Censorship at National Defence

The Department of National Defence's information management approach:

DND guide tells military how to censor records

OTTAWA, Apr 29 (Globe and Mail) - The Department of National Defence has produced a guide instructing the military how to justify its arguments for censoring records requested by the public and journalists.

The Guide on Protection of Operational Security Information was distributed in January across the Forces and National Defence, a department in a constant struggle with journalists over how much should be made public about the war Canada is fighting in Afghanistan.

The guide lays out myriad ways that the federal law allowing censorship of government documents, the Access to Information Act, can be used to withhold information.

Examples include the excuse that records "would offend other nations or citizens of foreign countries" or identify "deficiencies in Canada's ability to defend against a threat."

The guide explains how even innocuous information can be withheld on the grounds its release would help piece together a larger picture of military operations, producing what it calls a "mosaic effect" that causes harm to Canada.

The Canadian Forces has often cited "operational security" when making its case for the censorship of records to the Access to Information directorate at National Defence, an office that functions as a chief information gatekeeper for public document requests.

But there's no definition of "operational security" in the Access to Information Act. ... (link)

Related:

• CF decides to resume detainee transfers.

• Media gag order: PM's office and Privy Council gag DND.

Dulce et decorum

The war in Afghanistan is taking its toll on Canadian soldiers:

Canadian Forces looking at hidden head injuries in deployed soldiers

WINNIPEG, April 25 (CP) - The Canadian military is considering whether to start screening soldiers for mild traumatic brain injuries upon their return from combat zones.

Sometimes called hidden head injuries, it's an issue that's been heating up in part because of the increasingly powerful roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices being used by insurgents in places like Afghanistan.

The Canadian Forces doesn't track the number of mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussions, said Dr. Mark Zamorski, head of the military's deployment health section.

"We don't have a clear picture of the magnitude of the problem in the Canadian Forces members," Zamorski said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The topic has received a lot of attention in the United States, where traumatic brain injuries are known as the "signature wound" of the war in Iraq. Earlier this month, American legislators voted to expand monitoring and research into brain injuries.

Zamorski said U.S. statistics show that about 15 per cent of military members deployed in combat missions report suffering a concussion, and he expects the numbers would be similar in Canadian soldiers.

A panel of experts is studying the issue within Canada's military ... (link)

On the American situation, as mentioned above:

Study says 300,000 US troops suffer mental problems

WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - About 300,000 U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, but about half receive no care, an independent study said on Thursday.

The study by the RAND Corp. also estimated that another 320,000 troops have sustained a possible traumatic brain injury during deployment. But researchers could not say how many of those cases were serious or required treatment.

Billed as the first large-scale nongovernmental survey of its kind, the study found that stress disorder and depression afflict 18.5 percent of the more than 1.5 million U.S. forces who have deployed to the two war zones.

The numbers are roughly in line with previous studies. ... (link)

Related:

• Over a quarter of Canadian soldiers suffer mental health problems post-Afghanistan.

• The number of Canadian soldiers with drug and alcohol problems has more than doubled since 2001.

Kabul attack and its aftermath

On Sunday, April 27 armed attackers fired machine guns and grenade launchers at a military parade to mark Mujahedin Victory Day - the 16th anniversary of the mujaheddin victory over the Soviet-supported government in Kabul. Der Spiegel has more:

As shots rang out, hundreds of police and army, who had formed an honor guard, fled in chaos. The president, cabinet ministers and senior diplomats, including the US and UK ambassadors, were bundled away by security forces. Three people, including a lawmaker who was around 30 meters from the president, were killed.
Despite a wide security cordon, at least three Taliban fighters managed to hide in a building overlooking the parade ground and open fire at the end of a gun salute. Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak said that the three attackers were then killed by security forces after a gunbattle, the Associated Press reports.

Afghanistan analysts said the attack was meant to undermine the public's faith in their government's ability to protect them. Afghan parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost told Reuters: "There is no security force in Afghanistan that people can trust. If you pay attention to yesterday's incident, the security forces fled the area before the ordinary people did." ... (link)

The Times has more on the aftermath:

Hundreds held after presidential assassination attempt in Afghanistan

KABUL, April 28 (Times) - ... According to senior security sources in Kabul, the Afghan police and intelligence service detained some 200 guests at a cheap hotel in Kabul popular among travelling salesman. Among them were the six assailants, who launched their machine gun and grenade attack ...

