Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?

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Asia Report N°158

24 July 2008

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The Taliban has created a sophisticated communications apparatus that projects an increasingly confident movement. Using the full range of media, it is successfully tapping into strains of Afghan nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government and its international backers. The result is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban. The Karzai government and its allies must make greater efforts, through word and deed, to address sources of alienation exploited in Taliban propaganda, particularly by ending arbitrary detentions and curtailing civilian casualties from aerial bombing.

Analysing the Taliban’s public statements has limits, since the insurgent group seeks to underscore successes – or imagined successes – and present itself as having the purest of aims, while disguising weaknesses and underplaying its brutality. However, the method still offers a window into what the movement considers effective in terms of recruitment and bolstering its legitimacy among both supporters and potential sympathisers.

The movement reveals itself in its communications as:

• -the product of the anti-Soviet jihad and the civil war that followed but not representative of indigenous strands of religious thought or traditional pre-conflict power structures;
• -a largely ethno-nationalist phenomenon, without popular grassroots appeal beyond its core of support in sections of the Pashtun community;
• -still reliant on sanctuaries in Pakistan, even though local support has grown;
• -linked with transnational extremist groups for mostly tactical rather than strategic reasons but divided over these links internally;
• -seeking to exploit local tribal disputes for recruitment and mainly appealing to the disgruntled and disenfranchised in specific locations, but lacking a wider tribal agenda; and
• -a difficult negotiating partner because it lacks a coherent agenda, includes allies with divergent agendas and has a leadership that refuses to talk before the withdrawal of foreign forces and without the imposition of Sharia (Islamic law).

Out of power and lacking control over territory, the Taliban has proved adept at projecting itself as stronger than it is in terms of numbers and resources. Despite the increasing sophistication of some of its propaganda, however, it still puts out contradictory messages that indicate internal rifts and the diffuse nature of the insurgency. These reveal a cross-border leadership and support apparatus striving to present a unified front and assert control even as various groups maintain their own communications networks. Maintaining relations with transnational jihadist networks, which have a more global agenda, is a potential problem for the Taliban, which has always been a largely nationalistic movement.

A website in the name of the former regime – the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan – is used as an international distribution centre for leadership statements and inflated tales of battlefield exploits. While fairly rudimentary, this is not a small effort; updates appear several times a day in five languages. Magazines put out by the movement or its supporters provide a further source of information on leadership structures and issues considered to be of importance. But for the largely rural and illiterate population, great efforts are also put into conveying preaching and battle reports via DVDs, audio cassettes, shabnamah (night letters – pamphlets or leaflets usually containing threats) and traditional nationalist songs and poems. The Taliban also increasingly uses mobile phones to spread its message.

The vast majority of the material is in Pashtu, and a shortage of language skills in the international community means much of this either passes unnoticed or is misunderstood. English-language statements are relatively crude, but the Taliban is able to put out its story rapidly. More effort is devoted to Arabic language output, aimed at soliciting the support of transnational networks and funders. The overriding strategic narrative is a quest for legitimacy and the projection of strength. Use of tactics such as suicide bombings – previously unknown in Afghanistan – and roadside bombs, as well as such audacious actions in 2008 as a prison break in Kandahar city, an attack on a military parade attended by President Hamid Karzai and an assault on a five-star hotel demonstrate that grabbing attention lies at the core of operations.

Within Afghanistan the Taliban is adept at exploiting local disenfranchisement and disillusionment. The Kabul administration needs to ensure it is seen as one worth fighting for, not least by ending the culture of impunity and demanding accountability of its members. The international community must provide the necessary support and pressure for improved performance, while also examining its own actions. Whatever the military benefits of arbitrary detentions, they are far outweighed by the alienation they cause. The effectiveness of aerial bombardment, even if strictly exercised within the bounds of international law, must be considered against the damage to popular support. Greater efforts are needed in Western capitals to explain to their own populations the necessity of staying for the long haul rather than yielding to the pressure of quick fixes that give only the appearance of action.

