they were balanced by the
pre-2008 global and Chinese economic boom, with a sense that
Hong Kong had broadly benefited
both from China's economic rise
and from globalisation.
However, in recent years international concern about the implications of China's economic rise
has grown, extending to many people in Hong Kong.
For some, the growth in Chinese tourism, investment in property overseas, and commercial expansion have been a financial opportunity, but for many, their effect on rising prices and Hong
Kong's changing demographic profile are a threat. This is all the more
so for a crowded city which can't
hedge the effect of China's rise as
other global cities can - although
strengthening Hong Kong's economic links across Southeast Asia
would help.
The anti-mainland sentiment
These trends may be further
exacerbated by the sense among
many Hong Kongers that, although
the city is clearly accepted by the
vast majority as a part of China,
they have somehow not benefited
from the rise of China.
Dramatic transformations,
particularly in places such as Shenzhen just north of Hong Kong,
have brought China's cities closer
to Hong Kong in terms of hard infrastructure, though Hong Kong
still enjoys a separate political and
legal system, and a better public
provision of education and healthcare.
OPINION: Hong Kong - defying the Chinese Dream
Combined with growing socioeconomic divisions in Hong Kong,
the impact of China's economic rise
has fuelled new forces in Hong
Kong politics, which in turn tap
into long-standing antipathy to
China's ruling Communist Party
from a sizeable proportion of Hong
Kong people.
In particular, there has been a
steady rise in anti-mainland sentiment, seen in some politicians' "demainlandisation" slogans dating
back a number of years, and a
growing emphasis on Hong Kong
identity as something separate or
different from Chinese identity.
Post-Occupy, a frustrated minority have begun to advocate separation or independence for Hong
Kong.
These political trends have
contributed to the polarisation of
Hong Kong society and the futile
political standoffs which have left
the political reform process stalled
and exacerbated the city's governance challenges.
I contend that the causes of
this are much more about the mutual interaction between the structural consequences of China's rise
and local politics than any policy
choices in Beijing.
But the outcomes have created nerves in Beijing about its ability to influence events in Hong
Kong, and the central government's
responses have only hardened positions in the city.
Indeed, rather than an increase
in Beijing's "control", attempts to
intervene simply highlight the limits of Beijing's ability to influence
Hong Kong politics and society.
Several candidates for the February legislative by-election talked
about the need to find a middle
way, but they performed poorly.
Instead, 15 percent of the votes
cast went to the pro-independence
"Hong Kong Indigenous" candidate.
It therefore looks unlikely that
moderate voices will prevail, and
instead political and socioeconomic
tensions will remain high through
2016 September legislative elections. With another small-circle
Chief Executive (head of government) election to follow in spring
2017, the political tensions in
Hong Kong will only rise further.
Tim Summers is an adjunct
assistant professor at the Centre
for China Studies at The Chinese
University of Hong Kong.
article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's
editorial policy.
.
AFGHANISTANTIMES
In a large, airy classroom in the
village of Kashipur in the eastern
Indian state of Odisha, there unfolds a scene rich in contrasts and
ironies. A reading and writing class
for the five-year-olds of prathama
sreni, or first grade, proceeds
alongside a parent-teacher meeting.
The children are all girls, for
this is a primary school run by a
local NGO, Agragamee, exclusively for girls from Scheduled Tribe
or Scheduled Caste families - those
groups, collectively making up
then sign with a thumbprint. Their
inability to read attests to the dysfunctionality of India's extensive
but shambolic state-run primary
school system - thought by many
respected intellectuals, such as the
economist and Nobel laureate
Amartya Sen, to be the biggest failing of the Indian state in its seven
decades as an independent nation.
'Elder mother'
A hush falls over the room as a
diminutive woman in a salwar kameez, her greying hair cut short,
for tribal women, and an agriculturist experimenting with organic
farming for sustainable livelihoods.
She has been a campaigner for
the rights of tribal people - standing up to the power of both state
and market in protesting against
the displacement of tribals by mining companies in one of India's
most mineral-rich regions.
She has written lucidly and
combatively on all these issues in
journals and magazines, trying to
capture what she calls "the poli-
about a fourth of India's population, marked out by the Indian constitution as in need of special assistance from the state.
But even the parents present
are mostly mothers.
All in the room are barefoot,
as is the rule, but only some have
left slippers at the door.
Kashipur lies in Rayagada, one
of India's poorest districts. Twothirds of the households here are,
in the language of the Indian state,
"BPL" or below the poverty line as indeed, are most of India's 80
million indigenous peoples or "adivasis", no matter where they live.
And yet, despite the commonality of background, the contrast
between the generations could not
be more striking. While the girls
rapidly write out the names of animals on to their slates, matching
pictures with corresponding
words, the women are perplexed
by the printed page.
When the register of attending
parents is passed around, they have
to be shown their own names, and
smiling but stern, takes off her
shoes at the door and enters.
For the people of Kashipur,
Vidhya Das, 56, is better known
as "Bada Maa", or "Elder Mother".
Alongside her husband
Achyut Das, with whom she
founded Agragamee in 1987, Das
has spent more than three decades
in this district, studying and sharing the lives of some of India's most
marginalised people, and pointing
out not just what they have to endure by way of hardships and injustices, but also all that they have
to offer.
And in contrast to many
NGOs in rural areas, which limit
their interventions to a single major cause - education, reproductive
health, human rights - what stands
out about both the Dases is the
breadth of their vision and the
range of their practice.
Das is as an educationist working to produce hundreds of firstgeneration literates, the creator of
skill and leadership programmes
tics of underdevelopment" - the
deliberate effort by the state to keep
some of its people uneducated and
vulnerable, the better to exploit
them, their land and their labour.
"In India the great irony is that
the poor not only have to bear the
harsh burden of their own poverty," she says, "they also subsidise
the lives of a considerable number
of people far better off than them."
The 'real constitution'
One glimpse of this hidden reality soon appears in this very
room.
After a detailed and involved
discussion on school - options for
further studies for the fifth graders who will pass out in a month's
time, ensuring regular attendance the discussion turns to the role of
the women not as parents, but as
workers.
A small survey is taken of the
women's participation in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(MGNREGA).
Established in 2006, this is the
largest public works programme in
the world. The scheme was designed by the government as a way
of building rural infrastructure,
staving off migration to the cities,
and improving the options of those
who would otherwise have no bargaining power for their labour.
By the terms of the programme, each household has the
right to demand from the government 100 days of work a year (in
some of the poorest districts, including Rayagada, 200 days a year)
on local public works - the building of roads and bridges, the development of watersheds, the reforestation of village commons - and
to be paid a stipulated minimum
wage.
At the current minimum wage
of Rs226 or $3.50 a day, 200 days
of work would give a household
an income of Rs45,200 (about
$700) a year - a small but invaluable foundation for a poor family
to build on.
It was envisaged that the
works funded by the scheme, being local and requiring no travel,
would draw a large number of
women into the workforce and reconfigure gender and social dynamics at the rural level.
And so it has: today, more
than half the work days in the
scheme are claimed by women,
when men greatly outnumber
women in other kinds of recorded
work. "Narega" is today a household word in rural India, a neologism encapsulating both the hope
and the mechanism for a more equitable society.
And yet, on the ground, the
scheme has also generated enormous opportunities for corruption.
The extent of this quickly becomes
apparent when the women in the
room are asked how much they are
paid for what they colloquially call
"coolie kama" or manual labour
under the "narega" scheme.
It turns out no one is actually
paid more than Rs100 ($1.50) a
day. Being unable to read, they
believe what they are told and have
no idea what the official wage rate
is or even who is actually the source
of the works programme to begin
with. For many of them, it is a
contractor or local leader who has
organised the work, and who controls their destiny. They are happy to settle for less than half the
state-mandated minimum wage,
knowing that if they do not agree
to work at this rate, then some-
Glasgow: A city divided along learning lines
In some parts of Glasgow, a child
is more likely to end up in prison
than win a place at Glasgow University.
In 2015, fewer than five students from Easterhouse, a housing
scheme on the edge of the city, won
a place at Glasgow University.
That’s two fewer than the seven
who were sent to Polmont Young
Offenders Institution.
These numbers give us a
glimpse into the level of educational inequality in Scotland’s biggest
city.
Glasgow is the fourth oldest
university in the English-speaking
world and regularly ranks in the
top 10 universities in the UK.
Technology developed by its researchers recently helped scientists to prove the existence of gravitational waves, first predicted by
Einstein.
Former student and cultural
commentator Pat Kane describes
how it is both a world-class and a
local institution.
