Massacre in Kandahar: A United States Army Sergeant on Sunday walked a mile from his base to go on a shooting rampage in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province, murdering 16 Afghan civilians, nine of whom were children (NYT, Reuters, CNN, Post, WSJ, BBC, LAT, AP). President Hamid Karzai called the attack an "inhuman and intentional act," as U.S. officials scrambled to find out how the incident happened. The sergeant is reportedly a father of two on his fourth tour of duty, after three in Iraq, and came from Washington state's Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which was also the home base of three soldiers convicted in 2010 of the sport killings of three Afghan civilians (NYT, AP). Coming just weeks after the accidental burning of Qurans by NATO troops sparked deadly protests across the country, the murders not only complicate the U.S. withdrawal strategy as allies and Afghans alike lose confidence in the NATO mission, but may also fuel the Taliban's campaign against NATO soldiers there (AP, NYT, CNN, Post, Politico, Bloomberg).

A delegation of Afghan government officials visited the U.S. military facility at Guantánamo Bay last Monday, where the top five Taliban leaders held there told the officials that they would agree to being moved to Qatar, though the United States has yet to make a decision on the transfer (AP, AJE, BBC, Reuters, AFP, Reuters). Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool will reportedly travel to Qatar sometime in the next ten days to speak to government officials there about reconciliation with the Taliban (Reuters). German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Afghanistan on Monday for a surprise visit to German troops in Mazar-i-Sharif, where she told reporters that Germany is not sure it will be able to pull out all of its troops by the 2014 NATO withdrawal deadline (AP, AFP, Reuters).   

Afghanistan has opened its first major railroad, and has several others in the works via partnerships with China, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Turkmenistan, part of a plan to encourage trade with neighboring countries (AP). Railways were banned by an Afghan king over one hundred years ago for fear of being overrun by the competing British and Russian empires. The AP's Deb Reichmann reported Saturday on the many families of Afghans buried in a massive avalanche in the remote village of Daspai, where the United Nations said 145 are missing and "presumed dead" (AP, AFP). And another avalanche buried two more remote villages in eastern Afghanistan's Nuristan Province on Monday, trapping as many as 45 people in the snow (BBC, AP).

Rising anti-Americanism and deteriorating security in Afghanistan, along with President Karzai's mandate to ban private security firms by March, have left private aid organizations questioning whether they should stay in the country (NYT). If the groups decide to leave, Afghanistan could lose development projects worth billions of dollars.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in the middle of a funeral procession on Sunday in the outskirts of Peshawar, killing at least 15 and injuring dozens more (ET, Dawn, Tel, AFP, Reuters, CNN, AP). The Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for the blast, stating that the target had been the anti-Taliban Deputy Speaker of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Khushdil Khan - who was unhurt. Police in Peshawar said Monday that they had foiled another attack on Friday when they received a tip about a suspicious car and found it loaded with explosives (ET). 

At least two people were killed and 17 injured when a bomb exploded next to a bus on Monday in Pakistan's Kurram Agency, where the military has been carrying out intensive operations against militants since the beginning of the year (Reuters). The Taliban claimed responsibility for killing the leader of a pro-government militia leader on Friday, and a security official was killed Monday by a homemade explosive device placed at a check post in Mohmand Agency (ET, ET, Dawn). In Balochistan, meanwhile, six pro-government tribesmen were ambushed and killed by suspected insurgents on Saturday (ET).

Around 60 militants were killed Saturday in two separate operations in Khyber and Orakzai Agencies. A day before that, U.S. drone strikes targeting a militant hideout and a vehicle killed 14 militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan (CNN, AFP, BBC, AP). On Monday, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik invited militant groups to hold peace talks with the government, saying groups will be delisted from the government's list of banned organizations if they "closed down their militant wings" (ET, AFP). And the AP's Kathy Gannon reported Saturday on the growing feeling within the Pakistani military that its sacrifices and hard work go unappreciated by the West, where authorities often call on Pakistan to "do more" in the fight against militants (AP).

