Defence`s Feeds

Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive, today met with the Luxembourgish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Etienne Schneider to exchange views on the preparation of the European Council in June 2015, Luxembourg’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union and Luxembourg’s participation in EDA projects.

“The example of our future Luxembourg Governmental Satellite perfectly illustrates how public and private actors can work together for their mutual benefit and how defence spending can contribute to economic growth and job creation. The Luxembourg GovSat will be operated by a joint-venture company in Luxembourg, which brings together the government and the world-leading satellite operator SES established in the Grand-Duchy to launch a communication satellite with military frequency bands for the use of the Luxembourg government and its defence. This public-private partnership is one example illustrating how defence spending can benefit even a small economy without a significant armaments or specific defence industry of its own. As the EDA does, we promote working closely together with the private sector and looking whenever possible for economic opportunities for local companies, even SMEs, when planning for defence projects”, said Etienne Schneider, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence and Minister of the Economy.

Full support

”Luxembourg will take over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2015 - right after the June European Council on defence. Based on the excellent cooperation between the Agency and the Luxembourg Ministry of Defence, I have today assured Minister Schneider of our support in any defence related Presidency initiative. In particular, EDA will support a seminar organised on public-private partnerships as part of our endeavour to set up incentives for more cooperation in the development of European defence capabilities”, stressed Jorge Domecq during his visit in Luxembourg.

The visit in Luxembourg also allowed for meetings at the European Investment Bank and at the NATO Support and Procurement Agency. It is part of a series of visits by Mr. Domecq to all EDA Member States following his appointment as EDA Chief Executive and ahead of the Ministerial Steering Board on 18 May 2015. So far, Mr. Domecq visited Spain, Lithuania, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, France, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Estonia, Poland, Slovenia, Greece and Cyprus. Upcoming confirmed visits are Finland, Sweden and Italy. 

More information

• News "Defence cooperation talks in Cyprus" (23 April 2015)
• News "Chief Executive meets Hungarian Minister of Defence" (23 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Athens" (22 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in Poland for defence discussions"(20 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq meets Estonian Minister of Defence" (20 April 2015)
• News "Meeting with Croatian Defence Minister in Zagreb" (17 April 2015)
• News "Slovenia welcomes Jorge Domecq" (15 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Czech Republic" (13 April 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in Bulgaria to discuss defence cooperation" (8 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive travels to Romania" (8 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive meets French Minister of Defence" (30 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq exchanges views with Irish Minister of Defence Simon Coveney T.D." (25 March 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits The Netherlands" (23 March 2015)
• News "Discussions on European defence in Portugal" (19 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq meets German Secretary of State" (19 March 2015)
• News "Belgium and EDA discuss future defence cooperation" (18 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in the UK for cooperation talks" (25 Feb 2015)
• News "Latvia and EDA discuss cooperation opportunities" (19 Feb 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Lithuania" (17 Feb 2015) 

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Public hearing "The implementation of the security research programme for conflict prevention and peace building".
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak 5B001
Programme
Draft progarmme
Poster
Poster
Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Here’s the second installment of my reporting from the 2015 MCIS conference. This one and the next will focus on Russian views of NATO as the primary source of military threat to the Russian Federation. The first speech was by General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff. His topic was the military threats and dangers facing Russia in the contemporary period. He launched into a discussion of how the West saw Russia’s efforts to stabilize the situation in Ukraine as unacceptable independence in standing up for its national interests. He argued that this reaction was the cause of the increase in international tension over the last year, as the Western countries have sought to put political and economic pressure on Russia in order to “put it in its place.” He argues that while many Western experts believe that the Ukraine crisis has led to a sudden and rapid collapse of world order, the reality is that the situation has been developing since the start of the 1990s. The problems were caused by the collapse of the bipolar system, which allowed the US to consider itself the winner of the Cold War and to attempt to build a system in which it had total domination over international security. In such a system, the US would decide unilaterally which countries could be considered democratic and which were “evil empires,” which were freedom fighters and which terrorists and separatists. In doing so, the US stopped considering the interests of other states and would only selectively follow the norms of international law.

Russia has had to respond to this threat and has done so in its new military doctrine, which strictly follows international norms. The key points, as presented by Gerasimov in the slide below, include using violent means only as a last resort, using military force to contain and prevent conflicts, and preventing all (but especially nuclear) military conflicts. At the same time, the doctrine states that the current international security system does not provide for all countries to have security in equal measure. In other words, Russian military leaders continue to feel that Russian security is infringed by the current international security system and imply that they would like to see it revised.

The most significant threat facing Russia, in Gerasimov’s view, comes from NATO. In particular, he highlights the threat from NATO enlargement to the east, noting that all 12 new members added since 1999 were formerly either members of the Warsaw Pact or Soviet republics. This process is continuing, with the potential future inclusion of former Yugoslav republics and continuing talk of perspective Euroatlantic integration of Ukraine and Georgia. Political arguments about creating a single Europe sharing common values have outweighed purely military and security in enlargement discussions, with many new members added even though they did not fulfill the economic and military criteria for membership. This expansion has had a serious negative effect on Russia’s military security.

In addition to NATO enlargement, NATO has also expanded cooperation with non-member countries in the region through programs such as the Partnership Interoperability Initiative, which includes Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine among 24 priority countries for cooperation, and Privileged Partnership, which will allow NATO to use infrastructure in Finland and Sweden to transfer troops to northern Europe. Furthermore, NATO is actively seeking to increase its influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

NATO is using the crisis in Ukraine as an excuse to strengthen the forces it has arrayed against Russia. It has openly blamed Russia for aggressive policies in the post-Soviet space and has made containment of Russia the prime force for future development of NATO. The decisions made at the Wales NATO summit in September 2014 confirm this.

While NATO military activity near Russia was relatively stable through 2013, it has increased substantially over the last year. NATO states’ naval presence in the Black Sea has quadrupled, flights by reconnaissance and tactical aviation have doubled, and flights by long range early warning aircraft have increased by a factor of nine. US UAVs are flying over the Black Sea, while German and Polish intelligence ships are constantly present in the Baltic. The number of NATO exercises increased by 80% in 2014 compared to the previous year. The character of these exercises has also changed. Whereas in the past they were focused primarily on crisis response and counter-terrorism, now they are clearly aimed at practicing military action against Russia.

The action plan approved in Wales included a significant increase in NATO military presence in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, including a rapid reaction force and a constant presence of a limited contingent of forces rotating through the region. This will allow a large number of NATO military personnel to be trained to conduct operations against Russia. At the same time, military infrastructure, including weapons storage facilities, is being built up in Eastern Europe. Gerasimov argued that on the basis of all of these developments, it is clear that efforts to strengthen NATO’s military capabilities are not primarily defensive in nature.

Gerasimov then turned to the question of US efforts to develop global ballistic missile defense systems. He argued that Russia views the development of these systems as yet another move by the US and its allies to dismantle the existing international security system on their way to world domination. Over the last four years, US BMD systems have begun to appear near Russian borders, including Aegis-equipped ships in the Mediterranean and Black Seas, Aegis Ashore systems in Romania and Poland, and anti-missile systems being deployed in the Asia-Pacific region with Japanese and South Korean cooperation.

These forces present a real threat to Russian strategic nuclear forces and could also strike Russian satellite systems. Washington has so far refused to share command authority for global BMD systems, even with its allies, making it clear that it alone will decide which NATO member states it will defend from missile threats. Since Russia will have no choice but to take counter-measures against global BMD systems, this may subject non-nuclear NATO-member states to the risk of being early targets of Russian response measures.

What’s more, the deployment of anti-missile systems violates the INF treaty, since the Aegis Ashore systems can be armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles as easily as with SM-3 anti-missile systems.

Russia is also concerned with the development of the concept of Prompt Global Strike, which will also damage the strategic nuclear balance that currently provides the main guarantee for international stability.

In its efforts to “put Russia on its knees,” Washington and its NATO partners continue to create crises in territories on Russia’s borders. Having successfully carried out regime change scenarios under the guise of colored revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, the US was able to place anti-Russian governments in power in a number of states bordering Russia. The radicals and Russophobes who came to power in Ukraine in 2014 have based their policies on blaming Russia for all of Ukraine’s problems while persecuting the country’s Russophone population. They are now trying to use force to repress their own citizens who expressed a lack of confidence in this new government. As a result, Ukraine has been plunged into civil war. Gerasimov said that it is difficult to know how the conflict will end, since “we don’t know what directives Ukrainian leaders will receive from their Western ‘curators’ and where Kiev’s aggression may be directed in the future.” But it is clear that these actions pose a military threat to Russia, much as the Georgian attacks on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in 2008 did. Gerasimov also noted that Mikheil Saakashvili, who ordered these attacks, is now an advisor to Ukrainian President Poroshenko.

Gerasimov then moved on to a discussion of other frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, noting the increased risk that these conflicts may be “unfrozen” as a result of the currently heightened threat environment. He noted statements by the current Georgian government reflecting its intention to restore control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia by force. The Moldovan government has been pressing for the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from Transnistria while continuing its economic blockade of the region. This is all leading to an increase in tension in these regions and may result in response measures from the Russian side.

In conclusion, Gerasimov turned to the threat posed by global terrorism. He noted that the number of members of various extremist organizations has grown from 2000 in the 1960s-70s, to 50,000 in the 1990s, to over 150,000 today. He also expressed concern about the growth of transnational terrorist networks, including some such as ISIS that have developed certain aspects of statehood. Some ISIS fighters are Russian citizens. These fighters threaten the entire world and attempts to fight the threat by a US-led airstrike operation have so far not achieved visible results. As a result, Washington and Brussels have once again turned to developing new armed groups among so-called “moderate Islamists.” But such projects do not take into account how such terrorist empires have formed in the past. Al-Qaeda, for example, formed from mujahideen who were funded by the US and its allies. Similarly, ISIS fighters until recently were “good” fighters but have now gone out of Western control and started to threaten their former sponsors.

In response to this range of threats, Russia has continued to develop its armed forces. Nuclear forces are maintained at a level designed to guarantee nuclear deterrence, including modern systems that can overcome US BMD systems. Russian Air-space defense systems continue to be developed. Defensive forces have been placed in Crimea. Russian bases have been placed in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. These bases will serve as a guarantee of stability and security in these regions.

At the same time, Gerasimov noted that Russia understands that most modern security threats affect entire regions and even the whole world so that their solution requires international dialog and cooperation.

—-

I’ll have some reactions to this speech in a follow-up post. For now, let me just say that it was interesting to see the shift to the discussion of “old school” military threats, following last year’s focus on colored revolutions and hybrid warfare.

The Taleban’s first major onslaught in their ‘spring offensive’ this year took the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) by surprise. But after a few days, they were able to react and push the insurgents back in some areas while the latter held their ground in others. Although the ANSF kept control over Kunduz city and all district centres, AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig argues that the fighting underlined some of the well-known weaknesses of the ANSF: a lack of coordination between different forces (army, police, local police), possibly exacerbated by recruitment problems that are hidden both by corruption (producing ‘ghost soldiers’ and ‘ghost policemen’) and the current reporting system. The fighting also showed the Taleban able to mount large and simultaneous operations in different areas, but also that they were still a long away from a military victory. (With contributions by Borhan Osman, Ehsan Qaane and Obaid Ali.)

The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) seem to have ridden out the Taleban’s first massive onslaught this year, in Kunduz province, but with a black eye. The Taleban started attacking ANSF positions there on 24 April 2015, only two days after they had announced their annual spring campaign. They called it “azm” (resolve), not wasting the opportunity to mock their hitherto main adversary, the troops of NATO who have named their own post-combat mission “Resolute Support.” One week later, by 1 May, the fighting seemed to have largely subsided. The Taleban website claimed the last fighting happened on 30 April and stated that they had destroyed a military installation in Chahrdara district and driven the enemy out of “two large villages” – which is a far cry from taking a whole province. On the other hand, the ANSF victory does not seem to be as complete as Afghan media have reported.

AAN heard from Kunduz MPs in parliament on 2 May that, overnight, the Taleban had re-taken some areas. Elders and three ALP commanders from Gortepe, a rural area that is part of the district of Kunduz city, told AAN on 3 May that this whole area was now under Taleban control. Before, it still had government presence, consisting of Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP), Afghan Local Police (ALP) and nazm-e ‘ama (Afghan National Civil Order Police). Gortepe, which consists of some 40 to 50 villages, is an area with “a long history of instability,” as we wrote earlier, (1) just northwest of the city.

 

The environment in which the current fighting was taking place: agricultural land just outside Kunduz city…

 

A surprise attack…

Simultaneous fighting took place in at least five of the province’s districts – Imam Saheb, Chahrdara, Qala-ye Zal, Aliabad and Kunduz city. In some places, it saw concentrations of hundreds, if not thousands of fighters – if local ANSF and other government officials’ figures can be trusted. Figures given to Afghan media ranged from several hundred to up to 2000 fighters involved in single attacks. Provincial governor Muhammad Omar Safi said there were altogether 3000 Taleban in Kunduz.

Using what seemed to have been a moment of surprise, the Taleban initially made some territorial gains. Similar to the round of larger-scale fighting in Kunduz in September last year (see AAN analysis here and here), their move again brought them close to cutting off not only two district centres (Chahrdara again, and this time also Imam Saheb) but also again penetrating areas only some kilometres away from the provincial capital’s centre. These included Gortepe and Bagh-e Sherkat, nowadays also the location of an IDP camp, hosting people displaced by earlier fighting in the region. (In September 2014, AAN reported that the Taleban “managed to secure additional territory around the provincial capital of Kunduz and have been closing in on the city itself. They also gained nearly full control over several districts of the province. … Chahrdara and Dasht-e Archi almost completely fell under Taleban control, while the situation in Imam Sahib and Aliabad districts worsened significantly.”)

Local observers told AAN that the Taleban also occupied a former United States Special Forces base in Imam Saheb district. It was not clear whether it had been handed over to Afghan forces or abandoned.

… fields and gardens in Qala-ye Zal district …

 

According to provincial officials, the fighting has displaced another 2,000 families. This can amount to around 16,000 people, taking eight as the size of an average household. This comes at a time where people were in the middle of their sowing period and, therefore, risks displacing them permanently – if they cannot get back home in time to sow and therefore lose the year’s harvest.

Some of the features of the Kunduz fighting seem to indicate that it was indeed more massive than in September 2014: 500 ALP fighters were surrounded in Imam Saheb and called for help from there in distress; the government closed schools in the embattled areas, including in Kunduz city; shops were closed and streets empty in the provincial capital. AFP reported:

The streets of Kunduz city were deserted, with shops closed and local administration officials deserting government buildings, residents said as fears of a Taliban takeover grew. “We are really worried that the city could slip into the hands of the Taliban … and all the gains over the last 13 years will be lost,” Ahmad Luqman 35, a shopkeeper in the city, said.

People in Kunduz city confirmed these reports to AAN. They say that in the first days after the fighting broke out, major businesses like jewellery markets and the money exchange were closed; only small shops were open. There were not the normal crowds in the streets, although they were not completely deserted. Offices were either open with minimal presence of staff or completely closed. Particularly high-ranking officials did not report to work. A local reporter contacted by German Deutsche Welle radio said “people who have not fled the city have locked themselves inside their homes” as “loud explosions and gunshots [were to] be heard in the city”. The same sources contacted again by AAN on 2 and 3 May say the situation had not fully gone back to normal yet, particularly in the districts and Kunduz city’s outskirts.

For some days, at least, there seems to have a feeling among the city’s population that the situation was close to tipping point. The Deutsche Welle contact commented that “memories of the civil war days have come to haunt” the Kunduz population. Also, officials and former high-ranking officers sounded clearly alarmed. Kunduz’ chairman of the elected provincial council, Muhammad Yusuf Ayubi, said the Taleban controlled 65 per cent of the province and there was a “serious risk” of the province “falling to the Taleban.” Zalmai Wisa, the former commander of Afghan National Army (ANA) forces in nine northern and north eastern provinces, warned: “It’s not only Kunduz that can fall – but everywhere else where the armed forces are not professional.” The fighting also delayed President Ashraf Ghani’s departure on his first official visit to India for several hours on Monday, 27 April. He scheduled instant consultations with the Resolute Support command, apparently asking for air support.

