Mazar-i-Sharif - City of Afghanistan_Part_2

NATO presence and the Karzai administration

The city slowly came under the control of the Karzai administration after 2002, which is led by President Hamid Karzai. The 209th Corps (Shaheen) of the Afghan National Army is based at Mazar-i-Sharif, which provides military assistance to northern Afghanistan. The Afghan Border Police headquarters for the Northern Zone is also located in the city. Despite all the security put in place, there are reports of Taliban activities and assassinations of tribal elders. Officials in Mazar-i-Sharif reported that between 20 to 30 Afghan tribal elders have been assassinated in Balkh Province in the last several years. There is no conclusive evidence as to who is behind it but majority of the victims are said to have been associated with the Hezb-i Islami political party.

 

 Thomas de Maizière, German Minister of Defense, with Balkh Governor Atta Muhammad Nur in 2010

There are also NATO-led peacekeeping forces in and around the city providing assistance to the Afghan government. ISAF Regional Command North, led by Germany, is stationed at Camp Marmal which lies next to Mazar-i-Sharif Airport. Since 2006, Provincial Reconstruction Team Mazar-i-Sharif had unit commanders from Sweden, on loan to ISAF. The unit is stationed at Camp Northern Lights, located 10 km west of Camp Marmal. Camp Nidaros, located within Camp Marmal, has soldiers from Latvia and Norway, and is led by an ISAF-officer from Norway.
On April 1, 2011, as many as ten foreign employees working for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) were killed by angry demonstrators in the city (see 2011 Mazar-i-Sharif attack). The demonstration was organized in retaliation to pastors Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp's March 21 Qur'an-burning in Florida, United States. Among the dead were five Nepalese, a Norwegian, Romanian and Swedish nationals, two of them were said to be decapitated. Terry Jones, the American pastor who was going to burn Islam's Holy Book, denied his responsibility for incitement. President Barack Obama strongly condemned both the Quran burning, calling it an act of "extreme intolerance and bigotry", and the "outrageous" attacks by protesters, referring to them as "an affront to human decency and dignity." "No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act."[16] U.S. legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also condemned both the burning and the violence in reaction to it.
By July 2011 violence became at a record high in the insurgency.[18] In late July 2011, NATO troops also handed control of Mazar-i-Sharif to local forces amid rising security fears just days after it was hit by a deadly bombing. Mazar-i-Sharif is the sixth of seven areas to transition to Afghan control, but critics say the timing is political and there is skepticism over Afghan abilities to combat the Taliban insurgency.

 U.S. Senator John Kerry at Balkh University in May 2011.

Climate

Mazar-i-Sharif has a cold steppe climate (Köppen climate classification BSk) with hot summers and cold winters. Precipitation is low, and mostly falls between December and April. The climate in Mazar-i-Sharif is very hot during the summer with daily temperatures of over 40 °C (104 °F) from June to August. The winters are cold with temperatures falling below freezing; it may snow from November.

Demography

The population of Mazari Sharif is around 375,000, which is a multiethnic and multilingual society. There is no official government report on the exact ethnic make-over but a map appeared in the November 2003 issue of the National Geographic magazine showing Tajiks 10%, Hazaras 60%, Pashtuns 10%, Turkmen 10%, and Uzbeks 10%.Occasional ethnic violence have been reported in the region in the last decades, mainly between Pashtuns and the other groups. Some latest news reports mentioned assassinations taking place in the area but with no evidence as to who is behind it.The dominant language in Mazari Sharif is Dari followed by Pashto and Uzbeki. Pashto and Dari (Persian dialect) are both the official languages of Afghanistan. Minority of the population of Mazar-i Sharif practice Sunni Islam, the Shias who are mainly Hazara ethnic group which makes up to 60%.

Locals of Mazar-i-Sharif enjoying rides at a small family amusement park which is still under construction.