It emerged yesterday that one grenade exploded only 20 metres away from the VIP viewing stand ...

Eyewitnesses reported that the attackers opened fire from the third floor of the hotel, while other guests fled to the basement for cover. All the guests are being questioned by the authorities and most are expected to be released.
Yesterday, Afghan soldiers sealed off parts of the capital while plain clothes intelligence officers conducted searches, suggesting that some of the gang might still be at large. Three of the men were killed by security forces, one wounded and three captured. The three dead have been identified. All are Afghan nationals from different provinces of the country.

So far two militant groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, the Taleban and the Hezbi-Islami group headed by the former mujahideen leader Gulbudin Hekmatyar ... (link)

The New York Times outlines the beginnings of the investigation, though they couldn't resist framing it as an Al-Qaeda operation despite American officials rejecting the idea:

Afghans See Link to Qaeda in Plot to Shoot Karzai

KABUL, May 1 (NYT) - The attempt to kill President Hamid Karzai on Sunday was the work of militants who had infiltrated Afghanistan’s security forces and had ties to groups linked to Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas, the Afghan intelligence chief said Wednesday.

The claims emerged after a day of heightened alarm in which Afghan security forces killed and captured a number of suspects involved in Sunday’s assassination attempt, raiding three safe houses in Kabul, the capital. An eight-hour siege with one cell left seven people dead, including a child and three security officials.

One of those killed was a militant named Homayoun, who assisted in the attack on President Karzai as well as in the bombing in January of the Serena Hotel in Kabul, killing seven people, Amrullah Saleh, the intelligence chief, said at a news conference.

Afghan intelligence officials say they have linked Homayoun through an intermediary to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a mujahedeen commander who is based in Pakistan’s tribal areas and has long had ties to Al Qaeda. ...

American counterterrorism officials in Washington, however, said it was not yet clear what role, if any, Al Qaeda might have played in the attack against President Karzai on Sunday, even while acknowledging Mr. Haqqani’s past links to the group. ...

The unraveling of the plot here, the officials said, came after the Interior Ministry arrested some of its own men, who had been under investigation since the Serena Hotel bombing.

One of them confessed to involvement in the attack on a military parade on Sunday ...

Members of the police and a high-ranking officer of the Defense Ministry are also accused of helping the group, according to a member of the intelligence service ...

Within an hour of the confessions, the security forces had narrowed their search to a single house in the Kabul neighborhood of Guzargah and surrounded it on Wednesday, Mr. Saleh said.

When security officials tried to enter, they came under fire from gunmen and a woman barricaded in the basement. Three intelligence officials were killed in the ensuing battle. The security forces finally set off explosives, which killed all those inside — two men, a woman and a child — Mr. Saleh said.

In addition to the militant Homayoun, the two other adults killed in the house were a married couple and were not Afghan, Mr. Saleh said. ...

Six others suspects were arrested in a village on the eastern edge of the capital, he said, adding that another raid in a suburb of eastern Kabul was under way. ... (link)

The Quqnoos news site identifies Arzan Qimant and Tarakhil as the locations of the suburban raids.

Meanwhile, Reuters says that the urban siege ended with the militants blowing themselves up:

Taliban militants kill themselves in Afghan siege

KABUL, April 30 (Reuters) - Five Taliban militants blew themselves up in a house in the Afghan capital Kabul after 10 hours of clashes with besieging Afghan security forces on Wednesday, an Interior Ministry official said.

While the Taliban have launched sporadic suicide attacks in Kabul, the militants have not before been detected in any numbers inside the city ...

One of the men who died in Wednesday's siege had taken part in the parade attack, a Taliban spokesman said. One other militant, a woman and her daughter were also killed during a raid on the house, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted the spokesman as saying. ... (link)

From AP:

KABUL, April 30 (AP) - Afghan security forces raided the Kabul hide-out of militants with suspected links to a weekend attack on President Hamid Karzai, sparking a clash Wednesday that left at least seven people dead, officials said.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the two sides traded rocket-propelled grenade and automatic gunfire for several hours before the clash ended at midmorning. ...

