The Great Game : plus ca change

Karzai requests Russia's military support for Afghanistan , transvestite in Talibanstan, threat to the free press, and life online. An Afghan News Roundup: September 2013, compiled by Elayne Jude for Great North News Service

President Hamid Karzai urged Moscow's security and military support for Afghanistan at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin during a recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek.

President Putin promised to provide Afghanistan with military equipments and weapons, and to provide training opportunities for the Afghan national armed forces. The two leaders also discussed bilateral economic and trade relations.

Russia has a history of patronage and military and economic support to Afghanistan going back to the mid twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain vied for influence in the nation between their respective Imperial
borders; Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, British India to the south.

President Karzai said that he was hopeful that the next president of Afghanistan will further improve relations between Kabul and Moscow.

President Hamid Karzai also met Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Both men promised to strengthen relations and find ways to accelerate the Afghan peace process. They discussed the Kabul-Washington Bilateral Security Agreement and their mutual battle against the illegal drug trade.

President Karzai was reported to have raised the issue of Afghan refugees in Iran, after Iranian authorities announced last week that the undocumented migrants would be deported soon. President Karzai supposedly asked that Iran grant visas to the Afghans resident in Iran.

President Rouhani congratulated Karzai on Afghanistan's recent victory in the South Asian Football Federation Championship.

Afghanistan's Secret Subcultures

A side of Afghanistan barely guessed at by the outside world is explored in a new book, "Afghan Rumor Bazaar: Secret Sub-Cultures, Hidden Worlds, and the Everyday Life of the Absurd," by Afghan-American writer Nushin Arbabzadah, former BBC journalist and research scholar at the Center for the Study of Women at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Frustrated by one-dimensional coverage of Afghanistan, she attempts to give new perspectives "on unusual people on the margins of society and those who don't conform to mainstream standards of Afghanistan."

For instance, Afghanistan's underground gay community. "Afghanistan is a strictly heterosexual, family-based society where sex outside the legal bounds of marriage is a crime punishable by imprisonment. But behind the clean-cut surface of respectability, there's a foggy underworld of chaotic sexuality."

Gay activists and bloggers talk about their sexuality in the safety of online forums and social-networking sites. In Afghanistan, homosexuality is punishable by death. Gays also risk being disowned by family or being the victim of honour killing.

Hamid Zaher, who fled Afghanistan in 2001 and eventually settled in Canada, wrote his candid memoirs in Dari, "Beyond Horror, It's Your Enemy Who Is Dock-Tailed." Dock-tailed is an Arabic expression for a man without a son.

His family has disowned him and Zaher is no longer in touch with them.

Another Afghan practice is bacha posh -- literally "dressed like a boy" in Dari. It is the old tradition of disguising young girls as boys, to loan prestige to families without male children.

"It may seem strange, if not downright unbelievable, that in a society obsessed with maintaining strict gender roles, one form of transvestism has become widespread and even acceptable," writes Arbabzadah.

Afghanistan's community of transgender men is also covered in her book. Several years ago, a video of a police officer arresting a cross-dresser went viral in Afghanistan.

"When the footage was shown on TV you could see the bewilderment in the police officers," says Arbabzadah. "When the video was aired, the caption was 'a man dressed as a woman, but why?' Women are oppressed in Afghanistan so nobody understands why anyone would want to be one. You could just see that people didn't understand, even though in every neighbourhood there are these individuals."

Arbabzadah writes about overlooked religious communities in Afghanistan, including a vocal community of Christian converts.

Christian missionaries opened a church in Kabul in 1970. Afghan churches have sprung up in places as far apart as Scandinavia and California, suggesting the number of converts has surged. Today, the marginalized Christian community in Afghanistan has its own online TV channel. Some Christians venture out publicly and offer conversion testimonies in Dari and Pashto.

Arbabzadah suggests that a small but growing number of people accept nonconformist groups and individuals.

"What is good is that there is a growing, if still only small, part of society that is a lot more open-minded than mainstream Afghan society. So, little by little, there is acceptance of people like this."

Arbabzadah's family fled the country during the Soviet occupation, and she is particularly good on the shambles that was the Mujahideen campaign of resistance, whose attacks more often than not went astray and killed the civilians on whose behalf they were supposedly fighting. Their very unpredictability, she suggests, made it nigh impossible to create a counterstrategy. She quotes an old Afghan proverb: You cannot win against the insane.

Afghan Rumour Bazaar, by Nushin Arbabzadah. Hurst & Company, 2013

Violent Censorship Rising

There have been more than 60 cases of intimidation or violence against Afghan journalists this year, more than double the figure from the year-earlier period, according to Nai, a Kabul-based, U.S.-funded organization that supports press freedom.