However, the government was able to bring in some 2,000 additional Afghan forces. These included Afghan special forces from Kabul and units from neighbouring provinces, including Balkh and Badakhshan. Some of the units from Badakhshan had earlier (10 April) been sent there from Kunduz after the Taleban had started a more local operation in Jurm district, reportedly involving 250 fighters (see here and here). NATO dispatched fighter jets that, however, “dropped no munitions.” These reinforcements were reportedly able to push back the Taleban in Kunduz rather quickly, in some areas in their first night of operation. Once more, the Afghan government has been able to prevent the fall of an important population centre, be it a district or provincial centre, to its enemy. For the Taleban, taking Kunduz city, however fleetingly, would have been a prestigious and morale-boosting victory.

… and the main street in Qala-ye Zal’s district centre, Photos: Thomas Ruttig (2007).

 

Not only Kunduz

Noticed far less by at least the international media, also other provinces experienced some heavy fighting simultaneous to that in Kunduz. Further west, in Qaisar district of Faryab province, another long-standing focus of insurgent activity, the Taleban reportedly made some gains, although both sides claimed they had inflicted casualties on their opponents. But the commander of the local ANA corps confirmed that security forces had to retreat in some areas after Afghan Local Police (ALP) fighters surrendered, or defected, to the insurgents, and spoke about a lack of coordination between the ALP and the regular Afghan National Police (ANP). Fighting also took place in the province’s Pashtunkot district. In Farah and Kunar, hundreds of Taleban attacked and stormed police posts, although without threatening larger population centres.

[Amendment on 4 May 2015: The intensity of this fighting is reflected in increased casualty figures. According to US and Afghan officials, the ANSF have suffered record casualties this year, with the figure of killed or wounded increasing by 70 per cent in the first 15 weeks of 2015, compared to the same period last year.]

Simultaneously, more government officials were attacked in assassination attempts, in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangrahar (here and here), Paktia and Laghman. On 26 April, the second (acting) police chief of Uruzgan province was killed within six weeks. The numerous attacks and assassination attempts, however, do not constitute a peak but rather normal even though often under-reported practice.

A usually well-informed and pro-government Afghan military observer reported on 27 April on Twitter that the ANSF were involved in 18 “unplanned operations” throughout the country. This adds to 14 anti-Taleban “counter-insurgency clearing operations” mentioned by the MoD’s deputy spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, currently underway, including what he called two large-scale operations, Badr, in Zabul and Ghazni, and Shahin 22 that continues in Badakhshan’s Jurm and Warduj districts. Altogether, Afghan media reported fighting in at least twelve provinces early this week, in Ghor, Khost, Zabul, Wardak, Baghlan, Takhar and Jawzjan, Helmand, Ghazni, Nimruz und Farah (already mentioned above).

… despite early warnings

To counter the depressed mood in Kunduz, government spokesmen sent out soothing messages. At a press conference on 29 April, Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqi said, “The main core of the insurgents in Imam Sahib district have been destroyed and the situation in Kunduz has completely changed.” Waziri, the Defense Ministry’s deputy spokesman added, “No district or province will collapse, and I assure you that security forces are capable enough of controlling the situation.” Interior Minister Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi visited Kunduz city on 1 May. (There is still no Afghan defence minister.)

This fighting, however, raised – or reinforced – some points of concern with regard to the readiness of the ANSF. The first is how the Taleban were able to stage such a massive attack, which necessitated pulling together large numbers of fighters prior to it, and still caught the government forces by surprise.

Interior minister Ulumi had warned weeks ago in parliament that the insurgency was “moving north.” (This assertion, however, was later denied by the MoD’s Waziri – and indeed, as the battles listed above show, the insurgency continues to be active countrywide.) However, since last summer, additional fighters had been noticed arriving in the north and northeast, adding “a substantial level of additional military punch to the local Taleban,” as AAN reported from Kunduz province (see also here). This reportedly included fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who had been pushed out of Pakistan’s tribal areas as a result of this country’s military operations in Waziristan. They seem to have moved into Afghan areas where co-ethnics are living; Kunduz, with its large Uzbek population, was therefore an obvious choice (although this was also not the only destination of such fighters.) They were already said to be involved in the Kunduz fighting in September last year – when Taleban also made some (temporary) gains in Kunduz (see AAN analysis here).

The second reason for concern is that, after the withdrawal of most NATO combat forces, it was obvious and widely expected that this year, the Taleban would test the resolve of the ANSF. Again, Kunduz, with the movement having a strong base in a number of districts, was an obvious choice. It is also not impossible that the Taleban’s 10 April operation in Jurm, in the same north-eastern region, during which some 33 ANA soldiers were killed and some even beheaded, was designed to divert the ANSF’s attention from Kunduz. Particularly the beheading looked like a deliberate attempt to provoke the ANA soldiers. If that was the plan, it worked and triggered a Ministry of Defence announcement that ‘revenge’ would be taken.

The Afghan leadership should also have been warned by Taleban attacks in other areas. There was not only Jurm, but also heavy fighting in Helmand as early as December last year and again in February this year. Then, the ANA had to push back Taleban who had returned to districts in the province’s north which had earlier been – as it turned out only temporarily – cleared by British and US forces. In Sangin district, for example, the fighting was so intense that reportedly “few civilians remain.”

The domestic dimension

The Taleban attacks have also been instrumentalised in domestic politics. Some MPs as well as former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, on his Facebook page, now a leading and often the most radically outspoken opposition politician, accused the government of having deliberately delayed their military reaction in the north in order to – as Saleh put it – ensure the defeat of “the armed networks of Jamiat-e Islami-ye Afghanistan and the commanders of the armed resistance [ie against the Soviets and the Taleban] who have volunteered again for the local police.” (Jamiat, along with other tanzims like Vice President Dostum’s Jombesh and Vice CEO Muhammad Khan’s wing of Hezb-e Islami all currently on the government’s side, indeed run many, if not most, of the ALP units in the region; it is rare to hear a major politician admitting this in public as it is illegal for a political party like Jamiat to be armed.)

Second Deputy CEO Muhammad Mohaqqeq demanded that the defence ministry should be given to a mujahed. Both he and Saleh are tapping into widespread feelings among the former mujahedin that they are being further sidelined by the current government (a claim raised already from the beginning of the Karzai government, and now raised again, also by other heavyweights like Abdul Rassul Rabb Sayyaf and Ismail Khan), and that the ‘security ministries’ – ie defence, interior and NDS – have been given to former ‘communists.’ (2)

ANSF shortcomings

For the time being, the ANSF has withstood another massive Taleban onslaught. The Taleban, on the other side, again proved unable to take over larger population centres, including district centres (although these may not even be big enough to be towns) – assuming this was their aim in Kunduz. But there was some critical delay in the ANSF response, and the situation certainly felt close to the brink, judging from the reactions of officials and the population of Kunduz city.

Judging from Afghan media reports, it was the ANP and ALP that bore the brunt of the Kunduz fighting on the government’s side up to Monday, 27 April. This hints at coordination problems and puts in question at least the Afghan government and NATO’s claims that the ANSF are able to effectively resist the insurgency. The continuing lack of a new, legitimate defence minister may well have exacerbated these problems.

Another possible reason for the shortcomings in ANSF coordination is laid out in the two latest quarterly reports of the US Government’s Special Inspector for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR; here and here). It says, based on audits of the ANA’s and the ANP’s personnel and payroll data, that neither the US nor the Afghan government knew exactly how many soldiers and policemen are at its disposal. It adds that there is a number of what are usually called ‘ghost soldiers’ (also ‘ghost policemen’ and ‘ghost ALP fighters’) defined in the report as “dead, deserted, or non-existent soldiers kept on rolls by error or intention — whether to augment a superior’s pay or to enable a dead soldier’s family to go on collecting pay in lieu of a death benefit.” How high their figure might be is left open.

The latest official figures (from February 2015) for the numbers of personnel (which will include the unknown number of ghost soldiers) are 167,024 for the ANA (not including civilian personnel) and 154,685 for the ANP. In the case of the ANA, this is fewer than the 169,203 in November last year that was already down by 8.5 per cent compared with the February 2014 figure; this amounts to about 15,000 men, “roughly equivalent,” said SIGAR, “to a full Afghan army corps.” In turn, that November figure was “the lowest assigned ANA force strength since August 2011.” SIGAR gave desertions and increased casualty rates as the main reason for the attrition.

On the Afghan National Police (ANP), the latest report says that “there is still no assurance that personnel and payroll data are accurate.” It adds that “SIGAR analysis indicates a change in how ANP numbers are calculated that raises questions about the accuracy of these numbers and the validity of the reported increase in personnel this quarter.”

These figures must translate to actual fighting capacity at the regional and even local level: it is difficult to imagine that the MoD and Ministry of Interior (MoI) leadership can be sure at every moment how many ANA and ANP (not to speak about ALP) they can count on in a given area. On the other hand, the better trained and better supported 15,000 strong Afghan special forces seem to have proven reliable once more.

The ANA also continues to be ridden with corruption, as an on-going investigation by the Afghan government into what looks to have been a widespread fuel procurement scandal shows. MPs and the Administrative Board of the parliament’s lower house alleged in mid-April that this had had immediate effects on the ANA’s ability to operate and that, during the Taleban ambush in Jurm district in April, the embattled Afghan soldiers were unable to retreat because “their vehicles’ fuel was sold out by the corrupt and the plunderers,” as the house’s deputy secretary, Erfanullah Erfan, said. A member of the Wolesi Jirga’s economic committee had earlier confirmed:

I have witnessed a scene in Farah province in which the Afghan National Army soldiers could not move because their vehicle was out of fuel.

MoD deputy spokesman Waziri, however, rejected these reports and said, “We don’t have any incident where our operations were cancelled due to a lack of fuel.”

And the Taleban?

Taking into consideration that fighting not only took place in Kunduz but, on a relatively large scale also in Badakhshan, Jawzjan and Farah, the Taleban have also shown, not only their presence, but ability to hit various areas simultaneously, in one province and in various provinces. With all caution with respect to the figures given, they seem to again be able to pull together large formations of fighters, possibly as a result of the fact that, after the end of the ISAF mission, there is less danger of them coming under NATO air assault. (See also the above mentioned statement that NATO fighter jets were sent to Kunduz, but apparently did not directly take part in the fighting.)

It further became evident that Kunduz province remains one of the Taleban’s major focuses of operations – the very province in the north where they continued their resistance longest after the US-led 2001 intervention. They still enjoy support in the significant pockets of the province populated by Pashtuns, particularly so after the Pashtun population in the north became targets of Northern Alliance fighters and officials who are dominating the political and military scene throughout the region from 2001 onwards, leading to many northern Pashtuns feeling sidelined in the ‘new Afghanistan.’ (On this, see early reports by Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group as well as AAN reports here and here.) This feeling might even have been exacerbated by the growing influence of Uzbek-dominated Jombesh after its leader General Abdul Rashid Dostum became vice president in the current government. AAN has also been reporting for years about (often ethnically-based) ALP units persecuting members of other ethnic groups (only a few examples here and here; more in our freshly composed Kunduz dossier, here).

In contrast to those ALP units, the Taleban are often seen as less abusive, as AAN has been told repeatedly (see for example here and here). For the same reasons, they also remain popular among parts of the population for their system of ‘justice,’ as opposed to the corrupt (and ethnically biased) government courts and have gained a say in the education system, influencing curricula and the choice of teachers.

According to information received from region by AAN, madrassas close to Hezb-e Islami (a predominantly Pashtun party which split into a fighting group and a group which ‘came in from the cold’ and joined the political mainstream) around the provincial capital have played a role in harbouring Taleban fighters.

Another recurring feature of the recent fighting were reports about the participation of foreign, mainly IMU fighters displaced from their (previously) safe haven in Waziristan. Kunduz’ governor said on Monday 27 April, “20 militants, the majority of them foreigners, have been killed including three Uzbek women and Turkish nationals, Chechens and Kyrgyz nationals.” Another unnamed Afghan official was quoted as saying by ToloNews that “six foreign militants who were killed in the attack come from the north-western Faryab province, four of them were from Tajikistan and two were Chechens.” Their overall number and exact role in this fighting remains unclear, but there were recurrent reports that they brought in additional financial resources for the insurgents.

Given recent tensions between the Afghan Taleban and IMU, the reports of cooperation between both must be taken with some caution. The IMU has recently started distancing itself from the Taleban of which it was a declared ally since it received shelter during the Taleban emirate in the late 1990s, after being pushed out of its country of origin and from Tajikistan where it had supported the Islamist opposition to the regime in the 1990s civil war (see our latest dispatch here). Instead, it drifted closer to the Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State, falling short, so far, from declaring full allegiance. (3) Particularly the public announcements by the IMU that it had doubts the Taleban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, was still alive (posted on a pro-IMU Facebook side but inaccessible now) (4) will not have gone down well with the Taleban. Under these circumstances and despite possible local links, it is doubtful the foreign militants in the area and the Taleban fully coordinate their fighting.

Conclusion

In the first fighting after the declaration of the Taleban’s 2015 (1394) ‘spring offensive,’ the ANSF have gained the upper hand after being initially wrong-footed and forced to concede some territorial gains to the Taleban. This victory has not proven without doubt, however, that the ANSF will be able to withstand the insurgents. The Kunduz MPs’ reports indicate that the fighting in that province might not be over yet.

Moreover, the civilian population’s reaction in Kunduz flagged that the widespread public support and optimism about the ANSF shown over the past year (again there are reports about blood donations offered by Kabulis for the soldiers wounded in the fighting, here) is more defiance than a deep conviction that they are sufficiently able to withstand the Taleban.

Also other well-known, grave problems remain – coordination, recruitment, corruption. Maybe the widespread public support and continuous (although somewhat self-serving) praise by NATO (see in media reports here (on Kunduz) and here (in general)) has even bolstered the ANSF leaders’ self-confidence too much. The continues (and possibly exaggerated) pointing out of the role of foreign fighters is partly a way of diverting responsibility by blaming the usual ‘foreign hand.’

NATO’s training for the ANSF so far seems to have born insufficient fruit, particularly on the coordination between the ANA, the ANP and the ALP. With the some hundreds of trainers, many of them bogged down by heavy security restrictions, NATO’s post-ISAF mission might simply be too small to achieve this. On the other hand, to step this up would come too late now. The withdrawal seems to be somewhat delayable, but not reversible, given the waning public and political international interest and support for Afghanistan. The solution lies in the ANSF themselves and their leadership. They need to face, and rectify, their own shortcomings, as highlighted by the Kunduz fighting.

Comparing this offensive with the Kunduz fighting in September 2014 even raises doubts whether it really epitomised a new quality. In that sense, the offensive was a logical continuation of regular attacks in Kunduz that did not even really see the normal lull during the winter. The reported ‘move north’ of Taleban is also not a new phenomenon, but has been a steady development since at least 2007/08 (see AAN’s 2010 report “The Northern Front”). Kunduz province – where the Taleban are well-entrenched and have so far resisted all attempts to push them out for good – will remain one of the Taleban’s major focuses of operations, but of course they will also continue to target the whole country.

 

(1) There was some confusion about the exact location of Gortepe area, putting it as close as three kilometres from Kunduz city. In fact, Gortepe is a large area consisting of some 40 to 50 villages, some of them very close to the city indeed.

Gortepe also has seen earlier counter-insurgency operations, for example in late 2010/early 2011 (see here), apparently with no long-term success. One source says there are Uzbek-Pashtun land conflicts, after Pashtun families were displaced from there, into Bagh-e Sherkat IDP camp (which also hosted Gujar and Pashtun families from Takhar province), and Uzbeks moved on their land. (The same source incorrectly puts Gortepe into Dasht-e Archi district, though.) The name Bagh-e Sherkat is linked to one the country’s main industrial enterprises, the Sherkat-e Spinzar, or White Gold (eg, cotton) Joint Stock Company, founded in the 1930s by the Nasher family, a family of Pashtun naqelin (forced resettlers). It was linked to Abdul Majid Zabuli, the Afghan businessman often called “father of Afghan industrialisation” who founded the Afghan National Bank in 1936 and encouraged the country’s traditional traders to invest into industries by setting up joint stock companies (sherkat). The Nasher family is in exile in Germany now. Bagh-e Sherkat housed some 800 IDP families between 2002 and 2010 and continues in this function. There were no later figures available, though.

(2) The new interior minister Ulumi was one of the highest-ranking generals under the PDPA regime, and the current candidate for the MoD, General Abdullah Habibi, was also trained in the Soviet Union and served under that regime. His USSR training, however, was under President Daud (1973-78), and in the 1990s. Under President Karzai, he served under Bismillah who was for many years chief of the general staff and a former leading mujahed himself.

(3) According to media reports in late March 2015, a local IMU group in Faryab province led by a certain Sadullah Urgenchi (Urgench being a city in Uzbekistan, on the banks of river Amu), “claiming to be from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU),“ said his group was recognising Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their leader. Reports that the whole of IMU, through its leader Usman Ghazi, has done so has only been sourced to one Uzbek intelligence official who definitely is interested in playing this issue up:

On 6 October 2014, an Uzbekistan law enforcement official told Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) Usman Ghazi had declared his group’s support for Islamic State.