The Taliban is not going to be defeated militarily and is impervious to outside criticism. Rather, the legitimacy of its ideas and actions must be challenged more forcefully by the Afghan government and citizens. Its killings of civilians and targeting of community leaders need to be highlighted, including a public accounting for actions by the militants through open trials – something that has not yet happened. Strengthening the legitimacy of the Afghan government and ensuring that its actions – and those of its international backers – are similarly bound by the rule of law should be an important complement. Ultimately, winning popular support is not about telling local communities that they are better off today. It is about proving it.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Government of Afghanistan:

1. Do not block the flow of information, but seek
instead to disclose more, in an open and timely manner, and build morale by:

(a) responding more quickly on incidents such as civilian casualties and other alleged abuses by the government or its international supporters that are likely to feed into insurgent propaganda;

(b) speaking out strongly and consistently about Taliban killings and attacks, while holding the international community and Afghan national security agencies proportionately accountable for their actions;

(c) refraining from threatening the media for reporting and ensuring that legal definitions of incitement in the media are appropriate and clear; and

(d) holding open trials of captured insurgents and allowing their victims public redress.

2. Build the morale of the security forces by having senior officials regularly visit Afghan army and police units around the country, and put a human face on the violence by assisting the wounded and bereaved families.

3. End the culture of impunity by ensuring the rule of law, including by holding government and security officials accountable for crimes and abuses.

To the Governments of Countries Contributing International Troops:

4. Improve communications with Afghans on the directions and activities of the international engagement, while ensuring an Afghan lead in appropriate
areas, through:

(a) reaching out to local correspondents for international and national media, not just foreign reporters;

(b) building language skills among foreign staff and properly training sufficient numbers of professional translators;

(c) streamlining systems and devolving more responsibility to ground-based personnel so they can respond rapidly to incidents involving international forces; and

(d) directing enquiries on incidents that do not involve foreign troops to the appropriate Afghan institution.

5. Emphasise that the foreign presence is in support of the Afghan people and subject to the rule of law by ensuring that international troops are held accountable, in particular by conducting thorough investigations and improving data collection and information sharing on incidents of alleged civilian casualties.

6. Communicate clearly to the Afghan public that while the troops will stay as long as necessary, there are no longer-term strategic objectives, such as permanent bases in the country.

7. Ensure when using aerial force not only that an operation is strictly within the parameters of international law, but also that its potential immediate military gain has been weighed against longer-term community perceptions.

8. Press the Pakistan military to end its appeasement of pro-Taliban militants and Afghan insurgents operating from Pakistani territory, and encourage a dialogue between Kabul and the democratically elected government in Islamabad.

To Donors:

9. Emphasise the building and reform of judicial and detention systems in which detainees can be handled safely and legitimately and held to account within a rule-of-law system.

Afghan pipeline raises security questions

By Travis Lupick

Global Research, July 21, 2008

Afghanistan’s ambassador to Canada says NATO’s military mission has nothing to do with a proposed massive pipeline project that will bring natural gas to his country’s neighbours. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Omar Samad said the $7.6-billion pipeline won’t be finished before Canadian troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2011.

“So I fail to see what the relationship of this pipeline is with the Canadian mission,” Samad said from Ottawa.

On June 19, the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published a report questioning the feasibility of the pipeline project, given the strength of the Taliban insurgency. Samad, however, said that the Afghan army and local security forces would provide security for the pipeline. “If there is a need to do something different,” he continued, “we will discuss it with whomever will be interested to do so, down the road…beyond the Canadian mission.”

The proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-India-Pakistan pipeline (TAPI) could generate as much as $300 million in annual revenue for the Afghan government, Samad said. Afghanistan’s National Development Strategy lists the country’s projected domestic revenue for March 21, 2008, to March 20, 2009, as $887 million.

When operational, the pipeline will transport 33 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually. Energy-hungry Pakistan and India are planning to share output equally, while Afghanistan will only receive a “small percentage” of the pipeline’s gas.

Written by energy economist John Foster, the CCPA’s report raises serious concerns about the project’s security. The planned route for the pipeline runs through Kandahar province, where most Canadian Forces combat operations in Afghanistan are taking place.

Speaking to the Straight from Ottawa shortly after the report’s release, Foster said that if they were to build the pipeline now, it could become “a massive target going right through Kandahar, the heart of the insurgency”.

According to the CCPA report, a Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement was signed by representatives of the project’s participating nations on April 25, 2008. That agreement committed those parties to beginning construction in 2010. Foster said that if TAPI’s security is to be counted on for investment by 2010, the entire southern region of Afghanistan will have to be cleared of land mines, and Taliban and al-Qaeda forces will have to be eliminated.

Foster said that in 40 years of working for such financial institutions as the World Bank, he has never made a loan that required a foreign army’s presence as a precondition for security.

