Jerome Starkey

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Mon, 28 May 2012 11:04:23 +0430

Decrepit grandeur of party house that was once vibrant with white mischief

Mon, 28 May 2012 11:02:51 +0430

Decrepit grandeur of party house that was once vibrant with white mischief:

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent in Nairobi

It was once the headquarters of Kenya’s “Happy Valley” swingers, where guests in silk bathrobes would blow feathers at each other to determine the evening’s carnal pairings.

Today Clouds, the old home of Lady Idina Sackville, the woman known as the “high priestess” of her decadent set, is a dilapidated farmhouse where sheep sleep in the kitchen and the dining room is used as grain store.

“We don’t have any parties,” said Elizabeth Nuthu, a born-again Christian whose father bought the house from the Kenyan Government in 1969 for £560. “I don’t drink alcohol and we don’t have many friends. When you are a farmer, you are so busy.”

It is a far cry from the building’s 1930s heyday, when guests would arrive for weekends of wife-swapping down a magnificent gum-lined avenue to find silk pyjamas and a bottle of whisky awaiting in their bedrooms — which were almost all inter-connected.

The last of the vast gums was felled in 2003, after one of them collapsed on to a wing of the house, and most of the main bedrooms are now empty, save for spiders and stray maize-cobs.

Elizabeth, her mother, Grace, her three siblings, two of their wives and nine children live together in roughly half the house’s rooms. “We use the other rooms as stores,” Ms Nuthu said.

Sackville, who had married one of Britain’s most eligible bachelors, scandalised Edwardian society by divorcing him in 1919 and abandoning their two children to elope to Kenya.

Her great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne — the wife of George Osborne, the Chancellor — claims in a 2008 biography that Sackville had provided much of the inspiration for Nancy Mitford’s novels,Love in a Cold Climate, The Pursuit of Love and Don’t Tell Alfred.

She was twice divorced by the time she was 30, and married five times before she died. In Kenya her bed was known as “the battleground”.

“Husband or no husband she carried on with her parties and she only stopped when she got too old for her orgies,” said Juliet Barnes, a Kenya-based writer who is now finishing a history of the Happy Valley, Champagne to Charcoal.

Asked whether the sexual antics made famous in the 1987 film White Mischief still went on today, she said: “It’s probably worse in Britain now, than in Kenya.”

At Clouds and her other houses Sackville was renowned for greeting her guests naked, or sometimes wearing a single sheet, from her bath. It is one of the few original fittings still there, complete with a lion’s mouth spout in lieu of a tap, but unfortunately there is no running water. Paul, Ms Nuthu’s brother, explained that they had built a long-drop on one of the lawns instead.

“I have been told that my father was very clever because he got this house for a good price,” he said. “But you can see the house is dilapidated and it needs some cash. We would wish to restore it to its original condition. But life is hard. We can’t afford it.”

Although it still boasts 24 acres of prime farmland at the foot of the Kipipiri forest, the family’s plans to convert Clouds into a hotel or tourist attraction have so far floundered.

Instead, they farm snow peas, potatoes and maize. They grow pears and plums from Sackville’s old orchards and graze cattle and sheep on the lawns, which are strewn with wild trees and stinging nettles.

In the meantime they charge visitors an arbitrary fee and they are optimistic that more guests will come. “We get many, many visitors,” Paul said. “In a year, maybe ten.”

‘Blow to head’ killed Briton in Kenya police custody

Fri, 25 May 2012 20:08:05 +0430

‘Blow to head’ killed Briton in Kenya police custody:

The Times
Jerome Starkey in Nairobi and Laura Pitel

The father of a British man who died in police custody in Kenya has called for justice after medical tests showed that he was killed by a blow to the head.

Kenyan police had previously said that Alexander Monson, 28, a former pupil at Marlborough College, was taken ill in the cells after being arrested in the beach resort of Diani. However, two doctors’ reports on a post-mortem examination found that he died after a “blunt force trauma” to his skull.

A close family friend familiar with the reports said that they showed “compelling evidence of a violent assault”. Mr Monson’s family said yesterday that they were “utterly heartbroken” by his death, and said he was “adored by everyone who knew him during his tragically short life”.

His father, Lord Monson, said in a statement: “A post-mortem was carried out on Tuesday. Two independent pathology reports were prepared, one on behalf of the Kenyan Government and one on behalf of the family. Both reports conclude that the cause of Alexander’s death was ‘blunt force trauma’ — which means a blow to the head.”

The Times has learnt that both reports also found evidence that Mr Monson may have been kicked. “He had bruising to the scrotum which … was an injury that could have come from a kick,” a friend said. “He also had a haematoma on his left, upper wrist. Alex was left-handed. That’s a natural self-defence posture if you are being hit.”

Mr Monson, 28, had been on a night out with friends at Daduri nightclub when he was arrested by police at about 2.30am on Saturday. They suspected him of using bhang, a potent form of cannabis. Friends said he was sitting in a pick-up truck with a companion, waiting for two more friends so they could drive home. The police took them both to Diani Police Station.

“Alex managed to ring his friends and they came to the police station to try to get him out,” the friend said. “They saw him at 4.30am and they said he was fine. He was in quite good spirits.” His companion, who has not been named, was released at that point.

At about 8am two friends of Mr Monson’s mother arrived to try to post bail. They later told her that they could just see Mr Monson in the cell, and that he appeared to be standing upright. However, when they returned at about 10.30am “he was lying behind the counter with his head propped up”.

A second family friend said that he appeared to be frothing at the mouth and fitting, and he was taken in an ambulance, under police guard, to hospital in Mombasa where he was handcuffed to the bed. Doctors told his family that his breathing was erratic and that his heart rate was low, but increasing. The police had also found temazepam in Mr Monson’s possession, friends said.

“The doctors said he would be OK. They were working on the assumption that the toxicity would clear his system and he would improve,” the friend said. However, Mr Monson was pronounced dead at 5pm.

Richard Mugui, a spokesman for Mombasa police, said that officers called an ambulance after hearing strange noises from Mr Monson’s cell and seeing him choking.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said that the British Government was pressing for an “urgent and full” investigation.

Mr Monson, a contemporary of Pippa Middleton at Marlborough, had lived in Kenya for two years, working in meat processing and bamboo cultivation. His mother, Hilary, 57, who was Lord Monson’s first wife, runs a holiday accommodation business in Diani.

