Fariba Nawa – AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST

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  • Afghan exiles get mixed homecoming welcome

    Since February the United Nations has repatriated 231 Afghans from abroad.
    By Fariba Nawa
    June 26, 2002
    The Christian Science Monitor

    Kabul — After years in the West, hundreds of exiles are returning to Afghanistan and embracing a home country that some have known only through their parents. But while Afghans here have welcomed many of the returnees, tension is building in the workplace between the locals and the homecoming exiles.

    Diaspora Afghans return with their degrees and multilingual skills, taking high-powered, high-paid jobs that locals say should go to Afghans who didn’t flee when the going got tough. Exiles reply that they are more qualified for the jobs, and that they have given up Western luxuries to serve Afghanistan.

    United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in particular are being criticized for contributing to the problem by sometimes paying exiles much more than locals. The gap in monthly paychecks can be as wide as $200 for a local, compared with $2,000 for a returned exile.

    Rina Amiri, an Afghan-American who gave up a position at Harvard University to work with the UN on the loya jirga, (grand assembly), which met this month to choose Afghanistan’s next government, says locals were initially grateful that professionals like her were returning. But as more exiles come back, she says locals are feeling threatened.

    “I’m trying, but the diaspora hasn’t really connected with Afghans yet. There’s an arrogance [among the exiles],” says Ms. Amiri. “They take out their wads of money at the dinner table and talk down to Afghans.”

    The UN International Organization for Migration has repatriated 231 Afghan professionals from 35 different countries since February. They are placed in various organizations and ministries that pay their salaries, which are supplemented by a $100 monthly stipend from the IOM. Another 5,300 who have applied under the agency’s Returning Qualified Afghans program will be placed as soon as IOM receives funding. Ahmed Dizdarevic, the head of the program, says that so far, the returnees in the program have not complained about tensions at work.

    But in the new Ministry of Women’s Affairs, locals and exiles have confronted one another on the issue.

    Shahla Mayhandost, who persevered in the often dangerous work of women’s issues during 22 years of war in Afghanistan, is now a liaison between the 30 Afghan provinces and the women’s ministry. She believes she was passed up for a higher position in the ministry because she is a local hire. “When women come from the West, we’re not saying, ‘Don’t come and work with us’ but our problem is that they don’t know the pain we have suffered,” she says.

    “My expectation from my exiled sisters is to come back and work on an equal level with us,” she adds. “We’ll be very happy if they do that, but in the same spirit as us, not the West.” Mayhandost says local Afghan women working in all government ministries are unhappy that exiles are held above the locals and have approached international organizations to address the issue. Afghan locals say they felt abandoned by those abroad and it’s unfair for the exiles to reap the benefits of reconstruction. The diaspora may not be entirely prepared for the backlash they may face.

    Safia Siddiqui, director of planning and foreign relations in the women’s ministry, arrived two weeks ago from Canada. She is also a delegate of the loya jirga. Ms. Siddiqui left Afghanistan in 1988 but has worked on women’s rights in Pakistan and Canada ever since. She speaks English, Pashto, and Dari. But local women still tell her that she’s not aware of Afghan conditions and cast doubt on what she can contribute.

    Siddiqui, however, is clear on what contribution she can make: “We could change the administrative and management system because we have learned from abroad,” Siddiqui says. Patricia Omidian, an American aid worker and academic who has worked with Afghans and Afghan refugees for more than a decade, says cultural differences have also played a role in the tension among the women. A number of exiles returning from the US and Britain come with expectations of a liberal Afghanistan which existed during Mohammad Zahir Shah’s time 30 years ago, when women went out with bare heads and miniskirts and mingled freely with men at school and work.

    “Afghanistan isn’t what it was then, and the people have changed and the needs have changed,” says Ms. Omidian. The majority of Afghanistan is rural, and local women tend to be more in touch with rural women than the newcomers, she says.

    Not all locals feel resentment toward the returning Afghans. Says Jeena Haidari, who works as a general manager with non-governmental organizations: “Anyone who can serve the nation the best, whether inside Afghanistan or outside of it, I prefer them.”

  • Bay Area Afghan expatriates walk tightrope

    Those who returned to rebuild are caught between 2 cultures
    By Fariba Nawa and Juliette Terzieff
    June 17, 2002
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Kabul — While most of Kabul was watching television or asleep, a party unimaginable six months ago was heating up.

    A warm breeze played through the backyard of a house in the capital’s Wazir Akbar Khan district, one of two well-to-do neighborhoods that largely survived 23 years of civil war, as men and women mingled, danced to live music and drank alcohol.

    At a birthday party for an Afghan translator who smiled broadly, the guests included dozens of foreign reporters who came to cover the loya jirga, some local Afghan men and a group of Afghan Americans from the Bay Area here to do service to a homeland from which they spent most of their lives away.

    A few of the Afghan American men and women slyly danced to the music and kept their beers hidden behind their backs as neighbors sat in shock atop their mud walls watching a display of freedom available previously only on satellite television.

    Six months ago, the ruling Taliban militia would likely have imprisoned everyone at the house. But while those days are over, and the fundamentalist gone, the open lifestyles Westerners take for granted are still a long way off.

    About an hour before the capital’s 11 p.m. curfew, officers of the interim Interior Ministry men raided the party, told everyone to go home and threatened to cart the host off to jail. They were upset at hearing that Afghan women — never mind that they were American citizens — had danced and forsaken their Islamic honor. In the end, no one was arrested, but the officers made clear that any repetition would not be tolerated.

    For the dozens of Afghan Americans who have returned to help rebuild Afghanistan and come to terms with the other half of their hyphenated identity, fitting in has been a challenge. “You confront who you are here,” said Rina Amiri, a political affairs officer for the United Nations who arrived five months ago.

    “You say it’s OK to feel like a foreigner in the U.S. because you think your home is Afghanistan, but you come here and realize this isn’t your home either,” she said. “We’re somewhere in the middle, stuck in a crack.”

    Amiri, 33, left Afghanistan when she was 4 and grew up in Fremont, home to America’s largest Afghan community.

    She gave up a position at Harvard University to return and work on the loya jirga process, traveling to many provinces to oversee district elections, and working day and night to make sure the assembly is successful. Her work has been fulfilling and most local Afghans, she said, have welcomed her.

    In fact, it was hard to distinguish Amiri from local Afghan women as she sat among the delegates in the loya jirga tent, a black scarf draped around her hair, her deep brown eyes fixed on a cleric reciting a Koranic verse.