Construction of the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline scheduled to begin in 2010. CCPA image. Click image to enlarge.

The Asian Development Bank is coordinating the pipeline project. Speaking from Manila, Howard Brown, an executive director for the bank representing Canada, said that security concerns for TAPI definitely need to be addressed.

“Nobody is going to start putting pipe in the ground unless they are satisfied that there is some reasonable insurance that the workers for the pipeline are going to be safe,” he said.

Brown noted that a number of financial and engineering issues also still need to be worked out.

According to Thermo Design Engineering Ltd.’s president, Jim Montgomery, his company is probably the largest natural-gas contractor now operating in Turkmenistan, where TAPI will originate.

Thermo Design specializes in processing natural gas at its extraction site. Speaking from the company’s corporate headquarters in Edmonton, Montgomery confirmed that it is likely that Thermo Design will play some roll in TAPI.

He conceded that working in Central Asia can be politically challenging, with much less negotiating room than in North America. “There is always lots of suspicion in these countries, too,” he added. “You’re forever wired to your reputation and you have to be careful who you talk to and who you don’t.”

But Montgomery claimed that he is not especially concerned about TAPI’s security. He said that if “everybody is taken care of,” there will not be a significant security risk.

Asked if the pipeline could become a target for militant groups or terrorists, Montgomery said that any deal around the pipeline would likely include them, too.

“That happens all of the time,” he said. “If a deal was made with them [armed groups] and with the villages along the way, I think that that could be fairly secure.”

The CCPA report also raised questions about how TAPI could affect the Canadian Forces’ mission in Afghanistan.

André Gerolymatos, an SFU professor and expert in military and diplomatic history, pointed to the work of Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid in analyzing TAPI’s role in Afghanistan.

“It is all about the U.S. It has very little to do with Afghan development,” he said.

For Gerolymatos, TAPI is a geostrategic concern, not a development project. He noted that negotiations for an Afghan pipeline began under the Clinton administration, which held talks on the project with the Taliban government in the 1990s.

Gerolymatos said that he is highly skeptical that much of TAPI’s transit revenue will make it to Afghanistan’s ordinary citizens, or even to the Afghan government. He also suggested that a lot of money would have to be spent paying regional warlords not to attack the pipeline.

The Canadian Department of National Defence responded to an interview request with an e-mail stating that the DND is aware of a regional agreement on TAPI but “an interview on this matter will not be possible.”

Foster said that the answer to Ambassador Samad’s question about why Canada should take an interest in TAPI is clear. He emphasized that the pipeline is potentially Afghanistan’s largest development project and is planned to run right through the area where Canadian troops are most active.

Foster suggested that a better question would be to ask why the Canadian government has been silent on the project.

Taliban control more of Kandahar: analysis

GRAEME SMITH

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

July 15, 2008 at 7:53 PM EDT

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — More districts of Kandahar are controlled by the Taliban than by the Afghan government, according to a U.S. assessment that casts doubt on Canada's upbeat view of the war.

A detailed analysis by U.S. security officials shows that foreign troops and their local allies hold sway over the core, highly populated districts of Kandahar, but the zone of government control remains a small part of the vast territory assigned to Canadian responsibility two years ago.

The assessment divides Kandahar's districts into four categories: contested, Taliban controlled, locally controlled, and government controlled. Only four of 16 districts were classified as government controlled. The Taliban were described as controlling six districts.

The rest are held by local tribes or warlords, or they are battlefields with nobody clearly dominating.

Enlarge Image

Canada's new chief of defence
staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk,
holds a press conference in
Kandahar last Saturday.
(Alexander Panetta/The
Canadian Press)

The study was completed in January, but the findings were made available only recently to The Globe and Mail as the claims of progress by Canadian officials have increasingly contrasted with U.S. leaders' statements of concern about Afghanistan.

The months since the completion of the analysis have brought few signs of improvement in Kandahar's security, with a rising number of Taliban attacks, more than 100 people killed in the country's worst bombing since 2001, and a spectacular jailbreak that freed hundreds of suspected insurgents last month.

Other assessments of the province have been even more pessimistic: Over the past two years, the United Nations' periodically updated security maps have shown encroaching areas of “extreme risk” filling large swaths of the countryside described as government controlled in the U.S. assessment.

Canadian military officials have consistently offered a more optimistic view of security in Kandahar. General Walter Natynczyk, Chief of the Defence Staff, told reporters recently that violence in the province this year is not significantly above last year's levels.