A memorial service for Mr Monson is due to be held in Diani tomorrow.

Farm worker guilty of murdering white seperatist leader Eugene Terre’Blanche

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:37:00 +0430

Farm worker guilty of murdering white seperatist leader Eugene Terre’Blanche:

The Times
Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

South Africa’s far-right separatists welcomed a court decision yesterday to convict a 29-year-old black farm worker of murdering the white supremacist leader Eugene Terre’Blanche.

Chris Mahlangu, 29, was found guilty of bludgeoning and mutilating the 69-year-old Boer firebrand at his farm in 2010. A second defendant, Patrick Ndlovu, who was 15 at the time of the attack, was convicted of housebreaking with intent to steal but cleared of murder.

“We are satisfied with the decision that Mahlangu was found guilty of murder,” said André Visagie, a former secretary general of Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement, known as the AWB. “It makes sense to us that this younger one was not at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder, because there was not any blood on his clothes.”

Lucy Holborn, Research Director at the South African Institute for Race Relations, said the verdict should ease racial tensions which had been inflamed during the course of the trial.

“Justice has been seen to be done,” she said. “The judge found there wasn’t any evidence of political interference. The errors on the part of the police were just errors, they weren’t part of a conspiracy to stop these guys being brought to justice.”

Reading a lengthy and detailed verdict, Judge John Horn dismissed Mahlangu’s claim that he was acting in self-defence after Terre’Blanche tried to rape him. “The dispute with the deceased was about money, not about his political beliefs or aversion for black people,” he said. “I reject any suggestion that [Mahlangu] was sodomised.”

There was little reaction outside the court where scores of Terre’Blanche supporters, some wearing camouflage uniforms adorned with Swastika-like emblems, had gathered with banners proclaiming “We want Justice,” and “Stop Farm Murders”.

They were outnumbered by pro-Mahlangu protestors who sang “Shoot the Boer” at them, across a police cordon. Some waved banners asking “Where’s your underwear ET?” in a reference to how Mr Terre’Blanche’s body was found half-naked.

At one point a member of Mr Visagie’s rightwing Gelofte Volk group, an AWB splinter group, kicked a black protestor for brandishing a doll bearing the name of Terre’Blanche’s widow Martie, but otherwise the protests remained peaceful.

Far-right groups had threatened mass-protests and unspecified violence if both men were acquitted. Asked if still he expected unrest, the AWB’s new leader Steyn Van Ronge said: “Not from the side of the AWB. We take note of what the judge has said and we accept it.”

However, he went on to blame police incompetence for Ndlovu’s acquittal.

Terre’Blanche, who was jailed in 1997 and sentenced to six years for the attempted murder of a black security guard and assaulting a black gas station worker, came to prominence in the 1980s for advocating a separate Boer nation. He threatened to wage a civil war if Nelson Mandela took power, but his threats ultimately proved hollow.

The Afrikaans-language newspaper Rapport reported claims during the trial that Mr Terre’Blanche had mistreated white and black workers on his farm and that a teenage boy, who was a member of the AWB, regularly visited Mr Terre’Blanche, who sexually abused him.

Martie Terre’Blanche was at their second home, on the night of the murder, in the nearby town of Ventersdorp. Mr Ronge insisted claims of abuse were baseless.

Sudan frees arrested British mine-clearer after Mbeki appeal

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:16:32 +0430

Sudan frees arrested British mine-clearer after Mbeki appeal:

The Times
Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

A former British soldier held captive in Khartoum was released from a military jail today, after more than three weeks without charge.

Chris Fielding, formerly of the Royal Engineers, was handed over to Thabo Mbeki, the former South African President who is now the African Union’s chief mediator, who has been in Sudan since Thursday to try to re-energise failing peace talks with South Sudan.

The Foreign Office confirmed this morning that British officials had met Mr Fielding. David Lidington, Minister of State, said that he was healthy and had been “well treated by the Sudanese while he was in detention”.

The former soldier was arrested by Sudanese forces on April 28, together with John Sörbö, a Norwegian, Thabo Siave from Souith Africa and a South Sudanese man.

A spokesman for the United Nations said that they were part of UN de-mining team, surveying roads in Unity province, which shares a disputed border with Sudan.

“I’d like to thank President Mbeki, President Buoyoya [of Burundi] and the African Union High Implementation Panel for facilitating their release,” Mr Lidington said. “This helps to create a constructive atmosphere for engagement.”

Khartoum had accused the arrested men of fomenting border clashes around the disputed oil town of Heglig, and of providing military assistance to South Sudanese troops.

Mr Siave and the South Sudanese man were both working for a state-owned South African de-mining company, Mechem, which had been hired by the UN. It uses large armoured vehicles to patrol areas in which there is a risk of mines.

The arrests came amid a maelstrom of bellicose rhetoric between Khartoum and Juba, with Sudan’s Parliament branding South Sudan an enemy that must be eliminated. At first, officials in Khartoum rebuffed British and Norwegian efforts to gain consular access to their captive nationals.

Addressing the four men, former President Mbeki said: “I raised your issue with President [Omar al-] Bashir [of Sudan] and the Government explained to us the circumstances of your arrest, and then we asked President Bashir to release you.”

Mr Fielding, who was filmed wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt shortly after his arrest, was pictured with Mr Mbeki and Sudan’s Defence Minister, Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein, yesterday, in pressed khaki slacks and a loose, long-sleeved blue shirt.

Mr Hussein said that the men were freed because two of them worked for a South African company, “and we appreciate the efforts of President Mbeki to solve the issues between Sudan and South Sudan”.

Speaking to reporters on behalf all four freed captives, Mr Sörbö, who worked for Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), said that they were all “so happy” to be going.

Liv Tørres, NPA secretary-general, confirmed that he was happy and healthy. “We are incredibly happy that the situation has been resolved,” she said. “Now we look forward to seeing Sörbö again and together continue the important work we do to clear mines in Southern Sudan.”

Somali pirate boats destroyed in EU helicopter gunship raid

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:13:35 +0430

Somali pirate boats destroyed in EU helicopter gunship raid:

Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

Helicopter gunships from an EU task force hit Somali pirates on shore yesterday, in the first sortie since ground attacks were authorised in March.

