#panjwai

[globalrecon]

#Repost @panjwayi ・・・ US Army EOD and USAF JTAC hanging out in sperwan gar village panjwayi 2013 #GlobalRecon #Panjwai #EOD #JTAC #afghanistan #War #Brothers #GlobalReconPodcast

[newstfionline]

To Feed Hungry Minds, Afghans Seed a Ravaged Land With Books

By Mujib Mashal, NY Times, March 30, 2016

PANJWAI, Afghanistan--At first glance, it is not much of a library: two shelves of about 1,600 books and magazines in a basement room deep into a dusty alley of adobe homes in rural Panjwai District, in southern Afghanistan. The mattresses and blankets stacked in the corner still give the vibe of the guest quarters the room once was.

But the register shows how parts of the community here, particularly younger residents, have come to value any chance to indulge their curiosity, in a place that was at the heart of the original Taliban uprising in the 1990s and became a watchword for the tragedy and deprivation brought by war.

Hassanullah, 18, checked out “General History.” Muhammad Rahim, 27, came for “The Fires of Hell,” which he returned the next day; it was soon borrowed by a 12-year-old named Nabi. Taher Agha, 15, preferred “Of Love and the Beloved,” keeping it for 10 days. Another young man, about to marry, called ahead to make sure there was a copy of “Homemaking.” He rode his bicycle six miles to pick it up.

The library here in Panjwai is largely the work of Matiullah Wesa, a 22-year-old student from Kandahar who is in India finishing a degree in political science. For about eight years, the Pen Path, the volunteer organization that Mr. Wesa started as a teenager, has been working to reopen schools closed because of violence and to bring books to some of the worst-affected conflict areas.

After opening in January, the Panjwai library had about 24 visitors in its first month, said Muhammad Nasim Haidary, who looks after the library and whose family houses it.

But the interest of a couple of female readers, who approached women in the Haidary family about their interest in the books, has caused a small dilemma in a society that frowns upon even sharing the names of women in public: How can the library keep track of who took the books out if it cannot write the women’s names?

One proposal was to use pseudonyms for the women instead of writing their real names in the register, but that would create another problem: How would poor Mr. Haidary remember which pseudonym belongs to whom?

The fighting over the past 14 years has disproportionately affected the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan, and Kandahar Province, which includes Panjwai, has been among the hardest hit. As district after district changed hands back and forth between the Taliban and the Afghan government and its American allies, survival became the priority. Education, which had always been scarce here, fell to the bottom of the list, and in many places schools have remained closed even after the insurgents were pushed out.

Pervasive corruption has also had an effect, with many of the schools listed on government budgets not actually functioning at all--”ghost schools” set up to allow officials to gobble up development aid without delivering any services.

“The problem is that so much of the effort has focused on the cities,” Mr. Wesa said during a visit to Panjwai last month. “We have to start from the village. If this library was in the city, we would have 100 visitors a day. But to me, the five visitors in the village are more important than the 100 in the city.”

Mr. Wesa’s organization began a national book drive last year, collecting about 20,000 books in a campaign that focused on social media. The competition for social status runs deep in this country, and Mr. Wesa banked on that to encourage contributions. Even the smallest donation of just a couple of books was celebrated online, with a picture of the donor and a word of gratitude.

The books have helped establish seven modest libraries in provinces with a reputation for some of the worst violence of the war: Helmand, Kandahar, Khost, Kunar and Wardak.

To Westerners, Panjwai, about an hour’s drive from the city of Kandahar, is most closely associated with a gruesome atrocity: the massacre of 16 civilians by an American Army sergeant who walked off his base before dawn one morning in March 2012. But for the residents, the place turned to hell years before that.

“Panjwai was like a bakery oven: You burned if you entered,” Mr. Haidary said. “If you said you were from Panjwai, people would get scared of you.”

Recently, though, the district has been relatively quiet. Even as the Taliban exert pressure in neighboring provinces, gobbling territory, the reach of government has been maintained in Kandahar, though it has often been disappointing or abusive.

“A few years ago, I don’t think I would have agreed to house a library here,” said Hazrat-Wali Haidary, the eldest son of the family hosting the library, who is training to be a doctor. “Everyone was suspicious of everything, and I wouldn’t have wanted to welcome trouble. But now, relative to other places, it is peaceful here over the past three years, and there is an atmosphere for the people to turn to education and books.”