(4) The statement allegedly by IMU chief Usman Ghazi was published on 24 November 2014 under the title “Usman Ghazi be-dark budan-e Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahed-ra e’lan kard” (Usman Ghazi announced the unavailability of Mullah Muhammad Omar Mujahed) which, however, falls short of a denunciation of IMU’s earlier pledge of allegiance to him.

French soldiers are accused of sexually abusing children in the center at Bangui airport, Central African capital, between December 2013 and June 2014. After the rape charges brought against French soldiers in the CAR, the correspondent of France Info locally collected particularly explicit testimony about the alleged practices of French and Georgian military :
"This Thursday on the camp of the airport in Bangui M'Poko there is consternation. "Of course we knew" launches a woman very upset "but nobody listens to us." She says she has witnessed the sexual assault: "The French, the Georgians, when children come like that ask for a little food, 'before you have to suck me first ..." In a tent all close to the road, Jean was ringside. He said he saw soldiers abusing minors. "It was the night the French military ration packs give children and rape them. And the Georgian military, they were three on a sixteen year old girl at the entrance to the airport." Bangui is the disgust dominates. The prosecutor of Bangui announced the opening of an investigation. "We will contact the UN office responsible for this case and the French authorities to ask them to give us the documents relating thereto" said the prosecutor of the capital of CAR.

After The Guardian, the children described how they were sexually exploited in return for food and money. One 11-year-old boy said he was abused when he went out looking for food. A nine-year-old described being sexually abused with his friend by two French soldiers at the IDP camp when they went to a checkpoint to look for something to eat. The child described how the soldiers forced him and his friend to carry out a sex act. The report describes how distressed the child was when disclosing the abuse and how he fled the camp in terror after the assault. Some of the children were able to give good descriptions of the soldiers involved...

And this isn`t the first case. Dont forget the same accusation during the ARTEMIS Operation in the RDC, never clearly refuted.

Source : Le Monde, France Info and The Guardian

Language English Tag: EUFOR CAR Banguisexual abuseFrench army

In 2010 I ran a series of short pieces on these pages about the General Election (and the image is from the 2010 result). Back through no popular demand at all… some thoughts.

This election will have four main head-lines on May 8th, and a big mess of two significant minorities to hack about trying to form a government:

1) The SNP wiped the floor with Labour in Scotland.

2) The LibDems melted down

3) UKIP were second in over 100 seats, but gained only 5 seats, and thus – ironically – have become the new LibDems…

4) Both the Conservatives and Labour can mathematically form a minority government, and that leaves the Queen with a somewhat large constitutional headache.

So, let’s start with Scotland. Lovely place, one day I will live there. Well, Nicola Sturgeon (leader of the Scottish Nationalists) was the stand-out winner of the televised debate of all seven main party leaders. Indeed, the people I watched it with (who all live in England, and aren’t known for socialist tendencies) all wanted to vote for her by the end of evening. This was partly because she sounded competent (‘knows what she’s doing’), and partly because didn’t seem as ‘male and smug’ as the other ones. So, on an unscientific poll in the Midlands, the leader of a party no-one could vote for, had a clear majority. In more scientific polls, she is set to lead (despite not standing for a Westminster seat herself) an absolute drubbing for Labour north of the border. For Labour’s chances of forming a majority government this is catastrophic. Well, it has ended the chance of a majority. For Jim Murphy (the Scottish Labour Party leader) this will be – if it comes about – a disaster, which is a shame because he is both a competent politician and by most accounts a decent man too. So, whilst the SNP has been making strides to dominate Scottish politics for a good number of years it is the catalysing effect of the Scottish independence referendum that is catapulting the party ever higher in the polls. The notion that the independence referendum was the end of the matter ‘for a generation’ seems fanciful. The mode of exit for the Scots seems painfully clear: the 2017 EU referendum provides them with the perfect opportunity to jump a Brexiting ship. Expect to see to Nicola Sturgeon looking very pleased on May 8th, and her former mentor Alex Salmond restored to Westminster and full of the joys of holding someone over a barrel.

The LibDems are having what is known in cricketing circles as ‘a total mare’. There appears to be nowhere in the land that they are currently safe – bar Eastleigh – according to an aggregator poll yesterday, and the lack of local support (their traditional strength) will be particularly concerning for them. The LibDems have – by dint of their internal constitution – always been very close to their membership, but they seemed to forget this during Coalition and frankly didn’t spend enough time saying how they had held back the Tories from doing whatever it is we assume they would have done if given free rein. And that’s the LibDems problem in a nutshell: what did they provide the Coalition, short of bodies to form a majority? If Clegg is lucky he’ll be offered a seat in the European Commission, a job he’d do fabulously well. As for those LibDem MPs that survive next Thursday, theirs might be a cosy and lonely existence. Back to the drawing board, and the sort of localism that saw them as ‘the’ party of local government for 20years.

UKIP and the irrepressible Farage will be disappointed on 8 May. They’ll be disappointed because – ironically -we don’t have a European system of voting. If we did, they’d be laughing. Nige would be all over the papers guzzling warm beer and basking in the joy of 1953 (cards on the table: as a europhile, I’m not a fan, but I do think he’s a nearly-brilliant politician). So, in line with the Ashcroft polling, I’m also happy to think that UKIP will come 2nd in over 100 constituencies, but fail to win outright in many. The act of coming second in a large number of seats (although they’ll feel like it’s a cup of sick) is actually a very strong result, that they’ll need to work hard, and more coherently, to build upon. For me, the really interesting point is who they are taking votes from: I had assumed years ago that they were the militant wing of the Conservative Party, but there’s good evidence that they’re taking working class Labour votes (which will see Tory MPs saved) and I’ve heard a number of LibDems in the midlands saying they’ve switched to UKIP too (which is interesting, when you compare the platforms). What Farage does very well, is tap into the concerns of actual voters. Not the issues that the mainstream think we ought to be bothered about, but what the ordinary voter is actually bothered about. That makes him a bit of a mystery to people.. well, like me. But after May 8, if he can actually build a party machine and match populism to policies that don’t get automatically shredded by the majority of the press, he’ll cause electoral chaos.

It’s been noticeable that defence and security have been almost totally missing from the election debates. There was half a day on trident, and the debate centred on 4 boats, 3 boats, no boats, and what is trident? But by lunchtime, it was as if all the parties had come together and agreed that trident and defence in general was a bad topic for all of them, and it was better not to talk about it. What I took from this is that defence is going to suffer further irksome cuts after the election no matter who wins, and none of them wish to point out the emperor has his fundamentals dangling in the breeze. We must surely be at the point where the next SDSR needs to have a strong element of public engagement – we are moving from full-spectrum to limited spectrum capabilities and the public are only just beginning to wake up to it. Miliband’s attempt to engage on foreign policy – at Chatham House – was met with howls and protests, and the modification of what went out from the Labour press office the night before rather indicated that the language had been loose. It would have made for a more interesting foreign policy debate if Miliband had gone for the strongest interpretation of what he said – the debate around interventionism and isolationism (a false dichotomy in my view) would have been worth having. But all the parties decided this was bad karma for them too. Even the debate on economics has swirled around, with Cameron’s job’s miracle not landing properly, nor Labour’s swipe at zero-hours jobs and food banks misfiring – you’d have to wonder what carnage Blair and Campbell would have caused with this.

So, on May 8th (and then for probably a month) we’ll witness the moving of the chairs as two credible minority governments vie to actually form the government. Who’d be the Queen in those circs: unenviable! Cameron has seemed – unfairly, so he keeps saying – disconnected and without gusto. But he’s done the job as a Chief Exec rather than a vision thing, whilst Miliband – in not setting fire to anything or falling over in public – has exceeded popular expectations. His brand of geek-immunity from social pressure allows him to rock up with Russell Brand and not be intimidated by the coolest kid in the playground, whilst meandering into a hen party and looking appropriately geeky. Weirdly, Miliband is becoming the Labour party’s secret weapon… six months ago, you’d have laughed to see it written.

This election of disengagement and the race to the deadheat of 33% makes me almost nostalgic for the crushing certainties of electoral domination of the 80s and early 00s. Almost….

 

The MIDCAS (Mid Air Collision Avoidance System) consortium together with the European Defence Agency (EDA) announce the completion of successful flight-test and simulation campaigns conducted as part of the MIDCAS project. Major milestones included fully automatic avoidance manoeuvres of a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) relying on fusion of non-cooperative sensors.

Successful completion of flight tests

Flights with a demonstrator Detect & Avoid (D&A) system integrated in the Sky-Y RPAS test bed have been conducted since December 2014 at Grazzanise Air Force Base, Italy. First fully automatic coupled avoidance manoeuvres were performed by the RPAS based on combined cooperative and non-cooperative detection as well as non-cooperative detection only and put on collision course with a manned aircraft. The MIDCAS system had full authority over the RPAS flight control system. 

The formal flight test permit to perform the automatic manoeuvre was obtained using results from earlier flight tests demonstrating the readiness to safely perform such critical manoeuvres. Flight tests have covered numerous scenarios and sensor combinations bringing RPAS traffic integration a significant step closer to reality. The Detect and Avoid system tested, performs collision avoidance and traffic avoidance using data fusion for various combinations of the included detection technologies, i.e. the cooperative IFF and ADS-B equipment and the non-cooperative electro-optical, infrared and radar sensors.

Important simulations

Several types of simulations (including Monte Carlo simulations and real-time simulations) have been completed which will allow the project teams to demonstrate that the functional design of MIDCAS can be compliant with the safety levels for manned aviation. Simulations in Air Traffic Management (ATM) environment have also been performed to validate the system requirements in an operational context. “We are pleased with the outcome of the simulations where the involved air traffic controllers concluded that they were confident to control RPAS within their airspace and did not get any additional workload from the RPAS, whose behavior was fully in line with manned aviation”, MIDCAS project leader Johan Pellebergs explains.

MIDCAS is the European Detect & Avoid project

The MIDCAS project is laying the groundwork for future developments in the field of RPAS air traffic integration. The project has gathered European industries within the field of D&A with the purpose to achieve jointly agreed results with European and global standardisation stakeholders.The MIDCAS project was launched in 2009 by five contributing Member States (France, Germany, Italy and Spain under the lead of Sweden) under the framework of the European Defence Agency, with a total budget of €50 million. 

“The project has produced tangible results in the field of air traffic integration, which is a critical enabler for the use of RPAS in European skies”, Peter Round, EDA Capability, Armament & Technology Director, says. “In order to improve Member States’ RPAS capabilities, technological and regulatory issues need to be taken into account as early as possible”, he adds. 

MIDCAS has been carried out by an industrial consortium composed of 11 partners: Saab (project leader) from Sweden, Sagem and Thales from France, Airbus D&S, Diehl BGT Defence, DLR and ESG from Germany, Alenia Aermacchi, Selex ES, CIRA from Italy and Indra from Spain. Throughout the project, external stakeholders such as EASA, EUROCONTROL, EUROCAE or JARUS, were involved in the process. “The only way to achieve a high level of acceptance and reach a common European agreement on how to resolve the D&A issue is through close cooperation”, Johan Pellebergs concludes.

More information

• Find out more about the European Defence Agency's initiatives in the field of RPAS

Along with Head of the European Defence Agency and HR/VP Federica Mogherini, EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq travelled to Washington on 29 April to attend the 4th Annual Transatlantic Symposium on the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

Bringing together senior EU and US military and civilian leaders, the event provided a forum to discuss the role of CSDP and transatlantic cooperation in addressing challenges such as hybrid warfare, crisis management in Africa, maritime security and global security.

Transatlantic cooperation

After an opening address given by Federica Mogherini, EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq took part in a panel discussion focused on the reinforcement of the transatlantic security cooperation. There he shared views with Maciej Popowski, Deputy Secretary General, European External Action Service; and Jim Townsend, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, as well as with the rest of the audience.

“It is important that we maintain a sound working relationship with NATO”, Jorge Domecq stressed during the conference. “In the current security environment we will need to further enhance this link by avoiding unnecessary duplications and reinforcing the EU’s ability to act as a security provider with the right set of capabilities and a strong and balanced defence industry”, he explained.

Constant interaction

“We have to keep in mind that each EU Member State can only rely on a single set of forces to achieve EU and NATO ambitions”, the EDA Chief Executive added. “Thanks to constant interaction between EDA and NATO experts, we have already established transatlantic links that could be further developed in the years to come”.

Jorge Domecq also took advantage of this trip to the United States to meet with Department of Defense officials.

More information

• Link to the event's website

From ultra-conservative Salafis to secular-minded feminists, an astonishingly diverse range of voices have found their heroine in Farkhunda, the young woman who was lynched by a mob in Kabul on 19 March 2015. She has become the rare victim of violence to be almost unanimously called a shahid, a martyr. The consensus on her status, however, masks a deep divergence of views on what it was that made people resort to mob justice, who is to be blamed for it and how this should be remedied. The two main and conflicting narratives that have emerged pit conservative religious leaders and groups against activists advocating for ‘rights and freedoms’, with both sides blaming each other for having indirectly driven people to murder. AAN’s Borhan Osman has delved into the debate around the underlying roots of such violent behaviour in the name of defending religion. He warns that Afghanistan cannot afford the increasingly explicit polarisation of society that has emerged since the killing.

This is the second dispatch on Farkhunda’s murder. The first explored the social geography of the killing, see here.

A young woman going only by the name of Farkhunda was brutally lynched by a mob in the centre of Kabul on the afternoon of 19 March 2015. She was beaten with sticks, pelted with rocks and ran over with a car, after which her body dumped was on the banks of the muddy and polluted Kabul river and set alight. She had been attacked after being accused of burning a copy of the Quran at the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. During the attack, which lasted for about half an hour, the police did attempt, at some points, to save Farkhunda, but at other instances they can be seen standing idly as the attackers continue to beat her (this was documented in amateur footage recorded by witnesses, for instance here), although, be warned, the footage is graphic and upsetting).

News of the incident reached the public at large by the end of the day of the attack, 19 March. Most outlets explicitly reported that the woman had burnt a copy of the Quran. Others reported that Farkhunda had had an enduring mental health problem, implying she might have actually burnt the Quran as a result of her mental disorder. (The report of an alleged mental problem had originated with Farkhunda’s family who, in the initial hours and under pressure from the police, had released a statement in an attempt to mitigate the risk of public reprisal.) By the end of the next day, however, it emerged that the accusation that Farkhunda had burnt a copy of the Quran had been false.

A fact-finding mission by the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs that had visited the shrine found that only papers from a Persian book had been burnt, although it was not clear who had done so. An investigation by the Ministry of Interior confirmed the findings of the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs. At the same time, a video of Farkhunda, wearing a black Arab-style niqab (head-to-toe veil, with only eyes showing) and arguing with a group of young men at the gate of the shrine, surfaced on the Internet. Her veiling, a style which represented a departure from the iconic Afghan burqa, implied she had become a more devout, thoughtfully pious Muslim. When her family and teacher started directly talking to the media they revealed that she had been a student of Islamic studies and a fully observant Muslim. It transpired that she had graduated from one of the oldest female dar-ul-ulums (madrasas) in the country and was two years away from graduating from the Sharia Faculty at Kabul University. She had also recently attended a Quran-learning halqa (study circle) organised by an Islamist organisation.

The precise circumstances that led to the accusation of Farkhunda are not clear, but witnesses, speaking to the media and the presidential commission that investigated the murder, said she had been arguing with one of the attendants of the shrine over practices she deemed superstitious and un-Islamic. Those practices included selling tawiz (verses from the Quran or other prayers written on paper and usually worn in a cloth pouch in the belief they will protect the wearer from evil, or bring good fortune), tasting the soil from the saint’s grave in the shrine for its ‘healing powers,’ seeking the saint’s intercession, kissing his gravestone or other markers and performing (normal Islamic) prayers within the shrine. Farkhunda’s family said that she had, for a while, been visiting the shrine to preach against these practices.

These practices have been common in shrines in Afghanistan and elsewhere for centuries, but are increasingly proscribed by a new generation of mullahs who view them either as un-Islamic per se or as having evolved to contain un-Islamic innovations, bida’h. (1) Proscription of these acts has been more evident among Salafis, but finds resonance with many non-Salafi ulama as well, including most imams the author talked to in Kabul. However, other mullahs and guardians of shrines who benefit from these practices say they are not religiously problematic and cast their critics as ‘Wahhabis.’ In this intra-religious debate, Farkhunda belonged to the more ‘orthodox’ camp and had been openly disagreeing with these shrine practices in one of their bastions, the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine.