New boss

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Friday appointed a new head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Lt. Gen. Zaheer-ul-Islam, who replaces the three-and-a-half-year veteran ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha (Reuters, NYT,Dawn, ET, CNN, AJE, Post, Tel, LAT, The News). Gen. Islam's appointment maintains some continuity at the ISI, as he previously headed the directorate's domestic operations, and may improve the intelligence agency's ties with its U.S. counterpart, which had seen its relationship with Gen. Pasha deteriorate recently.

Meanwhile, former ISI chief Asad Durrani admitted to Pakistan's Supreme Court on Friday that he had distributed millions of dollars to opposition politicians on the orders of then-chief of the Army Mirza Aslam Beg, in an effort to defeat the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in the elections of 1990 (Guardian, ET, McClatchy, Dawn, DT, The News, AP). And Prime Minister Gilani said Sunday that the parliament is responsible for his decision not to write a letter to Swiss authorities asking them to reinstate a corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari, because the legislators approved a constitution that gives the president immunity (Dawn, ET, DT).

Girl power

Pakistani native Shad Begum was one of ten women activists to receive the 2012 International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. government last Thursday (Dawn). Begum has provided political training, microcredit financing, education, and health services to women in the conservative Lower Dir District through an organization she founded called the Association for Behavior and Knowledge Transformation. 

-- Jennifer Rowland

We can work it out

The United States and numerous other countries pledged continued economic and political support to Afghanistan after 2014 during today's conference at Bonn, on the 10-year anniversary of the first Bonn conference, which laid the groundwork for a post-Taliban Afghanistan (AP, Tel, AFP, CNN). Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked the nearly 1,000 delegates for financial support through the next decade, as the German newspaper Bild, citing German intelligence reports, suggested this weekend that Karzai plans on staying in power past the end of his second term in 2014 (Tel, BBC, Post, Reuters, AFP, Tel). Many observers and Afghans were skeptical this weekend about the prospects that real progress would be made at the conference, as Pakistan reiterated its pledge to boycott (McClatchy, BBC, WSJ, DW, AJE, Reuters, AFP, Dawn, AFP, ET, Reuters, DW). Bonus read: Bonn, 10 Years On - an FP Roundtable (FP).

The conference takes place as the American and Afghan governments continue to negotiate a long-term partnership agreement, one the Times suggests today is being delayed as Afghanistan pushes for an end to controversial "night raids" by Special Operations Forces (NYT). Julian Borger reports that NATO forces are planning a two-year push into eastern Afghanistan, including aggressive efforts to target militant sanctuaries and perhaps even Special Forces raids across the border into Pakistan (Guardian). And the Monitor follows a detachment of Marines after an offensive into Helmand's Kajaki Valley (CSM).

Iran claims it shot down an RQ-170 stealth drone this weekend, as American forces said the drone may have been an aircraft that disappeared over Afghanistan near the border with Iran last week (Post, Guardian, WSJ, LAT, CNN). Iranian officials have not yet produced evidence of the drone, known informally as the "Beast of Kandahar."

Three stories round out the Afghanistan news: The Telegraph reports that nearly 350 Afghan women remain imprisoned for "moral crimes," about half of the country's female prison population (Tel). Thirty Pakistanis are still being detained at the prison at Bagram, out of nearly 2,400 inmates (Dawn). And the AP reveals that as many as 2.6 million people are at risk of hunger as Afghanistan's north faces its worst drought in decades (AP).

It's not you, it's me

President Barack Obama telephoned his Pakistani counterpart President Asif Ali Zardari Sunday to express his "condolences" for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers last week in a U.S. airstrike in Mohmand, an attack that Obama told Zardari was not deliberate (CNN, Guardian, WSJ, AFP, ET). Pakistan has reportedly refused to take part in a joint investigation of the incident, as the Telegraph on Saturday spoke to Pakistani officials who said Pakistani officers who approved the strike were given incorrect target coordinates by their American interlocutors (Tel, NYT, CBS/AP, ET, Reuters, WSJ, Tel). U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told a Pakistani TV station this weekend that U.S. personnel were leaving Shamsi airbase in Balochistan (AP, Dawn, ET, DT). Karen DeYoung and Karin Brulliard discuss the succession of Pakistan-U.S. crises this year, while the Tribune reports that Pakistan will likely "redraw" it's anti-terrorism relationship with the United States (Post, ET, Tel). Bonus read: Daud Khattak, "Calling Pakistan's boycott bluff" (FP).