    “I get really emotional when I listen to this,” she said, her eyes glistening.

    VIEWED AS LOOSE WOMAN

    Amiri comes from a conservative family who did not let her indulge in such activities as drinking and dancing in Fremont. Still, some Afghans view her — single, alone and far away from her family and working with Westerners — as a loose woman.

    “It hurts when they say that, but there’s nothing you can do,” she said.

    Her struggle for acceptance as a working woman in a conservative society where fewer than 10 percent of the women are literate is indeed a daunting one, but Amiri says the experience has been cathartic and one of the best in her life.

    So far only a modest number of expatriate Afghans have come here to work. The U.N.’s Returning Qualified Afghans program has 5,200 applications for professionals wanting to return, but it has been able to fund only 231 of them from 35 different countries. Most come from the United States or Pakistan.

    Halima Kazem, 24, grew up in San Jose, graduated from New York University with a master’s degree in the spring and joined interim national leader Hamid Karzai’s staff as a media consultant.

    An infant when her parents fled the civil war, Kazem spent an emotional first two weeks acquainting herself with Kabul — helping in orphanages and schools, and filling the nights with live Afghan music, fascinating conversation and good food.

    “Some people kissed the ground when we arrived,” she recalled. “There was a sense of patriotism and camaraderie I’ve never experienced before.”

    But once Kazem settled in, the gender issue quickly surfaced. When she goes shopping, men stare at her. She wears pants and long-sleeved shirts and has a scarf wrapped around her neck to perch on her head when venturing into a conservative milieu.

    But Kazem has decided to keep the scarf off most of the time and is willing to put up with the ubiquitous leers.

    “I want people to get used to seeing women with a bare head,” she said. “I hate the staring and want to put on a burqa at times, but instead of getting angry, I smile at them ask them what they’re looking at. They smile back happy to know I’m Afghan.”

    Kazem’s high-profile position gives her access to top leaders and the leeway to negotiate her role as a woman. She’s the only woman in the presidential palace, and one of the guards calls her “the palace princess.”

    VIRTUALLY NO SOCIAL LIFE

    But even for Kazem, eating out or mingling with locals, especially from the opposite sex, is taboo. The returning exiles spent much of their time working, and their social lives are spent either with relatives or expatriates.

    Those strictures will not have to be a part of the everyday lifestyle of Rona Popal, a well-known Bay Area Afghan American activist who came as an expatriate delegate to the loya jirga.

    For more than 20 years, Popal has championed the cause of women’s rights from her home in Union City, and in 1992 she founded the Afghan Women’s Association International to raise funds and assistance for thousands of grandmothers, mothers and widows struggling to survive in this war-ravaged country.

    Popal, who was born in Kabul 50 years ago and represents the Northern California diaspora at the loya jirga, said a bit despondently, “All we’ve managed to do in six days is to vote for a president who was already selected.”

    She adds that it remains to be seen whether the loya jirga will play a substantive role in selecting members for Karzai’s Cabinet, a process fraught with problems over ethnic representation.

    “If the loya jirga does not decide about the Cabinet, no one will be satisfied. If we’re not here to elect the government, then why are we here?” she asked, echoing an inquiry made by dozens of delegates on the council floor.

    But for those like Popal, who have watched, worked and waited for Afghanistan to break its bloody cycle of decades-long strife, the past week has also been a dream come true: “Think about it. Six months ago, women could not walk freely on the street without risking being beaten up. Now we are sitting here with the men, deciding a course for Afghanistan.”

    Popal dismissed the seemingly chaotic nature of the proceedings, saying: “This is democracy. Let them scream, let them yell, let them voice their conflicting opinions. If you tell them to shut up, you are going right back to the dictatorships of the past.”

    Popal plans to return to the United States later this week and resume lobbying for reconstruction aid for the country. U.N. officials estimate Afghanistan needs $45 billion over the next 10 years for that task; of the $4. 5 billion promised by international donors for this year, only $1.8 billion has come through so far.

    “There is a lot of work to be done, so many in need,” Popal said of Afghanistan’s estimated 700,000 war widows.

    FUTURE BELONGS TO THE YOUNG

    One of her key goals is to bring the educational sector up to international standards, because “our future lies with the young.”

    Popal’s core issue — women’s rights — has been at the forefront of the loya jirga, with outspoken women from across the country boldly standing up to express their views and to chastise the warlords and military commanders who have dominated the country’s politics.

    “This is a watershed moment in Afghan history,” said John Kelly of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German nongovernmental organization. “The women have shown the political backbone, the political savvy, that the men have just not been able to muster.

    “Their courage makes them potentially the potent force in Afghan politics. It would be folly for the men to ignore them.”

  • Beyond the veil: time to refocus women’s rights

    By Fariba Nawa
    June 13, 2002
    Pacific News Service
    Essay also ran in the San Jose Mercury News

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Afghanistan’s grand council is completing its deliberations on an interim government, but the highly charged issue of women’s rights — inseparable from women’s dress in Islamic countries — will continue to simmer. PNS contributor Fariba Nawa considers how she, an Afghan-American in Kabul, should clothe herself, and asks if issues more important to Afghan women should be on the table.

    A Western reporter scolded me for wearing an Islamic head-covering today. She said Afghan women want exiles such as myself to dress in Western clothes and show our hair so that they too can muster the courage to lift their veils.

    I, an Afghan-American woman, am supposed to serve as a role model for executing the Western feminist agenda — showing my face and body is a step toward liberation, according to this female journalist.

    Perhaps it’s surprising that a non-Muslim, non-Afghan in pants, a long-sleeved shirt and bare head would tell me how to dress in my birthplace. But the incident reflects the debate simmering among women’s rights activists inside and outside Afghanistan. How can we help Afghan women gain their rights — and what are those rights?

    There are two approaches. One is the grassroots way of slow negotiation within the understood norms of Afghan and Islamic culture. The other is a much more Western style of in-your-face, secular, feminist lobbying.

    Afghan and non-Afghan women including aid workers, educators and activists on both sides of the debate have been busy since the Taliban banished Afghan women from the public. Now that the Taliban have been ousted and the interim administration has allowed more personal and political freedoms, the two sides have not joined hands. The debate rages on.

    Secular feminists say women’s rights should not be curbed by cultural relativity. In this view, human rights are universal, yet culture and religion have been used throughout history to justify women’s oppression. Many urbanite Afghan women, such as those in the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), are fighting for a secular, Westernized Afghanistan.