Farkhunda’s charred body was laid to rest on the third day after her lynching (21 March 2015). Her coffin was carried exclusively by women, in defiance of the mullahs present in the funeral. In Afghanistan’s patriarchal society where women rarely even attend burials, this was an unprecedented scene, made possible by a popular feeling of empathy with this defenceless woman who had been savagely killed by a large group of men, in the middle of town and against all norms of Afghan culture. The perpetration of such public violence against a woman is a very strong taboo, which made the murder look especially savage (according to Afghan cultural norms, Afghan women should be more respected and less likely to be subject to violence in public than men, although domestic violence perpetrated in the home is a different matter).

The presidential commission released its report after two weeks of investigation. It found Farkhunda had been slandered. She had not burned the Quran and all evidence indicated that her speaking out against certain superstitious practices had prompted the amulet sellers and attendants at the shrine to falsely accuse her and incite people against her. A member of the commission described the particular shrine attendant who was seen as the prime instigator of the mob, named Zainuddin, as an “illiterate person” who could not even read one word from the Quran. This apparent distinction between literate clerics (portrayed as good) and illiterate ‘clerics’ (seen as false and masquerading, as bringing a bad name on the clergy) becomes more relevant later.

Mixed reactions

The immediate reactions to the lynching were mixed. There were initial endorsements in the Afghan media and on social media by people who said they would have done the same if they had been at the scene. Others denounced the brutal killing as inhuman and un-Islamic. Among the notables caught on social media applauding the lynching were the Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, Semin Ghazal Hasanzada, Kabul Police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai and chief of the complaints commission in the Meshrano Jirga, Zalmai Zabuli. Ms Hasanzada responded to the reports of Farkhunda having a mental problem on her Facebook page: “What kind of mental problem was it? Dear friends, it is not a mental [problem], but a deliberate [act]. She was working for the infidels. If you overlook that, you are also one of them [ie an infidel] and putting your religion in danger.” Kabul Police spokesman Stanekzai also posted on his page: “She thought that by committing this type of insult [to Islam], she would get citizenship of America or Europe. But she died before achieving her goal.” Zalmai Zabuli posted the following text alongside Farkhunda’s picture: “This is the horrible and hated person who was punished by our Muslim compatriots for her action. Thus, they proved to her masters that Afghans want only … Islam and cannot tolerate imperialism, apostasy and spies. This is the apostate woman who set the Quran on fire in the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. Our Muslim compatriots beat her… and set her on fire, giving her the punishment [she deserved].” All three had to repent publicly when they found the accusation had been false.

Others were more conditional but still, in principle, supportive, like the head of the Awqaf Department of the Ministry of Hajj and religious affairs, Abdul Rahman Ahmadzai, who told a local TV station: “If this women has really acted against verses of Quran [burnt pages from Quran] and she is not a Muslim, we justify the action of the people.”

Friday sermons

The attack on Farkhunda happened on a Thursday, a time when imams across the country were preparing their Friday sermons. Speaking to worshippers at a number of mosques in Kabul, Jalalabad and Ghazni, it seems there were imams who condemned the brutal killing of Farkhunda or stopped short of condoning it, but many expressly approved the lynching and talked proudly of the people’s religious vigour, in the words of some clerics “uncorrupted by a decade of democracy.” Among those who denounced the brutality was the imam of Pul-e Kheshti mosque in the centre of Kabul who cautioned against accepting the reports of Quran-burning and described the mob attack as wild. On the other hand, two of Kabul’s best known ulama endorsed the attack. The prominent imam of Wazir Akbar Khan Mosque, Ayaz Niazi, made waves when a tape of his Friday prayer sermon went viral on the internet. Commenting on the police’s chasing of the murderers, Niazi had said:

My appeal to the judicial and legal institutions is to act with caution … When the people’s most important element of belief is insulted, they are not responsible to see if this [alleged insulter’s] mind is working or not working. You have to be careful. This is a huge mistake. If you start arresting people, they will probably revolt. It will be difficult to rein them in.

Another prominent mullah, Mawlawi Habibullah Hassam of the Bagh-e Bala mosque, who is also the former chairman of the Kabul Provincial Council, approved the lynching on his Facebook page. He quickly removed the post before it was widely shared, so few people noticed it. He addressed his fellow imams on Facebook:

Arbitrary execution (mahkama-e sahrayi, literally desert trials) is a necessity that must take place: respected khatibs [preachers], Friday sermons should be dedicated to this subject. The people can no longer tolerate insults to Islam under this or that pretext. A new court has started its work. From today on, the penalty for insulting Islam, the Quran and the Prophet is arbitrary execution. The top brass of the state supports those hostile to Islam …

After Farkhunda was buried and it had become clear she was innocent and pious, many ulama and Islamists took a U-turn and started to claim her as one of them. They emphasised her custom of proselytising (dawatgari) and started to hail her as someone who had sacrificed her life for a religious cause that they all share. A well-known Salafi-leaning Islamist preacher and lecturer of Islamic studies in Kabul University, Abdul Zahir Dayi, called Farkhunda his ‘colleague’ (ham-maslak) in a talk show, presumably in an attempt to reject the claims of women and human rights activists as being the inheritors of her cause. Many young Islamic activists, Salafis and orthodox ulama started to present her as a champion of their cause, a struggler against superstitious practices, turning her, within a week, from a Zionist-Western emissary to highly acclaimed martyr of the faith.

Backlash and counter-backlash

At a conference by human rights activists in Kabul on 20 March, there was a call for a thorough investigation into the murder and public trials of the perpetrators. However, protests really kicked off the following day, on the day of her burial, by which time it was also widely accepted that Farkhunda was not just a victim, but also completely innocent of the charge against her. The protests continued for more than a week. Those in Kabul were led by human and women rights activists, some of whom participated in carrying Farkhunda’s coffin on the day of funeral. The protests called for justice for Farkhunda with slogans such as “Punish the murderers,” “Ignorance is the enemy of humanity,” “ignorance is the enemy of Islam” and “We want an Afghanistan free of superstition, extremism and violence.” A thousands-strong demonstration, organised by a group of civil society activists and organisations on 24 March, asked for “open and immediate prosecution” of those involved in the murder. The protestors said in their statement:

In particular, the shrine custodian and the amulet seller mullah, who are the perpetrators of Farkhunda murder, must be publicly and immediately tried… All those involved in the crime in a way, including those who supported the unforgivable crime, the instigators, accusers, inspirers and justifiers, all should be identified… and brought to court… The government must deal seriously with summary punishments and prevent any type of extrajudicial activities and personal fatwas.

The statement, while thanking those mullahs who “dealt with Farkhunda’s case lawfully and responsibly” also asked the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs to take serious actions against the preaching of violence and militancy in religious institutions.

Public anger towards the murderers and shrine attendant had also been building up, emboldening civic activists to speak out in the name of a shocked public. Notables who had publicly endorsed the lynching now found themselves at the centre of public abhorrence. The government reacted by dismissing police spokesperson Stanekzai and deputy culture minister Hasanzada from their jobs. The interior ministry suspended 22 police and put them under investigation for not doing enough to stop the murder. About 30 other people were arrested for participation in the mob attack, many of them after having been identified from the video recordings caught by spectators with their smartphones and uploaded onto the internet. Parliament reacted by summoning the ministers for interior, and hajj and religious affairs to answer questions about the failure of police to stop the lynching and to present the government’s plans for better supervision of the country’s mosques and shrines. As the members of the parliament discussed the issue, many burst into tears. The Minister of Interior, Nur-ul-Haq Ulumi, admitted the police’s failure to save Farkhunda and the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Faiz Muhamamd Osmani, promised to rid shrines of amulet and charm sellers. The Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine was subsequently closed. MPs also asked Osmani to curtail the preaching of extremism in mosques and tighten and expand the state’s control over religious institutions, a call that was repeated during a protest by students and civil society activists in Mazar-e Sharif.

A minority among the protestors in Kabul and a small but vocal group on social media attacked mullahs per se. Although the mainstream voice from rights defenders stayed away from saying anything that could offend the ulama, those who did choose to bash the mullahs, blamed Farkhunda’s murder not only on the individual custodian who had falsely accused her (or on the mob who actually killed her), but on mullahs in general, particularly after many of them had condoned and justified the killing. Niazi’s Friday sermon was a particular cause of excoriation. Protestors from a small, radical leftist group, Hezb-e Hambastagi, carried placards with his face crossed out at a demonstration in Kabul and, according to some participants, chanted “Death to mullahs.”

The platform for the most vocal and insulting expressions of the anti-mullah campaign, however, was Facebook where mullahs were castigated by some as reactionaries, ignorant, animals, magicians, makers of money out of religion and peddlers of amulets (this article has collected some of these labels). There were also calls on social media for a militant secularism in Afghanistan in the style of Kemal Atatürk’s in Turkey in order to crush the mullahs. The killing of Farkhunda also attracted some very extreme reactions, both by named and anonymous Afghans in undisclosed locations, including the posting of videos of people setting fire to copies of the Quran or urinating on them and a controversial website run by a diaspora Afghan calling for the Shah-e Du Shamshira to be turned into a public toilet. All of this was, of course, highly provocative and, for most, extremely offensive.

The mullahs hit back, not only on social media, but in mosques and by pouring onto the streets of Kabul. The most conspicuous act was a thousand-plus-strong gathering of mullahs on 26 March 2015 in the same place where Farkhunda was killed, in front of the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. The participants included Niazi as well as many other notable imams from Kabul and the provinces, both Sunni and Shia. The gathering was reported by some media as pro-Farkhunda, but watching the full hour and a half video, there were few expressions of regret for her killing or remorse for earlier statements or calls for justice for the victim. By this stage, it was clear Farkhunda had been innocent of the charges against her and, indeed, was also not the sort of women’s rights activist seen by ulama in the gathering as ‘the enemy.’ Indeed, she could be considered one of their own – educated, orthodox and pious – albeit female. Even so, the statement of the gathering dedicated only one and a half lines out of three full A-4 pages to a condemnation of the killing. Even then, it was not of her murder per se, but of the type of killing, one that involved torment, burning by fire and a desecration of the human body. In reality, the gathering was not really about Farkhunda at all, but, almost exclusively, a counterpunch at the mullah’s critics.

Organised by a previously unheard-of body called the Coordination Assembly of the Ulama and Khatibs of Afghanistan, there were diatribes against civil society (understood by the mullahs as solely made of activists and organisations with a liberal, women’s and human rights agenda) and the government, attacking the first for speaking out against the clergy and the latter for not stopping it. One mullah ranted: “I tell Ashraf Ghani and civil society to be heedful… the gun is still in the hand of the mullah. It takes the ulama only a fatwa [to take down, popularly,] this government.” Another mullah asked for the media to be punished for what he said was its hostility to religion and issued this threat to roaring shouts of Allah-u Akbar:

I warn those who use this opportunity [the killing of Farkhunda to insult ulama]…that women will be killed more heinously than our sister [Farkhunda], and many people will be eliminated in a far worse way [if they continue insulting the ulama]. Then, nobody will dare raise their voice. … It is also a warning to those who create such incidents to have mercy on themselves. Once the nation rises up, nobody will be able to stop it. If you value your life, shut your mouths; don’t spread lies against the Quran and Islam.

The gathering culminated in a statement which blamed the media for creating deliberate confusion in its initial reporting of the incident. It suggested ­the media had intentionally spread the account of Quran-burning in order to entrap the ulama into defending the murder and only revealed the true story later to then defame them in a conspiracy hatched together with civil society. Evading its own logic of conspiracy, the statement defended the lynching regardless of any conspiracy or the actual truth of what happened: “Those who acted in defence of the sacred which led to the painful incident [ie the killing of Farkhunda], their sentiments are justifiable since their action was based on the intention of protecting the Quran and divine rites.” The ulama in the statement also urged the government to ban what they called anti-Islamic civil society groups and uphold Article 3 of the constitution which stipulates that there shall be no law repugnant to the beliefs and ordinances of Islam. The statement also declared that it is the ulama’s duty to root out “the dirty tree” of civil society which, they claimed, is hostile to religion.

Organised religious currents shared the ulama’s antagonism to critics of the clergy. For example, the mostly youth-based Hezb ut-Tahrir condemned those whom, it says, had attacked religious values and the ulama and had exploited the lynching of Farkhunda, calling them followers of Satan. It likened the responses to the murder to reactions to the Charlie Hebdo attack in France which, it says, was an organised effort to malign Islam. Another Islamist group, Jamiat-e Eslah, also attacked those who, it said, worked behind the façade of civil society as opportunists, weaping crocodile tears while pursuing their own ideological agendas. It described critics of the ulama as extremists more fervent than Farkhunda’s killers for their all-out smearing campaign against the clergy and religious beliefs.

The concerns about what is called din-stezi in Persian (anti-religion activism or hostility to religion), a term which has never been used that widely in Afghanistan before the Farkhunda protests, became so noticeable that popular TV channels had to feature the topic in their talks shows. In one of the programs, the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs Faiz Muhammad Osmani said he knew that Farkhunda’s murder was being used by those hostile to religion and that they were doing a disservice to her case.

Backing down

There were also efforts to soften the initial polarisation, possibly in response to the mullahs’ strong counter-campaign. One of the later civil society meetings on Farkhunda on 31 March prominently acknowledged the role of the ulama and religion in bringing justice for her and combating the wider roots of injustices in society. Four of the eight articles of the statement it issued were dedicated to or contained references to Islam and the religious institutions. It voiced its appreciation of ulama and religious leaders in standing for justice for Farkhunda and called for the prosecution of those insulting Islam. The meeting, which brought together various civil society and social organisations, also featured ulama.

The mullahs’ protest seems also to have alarmed leaders of the national unity government. Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah met prominent members of the Coordination Assembly of the Ulama and Khatibs on 2 April 2015. His office only released a video of the meeting, without audio or further explanation, but according to a leading member of the ulama body their discussion had centred on the “unprecedented wave of insult to religion under the new government.” Three days after this meeting and coinciding with the release of the fact-finding commission’s report, on 5 April 2015, Ghani addressed the nation in a video message. In his address, he referred several times to the role of ulama. He thanked them for standing with the people in Farkhunda’s case and pointed out that:

In condemnation of this issue [Farkhunda’s murder], there has been no dichotomy and confrontation among our people. Rather, all stood together against this savagery. We should not forget that the ulama and spiritual leaders are an inseparable part of civil society and we appreciate all their efforts in strengthening the rule of law… The Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs has been instructed to keep consistently in touch with the ulama and spiritual leaders and create necessary coordination in spreading the true values and ordinances of Islam.

Similarly, the presidential fact-finding commission, which consisted of MPs, women rights activists, ulama and senior government officials, included in its report specific clauses which responded to the concerns of the mullahs. The report said there was no evidence of the involvement of any mullah or alim in the murder of Farkhunda and that that most of the shrine’s attendants and amulet sellers had been found to be illiterate. The commission’s emphasis on the fact that those directly implicated in the lynching were illiterate looks partly like an attempt to safeguard the reputation of the ulama and prevent a backlash. The ulama themselves have frequently pointed out in TV debates and in the 26 March rally that Zainuddin and other attendants of the shrines did not qualify as religious scholars; rather they cast them as illiterate religious workers deriving purely commercial benefit from the use of their religious status. There is a problem here, though, given the fact that being a mullah and being illiterate are not mutually exclusive, especially in rural areas. The government may be seeking to address that now. The Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Faiz Muhammad Osmani, for example, told Tolo, “Unfortunately, unlike any other profession, there are no criteria and rules for who qualifies as an imam of a mosque or as an alim. We have brought many ulama together in Kabul after the killing of Farkhunda to discuss this issue. They agreed there should be universal criteria for becoming an imam.”

Finally, the commission, in its recommendations, said: “Our demand from the ulama and civil society activists is to condemn concertedly and loudly those irresponsible statements under the name of civil society or spiritual society which are aimed at inciting people to turbulence and instability.”

The debate: why did the attack happen?

 The discussions that followed the lynching of Farkhunda have involved a lively debate and, indeed, some soul-searching (although often of others’ souls) as people struggled to answer the question: what makes people do what they did to Farkhunda? Articles in the mainstream media, websites and social media, independent commentators, ideologues, social sciences scholars and analysts have tried to identify the underlying causes for Farkhunda’s murder and for the mob’s behaviour. Generally, the opinions fell into two camps: those who blamed the type of religion practiced in Afghanistan or how it has developed and who is in charge of it, and those blaming ‘secular society.’ Within the mass of commentary some interesting ideas have emerged.