Mr. Wesa’s journey into education activism began in his home district, Maruf, which is now contested by the Taliban. His father opened one of the first schools there, before violence forced their family to relocate to Spinbaldak, a border commercial hub.

But the seed had already been planted. Mr. Wesa, one of 11 children, continued accumulating books for a family library they brought with them when they moved.

“Every time he got his hands on money, we would see him returning with more books,” said his older brother, Wali Muhammad, an army officer.

The family library in Spinbaldak, which is now open to the public as part of Mr. Wesa’s volunteer organization, has nearly 4,000 books organized on neat metal shelves. In the middle of the carpeted room is a gas heater for winter reading and an ashtray and a spittoon for those who may need a smoke or a pinch of smokeless tobacco.

The circulation at the Spinbaldak library runs largely on an honor system. Bookkeeping is minimal, partly because another brother of Mr. Wesa’s, who is the library’s caretaker, Atta Muhammad, has only very basic literacy.

“If it is a person I know well, I just write down the number of books he took, not the details of all the books,” Atta Muhammad said.

When the books are not returned on time, Atta Muhammad finds himself making phone calls or visiting the borrowers’ homes. Despite his efforts, several dozen books have been lost, most of them never returned after being checked out.

Mr. Wesa plans to open several other small libraries in the coming year and to expand the book drive to a more organized network of volunteers across the country. How far he is willing to go to promote reading was best displayed in a recent conversation he had with a wealthy businessman in eastern Afghanistan. The man made an offer: He would donate 20,000 books to a library in his part of the country, on the condition that it be named for his father.

In his excitement, Mr. Wesa cared little about cultural taboos and what is socially acceptable in giving his answer: “I told him I would even name it after his mother--whatever it takes to get the books.”

[ourmenandwomen-blog]

Sept. 23, 2012. Dust lifts off the ground during an operation at dawn by U.S. Army soldiers at Zangabad foward operating base in the Panjwai district, Afghanistan.

[soldierporn]

Army Specialist Bryant J. Luxmore. 10 June 2012.

Died in Panjwai, Afghanistan, of injuries suffered when he encountered hostile small arms fire. Luxmore was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga.

[newstfionline]

An Afghan Comes Home to a Massacre

By Taimoor Shah and Graham Bowley, NY Times, March 12, 2012 PANJWAI, Afghanistan--Displaced by the war, Abdul Samad finally moved his large family back home to this volatile district of southern Afghanistan last year. He feared the Taliban, but his new house was nestled near an American military base, where he considered himself safe.

But when Mr. Samad, 60, walked into his mud-walled dwelling here on Sunday morning and found 11 of his relatives sprawled in all directions, shot in the head, stabbed and burned, he learned the culprit was not a Taliban insurgent. The shooting suspect was a 38-year-old United States staff sergeant who had slipped out of the base to kill.

The American soldier is accused of killing 16 people in all in a bloody rampage that has further tarnished Afghan-American relations and devastated Mr. Samad, a respected village elder whose tired eyes poured forth tears one minute and glared ahead in anger the next.

Once a believer in the offensive against the Taliban, he is now insistent that the Americans get out. "I don't know why they killed them," said Mr. Samad, a short, feeble man with a white beard and white turban, as he struggled in an interview to come to terms with the loss of his wife, four daughters between the ages of 2 and 6, four sons between 8 and 12, and two other relatives.

"Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us," Mr. Samad said outside the military base, known as Camp Belambay, with outraged villagers who came to support him. They transported the bodies of Mr. Samad's family members, as well as the other victims, and the burned blankets that had covered them as proof of the awful crime that had occurred.

After years of war, Mr. Samad, a poor farmer, had been reluctant to return to his home in Panjwai, which was known in good times for its grapes and mulberries.

But unlike other displaced villagers who stayed in the city of Kandahar, about 15 miles away, and other places around the troubled province, Mr. Samad listened to the urgings of the provincial governor and the Afghan Army. They had encouraged residents to return and reassured them that American forces would protect them.

Back in his village, a collection of a few houses known as Najibian, Mr. Samad and his family moved into a neighbor's house because his own had been destroyed by NATO bombardments in the years of fierce battles.

His home in Panjwai and the other districts around Kandahar city--long the Taliban's heartland--had been a main hub of mujahedeen during the Soviet occupation. The districts became ground zero for the surge of force ordered at the end of 2009 by the Obama administration.

There had been little to no coalition presence in the area in the decade since the war began, and American soldiers fought hard over the past two years to clear Taliban fighters from the mud villages like Mr. Samad's that dot the area.