A spokesman for the mission said “no boots” went ashore during the course of the operation but he said the helicopters destroyed several of the pirates’ fast attack boats which had been used to hijack commercial vessels for ransom, off the Horn of Africa.

Rear Admiral Duncan Potts, the force commander, said the raid would “further increase the pressure on, and disrupt pirates’ efforts to get out to sea to attack merchant shipping and dhows”.

The EU’s Operation Atlanta has deployed between five and ten warships off the Somali coast since 2008 in an attempt to thwart the pirate attacks against oil tankers and container ships which cost billions of pounds a year.

Some member states were reluctant to deploy troops on Somali soil for fear of endangering merchant crews already held hostage, as well as the the risk of being drawn into a new and protracted conflict.

Admiral Potts said: “The local Somali people and fishermen – many of whom have suffered so much because of piracy in the region, can be reassured that our focus was on known pirate supplies and will remain so in the future.”

Officials said the logistics base had been under observation for more than a year and they said no Somalis were killed in the operation.

German MPs who opposed the decision to send troops ashore said Britain was driving the decision to step-up operations.

There are currently at least 17 merchant ships and 300 crew in pirate custody. Many vessels now carry armed guards to try and repel attacks but even with international military escorts and protection, the waters in the Gulf of Aden remain the most dangerous in the world.

‘Shameless’ MPs challenged over new round of payouts

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:47:00 +0430

‘Shameless’ MPs challenged over new round of payouts:

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Not content with their place among the world’s best-paid politicians, Kenyan MPs have triggered a constitutional backlash by more than doubling the amount of money they get paid when they stand down.

Each of the country’s 222 MPs stands to make an extra £28,600 over the course of the current parliament, thanks to a controversial severance package that rewards them for standing down. They already earn about 10 million Kenyan shillings (£75,000) a year — more than their British equivalents — and about 22 times more than a kitchen assistant at the Kenyan parliament, who earn £3,500 a year.

The biggest beneficiaries of the law pushed through parliament last month are Farah Maalim, the Deputy Speaker, and the members of the Chairmen’s Panel, who awarded themselves an extra £110,000 each, under the guise of an annual Parliamentary Responsibility Allowance, which was backdated to January 1, 2006. Another group of senior MPs, the Parliamentary Service Commissioners, awarded themselves £55,000 each on similar terms.

“They are just trying to get away with it, and if they are not challenged they will,” said Mwalimu Mati, chief executive of the campaign group Mars. He and his wife, Jayne, have launched a legal challenge, claiming the increase violates Kenya’s constitution, which stipulates that MPs are not authorised to vote on their own pay.

“Our problem is not the constitution or the absence of law, it is the total lack of public morality,” Mr Mati said. “It’s an institutional rot. They have been condemned around the world, but they don’t seem embarrassed. There’s no shame.”

Only one MP, Millie Odhiambo-Mabona, objected to the legislation, passed on the day that the Cabinet issued a statement urging public sector workers to be “sensitive to the plight of taxpayers when they make demands for salary increases”.

The Cabinet emphasised the need “to avoid having a bloated government” and suggested a cap on the amount of cash which goes to public sector wages. “I will not be party to unfairness,” Mrs Odhiambo-Mabona said. “Members of Parliament have refused to reduce interest rates for members of the public, but, when it comes to our own things, we are very quick and sneaky.”

MPs had earlier refused to pass a new finance Bill so long as it includes a cap on high street interest rates, now at a crippling 27 per cent.

One of the MPs, John Mbadi, told The Times that the pay rises were part of a “barter trade” to get the Bill through parliament. “They said if you want us to authorise this gratuity, you have to also surrender,” he said. He maintained the new perks were “not conferring additional benefits”, but “regularising” MPs’ pay with other government employees.

Under the new law, severance pay for MPs is 31 per cent of annual salary for each year served, instead of 1.5 million shillings (£11,200) for each five-year term. “Politicians only serve the people in the last few months of their term,” said Kevin Omolo, a Nairobi worker. “It’s just to get re-elected.”

Terrorists seek 'impossible' prisoner swap

Tue, 01 May 2012 01:45:36 +0430

Terrorists seek 'impossible' prisoner swap:

The Times
Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

Fears were growing yesterday for a British man kidnapped by al-Qaeda after his captors proposed an “impossible prisoner swap”, claiming that they would release him in exchange for Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic cleric whom Britain wants to deport to Jordan.

In a statement released on the internet, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said that it would free Steven McGowan, a dual British and South African national, if the British Government let Abu Qatada choose the country to which he is to be deported. Otherwise, they warned, Britain would “bear the consequences”.

“We offer the British Government an initiative to release its citizen,” the statement said. “If it allows Sheik Abu Qatada to leave to one of the Arab Spring countries or any other country of his choice where he guarantees his freedom and rights and dignity.”

The Government refused to comment on the offer, which came fewer than 24 hours after another British hostage, Khalil Rasjed Dale, held by Islamic fundamentalists, was found bullet-ridden and beheaded by the side of a road in Pakistan after four months of intense talks.

Abu Qatada is fighting the latest bungled attempt to deport him. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, had said that he would be expelled by the end of April but a British judge has ruled that he should be released from jail if his deportation is not imminent.

Mr McGowan was snatched from a restaurant in Timbuktu in November, along with Nils Joan Viktor Gustafson, a Swiss national, and Jacobus Nicolo Ruke, from the Netherlands. A German tourist who tried to resist was shot dead in the street. The day before he was kidnapped, Mr McGowan told his father in South Africa that civil unrest in Timbuktu was “getting out of hand” and that it was time that the group of holidaymakers left.

Since then Mali has suffered a military coup and competing Tuareg and Islamist rebellions. Islamic militants have recently seized control of large swaths of the north, and Human Rights Watch warned that groups were committing abuses with impunity.

“An Islamist armed group has summarily executed two men, amputated the hand of at least one other, carried out public floggings and threatened women and Christians,” a report issued yesterday said.

Mr McGowan was born and raised in South Africa but worked in the UK for a number of years. He obtained a British passport shortly before setting off on a motorbike trip which was supposed to take him the length of Africa. He planned to settle in South Africa and the South African Government has led efforts to secure his release.