    But other activists agree that certain rights — such as the freedom to work and go to school — are universal, but say that cultural values must also be considered. Afghan women see themselves as part of their families, and seek justice and liberation within the family unit. From what I’ve gathered, the secular approach is not practical in Afghanistan. RAWA has few supporters, despite its brave lobbying.

    The women I’ve spoken to, from Herat to Kabul, are not ready for — or should I say not interested in — a secular, universal feminism. Older women, such as deputy of women’s affairs Tajwar Kakar, remember when, during the reign of King Mohammad Zahir Shah, urban women wore miniskirts. Last week, Kakar, her 20-year-old daughter-in-law Susan and I had dinner. I told them they probably wouldn’t have to wear anything on their head if the transitional government, now being determined by the Afghan assembly, turns out liberal.

    “I’ll always keep my scarf on because I’m Muslim,” Susan said. “I hope we never get to that stage.”

    Kakar said she’s not proud of her miniskirt days. “We weren’t liberating women with our skimpy clothes,” she said.

    So when the Western reporter verbally attacked me for my scarf and coat — Iranian-style veiling — I told her I felt more comfortable being covered in Kabul. No, I don’t wear the garb in my residence New York City, but I also don’t think clothes should be dictated.

    The first Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran in the early 20th century witnessed a tumultuous backlash when he forced the veil off women. Even now, Turkish women are fighting to keep their veils on in government posts and at the universities, against the policies of a secular government.

    Islamic dress has served both as a symbol of oppression and power at different points in history. And today in Afghanistan, it has become the center of the debate, while more important issues like work and education opportunities take a back seat. I wish we would go beyond the veil. But I realize the implications.

    If I unveil now, perhaps I will help a few of my Afghan sisters feel freer. But I can do much more with my scarf on. I can be a journalist who is respected and welcomed, recognized as an Afghan. Soldiers I walk past on the street comment, “Long live hijab (Islamic dress).”

    I’m coming back to my homeland for the second time after 20 years. I’m not here to give shock-treatment feminism to men and women who have lived under 23 years of war. I just want to fit in and be accepted. Then maybe I’ll join the debate on how to fight for women’s rights.

  • Afghanistan’s fate rests with council

    Delegates to choose new government
    By Fariba Nawa
    June 9, 2002
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Kabul — Amid the excitement of a pivotal moment in their country’s history, Afghan elders, scholars, nomads, teachers, intellectuals, civil servants and refugees — both men and women — are gathering here to choose the next government.

    Beginning Monday, 1,501 elected and appointed delegates to the loya jirga, or grand council, will gather in an air-conditioned tent on the grounds of Kabul Polytechnic University to formulate the next stage in the course to democracy. Afghans weary from decades of war and the harsh rule of the Taliban hope their country is on the verge of peace.

    For the United States and its allies, a peaceful transfer of power is just as critical. A stable Afghan government, in place of the chaos that once harbored the al Qaeda terrorist network, is a key objective of the U.S-led war on terrorism.

    Under the terms of a five-year recovery and peace plan drawn up in Bonn, Germany, last winter, the elected delegates will choose a national leader and interim government and appoint a commission to write a new constitution. Within two years, if all goes according to schedule, national elections will be held.

    The selection of delegates has had its share of successes — 11 percent of them will be women, a startling level of participation in a country where less than a year ago women had no political rights, and refugees from Pakistan, Iran and even Fremont’s Little Kabul will be represented. But eight would-be participants have been killed, according to the United Nations, while reports of intimidation, manipulation and bribery in the delegate elections process have been rampant.

    ‘SOMETHING POSITIVE’

    “It was not a perfect process but, overall, you have something positive, and you should look at it as a transition,” said Ismael Qasimyar, head of the independent loya jirga commission.

    The loya jirga is considered the next critical step in establishing a functioning central government in a country riven by more than two decades of war and sharply divided ethnic loyalties.

    “The loya jirga itself is acting as a force for centrifugal movement,” a State Department official said Friday in Washington. “People are seeing this as an opportunity to see how they might exercise their power (and) working with the power in the center and participating with it.” Observers predict that many of the ministers in the 6-month-old interim administration headed by Hamid Karzai, as well as the leaders controlling the provinces, will probably keep their positions. In the absence of a trained national army, Karzai’s government exerts little power over the armed warlords who dominate much of the countryside.

    “I wouldn’t expect much from a loya jirga, because historically loya jirgas have been held to legitimize those already in power,” said Abdulali Ahrary, an expert on Afghan politics who now lives in Fremont. “But I’m hopeful that the U.N. (Bonn) protocol will be executed.”

    CEREMONIAL ROLE FOR KING

    The council will be convened formally by former King Mohammad Zahir Shah, the 87-year-old monarch who recently returned to Kabul after 30 years in exile in Italy.

    The king, who is expected to serve a ceremonial role in the new government, and Karzai, who has close ties to the United States and other nations providing aid to the impoverished country, are both Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group. Karzai officially became a candidate for the transitional leader on Thursday.

    Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim said Saturday that he and other Tajik Cabinet ministers support Karzai to head the new government. Fahim is one of several powerful Tajiks who served in the interim government established by the Bonn accord.

    “If Hamid Karzai is again selected to head the government, the people will have chosen a moderate who will surely serve Afghanistan better than anyone else to bring national unity, security, peace and stability in the country,” Fahim told a news conference. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan has made painstaking efforts to work out a power-sharing deal that would be widely acceptable to the different ethnic groups and factions throughout the country.

    Despite that, officials admitted they were still not sure what to expect — particularly from the Tajiks. Under pressure to give up some control, the Tajiks are negotiating for a senior post, such as vice president under Karzai. The former president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, a Tajik, is expected to put himself forward as a candidate for the leadership, although he does not command the support of his party’s younger leaders. And a newcomer has arrived on the scene: Ahmed Wali Massoud, the younger brother of assassinated Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, said last week that he was also considering running for a post in the new administration.

    SYMBOL OF UNITY

    Since he returned from exile, Zahir Shah has become a symbol of unity for many Afghans. Hamid Seddiq, the king’s spokesman, said the monarch would accept any role the loya jirga assigns him, despite his age.

    “He has said many times that he will do whatever the Afghan people bestow up on him. His presence in Kabul has given people a sense of security and unity,” Seddiq said.

    Meanwhile, old Afghan rivalries die hard.