"The other role it should play
is as a symbol of aspiration for the
ambitious, talented children of
Glasgow, no matter what their
background is. These figures show
that it’s failing on that front - but
it can’t in any way be entirely the
blame of the institution itself."
Al Jazeera submitted a Freedom of Information request asking Glasgow University to break
down its admissions by postcode,
which reveal the neighbourhoods
new students come from.
The response shows that, in
2015, there were 1,239 first-year
students with Glasgow postcodes.
That’s just under a quarter of the
total intake of 5,771 new undergraduates.
The Glasgow postcode area
includes the city itself and its surrounding suburbs. The information
provided to Al Jazeera shows that
the communities the highest numbers of students come from are
outside the city boundaries.
More Glasgow University
students come from the affluent
south side community of Newton
Mearns than anywhere else in
Scotland.
Last year, this prosperous suburb, known for its blonde sandstone bungalows, provided 57 undergraduates. It was closely followed by neighbouring Clarkston
with 54 new students, and Bearsden, on the north of the city, with
52. Each of these well-to-do neighbourhoods sends more than 10
times as many young people to
Glasgow University as Easterhouse.
Other working-class communities in Glasgow do equally badly. Fewer than five new students
come from Bridgeton, in the east
end, and seven from Possilpark.
Patrick Harvie, Glasgow MSP
and co-convenor of the Scottish
Greens, said: "Unequal access to
higher education is a clear reflection of the deep inequality that
tarnishes our society more generally. The next session of the Scottish Parliament will finally have
some of the real economic powers
it needs to start changing that, but
we must also make sure that
schools, colleges and universities
have long-term security about their
funding."
He added: "Only if all these
institutions are able to reach out
to and support talented students
from all backgrounds will we see
real progress in closing the gap in
life chances."
Al Jazeera also submitted a
Freedom of Information request to
Polmont Young Offenders Institution, asking it to break down its
own admissions by postcode. The
results illustrate just how great the
gap in life chances really is for
Scotland’s children.
In each of the past four years,
more young people from Possilpark, one of Glasgow’s most deprived neighbourhoods, have gone
to jail than to Glasgow University.
In 2014, 17 new inmates at
Polmont had a Possilpark postcode. That was more than three
times the five students who made
it to Glasgow University that year.
Last year, seven of the university’s new undergraduates came
from Possilpark; 10 young people
from the area were imprisoned at
Polmont.
A spokesperson for Glasgow
University says it is committed to
widening access and has launched
an initiative which will see staff
visit nearly 50 target secondary
schools across the west of Scotland to speak to more than 12,000
pupils about their future choices.
"The University of Glasgow
runs extensive and extremely successful outreach programmes to
ensure that we recruit the most able
and ambitious students regardless
of socioeconomic background," he
said.
"This is seen in the rise in the
number of Scottish-based students
from the 40 percent most disadvantaged areas to more than 25
percent of our undergraduate intake - easily the highest of any of
Scotland’s ancient universities."
Despite its efforts, the information obtained by Al Jazeera indicates that Glasgow University
is still dominated by the middle
classes. However, this certainly
does not make it unique.
A separate Freedom of Information request to Strathclyde University, which has a campus in
Glasgow city centre, revealed that
it admitted 103 first-year students
from Newton Mearns last year and
102 from Bearsden, but just seven
from Easterhouse. These figures
suggest a social divide that is at
least as great as that of its older
and more prestigious neighbour.
Willie Bain is one of the rare
success stories. Almost half the
pupils at his old school, St Roch’s,
are entitled to free school meals
because their parents are on some
form of benefit.
He made it from a council flat
in a high-rise to become a law lecturer and eventually the MP for
the area where he lives, which includes Possilpark, until he lost his
seat in last year’s election. He
worries that social mobility might
actually be going backwards.
"By the time people have
reached primary school, inequalities are already engrained. Nursery education is key to unlocking
that, combined with what's happening in the home in the early
years of a child's upbringing."
Young people in areas such as
Possilpark and Easterhouse have
as much ability as those elsewhere,
he says, but the barriers they have
to overcome can be cultural as well
as financial.
"In my time at school, it was
seen as uncool or geeky to seek to
excel at exams and get on. There
was often peer pressure not to excel. It marks people out as differ-
ent. Children who are different can
find it hard to be popular in schools
and find an identity."
These views are echoed by Pat
Kane, who became a 1980s icon as
lead singer of the band Hue and
Cry. He grew up in Coatbridge, a
soot-stained industrial town on
Glasgow’s eastern fringe that attracted generations of immigrants
from Ireland to work in its mines
and foundries.
He says: "It matters hugely
that, according to these statistics,
Glasgow University is effectively
closed off to so many kids from
the poorer parts of the city.
"What I loved, as a young man
who had certainly suffered a lot of
grief for being ‘arty’ and ‘sensitive’ at my state school, was discovering a range of eccentric,
quirky, creative people, who accepted me for exactly who I was,
so accepting that I eventually married one of them (Joan McAlpine
MSP, my ex) and produced two
daughters with her."
Glasgow University is the sort
of institution that can help young
people to find their talent and give
them a decent shot at realising their
full potential. But first they have
to get through the door.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said: "We are
committed to widening access to
university and have delivered significant improvements compared
with the position in 2007-08. We
have invested over £76 million in
widening access and articulation
places over the past three years
and we continue to fund a wide
range of other initiatives to support access."
The Scottish Government’s
Commission on Widening Access
suggested, earlier in March, that
universities should lower their entrance requirements for children
from the poorest backgrounds, so
they are based on the minimum
academic standards needed to complete a degree.
This proposal is being carefully considered along with the commission’s other recommendations.
body else will.
In effect, the poorest of India's
poor work not just to make an income themselves, but to enrich the
many levels of government officials and middlemen who make up
the system of kickbacks, never to
be found on any official records,
called the pecentage (PC) system.
Das points out that as long as
the women do not get together to
approach the government directly
for work with a full awareness of
their rights, and are unable to monitor the records on which they affix their thumbprints, the theft will
go on. She asks the women to get
together in small groups to petition the local public works officer
for work, and offers the support
of Agragamee staff to help them
write their requests.
"We believe we live in a country governed by the Indian constitution," remarks Das wryly, "but
for many Indians, the PC system
is the real constitution of this country."
Suddenly, the simple words
being read aloud by the children at
the back of the room - "dog",
"bear", "parrot" - seem to resound
with power.
Organised resistance
"In the 30 years that I have
been here," Das says, "Agragamee's
work has changed - adapting to the
changing times and needs of the
tribal communities. But our objective of rights and sustainable livelihoods for tribal communities has
remained.
"In the 1980s, when our work
had just begun, the main focus was
to stop the system of bonded labour that had existed in this region
from time immemorial. Men and
women who got into debt and
could not repay it would have to
pledge their labour for an entire lifetime to the debtor. Imagine, in a
democracy, human beings were
still serving as serfs.
"These efforts resulted in a
violent backlash. Achyut was
physically attacked and seriously
wounded by the landlords.
Throughout our work in the tribal
regions, we have had to face several kinds of opposition from vested interests, including false propaganda and litigations, threats of
violence, ban orders on Agragamee,
and so on. I myself have been gheraoed [surrounded] at least three
times in my life by an angry mob.
But it's a bit easier in these situations if you're a woman. You just
look them in the eye and they will
not touch you."
In the 1990s, Agragamee's efforts to help tribal women claim
their rights and learn new skills led
to the formation of a local federation of women's self-help groups
called "Ama Sangathan", or "Our
Gathering", and to a growing
awareness of the possibilities of
community action and organised
resistance.
This is an emphasis very particular to Das' thinking: for her,
rural women need not limit their
focus to "women's issues", but
should think of their wider responsibilities as stakeholders in a community and as citizens of a polity.
In an essay from 1991, she criticises a writer for holding "the typical elitist feminist view which
gives prime importance to the
woman as an isolated individual
unit and almost completely ignores
her identity as an active, functional and necessary member of an extended family and a complex rural
community."
The site of an uprising
Twenty kilometres from Kashipur, in the village of Mandibisi,
I visit a settlement still called
"Holiya Sai", or "The Settlement
of the Bonded Labourers" - an echo
of the past that persists in the
present.
Not far away, the doors open
on a small godown, or warehouse,
piled high with sweet-smelling produce: neatly tied bundles of broomgrass. Looking at this humble raw
material, bought at Rs30 (50 cents)
a kilo and used to make the indispensable household broom, one
would never guess that it was the
focal point of a fierce battle over
economic rights 20 years ago between tribal women and the state a struggle that gave birth to a local
women's movement that lasts to
this day, and that brought about a
change in state law for all non-timber forest produce.