In a speech last week, the International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane issued a public message of solidarity to Mr McGowan and two other South Africans who are being held by Somali pirates. “To Steven McGowan, Bruno Pelizzari, Deborah Calitz, and your respective families — I want to say, we are with you,” she said.

Experience suggests that threats from militants in West Africa are not to be taken lightly. Edwin Dyer, in his early 60s, was executed in June 2009, six months after he was kidnapped near Timbuktu.

Algeria’s Foreign Minister said yesterday that talks to free seven diplomats seized by Islamists in Gao on April 5, would “soon bear fruit”. But a spokesman for the Movemement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, a radical al-Qaeda splinter group known by its French acronym MUJAO, said that the diplomats were in imminent danger of being executed because talks had broken down.Last month a British Special Forces Mission to rescue Christopher McManus, an engineer held captive with an Italian colleague in Nigeria, ended in tragedy when both hostages were killed.

The AQIM statement claimed that Abu Qatada was not part of al-Qaeda but that the group was acting out of solidarity for a fellow Muslim brother. They claimed that Abu Qatada’s case showed Britain’s disregard for human rights. “How come the Sheik was jailed for years merely for exercising his right to express his opinion and beliefs, in words and writing,” it said.

The terror group expressed hope that the British Government would deal with the offer with “objectivity, reason and wisdom”, but a British official speaking on condition of anonymity, maintained that Britain would not “engage with terrorists”.

Diplomats barred from seeing British mine-clearer held in Khartoum

Tue, 01 May 2012 01:03:32 +0430

Diplomats barred from seeing British mine-clearer held in Khartoum:

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

A British man arrested at gunpoint amid accusations that he was fomenting deadly border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan, was identified yesterday as Chris Fielding, a former Royal Engineer.

He was part of a four-man demining team working for the United Nations that was detained by Sudanese troops on Saturday and later flown to Khartoum to face “further investigation”.

A spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces accused the men of straying into Heglig — a hotly contested oil town at the centre of recent fighting — in an armoured car laden with military hardware.

He said that all the men had military backgrounds which “proved” that South Sudan had been receiving military help from “foreign experts”.

The UN insisted that the men were on South Sudanese soil, on a humanitarian mine-clearing mission.

Friends and colleagues of Mr Fielding said that he was travelling back towards Bentiu, the capital of Unity State, when his vehicle was stopped by Sudanese troops.

Mr Fielding, who now lives in Cyprus, was working for the UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre as an operations specialist, and was the Bentiu team leader. The Times understands that he joined the road survey mission for “quality assurance purposes”, along with the Norwegian John Sørbø, whose family live in Hertfordshire.

Norwegian People’s Aid, based in Oslo, said that Mr Sørbø, 50, a former Norwegian soldier, and “one of their most experienced mine-clearers” had been on a five-day field trip when he was detained.

“Since he works in a humanitarian organisation, I could never imagine that he would be in danger,” his wife, Rebecca Wallis Sørbø, told a reporter from Norwegian TV.

Two of the men, a South African, Thabo Siave, and an unidentified South Sudanese man, were working for the state-owned South African mine-clearing company Mechem on a UN contract. The company routinely uses heavily armoured Mine-Protected Vehicles (MPVs) where there is a risk of unexploded ordnance.

Diplomats from Britain, Norway and South Africa met officials at the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Khartoum yesterday, but they were denied consular access to the detainees. A spokeswoman for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry said that the men were being held at Sudan’s military headquarters and were yet to be charged with any crime. “They said they will give us consular access but they could not say when,” she added. “That is our priority.”

British de-mining expert arrested by Sudanese troops

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:21:00 +0430

British de-mining expert arrested by Sudanese troops:

The Times
Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

A British man working for a United Nations de-mining team was among four people arrested by Sudanese troops, it emerged today, amid accusations they were fomenting unrest along the country’s volatile southern border.

Khartoum accused the group, which includes a Norwegian, a South Africa and a South Sudanese man, of straying into Heglig — a hotly contested oilfield — and providing Southern Sudanese troops with military advice.

Sawarmi Khaled Saad, a Sudanese military spokesman insisted the group were detained on Sudanese soil. “This confirms what we said before, that South Sudan in its aggression against Heglig, was supported by foreign experts,” he said.

However, the UN insisted that all four men were well inside South Sudanese territory, on a humanitarian mission, when they were abducted.

The South African and the South Sudanese man were working for a state-owned South African de-mining company, Mechem, which had been contracted by the UN.

“We are doing humanitarian landmine clearance on a UN contract and our members have full UN immunity,” insisted Ashley Williams, Mechem’s CEO. “The abduction took place well within South Sudan territory,” he said. (Read more)

Six killed as Nigerian university is bombed during Christian service

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:19:40 +0430

Six killed as Nigerian university is bombed during Christian service:

The Times
Jerome Starkey
Africa Correspondent

Explosions rocked a university in northern Nigeria this morning as Christian worshippers held their Sunday service in an open-air lecture theatre.

Witnesses said at least six people were killed although officials warned the toll could rise as the attackers were still at large.

Three blasts were followed by sporadic bursts of gunfire as police and soldiers raced to cordon off the campus, a government spokesman said.

“A lecture theatre used for worship in the area was attacked,” Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi, an army spokesman in the city, said. “Some have died, some have been injured. We don’t have exact figures.”

In a separate attack in Kenya, at least one person was killed and 15 injured when a grenade tore through the congregation at God’s House of Miracles International Church, in Nairobi.

“We have been told that the person who threw the grenade was part of the congregation and he fled immediately after throwing it,” deputy police Chief Joseph Gichangi said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility and it was not clear if the attacks were co-ordinated. (Read more)

Is the bin Laden dream of global jihad now dead?

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:25:00 +0430

Is the bin Laden dream of global jihad now dead?:

The Times
Jerome Starkey in Nairobi, Julius Cavendish in Bamako and Cindy Wockner in Abuja

The blame for co-ordinated attacks against a Nigerian newspaper yesterday that left at least seven people dead fell swiftly on Boko Haram. The al-Qaeda offshoot was responsible for introducing suicide bombs to Nigeria, it has killed hundreds this year and local journalists said that they had received death threats from the militants in recent weeks.