    Human Rights Watch said in a report issued last week that the “loya jirga process, which was designed to sideline and minimize the rule of the warlords, may instead entrench and legitimate their hold on power.”

    Warlord Rashid Dostum resigned his post as deputy defense minister and was elected as a northern delegate to the loya jirga, despite his history of brutality.

    “After Dostum nominated himself as a candidate — and everyone knows his horrendous human rights record — all other commanders who had stayed away from the loya jirga went running after votes with their guns,” said one loya jirga election monitor. “There were supposed to be no persons who were drug dealers, thieves or killers, but they all ended up as candidates and we couldn’t do anything but watch.”

    The monitors said that the urbane, multilingual Karzai had lost some support in the provinces for not keeping his most important promises: to disarm civilians and to form a strong national army and government during the six months since the Bonn agreement was signed. Afghans had expected Karzai and the United States to make it happen, they added.

    SUPPORT FOR WARLORDS

    “People believe that if they can get rid of the Taliban so fast from these areas, then why can’t they rid us of these warlords?” he asked. “The U.S. wants us to have a democracy but it is still supporting the warlords because they think the commanders are the only ones who can fight their war against al Qaeda. So how can we have a democracy when the United States is playing this double role?”

    Afghans say they have no other choice but to hope that the loya jirga will reflect their views and appoint a democratic government.

    As the weekend began, the loya jirga commission was still finalizing the rules and procedures. But the festivities went forward anyway, with a ceremony marked by live music, boys and girls together decorating a map of Afghanistan, and delegates joining to sing “Brothers and Sisters, Let’s Be One.”

    About 200 women sat on the steps of the university dormitory where they are staying, eager to talk Saturday about their expectations. Bibi Ko, who heads an organization for teaching illiterates, is an elected delegate from Herat — where, she said, plenty of men voted for her. She said she has not settled on a new national leader, although she has approved of Karzai’s actions as interim leader.

    Demonstrating her sense of democracy in a nation where bloodshed is the usual route to power, she declared, “We in Herat want a leader who can lead the entire nation.”

  • Afghan warlords exact a toll on the road to democracy

    By Fariba Nawa
    June 5, 2002
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Herat, Afghanistan — Rafiq Shaheer’s friends were shocked when they saw the bruises on his back after he was released from custody.

    “He lifted his shirt, and it was all black,” said an acquaintance.

    Shaheer, president of the pro-democratic Council of Professionals in this city of 330,000, was jailed and beaten last week for speaking out against Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat province and self-styled ruler of western Afghanistan.

    As the nation prepares to choose new leaders through the loya jirga, or grand council, that gets under way on Monday, warlords representing different ethnic and religious groups are cracking down on opponents who favor more democracy as they jockey to retain power.

    The recent slayings of eight loya jirga delegates in different parts of the country, the arrest of 24 more in the district of Marawaray on charges of stirring up trouble and the detention of Shaheer have raised concerns about the process to determine Afghanistan’s political future.

    The 1,500-member loya jirga, representing all ethnic groups, will select the next administration in a weeklong meeting — the start of a five-year transition toward this war-torn nation’s first democratic government.

    The obstacles, however, are immense. The warlords pay only lip service to Hamid Karzai’s interim government in Kabul and are capable of pushing the country back into the factional chaos that has plagued it for the past 22 years.

    The democratic process in Herat is actually progressing faster than in most provinces — albeit in an Afghan context. The fact that Shaheer’s group openly criticized Khan in a publication without anyone being killed as a result is a step forward compared to many districts, where freedom of expression is nonexistent.

    Khan, a politically complex Tajik commander who does not match the bloodthirsty, gun-toting image of his peers in other regions, is one of the nation’s most tolerant warlords. After driving out the Soviets in 1992, he was welcomed by Herat locals as a near saint, allowing him to set up his fiefdom. In the next three years, he built a university, paved roads and instituted a moderate Islamic law that allowed women to work and go to segregated schools.

    When the Taliban arrived in 1995, Khan went into exile in Iran. Two years later, he returned to recapture Herat but was captured himself. He spent nearly three years in prison — mostly chained to a pipe — before escaping to Iran. Last year, he and his troops defeated the Taliban, liberating the city for a second time.

    Although local support has waned considerably for the 56-year-old white- bearded Khan in recent months, many residents still say he is a good leader.

    Since Khan regained control seven months ago, he has allowed women to return to work and school, introduced a new telephone system, paved roads and rebuilt homes and businesses. Herat remains the cleanest and richest province in the country.

    “Without him, there wouldn’t be stability in Herat,” said Sharif Faez, the nation’s education minister and one of Khan’s staunchest backers. “He’s a man of action.”

    His critics, however, say Khan reaps revenues from customs duty on smuggled goods from Iran and Turkmenistan, names unqualified individuals to government posts, keeps a private army of 15,000 to 20,000 men, has done little to stop the harassment of Pashtuns by non-Pashtun commanders and has become increasingly hard-line in enforcing Islamic law.

    He has discouraged women from removing their burqas and barred private school teachers from teaching the opposite sex. Public schools are already segregated by sex.

    Shaheer, a 42-year-old political scientist, was a Khan supporter during the warlord’s three-year reign in the 1990s. But lately, his group, made up of about 1,000 intellectuals, has encouraged locals to defy Khan’s autocratic rule. Shaheer has even spoken out with the warlord in attendance at several public meetings.

    “In one of my speeches, I asked people to show courage, express their opinions, not wait to ask for their rights and not be afraid,” said Shaheer.

    “If they don’t, our society will remain unchanged.”

    Shaheer said he still respected Khan until his arrest last week.

    About a dozen men broke into his house, which he shares with his wife and five children, at 10:30 p.m., demanding to see him. When he appeared clad in pajamas, he was blindfolded, taken to jail, interrogated about his political activities and anti-Khan comments and beaten.

    A day later, Karzai secured Shaheer’s release after meeting with Khan in Kabul. Insiders say Karzai warned the warlord to cooperate or risk losing U.S. support. Currently, about 50 U.S. soldiers are repairing bridges, roads and canals in Herat.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has described Khan as “a very interesting, deep man,” gave him a similar warning in a private conversation April 29, boosting the confidence of Khan foes such as Shaheer.

    Since his release, Shaheer has given press interviews to anyone who will listen and has received numerous guests to his modest home in downtown Herat.