He also said Canada's presence in the districts is expanding geographically.

Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier reiterated the same message through a spokesman Tuesday, returning to an assertion he originally made on Saturday when he said the military's count of “significant acts, enemy-initiated direct attacks, IED attacks [bombings], and so on, all of those incidents combined,” had increased only 3 or 4 per cent in June, 2008, as compared with June, 2007.

Gen. Natynczyk also said his troops have concentrated on protecting the major population centres in the province, and the U.S. assessment supports his statement. The districts listed as government-controlled – Kandahar city, Arghandab, Spin Boldak and Daman – are among the most heavily populated. Other areas listed as contested, Zhari and Panjwai districts, also contain large populations and have been the focus of Canada's most intense military effort.

At the same time, Canada's regular troops have abandoned positions in the north of the province over the past two years, including Ghorak district centre, about 70 kilometres northwest of Kandahar city; Forward Operating Base Martello, about 100 kilometres north of Kandahar city; and Gumbad Platoon House, about 80 kilometres north of Kandahar city.

These outposts were located in districts now listed as Taliban-controlled in the U.S. assessment.

Many other provinces also suffer from a strong Taliban presence according to the analysis, which found insurgents controlling or contesting roughly 130 of 398 districts assessed across the country.

Most of the districts heavily influenced by the insurgency were located in the south and east, but the study also found that the militants had gained a foothold in areas near Kabul, such as Wardak and Logar provinces.

The idea that security has deteriorated in Afghanistan is not unique to U.S. analysts; it is now the mainstream view among most observers of the war. Equally mainstream is the belief that withdrawing foreign troops would cause a disaster on a vastly greater scale, and many experts are calling for more international forces.

The new head of Canada's military also suggested more troops are necessary for Kandahar during his recent visit.

“The Kandahar area is a huge area, and we could take all the troops we could get,” Gen. Natynczyk said.

But the general declined to say how many troops are needed, or articulate why the situation is serious enough to require extra soldiers.

His American counterparts have been more outspoken, as the monthly death toll among U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan surpassed the toll in Iraq this summer.

“I am, and have been for some time now, deeply troubled by the increasing violence there,” U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters recently.

Gen. Natynczyk spoke about Adm. Mullen's comments in his meeting with reporters over the weekend, but dismissed them as inapplicable to Kandahar; the American general was referring to increased violence in the eastern provinces as a result of fighters infiltrating from Pakistan, he said, and also new activity in Helmand province caused by the recent deployment of U.S. Marines.

“I've been linking in with my American counterparts and their assessments in terms of their view of the increase in activity this year, and indeed I looked at what Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs has indicated, and he was pretty specific with regard to observations of increased activity being their additional troops in the south,” he said.

Are Canadians getting the truth about Afghanistan?

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

• E-mail Jeffrey Simpson
• Read Bio

July 14, 2008 at 9:20 PM EDT

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was correct last week when he said about Afghanistan: “We have serious challenges there, and we simply must make progress on governance and security … in the next 12 to 24 months. We have got to get the situation moving in the right direction.”

The implication was clear, and accurate: The “situation” is not moving in the “right direction.”

Robert Gates, the U.S. Defence Secretary, agreed. “We have clearly seen an increase in violence in Afghanistan,” he said.

With Mr. Harper and Mr. Gates essentially saying the same thing, why is Canada's new Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, insisting that increases in violence in Afghanistan have been “insignificant.”

It is one thing to do a Hillier-esque rah-rah to rally the troops and feed the goat of the “we love the military” media in Canada, it's another to deform reality. In March, the Manley report demanded “practical, verifiable criteria” for assessing security in Afghanistan. Nothing has apparently changed.

Canadians are still getting spin, but the spin is getting further removed from the reality being reported by every other source of information, including some Canadian media, U.S. military and diplomatic sources, European observers, the Senlis Council, writers such as Ahmed Rashid, informed academics who spend time in Afghanistan, and think tanks monitoring the Afghanistan situation.

The weekend Gen. Natynczyk offered his assessment from Afghanistan, nine Americans died in a highly co-ordinated Taliban attack on a base near the Pakistan border. That same weekend, newspaper reports suggested the United States was going to draw down forces from Iraq more rapidly than had been anticipated, so that it could deploy more to Afghanistan. The United States had previously committed an additional 3,500 troops. Reports now suggest the figure might be 10,000.

A series of factors are worsening the Afghanistan situation, no matter what the outgoing and incoming Canadian defence chiefs argue.

