February 10, 2003

Germans Take Afghan Peacekeeper Lead Role
Monday, February 10, 2003 5:20 AM EST
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Germany took control of the 22-nation peacekeeping force charged with keeping order in the Afghan capital, replacing Turkey in a ceremony Monday.

The new commander, German Lt. Gen. Norbert van Heyst, said the mission of the 4,800-strong International Security Assistance Force which has helped bring a measure of stability to the war-ruined capital will remain the same.

``Though the name and face of the commander of ISAF may change, ISAF's purpose and commitment will not,'' Heyst said.

Heyst received command from Turkish Maj. Gen. Hilmi Akin Zorlu during a ceremony at a secondary school auditorium in the capital. On hand were Afghan President Hamid Karzai, German Defense Minister Peter Struck and other dignitaries.

In December, Germany doubled to 2,500 its contingent in the peacekeeping force and extended its participation by a year. The Turkish contingent, now about 1,400, will likely be reduced to 160 men, Zorlu said.

Fourteen peacekeepers have died on duty in Afghanistan since the United Nations created the international force in 2001. The force's worst tragedy was a Dec. 21 helicopter crash that killed seven German soldiers.

Eventually, the peacekeepers' duties are to be taken over by a newly created Afghan police and military units, but that is expected to be several years in coming.

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Afghanistan seeks more women police
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan has launched a campaign to recruit more women police and is hoping women denied education by the former Taliban regime will sign up for training, a U.N. spokesman says.

Spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva told reporters on Sunday the interior ministry sought to attract more women students to Kabul's refurbished police academy, where sessions will begin next month.

"Afghan women are now the targets in the latest recruitment drive for the police academy," Silva said.

"The ministry's priority will be given to women students who were deprived of studies by the Taliban," he said.

There are 29 women among the 1,450 students now training at the academy which re-opened in August with German aid. Germany has taken the lead in helping Afghanistan set up a new police force.

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Afghans Free Taliban, Pakistanis Before Festival
HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Nearly 140 people, including members of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban and Pakistanis, were freed from Afghan jails Sunday in a goodwill gesture before the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

Sayed Nasir Ahmad Alawi, the intelligence chief for the western province of Herat, told Reuters 138 men had been released on the orders of President Hamid Karzai, who leads a transitional government trying to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation.

He said 72 of those freed were members of the Taliban, but he did not say whether they were fighters or merely supporters of the hard-line Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters and members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network were detained after a U.S.-led military campaign led to the fall of the fundamentalist movement in 2001.

A spokesman for Karzai said the president had ordered authorities to free prisoners who were critically ill, older than 60, serving minor offences or women who had finished half their sentence. Muslims traditionally exercise charity and clemency during the festival of Eid al-Adha.

``Those who kill people intentionally, drug smugglers, and national traitors do not benefit under this order,'' presidential spokesman Sayed Fazl Akbar told Reuters.

Alawi said there were 19 Pakistani citizens among those freed in Herat Sunday.

Several hundred Pakistanis have been freed from Afghan jails since the Taliban fell. Islamabad was the Taliban's main backer before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, blamed on al Qaeda.

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Two separate rocket barrages in eastern Afghanistan target U.S. bases, but miss  
By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - Rockets were fired at two U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan, but none hit their targets and there were no injuries, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday.

Three rockets were fired toward a U.S. base in Urgun on Sunday afternoon. Later, a 107 mm rocket was fired at the U.S. base at Shkhin, said Col. Roger King. Both locations are in Paktika province, near the Pakistan border.

King said the rocket attacks did not appear to be coordinated.

Rockets are frequently fired at U.S. bases in Afghanistan, but rarely hit their targets.

Meanwhile, King said that the 6th Battalion of the Afghan National Army graduated Sunday in a ceremony in the capital, Kabul. The battalion, the largest single group so far to graduate, included 590 light infantry soldiers who were trained by French forces.

King said it would be at least a year or two before the Afghans are able to take over their own military training. Creating the army is one of the keys to the U.S. military's continued presence in Afghanistan, he said.

"Having a functioning Afghan National Army has got to figure into the coalition's exit strategy somewhere, because we recognize that by our presence we are providing some security and stability to the country," King said.

The Afghan National Army now has about 1,800 soldiers, and the Americans hope to have 9,000 to 12,000 trained by spring of 2004. The Afghan government envisions the full force to eventually reach 70,000.