The collection of minor forest
produce, like firewood, fruits and
berries, and medicinal plants, is a
traditional part of the lives and
livelihoods of tribals. But bringing
these activities within the realm of
the modern economy and law has
proved a complicated business and one in which the tribals have
had little say.
"At the time," says Gunjli Ma,
a resident of Mandibisi in her 50s
who was a prominent figure in
what is known today as 'the Man-
dibisi struggle', "the tribals were
obliged to sell minor forest produce to a public-sector organisation called the Tribal Development
Cooperative
Cooperation
(TDCC), at rates decided by the
government."
"The rates were a pittance, and
the TDCC in turn sold off what it
bought from us to private trading
companies, who made substantial
profits from the manufacture of
brooms.
"We wanted to change this
unjust law, but for that we first
had to get together and form a strategy - and to prepare for the long
haul. Were the government and the
thana babus [policemen] going to
listen to us so easily? Never!"
Civil disobedience
The struggle lasted seven
years, and the most dramatic episode in it occurred when the Mandibisi women decided to take the
path of civil disobedience and to
stockpile broom-grass, illegally.
The Forest Department eventually seized the stock, but the
conflict was big news in the state,
and the government was forced to
reconsider its policy.
Finally, in 2000, the law was
changed and tribals were given the
right to sell minor forest produce
themselves.
Ama Sangathan decided to enter the business of brooms as a
supplier not just of the raw material, but the finished product.
"Today, Ama Sangathan
brooms can be found all over the
state, as well as in neighbouring
Andhra Pradesh, and our organisation has 1,300 members," says
Sumoni Jhodia, the president of
Ama Sangathan and a long-time
associate of Das in many Kasipur
struggles.
"New causes come up all the
time and we get together to fight
them. We fought and banned commercial liquor breweries in five
gram panchayats [administrative
blocks of villages]. Right now, our
task is to stop country-liquor
shops in our villages because they
are destroying our men and our livelihoods."
On the wall of Sumoni's humble home are awards and citations
presented to her over the years for
her work in the women's and tribal
rights movement, and a photograph of her meeting Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress
Party and probably the most powerful woman in India.
Will Kazakh autocrat's
daughter succeed him?
As his party triumphed in a snap
parliamentary vote, Kazakhstan's
ageing President Nursultan Nazarbayev said his oil-rich nation
may become a parliamentary republic - apparently with his daughter at the helm.
Nazarbayev, who has led Kazakhstan since 1989, is credited
with turning his Central Asian nation - which occupies an area the
size of Western Europe, but has a
population of less than 18 million
- into one of the most prosperous
former Soviet states.
But the question of succession
has dogged him for years as his
political opponents ended up in
exile, political oblivion, jail or a
graveyard.
Kazakhstan's immense hydrocarbon resources and strategic location in the heart of Eurasia have
already triggered political rivalries
between Russia, China and the
West - and their leaders, obviously, also want to know about Nazarbayev’s successor.
The answer, apparently, lies
in the results of Sunday's parliamentary vote, carefully phrased
pledges of political changes - and a
recent cabinet appointment.
Nazarbayev's suppression of
opposition has paved the way for
the landslide victory of his Nur
Otan (Shining Motherland) party
that won 82 percent of the vote
despite a crisis caused by low oil
prices, an economic meltdown in
neighbouring Russia, and the industrial slowdown in China, an
even mightier neighbour.
"There must be changes," Nazarbayev said in televised remarks
after casting his vote on Sunday.
"We may be talking about a distribution of power between branches - the president, the parliament,
and the government. We're thinking in this direction."
He also warned about the danger of "urging" democracy in Kazakhstan.
"Democracy is not the beginning of the road for us. Democracy is the end of the road," Nazarbayev, who won last year's presidential election with almost 98
percent of the vote, said.
"There is no need to urge us
because we are different. Asia is
about different relations, family
relations." In September, he appointed his 52-year-old daughter,
Dariga, as a deputy prime minister, and her name topped the ticket of the Nur Otan party. She is
the most likely speaker of the 107seat Majilis - the lower house of
parliament - and, possibly, the next
Kazakh leader, analysts say.
"Since the late 1990s, many
considered her a possible successor, an heiress," Adjar Kurtov, a
regional expert, told Al Jazeera.
In the past 20 years, she has
cut a towering political and public
figure. She headed a national news
agency, a media consortium, and a
political party that morphed into
Nur Otan. She also served on the
board of directors of a major bank
- and became an opera singer who
once performed at Moscow's renowned Bolshoi Theatre.
But Nazarbaeva's ties to her
father have not always been cordial.
In 2007, she and her husband,
Rakhat Aliyev, a powerful security official, fell out with Nazarbayev. She was forced to leave
her parliament seat and divorce
Aliyev, who fled to Austria and
was eventually arrested on murder and kidnapping charges.
He committed suicide in a prison cell last February - and she returned to parliament in 2012 as a
deputy speaker.
But the comeback to the spotlight has not been all positive to
her public image. Some of her statements have been controversial - if
not outright scandalous.
Nazarbayeva told a government meeting in 2013 that Kazakh
school students should visit orphanages for disabled and handicapped children "to see the results
of premature, reckless sexual life"
by observing "these freaks, the invalids".
Another obstacle in her rise to
the political top could be the traditional, male-dominated structure
of Kazakh society.
Fiercely proud of their nomadic heritage, Kazakhs have for ages
kept an elaborate clan structure that
excludes women from decisionmaking. Even the rapid Westernisation of younger Kazakhs and
their exposure to foreign political
models is not likely to change this
structure, analysts say.
"Even is such a civilised Asian
country as Kazakhstan a female
president is hardly possible," Arkady Dubnov, a Moscow-based
political analyst, told Al Jazeera,
adding Nazarbayeva's nearly certain appointment as parliament
speaker is a tentative "fitting".
.
AFGHANISTANTIMES
Online lodging
service Airbnb
opens Cuba
listings to world
The IMF has issued a warning that
“increasing financial market turbulence and falling asset prices” are
weakening the global economy,
which already faces headwinds due
to the “…modest recovery in advanced economies, China’s rebalancing, the weaker-than-expected
growth impact from lower oil prices, and generally diminished
growth prospects in emerging and
low-income economies.” In its report to the finance ministers and
central bank governors of the
Group of 20 nations before their
meeting in Shangahi, the IMF called
on the G20 policymakers to undertake “…bold multilateral actions to boost growth and contain
risk.” But will the IMF itself be
prepared for the next crisis?
The question is particularly
appropriate in view of the negative response of the G20 officials
to the IMF’s warning. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Law sought
to dampen expectations of any
government actions, warning
“Don’t expect a crisis response in
a non-crisis environment.” Similarly, Germany’s Minister of Finance
Wolfgang Schaeuble stated that
“Fiscal as well as monetary policies have reached their
limits…Talking about further stimulus just distracts from the real
tasks at hand.”
The IMF, then, may be the
“first responder” in the event of
more volatility and weakening. The
approval of the long-delayed 14th
General Quota Review has allowed
the IMF to implement increases
in the quota subscriptions of its
members that augment its financial resources. Managing Director
Christine Lagarde, who has just
been reappointed to a second term,
has claimed the institution of new
Fund lending programs, such as the
Flexible Credit Line (FCL) and the
Precautionary and Liquidity Line
(PLL), has strengthened the global
safety net. These programs allow
the IMF to lend quickly to countries with sound policies. But outside the IMF, Lagarde claims, the
safety net has become “fragmented and asymmetric.” Therefore, she
proposes, “Rather than relying on
a fragmented and incomplete system of regional and bilateral arrangements, we need a functioning
international network of precautionary instruments that works for
everyone.” The IMF is ready to
provide more such a network.
But is a lack of liquidity provision the main problem that
emerging market nations face? The
Financial Times quotes Lagarde as
stating that any assistance to oil
exporters like Azerbaijan and Nigeria should come without any stigma, as “They are clearly the victims of outside shocks…” in the
form of collapses in oil prices. But
outside shocks are not always transitory, and may continue over long
periods of time.
There are many reasons to expect that lower commodity prices
may persist. If so, the governments of commodity exporters
that became used to higher revenues may be forced to scale down
their spending plans. Debt levels
that appeared reasonable at one set
of export prices may become unsustainable at another. In these circumstances, the countries involved
may face questions about their
solvency.
But is the IMF the appropriate body to deal with insolvency?
IMF lending in such circumstances has become more common. Carmen M. Reinhart of Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government
and Christoph Trebesch of the
University of Munich write that
about 40% of IMF programs in
the 1990s and 2000s went to countries in some stage of default or
restructuring of official debt, de-
spite the IMF’s official policy of
not lending to countries in arrears.