"Freedom of speech must stay intact and nobody should be able to bring any kind of limitation," said Afghan Minister of Culture and Information Sayed Makhdoom Raheen. He cautioned Afghan journalists to be careful not to "insult" the people about whom they report. "Unfortunately our media does not pay attention to this very important point," the minister said.

The blame for this violence is increasingly falling on government and security officials, whom Nai holds responsible for most cases brought to the group's attention.

"The reality is this: Many in the government are not happy with freedom of press," said Abdul Hamid Mubariz, a former journalist and onetime deputy minister of information and culture. "The government has been resisting open-style media that aid donors wanted and pretty much got," said Bob Dietz, Asia coordinator for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Najib Sharifi, of the Kabul-based Afghanistan NGO Journalists Safety Committee, says Western donors still have leverage but they have been awfully silent.

Threats and intimidation are so common that self-censorship is becoming the norm. Many Afghan journalists routinely publish articles under pseudonyms.

The Afghan Taliban deny harassment. "None of our commanders or fighters have the right to threaten journalists or media outlets," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

But in April, the group claimed responsibility for the killing of Ali Asghar Yaqubi, a radio reporter based in the western Afghan city of Herat.

Actually, Mr. Yaqubi survived the shooting and remains committed to journalism. "The bullet is still in my body," he said in a phone interview with the WSJ. "If it won't cause pain in the future, I'd like to keep it."

Connected

Government and private-sector organisations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), hosted the country's first social media summit 22-23 September. Paiwand (Dari for "connection") The attendees learned about the ways social media can act as a government watchdog, and prevent or highlight the transgressions of the people's representatives.

"A message in the traditional media due to censorship might not be broadcasted, but in social media it can be made viral," said Mattihieu Aikins, correspondent at the Foreign Policy magazine.

Around two and a half million people, or around eight percent of the population have online access, and more than a million and a half use social media. The numbers are low by international norms, but rapidly growing, reflecting the youthfulness of Afghanistan's current population.

The Presidential Palace welcomed the suggestion from the participants about promoting social media across the country. "I want everyone to encourage Afghans to use social media. The government should promote it across the country," said Adela Raaz, Deputy Spokeswoman of President Karzai.

The UN estimates that only 41% of the country has reliable electricity. So government claims that more than half the population has a mobile phone and four companies offer 3G service should weighed against the likelihood that many users can't keep their handsets charged.

Paiwand was funded by the US Embassy in Kabul.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times has obtained an official memo revealing that the Pentagon's main battlefield intelligence network in Afghanistan is vulnerable to hackers. The U.S. command in Kabul will cut it off from the military's classified data unless the Army fixes the defects within 60 days. DCGS failed, with a grade of "critical concern," a readiness test by the Command Cyber Readiness Inspection at Bagram Air Base. The intelligence network, known as "D-Sigs", has previously attracted criticism from soldiers.

One of D-Sig's key functions is to process data that helps analysts identify links between insurgents and uncover IEDs.
In Congress, some have urged the Army to buy off-the-shelf commercial products. Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, wants the Army to buy proven commercial intelligence analysers.

If D-Sigs is not fixed within 60 days, Army intelligence analysts will be barred from using it to sift through intelligence reports on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), making the DCGS system significantly less useful.

To avoid this, the Army must conduct weekly security vulnerability scans of each D-Sigs workstation, to confirm that none has been compromised or penetrated. It must also rid DCGS of "private" IP addresses, which are difficult to trace,
and convert to authorised "public" IP addresses, which are known to system administrators.

The memo does not say whether D-Sigs has, in fact, been hacked or sustained a security breach.

90 Percent Males in Balkh and Kabul Against Women in Politics

A recent study by Oxfam International revealed that 94 percent of women from Kabul and Balkh provinces are either banned from the political processes of Afghanistan, or unaware of their right to contribute to it.

Oxfam expressed its worries over low female turnout in the elections, and said that almost 90 percent of the males in Afghanistan are against the participation of women in the political activities of the country.

Several female MPs cited illiteracy and gender discrimination as the major challenges. "Illiteracy, lack of awareness among women, and some so-called social norms are the main challenges that are preventing empowerment of women," said MP Shukria Barakzai.

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has allocated millions of dollars specifically for running awareness programmes to seek greater female participation, but these have had little impact.

Oxfam conducted the survey in Kabul and Balkh provinces. During the survey, nearly 680 people were interviewed, male and female. The 196-page report revealed that 90 percent of the males in Afghanistan are dead against political participation of women in the country.

with thanks to Khaama Press, Radio Free Europe, Wall Street Journal, Tolo News and the Washington Times