    “We want the Bonn protocol (a U.N.-sponsored conference last December to establish a post-Taliban government) to be implemented so that our basic human rights can be protected,” said Shaheer.

    Shaheer is most irate that he has been denied a spot on the loya jirga despite the fact that Herat residents voted in district elections to send him. He says Khan is trying to stack the seats allocated for the region with loyalists.

    Noor Ahmed Khatibi, a supporter of former King Mohammad Zahir Shah, was also booted from the list after being elected in the same election. He had called for Khan to share his power and cooperate more fully with the Karzai government.

    “It’s completely a militaristic government in Herat,” said Khatibi. “Fundamental needs and cultured discussions don’t exist.”

    Khan’s foes are skeptical that the loya jirga will loosen his hold, but they hope that their continued dissent will force him to change.

    “He’s selfish and arrogant, but he’s not a killer, and he loves his people and his country,” said a former associate.

  • Interim leadership celebrated

    ‘We can take country forward,’ chief says
    By Fariba Nawa
    December 6, 2001
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Bonn, Germany — Afghans around the world rejoiced yesterday as delegates signed an agreement to establish an interim post-Taliban government in Afghanistan on Dec. 22.

    After nine days of exhausting negotiations, the four Afghan groups meeting in Bonn promised to work together for the next six months until a traditional assembly, or loya jirga, is convened. Former rivals agreed to begin rebuilding the country, torn by 22 years of war, with the guidance of the United Nations and foreign donors.

    As the Bonn conference ended, a U.N.-sponsored donor conference for Afghanistan began in Berlin. Donor countries are expected to give billions of dollars in reconstruction aid.

    The crucial issue of ethnic and political distribution of posts for the transition government was handled fairly, observers agreed. In the 30-member cabinet are seven Pashtuns, 10 Tajiks, four Hazaras, three Uzbeks, five Shiites and one Nuristani. The militarily dominant Northern Alliance received 17 of the seats.

    Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun leader and former deputy foreign minister during the short-lived 1992-96 mujahedeen government in Kabul, will be the chairman of the interim government. Karzai is an English-speaking relative of former king Mohammad Zahir Shah. He and his 5,000 troops are fighting the Taliban in Kandahar, the hard-line Islamic militia’s stronghold.

    Karzai had no competition for the post after Abdul Haq, the other Westernized Pashtun and mujahedeen commander, was slain by the Taliban last month. Karzai’s duties will be similar to those of a prime minister.

    Karzai, who narrowly escaped death yesterday from a wrongly targeted U.S. bomb, told the BBC that his first priority would be “peace and stability for Afghanistan and the chance for Afghans to return to a normal life and being sure people get the opportunity to work and earn.

    “. . . I hope that with God’s help we can take the country forward to a much better future.” Zahir Shah, the exiled king, will be the head of the loya jirga, which will appoint the two-year transitional government. That administration will draft a constitution and pave the way for fair elections and democracy.

    The choice solved the problem of whether the king should be a symbolic or active member of the government. The head of the loya jirga is a respectable but temporary post that seems appropriate for an 87-year-old.

    REBELS KEEP POSITIONS

    The Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of minority fighters and the only group at the talks whose members currently reside in Afghanistan, was able to hang on to most of the de facto positions it already holds in Kabul.

    Alliance interior minister Younis Qanooni will assume the same post on a national level, as will foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Qasim Fahim, who replaced the slain and popular Ahmed Shah Massood as the alliance’s military leader, will be the defense minister.

    Former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, the alliance’s political leader, had stalled the Bonn talks for days by refusing to hand over a list of candidates. He may have a place on the new supreme court called for in the accord.

    Left out of a powerful role is Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord who helped defeat the Taliban in Mazar-e-Sharif and allowed the first U.S. troops inside Afghanistan. Dostum’s shifting alliances and his reputation as a ruthless fighter may have cost him the chance to obtain a key post.

    “He’s the one who took Mazar and Kunduz and has been instrumental in fighting terrorism,” said Azam Dadfar, Dostum’s envoy to the conference. “He will be discussing the problem with other members of the cabinet because he should be given the role of foreign or defense minister. “But he accepts the final agreement because we all want peace.”

    WOMEN A PART OF NEW PLAN

    Afghan women, after enduring five years of oppression under the Taliban when they had no public rights, will be a part of the interim administration.

    Sima Samar, a Shiite ethnic Hazara and director of the Shuhada aid organization based in Quetta, Pakistan, will have one of the five vice chair positions. The outspoken physician, who runs clinics, hospitals and schools inside Afghanistan and travels the world raising funds for Afghan women, had been threatened with death by the Taliban.

    The other woman cabinet member, Suheila Seddiqi, is also a doctor and will serve as health minister. Seddiqi has been practicing in Kabul and never left the country throughout the war. Khorshid Noori, an activist with the Afghan Women’s Network in Peshawar, Pakistan, said: “I’m elated. We have been working so hard on this and finally seeing the fruits of our labor.”

    Despite such successes, the new cabinet is certain to be criticized for its lack of expertise — not surprising inasmuch as the posts were parceled out largely to meet ethnic and political quotas.

    Rangin Dadfar Spanta, an Afghan political science professor at the University of Aachen in Germany, said: “It would have been much more practical to have a smaller cabinet with intellectuals and elder scholars not tied to ethnicity. But this is temporary, and everyone’s hoping this is the beginning of a better process.”

    Afghans are aware that the upbeat mood could turn to despair quickly if the new leaders are left without guidance.

    “We’re still very dependent on the U.N. and the international community,” said Nasir Mehrin, an exile in Germany who has written six books on Afghan politics. “This is the chance for foreign countries to make up for all the damage they caused and help us create a democratic nation.”

    NO LONGER A PAWN

    Meetings like the one in Bonn took place often over the past two decades, but there was no serious international pressure for a solution, experts say.

    Warlords and other nations, such as Iran and Pakistan, would intervene and spoil attempts at reconciliation among rival factions.

    Mehrin says the new leadership must actively engage foreign nations, instead of assuming the traditional role of regional pawn. He said one of its primary tasks is to attempt reconciliation with Pakistan, which has regarded the Northern Alliance with distaste. The most pressing issue is how and under what conditions the millions of Afghan refugees whom Pakistan has been sheltering will be repatriated.

    “It’s a fine line on how we position our new role in the world,” said Mehrin. Referring to the historic struggle for power in the region, he said, “If there’s going to be another Great Game, we will dictate it.

