Afghanistan

Background and News Feed of the Day

Afghanistan is trying to recover from more than a quarter-century of crippling conflict, but fighting still raging in parts of the country is hampering relief and reconstruction.

War, instability and isolation have left a heavily mined nation with an average life expectancy in the early 40s and some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

More than a million people died during a 10-year Soviet occupation in the 1980s and hundreds of thousands fled the country. Others left during the hardline rule of the Taliban.

U.S.-led troops ousted the Taliban in 2001 after they refused to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whom they blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

But violence has surged since 2006 with the Taliban fighting a guerrilla war in the south and east and carrying out high-profile suicide and car bombings across the country.

The Taliban have regrouped with the help of safe havens and training grounds across the border in Pakistan and money from drug lords fattened by record opium crops.

SOVIET INVASION

At the crossroads of regions and empires, Afghanistan has been subject to periodic intense foreign interest for centuries.

In 1978, a Soviet-backed communist government seized power, sparking a number of uprisings around the country as it tried to impose radical social reforms. Deteriorating security and a coup by another communist faction precipitated the Soviet invasion at the end of 1979.

Villages were bombed and thousands of civilians arrested and tortured during the occupation.

Religious fighters, or mujahideen, covertly funded by the United States and Saudi Arabia, formed the backbone of the resistance to the occupation.

The Afghan jihad, or holy war, became a cause for Muslim warriors from around the Islamic world. The future al Qaeda leader bin Laden was among them.

The Soviets withdrew in 1989, leaving behind the communist government of President Mohammad Najibullah. Stricken by defections, Najibullah's government collapsed in 1992, and he eventually took sanctuary at a U.N. compound in Kabul, where he was hanged by Taliban forces four years later.

A mujahideen government was established in April 1992, but it was riven with factional rivalry and the country disintegrated into civil war during which at least 40,000 people were killed in Kabul alone.

THE TALIBAN

The power vacuum allowed the Taliban, a militant student movement that grew out of hardline religious schools in Pakistan, to take the southern city of Kandahar in 1994 and Kabul in 1996.

The regime, which adhered to a strict interpretation of Islam, barred women from most activities outside the home and ruled they must wear a head-to-foot burqa in public and be accompanied by a male relative. Many women still wear the burqa.

Bin Laden and al Qaeda relocated to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s after being forced to leave Sudan. They based themselves around Kandahar.

The Taliban provoked international condemnation, particularly over their treatment of women. Only three countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - recognized them as the legitimate government.

In 1999, the United Nations imposed sanctions to force the Taliban to turn over bin Laden, who was wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in the Kenyan capital Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE

Fighting with the Northern Alliance, an ethnic Tajik dominated group, continued throughout the Taliban's rule.

Two days before al Qaeda launched its Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, a leading member of the Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed by suicide bombers posing as journalists. Al Qaeda members were believed to have carried out the assassination to curry favour with the Taliban.

The United States launched bombing raids on Afghanistan in October 2001 after the Taliban refused to hand bin Laden over.

The northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, then Kabul. The rest of the country swiftly followed.

FOREIGN TROOPS

At the end of 2001, members of the opposition and international organisations gathered in Germany and drew up the Bonn Agreement, which provided a political road map for Afghanistan and a timetable for reconstruction.

Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun born to the Popalzai clan, a minor sub-group of the royal Durrani tribe, was chosen to head an Interim Authority. He was later installed as president and won an outright majority in the first presidential election in 2004. Parliamentary elections were held the following year.

But the government's authority remains fragile and violence has soared in 2008 to the worst levels since the fall of the Taliban.

Kabul and Washington say militants have crossed the border from Pakistan to join the ranks of the Taliban fighters. The insurgents are staging increasingly sophisticated attacks, including multiple roadside bombings and complex ambushes.

