Current Projects
Afghanistan’s First Privately Financed Power Plant Generates Promise
Countries with a recent history of war and violence are used to making headlines, but it’s rarely for reasons that citizens and their leaders would hope for. That might be finally starting to change in Afghanistan, a country that has experienced three decades of continuous conflict. The Mazar Independent Power Plant (IPP), supported by IFC and private sector participants, makes news for all the right reasons. The 50-megawatt plant is expected to supply electricity to around 1 million Afghans and boost the country’s domestic power generation by 20 to 30 percent. The project will also result in the creation of almost 200 direct and many more indirect jobs. In addition, the Mazar IPP will be the first private power project to use domestically produced natural gas—a clean-burning and affordable fuel source with less than half the carbon emissions of coal. The plant is expected to pave the way for greater collaboration between the Afghan government and the private sector to develop key infrastructure. Start of operations in 2019 will mark the first time a power plant in Afghanistan is fully financed, designed, built, and operated by the private sector. POWER COMES TO A FRAGILE COUNTRY Increasing access to basic public services—electricity foremost among them—will be a major achievement for Afghanistan, which imported an estimated 80 percent of its electricity last year. The recently signed agreement, brokered by IFC, sets out the main terms under which the Ghazanfar Group, the leading private Afghan conglomerate developing the plant, will be contracted to build, own, and operate the gas-fired power plant near the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. It will sell electricity over the next 20 years to Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat, the country’s national utility company. Private investment in Afghanistan’s power generation sector will change the situation many Afghans face today. Less than half of the country’s population have access to electricity, and up to 90 percent of Afghan...
Afghan Weekly (Oct 29 – Nov 5, 2016)
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in its 33rd quarterly report to Congress, revealed that "Of Afghanistan's 407 districts, 258 districts were under government control (88 districts) or influence (170), 33 districts were under insurgent control (8) or influence (25), and 116 districts were 'contested.'"[1] Last week on October 23, the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics and the UNODC released its Afghanistan Opium Survey which reported a rise of 43 per cent in the illicit production of opium in Afghanistan in 2016, compared with the 2015 levels. The area under opium poppy cultivation had also increased to 201,000 hectares (ha) in 2016, a rise of 10 per cent compared with 183,000 ha in 2015.[2] As Taliban have advanced their control across Afghanistan, the Afghan government’s challenges have doubled. This week’s update on Afghanistan’s security, economy, governance, international engagements, socio-economic development and other issues follows below. A Security Overview: Daesh, Taliban and Afghan Security Forces & Security Operations Rising Daesh Activity in Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan The deputy speaker of the Wolesi Jirga, Zahir Qadir, on October 29, stated that "They [Daesh] have taken control of a very sensitive and strategic area. They have decided to enter Tora Bora and if they enter Tora Bora, they will build a Khorasan caliphate." Washington also warned that Daesh after being suppressed in Iraq and Syria is trying to find its footprint in other areas where there is little government control. "As it is chocked off in places like Iraq and Syria, that it is trying to as I said create affiliates or to establish itself in other ungoverned spaces and as much as we see that, (we) will take action to take out senior leadership of these groups," said U.S State Department spokesman Mark Toner. Meanwhile, Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said: "The air and ground operations and commando operations are ongoing...
Afghanistan Itself Is Now Taking In the Most Afghan Migrants
"By the end of the year, officials expect some 1.5 million migrants to return to Afghanistan — many of them forcibly, and including some registered as refugees." There is one country in the world that is now taking in more Afghan migrants than all the countries in Europe and South Asia put together this year. That would be Afghanistan itself. By the end of the year, aid officials here expect some 1.5 million migrants to return to Afghanistan — many of them forcibly, and including some officially registered as refugees. Some will come from Europe, which has recently signed a deal with Afghanistan to return tens of thousands of migrants who were not granted asylum. A far larger number are being forced back by Iran and, particularly, Pakistan, where the United Nations says there are 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees and an additional 700,000 undocumented Afghans. Many Afghans report that concerted harassment and discrimination by the Pakistani authorities have become too much to bear. And Pakistan has flatly given Afghans a Nov. 15 deadline to obtain legal documents like passports and visas — a near impossibility for most — or they will face arrest and deportation, which could lead to even greater numbers leaving Pakistan in the coming weeks. The last straw for Ghulamullah, a father of 10 who had sons in Pakistani schools and one married to a Pakistani woman, was when a soldier entered his house with a dog. “I came to Pakistan to save my honor and my religion,” he said, “but I see there is no more honor in Pakistan. The Pakistani Army gave me 15 days to leave.” He has now settled in a camp near Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. Official or unofficial, many of the Afghans had lived abroad for decades, and they are returning to a country where the war is at its most traumatic since 2001. And as they come back, they are redrawing the demographic map of a region that has long been defined by its displaced population and where cities are already straining to deal...