Pakistani-American "citizen diplomat" Mansoor Ijaz, who is at the center of the "Memogate" scandal that has shaken Pakistan's civilian government, claimed this weekend that Zardari and former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani knew in advance of the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden on May 2 and even gave the raid a "green light" (Daily Beast, ET, CSM). Both Haqqani and the White House denied Ijaz's claims, while Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said this weekend that Ijaz was trying to "destabilize Pakistan" (Dawn, ET, ET). And former senior investigator and police officer Tariq Khosa, Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry's choice to head the judicial investigation into the "Memogate" incident, declined Friday (ET). Bonus read: Peter Bergen and Andrew Lebovich, "What's behind the furor in Pakistan?" (FP).

The AP reports that the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has splintered in recent years, and is now short on cash and split between 100 different groups (AP). Security is being beefed up in Pakistan in advance of the upcoming Shi'a holy day of Ashura, usually marked by large processions that have been attacked in the past by Sunni militants (ET, Dawn, ET, Dawn, ET). And a Pakistani-born Virginia man, Jubair Ahmad, pleaded guilty Friday to producing and uploading a propaganda video on behalf of the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (AP, Reuters, AFP, DT).

Five stories finish off the weekend: Pakistani film star Veena Malik is threatening to sue the Indian edition of FHM magazine, after they ran nude photos purportedly of Malik with "ISI" tattoed on her arm, photos that caused an uproar in Pakistan and that Malik says were doctored (BBC, WSJ, AP, ET). Pakistan has called on Australia to sell it uranium after the country's parliament lifted a ban on selling to India this weekend (BBC). Pakistani Finance Minister Hafeez Shaikh said this weekend that the Pakistani government has spent nearly Rs1 trillion ($1.1 billion) in the last four years to cover electricity subsidies and the losses suffered by the country's state-run power companies (Dawn). The United Nations said this weekend that a secret American effort to obtain Osama bin Laden's DNA through a fake vaccination drive has hurt efforts to eradicate polio in Pakistan, making it harder for health workers to operate in key areas (WSJ). And Pakistan has issued 25 hunting permits for the rare Houbara bustard, which can only be hunted by falcons, to notables from the Arabian Peninsula (Dawn).

Wild kingdom

An unusual effort to bring stability to Afghanistan is being led by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is training Afghans to preserve their unique environment and many of the rare species that live there (NYT). Afghanistan sits at the juncture of three distinct "biogeographic regions" and nearly 80 percent of Afghans rely on natural resources to survive.

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On 5 October 2001, the London Evening Standard reported that a veteran commander of the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad was calling for then-U.S. President George W. Bush's imminent bombing campaign of Afghanistan to be delayed. The commander, whose name was Abdul Haq, needed time, he said, to implement his plan for an internal, peaceful toppling of the Taliban.

‘Every time I meet commanders who cross the mountains in darkness to brief me,' he said, ‘they are part of the Taliban forces, but they no longer support them.  These men will join us and there are many of them. When the time is right they and others will rise up and this Taliban Government will be swept aside.' 

Haq went on to add:  "The people are starving, they are already against [the Taliban]."

But his voice, so authoritative when visiting President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to call for more support to the mujahideen during the Soviet war, was barely heard in the aftermath of September 11. The bombing started, and Abdul Haq began his perilous mission. Two weeks later, on 25 October 2001, he was dead. 

In November 2001, after his death, Abdul Haq's obituaries were dismissive, even overtly condemning. Not only was the manner of his death questioned, but so too was his life and, implicit to that, his ‘value.'  When the New York Times described him demeaningly as "a middle aged man on a mule" or a "privately financed freelancer trying to overthrow the Taliban" the implication was that there should be nothing to regret about his loss. In London, an unattributed piece in Private Eye added snidely, "Like so many erstwhile terrorists, Haq managed to reinvent himself as a ‘moderate' and a ‘peacemaker' -- so successfully that his murderous exploits were entirely omitted from every single obituary." 