At the same time, they struggled to win the trust of the Afghans who live in the district, many of whom have proved wary of foreigners and fearful that the Taliban--who were pushed to the margins in many areas but still remained a forceful presence--would eventually return and extract a heavy toll from those who cooperated with the Americans. Some American actions in the area also alienated villagers, like the wholesale destruction of villages that commanders decided were too riddled with booby traps to safely control.

While the Taliban were pushed back for a while, villagers like Mr. Samad say they are still active and describe what an intolerable life caught between the coalition forces and the Taliban while their meager vineyards and wheat fields are consumed.

"Taliban are attacking the bases, planting mines, and the bases are firing mortars and shooting indiscriminately toward the villages when they come under attack," said Malak Muhammad Mama, 50, a villager who now lives in Kandahar. He said that a month ago, a mortar fired from the base killed a woman, and that last week a roadside bomb hit an American armored vehicle.

It was against this background that, United States officials said, the soldier left the American base and walked south about a mile to Mr. Samad's village. Mr. Samad and his teenage son survived because they had been visiting the nearby town of Spinbaldak. When he reached his home, neighbors were putting out the fire set on his family. One of his neighbors, an elderly woman named Anar Gula, who had been cowering in her home, said she had heard an explosion, screaming and shooting as the soldier broke down the door of Mr. Samad's house and chased his wife and two other female family members from room to room before he shot them.

Afterward, the soldier circled back north around the base to another village, where he attacked the home of Hajji-Sayed Jan, 45, a poor laborer who had fled to Kandahar city three times during the years of fighting but who had brought his family back because he could not afford to live in the city, villagers said.

He was in Kandahar for the evening and so survived, but his wife, nephew, grandson and brother were killed. Further on in the same village, the soldier entered a home and fatally shot Muhammad Dawoud, 55, a farmer, when he emerged from a room; his wife and children escaped to a neighbor's house.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Monday that the staff sergeant returned to the base after the killings "and basically turned himself in, told individuals what had happened." Asked if the soldier had confessed, Mr. Panetta replied, "I suspect that was the case."

The military would bring "appropriate charges" against the soldier, Mr. Panetta said, and the death penalty "could be a consideration."

He said the military was still struggling to understand a motive. "We're not sure why, what the reasons were," he said. But he called the killings "a criminal act" and said that he had assured President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that the soldier "will be brought to justice and be held accountable."

As for Mr. Samad, he said he was in too much despair to even think about how he would carry on with his life. But he said the lesson of the deadly shootings was clear: the Americans should leave. Mr. Karzai called Mr. Samad on Sunday after the killings, and Mr. Samad, barefoot as he spoke plaintively into a satellite phone with district officials gathered around, told the president: "Either finish us or get rid of the Americans."

"We made you president, and what happens to our family?" he told Mr. Karzai. "The Americans kill us and then burn the dead bodies."

[newstfionline]

Loathing for U.S. Grows in Wake of Massacre

By Taimoor Shah and Graham Bowley, NY Times, March 11, 2012 PANJWAI, Afghanistan--American officials scrambled Monday to understand why a veteran Army staff sergeant, a married father of two only recently deployed here, left his base a day earlier to massacre at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan. The devastating, unexplained attack deepened the sense of siege for Western personnel in this country, as denunciations brought a moment of unity to three major Afghan factions: civilians, insurgents and government officials.

Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. The man gathered 11 bodies, including those of 4 girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said. At least 5 people were injured.

While some Afghans had speculated that helicopter-borne troops were involved, a senior American diplomat told a meeting of diplomats from allied countries on Monday morning that the gunman had acted alone, walking first to a village and then to a cluster of houses some 500 yards away. He returned to the base and is in custody. He is to face charges under the military justice system, officials said. Helicopters and other troops arrived only after the shooting, the diplomat said, and the helicopters evacuated the wounded.

A senior American military official said the sergeant was attached to a unit based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a major Army and Air Force installation near Tacoma, Wash., and that he had been part of what is called a village stabilization operation. In those operations, teams of Green Berets, supported by other soldiers, try to develop close ties with village elders, organize local police units and track down Taliban leaders. The official said the sergeant was not a Green Beret himself.

Panjwai, a rural district near the city of Kandahar, was traditionally a Taliban stronghold. It was a focus of the United States military offensive in 2010 and was the scene of heavy fighting. Two American soldiers were killed by small-arms fire in Panjwai on March 1, and three died in a roadside bomb attack in February.