The bombs, almost a year after Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in Pakistan, were a bloody reminder of al-Qaeda’s growing “Africanisation”. Three people were killed in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, when a suicide bomber rammed a Jeep laden with explosives into ThisDay’s head office, while in the northern city of Kaduna a lone attacker lobbed a homemade grenade into a crowd outside the newspaper’s offices there, killing four more.

It followed two attacks on Wednesday that left five dead, while in January Boko Haram claimed responsibility for attacks in the northern state of Kano that killed 180.

Yet despite the rising violence in Africa, a consensus is growing among counter-terrorism experts that bin Laden’s original network is on its knees. “Al-Qaeda central has pretty much disintegrated,” said Rashid Abdi, a security analyst in Nairobi, citing relentless drone strikes and special forces operations against key al-Qaeda leaders.

In its place is a proliferation of mostly autonomous groups, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Ansar Dine in Mali, who fly the al-Qaeda flag but receive little or no direct support and are often motivated by far less grandiose ideals than bin Laden’s dream of global jihad.

“I am not aware of any core al-Qaeda leader left alive in Somalia,” said a Western official who monitors al-Shabaab, which proclaimed its allegiance to al-Qaeda in February.

He said that in the year since bin Laden was killed the group had lost territory, prestige and revenue. “Al-Qaeda are probably weaker than ever. They are certainly at a low point. The whole al-Qaeda mystique doesn’t have the appeal it once did, not in Somalia.”

Nonetheless, Britain suspects that the threat of terrorism from Somalia now outweighs that from Pakistan and Afghanistan, where drone strikes have so degraded al-Qaeda that Taleban militants are shunning their former allies for fear of being bombed by association.

The scale of the Somali threat may depend on who wins the power struggle between those, like Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, whose ambitions seem limited to power in Somalia, and a small but powerful minority, including the group’s overall leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, bent on war with the West.

Global versus local is a fault line common to militant groups across in Africa. Shehu Sani, the president of Nigeria’s Civil Rights Congress, said that despite Boko Haram’s alignment with al-Qaeda, their appeal was built mostly on local grievances. “The group is cashing in on the poverty in the northern parts of Nigeria and the failure of the state to actually stand up to them,” he said.

Boko Haram draws its support from the Muslim north of the country, where people feel ignored by the predominantly Christian government.

It is a complaint common to Mali, where Islamists linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have exploited a rebellion by disenfranchised Tuareg tribesmen. Malian refugees seeking shelter in the capital Bamako told The Times that Islamist barbus — “bearded ones” — had emerged as the only force for order after the Tuareg rebels visited rape and chaos on the civilian population.

“They squeeze your waist as they search for money,” said Maya Maiga, a shopkeeper from Timbuktu who fled the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad (MNLA). “They point their guns at you. I pray that God Almighty punishes them.”

As the secular MNLA provides a textbook example of how not to win hearts and minds, members of the Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, have set up hotlines for residents to report abuses and tried to rein in brigandry.

Although AQIM can trace its roots to Salafist terrorists, the organisation has concentrated on trafficking drugs, cigarettes and weapons through northern Mali’s desert, and on kidnapping Westerners. Ransoms are thought to have earned the group $130 million and swollen its ranks to more than 300 members.

For years it has lingered in the shadows, occasionally engaging the Malian military but rarely showing a public face. Then, when Ansar Dine swooped into Timbuktu, three al-Qaeda emirs were reportedly seen walking about in an uncharacteristic display of confidence.

Meanwhile, another group affiliated to al-Qaeda, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, played a visible role in the capture of the garrison town of Gao and in the abduction of seven Algerian diplomats there. They remain in captivity.

Analysts say that, if true, these reports of al-Qaeda fighters appearing so openly are a major break with the past and may indicate an attempt to impose Sharia in northern Mali — a policy Ansar Dine is also pursuing. It is not clear if they will try to export violence beyond their borders, as al-Shabaab have. A small cadre of al-Shabaab extremists are thought to be operating inside Kenya; last week the US embassy there warned its citizens not to visit shopping malls.

As that group faces pressure from Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in Somalia, Western officials fear that violence will increase. “The likelihood of an attack will increase rather than decrease if they lose their safe havens,” said one. “They either give up, or they demonstrate that they still matter.”

Additional reporting: Julius Cavendish, Bamako; Cindy Wockner in Abuja

Married, divorced, died. Married, married, married.

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:37:32 +0430

Married, divorced, died. Married, married, married.:

The Times
Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s polygamous President, is set to match Henry VIII’s marriage tally when he weds wife No 6 this weekend, giving South Africa yet another First Lady and an ever more complex protocol problem.

But unlike the Tudor king — who married one woman at a time — three of President Zuma’s wives are still alive and still married to him. One of them has died, and one is divorced.

Officials said that Mr Zuma, who turned 70 last week, was due to marry Gloria Bongekile Ngema, at a “low-key” ceremony in KwaZulu-Natal, his home province. It will be the third time he has married in four years.

Although details and timings of the ceremony remain secret, he donned animal pelts and white running shoes to perform a traditional dance with his fifth bride, Thobeka Madiba-Zuma, at his most recent nuptials in 2010.

Mrs Madiba-Zuma visited Buckingham Palace two months later, when she accompanied her husband on a state visit to Britain.

“I have to respect their privacy,” his spokesman, Mac Maharaj, said when asked about the latest wedding plans.

While the role of South Africa’s first ladies is not defined in law, they share a fleet of luxury cars and get state-funded private secretaries. If the past is any guide, Miss Ngema will take turns with the other wives in accompanying her husband to state functions.

Sudan President threatens to overthrow ‘insect’ South Sudan

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:35:09 +0430

Sudan President threatens to overthrow ‘insect’ South Sudan:

The Times
Jerome Starkey in Nairobi

Africa’s newest country insisted yesterday that it was not at war, despite fresh bombardments by Sudanese warplanes and a pledge by President Bashir to eliminate the “insect government” in Juba. “The Republic of South Sudan is not in the state of war, nor is it interested in war with Sudan,” its Information Minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, said. “The Republic of South Sudan considers Sudan as a neighbour and friendly nation, not an enemy.”

His remarks were unusually soothing amid a maelstrom of bellicose rhetoric from both sides: each accuses the other of starting and inflaming the the violence.

