News list from today's editorial meeting (in no particular order):
-The National Directorate of Security has asked all the media not to report on incidents of violence during the election. No one thinks we should pay any attention to this.
-A TV channel in Baghlan has run an interview with a parliamentary candidate in violation of an election law which prohibits campaigning 48 hours before the election.
-The Ministry of Interior, the Independent Election Commission, the Free and Fair Elections of Afghanistan, the defence ministry, security officials in northern Takhar and Kunduz provinces, southern Kandahar province and the half-brother of the president, Ahmad Wali Karzai, are all having press conferences.
-There will be no voting in two districts of northern Jawzjhan province because of the security situation
-Shamshad TV station has also interviewed an election candidate, but did not ask him anything about the election
-Police and election officials clash in southern Helmand province
-In remote areas of Helmand, IEC workers complain there are no facilities for them
-Weekly economic report (tea up, petrol down)
-11 Taliban surrender in northern Baghdis province
-Regional study centre releases report on US-Afghan relations
-Five construction workers killed by the Taliban in southern Ghazni province
-Taliban to close roads in all districts of Ghazni to prevent people voting
My colleague Naseh was telling me today about his village in Kunar province, in the east, where the mountains are "more green than anywhere else in Afghanistan and the air is so fresh".
His village is in a valley between jungle-clad mountains where Taliban and militants from Hizb-i-Islami (the second biggest insurgent group in Afghanistan) hide out. Every other day there is an attack on a NATO convoy from the mountains.
During the Soviet occupation, Naseh's uncle was a commander in the biggest jihadi group, Jamaat-i-Islami. Naseh's father gave up his own education so that he could pay to put his younger brother, the jihadi commander, through school. Although Jamaat went on to become part of the Northern Alliance which with the help of the US forced the Taliban from power, Naseh's village later allied themselves with the Taliban. The Northern Alliance leadership was mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks and Naseh's villagers were Pashtuns.
An alliance with the Taliban also gave them protection from the HIA with whom Naseh's village and family seem to have some long-term feud.
Today, they try to live in peace, although personal and tribal enmity are as much a problem as the insurgency.
Naseh tells me that on the 20th day of Ramadan (that would be about the end of August), a lawyer who lived in his village was kidnapped by the Gujar tribe, a mountain-living group most of whom are members of the Taliban.
This lawyer, Naseh, says, is not like any of the other provincial lawyers. He does not own an expensive car or an apartment building. He cuts his own firewood and grazes his cows himself.
One day, he was approached by a member of the Gujar tribe who had been accused of stealing some cows. The lawyer was asked to make the case go away in return for a sum of money. The lawyer, who had never taken a bribe in his life, refused and the cow rustler was sent to jail for 4 ½ years. However, because he bribed the judicial department, he spent only one day in detention.
So of course the cow rustler wanted his revenge. And a few days later as the lawyer was travelling to the provincial capital in a minivan, the Gujaris ambushed the vehicle. The tribesmen had rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns, and the lawyer had, according to Naseh, just a pistol. He weighed up the situation, reasoned that he could probably take out one of the Gujaris, but it would mean everyone else in the minivan would die with him. So he gave himself up.
Naseh's villagers were of course enraged. They went to see the district chief and told him they wanted to launch their own rescue attempt. The district chief agreed: "What do you need," he asked them. "Weapons"?
Naseh's villagers declined, not as I thought because they wanted to launch a non-violent rescue, but because they already had their own weapons – everyone has a Kalashnikov.
What they wanted was assurances from the US military that there would be no aerial attacks on the Gujar tribe while they were attacking. The district chief set up a meeting with the US adviser in the district who asked how long it would take to rescue the lawyer.
Two or three days Naseh's villagers estimated, but the US adviser refused, saying that was too long to remove the threat of air strikes.
So Naseh's villagers decided on another tactic.
They set up a road block along the road running down from the mountain past their village and stopped every car, checked every passenger and anyone found to be from the Gujar tribe was detained. In total they detained 10 people,who have spent the past week, including the festival of Eid, in jail.
Over the past week there have been multiple shuras -- tribal councils -- involving tribal elders and religious and village leaders from all districts of Kunar province to try to resolve the issue. Naseh is convinced that the lawyer will be released and in return they will release the 10 Gujaris. You will notice that police were not involved, nor was the central government.
For hundreds of years this is the way that Afghanistan has governed itself, through tribal shuras, negotiation and of course, the Kalashnikov.