    “We will be masters of our new nation. In order for this plan to work, we cannot be bought and we shall not fight anymore.”

  • Afghan talks off to a rosy start

    Factions OK role for ex-king, lean toward peacekeeping troops
    By Fariba Nawa
    November 28, 2001
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    Bonn, Germany — Meeting under United Nations auspices, delegates from four Afghan factions got off to a surprisingly promising start yesterday, agreeing to give former King Mohammad Zahir Shah a role in a new government and leaning toward a multinational peacekeeping force for their war-ravaged country.

    Under international pressure to act quickly to fill the leadership vacuum in their homeland, the delegates have been charged with completing plans for an interim government in less than a week.

    The four factions — which included 11 delegates from the Northern Alliance, 11 from the so-called “Rome Group” representing Zahir Shah, and three each from Afghan exile groups in Cyprus and Peshawar, Pakistan — pledged to set aside their differences and set up a broad-based government during the meeting, held under tight security at Bonn’s historic Petersberg Hotel.

    The goal of the conference is to appoint an interim council that would be in charge in Kabul until this spring, when a loya jirga, or Afghan assembly of elders and intellectuals, would choose a transitional government.

    The transitional administration would be in power for two years and would draft a constitution, which must be approved by the assembly. The approval of the constitution would set the stage for a permanent democratic system for Afghanistan, a best-case scenario for a nation in which tribal feuding has been the prevalent political behavior.

    For such a disparate delegation to build a government is a daunting task, especially in the three to five days the United Nations wants it done. But the participants seemed hopeful.

    In a briefing prior to the conference, Yunus Qanuni, the Northern Alliance’s interior minister and head of its delegation, set a conciliatory tone. “We are in a new era, and we have the chance to become the champions of peace,” Qanuni said. “It is not our intention to monopolize power.

    “It will be our pride to work for a broad-based government based on the will of the people of Afghanistan. We want a system in which all Afghans — including women — participate in an equal manner in the structures of power.” Qanuni is an ethnic Tajik, the primary group in the seat of power in Kabul since the Taliban abandoned the capital.

    The Northern Alliance is made up mostly of minority factions — Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, along with some majority Pashtuns. In an effort to drum up more Pashtun support, the alliance brought two Pashtun members to Bonn as part of their delegation.

    Hamid Karzai, one of the main Pashtun leaders invited with the king’s group, could not make the conference because he is fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. But he expressed high hopes for the outcome of the talks in a telephone message relayed by U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi.

    “We have been made extremely poor and vulnerable, but we are a strong people who would like to assert our will and our sense of self-determination,” Karzai said. “This meeting is the path toward salvation.”

    WHAT ABOUT THE KING?

    The future role of the former king was much discussed, though by the end of the day it was not clear what role he might be asked to play.

    The 87-year-old Zahir Shah, who was deposed in 1973 and lives in Rome, is widely popular among Afghans and is seen as a unifying force. He is also a Pashtun, which would help rally 40 percent of the population behind the new government.

    Northern Alliance political leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was Afghanistan’s president in 1992-1996, strongly opposes making Zahir Shah head of state. But U.S. special envoy James Dobbins said the alliance indicated yesterday that it would accept him in a symbolic post.

    “Everybody sees the ex-king as a rallying point and hopes that he will be willing and able to play that role as they elaborate a new structure,” Dobbins said. The issue of a multinational peacekeeping force is a divisive one, since most Afghans dislike the idea of foreign troops in their country. The Northern Alliance fiercely opposes the idea.

    But other delegates said the alliance was under strong international pressure to change its stance.

    Both the Rome and Peshawar delegations said they supported a peacekeeping force, and delegates from both groups said the Cyprus faction was leaning toward the idea. Delegates are expected to take up the issue today.

    REGAINING TRUST AND RESPECT

    Mixed with the positive developments were warnings from the United Nations that there can be no repeat of the disastrous outcome that occurred in 1992 after the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Northern Alliance factions that are now united against the Taliban fought each other then, laying waste to Kabul and other cities, and losing civilians’ trust and respect.

    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the delegation: “You must not allow the mistakes of the past to be repeated, particularly those of 1992. To many skeptics, it appears that it is precisely what you are about to do. You must prove them wrong and show that you can choose the path of compromise over conflict.” The conference drew about 200 to 300 demonstrators, who gathered on the highway leading up to the cloud-shrouded mountaintop hotel.

    Shivering in the cold fall day, they were an odd mix — royalists supporting Zahir Shah, exiles opposed to the entire exercise and Iranian communists objecting to any Islamic government in Afghanistan.

    To cheers and chants of “Zahir Shah, Zahir Shah,” the king’s grandson, Mustapha Zahir, a 37-year-old Western-educated delegate to the convention, told his supporters: “Peace will come soon to Afghanistan, and we can all go home.” Two of the most persecuted groups under the Taliban — Shiite Muslims and women — were represented at the conference, though many observers consider them to be tokens. There are three women participants, and two are advisers.

    But Seddiqa Balkhi, an adviser in the Cyprus team and head of two Afghan orphanages and a cultural center in Iran, said women were treated equally.

    “Our role is active, not symbolic,” she said. “The men here are not ruling us out. They’re listening to what we’re saying.”

  • Fractious groups to meet at U.N.-sponsored talks

    Monumental task to develop Afghan government (Analysis)
    By Fariba Nawa
    November 25, 2001
    The San Francisco Chronicle

    On Tuesday, behind closed doors, representatives of tribal and ethnic groups who are used to waging war will gather at a U.N.-sponsored conference near Bonn, Germany, to begin the task of reconstructing a country mired in two decades of war, terrorism, drought and poverty.

    If successful, Afghanistan may be on the road to a functioning government, the first since the ruling Taliban fled the capital of Kabul two weeks ago, with factions formerly locked in murderous rivalry finding a mutually acceptable way forward. The stakes could hardly be higher for Afghanistan, even as America’s “war on terrorism” appears to be drawing to a close there.

    “If the U.N. really has the intention of forming a broad-based government, then this is an opportunity,” said Sayed Ishaq Gailani, a member of an Iran-supported team going to the conference, from the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. “But if this is another picnic for people to get together, it will spell disaster all over for Afghanistan.”

    The conference’s main objective is relatively modest: the establishment of a 15-member council, drawn from the various factions, as a precursor of a broad-based interim government, which in turn would draft a new written constitution before giving way to a full-fledged democratic, multiethnic government.