President Bashir vowed to teach the South “a lesson by force” during a speech to troops in South Kordofan, a volatile border province, and promised to “liberate” the people of South Sudan from their rulers. He said that the Government in Juba was an “insect trying to destroy Sudan … and our main target from today is to eliminate this insect completely.”

His address came after the Parliament in Khartoum passed a resolution branding South Sudan an enemy that “must be fought until it is defeated”. A placatory Dr Benjamin said that the resolution was “unfortunate” and insisted that the South remained “committed to a peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues”.

Video

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:27:52 +0430

Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi, 36, at her home in Kabul

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:40:23 +0430

Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi, 36, at her home in Kabul

The woman who wants to rule Afghanistan

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:36:08 +0430

The woman who wants to rule Afghanistan:

Fawzia Koofi has survived ambushes and assassination attempt. Yet still she wants to become the first female president of Afghanistan

The Times Magazine
By Jerome Starkey in Kabul

There is a large, imposing picture of Fawzia Koofi hanging on her sitting room wall. Dressed in a leopard-print headscarf, she stands next to Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. Barely an inch apart, their hands clasped demurely in front of them, they stare straight out of the frame with a formality more reminiscent of Pilgrim Fathers than modern-day politicians.

“That was when we were friends,” says Koofi. “We’re not friends any more.”

Koofi is the 19th of her father’s 23 children. Her mother was the second of her father’s seven wives and they lived in one of the most remote backwaters of Afghanistan, where Koofi’s father used to beat her mother if the rice wasn’t cooked correctly. Koofi would grow up to be the first woman in her family to learn to read and become among the first women to be elected to Afghanistan’s parliament in 2005, where she was also appointed deputy speaker. Last year she helped pass a law that criminalised rape in Afghanistan’s penal code for the first time. In many ways she is the embodiment of women’s emancipation, and now, she wants to be president.

“I’m not running just for the sake of running,” Koofi says. “This country needs a change.”

Now 36, she is the heir of a pseudo-aristocratic political dynasty which, in just two generations, has served under the Shahs, the communists, the Mujahidin and now Karzai. Two of her brothers were police commanders. She had to cajole them to let her go to school, to permit her to stand for parliament, and it took her four years and $20,000 to persuade them to agree to her marriage to the man of her choice. One is retired and the other now lives in Denmark, but she is still dependent on their support to maintain her political power base.

“She’s a feminist, she would call herself that,” says a European friend. “But at the same time she is a conservative village girl from the wilds of one of the most conservative parts of the country.”

She bursts into her sitting room 20 minutes late for her interview, all smiles and apologies. “Traditional politics,” she says by way of explanation. “It’s exhausting. Mornings at home are always busy.” She usually wakes at 5am and works on her computer for a few hours, before the petitioners from her native Badakhshan province start knocking on her door. Around 11am she goes to parliament.

She is wearing a chunky grey cardigan and a plain blue headscarf, which slips to reveal dark, damp hair, because she has squeezed in a shower between the petitioners and our meeting. She is effortlessly pretty, without make-up, but many of her own countrymen would think her wet hair indecent. There is a fine balance to be struck in this oppressively patriarchal country.

Afghanistan’s leaders are, she says, “entirely selfish”, treating their country like a fiefdom, but she concedes that “clever politicians need to work within the framework” to effect lasting change. She admires outspoken women – one of her colleagues was thrown out of parliament for calling the warlords donkeys – but she does not want to join her in the political wilderness.

Koofi might have her sights on the presidency one day, but the 6ft square picture of President Karzai still hangs above the television at one end of the L-shaped room, like a feudal foghorn reminding her guests of their proximity to power. She is clearly playing the game.

Her two-storey house is on a main road opposite two barber’s shops and a small tailor, in a fairly affluent neighbourhood close to the parliament building. There are snowcapped mountains visible in the distance and a sea container on the pavement outside her gate, which houses a couple of armed policemen who protect her. This is normal in Afghanistan. In fact, compared with the private armies, bulletproof convoys and 30ft blast walls that some politicians seem to adopt for prestige as much as protection, Koofi’s security is modest. She has survived assassination attempts, including one ambush outside Kabul that killed two of her police escorts while she hid in the car with one of her daughters.

On a separate occasion, men wearing the uniforms of Afghanistan’s intelligence service forced her car off the road, dragged her driver into the dirt and started beating him, while she frantically dialled the Ministry of the Interior and screamed that she was being kidnapped. When she demanded to know who her attackers were, they just laughed before eventually letting her go.

“She is living under the constant strain and fear of death,” says Nadene Ghouri, a British journalist who collaborated with Koofi on her forthcoming autobiography, The Favored Daughter, and who was with her in the car at the time. “It’s not only the Taleban. There are elements within the Government that would like to see her shut up.”

Koofi’s sitting room is filled with throne-like sofas, all decorated in spray-painted gold. Matching coffee tables are adorned with lace-covered tissue boxes. It is a typical reception room for a dignitary in Kabul, designed to seat large numbers of guests for semi-formal audiences. There are no obvious feminine touches, which might be because Koofi likes to think of herself as “a politician first and a woman second”.

Her 18-year-old nephew, Najibullah, carries in a small electric bar-heater and plugs it in to relieve the winter chill. He is also from Badakhshan, from a small village in a remote district ten days’ walk from the provincial capital.

An ornamental horsewhip hangs on the wall, denoting Afghanistan’s national sport, buzkashi, in which horsemen wrestle at full gallop for the carcass of a headless goat, and a small pair of horns, from a rare Marco Polo sheep, sits on top of the television. “They were a gift,” Koofi explains. “I’m not sure how they got hold of them.”

The only other picture is at the far end of the room, on top of a large glass display cabinet which houses eight separate tea services, complete with pots, cups and matching saucers, edged, of course, in varying amounts of gold. The black-and-white photograph shows a handsome young man in a dark suit and tie. He has a neatly trimmed beard and his top lip is shaved in a traditional sign of Islamic devotion. He wears a lambskin hat, like President Karzai, and he too stares resolutely out of the frame.

It is Wakil Abdul Rahman, Koofi’s father, who was elected to Afghanistan’s parliament in 1965, under King Zahir Shah. He stayed on after a bloodless coup in 1973 installed the king’s cousin, Daoud Khan, and again after Daoud and most of his family were killed in 1978 and Hafizullah Amin seized power.