Reinhart and Trebesch attribute
the prevalence of continued lending (which has been called “recidi-
vist lending”) in part to the Fund’s
tolerance of continued non-payment of government debt.
More recently, the IMF’s credibility suffered a blow due to its
Asia markets were mixed in a quiet session on Tuesday, with a
weaker yen buoying Japanese
stocks while Chinese stocks gave
their Monday gains but held onto
the psychologically key 3,000 level.
Japan's Nikkei 225, which reopened after a public holiday
Monday, closed up 323.74 points,
or 1.94 percent, at 17,048.55.
Across the Korean Strait, the Kospi finished up 7.05 points, or 0.35
percent, at 1,996.81. Hong Kong's
Hang Seng index gave up morning
gains to close near flat at 20,666.75.
Chinese markets, which were
up Monday after authorities signaled the loosening of controls
over margin lending, retreated, with
the Shanghai composite closing
down 18.13 points, or 0.60 percent, at 3,000.67. The Shenzhen
composite fell 5.58 points, or 0.29
percent, at 1,880.78.
Down Under, the ASX 200
index gave up early gains to close
flat at 5,166.60, weighed by the
financials and materials sub-indexes, down 0.46 and 0.58 percent,
respectively.
Mark Matthews, head of research for Asia at Bank Julius Baer,
wrote in a morning note that ahead
of the Good Friday holiday, markets were very quiet but stable.
"There is no real reason for them
to sell off, apart from their being
high," said Matthews.
But economists at Deutsche
Bank said in their Asia Economics
Monthly note that despite the recovery in global risk sentiment,
accompanied by stability in the
currency market and a rally in as-
set prices, Asia's economic outlook
remained a cause for concern.
"Asia's underlying economic
data have worsened progressively. Exports, which declined across
the board in the region last year,
have started 2016 even weaker,
both in value and volume terms,"
the economists said, adding "industrial production data and PMI
survey readings have also been
poor. Weak demand from China is
a key contributor to this phenomenon, but another important element is chronic weakness in demand from EU."
On the currency front, the Japanese yen advanced to the 111
handle against the dollar, after market close, with the dollar/yen pair
trading down 0.21 percent at
111.70, as of 4:00 p.m. HK/SIN
time. Earlier, the pair hit a session
high of 112.20, lifting shares.
Major Japanese exporters received a boost Tuesday, with Toyota adding 3.57 percent, Nissan up
1.98 percent and Honda adding
1.24 percent. A weaker yen is usually a positive for exporters as it
improves their overseas profit
numbers when converted to local
currency.
The Australian dollar climbed
up to the $0.76 level against the
greenback after market close, before retreating slightly as the pair
traded up 0.24 percent 0.7594 at
4:00 p.m. HK/SIN time.
Chris Weston, chief market
strategist at IG, said in an afternoon note that the low levels of
implied volatility in equity markets have benefited the Aussie dollar, with "the rise in iron ore, steel
and energy [have] ... also been a
key tailwind [for the currency]."
Reserve Bank of Australia
(RBA) governor Glenn Stevens
said earlier Tuesday that the recent rise of the Aussie was risky,
Reuters reported. Commodity
prices would need to recover
strongly and the U.S. Federal Reserve would have to keep interest
rates at current levels to justify the
higher Aussie dollar, the central
banker said, according to Reuters.
Pedestrians walk past a share
prices board displaying movements on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo.
Kazuhiro Nogi | AFP | Getty
Images
Pedestrians walk past a share
prices board displaying movements on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo.
In corporate news, Japan's Jiji
News reported Monday that Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn
would likely reduce its capital injection into troubled electronics
maker Sharp by around 100 billion yen ($898 million), compared
to its initial plan of injecting 489
billion yen, according to Reuters.
Shares of Sharp closed down 6.52
percent. Elsewhere, the Nikkei reported that airbag manufacturer
Takata planned to sell Irvin Automotive Products, an American
company that produces automotive interior materials, for tens of
billions of yen to fund the recall of
its defective air bags. Takata shares
ended up 0.38 percent.
Mining stocks were mixed,
with major miners in Australia, Rio
Tinto and BHP Billiton, finishing
down 0.54 and 1.49 percent respectively. But iron ore producer
Fortescue closed up 0.36 percent,
following an overnight uptick in
iron ore prices to $58 a tonne, from
$56.30 on Friday.
Chinese metal plays were
mostly lower, with shares of Baoshan Steel closing down 2.02 percent, Shandong Jinling Mining
down 4.45 percent and Yunnan
Copper lower by 2.80 percent.
Metal prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) were mostly
lower, with three-month copper
trading down 0.37 percent while
three-month aluminum fell 0.43
percent as of 4:00 p.m. HK/SIN
time.
Oil prices advanced overnight,
with Reuters reporting that data
showed crude inventories at the
Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub
for U.S. futures fell for the first
time since January. U.S. crude futures for April delivery added 1.2
percent to $39.91 a barrel, before
expiring as the front-month contract. During Asian hours, U.S.
crude futures for May delivery,
which became the front-month
contract, shed 0.17 percent to
$41.46 a barrel. Global benchmark
Brent futures were lower by 0.19
percent at $41.46 in late afternoon
HK/SIN time, after settling up 0.8
percent overnight. Energy plays
finished mixed, with Santos closing up 0.25 percent, Woodside
Petroleum higher by 0.77 percent,
Japan's Inpex closing down 0.92
percent and South Korea's S-Oil
fell 0.33 percent. Mainland Chinese energy plays were mixed, with
Sinopec adding 2.67 percent.
GLOBAL MARKETS-ASIAN SHARES
WOBBLE AS FED RATE TALK REVIVES
TOKYO: Asian stocks seesawed
on Tuesday as hawkish comments
from U.S. Federal Reserve officials
clouded the monetary policy outlook less than a week after Fed
Chair Janet Yellen had set out a
more cautious path to interest rate
increases this year.
The dollar got a mild boost
from the suggestion that interest
rate hikes could be on the way sooner rather than later.
Financial spreadbetting firm
IG predicted Britain's FTSE 100
would open 4 points lower, Germany's DAX would fall 8 points
and France's CAC 40 would gain 1
point.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis
Lockhart said the central bank
might be in line for a rate hike as
soon as April, as policymakers'
decision to hold rates steady last
week was more about ensuring that
recent global financial volatility
had settled down.
San Francisco Fed President
John Williams told Market News
International he would advocate
another hike as early as April, and
Richmond Fed President Jeffrey
Lacker said U.S. inflation is likely
to accelerate in the coming years
and move toward the Fed's 2 percent target.
MSCI's broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan was
down for much of the session but
was last up 0.1 percent, after all
three U.S. stock indexes posted
small gains overnight.
China stocks slipped, as the
market weighed new guidelines on
pension products and recent comments by the central bank governor that some short-term speculative funds may be leaving the country. The CSI300 index fell 0.6 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.4 percent.
Japan's Nikkei stock index
added 1.9 percent, closing at a oneweek high, after markets in Tokyo
reopened after a public holiday on
Monday. A weaker yen gave a tailwind to shares.
"People who bought the yen
and sold stocks last week seem to
be unwinding their positions," said
Takuya Takahashi, a strategist at
Daiwa Securities in Tokyo.
The dollar nursed losses last
week after the Fed halved its outlook for interest rate increases to
two from four by the end of this
year and said an uncertain global
outlook posed risks to the U.S.
economy. The latest round of official Fed remarks allowed the greenback to take back some of that lost
ground.
The dollar index, which tracks
the U.S. unit against a basket of
six major rival currencies, was
steady at 95.278.
The dollar rose 0.2 percent
against the yen to 112.13 , pulling
well away from Thursday's 17month low of 110.67.
The euro edged up about 0.1
percent to $1.1258, but was below last week's one-month peak
of $1.1342.
Sterling inched higher but remained pressured by concerns
about Prime Minister David Cameron's ability to keep Britain in the
European Union after leading 'Out'
campaigner Iain Duncan Smith resigned from the cabinet late on Friday.
Sterling was last buying
$1.4387, up about 0.2 percent but
well below Friday's one-month
high of $1.4514.
"A bit of internal party bickering doesn't normally impact sterling but this time it has because of
the possible implications for Brexit," Jasper Lawler, market analyst
at CMC Markets, said in a note.
The Australian dollar firmed,
rising 0.4 percent to $0.7603 . Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)
Governor Glenn Stevens made no
comment on the immediate outlook
for further rate cuts, but sounded
an upbeat tone on the country's
economy and the strength of its
financial system.