Why is the gender gap widening in Pakistan?
The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report has ranked Pakistan at 143 out of 144 countries surveyed. The disparity represents a systemic and historical disadvantage for women in Pakistani society. According to the report released last week by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Pakistan is ranked even lower than it was 10 years ago. The reasoning behind this is based on Pakistani women being systematically denied access to important social facilities that determine the gender gap ranking. These include education, health, economic opportunities and political empowerment. In the past, Pakistan was put under pressure by the international community to address gender inequality. In 1979, Pakistan established the Ministry for Women's Development in response to recommendations from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This ministry facilitated women's access to education, health, legal services and ensured their placement in provincial and national legislatures. It also set up services like credit facilities for women, study and computer centers, child care and hostels for working women. Nothing but good intentions These steps indeed helped women, but because of the patriarchal nature of the society and religious backlash, they never became a normal part of Pakistan's social structure and political system. Even when Pakistan had a female chief executive, Pakistan's women never felt that they had a representative in the prime minister's house. And after the dissolution of the Ministry for Women's Development in 2010, these initiatives were left at the mercy of provincial governments. According to former federal secretary Rukhsana Shah, the initiatives were lacking political will. "They did not appear to have the capacity to develop an alternative narrative to the rampant obscurantism proliferating throughout the country," she said. Taking the gender gap seriously Shahida Jameel was the first woman to be appointed as the Federal Minister of Law, Justice, and...
Kafka in Cuba: New AAN report on The Afghan Experience in Guantánamo
Afghans make up more than a quarter of the inmates ever held at Guantánamo Bay, the largest national grouping among United States ‘war on terror’ detainees taken to Cuba. Most were picked up in the early years of the US-led military intervention when US forces carried out mass, arbitrary detentions of Afghans. In a major new report, AAN’s Kate Clark looks at the Afghan experience in Guantánamo, honing in on the cases of eight of the longest-serving Afghan detainees. Five are still in Cuba, while three were transferred to the United Arab Emirates in August where they are believed still to be in some form of detention. She finds the Afghans’ documents to contain outlandish errors of fact, bad translations, testimony obtained under torture, fantastical allegations and cases based on hearsay and unverified intelligence reports. Reading through the files of the eight Afghans still in Cuba at the start of 2016 is to enter a Kafkaesque world. None of the eight were detained on the battlefield – six were handed over by Pakistan or Afghan forces and two were detained after tip-offs from unknown sources. Instead, intelligence forms the basis for all the detentions and that intelligence is threadbare. The US military gets dates wrong, provinces wrong, mixes up non-belligerent groups and jihadists and reaches back to make ahistorical allegations – assuming bin Laden had set up al Qaeda a decade before he did, or deciding association with Hezb-e Islami in the 1980s (when it was part of the mujahidin fighting the Soviet occupation and, incidentally, America’s favourite faction) is proof of malign intent in the 2000s. Three of the detainees had associations with the mass, quietest, missionary organisation Tablighi Jamaat; the US holds that as proof of terrorist intent, even though the organisation is anti-jihadist, believing that now is not the time for fighting (jihad),but for preaching (dawa) and persuading Muslims to live better lives. Thousands of Afghans (the exact figure...