Furious comments mounted on social networking sites like Afghan blogs and Facebook, some of them accompanied by graphic photographs of what appeared to be children slain in the attack. "This is a clear crime and will only add to the people who hate American in Afghanistan," said one. "You can't give their lives back to them with apologies."

Following the attacks, the Taliban threatened vengeance, as the insurgents often do after Western actions they depict as atrocities. A Taliban statement posted online Monday denounced the killings, saying they were the latest in a series of humiliations against the Afghan people and denying that any Taliban fighters had been in the area.

The Afghan Parliament said it condemned "this inhumane and uncivilized act."

One member of Parliament from Kandahar, Mohammed Naim Lalai Hamidzai, lashed out at the Afghan leader over the killings, suggesting that "if President Karzai cannot fix the situation, we urge him and his vice presidents to resign."

In a measure of the mounting mistrust between Afghans and the coalition, however, many Afghans, including lawmakers and other officials, said they believed the attacks had been planned, and were incredulous that one American soldier could have carried out such attacks without help.

On Sunday, President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks, calling them in a statement an "inhuman and intentional act" and demanding justice. In his statement, Mr. Karzai said "American forces" had entered the houses in Panjwai, but at another point he said the killings were the act of an individual soldier.

Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called Mr. Karzai, expressing condolences and promising thorough investigations.

Long seething public outrage has been growing explosive here, spurred by the apparently inadvertent Koran burning by American personnel last month and an earlier video showing American Marines urinating on dead militants. Adding to the problem, the massacre occurred two days after an episode in Kapisa Province, in eastern Afghanistan, in which NATO helicopters apparently hunting Taliban insurgents instead fired on civilians, killing four and wounding three others, Afghan officials said. About 1,200 demonstrators marched in protest in Kapisa on Saturday.

Officials described growing concern over the cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission, left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge, and complicated tense negotiations on the terms of the long-term American presence in the country.

[occupyonline]

A U.S. sergeant methodically kills 16 civilians (inc. children) in Afghanistan on Sunday

Stalking from home to home, a United States Army sergeant methodically killed at least 16 civilians, 9 of them children, in a rural stretch of southern Afghanistan early on Sunday, igniting fears of a new wave of anti-American hostility, Afghan and American officials said.

How about igniting fears about a rash of indoctrinated American soldiers losing their humanity and methodically going from home to home killing innocent people? Why must media so often write from our own perspective?

Residents of three villages in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province described a terrifying string of attacks in which the soldier, who had walked more than a mile from his base, tried door after door, eventually breaking in to kill within three separate houses. The man gathered 11 bodies, including those of 4 girls younger than 6, and set fire to them, villagers said.

Coming after a period of deepening public outrage, spurred by the Koran burning by American personnel last month and an earlier video showing American Marines urinating on dead militants, the possibility of a violent reaction to the killings added to a feeling of siege here among Western personnel. Officials described growing concern over a cascade of missteps and offenses that has cast doubt on the ability of NATO personnel to carry out their mission and has left troops and trainers increasingly vulnerable to violence by Afghans seeking revenge.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the attacks, calling them in a statement an “inhuman and intentional act” and demanding justice. Both President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called Mr. Karzai, expressing condolences and promising thorough investigations.

The sergeant alleged to have carried out this attack is 38 and married with two children. He had served three tours of duty in Iraq, this official said, and had been deployed to Afghanistan for the first time in December. Yet another military official said he has served in the Army for 11 years.

In Panjwai, a reporter for The New York Times who inspected bodies that had been taken to the nearby American military base counted 16 dead, including five children with single gunshot wounds to the head, and saw burns on some of the children’s legs and heads. “All the family members were killed, the dead put in a room, and blankets were put over the corpses and they were burned,” said Anar Gula, an elderly neighbor who rushed to the house after the soldier had left. “We put out the fire.”

The villagers also brought some of the burned blankets on motorbikes to display at the base, Camp Belambay, in Kandahar, and show that the bodies had been set alight. Soon, more than 300 people had gathered outside to protest.

At least five Afghans were wounded in the attacks, officials said, some of them seriously, indicating the death toll could rise. NATO said several casualties were being treated at a military hospital.

[nationalpost-blog]

Photos of the day U.S. Army soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, B battery 2-8 field artillery, fire a howitzer artillery piece at Seprwan Ghar forward fire base in Panjwai district, Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, June 12, 2011. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)