U.S. crude erased early losses
and built on the previous session's
gains made on data showing a drawdown at the Cushing, Oklahoma
delivery hub. It was up about 0.4
percent at $41.68 a barrel after rising 1.19 percent in the previous
session. Brent added 0.4 percent
to $41.69 after settling up 0.8 percent on Monday.
involvement with Greece and the
European governments that lent to
it in 2010. (See Paul Blustein for
an account of that period.) The
IMF ‘s guidelines for granting “exceptional access” to a member stipulate that such lending could only
be undertaken if the member’s debt
was sustainable in the mediumterm. The Greek debt clearly was
not, so the Fund justified its lending on the grounds that there was a
risk of “international systemic
spillovers.” But the IMF’s willingness to participate in the bailout loan of 2010 only delayed the
eventual restructuring of Greek
debt in 2012. The IMF now insists that the European governments grant Greece more debt relief before it will provide any more
financial government.
Reinhart and Trebesch write
that the IMF’s “…involvement in
chronic debt crises and in development finance may make it harder to focus on its original mission…” of providing credit in the
event of a balance of payments
crisis, its original mission. Moreover, its association with cases of
long-run insolvency may “taint all
of its lending.” This may explain
the limited response to the IMF’s
programs of liquidity provision.
Only Colombia, Mexico and Poland have shown an interest in the
FCL, and the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia and Morocco in the PLL.
Even if the IMF receives the
power to implement new programs, therefore, its past record of
lending may deter potential borrowers. This problem will be worsened if the IMF treats countries
that need to adapt to a new global
economy as temporary borrowers
that only need assistance until
commodity prices rise and they are
back on their feet. The day when
the emerging market economies
routinely recorded high growth
rates may have come to an end. If
so, debt restructuring may become
a more common event that needs
to be addressed directly.
This article was first published
on the WEF Agenda Blog in March
2016.
Joseph P. Joyce is a Professor
of Economics at Wellesley College,
where he holds the M. Margaret
Ball Chair of International Relations. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global
Affairs. His research deals with
issues in financial globalization.
His book, The IMF and Global
Financial Crises: Phoenix Rising?,
was published in 2012 by Cambridge University Press. A Chinese
edition of the book will be published in 2015. His published articles have appeared in journals such
as the Journal of International
Money and Finance, Review of
International Economics, Open
Economies Review, Journal of
Development Economics, Economics & Politics, Journal of Macroeconomics, Review of World
Economics, and World Development. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Review of International Organizations and the
Journal of International Commerce,
Economics and Policy. Professor
Joyce received a B.S.F.S. degree in
international affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and an M.A. and
Ph.D. in economics from Boston
University.
IHS and Markit to merge,
creating data heavyweight
Markit Chief Executive Lance Uggla spoke before the company's
market debut at the Nasdaq stock
market in New York in June 2014.
The firm announced Monday a
merger in which Mr. Uggla will be
president and a member of the
board for the new combined company, IHS Markit. ENLARGE
U.S. information and analytics provider IHS Inc. and U.K.based market-data company Markit Ltd. said they would combine
to create a $13 billion company
based in London.
By moving to the U.K., IHS
will be able to take advantage of
the country’s lower corporate-tax
rate through what is known as a
tax inversion, a way for U.S. companies to avoid paying taxes at
home. The new company, to be
called IHS Markit, is expecting a
corporate-tax rate in the low- to
mid-20% range, compared with the
35% U.S. firms pay.
Monday’s deal values Markit
at about $5.8 billion, or $31.13 a
share, a 5.6% premium to Friday’s
closing stock price.
After the deal is completed—
which is expected in the second
half of the year—shareholders of
IHS, which has a market value of
about $7.5 billion as of Friday’s
close, will own about 57% of the
combined company.
Shareholders of London-based
Markit will own about 43% of the
firm. Although it will be located in
London, the new company will
have “certain key operations” in
IHS’s base of Englewood, Colo.
Started in a barn more than a
decade ago by former TD Securities credit-trading executive Lance
Uggla, Markit aggregates information from major bond dealers that
is used for research, valuation, trading and reporting about derivatives,
bonds, loans and currencies.
The company has become an
important provider of data to Wall
Street and was initially backed by
a dozen large lenders, including
Bank of America Corp., Goldman
Sachs Group Inc., Deutsche Bank
AG and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Jerre Stead, chief executive of
IHS, will become CEO of the combined firm until his retirement on
Dec. 31, 2017. He also will be chairman. Mr. Uggla, who will be president and a member of the board of
directors, will take over as CEO
after Mr. Stead’s departure.
The two executives, who have
been involved in more than 100
mergers and acquisitions over the
past decade, discussed merging
over breakfast in December after
being connected by an investor in
both companies, they said. By early January, the deal was progressing with a March 21 deadline to
announce the merger.
Messrs. Stead and Uggla said
the deal was attractive because
their customer bases don’t overlap and it represents an opportunity to marry corporate and financial data.
IHS serves more corporate
customers and Markit provides
data to Wall Street banks and asset
managers.
“We use content in slightly
different ways,” Mr. Uggla said.
IHS provides analytics for
businesses and governments in
more than 140 countries. Founded
in 1959, it went public in 2005 and
has about 9,000 employees in 32
countries. The firm has been on an
acquisition spree in recent years,
pursuing a growth strategy by
snapping up data providers and
rival analytics firms.
It completed four deals in 2015
and earlier this year acquired pricereporting agency Oil Price Information Service.
IHS sponsors one of the most
important global energy conferences every year, IHS CERAWeek
and retains some of the industry’s
top authorities, including Daniel
Yergin, the Pulitzer-Prize winning
author and economic researcher.
Mr. Uggla said IHS’s energy data
was particularly valuable to Wall
Street investors trying to size up
debt and equity investment opportunities.
Online lodging service Airbnb is
allowing travelers from around the
world to book stays in private
homes in Cuba after the San Francisco-based company received a
special authorization from the
Obama administration, Airbnb announced Sunday.
Airbnb was the first major
American company to enter Cuba
after Presidents Barack Obama
and Raul Castro declared detente
on Dec. 17, 2014. The service handles online listing, booking and
payments for people looking to
stay in private homes instead of
hotels. Cuba has become its fastest-growing market, with about
4,000 homes added over the last
year.
Airbnb had only been allowed
to let US travelers use its services
in Cuba under a relatively limited
Obama administration exception to
the half-century old US trade embargo on the island. The expansion
of that license gives Airbnb the
ability to become a one-stop shop
for travelers seeking lodging in private homes, which have seen a
flood of demand from travelers
seeking an alternative to state-run
hotels.
Airbnb’s new authorization
was announced on the morning of
an historic three-day trip by
Obama to Cuba and a day after
Starwood Hotels announced that
it had signed a deal to run three
Cuban hotels, becoming the first
US hotel company in Cuba since
Fidel Castro took power in 1959
and took over the island’s hotels.
Airbnb said world travelers could
begin booking in Cuba in April 2,
the anniversary of the country's
start of operations on the island.
Also on Sunday, Marriott International Inc. said it had gained
Treasury Department authorization to pursue a deal in Cuba. The
hotel company, which is based in
Bethesda, Maryland, said it is in
talks with potential partners on the
island. Its CEO, Arne Sorenson, is
in Cuba with Obama’s delegation.
All hotels in Cuba are now
owned by government agencies and
many are known for poor service
and decrepit infrastructure. Foreign hotel chains operate some of
the island's larger and more luxurious hotels, which are running at
full capacity thanks to a post-detente boom in tourism that saw
visitor numbers surge nearly 20
percent last year.
One of the first openings in
Cuba’s centrally planned economy
came when the government allowed
families to rent rooms in their
homes for a few dollars a night,
starting in the 1990s. That has become a full-blown private hospitality industry, with many Cubans
using capital from relatives abroad
and even foreign investors to
transform crumbling homes into
the equivalents of small boutique
hotels.
Many websites allow foreigners to book Cuban private homes,
known as “casas particulares,” but
none has emerged as a dominant
player. Many travelers still find it
hard to guarantee bookings and
make electronic or credit card payments. Airbnb is promoting its service as a solution to those problems in Cuba.
German business
confidence
rebounds on
resilient domestic
demand
German business confidence improved for the first time in four
months in a sign that domestic demand is helping shield companies
in Europe’s largest economy from
slowing global growth.
The Munich-based Ifo institute’s business climate index rose
to 106.7 in March from 105.7 the
previous month. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of
economists was for an increase to
106.
German companies have increased their reliance on domestic
demand as a China-led slowdown
in emerging markets curbs exports.
A measure of German investor
optimism to be published later on
Tuesday is also forecast to show a
pickup.