The chief of the intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, told Parliament on Tuesday that his agency knew about the plot to kill the president over the weekend but failed to locate the assailants in time. ... (link)

Two thirds of Afghans suffer mental disorder

Reuters relays a shocking statistic:

66% of Afghans mentally afflicted: Official

KABUL, Apr 21 (Reuters) - Scarred by decades of turmoil and grief, 66% of Afghans suffer from depression or some form of mental disorder and an increasing number are turning to illegal drugs, a health official said.

Afghan deputy health minister Faizullah Kakar said mental illness and drug abuse were the most urgent health problems that the country needs to tackle. ...

"Depressed people like to take drugs and get more depressed. It's a vicious cycle."

Afghanistan is the world's number one producer of opium, from which heroin is derived. It had an estimated 920,000 drug addicts a few years ago. "This may be greater now," Kakar said. ... (link)

Guns and aid don't mix

Canadian Doctor James Orbinski is a former president of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and the subject of a new documentary called Triage opening in Toronto. He's featured in the Toronto Star:

Canada confusing political, aid relief goals in Afghanistan, MD says

April 22 - [...] He says the "war on terror" has allowed governments to sell the public on warfare as a life-saving operation. ...

Despite many near-death experiences over more than a decade in conflict zones, Orbinski rejects Ottawa's argument that the military can help to create a safe space for humanitarian work in Afghanistan.

"This is part of a dangerous confusion of humanitarian action with the political stakes that are at play in a war," he says. "Humanitarian relief is focused on relief of suffering. That's what it does. It's not rebuilding, reconciliation or gender equity. It's not a political project."

He adds, "when that clear, limited goal is obscured with other objectives, what suffers the most is the people who need assistance. They don't get it."

The best thing that Ottawa could do for Afghanistan is to "decouple" humanitarian programs from military objectives, he insists. "That would dramatically affect the lives of Afghans." ...

[T]he rules of war – the Geneva Conventions created to protect human rights – have been undermined by the U.S.-led "war on terror," he says.

"Distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, proportionality of military response, respecting people's right to humanitarian assistance, and the obligations of occupying armies to allow for (aid) to flow freely, those have been lost in a post 9/11 world." ... (link)

Related:
ACBAR, an umbrella agency dealing with Afghan aid efforts says in a report:

... PRTs have often overshadowed and in some cases assumed the responsibilities of local government. Thus, they have slowed the emergence and development of state institutions at local level ...

Writing in Guardian, a British writer with experience in international aid says "Six years into the occupation, it is clear that the PRT strategy has failed."

Indian soaps banned while death penalty lives

Radio Free Europe has the story:

TV Stations Ordered To Stop Broadcasting 'Un-Islamic' Content

April 22 - The Afghan government has ordered independent television stations in Kabul to stop broadcasting programs deemed "un-Islamic"or that "undermine Afghan culture."

Indian soap operas, hugely popular among Afghans, are among the shows that have been branded "un-Islamic," and television stations have been given orders to take them off the air.Abdul-Qadir Mirzai, chief news editor for the private television station Ariana, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that Ariana has had to stop airing "Kumkum," a popular Indian soap opera. ...

Mirzai insists the Indian soap opera, based on the love story of a Hindu couple, does not undermine Afghan culture or corrupt young Afghans' morals. Indian movies and television series do not usually include sex or nude scenes. ... (link)

President Karzai has reportedly defended the ban:

Asked about the move, Karzai told a media briefing his government was committed to media freedom.

But, "like the rest of the countries in the world, we want our television broadcasting to be in line with our culture, based on our society moral standards," Karzai said. ... (link)

You can watch a clip of Kumkum, the banned soap, on Youtube here.

President Karzai has also revealed that he dislikes the death penalty, but will not move to abolish it:

Karzai rejects call to end death penalty

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - President Hamid Karzai expressed reservations Monday about imposing the death penalty but rejected calls to abolish capital punishment in his country.

"I am very slow in approving the orders for executions," Karzai said. "I prefer life sentencing because that would serve as a better lesson."

The Supreme Court recently upheld rulings by lower courts to sentence about 100 people to death, despite concerns that the fledgling legal system does not ensure fair trials. Karzai must give final approval for executions to take place.