At least We aren’t Turkey
Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan gleefully greeted Imran Khan’s decision to shelve his Nov 2 ‘lockdown’ plans of Islamabad with a “no winners or losers today” declaration. “Today Pakistan has won… Pakistan’s win is in peace, democracy, rule of law and reliance on our institutions.” For his part, Imran Khan declared a moral victory, fruition of two decades of struggle against the corrupt status quo, as he puts it. Nisar in theory was right. In practice, his statement was quite short, hitting on all four catchwords: peace, democracy, rule of law and reliance on institutions. But, ironically, the federal government’s response to Imran Khan’s threat went against the spirit of these very words. The “container” response to the PTI lockdown, the relentless shelling on the motorway to prevent Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak from entering Islamabad, the mockery of the rule of law by erecting barriers on roads leading to the national capital, and the excessive brutal deployment of the Punjab police to contain PTI zealots. No judge, journalist, general or rival business is in jail, unlike in Turkey, where President Erdogan, an apparent inspiration for Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, has persisted with mass purges of perceived rivals and sympathisers of Fethullah Gülen. On October 29 alone, his administration fired at least 1,267 academics from universities across Turkey, dismissed 4,719 military officers, 3,640, judges and prosecutors Why has it all happened? Dear friend Mosharraf Zaidi sums it up: “The obduracy of the prime minister in mishandling the Panama Papers issue from day one—and thereby smothering his government with the toxin of opacity. The questions that the leaks from the Mossack Fonseca’s files have raised are not trivial. They go to the heart of the most basic and fundamental principles of fiduciary responsibility in executive offices in a democracy. In short, no country can afford to have its top leaders and their families embroiled in financial...
Report: US has given Pakistan $33 billion in Economic and Security Assistance, including Coalition Support Funds as part of the Afghanistan Operational Budget, since 2002
Since 2002, the United States has provided Pakistan with additional economic and humanitarian assistance, totaling more than $11 billion that are neither specifically security-related, in or part of the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget that is used for Pakistan. While it is arguable that some of that US economic and humanitarian aid is used for security purposes, or is used to deal with the refugees and food insecurity caused by fighting in the border region, I do not count this assistance as part of the war effort and report here only the CRS numbers for security assistance. It is also plausible that most of that money — beyond that used for disaster assistance — would not have gone to Pakistan absent a war since the US was giving little or no aid to Pakistan prior to the 9/11 attacks. All told, Pakistan has received about $33 billion in economic and security assistance, including Coalition Support Funds as part of the Afghanistan operational budget, since 2002. There are three ways the US operates in Pakistan: Since 2001, the US has used Pakistan as an overland route for supplies to Afghanistan. The United States reimburses and compensates Pakistan for the use of its ports and overland transportation of food, fuel and military equipment through Pakistan en route to Afghanistan with Coalition Support Funds, which are included in the budget for OCO in Afghanistan. Since the start of the war in Afghanistan, the US provided about $15 billion in Coalition Support Funds to Pakistan. The Department of Defense describes the role of Coalition Support Funds as reimbursement for "expenses Pakistan incurs to conduct operations against al Qaeda and Taliban forces include providing logistical support for its forces, manning observation posts along the Afghanistan border, and conducting maritime interdiction operations and combat air patrols."[i] Pakistan is a zone of US military operations, including drone strikes and cross‐border attacks, against Al Qaeda, the...
China Willing to Finance Pakistan’s Portion of IP Pipeline
With Iran coming out of decades-long global economic isolation, China has offered Pakistan that it was willing to finance the un-built portion of a multibillion-dollar gas pipeline project. Officials told The Express Tribune that the China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPPB) – currently engaged with the $1.4 billion Gwadar-Nawabshah LNG terminal and pipeline project – was keen to work on the remaining portion of the gas pipeline from Gwadar to the Iranian border to implement the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project. China was providing 85% of the total financing for the LNG pipeline project and wanted to emulate the same model for building the remaining portion of the pipeline from Gwadar up to the Iranian border. The IP gas pipeline project had been stalled due to international curbs against Tehran. But soon after lifting of the sanctions, the United States had imposed certain sanctions against Tehran that were hindering the implementation of the IP gas pipeline project. Officials said China had also expressed its desire to work on the remaining portion of the 80km pipeline from Gwadar to connect it with the Iranian border. China was lobbying to award the contract of this portion as per the cost decided for the Gwadar LNG pipeline. A senior government official said Pakistan was working on LNG import projects but LNG supply was not a secured source because in case of war, this supply source could be halted. He said this was the reason why the IP project was considered to be an essential as well as strategic project for Pakistan. “In case of some interruption in the supply of LNG, Pakistan will be able to get gas supply through the IP pipeline,” the official added. The other reason was that prices of steel and other material for gas pipelines had dropped over the years. During the last PPP government, Iran had decided to lay the IP pipeline by nominating an Iranian company. Iran had also pledged $500 million financing for the project. The offer of the Iranian company...