The improvement “is related
to catching-up effects after the exceptionally strong decline in February” for both indicators, Johannes Gareis, an economist at
Natixis SA in Frankfurt, said before the reports. Business confidence “still faces headwinds from
weakness in the manufacturing
sector on the back of weak global
growth and the euro exchange rate.”
The single currency has risen
2.5 percent on a trade-weighted
basis this year. Germany’s
Bundesbank warned on Monday
that the nation’s growth momentum could slow in the second quarter after a positive start to the year
as weakening exports prompt
companies to curb output and hiring.
.
AFGHANISTANTIMES
Artists throw weight
behind Shafqat
Amanat Ali
While the anticipation surrounding the India-Pakistan match was
bound to be unparalleled, it didn’t
seem to have much bearing on the
box office collection of Fawad
Khan’s latest Bollywood innings,
Kapoor & Sons. While the movie
was sure to have a successful outing in Pakistani cinemas, not many
were expecting it to impress so
early on — especially at a time
when the World T20 was in full
flow.
Released across 67 screens
nationally, the Shakun Batra-directorial has managed to rake in approximately Rs36.5 million during
its opening weekend, revealed
IMGC Entertainment marketing
and distribution manager Ahsan
Khalil. According to him, the company was always confident about
the film despite it being released in
such a tricky window mainly due
to its excellent storyline and
Fawad’s star power. “Even two
and a half to three weeks prior to
the release of the film, there was a
lot of demand for the movie, which
prompted cinema owners to increase the number of shows,” Khalil explained to The Express Tribune.
Even though Kapoor & Sons
has done reasonably well nationwide, Khalil singled out the multiplex circuits in Punjab and Karachi as the driving force behind its
initial run. Breaking down the dayby-day collections of the film, he
shared it had managed to earn close
to Rs13 million on its opening day.
The Dharma production witnessed
a slight dip in earnings by 23% on
the second day mainly due to the
India-Pakistan World T20 match
but still managed to collect approximately Rs10 million. While earnings for the third day have not yet
been tabulated, a source close to
the publication revealed that the
film managed to earn approximately Rs1.3 million.
This is not the first instance a
Fawad Khan film has done well at
the local box office as nearly two
years ago, his Bollywood debut
Khoobsurat also earned Rs30 million in the span of just three days.
Khalil had forecasted Kapoor &
Sons to reach Rs100 million by the
end of the week. When questioned
what sort of box office they were
looking at, he replied, “If it continues in this manner, we expect
the film to earn about Rs150 million by the time if concludes its
run.” In India, Kapoor & Sons
managed to earn an over Rs376.4
during the first three days, bringing its worldwide box office collection to Rs570 million, reported
Bollywood Hungama.
With no other major Bollywood film expected to release in
the coming weeks, Khalil expects
the movie to continue in the same
form. “Only Batman v Superman
is releasing in the current week and
judging by previous trends, Hollywood films have a selective audience in Pakistan. They don’t
pose much of a challenge to Indian
or Pakistani releases.”
Directed by Shakun Batra, the
family-drama features an ensemble cast with Siddharth Malhotra,
Alia Bhatt, Fawad Khan, Rishi
Kapoor, Rajat Kapoor and Ratna
Pathak Shah appearing in lead
roles. It revolves around the story
of a dysfunctional family and their
journey back to one another.
Given the buzz surrounding the
India-Pakistan cricket face-off, organisers of the World T20 had
worked to the best of their knacks
to fly in Amitabh Bachchan and
Shafqat Amanat Ali to sing the respective national anthems of their
countries before showdown.
While Amitabh’s performance was
more of a precursor to India’s passionate on-field performance,
Shafqat seemingly failed to make
the nation proud with his otherwise immaculate singing skills.
Within minutes after he was
done with the performance, the
former Fuzon front man drew the
ire of his fellow countrymen, forcing him to later post a lengthy apology on Facebook, explaining that
what appeared as him forgetting
the lines was rather an “audio and
technical” glitch.
In light of the controversy,
heavyweights of the music industry have thrown weight behind the
Amanat scion. A frequent performer across the border, Ali Zafar said
Shafqat would come out of the incident as a better person. “I can
understand the sentiment of the
general public but one thing that
should be understood is that human error is something unavoidable,” Ali told The Express Tribune.
Having recently performed at
the Pakistan Super League (PSL)
opening ceremony, the ‘Rockstar’
could relate to the pressure and
weight of expectations on Shafqat
during the performance. “We
should not disown or isolate him
based on this mistake. Shafqat
bhai’s contribution is immense and
all of that must not be forgotten
only because of one mistake.”
Echoing Zafar’s sentiments
was renowned musician and philanthropist Abrarul Haq.
A long-time friend of Shafqat,
Abrar said it was not intentional.
“The criticism is justified because
it is the national anthem and he
was representing us, that too in
hostile territory,” stated Abrar.
“But we should not criticise him
just because of that. We should,
instead, learn from these mistakes.
As a nation, we have a terrible tendency of not learning from our
mistakes.”
Even Atif Aslam, one of Pakistani most successful exports to
India, showed support for the
Mitwa singer. Drawing parallels
with fast bowler Mohammad
Amir’s case, Atif said things have
been blown out of proportion.
“Even Amir bowled no-balls and
now he is back and performing to
the best of his ability. We should
forgive and forget,” he maintained.
Commenting on the praises Amitabh received for his performance,
he said, “I don’t know the facts
but from what I saw, I think Amitabh Bachchan was lip-syncing.”
Agreeing with Atif, Abrar went on
to say that Shafqat could have
made use of a teleprompter.
Musician Zoheb Hassan said
even the best of batsmen get dismissed on their very first delivery.
“It is only human to commit an
error. Big concerts tend to have
these technical issues,” he said.
On the other hand, there are
some who are still unhappy. One
of the most proponent critics was
Shafqat’s former band mate, Imran Momina, commonly known as
Immu. “I think he lost it big time.
An ordinary man, if presented
with such an opportunity, would
have sung with more emotion. His
over-confidence may have caused
the slip. Just look at Amitabh. He
is in his 70s and he didn’t forget
the lines,” he shared. “How can
you forget the lyrics to the national anthem? It is wrong to forget
something you learn as a child!”
Despite the overt criticism flying his way, Shafqat is not the first
artist to perform his national anthem incorrectly. Nearly half a decade ago, Christina Aguilera found
herself in a similar fix when she
messed up the lyrics to the American national anthem at the Super
Bowl XLV ceremony.
WATER
UNDER
THE
BRIDGE?
Durdana
Rehman
passing on
the wisdom
Superhero
stand-off
LOS ANGELES: Superheroes
have long existed in a world of their
own. But as two of the world’s
most iconic caped crusaders collide in Batman v Superman: Dawn
of Justice, both are brought crashing down to reality to face the ramifications of their actions.
Batman v Superman — out in
US theaters on March 25 — opens
with the climax of 2013’s Man of
Steel, wherein Superman’s battle
with General Zod causes widespread destruction in Metropolis.
Bruce Wayne — Batman’s alter ego
— sees his company building crumble and blames Superman for the
deaths of civilians, which sets up
the clash of two superheroes.
LONDON: In an unfortunate turn
of events, Oscar-winning singer
Adele’s personal photographs
were hacked and posted all over
social media on Monday. The 27year-old, who has a three-year-old
son named Angelo with her partner Simon Konecki, is said to be
furious after the images; including
a photograph of her new born baby
swaddled in blankets, an ultrasound
scan and a selfie while she was
pregnant — were circulated on a
group on Facebook.
One of the members of the
group was so shocked by the
breach that he contacted the Hello
hit maker’s management to let
them know. The tranche also contained pictures from the singer’s
childhood, a photo of her dressed
in a Santa Claus outfit as a teenager and the early days of her career,
not previously released to the public.
“I was appalled and upset for
Adele when I saw the photographs. They are really private and
should not be passed around.
Durdana Rehman, once a screensiren of Pushto and Punjabi movies, recently returned to the silver
screen with latest film, Fiker Not.
The actor, who at one time was
popular for her potentially backbreaking dance moves, chose to end
the hiatus by working on the film
alongside her daughter, singer-actor Maham Rehman.
Released on March 11, the
Asma Butt directorial featured a
cast of newcomers, with the exception of Durdana. Maham, who
recently launched her debut music
album, lent her voice for the film’s
soundtrack. “Nowadays my primary focus is my daughter,” said
Durdana. “After receiving great
feedback for her work on Fiker
Not, she has received a host of offers for films and dramas. However, I’ve advised her to first complete her education, which is undoubtedly more important at this
point.” As of now, Durdana is herself busy working on a few Pushto projects and promises good quality work to her fans.