Scrutinising the religious culture for violence

In a Foreign Policy piece, one diaspora Afghan, a journalist and cultural critic, argued that the murder of Farkhunda had revealed that

… a fanatic strand of Islamic [sic] has become normalized and accepted by a mainstream audience. The imam who incited the violence, the mob who lynched Farkhunda, the bystanders who filmed it — they were not the disenfranchised. They were ordinary Afghans, members of the middle class, including shop keepers. The initial public reaction was approval, expressed by public figures representing the spheres of culture and education. What do we learn from this? A populist, fanatic strand of Islam appealing to base emotionality has become mainstream, finding an audience in all levels of society. Listening to the preacher Niazi’s sermon, it is easy to learn what kind of Islam is disseminated to the wider population through the institutions of mosques, universities, and religious media outlets. A key characteristic of this version of Islam is that is encourages lawlessness … mullahs are doing mass manipulation and brain-washing … carving foreigners as enemies and therefore unlivable … This image is carefully cultivated and sustained through collective effort.

Another commentator, a former journalist of Radio/TV Afghanistan, found political Islam and the long-preached jihadism as the key reason for the younger generation’s violent behaviour. He wrote:

From the countless beheadings in Iraq and Syria to the kidnapping of hundreds of girls in Nigeria to the immolation of an innocent woman in public in Afghanistan … all have roots in political Islam and irrational thinking rather than the superficial behaviour of the fringe strata such as amulet-peddlers, fortune-tellers and traditional mullahs. It will be a huge mistake [to think] further tragedies such as that of Farkhunda would be avoided simply by getting rid of amulet-sellers and fortune-tellers.

Another observer pointed to the mullahs’ unshakable influence over society, given their “violent reading of religion” and general ignorance as a reason that leads to violent behaviour in the name of defending Islam. She stated: “As a result of obedience to every mullah, we now have people who are ready to kill a person in broad daylight in front of thousands of people after a mere hint from an amulet-seller. Those who withhold their minds and dance to the clergy are like programmed robots who have the capability of applying any type of brutality.” This commentator sees the excessive religious zeal and bigotry as a symptom of a deeper social problem which, she believes, is a product of the absence of quality education, illiteracy and the absence of ‘real’ religious scholars who have a non-violent reading of religion.

Finding fault with ‘civil society’ activists

On the other side are those who castigated the actions of ‘secular activists’ who, they believe, offend the conservative norms of society to such an extent that it became the driving force behind the killing; the threat posed by these ‘secular activists’, they contended, had caused the people’s knee-jerk reaction to an accusation of blasphemy and apostasy (and without the need for the slander to be proven). Three recent incidents (which happened between December 2014 and March 2015) in particular, which are viewed as initiated or supported by ‘civil society activists,’ and have outraged the ulama and Islamist organisations, featured prominently in such analysis. These include an unnamed and unknown woman pictured walking bare-legged (and bare-foot) in Kabul (her motivation remains unknown) and two public protests against the harassment of women: a group of Afghan men wearing burqas and a female artist who wore a home-made suit of armour designed to protect her from and as a protest against being groped in the street by strangers.

These three incidents may appear minor and unrelated, but religious activists have taken them as totemic of a wider sense of grievance inculcated among many conservative Afghans who then sprang into action to “defend the Quran” as soon as they heard the shout that it had been burned. These themes were mentioned frequently in the ulama gathering, as well as in opinion pieces, such as this one by the head of Kandahar University’s Faculty of Sharia, who is a senior member of Jamiat-e Eslah, Muzammel Islami. He wrote this a day after the lynching when the dominant narrative still considered Farkhunda as a Quran-burner:

Although people do not have the right to punish someone publicly in that way [as Farkhunda], the government had to convince the people that it takes serious action against those who commit even a minor desecration of people’s beliefs and values. This lenience and incompetence on the part of the state has probably emboldened the people to react in this way to the burning of the Quran [in a way] which is probably not compliant with the Sharia. Logically, people should not enforce laws themselves. However, we have examples in the recent history of Afghanistan of, for example, the Holy Quran being burnt by the foreigners [troops] or someone converting from his religion; these people have not been handed any punishment… That is why I think the people probably feel the government cannot punish these people… If the government had some records of punishing certain people [who had been accused of blasphemy], this incident [the lynching of Farkhunda] might not have happened.

A short piece in Weesa daily also referred to the public inclination against anti-Islam actions following the three ‘anti-Islam’ incidents. It added: “The donning of the suit of armour by a girl against the Islamic spirit of hijab, the wearing of chadari by young men in order to ridicule hijab and the celebration of a donkey were some incidents that have incited the people’s minds against anti-religion projects.” (The celebration of donkey refers to a small event titled “Donkey, the reality and perception; Donkey an unappreciated servant” organised by some Pashtun civil society activists in early March where they discussed virtues of the donkey in its services to human beings.)

An article on the Taleban’s website on 26 March referred to “the increased anti-Islam and anti-woman efforts” in the context of giving reasons for Farkhunda’s murder. It said: “[E]vil anti-Islamic currents are trying continually to … target the honour-loving and faithful generation and to encourage a sort of mistrust and ill will within Islamic society. It can be said that a lack of full awareness by Muslims about actual realities can lead to shocking incidents, such as that of Shah-e Du Shamshira.”

The ‘anti-Islam and anti-hijab campaign’ has been a frequent topic in articles on the Taleban websites both before and after Farkhunda’s murder, most of them putting it in the context of the unity government’s ‘anti-Islam inclinations.’ The most recent such article entitled “Shocking wave of desecration of Islam” and published on 21 April referred to all the mentioned incidents as well as an interview by the first lady Laura Ghani when she backed the French ban on veiling the face. The article then blames Farkhunda’s lynching on all such ‘provocations:’

[T]hese civil society organisations and foreign organisations undertook some provocative actions which aroused in the minds of the Muslim nation the feeling of avenging the insult to holy beliefs. It so much disturbed Afghans psychologically that anyone who does something offending will naturally meet a bitter end. Farkhunda’s killing and immolation is a clear manifestation of that feeling. If there had not been such desecrations of sacred affairs, the public might not have reacted so hastily to such incident.

Identity politics or ‘Muslim degeneration’?

Among the Afghan academia and well-known intellectuals, some have tried to offer more nuanced explanations. A lecturer at Ibn-e Sina University of Islamic Studies in Kabul, Ali Amiri, sees the mob’s act as an indication of cultural degeneration that, he says, is common across the Muslim world. He concludes that the roots of Farkhunda’s lynching lay in Afghan society’s wider irrationality and the erosion of spirituality, which has caused a loss of respect for human life and dignity. He describes Farkhunda’s killers as nihilistic mischief-makers who covered up their sadism (gaining pleasure from the suffering of others) in religious language since in this way, they could explain away their brutality as religiously-sanctioned violence. In response, one reader blamed the atrocity on what he refers to as the embedding of violence in religion and the religious culture of the Afghan society; he accused Amiri of being a religious apologist for analysing ‘culture’ separately from religion.

A diaspora intellectual, Muhammad Kazem Kazemi, sees Farkhunda as a victim of others’ “absolutist thinking.” He describes this as a tendency to think and judge in absolute terms without differentiating between levels of good and bad and says it is typical of Afghan society. He argues such thinking blinded accusers and attackers of Farkhunda alike to the actual offence she was alleged to have committed and the “proper punishment” for that offence. He says Farkhunda’s murderers were, unfortunately, ‘normal’ members of a society in which such absolutist thinking and an inclination towards prejudice and mischievous violence is common, indeed, has come to be at its core.

This is that simplistic and absolutist mentality that makes us ignore differences between disrespecting the Quran, burning the Quran, denying the truth of the Quran and denying the existence of God. In our view, the severity of the crime of someone who burns amulets by fire is the same as of someone who burns the Quran. The crime of the latter is [seen as] the same as someone who disbelieves in the Quran and God… This problem also manifested itself in a different way. Many deemed those who immolated Farkhunda as outside the circle of humanity, depicting them as savages with no semblance to humanity. The truth is that they were people from this same society with various levels of morals and religious understanding. Their traits probably exist within ourselves [the rest of the society] at different levels and we might express these behaviours according to circumstances … The minimum harm of seeing them as the most evil people on earth is that it makes us think safely about the people around us since we think only few wolfish people can commit such an atrocity. That is not true. The distance between us and those people is probably not huge, as manifested by our behaviour on the internet … This absolute thinking did not stop here. Those who supported Farkhunda’s killing in the initial moments … were treated in an extreme manner. They were treated as if they had set fire to Farkhunda, themselves. Some of the worst smears were thrown at people who had expressed an unconsidered opinion

The dean of Kabul’s Ibn-e Sina University, Amin Ahmadi, in a seminar at his university (the transcript of the speech is published here) focused on religion-based identity politics as the key reason for driving members of Afghan society to such violent action when there was a perceived attack on their religious beliefs.

He looked into the cultural context of the society and pinpointed three specific characteristics to explain the attack on Farkhunda: the fact that religion in the Afghan society has become a giver of identity and any perceived insult to it brings an emotional response; the ubiquitous perception of a Western threat to Islam, which is also rooted in the identity-oriented religiosity; and the inability to think and decide rationally during dire situations. The conspiracy theory that the West is constantly plotting against Islam is so deeply embedded in the minds of the public, he argues, that when the people outside the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine heard of someone setting the Quran on fire, they not only immediately believed it, but also automatically thought it a conspiracy to defame Islam. This is illustrated in a video showing young men shouting at Farkhunda in the initial moments after the accusation, claiming that she had been sent by the Americans [to burn the Quran]. He argues that when religion as a strong definer of identity is perceived to be under threat, it feels existential and strips members of that society of the ability to decide rationally. That is why most people, he argues, could not make a definitive decision to wholeheartedly condemn or support the murder during the first 24 hours after the lynching – until it was clear that Farkhunda was fully innocent of the charge of burning the Quran.

One Kabul-based sociology student tried to distinguish religious zeal from instinctual sadism. He says there might be little doubt that the primary motive for the violence had been religious, but that it quickly turned into unreligious action driven by “the pleasure of murder” as manifested by the step-by-step application of a variety of brutal methods of violence. He writes that, despite the mob desecrating a human body and setting it on fire, both acts which are strictly proscribed in Islam, the attackers hid their thrill at the killing behind a religious defence, ‘saving’ the Quran.

Non-religious social factors

Other analysts and commentators have examined the possible (non-religious) social causes of the murder. One commentator writing on a website run by Sweden-based Afghans put it this way:

This murder in which 250 people were involved against the backdrop of thousands of other cases of murdering, immolation and harassment of women… indicates that there is something horrible happening in the society. This horrible thing has roots in the school, in the mosque, in the family, in the weakness of the state and the absence of a value system.

Another observer, writing for BBC Persian, noted that Farkhunda’s lynching was an example of a misjudgement stemming from ignorance. He pointed to superstitious religious beliefs as a particular problem, exacerbated by a broader failure of the social institutions, which has not left the new generation untouched. He writes:

Among those involved in Farkhunda’s murder are people from the younger and educated generation which has been brought up under the educational system of the current government and learnt religion from mosques and madrasa of this [post-Taleban] society. The murder of Farkhunda exhibited in the first place the failure of the educational and upbringing system as well as the failure of the human rights institutions and of the ulama.

For some women rights activists, the attack on Farkhunda illustrated the wider oppression of women in Afghan society. Fawzia Koofi, a known activist and member of parliament (who was also on the fact-finding commission), told The New York Times: “This happened to [Farkhunda] because of her gender … If there is no rule of law, not only women, but any human being in this country, is not safe.” Any further explanation of his was not quoted. However, a scholar based at an American university writing in a US Muslim newspaper did do so, pointing to what she said was “a crisis in status of Afghan men … a significantly large group of whom feel excluded from the benefits of the new Afghanistan” as the root cause of their violent behaviour towards women, and in this case, towards Farkhunda. She said: “These men tend to view women, especially successful and/or independent women in public spaces, as a symbol of men’s collective failure.”

The role of rumour-mongering and conspiracy-mongering

In addition to social or cultural factors, there is also a wider distorted thinking at work, however, which led the crowds to over-hastily respond to the shout of burning the Quran and to misjudge the circumstances around the accusation, rather than questioning the accusation and listening to Farkhunda. In Afghan society, rumours are often sufficient to drive people to action and can thus become a powerful, destructive tool in politics and culture. (2) In Farkhunda’s case, everybody nearby seemed inclined to believe the rumour. In video footage circulated on the internet, young men surrounded Farkhunda at the gate of the shrine to yell at her, demanding to know why she burnt the Quran, but with no attention to her responses, as if they had already had proof of the burning. The rumour was repeated as a fact in accounts by people from the scene, young and old, and in TV reports from the site hours after the incident. Even the inaction of the police who failed to stop the lynching, according to a member of the truth-seeking commission looking into Farkhunda’s murder, stemmed in part from their belief in the truth of the rumour and in the rightness of the death penalty for the accused. A senior police officer was quoted an hour after the lynching by the BBC recalling the reason for Farkhunda’s murder to be her burning of the Quran – as a fact rather than an accusation or rumour. The pervasiveness of believing rumours, especially when involving sensitive social or political issues, may back up Professor Ahmadi’s contention that a threat to religion is perceived as an existential issue which strips people of their power to act rationally and urges action.

The persistence of the report and the fact that the actions were still praised afterwards by people who were not facing the same urgency to act and who had enough time to examine the rumour before judging the killing – such as the clergy and some officials – seems to have been exacerbated by rampant conspiracy-mongering. The perception that Islam is constantly under an external threat, usually from the West, is so entrenched in Afghan society that it finds subscribers in all strata. Although mullahs and Islamist groups are often leading sources of this conspiracy theory, they do not have a monopoly over it. One can find similar sentiments expressed by senior government officials and members of the security forces. (3)

On 29 March, for example, several members of the parliament, called for an investigation into reports that Farkhunda had been in contact with foreign embassies prior to her alleged burning of the Quran. On social media, hours after the lynching, a detailed ‘report’ of a plot popped up in which the United States embassy was said to have invested 25,000 dollars in partnership with a local TV channel which had been the first to air the news of mental illness of Farkhunda. Pictures of a woman standing beside John Kerry amid a group of other Afghan women was circled and compared with the bloodied victim to ‘prove’ an American plot. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that a people so alert to a perennial and cunning threat to their all-important religion did not give someone accused of burning the Quran the benefit of the doubt, no matter how pious and Sharia-compliant she looked (Farkhunda’s wearing of niqab could readily suggest she was religiously observant). Under such conditions of delusional conspiracy-mongering, a person accused of harming Islam is by default guilty until unequivocally proven innocent.

Finally, there is the perception that the state is too lax, corrupt or afraid (of its international backers) to take the necessary action in cases of blasphemy. The reactions and views already cited from Mawlawi Hassam, Muzammel and the Taleban’s website illustrate this perception. Even Kabul Police spokesman Hashmat Stanekzai’s reaction is based on the notion of apostates and blasphemers slipping through the net of state justice. The mistrust in the state’s ability or willingness to respond to popular sentiments when there is a case of actual or alleged blasphemy made some ulama condone mob justice – at least that is what they said. Although Kabul imam Niazi did later admit, in an interview with AAN a month after the murder of Farkhunda, that the attack was un-Islamic and would set a dangerous precedence if the defense of religion was left to the people, he also said: “When the people feel the government is not standing up to protect the core values of society, it should not shock anyone that [the people] do it in their own messy way. What they do is out of desperation, not that they are convinced they should act in the place of the law enforcement agencies.”

Niazi also accused the media of earlier distorting his words by taking them out of the intended context.

I have always been and will continue to be against arbitrary trials. Farkhunda was murdered by the common people who believed she actually burnt the Quran. In that Friday sermon, using that incident, I tried to alert the government of the building of public anger against the state for its inaction towards incidents of blasphemy and mockery of Islamic ordinances. I did not approve Farkhunda’s killing by any way. I said whether Farkhunda really burnt the Quran or not, what the people did to her was a result of the increasingly public lack of confidence in the government to apply the law in cases related to insult of the people’s holy beliefs. The media and anti-religion currents misused the widespread sympathy with Farkhunda to undermine the ulama.

The unhealthy face-off between mullahs and anti-clericalists

The killing of Farkhunda instigated by a religious worker and some mullahs’ immediate endorsement of the lynching plus the calls (by protestors and in the parliament) for curtailing preaching in religious institutions that encourage violence all seem to have put the clergy under public pressure. In general, there was little soul searching among the clergy. There was a condemnation of ‘clerics’ involved in faith-healing and charm-selling, but this looked like an attempt to distance ulama from the type of religious worker involved in the murder.

