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Afghan warlord gets key cabinet post
Tuesday December 25, 11:59 AM AFP
Afghanistan's new leader included Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam in his government, despite his criticisms of the first post-Taliban administration, as Afghan forces arrested eight suspected supporters of Osama bin Laden.
Hamid Karzai's new government also backed Pentagon claims that a deadly US air raid last week blasted a convoy carrying members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, after reports said it contained only ethnic chiefs and tribal leaders.
And as a subdued United States prepared to celebrate Christmas under the shadow of September 11 terror attacks, a man appeared in court in Boston, after allegedly trying to blow up a packed US airliner over the Atlantic on Saturday.
Just two days after Karzai took office at the head of an interim power-sharing cabinet, he met Dostam and offered him the job of deputy defence minister.
Dostam, who commands a powerful military force from his headquarters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, had voiced dissatisfaction with the Bonn agreement which set up Karzai's six-month government.
The veteran general said he had his own political ambitions once Karzai's six-month mandate expires and a traditional assembly or Loya Jirga convenes to map out the nation's future.
"After six months there will be a Loya Jirga -- I will listen to the wishes of my people but there will be a constitution and law in Afghanistan," Dostam said. "If peace comes to Afghanistan, I want to enter the political movement."
In the southern city of Kandahar, Afghan forces stormed a hospital and arrested eight suspected al-Qaeda members after a brief exchange of gunfire, a spokesman for provincial governor Gul Agha said Monday.
Spokesman Akbar Jan said 12 Arabs, believed to be al-Qaeda members, were admitted to Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar before the departure of the Taliban militia from the city earlier this month.
"These Arabs had been a problem for us. They were threatening to blow up the room in which they were admitted if any attempt was made to arrest them," Jan told AFP.
"They had also warned they would not allow any foreigner to interrogate them."
Border Affairs Minister Amanullah Zadram meanwhile said four al-Qaeda troops were killed in Thursday's bombardment of a convoy by US warplanes that left 65 people dead.
Locals had insisted the raid hit tribal elders, mujahedin fighters and others en route to Karzai's inauguration, but Zardam corroborated US claims that American pilots had come under fire.
"They fired an anti-aircraft missile so they are not innocent. There were four Al-Qaeda in the convoy," Zadram told reporters, adding that around a dozen innocent civilians were also killed.
US commanders have insisted the convoy was a "good target" as the United States continues its hunt for bin Laden, his al-Qaeda fighters, and the Taliban leaders who sheltered the alleged terrorist mastermind.
The incident brought threats of retaliation against the administration of Karzai, who took office in Kabul on Saturday more than a month after the punishing US air campaign helped topple the radical Taliban militia.
In Boston, a man overpowered in an alleged bid to blow up an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on Saturday was charged with interfering with a flight crew.
Though the suspect was charged under the name of British passport holder Richard Reid, 28, investigators are still probing his identity amid confusion over his name and nationality.
The tall, long-haired suspect has alternately identified himself to US authorities as Sri Lanka-born Tariq Raja, born in 1973, and as Abdel Rahim, a name reflecting his conversion to Islam, French police have said.
Investigators are trying to establish whether he acted alone or as part of a group.
The suspect had tried unsuccessfully a day earlier to board the American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami but achieved his goal Saturday, traveling without luggage on a round-trip ticket to the Caribbean island of Antigua reportedly purchased at a travel agency in Paris.
Stashed in his shoes, according to French police citing unnamed US investigators, was about 200 grammes (under half a pound) of pentrite, a hard-to-manufacture substance often used as a detonator in military ordnance.
The amount of explosive found would have had a blast effect similar to that of many anti-personnel mines, which, according to the source, who asked to remain anonymous, would have been unlikely to have blown up the Boeing 767.
In Kabul, British commandos were patrolling the streets to ensure longtime ethnic tensions do not erupt to mar the launch of the new government, but the details of a future UN security force remained unfinished.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 international troops led by Britain are to use a six-month mandate to oversee the transition in Afghanistan, but a British spokesman said there were delays in rounding out the deployment.