Other pieces begged to differ and one, written by a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. Diplomat to Afghanistan, had a different take on the story:

To hear them talk in Washington and Islamabad, you'd think there was some doubt. In fact, you'd think his death no great loss. Listen carefully. It's scared talk, the kind of stuff you hear from bureaucrats whose backsides are exposed.

Abdul Haq, they rush to insist, was on a mission of his own. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Either way, it's shameful to demean him.

He added:

There is some doubt about how the man died and where and when. We know he was ‘questioned' and then executed. But was it by hanging with his body then used for swaying small-arms target practice, or was he shot in cold blood in a prison courtyard? It was in eastern Afghanistan -- but Jalalabad or Kabul?  It was two weeks ago -- but late Thursday or early Friday? There's some doubt about who sent him and who betrayed him. There could even be confusion about his name were it not so well known: 

‘Born Hamayoun Arsala 44 years ago, he became "Abdul Haq" -- Servant of Justice -- in the crucible of our Cold War's most decisive battleground.'

***

Kabul, January 2004

Towards the end of January 2004, I finally met the Taliban's Deputy Interior Minister, Mullah Khaksar. It was his boss, the Taliban Interior Minister, Mullah Razzaq, who had apparently given the orders for Haq to be killed.

The family told me that Khaksar had visited Haq in Peshawar after September 11 and helped him with his plan to overthrow the Taliban, intending to work with Haq in forming a broad-based government. The plan was for Khaksar to work with Khan Mir, another of Haq's jihadi commanders, in Kabul as Haq went into Afghanistan from the East on his mission. The two would work on turning over several divisions of the Interior Ministry. In the event though, Haq had been killed and captured before the fall of Kabul.  

Khaksar had apparently turned himself over to the Karzai government following the routing of the Taliban and was now hiding out in a "safe house." At this stage there was still no Taliban Reconciliation Program.

I hooked up with my interpreter, Hanif and we headed in the direction of Khair Khana on a cold January day, the air thick with a winter freeze. Eventually we arrived at a rundown suburban house, stepped into a concrete hallway and were shown into a curtained room. The Mullah sat there alone. He had a shaggy dark beard, a voluminous dark grey turban and dark, spaniel-shaped eyes. I could see my breath in the cold air and was relieved when a young man arrived to stoke the bukhari stove heater and bring us green tea and nuts. 

Khaksar's dark looks were utterly incongruous with his quiet, high-pitched voice and the phone which periodically jingled ‘happy birthday' from inside his salwar kameez. After some explanations of who I was, I asked whether, given the current situation, it might have been better for many members of the Taliban if Haq had not been killed?

Khaksar replied, "At the last days the friends of Abdul Haq in the Interior Ministry practically began a war. We were ready to act" he said, telling me Haq had wanted a broad-based government, like himself.   Later, he had stayed at the Arsala house in Peshawar and spoken with Haq's brothers Haji din Mohammad and Haji Qadir. He told me that he had known the regime would collapse two years before it did. I asked why Mullah Razzaq had wanted Haq dead and Khaksar said:

He used his competence as it was an emergency situation. But he also said that, at this time, the Taliban still did not believe they would lose their power. They thought, rather naively, that Afghans would rise up against the foreign invaders in their support. They executed [Haq] as they thought the USA would rescue him and then he'd stand against the Taliban again. But the act [of killing Haq] was against human rights law and [Islamic] law. As he was killed without a fight and without a trial. 

As to why the Taliban had killed Haq so fast, he said:

If he was alive and his programme had been a success, then from my point of view he would now be President of Afghanistan...If they had put him in jail the people would have been rising up and pushing for a revolution. 

Again, his phone tinkled ‘happy birthday' from somewhere deep within his salwar kameez. Fixing me with his bottomless dark eyes he added, "A lot of people supported his plan, even in Khost, Paktia, Gardez and throughout Afghanistan." 