Within Pakistan, the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies are well established, especially in the border areas. The new Pakistani government seems to lack the power or the will to do anything about them.

Islamic madrassas and other recruiting havens are providing a steady stream of terror recruits for action in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Money from the drug trade and jihadi supporters in such places as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States provide money to pay families who lose an offspring in the war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Almost everyone with even some knowledge of Pakistan believes elements within the country's security forces support the jihadis. Last week's bomb explosion at the Indian embassy in Kabul illustrated again the old struggle between India and Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan.

The opium trade is flourishing. NATO seems helpless to stop it, thereby giving insurgents access to ready cash.

Drying up financial resources, sealing borders and isolating insurgents from the local population are three fundamental rules of counterinsurgency warfare. NATO hasn't got a grip on any of them. Unless it does get a grip, there is no chance of winning – however winning is defined – in Afghanistan.

Similarly, NATO has far too few soldiers for such a bleak and bewildering country. Kandahar, alone, is the size of New Brunswick. Canada is deploying there about 2,300 people, of whom 800 to 1,000 can actually fight. It was a telling comment on the state of the military that when it became apparent these numbers were too few, the cry went up not for more of our own forces but for troops from another country. That country turned out to be the United States.

Afghanistan is a country within which many elements can be fairly described as post-medieval. The code of conduct of the Pashtun, the tribal group of the South, is so foreign to Western thinking that every occupier who has encountered the code struggled to understand it.

So, too, with what passes for the governance of a country whose tribal rivalries, customs and mores go back to the mists of time. What we consider corruption is normal practice for tribal chieftains, who distribute some of the largesse to their followers and use the rest to secure their position and the security of their group against “others.”

Mr. Harper was right to say the situation needs to be turned around, but he did not suggest how. It would be instructive to know what he might have in mind.

Afghan violence rising, top soldier concedes

BILL CURRY AND GRAEME SMITH

Globe and Mail Update

July 20, 2008 at 9:35 PM EDT

OTTAWA and KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff has acknowledged that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse and more troops are required in the face of mounting Taliban attacks aimed at derailing next year's Afghan election.

General Walter Natynczyk faced criticism last week when he dismissed the growing violence in the Kandahar region as “insignificant” during a tour of the country, in spite of claims to the contrary by observers and other NATO countries.

But he's now offering a far more sombre analysis, stepping back from his previously upbeat picture of security in the country.

“We have two contrasting pictures here. On the one hand, what I got from the people in Kabul is a worsening security situation across the country. That is really clear,” Gen. Natynczyk said in an interview broadcast yesterday on CTV's Question Period. Specifically, he said, the situation is getting worse in Kabul, in eastern Afghanistan where U.S. forces have the lead and in southern Afghanistan where Canadian troops are based.

Enlarge Image

Gen Walter Natynczyk (second
from left), Canada's new Chief of
the Defence Staff, addresses
soldiers at a forward operating
base during his first visit with
Canadian troops in Kandahar
Province in Afghanistan, July 9,
2008. (Stevo J McNeil/The
Canadian Press)

“On the other hand, when I was in Kandahar from the soldiers' perspective, what they see are localized fragile signs of success. Very, very localized,” he said.

The House of Commons voted just four months ago to extend Canada's Afghan mission until 2011, based in large part on NATO's commitment to support Canada with an extra 1,000 troops in southern Afghanistan. While the general said that a U.S. battalion is on its way to help in the south, he noted that a surge in military strength in Iraq had “a significant, positive effect.”

The comments from Canada's top military leader come as military observers have been questioning why recent Canadian analysis of the Afghan situation has been relatively upbeat compared with increasingly dire reports from Americans.

Canadian officials had suggested that recent incidents of violence were to be expected because of the time of year. But the general now says the spate of attacks is part of a larger Taliban campaign aimed at next year's election in Afghanistan.

“There's a sense the Taliban are throwing everything against the Afghan government and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] in the work up to the election which will take place next year,” he said.

Western officials say Kandahar province has not been an exception to the general trend of deteriorating security in southern Afghanistan.

But the general's comments about localized improvements within the province reflect the views of Canadian military officers who say they have reduced Taliban activity in a limited number of locations such as Pashmul, a cluster of villages 15 kilometres west of Kandahar city.

Such zones of relative security are geographically limited, however; another group of villages known as Ashokay, only a few kilometres east of Pashmul, has become a notorious hideout for insurgents.