The actor expressed concerns
over the progress of Pakistani cinema in comparison to that of films
being made in neighbouring countries. “Despite the many issues,
our movies did dominate back in
the 70s. What I fail to understand
is that today, when we have young
film-makers who had studied film
abroad, we’re lagging behind,”
shared Durdana.
.
AFGHANISTANTIMES
Wesley Bryan
needs no
tricks to win
Web.com
Tour event in
La.
Wesley and George Bryan made a
name for themselves as the trickshot duo, the Bryan Brothers.
However, it was a different kind
of teamwork that earned Wesley
his first Web.com Tour win on
Sunday.
In just his third Web.com Tour
start, Wesley won the Chitimacha
Louisiana Open, the first Web.com
Tour event of the season on U.S.
soil, by a shot with his brother
George on the bag.
After a weather-plagued week,
Bryan put the finishing touches on
a final round of 3-under 68 that
left him with a nervous wait to see
if his total would hold up for the
win. The 14-under total was
enough for a one-shot win over
Argentinian Julian Etulian.
“Dude I’m not going to lie. I
went over to the range to prepare
for a playoff and I was 55 times
more nervous over there when the
ball was out of my court and I had
no control over the situation,” Bryan said. “That was a super weird
feeling. I’m super relieved I guess
would be the word.”
George himself had hoped to
play in the event, but came up just
a shot shy in Monday qualifying.
The 25-year-old Wesley, who
calls Augusta, Ga., home, moved
up to third on the Web.com Tour
money list.
Day grateful for
Woods' words
of wisdom
Tiger Woods told Jason Day that
he is capable of starting his own
legacy at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week. Jason Day expressed his gratitude for Tiger
Woods' support after the Australian won the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Sunday. Day held his
nerve to win his first title of PGA
Tour title of the year at Bay Hill
after chipping out from the bunker close to the pin and sinking a
putt for par to finish 17 under. The
2015 PGA Championship winner
is second in the world rankings and
can replace Jordan Spieth at the
top at the Dell Match Play this
week. And Day said words of wisdom from former world number
one Woods have played a part in
his success. "One of the things he
told me was 'just be yourself and
stay in your world' and another
was 'you know that you can do
this and start your own legacy
here'." said Day. "And to have his
advice, to be able to go see him and
practice with him and pick his brain
about numerous things that I want
to try and improve my game ... it's
been a big credit to him.
This is 2016, yes? Just making
sure. Because Raymond Moore,
the director of this weekend's BNP
Paribas Open tournament at Indian Wells, apparently set his watch
back about four decades prior to a
media Q&A Sunday. Moore answered a question about the Women's Tennis Association by basically chopping female tennis players off at the knees.
"In my next life when I come
back I want to be someone in the
WTA," Moore said, "because they
ride on the coattails of the men.
They don't make any decisions and
they are lucky. They are very very
lucky. If I was a lady player, I'd go
down every night on my knees and
thank God that Roger Federer and
Rafa Nadal were born, because
they have carried this sport. They
really have."
Yep. You hear that, "lady players"? Stop complaining about
equivalent purses and start thanking the men like good women
should!
That in itself would be enough
to land Moore in hot social-media
water, but Moore followed that up
by discussing, yes, the physical
attractiveness of the women:
Lest anyone start down the
proverbial "everyone is too PC!"
road: this is unacceptable and demeaning for the director of a major
tournament to dismiss and disregard the efforts of women in the
sport ... starting with a woman
who's one of the most notable athletes on the planet. And oh, was
Serena Williams displeased with
Moore's comments.
Shortly after her match, in
which she lost the championship
to Victoria Azarenka, Williams lit
into Moore's comments:
"We, as women, have come a
long way. We shouldn't have to
drop to our knees at any point,"
she said. "In order to make a comment [like Moore did] you have to
have history and you have to have
facts and you have to knows thing.
Scores of fighters have made the
trek to Albany, N.Y., over the last
several years to plead with legislators and, in some cases, the governor to lift the ban on mixed martial
arts in the state.
Zuffa, the parent company of the
UFC, has spent millions of dollars
in its lobbying efforts to get New
York to become the last state in
the country to legalize MMA.
Many have spoken passionately
about the topic. Fans have flooded the in-boxes of lawmakers seeking support.
Along the way, the culinary union
got involved and bashed UFC
fighters for what it viewed as misogyny, homophobia, crude language and all manner of other untoward behavior.
Sheldon Silver, the powerful
speaker of the New York state assembly who was thought to be
doing the culinary union’s bidding
and blocking a vote on the MMA
bill, was indicted on corruption
charges and eventually jailed.
MMA supporter Carl Heastie succeeded him 13 months ago,
but there still wasn’t a vote last
year.
That will finally change on
Tuesday. The bill to legalize
MMA, which has the support of
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.),
passed the state senate in February and will be put up for a vote
by the house on Tuesday.
For years, UFC executives
believed they had the votes in the
assembly they needed to pass the
bill, but Silver continually refused
to allow it to get to the floor of the
house for a vote.
Finally, logic and reason seem
to have prevailed and the vote will
come Tuesday. It’s expected to
pass easily, which will set off plenty of celebrating inside the MMA
community.
It’s become a cause célèbre
among high-profile fighters like
New Yorkers Chris Weidman, Jon
Jones and Matt Serra. Ronda Rousey is a California resident, but she
traveled numerous times to New
York and met with Cuomo last year
to urge him to support the bill.
It’s big news, and not just because the UFC will soon after announce its first event at Madison
Square Garden.
The UFC has staged events in
many of the world’s largest cities,
including Tokyo, Los Angeles,
Seoul, Sao Paulo, Mexico City,
Chicago, Manila, Rio de Janeiro,
London and Houston.
Fighters will plead with UFC
president Dana White and CEO
Lorenzo Fertitta to be placed on
the first card held in New York
City. The card, no doubt, will be
stacked with many of the company’s biggest names, and the marketing and promotion of it will be
well over the top.
Fantastic Style scores easy win in Las Flores at Santa Anita
Fantastic Style cruised to a four-length victory in the $100,000 Las
Flores Stakes for older fillies and mares Sunday at Santa Anita.
Ridden by Rafael Bejarano and trained by Bob Baffert, Fantastic
Style ran six furlongs in 1:08.79 and paid $3, $2.40 and $2.10 in the
Grade 3 race. The 4-year-old Kentucky-bred filly had been idle since
winning the Great Lady M Stakes by 3 1/2 lengths on July 11 at Los
Alamitos. Ben's Duchess returned $4.20 and $2.60, while Cadet Roni
was another 3 3/4 lengths back in third and paid $2.40 to show.
The victory, worth $60,000, increased Fantastic Style's career earnings to $332,000. Mike Marlow, Baffert's assistant, says Fantastic
Style ''just cruised. ... She was really impressive.''
In the $75,000 San Pedro Stakes, Iron Rob took the lead with a
quarter mile to go and went on to win by 1 1/2 lengths, giving veteran
jockey Stewart Elliott his first stakes win at the track. Iron Rob ran six
furlongs in 1:09.05 and paid $21.80, $4.60 and $3 at 9-1 odds. Denman's Call returned $2.20 and $2.10 as the 2-5 favorite, while Mt Veeder was another 2 1/4 lengths back in third and paid $2.40 to show. Elliott
is best known for riding Smarty Jones to victories in the 2004 Kentucky
Derby and Preakness. The victory, worth $46,800, increased Iron Rob's
career earnings to $157,320, with three wins in 10 starts.
I mean, you look at someone like Billie Jean King who opened so many doors for not only women's players but women's athletes in general. I feel
like that is such a disservice to her and every female, not only a female athlete but every woman on this planet that has ever tried to stand up for
what they believed in and being proud to be a woman."
Moore did proffer an apology later in the day:
Times change. Minds need to change, too. This isn't a matter of "political correctness" or not hurting feelings; this is simple recognition of the
vast achievements of women in tennis. Women stand on their own in tennis more than virtually any other sport, and anyone who can't recognize
or credit that simply isn't paying attention.
The journalist who
brought down Lance
Armstrong
When journalist David Walsh met Lance Armstrong during his first Tour
de France in 1993, he was charmed by the young cyclist. "He was 21. I
was 38, and I really liked him," Walsh says. "I walked away thinking I
had met a guy who was really going to leave his mark on this sport."
Walsh was right. Over the next decade, Armstrong beat cancer, won
seven Tour de France titles, and became the most celebrated cyclist of
all time. He rose to the status of international celebrity, advocating for
his own charity and the sport as a whole.
But he was cheating the whole time. And Walsh knew.