It seems, two factors brought clerics and Islamic groups (in the past, not normally natural bedfellows) together, so making a real debate within the religious domain more unlikely. The first was the fear of the state’s increased control over religious institutions as a result of public pressure. The second was a fear that mullahs might cease to be beyond criticism in the eyes of a new and educated generation (in traditional society, clerics are rarely criticised). The responses to Farkhunda’s murder, which partially entailed a confrontation between the mullahs and the ‘secular’ activists, indicated the possibility of a change to the status of mullahs as beyond criticism, at least in some urban settings.

These two challenges felt to the clergy’s independence and status seem to have diverted what might have been a rare chance for an intra-religious discourse on reform. Instead, the discourse is pitting the religious against those seen as their secular rivals. Although the ulama’s appetite for such soul-searching remains untested, of course, one would have hoped it could have been triggered by the murder and its aftermath. Religious civil society could have taken some time to assess the underlying problems in the religious sphere that contributed to the occurrence of the murder.

Specifically, three problems needed to be examined and were not. The first would have been the relationship between what is preached by the ulama plus Islamic activist groups in the name of religion and the violent behaviour as witnessed during the brutal killing of Farkhunda. Notably, religious institutions cannot ignore the need for a definitive stance on the promotion and use of violence in today’s society, where the state should have the monopoly over the use of coercive power.

The second issue is the perception of rule of law and the validity of the vigilante in dominant religious discourse. The praise of the attack by some clerics during their Friday sermons on 20 March, the speeches of the ulama in the gathering on 26 March and what some mullahs said online during the initial days suggest there is little respect for rule of law when it comes to attacks perceived to be against Islam. A serious question is what would have been the reaction of the ulama and Islamists if Farkhunda had indeed burnt the Quran? Responses supportive of the lynching in the initial days as well as the statement of the ulama gathering should provide at least half the answer.

The third problem needing to be raised for the intra-religious debate is the wild conspiracy-mongering ingrained in parts of religious civil society (and elsewhere) and its consequences for wider society. The lynching of Farkhunda could have been used as a lasting lesson for both the absurdity and danger of that sort of thinking. Serious debates about these issues did not materialise partly because the debate ended up being centred on a rather unhelpful axis. Feeling challenged from rights-centric ‘civil society,’ the clergy banded together to defend what they saw as an encroachment on their political and social status. Anti-mullahism pushed moderates in the religious camp towards the hardliners, bringing together Sunni and Shia, pro-state and anti-state ulama with more modernist religious activists. Niazi, himself a moderate mullah by Afghan standards (irrespective of his reported initial stance on Farkhunda’s killing), was probably not known that widely among the religious community before the campaign against him. An example of the campaign actually bringing out more support for Niazi and the ‘embattled clergy’ was the strong statements by Balkh’s powerful governor, Atta Muhammad Nur, who lashed out at secularist activists for what he said was their exploitation of Farkhunda’s case for ideological goals and their insulting of ulama and religious values. On his Facebook page, he warned he would stand with his full power against blasphemy and anti-religionists. (Atta’s Mitra TV aired the ulama’s gathering in full.)

What Afghanistan now needs is a critical and level-headed discourse on the sacred realm rather than divisive lines between the ‘religious’ and the ‘anti-religious.’ Such lines will only further close off the religious sphere to an open debate. Additionally, clashing with those who act as gatekeepers of religion and intentionally insulting them, threatens to only further radicalise them. Anti-mullahism as a way to reform the religious sector has also proved self-destructive in Afghanistan’s past: once it led to the fall of the reformist King Amanullah, despite him having earned Afghanistan’s independence, and again after the communist coup of 1978. A better way ahead, rather than seeking to disempower and humiliate the mullahs, seems to be to modernise the system and institutions that produce religious leaders. Afghanistan cannot afford another social polarisation along such virulent ideological lines.

 

(1) During their last two years of rule, the Taleban government tried to curtail these practices and even almost closed Shah-e Du Shamshira (they also stopped elevating the flag or janda on Nawruz in Mazar-e Sharif which they also saw as un-Islamic tradition); at the same time, there were also many Taleban foot soldiers among the visitors to shrines.

(2) There have been examples throughout Afghanistan’s history, including in the 1920s, as described in this Al Jazeera article, when British agents disguised as Pashtun tribesmen spread malicious rumours against King Amanullah in 1928 and disseminated doctored photographs of Queen Soraya in a state of ‘undress.’ This purportedly fuelled the ire of the conservative masses, already seething over the king’s modernising reforms, which eventually led to Amanullah’s overthrow.

(3) The author for instance found such sentiments quite common during his research into so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks in 2012-2013; many in the security forces, who were working with the foreign forces, said they believed Islam was in confrontation with the West.

40 days after the violent killing of Farkhunda, supporters gathered on Monday, 27 April 2015, to mourn and protest her death. Afghan public opinion has now reached a broad consensus over the unprecedented gravity of this murder. Yet, many questions remain as to what triggered the killing and how it was possible for such a terrible incident to take place in central Kabul at the hands of what looked to be otherwise law-abiding and ‘normal’ citizens. In the first of two dispatches on the murder of Farkhunda, AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini and Naheed Esar have been looking at the specifics of the social environment where she met her death and exploring some of the social types who were possibly party to her murder, from the amulet sellers and beggars, whose economic interests revolve around shrines such as that of Shah-e Du Shamshira where the murder took place, to the petty criminals and police of that part of the city, Police District (PD) 2.

A second dispatch by AAN’s Borhan Osman will look at the responses of civil society and the ulama and how a polarisation emerged over how each interpreted the murder; this, he will argue, has complicated chances for a much-needed internal debate among Afghanistan’s clergy.

At the traditional 40-day ceremony, marked all over the Muslim world to mourn a death, those protesting Farkhunda’s murder re-enacted her killing. The dramatised scenes, the beating and burning were painful to those watching – many were in tears – and were later relayed on television news reports. The Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine was closed after the murder, but the messages of condolences and the images of the dead Islamic studies student left by the protesters have turned the place into a new shrine. The area is now calm, but passers-by told AAN an uneasiness remains and they now fear to pass down the road where Farkhunda was murdered.

With the many unsettling issues connected to the killing of Farkhunda, considerations about the place where it happened have generally been sidelined. But geography was and is important in this killing. The area of the incident, Shah-e Du Shamshira and the Kabul riverbanks beside it, are places everybody knows and that many people have to pass when crossing the city. If such a terrible murder had happened in some remote province, or in the outskirts of the city, it would not have been any less grave or atrocious. However, the shrine where everything started and the riverside where her mangled body was finally burned and discarded, lie at the very centre of Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan and are arguably perceived as the safest, most controlled and ‘civilised’ part of Afghanistan.

A central place in downtown Kabul

The spot where the incident happened can truly be termed the heart of Kabul. Administratively in urban district number and police station number two, the Shah-e Du Shamshira complex, with mosque and shrine, stands on the left bank of the Kabul river, at the junction of the Old City and the new residential and administrative expansions beyond the river. The latter symbolised the transformation of Afghanistan into a modern state in the late 19th century. Located at the western entrance of the characteristic riverside quays, which form one of Kabul’s most recognisable icons, the Shah-e Du Shamshira is also oriented towards West Kabul through Jada-ye Asmai, the road which crosses the narrow Kabul river gorge and skirts just behind the complex.

Many of the historical and social landmarks of Kabul surround the mosque or are in plain view of it: the mausoleum of Timur Shah, the sovereign who made Kabul the capital of the Afghan kingdom towards the end of the 18th century; Lycee Aisha Durrani, built in the 1920s as one of the European (in this case German) high schools wanted by King Amanullah to modernise education and still the largest girls school in the country; Pamir Cinema, one of the first cinemas to open in Afghanistan in the relatively peaceful mid-20th century, and the Central Polyclinic hospital established by the communist government in 1985.

The area hosts numerous other landmarks, from the National Gallery to the Turko-Afghan Technical Institute, but it is the National Bus Company Central Station close by that influences its human geography most. The square in front of the Shah-e Du Shamshira mosque and the riverside lane to the south of it have become a single transportation hub crowded by taxis, minivans and buses connecting the Old City with other areas of Kabul and the city with the provinces. Thousands of travellers transit through the area every day, and an adequate deployment of street hawkers, food sellers and pickpockets are ready to meet them.

The area was heavily damaged during the civil war in the 1990s, leading many residents to leave, while reconstruction in recent years has been rather selective. The Old City of Kabul proved less attractive than other areas for private investors, split as it is between key government facilities in the flat patches of ground along the riverside and the poor mud-house settlement on the hill slopes to the north and south of it. Although some new residential and commercial buildings have arisen, the area’s former social fabric has not been fully reconstituted. Rather, impoverished immigrants from outside Kabul have replaced many of the original residents.

The mosque of Shah-e Du Shamshira, a shapely square building showing mixed Ottoman ‘Belle Epoque’ and Italian baroque influences and abutting the riverbank, dates from Amanullah’s time. It was Olya Hazrat, the king’s mother, who commissioned the new building on the site of a smaller Mughal-era mosque and inaugurated it, as a votive offering (offered in fulfilment of a vow) for the quelling of the Khost Rebellion in 1925.

If the mosque itself is a favourite spot for Kabulis to go and pray, there is another part of the religious complex that attracts visitors from even farther away. Right across the street, the namesake ziarat (shrine) of Shah-e Du Shamshira stands in memory of the heroic death of an unnamed ghazi, a Muslim warrior, said to have kept wielding his two swords against the infidels, even after his head had been severed by a blow as he fought against the Hindu-Shahi dynasty which ruled Kabul at the time of the Ghaznavid conquest in the 10th century. Inside this highly revered shrine, frequented by visitors to the mosque and people in search of blessings, a number of beggars and amulet-sellers can be found. It was this practice, the selling of amulets, which brought Farkhunda into confrontation with the keepers of the shrine on the day of her murder.

Selling blessings in the shrine

Amulets (tawiz) have a long history in Afghanistan. They can be found all over Afghanistan, most commonly in the form of written pieces of paper and worn on the body of the person it is meant to benefit. They can be different in form and size; some are square, some rectangular and some roundish; they can be made from fabric or metal or be in the form of crystals or gems. Tawiz are often used in the belief that they heal or protect from illness, or solve a person’s problems in life – typically related to love affairs or the wish for offspring, particularly male offspring. However, more recently, the range of wishes has expanded to new topics, from passing the university kankur entry exam to getting a foreign visa. Women are the most frequent, though not the sole users of tawiz: they carry them in the form of a bracelet, necklace, pinned to their clothes, or hidden in houses and cars. They can cost anything from 100 Afghani (two dollars) to 15,000 Afghani (300 dollars).

The status in society of those who write amulets is presently unclear. Traditionally, also in the context of the presence of popular devotional practices centred around persons claiming descent from the family of the Prophet or from Sufi saints, some of them used to be quite prominent and respected as ulama (read a previous AAN piece here). Today, with changing social patterns and religious practices, due to some degree of modernisation at least in the urban centres, amulet-writers are being slowly pushed to the fringes of society.

According to Afghan scholar Abdul Zahir Dayi, the origin of the amulet-writing tradition in Afghanistan was Hinduism and Judaism (see here). Islamic scholars have contradicting views about the status of tawiz in Islam. Some divide amulets into two kinds, those with Quranic verses and those without. Tawiz without Quranic verses are largely considered haram (sinful), while amulets containing Quranic chapters are permissible according to some scholars. The Wahabis, on the other hand, believe that all tawiz are un-Islamic, primarily because there is no mention of them in the Quran or Hadith (see here). The latter attitude seems to have been shared by Farkhunda. A friend of hers whom AAN spoke to during the 40-day commemoration at the location of the murder on Monday said that “for about the past three years [Farkhunda] had regularly gone to the shrine of Shah-e Du Shamshira” to try to convince the amulet writers to desist from what she considered an un-Islamic practice.

Selling other things in the shadow of the shrine

The Old City of Kabul is definitely not ‘uptown.’ Despite the area being frequented by many people for shopping, it is not regarded as the safest. Crime rates are rather high, and while the security forces keep tight control of the area against possible insurgent attacks because of the many potential targets in it, they are not much concerned about repressing common criminality, according to a security analyst working for an independent organisation.

In the immediate post-2001 period, Kabul’s police districts were taken over and staffed by the military victors – different commanders belonging to Jamiat-e Islami/Shura-ye Nazar and Ittihad-e Islami factions of the Northern Alliance. Enjoying the support of heavyweights like the first post-Taleban interior minister, Yusuf Qanuni, or the first defence minister, Qasim Fahim, they managed to withstand foreign-sponsored reforms for quite a while. Eventually, the commanders had to give up their posts. However, their men have largely remained in place. The majority of the policemen there have been assigned to the area for a decade now and have resisted all attempts to transfer them. According to a Ministry of Interior officer interviewed by AAN, policemen have developed a strong attachment to their posts of duty in Police District (PD) 2, an area that is eminently commercial and offers additional income by levying protection money from shopkeepers and other businessmen in exchange for turning a blind eye on irregularities.

This part of the city is thus a hotspot of petty criminal activities. The massive presence of shoppers and travellers from outside the city draws groups of thieves from the settlement above the area, Deh Afghanan. The partially dry riverbed has also become the abode of drug addicts in recent years and their number has grown considerably, making it second only to Pul-e Sukhta area (see AAN report here). Large amounts of narcotics are thus brought to the area and pass from traffickers, often via shopkeepers for whom it is a side activity, to retail sellers who sell it to those on the riverbed. According to a social worker once engaged in a program to help widows in the area, the amulet sellers and some of the beggars in the shrine are also rumoured to be accomplices in the smuggling and safe-keeping of drugs there. Even the presence of a prostitution ring run from the shrine has been hinted at by the police, who have now temporarily closed the place down.

Together with the amulet-sellers, there are also many gadagaran, beggars, mostly female, within the ziarat enclosure. They can be roughly divided into two categories: those who regularly frequent the shrine and those who come only for religious festivals or during the days preceding them. On such occasions, wealthy merchants and businessmen visit the ziarat and are expected to give alms to the shrine and the assembled beggars. The right to ask for alms inside the shrine is sold – with the involvement of police and shrine staff, as on such occasions, high profits can be made – reportedly for as much as 30,000 Afghanis (600 dollars) in months with such religious celebrations. Some of the beggars at the shrine are said to work in close partnership with the amulet sellers as well.

A widow who often begs for alms inside the shrine told AAN that Farkhunda had had arguments with the amulet sellers in the past.  Another woman, Latifa, a visitor to the shrine and a former customer of Zainuddin, the shrine attendant who would later be accused of having initiated the false accusation that Farkhunda had burned a copy of the Quran, also said she had seen Farkhunda in the shrine on other occasions. “Farkhunda would debate the ‘sin’ of tawiz in Islam and ask the caretaker of the shrine, Zainuddin, to stop this trade.” Farkhunda had also enjoined female visitors to stop buying tawiz. The amulet sellers’ anger about her interference was shared by some of the female beggars who feared a loss in the ‘business’ tawiz clients bring to their begging grounds. The widow also told AAN the female beggars were among the first to instigate others to kill Farkhunda after shrine caretaker Zainuddin’s initial call for Muslims to “save the Quran.”

This is not to suggest that her killing was planned, although worse conspiracy theories about her death have circulated. But given the links between some of the criminal groups active in the area and those in charge of business inside the ziarat, some of those who took part in killing Farkhunda might have known more precisely what they were doing and had one or two ‘reasons’ for it.

The killers: Zainuddin, Sharaf Baghlani and others

“On Thursday at around 3.30, the voice of the cleric Zainuddin was heard from the front window of Shah-e Du Shamshira, and he called the crowd to punish an American woman who had burned pages of Quran.” This is how a female eyewitness, a frequent visitor to the shrine, recalls the start of the murderous rush which resulted in Farkhunda’s death. Reportedly, Zainuddin further provoked the crowd by saying, “If you are a real Muslim, please come and save the Quran.” Following that, some men gathered around Farkhunda aggressively asking her questions, some of which were: “Are you American? Are you America’s agent? Why did you burn the Noble Quran?

Representatives of the presidential investigative commission later also stated that that it was Zainuddin who first shouted that Farkhunda had burnt the Quran and asked the people to punish her. During the investigation, he admitted he had lied about the Quran-burning.