As US-led troops continued to scour the rest of the country for bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, head of the hardline Islamic Taliban who ruled the nation until last month, the world's two most wanted men remained unsighted.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has resumed bombing in Afghanistan after a lull following a deadly raid on a convoy that Afghan survivors said was a mistaken target.
The Pentagon said on Monday that airstrikes resumed on Sunday with a B-52 heavy bomber attack on caves and ammunition dumps north of Kandahar, using precision-guided munitions in the drive against Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
"They did multiple strikes," said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Ken McClellan, a Pentagon spokesman. "Apparently they hit an ammo dump. So there were a lot of secondaries," or follow-on explosions.
In Afghanistan, the new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, met a survivor of the convoy from which about 60 people were killed in the eastern province of Paktia during bombing late Thursday into Friday.
Survivors have said they were hit while en route to Karzai's swearing-in ceremony in the capital of Kabul, possibly because they were deliberately misidentified to U.S. forces by foes of various ethnic Pashtun elders in the motorcade.
Karzai's spokesman added his voice to speculation that the convoy might have been deliberately misidentified to the Americans.
"Rivalries among the various tribes may have led to the incident," said Ustad Stanikzai.
But U.S. defence officials say they struck a valid target -- presumed to be Taliban militia -- after members of the convoy fired shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles at U.S. warplanes.
"I will tell you, having been in touch with my headquarters, that at this point we believe it was a good target," Army General Tommy Franks said Saturday in Kabul after the swearing-in ceremony for Karzai.
A defence official said U.S. and allied forces will soon make a new push into caves and tunnels in eastern Afghanistan as the hunt continues for bin Laden, blamed by the United States for September 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
"Operations are imminent" in the Tora Bora complex of the White Mountains, the last al Qaeda bastion to fall to U.S.-backed anti-Taliban forces, the official said.
NEW BOMBS
The Pentagon said on Friday that it was sending 10 experimental "thermobaric" bombs to Afghanistan to blast the air out of caves and underground facilities.
U.S. air strikes on the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora and a ground offensive by anti-Taliban forces have driven out hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, leaving a potential treasure trove of intelligence behind.
Army Sergeant Major Rich Czizik, a spokesman for the Tampa, Florida-based U.S. Central Command, the military unit running the campaign in Afghanistan, said the thermobaric bombs had not yet arrived in Afghanistan as far as he knew.
U.S. and allied forces are still seeking remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban militia, al Qaeda and bin Laden himself. But U.S. officials admit they have no idea whether bin Laden is still in Afghanistan or whether he is still alive.
In Islamabad, Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said "it's quite possible" the Saudi-born militant was killed in recent bombing. But the defense official in Washington said: "The hunt continues."
The Central Command discounted published reports that radiological material had been found in the region of the southern city of Kandahar, the last major Taliban bastion to fall in the war that began with U.S. and British airstrikes on October 7.
A spokesman in Tampa, Navy Commander Dan Keesee, said evidence -- which he declined to discuss further -- had been found indicating al Qaeda forces had an interest in developing weapons of mass destruction.
"(But) we have no reports ... that confirm the finding of any radiological material. So far, we have only detected natural background radiation at those sites we've surveyed," Keesee said.
Defence officials told Reuters on Thursday that about 500 U.S. Marines had been put on stand-by in Afghanistan for possible orders to help search the caves.
Dozens of U.S. Special Operations forces have been in the Tora Bora region for weeks, coaching anti-Taliban Afghan forces and directing airstrikes against the caves and tunnels.
On the humanitarian front, elements of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and other U.S. forces are upgrading airfields and infrastructure at Mazar-i-Sharif and Bagram so they can be used for large-scale aid distribution in Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman McClellan said.
Tuesday December 25, 3:55 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has resumed bombing in Afghanistan after a lull following a deadly raid on a convoy that Afghan survivors said was a mistaken target.
The Pentagon said on Monday that airstrikes resumed on Sunday with a B-52 heavy bomber attack on caves and ammunition dumps north of Kandahar, using precision-guided munitions in the drive against Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
"They did multiple strikes," said Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Ken McClellan, a Pentagon spokesman. "Apparently they hit an ammo dump. So there were a lot of secondaries," or follow-on explosions.