These were the same places one of Haq's British supporters, nobleman and famed Afghan war photographer Sir John Gunston, had mentioned as being the backbone of the Taliban's hold over the south: the places which had fallen due to Haq's commanders and the willingness of the people who were fed up with the regime.  Not due to some ‘secret deals' made by MI6 -- as asserted in the British press -- who had been nowhere to be seen when help was needed.

His comments echoed Gunston's assessment of the sad irony that, in Kabul, Abdul Haq had been deemed a threat to the Taliban, yet in Washington and London, those charged with knowing better were just blithely unaware. I asked Khaksar if it was too late to include moderate Taliban in the government. "Yes of course," he snapped. "But if not 100 percent fruitful, it could be 20 percent at least." It was a short interview. He had people to see, but he agreed to meet again the next day to talk more about the circumstances surrounding Haq's death.

Lucy Morgan Edwards is a former Political Advisor to the EU Ambassador in Kabul and author of The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, the CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan, from which the above passages are derived.

By mid-2008, the local branches of the Tehrik-i-TalibanPakistan (TTP) had forced out Pakistani security forces and taken power inlarge portions of Mohmand and Bajaur, the northernmost of the FederallyAdministered Tribal Areas (FATA). For three years the militant group exercisedopen territorial control, levying taxes and administering its own brand ofjustice in the mountainous areas along the Afghan border. Pakistani militaryoperations aimed at destroying the TTP insurgency came in regular cycles, yeteach declaration of success was followed by the swift resurgence of militantpower. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled the violence to reside inInternally Displaced Person (IDP) camps or with family members elsewhere inPakistan.

Recently, however, the tide in Mohmand and Bajaur has turneddecisively in the Pakistani military's favor. For the first time in four years,militants have lost the territory they once openly controlled. Whether the tideturns back, or whether these tribal areas even matter given the largerchallenges Pakistan faces, is another question entirely.

Information from the FATA is scarce, as few independentreporters are fearless enough to venture into the area, and their number isdwindling. Over coffee in Islamabad last February, Asia Times Online's SyedSaleem Shahzad told me, "journalist access in the tribal areas is difficultnow, you need strong contacts with the government, the locals, and also withthe militants." Tragically, three months later Shahzad's body was found dumpedin a canal southeast of the capital. Many blamethe Pakistani security services for his death, and interpret his killing asintended to intimidate the Pakistani media.

Given that the military's public relations wing possesses anear-monopoly on information coming out of the FATA, it is no wonder thatrecent declarations of victory over the TTP in Mohmand and Bajaur have gonelargely unnoticed. Military announcements now fall on deaf ears, as U.S.policymakers, not to mention the Pakistani public, have become jaded by earlierdeclarations of success that later proved meaningless. In this informationvacuum the best indicator that security has truly improved is the sustainedreturn of IDPs to their homes.

In June 2011, the Pakistani government declared the entirety of Bajaur safe for IDPreturn, with the soleexception being Loi Sam, a market town flattened by Pakistani airstrikes in2008. Jalozai camp near Peshawar has been emptied of tens of thousands of IDPs,many of them families who fledBajaur two or three years prior and are only now returning home.Additionally, of the two camps established tohouse Mohmand IDPs, Danish Kol is empty and Nahakki camp is nearly so. Whilethe government has attempted to coerce IDPs to return to their home areas inthe past, this has had only limited results, as IDPs have shown they are morethan willing to flee insecure areas once again if the security problems havenot been resolved. In this context, it is remarkable that IDPs have stayed putsince their return to Mohmand and Bajaur earlier in the year.

The paramilitary Frontier Corps, backed by the army, hasreestablished its presence in troubled hotspots along the border, including theChamarkand, Nawagai, and Mamund areas of Bajaur, and the Lakaro, Khwezai andBezai areas of Mohmand. Local tribal militias, referred to as "PeaceCommittees" or lashkars, receive nominal government support to police theirvillages, supplementing the established Khassadarand paramilitary forces whose membership is culled from the local populations.The TTP no longer openly patrols the roads and villages, replaced instead bygovernment checkpoints.