Also, King said a stockpile of weapons collected over several weeks was destroyed Sunday at the U.S. base at Salerno, in Khost province.

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Bin Laden's relatives tried to use Hajj to get to Afghanistan, says a former Ariana employee
Sun Feb 9, 7:13 PM ET  By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Increased U.S. fears of terror attacks may not be unfounded. The Hajj, the huge annual Muslim pilgrimage to Islam's holy city of Mecca, can provide cover for militant organizations attempting to secretly place operatives around the globe to stage attacks.

Four years ago, Osama bin Laden's relatives, worried about his ill health, tried to use the pilgrimage as a cover to visit the Saudi-born terrorist while he was holed up in Afghanistan, says a former Afghan airline official who was approached by the fugitive terrorist's family.


The sheer number of travelers for the five-day pilgrimage, which typically draws about 2 million Muslim visitors, means that tracking movements becomes difficult if not impossible __ and would-be terrorists know it.


The U.S. government — citing increased intelligence suggesting al-Qaida activity — upgraded its terror status to code "orange," on Friday warning of an increased possibility that the terrorist network would launch an attack to coincide with Muslim holy days.


During the 1999 Hajj, bin Laden's mother and brother apparently contacted officials at Afghanistan's state-run airline, Ariana, to sneak aboard a flight to visit the ailing terrorist in his Afghan hideaway.

A former airline official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, provided details of the attempt to smuggle the relatives into Afghanistan after he met a brother of bin Laden who identified himself only as Abdullah.

At the time, bin Laden was ill and United Nations sanctions had grounded Afghanistan's national airlines — except for flights to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage.

"He was a tall, young, handsome man and he said 'we want to go because my brother is sick and my mother is insisting she goes to see him.' They said they had permission from the Saudis and from the foreign ministry in Afghanistan," the official recalled of the meeting held at the airport in Jeddah.

The former employee __ the only non-Taliban among the Afghan men at the 1999 meeting __ still lives and works in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and said he feared repercussions if identified.

The Taliban's vice president of commercial affairs at the airline, Mullah Kifaiatullah, and the Taliban's consular officer in Jeddah were the only two others at the meeting with the man, who was introduced by "a man who said he was with the Saudi interior ministry."

The meeting was held at the airport in Jeddah, after three calls within one hour to the Ariana employee's mobile phone by the Saudi interior ministry official.

"When we returned to the hotel after the meeting, the Taliban told me 'you don't tell anyone about this.' I was so scared about having this information. I didn't know what would happen to me and I wanted to just run away from Ariana after that, but I didn't know what would happen if I left Ariana."

In the end, bin Laden's brother and mother were not taken aboard the Ariana flight because United Nations workers were monitoring everyone who got off the aircraft back in Kabul, he said.

"I know for certain they did not come on the flight. I told his brother to try to go by way of Quetta or Peshawar," both in Pakistan because the U.N. would not be monitoring those flights.

"His brother smiled and said 'I've been to Quetta. It is so hot and to Kandahar (in southern Afghanistan) it is a long and dusty ride.'" But Abdullah told the Ariana official he was in touch with his brother who could arrange transportation from the Pakistan border.

Today, even Pakistani investigators admit they are working to improve immigration controls throughout the year. Federal investigators in Pakistan said forged documents are a dilemma for law enforcement.

"It is very easy for any person to get a fake Pakistani passport with the help of those agents dealing in the business of forged travel documents," said Sharif Virik, a director at Pakistan's domestic agency, the Federal Investigation Agency.

"This is a serious problem, and we are very worried about it," he said. In 2001, Pakistani authorities stopped nearly 1,000 people trying to board aircraft using false documents.

"You can get ten passports of different countries, if you know who to approach," said Virik.

But the authorities are clamping down.

"We also seized forgery tools, and fake stamps of foreign missions," said Naeem Khan, regional chief of the Federal Investigation Agency.

But the traffic during the Hajj greatly increases the workload — and the dangers of undesirables getting through. A total of 135,000 Pakistanis traveled to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage this year.

This year Pakistan imposed stricter controls on its pilgrims, said Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, director general of the National Crisis Management Center.

In Afghanistan similar controls have been imposed on its 25,822 pilgrims who were given visas to Saudi Arabia. Their identities have to be verified by the head of their local mosque, then they are registered with the local police. However, returning pilgrims either in Pakistan or Afghanistan rarely get more than a glance.