In Afghanistan, the new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, met a survivor of the convoy from which about 60 people were killed in the eastern province of Paktia during bombing late Thursday into Friday.
Survivors have said they were hit while en route to Karzai's swearing-in ceremony in the capital of Kabul, possibly because they were deliberately misidentified to U.S. forces by foes of various ethnic Pashtun elders in the motorcade.
Karzai's spokesman added his voice to speculation that the convoy might have been deliberately misidentified to the Americans.
"Rivalries among the various tribes may have led to the incident," said Ustad Stanikzai.
But U.S. defence officials say they struck a valid target -- presumed to be Taliban militia -- after members of the convoy fired shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles at U.S. warplanes.
"I will tell you, having been in touch with my headquarters, that at this point we believe it was a good target," Army General Tommy Franks said Saturday in Kabul after the swearing-in ceremony for Karzai.
A defence official said U.S. and allied forces will soon make a new push into caves and tunnels in eastern Afghanistan as the hunt continues for bin Laden, blamed by the United States for September 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.
"Operations are imminent" in the Tora Bora complex of the White Mountains, the last al Qaeda bastion to fall to U.S.-backed anti-Taliban forces, the official said.
NEW BOMBS
The Pentagon said on Friday that it was sending 10 experimental "thermobaric" bombs to Afghanistan to blast the air out of caves and underground facilities.
U.S. air strikes on the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora and a ground offensive by anti-Taliban forces have driven out hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, leaving a potential treasure trove of intelligence behind.
Army Sergeant Major Rich Czizik, a spokesman for the Tampa, Florida-based U.S. Central Command, the military unit running the campaign in Afghanistan, said the thermobaric bombs had not yet arrived in Afghanistan as far as he knew.
U.S. and allied forces are still seeking remnants of Afghanistan's Taliban militia, al Qaeda and bin Laden himself. But U.S. officials admit they have no idea whether bin Laden is still in Afghanistan or whether he is still alive.
In Islamabad, Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said "it's quite possible" the Saudi-born militant was killed in recent bombing. But the defense official in Washington said: "The hunt continues."
The Central Command discounted published reports that radiological material had been found in the region of the southern city of Kandahar, the last major Taliban bastion to fall in the war that began with U.S. and British airstrikes on October 7.
A spokesman in Tampa, Navy Commander Dan Keesee, said evidence -- which he declined to discuss further -- had been found indicating al Qaeda forces had an interest in developing weapons of mass destruction.
"(But) we have no reports ... that confirm the finding of any radiological material. So far, we have only detected natural background radiation at those sites we've surveyed," Keesee said.
Defence officials told Reuters on Thursday that about 500 U.S. Marines had been put on stand-by in Afghanistan for possible orders to help search the caves.
Dozens of U.S. Special Operations forces have been in the Tora Bora region for weeks, coaching anti-Taliban Afghan forces and directing airstrikes against the caves and tunnels.
On the humanitarian front, elements of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division and other U.S. forces are upgrading airfields and infrastructure at Mazar-i-Sharif and Bagram so they can be used for large-scale aid distribution in Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman McClellan said.
Tuesday December 25, 2:13 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Shooting broke out at a hospital in Kandahar late on Sunday when Afghan fighters backed by U.S. soldiers tried to flush out eight wounded al Qaeda members holed up there with grenades, witnesses said.
They said forces loyal to city governor Gul Agha opened fire on the second floor ward of Kandahar's Chinese Hospital after a failed attempt to trick the foreigners, believed to be Yemenis loyal to Osama bin Laden, into leaving the building.
Hospital security guard Haji Abdul Razzaq said the firing went on intermittently for two hours until around 1 a.m.
"Nobody was injured and all the other patients were fine," Razzaq told Reuters.
He said Gul Agha's men had showed up at the hospital, run with the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), along with up to 40 U.S. soldiers on Sunday night. The Americans had not opened fire, he said.
Nineteen wounded foreign fighters were brought to the hospital a few days before the southern city, the Taliban's powerbase, fell to Afghan tribal fighters on December 7.