NATO and the United States have poured extra troops into the country. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), NATO's biggest ever ground operation, has around 53,000 troops who concentrate on providing security for development. An additional 19,000 U.S. troops conduct missions ranging from counter-terrorism to training local police. There are also more than 60,000 Afghan soldiers and around 80,000 Afghan police. (All figures are from mid-2008)

Aid workers say the escalating violence is killing an increasing number of civilians. It is also forcing aid agencies to restrict their humanitarian and development work at a time when drought and high food prices are putting more people under pressure.

Up to 1,000 civilians were killed in the first seven months of 2008, more than a quarter of them in July, according to the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR).

Many schools and clinics have closed because of the insecurity and aid agencies and U.N. convoys have been attacked.

Taliban insurgents in the south and east of the country "are mounting an increasingly vigorous, systematic terror campaign of threats, abductions and executions aimed against members of the civilian population", ACBAR said in a statement. Air strikes by international forces have contributed to the rising civilian toll as well.

Human Rights Watch has also raised grave concerns about the numbers of civilians affected by the conflict.

GOING HOME

The Taliban's fall triggered one of the largest and swiftest refugee repatriations in the world.

Millions of Afghans fled to neighbouring countries during the years of conflict.

Since 2002, Afghans have been streaming home, mostly from Iran and Pakistan. As of November 2007, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said some 5 million Afghans had returned to their country. For the latest figures, see UNHCR's Afghan homepage.

The rate of return has steadily dropped, partly because of the rise in violence. Some people have started going abroad again while others have fled to safer parts of the country.

But neighbouring countries are tiring of the large numbers of refugees. Pakistan has said it wants the Afghans on its soil to go home, and Iran has begun forcibly repatriating tens of thousands of refugees, breaking up families and raising fears of another humanitarian crisis.

For the latest estimates of the number of people uprooted within Afghanistan have a look at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

Both internally displaced people and refugees face "re-displacement" upon their return home, either because of the lack of economic opportunities or because of unresolved land and property disputes, the IDMC says.

Many also face the risk of landmines and unexploded ordnance left over from the war. These kill or injure about 62 Afghans a month, according to the Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan.

That figure is down from 150-300 in 2002. The organization says it hopes the country will be free of mines by 2013.

RECONSTRUCTION HURDLES

Billions of aid dollars have poured into Afghanistan to help rebuild the shattered infrastructure and economy.

In early 2006 the international community committed $10.5 billion over five years. U.N. agencies and non governmental organisations have set up shop throughout the country, and schools, hospital and police stations are being built.

But the violence is a major obstacle. Dozens of aid workers have been injured, kidnapped or killed since the Taliban government was toppled. Large areas have been rendered off limits to humanitarian agencies.

"Afghans consistently rank insecurity as their top concern," says Human Rights Watch. "Resurgent Taliban forces have managed to contest the government's control over much of the southern part of the country, curtailing the delivery of desperately needed development and reconstruction assistance.

"In other areas, warlords are further entrenched and have even been elected to and placed their supporters in parliament."

Rights organisations also complain that detainees are being abused in U.S. custody in Afghanistan.

Experts blame the surge in violence on a weak central government, banditry, a booming narcotics trade and the insurgency. Distinguishing and dealing with the different actors can be hard, they say.

"You can call them regional commanders, but many are also involved in the drug trade, and some in the south are actual Talibs. They are also tribal leaders. In Afghanistan, all of these overlapping identities mean wherever there is a power vacuum, any of them could fill the gap," says Jennifer Harbison, research director at international risk consultancy Control Risks.

CORRUPTION

Reconstruction efforts have been dogged by allegations of corruption and waste on the part of the government, aid agencies and contractors.

Government officials and international aid workers have been accused of stealing money or taking bribes. Some companies that won contracts to rebuild the country have been accused of leaving behind them shoddy roads, hospitals and schools or even nothing at all.

Lorenzo Delesgues, director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a local independent watchdog, said real and suspected waste and misspending was turning parts of the Afghan population against aid workers.

"There are millions spent here and a lot of people feel that it is not reaching the right people...," he said.