Nor has the Canadian military effort of the past two years pushed the insurgents farther away from Kandahar city, since some of the air strikes against suspected Taliban positions in the past few days have targeted locations near Zala Khan, only 10 kilometres south of the city limits.

Next year's election is a subject of heated debate among policy makers in Kabul, some of whom say the vote should be delayed because of the security situation.

Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was among those who had questioned why Gen. Natynczyk and other Canadians were speaking so positively of late.

“It's a pretty good clarification,” Mr. MacKenzie said yesterday in response to the general's comments. Mr. MacKenzie said he suspects Gen. Natynczyk was simply trying to encourage the troops with his comments in Kandahar.

“[He was] trying to put a positive spin on for the soldiers. Sure can't blame him for that.”

NDP MP Paul Dewar was less charitable.

“I think reality caught up to the general,” he said, expressing concern at the call for more troops. “To point to Iraq is not helpful.”

A spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay said the minister and the general are on the same page in their assessment of Afghan's security situation.

“Minister MacKay has said on several occasions, including the last NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels, that more troops would always be welcomed for this important mission,” Dan Dugas said Sunday.

Food prices fuelling sex work in north?

Photo: Parwin Arizo/IRIN Sex work is on the rise due to high food prices, unemployment and lack of economic opportunities for vulnerable women, women's rights activists say MAZAR-I-SHARRIF, 16 July 2008 (IRIN) - High food prices, drought, unemployment and lack of socio-economic opportunities are pushing some women and young girls in northern Afghanistan into commercial sex work, women’s rights activists and several affected women told IRIN. “I have no way of feeding my children other than by doing this disgusting job,” said 27-year-old Nasima (not her real name), a commercial sex worker in Balkh Province. Clad in a blue `burqa’, Najiba, a sex worker in Mazar-i-Sharrif, the provincial capital of Balkh Province, said she had been pushed into sex work after food prices started rising dramatically in November 2007. “I am a widow and I have to feed my five children. I am illiterate and no one will give me a job. I hate to be a prostitute but if I stop doing this job my children will starve to death,” Najiba told IRIN. Most women who turn to sex work are illiterate widows who lack professional skills to find alternative employment, according to Malalai Usmani, head of a local women's rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Balkh. “Extreme poverty and the obligation to feed their dependents have increased prostitution among women,” Usmani said. Severe penalties In Afghanistan sexual relations between a man and a woman outside marriage are considered a serious crime and offenders can face death penalty and/or a lengthy prison sentence, depending on their marital status and other circumstances. Every year hundreds of female sex workers are sent to prison for allegedly having “unlawful sexual relationships”, according to women’s rights activists such as Usmani. “This [sex work] is an abhorrent deed and an appalling crime. We encourage and help security forces to arrest and punish women involved in prostitution,” said Fariba Majid, director of the Women’s Affairs Department in Balkh Province. Majid acknowledged that many female sex workers have no other option, but warned that the country’s Islamic laws and conservative culture meant prostitution was “unacceptable”. Sex workers are also exposed to stigma and discrimination. “We cannot live in one place for long,” said a middle-aged sex worker who refused to be identified. “We move as soon as local people become suspicious of us.” “People will spit on us and no one will interact with us if they know about our work,” she added. Photo: Parwin Arizo/IRIN Most sex workers are unaware of the risk of sexually transmittable diseases and HIV, health workers say Poor HIV/AIDS awareness Afghanistan launched its first ever national HIV/AIDS control programme in 2003. At least 436 HIV/AIDS cases have been confirmed over the past five years, according to the Ministry of Public Health. Health specialists warn that sex workers, intravenous drug users, truck drivers and other vulnerable groups have very little knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases and preventive measures. At least three female sex workers interviewed by IRIN said they paid no attention to HIV, and had not used condoms to avoid infection and/or the spread of the virus. “I don’t know about HIV/AIDS,” said a female sex worker who preferred anonymity. “I have not seen any of my clients using a condom.” Saif-ur-Rehman, director of the National HIV/AIDS Control Programme in Kabul, said there was a widespread lack of awareness about sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among commercial sex workers. “We will launch a project to boost awareness and introduce preventive measures among sex workers hopefully in September [2008],” Rehman told IRIN, adding that the distribution of free condoms would be part of the project. “It’s a very sensitive project and we will try to avoid misconceptions that it supports or encourages prostitution in Afghanistan.”