Residents say the 19 were the remnants of a community of Arab radicals who lived in Kandahar under Taliban rule. They say many of them trained at a key al Qaeda camp called Lewa Saradi -- Wolf's Frontier -- near the city airport.
Most of the 19 wounded, apparently injured in U.S. bombing raids, have escaped but those still there have barricaded themselves in part of Ward Four behind a single brick wall.
They are armed with guns, grenades and other explosives and have threatened to blow themselves up if anyone tries to capture them, according to security guards and hospital staff.
FAILED RUSE
Razzaq and other witnesses said Gul Agha's men had sent a male nurse who enjoyed the trust of the Arabs up to the ward to tell them he could smuggle them to Pakistan.
One of the Arabs, who was missing a leg, fell for the ruse and went downstairs, but then realised it was a trap.
"He started shouting and tried to set off his grenade. The people around him got hold of him and stopped him detonating it. Then the Americans took him away," Razzaq said.
Gul Agha's forces stepped up their guard around the hospital on Monday. One commander outside the building said the aim now was to starve out the remaining seven Arabs.
"We are trying to isolate them so they don't have any access to food or anything else," commander Ismail said. "In the end, they will have to surrender peacefully and once we arrest them we will hand them over to an international court."
Several windows on the second floor were smashed on Monday. Some of the Arabs could be spotted peeping cautiously outside.
Patients in a different part of the ward were moved to safety when the shooting started and moved back to their beds on Monday morning, according to an orderly who was with them.
Commander Ismail said he wanted the patients evacuated.
"Their relatives keep coming and going and we don't know the people entering and leaving the ward," he said. "They may or may not be trustworthy."
Monday December 24, 11:44 PM AFP
US forces in Afghanistan have arrested the deputy head of the ousted Taliban regime's intelligence department, Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Afghan Islamic Press reported.
The Pakistan-based news agency said Wasiq, described as a key leader of the Islamic militia, was arrested last week by US commandos in the town of Maqaur in the central province of Ghazni.
It quoted unidentified sources for the report.
Kenton Keith, a spokesman for the US-led coalition said he could not confirm the report but when asked by reporters if Washington would like him extradited to the United States, he said: "He's definitely one we are very interested in."
From Tampa, Florida, a spokesman for the US Central Command, Sergeant-Major Richard Czizik, told AFP that the US military was aware of the report but: "we have nothing that indicates that at this time."
The United States has said it wants to question detained followers of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden for clues to his whereabouts since his forces fled a cave network in eastern Afghanistan last week.
It also wants to interrogate leading members of the Taliban regime which had sheltered bin Laden until it was overthrown this month.
Washington charges the Saudi-born militant and his al-Qaeda network are responsible for the September 11 terror strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed some 3,000 people.
Under intense US bombardment of the Tora Bora cave complex, some 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters are reported to have fled toward Pakistan.
The US-led coalition said last week that US forces and Afghan militia allies are holding an estimated 7,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said that a detention center set up by US Marines at Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan will be expanded to hold 500 prisoners.
Monday December 24, 10:04 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - During 12 years in Afghanistan, Alberto Cairo has seen five governments, survived two civil wars and helped countless people disabled by landmines and rockets to rebuild their lives.
Through the bloody warlord era after the Soviet withdrawal and the austere years of Taliban rule, the flamboyant Italian has worked as head of the International Committee of the Red Cross Orthopaedic Project, earning the name, "The Mother Theresa of Kabul".
"Why would I leave?" said Cairo, 48, a former lawyer from Turin who retrained as a physiotherapist and joined the ICRC. "These people are my family."
"It has been a tough time, but every day, everybody was just hoping that tomorrow will be better."
Cairo breathed a sigh of relief when a new interim government under Hamid Karzai was sworn in on Saturday with a mandate to rebuild a nation with a massive injection of international aid.
But at the back of his mind, he remembers how quickly the United States abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet Union withdrew its troops in 1989 and how aid workers battled for media attention through the 1990s.
"Now, everybody wants to be in Afghanistan, it's a good place to be," he said. "I just hope they will stay here and not forget about us like last time."
"Commitment from the international community -- that would be my best Christmas present."