However, in cases such as kidnappings and killings of innocents, Karzai said he would follow Shariah, or Islamic law, which sanctions capital punishment. ... (link)

Related:
Draft law mirrors Taliban regime.

Conservative women's leader calls for negotiations

Fatana Gailani, head of the Afghanistan Women Council, has some hard-won anti-Taliban credentials. Back in 1998, she and her husband (more on him later) found themselves on a Taliban-inspired hit list. Amnesty International was among those who came to their defense. At the time, they were living in exile in Pakistan's Pashtun city of Peshawar. Fatana had started her organisation there after her family fled from the communist regime in Afghanistan in the late 1970's. Thus, she has some serious anti-communist qualifications as well.

Gailani also has human rights credibility. Profiled on the website of Amnesty International (Canada) as a defender of human rights, she says:

"Amnesty International members are my friends. Our shared work is very important for people, especially the women. We still have hope for the future." (link)

In 1998, Gailani was a recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. Co-recipients of that Spanish prize that same year included Rigoberta Menchu and Graca Machel, the only woman to have been married to two different heads of state (Mozambique's late President Samora Machel and Nelson Mandela).

Gailani was also featured in a 2002 story in Oprah's Magazine.

Yet that is not all. Gailani also has some serious conservative bona fides. Recently she took part in a demonstration in Kabul called to protest against the Dutch and the Danes. The Dutch on account of the film Fitna and the Danish for newspaper Jyllands Postens, which recently republished the famously offensive cartoons depicting Muhammad.This week, according to the Afghan news site Quqnoos, Fatana Gailani called for negotiations with Taliban insurgents:

Women's group supports Taliban peace talks
Head of women's assembly urges UN to sponsor peace negotiations
Quqnoos, April 19

... Fatana Ishaq Gailani said women were vital to the success of peace talks between the two warring sides.

At a meeting on Thursday, Gailani called for the UN to support the [Afghanistan Women Council] in its search for a peace deal.

Gailani blamed foreign interference for the long war in Afghanistan, and called on foreign countries to help the Afghan government to restore peace and security in the country.

She told foreign troops to stop searching people’s houses during military operations and criticized the lack of co-ordination among the various foreign forces based in the country. ... (link)

Gailani has an interesting family background. Her husband is Ishaq Gailani, head of the National Solidarity Movement of Afghanistan. He is a nephew of Pir Ahmad Gailani, who is the leader of the Qadiriyya Sufist order. Pir Gailani is also the head of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan (NIFA).

During the jihad against the Soviets, NIFA, a royalist movement, had the favour of US conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation and Freedom House. In those days, NIFA was a loose coalition which included such luminaries as General Abdul Rahim Wardak and Kandahar strongman Gul Agha Sherzai. Wardak, head of the leading family of Wardak Province, is a US-trained officer who has served as Afghanistan's Minister of Defense both the pre- and post-Taliban eras. Similarly, Sherzai was appointed post-Soviet and post-Taliban governor of Kandahar but has since been moved to Nangarhar in order to keep him out of trouble.

We have covered various aspects of calls for negotiations (see especially here), but we'll leave the last word (for now) to the leading English language expert on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin. Writing on his blog, Rubin has some choice words for American opponents of negotiations, both left and right:

... Curiously, both right-wing and left-wing critics of U.S. policy are now speaking out against these talks, in the apparent hope that Afghans will continue to die fighting in an endless war to solve the whole world's problems. ...

There are indeed dangers in these negotiations, but I wonder what scenario for ending the conflict the critics of negotiations have in mind? The Afghan insurgency, loosely affiliated to the Taliban, is not a marginal extremist organization that can be destroyed by force. ... (link)

Canadian Army's low retention and new CF ads

The problem:

Keeping soldiers now tougher task
Army has almost double the attrition of Forces average

OTTAWA, Apr 17 (CP) - Keeping soldiers in the military is proving to be a difficult task as the country settles in for three more years of fighting in Afghanistan — one that is demanding more and more attention from top commanders, newly released documents reveal.

Briefing materials prepared for Defence Minister Peter MacKay show army attrition — the number of people choosing to retire or not renew their contracts — has reached 13 per cent, almost double the average for all three branches of the military.

