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Afghan Officials Said to Talk Nearly Every Day With Taliban

ISLAMABAD Despite seemingly stalled peace talks between Afghanistan's government and the Taliban, officials say the intelligence chief speaks by telephone with militant leaders nearly every day about the country's constitution and political future.

In addition, Afghanistan's national security adviser has conversations with the Taliban every other month, officials familiar with the efforts said.

The Associated Press has seen documents describing the conversations between the Afghan officials and the Taliban leadership in both Pakistan and the Gulf state of Qatar, where they maintain an office.

While Afghan officials said neither side was ready to agree to public peace talks, the documents revealed details of the issues discussed, including the Taliban's apparent willingness to accept Afghanistan's constitution and future elections.

A senior Afghan security official, who had taken notes on the details of talks, rifled through a black leather-bound book until he came to a list he called "Taliban talking points."

The Afghan security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the Taliban wanted certain amendments to the constitution � although not immediately. They also envisioned an Islamic system of governance in Afghanistan, he said.

Among the Taliban's demands, according to the official:

* They accepted education for boys and girls at all levels, but wanted segregation by gender.

* Women could be employed in all fields, including defense and the judiciary, and they could serve as judges at all levels except the Supreme Court. However, the Taliban wanted constitutional guarantees that a woman could not be president.

* Special courts should be established to oversee thousands of cases that allege land was taken illegally by the rich and powerful in the post-Taliban era. Many of the landowners are former warlords who are now in the government. The Taliban wants the land returned to those from whom it was taken.

* Elections could be held after an interim government is established, with no one affiliated with past governments allowed to serve in the interim administration. The Taliban said all sides could keep areas currently under their control until voting is held.

Afghanistan's Intelligence agency had no comment about the contacts with the Taliban. Officials familiar with the conversations said intelligence chief Masoum Stanikzai has near daily telephone conversations with Taliban leader Abbas Stanikzai, who is not related to him. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

National Security adviser Mohammed Haneef Atmar's office refused requests to comment on reports of his contacts with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar.

"I am confident that these are sincere terms from the Taliban � with the qualification, of course, that in the areas they control they will determine the outcome of the elections � because I have heard variants of them put forward by a range of people from or close to the Taliban," said Anatol Lieven, professor at Georgetown University's campus in Qatar and the author of Pakistan: A Hard Country.

But the path to substantive and public peace negotiations is difficult, he said.

"Apart from anything else, it is difficult to imagine the existing elites [in Kabul] surrendering power and patronage to a neutral government, let alone one that in future would inevitably have to include the Taliban," Lieven said.

Rise to power

The Taliban came to power in 1996 after pushing aside the U.S.-backed mujahedeen fighters who defeated Afghanistan's Communist government. The mujahedeen then turned their weapons on each other, killing thousands of civilians and destroying entire neighborhoods in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Their rule also was marked by widespread corruption.

Under the Taliban, officials imposed a repressive interpretation of Islam that denied education to girls, drove women from the workforce and established harsh punishments like public executions and flogging similar to those carried out in Saudi Arabia. The only countries to recognize the Taliban government were Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

After harboring militants from al-Qaida who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban from power, but the militants have waged an insurgency against the Afghan government since then. The U.S. and NATO have sent thousands of troops to the country in the past 16 years to help the Afghan military fight the Taliban and other militant groups.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia. He said American troops would "fight to win" by attacking enemies, "crushing" al-Qaida, preventing terrorist attacks against Americans and "obliterating" the Islamic State group, whose affiliate has gained a foothold in Afghanistan as the U.S. squeezes the extremists in Syria and Iraq.

But his definition of a win in Afghanistan notably did not include defeating the Taliban. "Someday, after an effective military effort, perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan," Trump said.

Although Trump insisted he would not talk about numbers of troops, he hinted he would embraced the Pentagon's proposal to boost troop numbers by nearly 4,000, augmenting the roughly 8,400 Americans there now.

Deep mistrust

Lieven said he was hopeful that U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster could use the increase authorized by Trump as well as the threat of an increased presence by India "as a way to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table," using their own talking points as a start.

But the Taliban told AP they were not interested in talks.

A member of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, Abdul Hakim Mujahed, who also served as the Taliban's representative at the United Nations during their rule, said there is deep mistrust on both sides.

Mujahed said it is also unlikely the Taliban will enter talks without a guarantee of an eventual troop withdrawal.

"They have moved away from demanding immediate withdrawal but they want a discussion with the Americans on a timetable," he said.

Source: Voice of America

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2 Militants, 8 Indian Police Killed in Year’s Deadliest Kashmir Attack

SRINAGAR, INDIAN-CONTROLLED KASHMIR � Indian security forces in the Kashmir Valley shot dead two militants after an hours-long gun battle for control of a government compound in which eight policemen were also killed, the state's top police official said.

The shootout ensued after the militants stormed into the police camp in Pulwama, a town in southern Kashmir, early on Saturday, SP Vaid, the director general of Jammu and Kashmir police, told reporters in Srinagar.