Koofi’s father was killed later that year trying to negotiate with members of a burgeoning Islamic insurgency in the hills of his native Badakhshan. According to Koofi family lore, Rahman was riding into the mountains unarmed, on a magnificent white steed, to negotiate a peace deal when they ambushed him. Three men blocked his path and one of them shouted, “So it is you, Wakil Abdul Rahman. I have waited a long time for this chance to kill you.” He wounded Rahman’s horse, more shots rang out from the mountain, and the government entourage fled. Rahman was captured and executed two days later, and the insurgents refused to return his body. It was only when Koofi’s aunt, her father’s sister, rallied a group of relatives to walk up into the wilderness that he was finally brought home.

Koofi was 3 when her father was killed. In all that time she remembers him speaking to her only once – and that was to tell her to go away. He is the man who beat Koofi’s mother so badly that she contemplated leaving him, but ultimately she decided to endure the violence because she couldn’t face the prospect of leaving her children behind.

“I am a mix of all of my mother’s strengths,” Koofi says. “With all of the problems she suffered, you would never see the smile leave her face.”

Their family home in Koof district, from which they get their name, was the only building with a lavatory. It was a simple long drop yet her father referred to his private rooms as “the Paris suite”, without any apparent irony, because a man from Kabul had decorated them with murals.

It is his legacy, and specifically his “empire of allies, networks and connections” that has proved so important for mobilising voters to keep Koofi in parliament. She was re-elected in 2010 and her sister, Qandigul, was also elected – further entrenching the family dynasty.

Koofi says her father used all but one of his seven marriages to cement political alliances with rival clans in neighbouring districts. Only his sixth wife was apolitical – and she was chosen for her carpet-weaving skills. Thus Rahman’s portrait on her sitting room wall reminds guests that their hostess is, in her own words, “high-born”.

In fact, Koofi was born in a field, in the mountains, where her mother had led their family’s livestock to graze on summer pastures. Her mother had lost her husband’s affections to a newer wife and, when she produced a daughter instead of a coveted son, she left the baby in the sun all day, expecting she would die.

This is just one of the anecdotes of everyday brutality recounted in Koofi’s autobiography. In the book, the conflict between the conservative village girl and reformist politician is even more apparent.

The fact that she is pictured barefaced on the cover of a book to be published around the world puts her at the vanguard of female emancipation and achievement in Afghanistan. Yet the story of her life – which spans Afghanistan’s descent into chaos over the past 30 years and includes personal tragedy at almost every turn – reads as if it has been censored by the invisible hand of Afghan custom.

There is no explanation of how her family, and particularly her brothers, who were police commanders, made their money. She writes adoringly of the father she barely knew, and explains that his violence was “normal” and suggests her mother interpreted it as a sign of love.

She describes one night when insurgents broke into their home and beat her sister-in-law until dawn. The implication is that to say anything more specific about the ordeal would further dishonour the family.

Nor is there any explanation as to why an unidentified assassin would creep into their house, on a night when an older brother had dismissed all the security guards, go straight to her brother Muqim’s room and empty 30 bullets from a Kalashnikov magazine into his sleeping body.

“It was a political killing,” she says, unconvincingly, when we meet. All that emerges subsequently is that Muqim was in love and writing hopeless love letters to a university girl, but Koofi says all the letters were returned unopened, because that was the only proper thing for the girl to do.

Soon after her father was killed, she recounts how one of his seven wives remarried a shepherd who had recently returned from Iran. In the book she describes how this man refused to feed and clothe his new wife’s children.

“When my mother visited a few weeks later, she found Ennayat, Nazi and Hedayat crying outside in the yard. They were not allowed into the warmth of the house and were hungry and dirty,” Koofi writes. Her mother, Bibi jan, immediately rescued the three eldest, “but the young woman refused to give up her baby, Safiullah, and my mother left without him. A few days later he became feverish and was left to die without food or comfort. We heard that he cried alone for hours, his little face covered with flies, while this man would not allow his mother even to pick him up. He died a lonely, horrible death.”

Amazingly, Koofi spares this man her scorn. Domestic violence, child abuse and in this instance, murder, are recorded but rarely condemned. “Of course I don’t condone my father for beating my mother,” she writes. “But in those days it was the norm.” He may have torn chunks out of her mother’s hair and bloodied her face with a ladle, but later in the book she describes him as a “man of peace”.

“I was a child,” she says when we meet, as if to explain this uncomfortable acceptance of his violence. “He was a tough man. He was tough with his wives. If I saw the same things now, I don’t know how I would react.”

There is more concern when she recounts how her 17-year-old older brother married a 12-year-old girl and began a “full sexual relationship immediately”.

“My sister-in-law was still such a child that my mother had to help bathe her and dress her in the mornings,” she writes, imagining her own young daughters, Shuhra, 12, and Shaharzad, 13, enduring a similar ordeal. “I wonder what my mother felt on seeing the injuries inflicted on this poor girl by her own son? Did she recoil in horror at the injustice of it all?”

But it is only later, when faced with the full depravities of a civil war – virgin daughters raped and shot in front of their mothers and women’s breasts hacked off – that she writes, “In a country where morality is everything, it was hard to believe we had descended into such evils.”

In this country of hers, “where morality is everything”, only the anonymity of war affords her the space to speak honestly, which is something she either cannot or will not do when it comes to her own family. Perhaps that is because she knows that both her life, and her political career, rest on the perception of her honour, and her honour is the same as that of her family.

Nonetheless, her political enemies circulate unfounded rumours of sexual impropriety to try to impugn her. Her husband, Hamid, succumbed to tuberculosis in 2003. Koofi first set eyes on him when her mother was dying in hospital, but her brothers disapproved of the match because they wanted her to marry someone more important. It was only four years later – in a brief pause during a retreat from Kabul, as the Taleban advanced – that they finally accepted his proposal on Koofi’s behalf, along with a $20,000 dowry.

Koofi has never remarried. But rumours have circulated that she has a boyfriend in Kabul and a rich backer in Dubai. There is no evidence, but in Afghanistan, sometimes hearsay is enough.

“She lives a nun-like existence,” says Ghouri, who has stayed in her house. “She is a bit like Elizabeth I in the sense that she always has to be beyond blame.”