A presentation given last fall by the army chief, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, shows the overall size of the land force declined by 1,846 soldiers between May 2005 and May 2007, despite the success in recruiting fresh troops. ...

Many veterans will tell you their experience in the war-torn country is so rewarding that they would happily return. It’s the time spent in home bases back in Canada that seems the most taxing, especially for those serving with comrades or commanders who’ve never seen combat. ... (link)

The solution:

Latest Canadian Forces ads omit Afghan mission

OTTAWA, Apr 17 (Globe and Mail) - One thing is missing from the Canadian Forces' latest generation of TV recruitment ads unveiled this week: any mention of Afghanistan or overseas combat.

It's an odd omission given that Canada is engaged in its biggest military operation since the Korean War in Afghanistan, a mission that has revitalized the Forces and driven a lot of its new equipment spending.

Instead, the two new TV ads - Hard Landing and Drug Bust - paint a job in the Forces as an exclusively domestic career: rescuing survivors of a downed airplane in the Canadian North and catching drug smugglers off the East Coast.

"These ads will be seen on television throughout the spring - including in the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs," the Department of National Defence announced this week.

Peter Donolo, a partner with the polling firm the Strategic Counsel, said the minority Conservative government is likely trying to play down the controversial Afghanistan mission in case it is defeated and must go to the polls, while playing up two issues it has long championed to political acclaim: Arctic sovereignty and border security. ...

More than 12,000 Canadian troops - regular force and reservists - have been through Afghanistan in six-month rotations of roughly 2,500 each since the latest deployment to the Afghan province of Kandahar began two years ago. ... (link)

See the ads on Youtube: Hard Landing and Drug Bust.

Kambakhsh's appeal: hope for condemned journalist

Bloomberg carries a bit of good news:

Condemned Afghan Journalist Wins Right to Appeal Death Sentence

April 16 (Bloomberg) - A young Afghan journalist, sentenced to death in January for spreading feminist criticism of Islam, has been granted an appeal, according to one of the international organizations monitoring his case.

The writer, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, 23, was transferred on March 28 from prison in the remote province of Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, to the capital, Kabul, according to Jean MacKenzie, program director in Afghanistan for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting. The London-based Institute is an international advocate for press freedom.

The move, Mackenzie said in a telephone interview, was accompanied by promises from officials in the government of President Hamid Karzai that Kambakhsh would be freed.

MacKenzie credited international protests in the wake of the death sentence as a key factor in getting Kambakhsh out of the control of regional religious and secular authorities. She also said that within Afghanistan, protests in several cities organized by the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), a banned group, had made local citizens aware of the case.

"There is a belief that the charges were trumped up as a political move," MacKenzie said. She added that Kambakhsh and his brother, also a journalist, had been outspoken about the rise of warlords in the north and the breakdown of centralized government authority. ...

On Jan. 31 Kabul demonstrators, organized by RAWA, marched in support of Kambakhsh, shouting "Long live democracy!" and demanding his release, ending up in front of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan.

"This case is not an anomaly," MacKenzie said. "It is symptomatic of what is happening in Afghanistan, the weakening of power at the center and the rise of local powerbrokers.

"It's entirely possible that if things continue this way," she continued, "Afghan society will not look that different from the way it was under the Taliban." (link)

The Independent (UK) quotes Kambakhsh's brother, Ibrahimi, who was arguably the indirect target of Kambakhsh's arrest. Ibrahimi is a journalist with a tendency to criticize the government:

"It is a warning to the whole of the Afghan people. The Afghan judiciary shouldn't have the ability to pass the death sentence. The whole system is corrupted... Lots of people are facing the death penalty for no reason.

"Maybe there are people who should face the death penalty, but they are in power, in government. The people on death row are the people who could not pay enough to get out." ... (link)

Draft law mirrors Taliban regime

In the summer of 2006, Human Rights Watch expressed its concern that Afghan President Karzai's cabinet had approved a proposal to reestablish the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Taliban regimes' brutal and arbitrary morality police.

"Afghan women and girls face increasing insecurity, and it’s more important for the government to address how to improve their access to public life rather than limit it further," said an HRW researcher.