"The impact (of corruption) is that it puts everything in the same bag ... so that all the money spent in Afghanistan risks losing its credibility. Afghans see foreigners in expensive cars, with big salaries ... people feel they are not spending this money correctly."

The international Afghanistan Compact, a plan launched in 2006, aims to combat corruption and ensure transparency.

HEALTH CRISIS

Violence is not the only threat to life. Children born in Afghanistan face myriad obstacles that can prevent them from reaching adulthood - the country's child mortality rates are among the highest in the world, with more than a quarter dying before their fifth birthday, according to U.N. children's agency UNICEF.

Diarrhoea, respiratory infections, malaria and malnutrition are the biggest killers. The majority of the population lacks access to safe drinking water and sanitary facilities. Afghanistan is one of four "polio endemic" countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Tuberculosis is another major public health challenge. WHO said in early 2008 that 20,000 Afghans were dying a year.

Worldwide, women represent 37 percent of total TB cases. But experts say women suffer higher rates in Afghanistan because they tend to spend most of their time indoors and have less access to medical care than men do.

A new health problem emerged in 2006 in the form of the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has been found in several provinces.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that dealing with bird flu could be particularly difficult for Afghanistan, as its public veterinary services are weak. About 85 percent of the population lives in close contact with poultry.

DRUGS

Poppy cultivation, which was eradicated under the Taliban, has ballooned in recent years.

Afghanistan now produces over 90 percent of the world's heroin, according to the United Nations.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in November 2007 the export value of Afghan opiates stood at about $4 billion, equivalent to more than half the country's legitimate gross domestic product.

Taliban insurgents, warlords and drug traffickers share the bulk of that total, while farmers receive about a quarter.

Poppy eradication efforts have infuriated farmers, many of whom say they would be destitute without their crops.

One of the main tools in combating the narcotics trade involves fostering alternative livelihoods. The idea is to wean farmers away from poppy cultivation by offering them fertilisers and seeds for agricultural crops. Results are mixed.

Drugs don't just affect those beyond Afghanistan's borders - there are close to one million addicts in the country, according to UNODC. Drug use is high among refugees returning from Iran and Pakistan.

One proposal put forward by the Senlis Council, a Canadian-based think tank, suggests forced eradication be replaced by legal cultivation for painkillers. The suggestion hasn't found much favour with Afghanistan's government or donors.

Karzai has opposed aerial crop spraying, favouring a softer approach to a sector that many Afghans rely on for survival. But pressure is mounting on him to back more stringent methods.

A UNODC report showed the area of Afghan land where opium poppies are grown rose by 17 percent to 193,000 hectares between 2006 and 2007. The 2007 harvest was a record 8,200 tonnes, up from 6,100 tonnes in 2006.

In recent years, Afghan drug lords have sought to maximize profits by processing opium into heroin at home before sending it abroad.

UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa Costa says the anti-drug effort is being hit by corruption within the Afghan security forces.

WOMEN

Women and girls have made strides since the Taliban was toppled.

During the Taliban years, the regime prohibited women from attending universities and shut girls' schools in Kabul and other cities, although primary schooling did go on in many other areas of the country. Earning a living was also very difficult, a tragedy in a country with tens of thousands of war widows - in Kabul alone there are estimated to be up to 50,000.

Today, women have the right to vote - 68 were elected to parliament in 2005. Millions of girls go to school and women are allowed to work outside the home.

But the daily life of many women is still dominated by the threat of violence and backbreaking toil.

Many girls are married off as children or young teenagers, and the vast majority never learn to read or write.

Afghanistan also has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. More than 50 women die every day due to complications in pregnancy or childbirth, UNICEF says. Some 90 percent of rural women deliver babies without medical care.

Human Rights Watch says violence against women and girls remains rampant, including domestic violence, sexual violence, and forced marriage.

In many cases women who are raped are charged with immorality and imprisoned. They can also be jailed for the crime of running away from their husband.