She is still bombarded with marriage proposals from fellow power brokers. She says most are seeking a dynastic union, and she makes enemies of old allies every time she turns men away. She says she is unlikely to remarry because she doesn’t think she will ever find someone like her husband, who was so supportive of her work.

It would be truly revolutionary if a woman were elected president in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is no stranger to revolutions. But for all her extraordinary achievements, Koofi is not a revolutionary. She is a conservative reformist who has transformed her own family, and if fate had conspired differently, if her father had survived and she had never gone to school, she would probably be a 36-year-old grandmother, with eight children of her own, in a house without a lavatory, in a village without a road, ten days’ walk from the provincial capital, and her husband would beat her and refuse to sell his only goat to pay for life-saving medical treatment.

She still meets families in her province where women are valued less than livestock, and where babies are kept warm with fresh animal dung. It’s in communities like that where she is making the greatest change, even if those changes might be as simple as explaining basic hygiene and the benefits of modern medicine.

Yet she is just as comfortable shaking hands with world leaders. There are pictures – reprinted in her book, but not hanging on her wall – with George and Laura Bush; Tony Blair; Condoleezza Rice. In October, when she addressed the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, she urged David Cameron not to sacrifice women’s rights in the rush to cut a deal with the Taleban.

Perhaps one reason for her acclaim, internationally at least, is that Koofi embodies much of what the West hoped to achieve when it ousted the Taleban ten years ago.

“Change will come, and it will come through women like Fawzia, from within families and it will take generations,” Ghouri says. “There may be many Fawzias in the future, but at the moment she is the only one and she is blazing the trail.”

When it is time to be photographed she changes into a full-length, unfashionable, embroidered black smock. She pins on a purple ribbon, to mark International Day For The Elimination Of Violence Against Women and picks a matching lilac headscarf. This is the public face of Fawzia Koofi, modestly dressed, in accordance with Islamic custom, and like Karzai and her father, she stares straight into the camera. But there are two sides to Koofi, and it doesn’t take long before she breaks into a smile.

The Favored Daughter, published on February 16 by Palgrave Macmillan, is available from the Times Bookshop for £15.29 (RRP £16.99), free p&p, on 0845 2712134; thetimes.co.uk/bookshop

Herb-i-Islami, my 1969 Volkswagan Beetle, in Kabul.

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:31:19 +0430

Herb-i-Islami, my 1969 Volkswagan Beetle, in Kabul.

Old Volks in happy hippy home

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:25:00 +0430

Old Volks in happy hippy home:

The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

It’s pure pleasure driving my Beetle around Kabul.

Originally painted in VW’s Toga White with a crank-operated sunroof and factory fitted with a then state-of-the-art Emden radio, she rolled off the production line in Germany on October 28, 1968 but exactly how she came to Afghanistan remains a mystery.

By the time we met, two years ago, the Gala red “permeable plastic” upholstery had long since gone and “toga white” had been locally translated to “shitouri,” which means camel-coloured, in Dari. I renamed her Herb-i-Islami.

Archivists in Wolfsburg said the record of who bought her is “unreadable,” but the Afghan papers have survived.

She was owned by an Afghan woman called Hassina Jan, during Kabul’s 1970s heyday. I like to think that she was driven here, via Iran, by hippies retracing the old silk road, before war and politics made these places impassable.

Then she was sold, or abandoned, in a haze of marijuana smoke when the lovers ran out of money. One day, I will drive her back.

I bought her for £450 in 2010, and it costs about £100 a month — in begrudging instalments to the mechanic Ahmad Zia Faqiri — to keep her running.

When I asked Mr Faqiri (who I have come to know almost better than the car) to fix the sunroof he welded it shut.

Yet I watch in awe as he taps and tinkers and sniffs and listens to diagnose her never-ending ailments, and he has taught me to blow dust out of the distributor cap and suck dirt (and fuel) out of the carburettor to keep her on the road.

Seven US troops die amid spike in Afghan violence

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 11:45:00 +0430

Seven US troops die amid spike in Afghan violence:

The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Eight Nato soldiers and seven Afghan civilians were killed in a spate of explosions across southern Afghanistan, as new Nato figures showed violence actually increased there last year — undermining earlier claims to have reversed the insurgents’ momentum.

In southern Afghanistan, the main Taleban heartland which absorbed most of Barack Obama’s surge, violence jumped 5 per cent between January and November, compared with the same period in the previous year, Nato said.

Commanders had hoped to obliterate the Taleban in southern Afghanistan so they could refocus their resources in the east, where attacks soared by 20 per cent in the same period.

However, the latest figures, which coincided with the start of the American withdrawal, suggest the Taleban has weathered the surge in one of the most heavily contested parts of the country.

In the most recent attacks, six children and an adult man were killed in Oruzgan province, Afghan officials said, when they accidentally triggered a bomb hidden in a rubbish heap.

Four American soldiers were killed in a separate explosion in southern Afghanistan, while three more died in a blast late Thursday. An eighth Nato soldier was also killed in a separate incident yesterday, also in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement.

Nato’s statistics have been consistently at odds with the United Nations, which claimed violence was up 21 per cent, countrywide in the first 11 months of last year, compared with 2010. Nato said “enemy-initiated attacks” dropped 8 per cent across the country in the same period last year.

The southwest, which includes Helmand province, witnessed the most dramatic drop in attacks. Nato said incidents last year were 29 per cent fewer than the year before.

Yet the insurgents’ resilience is likely to raise fresh concerns over whether the Afghan Security Forces will be strong enough to stay in control when foreign forces stop fighting, no later than 2014.

“Overall enemy-initiated attacks are still down,” said a Nato official. “But when you break it down to the regional commands the picture is much less clear.”

Three months ago Nato used a similar set of figures, which showed a 12 per cent decrease in attacks in the south, to suggest its strategy was working.

“Regional Command South is showing emerging success and some improvement in security,” Brigadier Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, said at the time.

“Enemy-initiated attacks reported during the period June through August 2011 were 12 per cent lower than the same period in 2010.”

A senior Western official said the latest figures were “concerning” but he said they showed the insurgents had been forced to withdraw from places such as Helmand to maintain the pressure in neighbouring Kandahar.

“We knew attacks were up in the east, that’s always been a problem, but the south was a surprise,” he said. “Attacks were considerably down in Helmand, slightly up in Kandahar. Those facts may well be linked.”