    “The perfect success would be that we come out of Bonn with an agreement on an executive council,” said Hans-Joachim Daerr, Germany’s special envoy to Afghanistan, who is accompanying the delegation of the Northern Alliance, the most influential of the four Afghan groups involved in the talks.

    However, Daerr acknowledged, “It’s only the first step, and many more will have to follow.”

    TALIBAN NOT INVITED

    The U.N. conference, at a mountaintop hotel, takes place while American warplanes continue to drop bombs around the Afghan cities of Kunduz and Kandahar, where Taliban soldiers, and “Afghan Arab” fighters loyal to suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden continue to hold out against opposition forces. The Taliban — even so-called “moderate” representatives — have not been invited to the conference and the movement is not expected to have any role in a future government.

    “There is absolutely no room for the Taliban,” Daerr said, echoing the position of the United Nations and the Afghan groups taking part in the conference — to the great displeasure of neighboring Pakistan.

    Expected to attend the conference are up to 70 representatives from four Afghan groups in addition to envoys from the United States, Britain, Russia and Pakistan.

    The Afghan groups include delegates loyal to the exiled king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, currently living in Rome; the Northern Alliance, already acting very much like a government in Kabul, which is headed by its interior minister, Yunus Qanooni; a group of Western exiles backed by Iran that recently surfaced and met in Cyprus; and the Peshawar-based United National Front, made up mostly of Pashtuns and backed by Pakistan. Some of the groups are sending women as part of their delegations.

    Although getting Afghanistan’s various ethnic groups together in one room is itself a singular achievement, Western officials remain cautious about the conference’s prospects.

    “I don’t want to raise expectations too high,” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a news conference in London. “It will take some time before a full-fledged government, equivalent to that of a normal nation state, can be established . . . The signs are, however, more hopeful than they were.”

    LONG-TERM GOAL DEMOCRACY

    On the surface, the task shouldn’t be so difficult because there is a general consensus on the setup of an interim government. All the groups say they want the traditional loya jirga, or grand assembly, convened to help in its establishment, the return of the 86-year-old king, Zahir Shah, and as little foreign interference as possible. The long-term goal, they say, is to pave the way for elections and democracy in Afghanistan.

    “Our intention is for a representative government that all Afghans can feel a part of and one that will harbor peace,” said Ahmad Wali Karzai from his family home in the western Pakistani city of Quetta. Karzai’s brother Hamid would be leading the United National Front delegation in Bonn if he were not fighting the Taliban in Uruzgan.

    But schisms among the groups that led to the destruction of Kabul in the early 1990s and the emergence of the fundamentalist Taliban militia, remain not far below the surface.

    The United National Front wants the king returned as the temporary head of state, while leaders of the Northern Alliance — a loose network of Uzbeks, Tajiks and other mostly minority Afghans — only want him back as a figurehead. A rival commander, Ismail Khan, who recently re-established his rule over the western city of Herat after driving out the Taliban, forcefully broke up a pro- Zahir Shah demonstration last week, declaring the king was just an ordinary citizen.

    “The people of Afghanistan should elect their leader,” Khan told the media.

    DISPUTE OVER AFGHAN EXILES

    Another dispute centers around Afghan exiles, with the Northern Alliance, which has done most of the recent fighting in Afghanistan, complaining that groups like the so-called “Cyprus” team, made up mostly of ethnic Hazara activists who settled in the West, should not have been given such a prominent seat at the U.N. table in Bonn. Gailani, who is the nephew of the Pir Sayed Ahmed Gailani, the Pakistan-backed Pashtun leader, dismissed the criticism, saying exiled educated Afghans are needed to assist in the country’s reconstruction.

    The conflicts go beyond the internal bickering. The Northern Alliance, which ignored U.S. pressure to stay out of Kabul two weeks ago, is upset that British troops landed in Bagram air base in northern Afghanistan, supposedly to assist in humanitarian relief, and has refused to allow U.N. peacekeeping troops to enter Afghanistan. It also won’t deal with Pakistan, which it blames for harboring and funding its Taliban enemy.

    Pakistan, meanwhile, sees the Bonn meeting as an opportunity to reassert its interests and those of the majority Pashtuns, both of which have been badly damaged by the rapidity of the Northern Alliance advances on the ground in Afghanistan.

    “I don’t think Pakistan is losing out because at the end of all this, the Pashtuns will support us and we will support them,” said Kamal Matinuddin, a Pakistani retired army general who has authored four books on Pakistani foreign policy.

    One hope universally shared is that the same mistakes won’t be made as those following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Observers pray that the United States will not abandon reconstruction efforts and that the Northern Alliance will not kill civilians in a bid for power.

    “We’re all watching to see what will happen,” said veteran Afghan journalist Ali Seena, based in Peshawar.

    “There are a lot of expectations from this conference. If they come out with passive resolutions, the little hope that has come about with recent events will vanish.”

  • Demanding to be heard

    By Fariba Nawa
    November 14, 2001
    Mother Jones

    Advocates for Afghanistan’s women are pushing to ensure that women’s freedoms are protected under a post-Taliban government.

    Peshawar — As diplomats at the United Nations continue to lay out plans for a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, advocates for the country’s women are increasingly worried that the rights and freedoms of women will once again be left off the negotiating table.

    “Of course, we’re angry,” says Khorshid Noori, head of the Afghan Women’s Network, a coalition of relief agencies based in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. “Anyone would feel angry if they were forgotten, especially in that we have … endured the suffering throughout so many years.”

    Spurred on by the rapid military gains made by anti-Taliban forces, diplomatic efforts to produce a framework for a transitional government are gaining momentum. Appearing recently before a hastily-called meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the UN’s envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, outlined plans for a political transition in the country. Representatives from the US, Russia and the six nations bordering Afghanistan had earlier approved a draft statement calling for the formation of a coalition government to replace the Taliban.

    Brahimi’s plan calls for the UN to convene a meeting of Afghan representatives to negotiate “the process of political transition” and to convene a Provisional Council “drawn from all ethnic and regional communities.” While Brahimi did not directly call for women to be included on the council, he did note that the “credibility and legitimacy of the Provisional Council would be enhanced, if particular attention were to be given to the participation of individuals and groups, including women, who have not been engaged in armed conflict.”

    Even if Brahimi’s recommendations are supported by diplomats at the UN, it remains unclear whether the emerging power brokers in Afghanistan, particularly the leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, will follow suit. Afghan women’s rights activists say they are not going to wait quietly as the diplomatic process unfolds.