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Afghan Americans Hold Levers of Power
U.S. Citizens Appointed to Senior Posts in Kabul Draw Praise, Scrutiny
By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 10, 2003; Page A12
KABUL, Afghanistan For more than 20 years, Ali Ahmad Jalali lived with his family in suburban Maryland sending his children to Prince George's County schools, shopping at the local malls and carpooling to work in Washington, where he was a broadcaster and director at the Voice of America, specializing in his native Afghanistan.

A U.S. citizen since 1987, he recently left VOA to take up an unusual and daunting second career halfway around the world. Last week, Jalali became the Afghan government's interior minister, a powerful and influential position that places him in charge of the nation's police force.

"I symbolize the partnership that now exists between Afghanistan and the United States and the international community," Jalali said in his new office in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "That is the main reason I accepted the job. . . . I know the world, and I know Afghanistan."

Jalali is not the only U.S. citizen in the government of President Hamid Karzai. Four other cabinet members, the governor of the Central Bank, Karzai's chief of staff and one of four vice presidents are Afghan Americans who lived for years in exile. Most have worked alongside Karzai in what used to be Afghanistan's opposition abroad when this country was ruled by the Taliban Islamic movement, guerrilla factions, regional warlords and Soviet-backed leaders over the past two decades.

The backgrounds of the Afghan Americans arguably make them natural candidates for a fledgling administration that is trying to revive a shattered country. But their adopted nationality poses potential political costs in Afghanistan, which has a long history of foreign influence and popular resistance to it. Critics have accused Karzai of relying too heavily on Americans both for the U.S.-led military campaign that toppled the Taliban and now for civilian expertise in the government.

The editor of the newspaper of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jamiat-i-Islami party, for instance, has railed against the Americans and other Westerners in Karzai's cabinet, saying they are out of touch with the realities of Afghan society.

The party's general secretary, Enayatullah Shadab, was more circumspect but made the same point. "We want the government to listen to those who defended the country and not only rely on elements that came from outside," he said. "Karzai must strike a better balance. We need people from the West and their new skills, but we can't ignore those who stayed and fought, because they have the most realistic view of our society."

American diplomats were sufficiently concerned about the number of Afghan Americans in the government that the U.S. Embassy commissioned an informal census recently to see how many had been appointed. Embassy officials have stressed the independence of the Karzai government in recent months, and are anxious about minimizing the appearance of U.S. influence on the government's decision-making.

Karzai dismisses the uneasiness about prominent Afghan Americans as misguided. "These ministers may have a green card or a U.S. passport, but they are Afghans for us," he said in a recent interview. "Some Afghans went as refugees to Pakistan or Iran and some to America, and none is more or less an Afghan."

Most important, he said, the Afghan people want results from their government, and so he has reached out to people who can deliver them. "I truly don't think the people are concerned about which ministers come from where," he said. "They just want the country to finally be run well."

The prospect of being part of that effort led Jalali to leave his family in Maryland and take a position of enormous challenge and risk. He says he knows he will be under constant scrutiny especially since he has defined his job as completely overhauling the chaotic, poorly funded and often corrupt Afghan national police force and he already has commissioned some of his relatives to serve as his personal bodyguards.

"What you have now in the national police is an odd assortment of former mujaheddin fighters who fought with different factions," Jalali said. "All they know is to use their Kalashnikovs. They do not know how to function as a police force." And as for police commanders, he said, "Many were not appointed. They installed themselves."

As qualification for the job, Jalali points to long years as a student of military organization, including several years as a top military planner with the Afghan resistance against the Soviets. He says he is the most highly and widely educated Afghan in the world when it comes to military affairs, and he has written extensively about the Afghan military for scholarly journals and the mass media, in addition to reporting on Afghanistan and Central Asia for VOA for almost two decades.

He also wrote an influential critique last spring of the U.S. military role in Afghanistan, arguing that the way the United States used local chieftains in the war on terrorism "enhanced the power of the warlords and encouraged them to defy the central authorities." He has since softened his criticism but pointed out that local militias still play a significant role in working with the U.S. military.

Many Afghan and Western observers say the aggressive approach that officials such as Jalali bring to their ministries is essential to the development of the country. But it also can quickly make waves and enemies.

Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani, for instance, a former World Bank employee who is a U.S. citizen, is widely admired at the U.S. Embassy and many international agencies for his efforts to organize the country's finances and to change some established ways of doing business. But he also is harshly criticized by many Afghans and is said to have more enemies in Kabul than any other minister.

