The IEC said on Tuesday afternoon presidential elections will take place six months after parliamentary elections.

Reg: No 352 Volume No. 3946 Wednesday August 01, 2018 Asad 10, 1397 www.outlookafghanistan.net Price: 20/-Afs

Quote of the Day

Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve

we call theories.John Dewey (1859 - 1952)

www.thedailyafghanistan.comEmail: thedailyafghanistan@yahoo.com

Phone: 0093 (799) 005019/777-005019Add: In front of Habibia High School,

District 3, Kabul, Afghansitan

FACTS

KABUL - Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Tuesday afternoon announced it has set the date for presidential elections for next year.The IEC said these elections will be held on April 20, six months after the October parliamentary and district council elections.No further details were immediately available.This comes after National Unity Government (NUG) leaders called on the IEC a week ago to announce the date for the

2019 presidential election as “soon as possible”.According to a statement issued by the President’s Office at the time, President Ashraf Ghani met with IEC members, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghani-stan and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Tadamichi Yamamoto, and various ambassadors of countries supporting the election process.“At the meeting the leadership of the NUG asked the IEC to reassure the people about the ...(More on P4)...(1)

FARAH CITY - A roadside bomb which hit a bus in restive western Afghanistan on Tuesday killed at least 11 people and wounded 31, mostly wom-en and children, officials said.“It was a bomb planted by the Taliban to hit se-curity forces but... it got a passenger bus,” Farah provincial police spokesman Muhibullah Muhib told AFP.There was no immediate confirmation from the Taliban that they were responsible.The explosion killed at least 11 people and wounded 31, said Naser Mehri, Farah provincial governor’s spokesman.Abdul Ghani, the director of a health centre near the scene of the blast, confirmed the casualty toll.Afghanistan’s largest militant group is very active in the west.It often uses improvised explosive devices against government officials and Afghan and foreign forces.The bus began its journey in the western city of Herat and was headed for the Afghan capital.The explosion happened as it travelled through Farah’s Bala Baluk ...(More on P4)...(5)

KABUL - The Independent Elec-toral Complaints Commission (IECC) has been refusing to reg-ister complaint against a Wolesi Jirga candidate accused of kill-ing 10 people and spearhead-ing an illegal militia in northern Baghlan province.However, the IECC argued it could not register complaints now because the time to register complaints registration expired on June 30.Two men and a woman, resi-dents of Jalga district of Baghlan province traveled to Kabul to register a complaint against Del-awarImaq, a Wolesi Jirga candi-date in the upcoming elections.They asked the IECC to remove Imaq from the list of Wolesi Jirga candidates. Carrying pho-tographs of their relatives alleg-edly killed by Jabbar, an illegal commander linked to Imaq, the three persons said their 10 rela-tives had been killed by Jabbar who had the backing of Imaq.Haji Habib, one of the protestors, said his seven other relatives had also been killed by Imaq but they could not come to Kabul and register a complaint because they could not afford their travel costs.He said they wanted to register a complaint on behalf of their other relatives in the IECC.“We came to Kabul because no government offices in Baghlan take our complaints,” Habib said.He claimed two of his sons, with one of them ...(More on P4)...(3)

KABUL - The Independent Elec-toral Complaints Commission’s committee tasked to investigate reports of links between some candidates and illegal armed groups on Tuesday said it has changed its mechanism of iden-tifying candidates with links to illegal armed groups. IECC spokesman Ali Reza Rou-hani said that based on the new mechanism, after this, the IECC will act against those candidates who have complaints lodged against them and that the final decision will be taken in line with a consensus among IECC members. But rights groups have said can-didates who have been linked with illegal armed groups and are accused of rights violations must be dropped from the list of the candidates. “Those who have ties with il-legal armed groups, those who are involved in drug smuggling, those who are bullying and organizing open courts, these kinds of people shouldn’t be al-lowed in parliament,” said Sima Samar, chairperson of Afghani-stan Independent Human Rights Commission. “There is a lot of political pres-sure, perhaps one of the reasons that stopped them (IEC) from announcing the list was because of political pressure,” said rights activist Lailuma Naseri. Based on the IECC’s new mecha-nism, the names of candidates that have ties with illegal armed groups ...(More on P4)...(6)

Roadside Bomb Hits Bus, Killing 11 and Wounding 31

IECC Refuses to Register Complaint Against Baghlan Candidate

Watchdogs Want IECC to Drop Candidates with Links to Armed Groups

IEC Announces Date for Presidential Elections

KABUL - The situation in Afghanistan is consistent with a largely lawless, weak and dysfunctional gov-

Kabul Yet to Prosecute High-Profile Graft Cases: SIGAR

15 Killed in Siege of Govt Compound in Jalalabad

ernment, Ameri-ca’s federal watch-dog says.Many corrup-tion cases are yet to be prosecuted due to the lack of political will, said the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR.A citing a Depart-

ment of Justice report, the watch-dog referred to problems within

the Anti-Corruption Justice Center (ACJC), set up in 2016 by President Ashraf Ghani.In its latest report, SIGAR blamed the ACJC for going after low-lev-el offenders instead of pursuing big graft cases, such as a case at the Herat passport office.Calling the fight against the Tali-ban insurgents a stalemate, the watchdog said the Afghan gov-ernment controlled or influenced about 56 percent of the country’s 407 districts as of May 15.The government’s control re-mains ...(More on P4)...(4)

JALALABAD - Provincial officials have con-firmed the attack on the directorate of migrants and refugees’ affairs in Jalalabad on Tuesday has ended.According to them 15 people were killed and as many wounded in the attack that lasted over six hours. Officials said a car bomb was detonated close to the entrance of the compound at about 11.30am and was followed by two gunmen storming the building. A number of employees were able to escape during the course of the day, but many re-mained trapped inside. Throughout the day gunfire could be heard coming from the area while plumes of black smoke could also be seen soon after the attack started. This comes just three days after a complex at-tack on a midwife training center in Jalalabad.

This attack lasted almost six hours – and claimed the lives of two people. On Monday Nangarhar provincial health officials raised concerns over the sharp increase in civilian deaths in the past three months in the province. They said 160 people had been killed and over 490 wounded in the province in

serious security incidents in this time. Provincial council members also raised con-cerns and said they were extremely worried about the security situation in the city. But there has been a string of deadly attacks in the past few months, including the suicide bombing near the governor’s office on the third day of Eid al-Fitr, the attack on the edu-cation department and this week’s complex attack on a midwife training center that lasted over five hours.Among a long list of attacks in recent months, these included the July 1 suicide bombing which killed at least 19 people, mostly from Afghanistan’s Sikh community. On June 17, eighteen people were killed – also in a suicide bombing. On July 10, another ten people were killed in a suicide bombing – on a police checkpoint. (Tolo news)

KABUL - Ambassador to Pakistan Dr. Omar Zakhilwal has expressed concern over insecurity in eastern Nangarhar province, saying he will dis-cuss the issue with President Ashraf Ghani.After the killing of a tribal elder and Wolesi Jirga candidate and four other people in a suicide car bombing in Nangarhar on Monday, Zakhilwal voiced his concern at the situation there.The ambassador wrote on his Facebook account the security situation was deteriorating in the province, bordering Pakistan’s tribal region of Khyber, with each passing day.Around 32 suicide attacks and explosions had happened in Nangarhar over the past three months, killing and wounding more than 600 peo-ple, he added. The current situation in the war-hit province negatively impacted minds of people, he noted.“I urge provincial authorities to stop giving base-less reports about ...(More on P4)...(2)

Zakhilwal to Discuss Nangarhar Situation

with Ghani