Another man, Sharaf Baghlani, who is in his thirties and has claimed a connection with the Afghan Forces on his Facebook account (the page has since then been removed), bragged about his role in the killing of Farkhunda. The translated version of the post said: “Salam: today at 4.00 pm, an atheist woman burned the Quran at the Shah-e Du Shamshira shrine. Afterwards, the religious people of Kabul, including myself, killed her. Hell shall be her place.” Baghlani was one of the first suspects to be detained. He had already posted, on 21 March 2015: “I believe in an extra-judicial court system for an un-Islamic country like Afghanistan.” He said, “suicide bombers released by the Afghan government” was one reason why he thought handing over criminals to the state authorities was pointless.

One of the other suspects, a young man in his late twenties, would later say his “religious emotion” was the reason he joined in the killing. Others would later condemn their own actions. One man in his early thirties spontaneously surrendered himself to the police saying his “sleep at night had been extremely disturbed by the anxiety and fear created by his feeling of guilt.”

Those involved in the crime were typically young men in their early 20s to late 30s, many of them ‘modern-attired’, sporting jeans and fashionable clothes. Some of them may have been associated with the drug users or crooks crowding the area, but many more seem to have issued from the mosque, while others might have been shopping in the bazaar along the riverbanks when the turmoil started.

If Zainuddin represents the conservative and self-interested use of religion to cow society into obeisance and Sharaf Baghlani the violent and ruthless face of the vigilante, the majority of people who took part in the killing cannot easily be dismissed as leftovers of Afghanistan’s past of violence and extremism, or as dangerous characters living at the margins of society. Rather, they appear to forebode a new generation having lost its bearings in terms of culture and social behaviour.

No shelter from the mad crowd

With the crowd being this diverse in its motivations, the criminality and degradation in the area we have described and the availability of goons to conduct a killing does not yet explain how a mob of some 400 persons could have gathered for such a long time to lynch one girl. The sheer numbers of the crowd prevented the police from succeeding in their, albeit half-hearted, attempts at rescuing her. It also doomed the efforts made by a few individuals to help Farkhunda and bring their fellow Kabulis to reason. It seems that some bystanders did try, in vain, to help her. AAN talked to a woman who asked a policeman only about ten metres away from Farkhunda to intervene. She said the policeman did not budge and calmly remarked, “Let her be killed. That will be a good lesson to those who insult Islam.”

Some observers have wondered why the gender of the victim did not protect her, given that women are usually at less danger from public (although not domestic) violence in patriarchal Afghanistan. While largely agreeing with this analysis, looking deeper into Afghan ‘traditions’, there is a different approach to gender to be detailed. Afghans can be said to treat women in a more ‘equal’ way than that often imagined by outsiders, meaning the treatment meted out by society to a woman seen as guilty of something is unlikely to be more lenient because of her sex. In the Afghan psyche, the duty to defend a ‘helpless’ women is not linked to some romantic idea of chivalry, but to a very concrete understanding of collective honour and respectability. Women who have not trespassed the boundaries set for their place in society are indeed more protected. However, those who are seen as having transgressed lose their status as women who need to be protected. This might have reduced Farkhunda’s chances of eliciting feelings of pity from the people who were attacking her.

What was also shocking about the killing was not just the behaviour of the mob but also of the people who witnessed it. Many filmed it on their smartphones or joined in to take part briefly in a sort of ‘I was there, too’ attitude. Judging by the images, this social type of the casual onlooker, among them many young shoppers, far outnumbered the actual killers. This is disturbing particularly given the hopes so often placed in young people to bring much needed changes in society and push it forward, away from the scars and ruins of the civil war.

But also most of the remarkable mobilisation witnessed in the days following the murder was initiated by Kabul youth, albeit a different section. These activists have been calling for “justice for Farkhunda”, that is, harsh punishments for her murderers. This attitude may feel reasonable at this stage, but it does not seem sufficiently introspective. This murder needs deeper and harder questions to be asked as to how Kabulis came to murder one of their own in the heart of their city.

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

When the casualty incident described in this piece occurred, it fell to me to tend to the unit’s “family.” Beyond the families directly affected, the rest experienced these events through my messages. They chronicle a small piece of what happens on the home-front when casualties come home. [1] These events unfold regularly in our midst, more so in the last decade of conflict, but most in the general public have no experience of this aspect of war; they should.

 

Reflecting upon the conflict and mayhem that has been unleashed in Iraq since the instigation of the military operations to end the regime of Saddam Hussein, there are many issues to confront the scholar. As a military historian, most fundamentally for me I never believed regime change in Iraq was a good idea. Breaking states should only be a strategy choice of last possible resort, and even then it is probably best avoided. But as the spouse of a Marine Officer my professional and intellectual opposition would be challenged by personal obligations.

I was not unfamiliar with this internal conflict between scholarly and real world obligations. In 2004, as a Fellow in their Summer Seminar in Military History, I watched the veterans among the West Point uniformed historians experiencing both cognitive dissonance as well as resonance as they confronted their intellectual material. I could tell that they were comparing their experiences with their scholarship, but I did not understand what that meant at the time. Years later, humbled by my own small experience, I have a sense of how they must have felt and thought. My hope is that this glimpse into the wider experience of war and conflict will offer a similar bit of enlightenment for others.

The vagaries of the personnel system meant that my former husband missed the first several years of OIF. He spent its first year “Stop-Moved” in Okinawa – a one year unaccompanied tour doubled at the commencement of hostilities in 2003. Then a B-Billet tour in Newport, RI, followed, because the alternation between line units and administrative jobs is relentless in the Marine Corps, no matter the state of conflict. At the first opportunity, after only two years in Newport, the Fleet Marine Force beckoned once again, specifically for Iraq. After a three months’ preparation, in January 2007, as a Major, he deployed to Iraq in command of a Military Training Team (MTT). As a training cadre the team was small, giving the families in support an intimacy and closeness that would colour the experience of the deployment. Furthermore, I was the unit Key Volunteer, which made me the point of contact between the unit/Marine Corps and the families of the serving Marines and Sailor. For the most part this meant I was responsible for providing official and correct information about the unit’s movements and activities to the families on a timely basis. Secondarily, as possible, I tried to offer some measure of additional information and support, as well as to coordinate any assistance the unit or the families might require. [2] It is the sort of responsibility that anyone not afflicted with terrific arrogance will feel that they have done inadequately.

By way of background on the context of the deployment, Fallujah in the first half of 2007 was roiling. At the time of the casualty event the Marines and the Iraqi Army battalion they were training had already seen significant and regular combat action. Their AOR, an area of the city known as the “Pizza Slice,” was particularly dangerous, with regular and daily insurgent activity. The Lieutenant Colonel commanding the Iraqi battalion was experienced and educated, having served during the Hussein regime. [3] Pragmatic and hopeful that a new start could be made for his country, he was a willing and able partner in the rebuilding of Iraq. The battalion and its training team would endure several months of sustained attacks until the insurgency broke – of its own stupidity and the civilian population’s shifted allegiance – early in the summer.

However, before that break occurred, a sniper ambush towards the end of a day’s activities took the lives of one of our Marines, and wounded two others. On the afternoon of 29 April, an element of the battalion and its trainers had been conducting a dismounted patrol of Marines and Iraqi soldiers with vehicles in support. As the last task of the patrol, they had stopped to conduct a search. With the units’ vehicles deployed along narrow and twisted streets, the dismounted elements cleared a building which had been identified as a potential insurgent base. Finding nothing in the building, as the Marines made their way to their vehicles the attack opened with precision sniper and general supporting fire.

Within short order, no more than five minutes of fighting, the three casualties were taken. The remaining 15 to 20 of minutes combat was fought as the dismounted Marines struggled to safely remove the fallen to the vehicles while those in the vehicles provided cover. Unable to safely extricate from the killing ground on their own, the timely arrival of the QRF (quick reaction force) ended the engagement. It was a close run thing, as the Marines engaged on the ground were running out of ammunition to continue their fight.

I remember the day clearly. I was probably munching bagels and driving home to Newport with my son and dog after a weekend visiting family in New York, while these events were occurring. (Yes, you do stop to note the surreal aspects of such moments.) Or maybe I was reading the Sunday New York Times, which had a story on the turning tide fighting the insurgents in Ramadi. Although the deployment was not easy, things were not terrible, and I had just returned from the annual conference for the Society for Military History conference and was energized for my research. [4] We arrived home, safe and sound. And completely oblivious.

It was later that night when the Major sent me the following email:

Do NOT say anything/tell anyone.  The worst happened.  Notifications are being made.  I’m still alive.

Brevity enhanced, rather than diminished, the impact of the news.

The identity of one of the casualties was the first detail I would receive regarding the incident. Shortly after the email arrived the phone rang. On the other end was the brother of the unit’s corpsman (Doc) who had been wounded the ambush. As awful as it was in its brevity I was now happy to have received the message. While there is no way to prepare for such things it was better not to be caught completely unaware. I spent hours on the phone with the brother that night, talking through what was happening to Doc and trying to get what information I could from the unit in Iraq. This effort was complicated by the fact that when casualty incidents happen a unit goes into communications lockdown – “River City” [5] – so as to avoid the unfortunate circumstance where rumour gets ahead of the official notification procedures of the service. Technically the Major should not have been in email contact with me. But as I was conferring with him on behalf of the family of a wounded service member, judgment and discretion were exercised to provide every support possible.

That night we settled the first round of issues and for the moment Doc’s situation was stable.

 

 

The next day’s shock was my notification of the Marine who had been killed in action.

When the liaison from the Marine unit in Camp Pendleton called and started talking me through the details of the event and what was now happening, my mind was whirring through the names and what the loss of each individual would mean. A widow. A child who would never know his father. A new mother left at loss for her spouse. A beloved child’s life ended. A fiancé who would never marry. When I heard the name of the Marine who had been killed, I was gutted.

Even as some scenarios had been averted, in the end there was no good answer to the question I had been considering, who had been lost?

I was informed of the dates and locations for the return of this fallen Marine and the funeral services. The family was from the East Coast, so I would attend. At the time we expected Doc to return to Bethesda on the same weekend, so my plan was to go there after the funeral. As it would turn out, this did not happen, his return to the States was delayed by complications from his wounds. To be honest, when he did return the experience of seeing him in the hospital in those early days was not easy and so the delay was for the best. I would have struggled mightily that weekend to confront both shocks.

It was for me to break the news to the rest of the families. Studying war and military history, casualty notifications are a common part of the narratives. To write one in reality is far more difficult than the words put to paper suggest. It is a humbling responsibility.

 

01 May 2007

All — If you have not heard from your family member in the last two days, it is because their communications have been shut down in light of recent events. I can tell you that the team was involved in a serious incident yesterday, with one critically wounded, and another, unfortunately, killed in action….I am not certain when the guys will be able to resume communications, but I hope it will be in the next day or two. I have been in contact with both families involved and have been assisting them in every way possible.

The team member wounded was Doc. His injuries were serious, but he was operated on and stabilized in Fallujah before being evacuated to Balad, where he underwent further surgery. He is in stable condition and improving, and is nearing the end of the period of critical concern. They expect to evacuate him to Germany, where he will stay for a couple/few days before being returned stateside for the recovery and recuperation process. There is good cause for (guarded) optimism that he will make a complete (or near complete) recovery.

As concerns the other casualty, I am very saddened to have to inform you all that the team has lost [a] Lieutenant. I know from various things the Major related to me that the Lieutenant was a superb officer. He was instrumental in setting the sort of moral, ethical and professional standard that was a credit to himself, the Marine Corps, and the mission to which he had been assigned. His family is, of course, suffering from this tragedy, but they are trying to hold onto these positive values, and the importance the Lieutenant himself placed in them, as a means to help them through this time. I will be in contact with them later in the week regarding the plans for the services. As they are located relatively near to me I will be in attendance.

Obviously both families are trying to come to grips with the enormity of the situations they face, and neither is able to put into words what they might need or appreciate in terms of support or assistance. After the passage of some time I will find out what you all can do for them or on their behalf. I would suggest that you all allow a few days before attempting to reach out to the [Lieutenant’s family]. I know that they are surrounded by friends and family right now, and do not lack for the support necessary to make it through this time….

If you would like, you may forward messages to me to pass along to the families as appropriate. I will keep you apprised of the situation with Doc, and will let you know details regarding the service for [the Lieutenant] if there is interest.

Unfortunately I do not yet have information regarding the third casualty [a member of the augmentees assigned to the team], but as I receive details I will pass those along as well.

I will tell the Major to have everyone send a message home when communications are restored.

I think that’s it for now. My best to all of you,

Jill

 

That week passed in a blur as I tried to come to grips with the events, continued assisting Doc’s family, and made plans to travel to Pennsylvania for the funeral. I would speak to the Lieutenant’s parents briefly during this period, as well as send them the following message.

 

02 May 2007

Please allow me to again express my deepest sympathies to you on the loss of [your son]. I knew early on that there had been a fatality, but the Major, of course, could not let me know directly who it had been. When the GySgt from I MEF contacted me to discuss what had happened, and informed me that it was your son, the news was crushing. Part of it had to do with the email exchange we had last week — his loss did not seem right given that we had been talking about him just so recently. Another part was due to the role I know he played on the team and with the Iraqis, and how much his influence would be missed by all of them. I’ve spent a fair bit of time staring at the picture of [the Major and your son] sharing a cigar, trying to come to grips with his loss. It seems that he is staring right at me, and I just can’t imagine that he is gone. It provides me with the smallest glimpse into the enormity of what you must be going through right now.

I have attached a copy of the message I sent to the team families regarding the events of last Sunday. All of the immediate family members, as well as a wide universe of people secondarily related to the team, stand ready to provide you with whatever you may want or need, and when the time is appropriate, I hope you will feel free to let me know how they might help you and/or honor [your son’s] memory. I do not know whether you wish to remain informed of the doings of the team, and it is certainly not something you need to concern yourself with now. However, given what I have learned about you from our brief conversations over the past few months, and what I know about the sort of man [your son] was, I have to assume that despite your terrible loss you still hold the team close to your hearts — perhaps even closer now than before. Please know that I stand ready to accommodate whatever your participation desires might be when the time is right.

I have been collecting notes for you from the team families and others, and will bring those that I have with me. I will continue to collect these as time goes by and pass them to you as appropriate. And, as previously mentioned, I will forward the memorial collection that the team puts together. I know that the Major is eager to provide you with anything you need communication and information-wise, and will move heaven and earth to contact you directly tomorrow. I hope that speaking to him will assist you in this terrible time.

Finally, it will be an honor to meet you both in person on Saturday and to properly express my own sentiments, as well as those of the Major, the other team members, and their families.

My warmest regards, Jill

 

I drove to Pennsylvania on that Friday for the services. It was a long, exhausting weekend, and on Monday I reported back to the rest of the families.

 

07 May 2007

Good morning all,

I am returned from the weekend’s journeys and wanted to pass along an update on Doc and tell you a little something of the services that were held in honour of the lieutenant.

Despite his continued recovery and improvement, Doc’s return to the states has been delayed for a few days/a week. He developed a very minor infection, so in an abundance of caution they have kept him in Germany to continue his recovery. He remains on a respirator and sedated, although I understand that this is to give him the rest his body needs to recover, and is not bad news. The parents travelled to Germany yesterday, arrived there this morning (EDT), and have been in to see their son. I spoke with the brother, who did not make the trip, and he let me know that, despite the difficulties associated with seeing their son in such condition, just being with him had provided them with a large measure of comfort. I am certain that Doc is aware, on some level, of their presence and that this will help him along as well. [The fiancée of one of the other Lieutenant’s] is stationed in Germany, and will do everything possible to get down to Landstuhl, while the parents are there, to visit with them and help, if necessary, in any way that she can. As soon as Doc returns to Bethesda I will make a trip down to see him. I will continue to keep you all as up to date as possible on his progress.

===

I would like to tell you as much about the services for [the Lieutenant] as possible. I hope I can do justice to the event, though I will admit that parts of it exceeded my comprehension at times, both in terms of the scale of support and love that was in evidence from the family and the local community, as well as in the magnitude of the effect that [he] clearly had on the wide universe of people who knew him.

Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to PA for the services marking his return home. However, I am attaching a link to the video of the event, so that you might share in it somewhat….

The services on Saturday began with the viewing. I will admit that I had a great deal of difficulty with that part, as I waited and was thinking of the events, and I must express how grateful I was to have the [liaison officer] who had been sent by the Advisory Training Group in Pendleton there with me — he went above and beyond to support and help me. As soon as I was introduced to [the Lieutenant’s parents], as well as [his] sister and her husband, they embraced me as family. I cannot tell you how humbled I was at their graciousness, at their thoughts for me during this incredibly difficult time for them. It is easy to understand how [the Lieutenant] became the man of character that he did given the qualities of the family in which he was raised.