A search of the camp was continuing, he said.

In a statement to local newspapers, Islamist group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the attack.

It was the deadliest on a state security facility since September last year, when armed militants broke into an army camp in Uri near the Line of Control (LoC) - the de facto border with Pakistan - killing 18 army personnel.

Indian troops have killed 134 militants this year, mostly in the past two months, officials said. Last year's total was 150.

Some 79 militants are believed to have crossed the LoC into Indian Kashmir in July, according to Indian officials.

Separately, India's Border Security Force said on Saturday it killed three Pakistan Rangers in a cross-border exchange of fire.

India accuses Pakistan of training and arming militants and helping them infiltrate across the LoC that divides Kashmir.

Pakistan denies those allegations.

The South Asian neighbors have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Source: Voice of America

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Invisible Taliban Child Brides, Widows Trapped as Sex Slaves

LONDON � Fatima's Taliban husband was so controlling that he refused to allow her to bathe and threatened to burn her face if she dared wear makeup, suspicious that his 12-year-old Afghan wife was trying to make herself attractive to other men.

He would not let her step outside their home in Afghanistan's western Farah Province, even when she fell sick, and beat her for burning her hand baking bread, complaining that her mother had taught her nothing to justify the dowry he paid.

"My father sold me to a man at a time when I didn't know anything about the responsibilities of marriage," she told Reuters in a phone interview from the capital, Kabul, where she and her young daughter are hiding.

"He became my lawful husband and began to rape me and beat me every single day for not consenting [to sex]," said the 18-year-old, who would not give her full name.

Child and forced marriage are outlawed but remain common in Afghanistan, particularly among poor families eager for dowries.

Half of all girls are married by the age of 15.

Among the most invisible victims are the wives of Islamist Taliban hardliners who, when in power, barred women from education and most work and ordered them to wear burqas outside the home, before being overthrown in 2001 by U.S.-led forces.

"Being family members of the most dangerous and ruthless fighters who have plenty of enemies among the people makes it difficult for these women," said Shukria Barakzai, a parliamentarian and women's rights campaigner. "They are treated as sex slaves and left completely helpless."

Agonized, emboldened

When their militant husbands die, life often gets worse for young Taliban brides. Their families are too scared to take them in, society treats them as pariahs, and they risk further violent abuse as unprotected single women.

About a year into their marriage, Fatima's 25-year-old husband � she calls him a "veteran criminal" with stockpiles of ammunition in their home � blew up a police officer and was jailed for 18 years.

He was released in late 2016, after serving just four years � a common phenomenon in Afghanistan, where the Taliban often hold influence over the government.

But he never came home.

His brothers told Fatima they believed he had sacrificed himself in a suicide attack and become a martyr.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, estimates that several hundred women become Taliban widows each year.

"My brother-in-law was planning to force me to marry him and sell my four-year-old daughter to a Taliban commander," she said, referring to the dowry that would be paid for her child.

"This evil plan agonized me and at the same time emboldened me to run away, regardless of the consequences."

Under the pretext of attending a village wedding with her mother-in-law, Fatima ran away with her child.

Her father would not take her in, but her cousins helped her get to Kabul.

"Every one of my in-laws is a Taliban member and they vowed to slay my whole family to bring justice," she said.

To the Taliban, justice means killing Fatima and her family for the shame she brought by running away from home.

Jihadis in training

Zari, another Taliban widow, who was forcibly married at the age of 14, was not so lucky.

Three years after her husband died in a suicide attack, she remains trapped in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, tormented by his cousins who rape her repeatedly and are raising her sons, aged nine and 11, to become jihadis.

The men, who are members of the Taliban, come to the house where she lives with her elderly mother-in-law a couple of times a week to rape her, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone.

"I urge the government to rescue me and my sons as their future is in grave danger," the 26-year-old, who declined to give her real name, said in a phone interview.

"They plan to send both of my sons to Pakistan to participate in jihad. ... They take my elder son for religious indoctrination and training to become a militant like his father."

Neither the government nor rights groups can access Taliban widows living with their in-laws in remote, rebel-controlled territory. Conflict makes it impossible for them to provide for themselves, forcing them to live with their in-laws.

Neither boy goes to school because Zari cannot afford books or uniforms with the money she earns weaving or from her cows.

"I want to escape with my sons, but my family is not ready to accept me and jeopardize themselves," she said, adding that her family did not know they were marrying her into the Taliban.

Afghanistan has about 5 million widows, said a spokeswoman for the women's affairs ministry, Kobra Rezai. It can only afford to provide about 100,000 of them with about $100 a month in financial support and skills training, she said.

None are Taliban widows.

The government does not want to be seen to be supporting them, Rezai said, a position condemned by Barakzai, the parliamentarian.

"Circumstances push [Taliban widows] into a precarious position and compel them to continue their lives as sex slaves in the hands of Taliban," she said. "Even their children have no way out of this vicious trap."

Source: Voice of America

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