REBUILDING A NATION
A recent report by the World Bank estimated Afghanistan needed at least $9 billion to rebuild its economy and basic infrastructure.
A visit to one of Cairo's orthopaedic centres in Kabul illustrates the human cost of 23 years of war in one of the world's poorest nations.
His centre treats an average 300 invalids per day -- 80 percent of them landmine victims -- and offers treatment, training and counselling to help them re-integrate in society.
As well as manufacturing and fitting prosthetic limbs, the centre provides jobs in its workshops and rehabilitation rooms to disabled people such as Mohammad Ali.
When Ali lost both his legs after a rocket slammed into his shop in Kabul in 1993, he thought his life was over. Now he earns a living making prosthetic feet using rubber from the tyres of field guns.
"I am happy to help other people in my situation," Ali said as he put the finishing touches to a tiny child's prosthetic foot. "We use military materials to make peace."
The United Nations estimates five million to 10 million land-mines litter Afghanistan, one of the world's most heavily mined countries, killing or maiming 10 people every day.
Most of the mines were placed by Soviet forces during their decade-long occupation.
Since it began in Kabul in 1988, the ICRC project has also opened centres in Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, Gulbahar and Faizabad.
TALIBAN RESTRICTIONS
The Kabul centre continued its work through the Taliban era -- not least because some of its patients were Taliban -- although men had to be strictly segregated from women.
"Throughout this Taliban period there were many restrictions, but we succeeded," says Cairo. "It is only now they are gone we see how much easier it is to work."
The Taliban eventually forced Cairo to leave Kabul a few days after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
But he immediately worked his way back through Pakistan, London and Moscow to Tajikistan from where he re-entered Afghanistan and followed the advancing Northern Alliance.
He was back in Kabul by the end of November -- a few days after the Taliban fell.
"You can see he loves his job," said director of the Kabul centre Najmuddin, who lost both his legs when he drove over a landmine 19 years ago.
"Some people feel he is no longer foreign and I think he himself feels he has become a little Afghan."
Monday December 24, 8:18 PM AFP
Powerful warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam said he supports Afghanistan's new leader Hamid Karzai but wants his tens of thousands of fighters incorporated into a future national army.
The ethnic Uzbek leader was speaking to AFP before a meeting with Karzai and with Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
Karzai later told reporters he has appointed Dostam as deputy defence minister.
Dostam commands a powerful military force -- which he says numbers 50,000 -- from his headquarters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
He has voiced dissatisfaction with the Bonn agreement which set up Karzai's six-month interim government but promises not to try to derail it.
"My meeting with Mr Karzai is to give him an assurance from the people of northern Afghanistan and the National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan (the political party he leads) to support the interim government," Dostam said.
Dostam also warned that while suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters and the former ruling Taliban regime had been "crushed" in the north of the country, thousands remained free in the south.
"In northern Afghanistan armed al-Qaeda and the Taliban forces have been captured, arrested, they are prisoners" Dostam said.
"In northern Afghanistan they are crushed but in other parts of Afghanistan they have changed their shape.
"In other parts of the country, in Kabul, in Kandahar, in Jalalabad, there were thousands of al-Qaeda and Taliban -- there is still a great danger there," he said.
"None of them has been arrested and they have not been killed. We still have a lot of work to do."
He said he was prepared to deploy his six Northern Alliance-affiliated divisions -- which helped drive the Taliban from Kabul on the night of November 12 -- as part of a fledgling national army.
"In the northern part of Afghanistan it is my wish that my people be part of the country but my people should be part of the national army.
"In the northern provinces of Afghanistan there are many divisions."
Dostam said his own personal military experience, and that of the troops who follow him, meant he could contribute a battle-hardened standing force to a national army.
"Including myself we have experience of military activities," he said.
Dostam said his political future would depend on a Loya Jirga, or traditional assembly of tribal elders. This will be held within six months to appoint a transitional authority to succeed Karzai'a interim administration.
"After six months there will be a Loya Jirga -- I will listen to the wishes of my people but there will be a constitution and law in Afghanistan."
If a lasting peace was finally established after 23 years of bloody conflict, he said he would embark upon a political career.
Dostam said his party is the most powerful and best organised.
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