A female MP told HRW that she was worried that such a development could spur violence and repression. "The only hope is the Parliament," she said. (For more, see Appendix below.)

Fast forward to this week, when legislators in that same Afghan parliament have proposed their own set of Taliban-like restrictions:

Afghan parliament committee drafts Taliban-style moral law

KABUL, Apr 16 (AFP) - An Afghan legislative committee has drafted a bill seeking to introduce Taliban-style Islamic morality codes banning women from wearing make-up in public and forbidding young boys from wearing female fashions.

The draft, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, needs approval by both chambers of the Islamist-dominated parliament and President Hamid Karzai signature to become a law.

"Women and girls are obliged to not wear make-up, wear suitable dresses and observe hijab (veil) while at work or classrooms," said one article of the draft.

It also aims to ban women dancers performing during concerts and other public events as well as on television. ...

In a similar move the parliament, which is dominated by former anti-Soviet Islamist warlords, called earlier this month for a ban on dancing and Indian soap dramas on private television networks.

Men and young boys must avoid wearing bracelets, necklaces, "feminist dresses," and hair-bands, the draft reads.

The proposals also demand an end to dog and bird-fighting, pigeon-flying, billiards and video games, all past times favoured by many Afghans.

It demands separate halls for men and women during wedding parties, while loud music is banned at such gatherings. Afghans hold big and costly get-togethers for weddings, usually in a public hall with music.

If the proposals are passed, violators could be fined 500 Afghanis (10 dollars) to 5,000, according to the draft.

The plans mirror many of the laws introduced by the extremist Taliban regime, which ruled the country from 1996 to 2001 with strict Islamic Sharia law. (link)

ANI, the Indian news sevice adds the following sketch:

The legislation would ban:

• Men from wearing bracelets, designer jeans, necklaces, earrings and T-shirts

• Men from growing their hair long, “like a girl’s”

• Pigeon flying, animal fighting and playing with birds on rooftops

• Men and women from talking with each other in public, unless they are related

• Loud music and loud speakers at weddings and restaurants

• Betting in snooker clubs

• Shops selling “revealing” clothing

• TVs, radios and cable companies from airing programmes that are anti-Islamic and detrimental to the young

• People from selling, keeping or importing DVDs or photos of naked or semi-naked women

• People from swearing at children or women in public
Girls would also have to start wearing the Hejab “properly” by covering all of their hair with the shawl. (link)

In other similar developments, the Afghan Supreme Court has approved some one hundred death sentences, thus putting the question of their approval before President Karzai:

Supreme Court issues 100 death sentences

KABUL, Apr 15 (AKI) - The Supreme Court of Afghanistan has in the past few weeks confirmed 100 death sentences issued by provincial courts. ...

"The court proceedings are carried out behind closed doors, without the presence of defence attorneys, and often without the presentation of any proof on the part of the public prosecutor," said Wadir Safi, a jurist and law professor at the University of Kabul.

"In essence, we can say that justice in our country does not work and the accused do not enjoy any form of guarantee." ... (link)

Appendix: The Department of Vice and Virtue was in fact reinstated, according to Rina Amiri of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and George Soros' Open Society Institute. Testifying before Canada's Standing Committee on National Defence (January 30, 2007) she observed:

The fact that the ministry of vice and virtue has now been reinstated as a department in the government is because of the pressure from the conservatives.

... [The vice and virtue department is] keeping a low presence and [Karzai] did this as a means of appeasement to the religious community.... (link to pdf)

The picture is muddied a bit when we read that the department was reinstated much earlier in Karzai's government:

Afghan Women Wary Of Vice & Virtue
AFGHANISTAN, Oct. 7, 2002

[A]s CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey reports, in a development Washington is watching closely, the Kabul government has re-instituted the department of vice and virtue to safeguard Islamic values.

"It was a demand by some groups and we have accommodated it, but the real trend in Afghanistan is to move toward a civil society," says presidential spokesman Saeed Fazul Akhbar. ... (link)

Also, Indian journalist Aunohita Mojumdar wrote the following for Asia Times in 2006:

[T]he reality is that the department was never closed down by the Karzai government after it came to power, but lay dormant. Another little-reported fact is that the department was first set up under the mujahideen, though the Taliban upgraded it into a full-fledged ministry. ... (link)