    “The players in Afghanistan, including the US and United Nations, all talk about women’s rights but when it comes to action, there is nothing,” says Zieba Shorish, a Washington-based Afghan exile and veteran women’s rights activist.

    The cofounder and executive director of the Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, Shorish had been helping to organize a December meeting of Afghan women’s rights leaders, which she hopes will result in a unified message which all Afghan women’s groups can support.

    “We’ve got to push on this issue,” says Shorish. “We need to be involved. We need to have our rights fully restored.”

    The last time women had any significant say in Afghan affairs was when they were included in a 1963 constitutional drafting committee. That committee was convened by Mohammed Zahir Shah, the former king of Afghanistan, who has emerged as a possible figurehead around whom a multiethnic coalition government could be formed.

    The Afghan constitution, enacted in 1964 but disregarded during the past 22 years of war, guarantees equality for men and women under the law. The Taliban regime, which seized Kabul in 1996, has ignored that constitution completely. Its laws are made by Islamic clerics. Under Taliban law, women have been forced to wear the burqa, a full-body veil which covers the face in a thick mesh, have been all but barred from working outside the home, and barred from attending state schools.

    As they have seized territory across northern Afghanistan, Northern Alliance officials have announced that women would no longer be forced to live under such severe limitations. Women, they announced, are free to return to work and girls would be allowed to attend schools once more. Still, it remains unclear whether the Alliance will actively protect and ensure women’s freedoms.

    Given that most women’s groups have little if any political clout, their political concerns may be largely ignored by foreign diplomats and Afghan politicians alike. Some moderate female activists, however, could find themselves thrust into the negotiations — particularly as the UN searches for Afghans untainted by the nation’s bloody conflict.

    If women are given a role in a transitional government, one of the likeliest candidates is Fatana Gailani, director of the moderate Afghanistan Women’s Council. A member of a politically powerful Afghan family — she is the daughter-in-law of Sayed Salman Gailani, an advisor to Zahir Shah — Fatana Gailani says she does not expect deeper issues of women’s rights and social change to be addressed until after a stable government is in place.

    “Let the men get along first, then we will get involved,” she says. “Until our country has been rescued, the women’s issue is a non-issue.”

    Supporters of the deposed king have proposed the formation of a broad-based council, known as a loya jirga, to choose members of a post-Taliban government. Advisors to Zahir Shah say they plan to include women in the 120-member loya jirga, but are still searching for representatives.

    Leading women’s activists, however, are unimpressed by the promises. They have reason. Led by Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, the politically powerful clan’s patriarch, some 1,200 men representing Afghanistan’s diverse ethnicities, religious sects and political factions convened for a peace and unity conference in Peshawar three weeks ago. No women were invited.

    With little coordination among the various women’s activists, the emergence of a unified, broad-based women’s movement appears unlikely. While united in their concern about the future of women’s freedoms in Afghanistan and their frustration over their exclusion from the ongoing negotiations, Afghan women’s groups are deeply divided on numerous other issues.

    There remain deep disagreements between those activists pursuing a radical transformation of Afghanistan’s male-dominated society and those wanting protection of women’s freedoms without significant changes in traditional gender roles.

  • Afghan carpet industry unravelled by war

    By Fariba Nawa
    November 11, 2001
    Agence France Presse

    Peshawar, Pakistan — These are depressing times for the staff at Herat Carpets, who pass their days drinking copious quantities of tea and staring disconsolately at the nomadic tribal carpets they specialize in but cannot sell.

    The Afghan carpet industry — primary source of income for one million refugees in Pakistan — has been left in tatters by the latest conflict to hit their war-torn homeland. Carpet traders estimate that up to 700,000 refugees could find themselves out of work within a month, with no alternative source of income.

    Members of the Relief Organization of Pak-Afghan Carpet Traders say new orders dried up after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington which precipitated the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

    “Most of our carpets are sold in America and Europe and this is supposed to be our busiest time with Christmas approaching,” said Haji Naeem Walizada, president of the carpet traders organization.

    “But instead of doubling as usual, our business has practically stopped,” said Walizada, who believes some western buyers are boycotting Afghan carpets. Haji Abdul Wahid, owner of Herat Carpets, said he understood why individual buyers were staying away.

    “They want to save their extra money for happier times. I wouldn’t even buy a carpet at a chaotic time like this,” Wahid said.

    Walizada’s own business, Naeem Carpets, posted sales of 600,000 dollars in October 1999. This October, that figure plunged to just 50,000 dollars.

    Faced with growing stockpiles, Naeem’s parent company Lahore Carpets — one of the largest manufacturers of Afghan carpets — has told its weaving factories to stop production. “Our customers are simply not ordering,” said Lahore Carpets owner Shahid Sheikh.

    “We’re going to try and keep feeding our workers for a month, but the industry is looking at lay-offs of about 700,000 people,” Sheikh said.

    The concerned traders have gone so far as to call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help tide the industry over the current crisis.

    Some major carpet traders have built special colonies for their factory workers, comprising homes, schools and free health clinics.

    If the manufacturing shuts down, so does the entire support infrastructure.

    Business crashed as Walizada’s organization was halfway through building a “carpet town” on 275 acres (110 hectares) of land in Chamkani near the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar.

    The trade organization has written to the UNHCR requesting help with completion of the project, which would prove an important source of employment for Afghan refugees when the industry picks up again.

    Walizada, who employs 45,000 Afghan refugees, said only 5,000 remain at work.

    For many refugees, carpet weaving is considered a high-end job, bringing in between 2,000 and 3,000 rupees (30-45 dollars) a month depending on how fast families produce the carpets.

    Most weavers work from their homes at their own pace and are paid on completion of each carpet.

    Traders say the industry has a role to play in bringing peace to Afghanistan, arguing that its viable source of income would attract many young Afghans whose only other option was to join one of the country’s myriad mujahedin groups as a salaried fighter.

    “So many soldiers and generals fight in the war because of money. We have convinced many of them to give up their weapons and work in the carpet business for a living inside and outside Afghanistan,” Walizada said.

    Abdul Rahim, a former mujahedin general in Kabul before the Taliban came to power in 1996, moved to Pakistan with his family to work in the carpet industry.

    He supports 12 people including members of his brother’s family.

    “We could eat, have shelter and send our children to school, but now I’m not sure what to do, Rahim said.

    “I’m looking for other work but not finding any.”