As the world celebrated a hero, Walsh was convinced that Armstrong was one of the many cyclists taking performance-enhancing
drugs. The cycling community and his fellow journalists wanted a champion. Fans wanted a role model. Walsh wanted the truth.
Armstrong's decade-long cover-up and Walsh's investigation into
one of sport's biggest cheaters is the basis for director Stephen Frears'
film The Program. Actor Ben Foster plays the cyclist with chilling
accuracy. The actor trained to be a professional cyclist, dedicating himself to the sport-even admitting to taking Armstrong's performance
enhancing drugs to complete the character. "Actors do what they have
to do to give the performance," Frears, who had no idea Foster was on
the drugs, says. "He thought it was necessary. He was very, very good
in the film and I had no complaints."
Complete with sweeping scenes of past Tour de France races (a mix
of CGI, recreations, and found footage, Frears says), Foster's Armstrong and Walsh (played by Chris O'Dowd) square off over the integrity of cycling. Ahead of The Program's wide release on March 18, we
spoke with the real Walsh about how he brought down cycling's greatest
cheater.
What was the first time you suspected Armstrong of cheating?
Six years lapsed from our first meeting to the time I suspected
Lance was cheating. He'd had a pretty good career. He won the world
championships. I always said that he had tremendous potential as a
one-day racer. I never saw him as a Tour de France rider in his kind of
shape, given his attributes. Then he gets cancer, and everyone in the
sport is feeling sad for him and hoping he pulls through. Then he comes
back to the Tour de France in 1999 to a different sport. In '98 we had all
this drug scandal, so journalists like me were thinking we were screwed
over covering when this bike race. We thought we were covering heroes,
but it turns out they were cheats. Any journalist worth his salt was
going to have a more skeptical view.
When I turn up in '99 I'm thinking, Let's make sure we properly
investigate. So, Lance wins by a mile, the best performance he's done in
his life. He's the best you've ever seen. From the very start I felt something was wrong. The starting point of the suspicion was just watching
his answers to questions. It wasn't just that he was defensive; he was
almost aggressively defensive. Lance had this almost patronizing bit,
where he said, You need to fall back in love with cycling. And I'm
listening to this and I say, "Lance, what about all the doping, has it all
disappeared?"
So you think he could be up to something. What's your first move?
I had complete and utter conviction. On that Sunday, I advised
readers in the Sunday Times not to applaud Lance's victory. Because
what we need here is not acclimation to a new champion, but an inquiry.
And of course I was vilified for that. So what I had to do was go out and
get evidence. Real evidence. I got firsthand accounts of Lance's doping.
How could people accept that? People wanted the story to be true so
badly that they were prepared to embrace the irresponsibility of not
knowing.
.
.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 23 2016-Hamal 04, 1395 H.S
Vol:X Issue No:232 Price: Afs.15
2,000 new
soldiers to
test mettle
against
insurgents
The supporters of Vice President
General Abdul Rashid Dostum and
acting provincial governor Ata
Mohammad Noor staged protests
45pc rivers
water wasted:
Zamir
AT News Report
KABUL: Expressing his concerns
over poor water management, the
Minister of Agriculture, Irrigation
and Livestock on Tuesday said
that currently 45 percent of Afghanistan’s rivers water was being
wasted before reaching cultivable
lands for irrigation purpose.
Briefing newsmen to commemorate the International Water
Day, Asadullah Zamir said that
based on recent report over 9.5
million hectares of the country’s
land was suitable for cultivation.
“Out of which 500,000 hectares
of land can be brought under cultivation if rivers water was managed. Currently, two million hectares is irrigated,” he said, referring
to the 9.5 million cultivable lands.
Furthermore, he said that 80
of the Afghan population’s economy depend on agriculture sector.
However, he emphasized that
more attention should be paid to
this sector.
He added that 70 percent of
agricultural products were taken
from irrigated lands and other 30
percent from rain-fed lands.
“Water is not something alternative, rather it is one of the most
important human needs,” said
Minister for Energy and Water,
Eng. Ali Ahmad Osmani.
Osmani, who was also briefing reporters, said that neither the
human beings nor the land can live
without water. “It is the matter of
life and death,” he said referring to
the value of water.
However, he termed water
mismanagement as a big challenge
and said that currently Afghanistan
was not facing water shortages.
in Mazar-e-Sharif city, a day after
reports emerged regarding the removal of Dostum’s pictures from
the city that sparked furor among
his supporters.
Hundreds of people took to
the streets in Mazar-e-Sharif city
today amid fears that the rallies
could turn violent due to the cause
of demonstration.
The protesters are chanting
against corruption, use of power,
deception, discrimination, and
Mafias operating in this province.
This comes as Noor issued a
statement late on Monday warning against any provocative moves
that would lead to chaos in the city
as a result of the removal of Gen.
Dostum’s pictures.
Noor, who is leading Jamiate-Islami party, urged the people
to refrain from chaos and moves
that lead to disorders in the city
and prevent destabilizing the stability of the local residents by repeating the bitter memories of the
early 90s and 2000s.
The acting provincial governor
warned of strict repercussions if
his pleas for calmness were ignored, insisting that the leadership
believes and respects tolerance.
Khaamapress
AT News Report
Retreat in Helmand was tactical, Senate told
KABUL: Senior security officials
said on Tuesday security forces
had staged a “tactical retreat” from
some areas in southern Helmand
province, assuring the Taliban
would not be able to overrun the
restive province.
The security situation in Helmand deteriorated after heavy
clashes between security forces
and the insurgents broke out.
The Taliban, who have laid
siege to Marja district, are currently in control of Baghran, Dishu,
Musa Qala, Khanshin and Nawzad districts of Helmand over the
past four years.
On Tuesday, the Meshrano
Jirga summoned top security officials to brief the upper house about
the security situation in Helmand
and other parts of the country.
Lt. Gen. Abdullah Khan, head
of the army chief office staff, said:
“Last year, the enemy was unable
to capture Helmand and we guarantee they would not be able to do
it this year.”
He said four battalions of the
215th Maiwand Military Corps
had been reorganised and were fully capable to respond to the enemy attacks.
Answering questions from
Senators about the retreat of security forces, Abdullah Khan said the
Ministry of Defence had removed
50 percent of check-posts which
could be attacked by the enemy.
The move was aimed to avoid the
loss of security men, he said.
Khan said had security forces
not left their check-posts, they
would have been besieged by the
enemy and would have been finally lost.
About rocket attacks from
across the Durand Line, Khan said
security forces had been ordered
to respond to the attacks in future. He said the issue of rocket
attacks had been formally conveyed to the leaders of the unity
government.
Lt. Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman, senior security affairs incharge at the Ministry of Interior
(MoI), said: “Necessary orders
have been issued regarding the rocket attacks from across the Durand
Line.”
He added the Afghan security
forces would do everything they
had in their disposal to respond to
rockets fired by the Pakistani forces.
Abdul Matin Baig, deputy
head of the National Directorate
of Security (NDS), was also
present at the session, but he
briefed lawmakers behind closed
doors.
KABUL: Another batch of 2,000
soldiers completed their training at
the Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) on Tuesday. They
will join their brothers in uniform
to test their mettle in the fight
against anti-state elements.
Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qadam Shah Shaheem, who was
present at the graduation ceremony, said that at least 1,200 soldiers
and 800 sergeants were graduated
from the KMTC on Tuesday.
He said that new military operations codenamed “Shafaq” was
conducted across the country.
“We have learned a lot from last
year’s operation Zafar,” he said,
adding that “Shafaq” offensive
would yield significant results as
the Afghan security forces had
learnt several things in last year’s
operation.
However, he termed last year
a test for the Afghan security forces who went through some difficulties. “But the Afghan security
forces were capable to foil evil designs of the enemies of Afghanistan,” he said.
He went on to say that militants failed to capture some provinces as they were looking to do
so due to withdrawal of foreign
forces from the battleground. The
NATO ended combat operation in
December 2014.
Hinting to the Kunduz collapse, he said that the province
was retaken from insurgents by the
Afghan security forces. “We are
reviving political, social and international support,” he said, adding
that they also several military
choppers to support the ground
forces. Furthermore, he assured of
international community’s financial and technical supports to the
Afghan forces for longtime.
KMTC Commander Brig.
Gen. Aminullah Patyani said that
the new batch of graduated troops
was ready to serve in every part
of the country.
One of the graduates, Ihsanullah, told Pajhwok Afghan News
that Afghanistan was his home. He
showed readiness to defend his
house at any cost event at the cost
of his life.
“I have learned military tactics as well as use of different light
and heavy weapons during the
training,” he said.

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