Indian Poverty Levels Higher Than Pakistan 's, Says UN Report
India, the world's second fastest growing economy, has been ranked as poorer than its blighted enemy Pakistan in a United Nations report on global poverty. The report also finds more 'gender equality' in conservative Pakistan than in 'tolerant' India. Its findings amount to a wake-up call for a nation which has taken great pride in its rapid economic growth and the increasing clout of its billionaire business leaders but has failed to share the spoils with its poor. Britain's Department for Internmational Development has pointed to this chequered progress to justify its continuing aid to India. The Human Development Report reveals that while India ranks slightly above Pakistan in its level of 'human development' – based on life expectancy, schooling and per capita income – its wider poverty level is worse than Pakistan's. In absolute terms, 41.6 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people earned less than 78 pence per day compared with 22.6 per cent of Pakistan's 173 million. The report quotes its 'multi-dimensional poverty index' which includes measures of schooling, child mortality, nutrition, access to electricity, toilets, drinking water, and hygienic living conditions, and reveals India is poorer. It found 53.7 per cent of Indians suffering from this broader kind of poverty, compared with 49 per cent of Pakistanis. More surprisingly, India is ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh on gender equality which reflects maternal death rates, teenage pregnancies, access to education, and the number of women parliamentarians and in the workplace. India's rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said the report highlighted the prevalence of poverty in the midst of economic growth and the possibility that "actually economic development may lead to retrogression of social indices." Priya Subramanian of Save the Children said India's poor ranking reflected a lack of political will to tackle poverty. "It is things like healthcare and education which have India lagging behind...
Indian Poverty Levels Higher Than Pakistan ‘s, Says UN Report
India, the world's second fastest growing economy, has been ranked as poorer than its blighted enemy Pakistan in a United Nations report on global poverty. The report also finds more 'gender equality' in conservative Pakistan than in 'tolerant' India. Its findings amount to a wake-up call for a nation which has taken great pride in its rapid economic growth and the increasing clout of its billionaire business leaders but has failed to share the spoils with its poor. Britain's Department for Internmational Development has pointed to this chequered progress to justify its continuing aid to India. The Human Development Report reveals that while India ranks slightly above Pakistan in its level of 'human development' – based on life expectancy, schooling and per capita income – its wider poverty level is worse than Pakistan's. In absolute terms, 41.6 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people earned less than 78 pence per day compared with 22.6 per cent of Pakistan's 173 million. The report quotes its 'multi-dimensional poverty index' which includes measures of schooling, child mortality, nutrition, access to electricity, toilets, drinking water, and hygienic living conditions, and reveals India is poorer. It found 53.7 per cent of Indians suffering from this broader kind of poverty, compared with 49 per cent of Pakistanis. More surprisingly, India is ranked below Pakistan and Bangladesh on gender equality which reflects maternal death rates, teenage pregnancies, access to education, and the number of women parliamentarians and in the workplace. India's rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said the report highlighted the prevalence of poverty in the midst of economic growth and the possibility that "actually economic development may lead to retrogression of social indices." Priya Subramanian of Save the Children said India's poor ranking reflected a lack of political will to tackle poverty. "It is things like healthcare and education which have India lagging behind...
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I am also a member of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting. Recently, we held a meeting with the Director General of Radio Pakistan and we told them to initiate such local programs (like Constituency Hour) in regional languages to educate and inform people. Even Indian Radio can be heard in FATA which is being used for propaganda purposes and must be closed. Therefore, we should launch some standard and quality programs like CRSS that will change the taste of the listeners.