I took this last moment with [the Lieutenant] to offer the farewells of his teammates, as well as those of the families who love and support the team. I let him know that Doc and the other Marine wounded were doing well and would recover from their injuries with few if any ill-effects. I told him that this was not how I had wanted to see him again — I had wanted to have the team to our house when they returned to Pendleton for a big dinner and some fun to celebrate their homecoming. I am certain, however, that he will be with us in spirit as we get together to mark the end of the deployment. I made certain that he knew that we would take care of the team during the second half of the deployment. I also assured him that we would also see to it that his family did not lack for the love and support we could provide them to help them through this very difficult time.

As the viewing period came to a close and we prepared to move to the Church for the services, more evidence of the magnitude of the event was in evidence. The legion of vehicles, bedecked in the flags of the Marine Corps and the Stars and Stripes was awe inspiring. As we made our way through the town it seemed that every person there was out on the streets to salute their fallen neighbor and show their support for the family. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, the town a rare beauty of old and stately homes, there were American flags everywhere. At first I felt inappropriate for taking account of the beauty, but as I thought on it more, I realized that it was as it should be, that a force beyond our comprehension had intervened to provide a day and a scene worthy of the event and the people involved. [The Lieutenant] had clearly reported to his next duty station — in the parlance of the Marine Corps and the idea that fallen Marines guard the streets of heaven — and was already proving to be outstanding in his job and had made certain that all was taken care of.

The services held at the Church were a tribute to the character, faith, and personality of the Lieutenant. We were given glimpses into the parts of his life that reflected upon the totality of the man. There were moments of laughter, as humorous stories were related about him. There were moments of reverence, as the depths of his personality were revealed. There were moments of profound sadness as the reality of what had been lost became abundantly clear. The family and friends chosen to speak on his behalf were eloquent, offering such meaningful words of praise and insight into the life of someone who had clearly made a difference at every moment he had on this earth. There was not a person in the Church who was not touched by their offerings. I intend to get copies of these remarks so that I can send them to the team back in Fallujah, and I will try to provide them to you all as soon as possible.

In order to convey to you the scope of the procession to the cemetery, let me tell you that I have, on many occasions, followed the exact same route as I travelled from my home in New Jersey to Washington, DC. It is a very busy route that is filled with businesses and often congested with traffic. To imagine the efforts that went into allowing the free procession that must have stretched for several miles is a testament of the lengths to which the local authorities went to show their support of the family and to pay their respects to the Lieutenant. It seemed that every local fire and police department was out to pay their respects. At one point we passed under the arch of crossed ladders from two fire trucks — an image I will never forget. Again, scores and hundreds of people lined the route to pay their respects. As I looked upon the people in cars who were stopped to provide for the free passage of the procession I am certain that I could see their profound respect for what they were witnessing.

The burial ceremony was simple, and yet filled with all of the honours and traditions that the Marine Corps holds dear. There was a piper playing in the background as we arrived. We shared in the playing of Taps, by a lone bugler off in the distance, and the rifle salute. The detail of Marines there to assist in the ceremony fulfilled their duty with all of the honor and respect they knew was due to a fallen comrade. As I took a moment to thank them afterwards for their service, on behalf of the team back in Fallujah and their families, they offered with great humility and true emotion that they could think of nothing they would rather do. The ceremony ended with the bestowal of flowers upon the casket.

At the end of the long day, one filled with many tears and sad thoughts on such a tragic loss, the family and friends gathered at the [family] home to share a brief moment of lightness and perhaps a little joy, as they reflected upon all of the good things associated with [the lieutenant] and his life, the funny stories that made up the texture and fabric of his character, and the things that would be missed in his absence. I had the opportunity to speak with several of his friends, and they told me a little of the person he had been in his youth, and the effect that he had had on their lives. I also talked with a Marine, recently returned from Fallujah, who had served as part of the augment in personnel the team had received near the beginning of the deployment….Although he indicated that things were challenging for the team, and at times downright rough, that they were all doing very well, their spirits were as high as possible, and were comforted and deeply appreciative of all the support the families had provided.

To close, I would like to relate to you all that, as I spoke with [the lieutenant’s father] before leaving, he made certain that I know that the family remained committed to the team and wished to remain a part of our group until the end of this deployment — a sentiment echoed by every member of the family with whom I spoke. Despite having an inkling that this would be the case, I was still amazed at what it said about them that they maintained the willingness to partake of something that would, on many levels, remind them in such stark terms of their loss and pain….And, as they face the difficult of simply living with the new reality, I am certain that there is nothing the rest of us won’t do to help them out….

My best to all of you,

Jill

 

The funeral was closure for only one part of the event. The long and often painful recovery of the wounded personnel was the next challenge to face.

Returning to the Doc, initial optimism for his recovery would be eroded over the next several weeks as his body struggled to cope with the terrible trauma to which it had been subjected. However, just after the funeral these difficulties were in the future and at that moment we celebrated the good news that he would be returning to the States.

 

09 May 2007

It is my distinct pleasure to pass along some good news. This is the latest report from [our family member in Germany]:

//I went back down to Landstuhl today to see Doc one last time before they fly him back to the states and I am happy to announce that his is fully alert and breathing on his own. He looked really good, considering what he has just gone through. His parents were not there so I stayed and talked to him for a little while. Even though he is breathing on his own they still have the ventilator hooked up for supplemental oxygen only so he isn’t able to talk yet. He mouths words when he can but mostly writes everything down. It was good to see he has a sense of humor and one of the first things he asked about was the rest of the team. He told me he remembers everything about their encounter but he asked who died and if [my fiancé] got shot. For a brief moment I started tearing up on him as I had to tell him about the Lieutenant and [my fiancé’s] grazing. He wants me to tell the guys that he is doing well but he’s not coming back! I had to chuckle at that after he wrote it. I know you will tell the Major so he can pass it on to the others. I’m sure he will be doing even better by the time he gets to [Bethesda] and hopefully you will be able to make it down to visit. I just wanted to pass along this information so you could spread the good news. Well, I must get started on my school work, talk to you later.//

I will let you all know when he arrives in Bethesda and how to contact him there.

Best, Jill

 

During all this time I had known there was a third casualty. However, as he and a dozen or so other Marines from his unit had been attached to the team after deploying to Iraq I did not have any information on them. Finally, in the second week after the event I was able to track him down.

 

09 May 2007

Hello all,

So, I finally made contact with the other Marine (a Lance Corporal) wounded during the incident of 29 April. He is back in the states, recovering at [the hospital]. His direct dial phone number is…, I’d say give him a call if you want — I did, and he seemed to enjoy the contact. He is doing pretty well, all things considered, able to get up and move around, and his spirits seem appropriately high — relative to what has happened to him, of course. He’s not able to eat anything more than toast and liquids, so there is no need to send him food care packages. However, he picked up something of a Sudoku habit over in Iraq, and so would enjoy books of those, as well as magazines along the lines of National Geographic, Time, etc. Cards and flowers would also be welcome. (I checked, and he sheepishly said that flowers would be good.) He will be [at the hospital] for about two weeks, so take that into account when sending anything….I would assume that you can send things to him care of the hospital, but it might be worth making a call to double-check the addressing procedures.

As mentioned in the previous update on Doc, he is conscious, alert, and cracking jokes, albeit in writing. He will probably be flying back tomorrow – I will receive word when his departure is confirmed. For the purposes of sending things to him (same magazines as above, cards, and flowers), I would assume that delivery for Monday is a safe bet. I will try to get down there for Monday to visit with Doc and his family.

I think that’s it for now. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

All my best,
Jill

 

When the Doc finally arrived to Bethesda Naval Hospital in mid-May I flew to DC to visit with him and his family. I had, by this time, spent quite a lot of time on the phone and emailing them. The visit was more difficult than I let on in the message below. I had last seen him hale and hearty on the eve of the deployment. His wounds had transformed him utterly. And the strain upon his parents was, as a parent myself, almost too difficult to bear. As well, at the end of this message to the families, there is the reminder of the toll the losses had on the rest of the team.

 

21 May 2007

All,

I hope this finds you all doing well. My apologies for the time between postings, I didn’t even realize the time had passed — deployment brain, I suppose. However, I do have quite a bit of information to pass along.

On Doc – I travelled to Bethesda on Friday to visit with the Doc and his family. It was a tremendous pleasure to finally meet the family after the weeks of phone contact. I can’t express how valuable it was to me to have a chance to talk with Doc, about the team, about what happened, and so forth, both with him and  his family, and [with him alone] for the few moments we had while they were having dinner. As for his medical condition, considering where he started in this, he is doing remarkably well. There are still medical issues to deal with, and he remains in significant discomfort, but all of the medical personnel remain really pleased with his progress and entirely optimistic about his recovery. I would suggest that his biggest “problem” right now is the loss he is feeling at being separated from the team. Because of the small size of the original MTT (and even with the augments the team retains its “small unit/big family” feel), and how close they got with one another, separation from the team must be very difficult. I also suspect that, although he had worked with Marines before, this was the first time the Doc had been fully integrated into a unit – if we stick with the family metaphor, I suppose I would describe it as the difference between being a favorite cousin and being a brother. I have passed this impression along to the Major and he will make sure that Doc gets a call from someone on the team on a fairly regular basis. If you are searching for something to do for him I think that contact — mail, visits (to the extent that they are geographically feasible), or phone calls — would mean the world to him.

On the Lance Corporal: [He] has made remarkable progress. Rather than the two weeks he thought he would spend in the hospital at LeJeune, he was released to home care here in Rhode Island last weekend. On Wednesday we got together for coffee at his favorite local place…, a lovely spot right on the water — of course we remarked on how the locale could not possibly be more different from where he had just come. It was great to talk to someone who had just been with the team. Although he was a recent augment to the MTT, he had already gotten quite attached to it, and is very disappointed that he has lost the opportunity to continue to work with them. This weekend he suffered a minor setback…and was checked into the Newport Hospital. When I visited with him on Saturday he was waiting on a friend to bring him some food and griping about the hospital, so he is clearly doing quite well. I will check in with him today and continue to visit with him as long as we are here in Newport.

The Team: I had a letter from the Major this weekend that described how the team was coping with recent events. I’ll let his words tell their story — “It’s the day after our memorial service for [the Lieutenant]. I do feel like it provided some closure for us about all of the losses we took. The last week reminded me of a portion of one of the wolf shows we’ve watched. I recall the part where one wolf has died and there is no play in the pack for almost two weeks. It’s been like that around here since April 29th. Everyone still moved about their business but the smiles and joking around were gone. Shortly after the memorial, once we were back home I heard laughing in the other room. One of the new guys had done something dumb, I don’t even know what it was, but the guys were teasing him mercilessly. I knew then that we were moving along.”

 

Doc’s medical condition took a turn for the worse in the following weeks. The reality of the physical trauma from his wounds was more serious than initially expected. As well, the suffering of his family, of watching him in pain, of not knowing what would happen, was tremendous.

 

02 June 2007

Hello all,

I called down to Bethesda today — I had sent a package (cake and brownies, and a few other items), and I wanted to check on whether it had arrived. I had expected to have a nice little chat with Doc and his family. Unfortunately, in the last few days there have been complications with his condition. He has had a fever, is on a feeding tube, and is sleeping a fair bit. I neither want to be excessively morose and pessimistic, nor do I want to give the impression that this is insignificant. The fact of the matter is that his original injuries were extensive and serious, and the process of recovery is difficult (if not something just shy of miraculous). As for me, I refuse to believe that we have come so far in this not to have a good outcome. I spent a fair bit of time speaking with his mother, and while she is worried (she’s his mother, after all), she remains nothing but steadfast in her certitude that things will resolve themselves in a positive fashion, full stop.

I have let the Major know the situation….

Finally, I am certain that this will wear heavily on the guys, so reach out to them as well.

My best to you all,

Jill

 

They would continue in the vein through June, and it was only by July that the certainty of his recovery was a comfortable fact.

The Lance Corporal, though the least seriously wounded, struggled with his return home. Late one night he called me, in distress. He had gone out with friends and found civilian obliviousness a crushing contrast to his military and deployed experience. I knew the Lieutenant with whom he had served, so I wrote this message to him in Fallujah.

 

13 June 2007

Hello,

I hope this finds you doing well… or, well enough for a guy doing duty at “the Rock”. I suppose it would be terribly mean of me to tell you about the brilliantly mild spring we’re enjoying here in Newport — I don’t think we’ve gotten over 70 yet, and right now it’s almost chilly! Well, the weather in Pendleton should be nice for your return, so you have that to look forward to.

 Seriously, though, I wanted to let you know that [your Lance Corporal is] having a bit of a hard time being away from the unit. He called me just a little while ago, needing to talk to someone who had some sort of a clue — he’s feeling a bit guilty for not being there for you guys, and is generally pissed at the run of the mill selfish civilians. Anyway, if you can keep after him, giving him a call now and then, I think it would be good. If you could get [his buddy] to call, that would be good too. I’ll do what I can, but the Major’s wife is not quite the same thing as a fellow Marine.

Oh, and I had a good laugh over the ruckus my having him sit in the Major’s seat for dinner has caused. You guys are relentless!

Sorry to hear that you missed the birthday party… I hope you’ve given the Major a hard time about it!….

Best, Jill

 

I would continue to have the Lance Corporal to dinner throughout that spring, to include a birthday dinner. He tried to be annoyed that I had informed the team of his struggles with having been taken from them and sent home, but I have the distinct impression that was only for show.

Only gathered and stood up for the deployment, at the end the remaining members of the unit dispersed upon their return to Camp Pendleton back to their home units. [6] By that time Doc and the Lance Corporal were well on their paths to recovery. But the events and losses of that day in April will stay with them and their families always.

At the beginning of this piece I suggested that more people “should” be aware of this facet of war. Reflecting with the humility such events demand, I might correct that now to say that they deserve to know.

 

Notes:

[1] To give a sense of the significance of the event for the unit and the families, the core unit lost two of its original 11 members. The third casualty was from the ranks of the augmentees the unit received in country.

[2] In the first months of the deployment there was an issue with feeding. Ironic given that subsistence and logistics are the subjects of my dissertation. Essentially the FOB system could not serve them in their location, they could not get to the FOB regularly and the unit was not stood up with organic feeding capabilities. Putting this information out to the families and friends we more than compensated for the deficiencies with a deluge of care packages. A modern iteration of the Berlin Airlift. After about 3 months of ideas that did not work, the Marine command in Fallujah sent a messman from another unit to cook them one hot meal a day. I liked this old school solution.

[3] He was clear on his professionalism, emblematic in that he was field grade professional military education in the UK, and that although he had been wounded by Marines in Desert Storm he dismissed that as the cost of war and worked quite successfully with the training team and Marine units assigned to Fallujah.

[4] Ironically, I recall that weekend being particularly aggrieved to have to listen to a retired General opine – incorrectly, in my opinion and experience – on what affected the morale of military families. I may have had an exuberant conversation or two with colleagues at the conference about what general officers know of the home-front experience – less than most expect – and I still maintain that position.

[5] I have tried and failed to find an authoritative explanation for this term.

[6] Several months later more than half of them would volunteer to join another MTT deployment with the Major.

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To further harmonise national practices, a voluntary Code of Conduct (CoC) on REACH Defence Exemptions was adopted last month by EDA Member States, as well as an associated technical Framework for Applying for a Defence Exemption from a Requirement of REACH. The Code of Conduct is now open for subscription to EDA participating Member States as well as third states having an Administrative Arrangement with the Agency.

The REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) regulation was adopted by the European Union in 2006 to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals, while enhancing the competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry. The Code of Conduct on REACH defence exemptions adopted last month sets as a common goal that Member States will fully support the objectives of REACH and provide for the highest safety and traceability standards possible when granting REACH defence exemptions. 

In parallel, Member States agree to establish on a voluntary basis suitable measures to acknowledge other Member States' exemption decisions in accordance with national law, as well as to make information on national procedures publicly available. The technical Framework aims to standardise, as far as reasonably practicable, national defence exemption procedures and provide an agreed set of minimum standards in order to guarantee a safety equivalent with the REACH requirements.

Harmonised approach

A harmonised approach towards national REACH defence exemptions will level the playing field for European defence industries by reducing their administrative burden and related costs. It will support the creation of an open and transparent European Defence Equipment Market and a capable European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, providing Armed Forces with the right defence equipment to meet their operational requirements.

 

More information

• EDA's project page on REACH
• EDA Code of Conduct (CoC) on REACH Defence Exemptions
• Annex to CoC - Framework for Applying for a Defence Exemption from a Requirement of REACH

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