Though they no longer control territory in the area, theinsurgency has by no means vanished. Some fighters have chosen to lay low,putting down their weapons and returning to agrarian life, at least for now.Others, including the militant leadership, have fled across the border into theinsecure Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan. Just as North and South Waziristanhave served as a safe haven for Afghanistan-focused militants such as theHaqqani Network, the mountainous borderlands of Eastern Afghanistan are nowfunctioning as safe havens for militants expelled from North FATA by thePakistani state.

Lack of territory inside Pakistan has not prevented theBajaur and Mohmand TTP from continuing their campaigns of terror andintimidation, however. Pro-government tribal leaders have been assassinated,Frontier Corps checkposts attacked in cross-border raids, and most recently 30teenagers were kidnappedin the Mamund area of Bajaur. Faqir Mohammed, the leader of the Bajaur TTP, hasreestablishedan illegal radio station and is again broadcasting propaganda along theborder. Local militants who agreedto cease attacks against the state in return for amnesty could easilymobilize again if the TTP appears poised to retake control of the borderlands.

Meanwhile, sectarian violence in the nearby tribal area ofKurram has resisted both the efforts of Afghan militant leaders and thePakistani government for mediation - with the Shi'a Pashtuns stuck in thearea's major city, Parachinar, still deeply suspicious of the true intentionsof both would-be peacebrokers. Zones of Shi'a and Sunni control have hardened,as the TTP and other sectarian militant groups such as Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan(and its subsidiary Lashkar-e-Jhangvi) have proved unwaveringin their attacks on Shi'a traveling along the main road through Lower Kurram.Pakistani military operations began in July of this year in Central Kurram, amountainous Sunni-dominated region along the Afghan border long ignored by thestate. Tens of thousands of IDPs have fled the area. Though the militarydeclared the operations a success in mid-August, only a smallminority of IDPs have since begun to return home, and questionsremain about the value of staging operations in Central Kurram, rather thanother parts of the agency.

Militants in other parts of FATA also remain strong. In muchof Khyber, armed groups such as Lashkar-e-Islam, Ansar-ul-Islam, and the TTPview each other, rather than the government, as their main competition forpower. An uneasy truce between Afghanistan-focused militants and the FrontierCorps persists in North Waziristan, even as sporadicfighting between the TTP and the state continues in South Waziristan. Inaddition, other challenges increasingly overshadow the conflict in FATA,including concerns about tensions with India, extremistinfiltration of the armed forces, and escalatingconfessional violence in Karachi.

Sustaining the state's victory in Mohmand and Bajaur willdepend on its ability to provide services and especially security to thereturning IDPs. The years-long conflict between the military and insurgents hasdevastated both the traditional civilian authorities and the tribal leadershipof FATA. The military has used the ongoing conflict as a justification forblocking the implementation of long overdue political reforms meant to startincorporating the tribal areas into the mainstream of Pakistani politics andlaw. Whether the government can maintain security and normalize life in Mohmandand Bajaur will be a crucial test of its ability to succeed in the rest of thetribal areas.

Sean Mann is currentlyin the Masters of Science in Foreign Service program at Georgetown University.He speaks Pashto, and spent the previous year conducting research on the borderareas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Last Friday agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Jubair Ahmad, a 24 year-old Pakistani immigrant living in Woodbridge, Virginia. He has been charged with "providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]," specifically producing and uploading a propaganda video to YouTube, allegedly at the direction of Talha Saeed, son of the group's founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed. According to an affidavit, Ahmed received "religious training" from LeT as a teenager, and later attended its "basic training camp" while living in Pakistan, before entering the U.S. in 2007 with other members of his family. The religious training to which the affidavit refers is likely the Daura-e-Suffa, a three-week program focused on teaching the principles of LeT's interpretation of Ahl-e-Hadith Islam, converting those from other sects to this school of thought. Its basic or general training also lasts three weeks, and is known as the Daura-a-Amma. This latter program involves additional indoctrination, physical training and minimal instruction in the use of light weapons.

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