The other Afghan Americans in Karzai's cabinet are Sayed Raheen, the minister of information and culture; Sherief Fayez, the higher education minister, and Yusuf Nooristani, minister of environment and irrigation. Another important appointee, Reconstruction Minister Amin Farang, is an Afghan from Germany.

Most of the Americans have held academic jobs in the United States or, like Jalali, worked with the U.S. government. Nooristani served for several years in the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan, at a time when the United States was covertly supporting mujaheddin guerrillas in the war against Soviet occupation forces. Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, the new governor of the Afghan Central Bank, was a professor of political science at Providence College in Rhode Island before his appointment.

Probably the most prominent Afghan American in Kabul, however, works for the White House, not the Afghan government. Zalmay Khalilzad, of the National Security Council staff, is President Bush's special representative to Afghanistan and has been at the forefront of setting and implementing U.S. policy on Afghanistan since the military action in late 2001. Khalilzad is now serving in a similar capacity with the Iraqi opposition, and his long absences from the Afghan scene are often discussed and lamented by Afghan leaders.

With Khalilzad less available, Jalali said, the presence of other Afghan Americans is especially important and a sign that the international commitment to helping his native country is long term.

"So many American citizens and German citizens and Australian citizens are returning to their native country every day, and why not?" he said. "In Afghanistan now, we need more of the American and international presence, not less."

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Rising Violence Hurts Afghanistan Aid Work
Relief Groups Brace for More Attacks
By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 9, 2003; Page A20
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 8 The blast came at night, as six foreigners with the French aid organization Action Against Hunger were settling down and preparing for bed. There was a bright flash, a loud explosion, and suddenly the windows were shattered, throwing glass far into the house.

As the group later learned, dynamite had been thrown over the back wall of the compound and had landed in the garden, just a few yards from the house. It was pure luck that everyone was away from the windows when it exploded.

"We were attacked, but we don't know by who or why," said Olivier Franchi, program coordinator for the group in Kandahar. "Was this a random attack, or was somebody sending us a warning message? We don't know, but this is a very serious thing."

Such attacks are becoming increasingly common in southern Afghanistan, particularly here in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. In the past several weeks, a car belonging to an aid group was riddled with 16 bullets; two foreign land-mine removal specialists were slightly injured when their car hit a booby-trapped mine; Afghan workers with aid groups have been tied up and robbed; a grenade was thrown at an Afghan relief organization's car; and leaflets have been found urging locals to attack foreigners and Afghans who work with them. In neighboring Helmand province today, local officials told the Reuters news agency that unidentified gunmen attacked a security post on Friday, killing five Afghan soldiers and kidnapping two others.

"The level of violence here has increased in the past few weeks, there's no doubt," said Diane Johnson, head of the Kandahar office of Mercy Corps International, the aid group with the largest program in southern Afghanistan.

At a time when the United States and the international community are emphasizing the need to rebuild Afghanistan, many of the people working to accomplish that task say they are deeply worried about their programs and their own safety. The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and its supporters are especially eager to show that life can improve rapidly in the south, populated by the ethnic Pashtuns who formed the core of the Taliban Islamic movement, but that is where instability is greatest and aid programs most vulnerable.

In Kandahar, most relief groups have begun to draw down their staffs and develop contingency plans. Since almost all expect the violence to increase if the United States attacks Iraq, the talk is often of possible evacuation.

"We don't want to leave like we are panicking, because that is exactly what these people want," said Franchi, whose group was attacked on Jan. 29. "But we must also protect our staff. It is a very difficult situation."

Most of the aid workers say they believe the attacks are linked to the recent increase in combat between Islamic militants and U.S. and Afghan troops in the area. There have been battles to the southeast near Spin Boldak and in the mountains to the north, and late last month, several cars pulled up beside a U.S. military convoy heading out from Kandahar and shot three rocket-propelled grenades, all of which missed their targets.

In addition to soldiers and relief workers, Afghans have been targets. A land mine planted on a road near Kandahar blew up a minibus, killing at least eight people, and several provincial militia vehicles have been attacked and destroyed, killing several people.

Many international groups say they would have left some time ago if the humanitarian needs weren't so great. The area has not only experienced war and civil chaos for years, but has also suffered a three-year drought. Never a lush area, the region is now a uniform parched brown.

"In any other country, groups wouldn't be working here under these conditions," said Johnson of Mercy Corps International. "But this is Afghanistan, where the humanitarian needs are extreme and where everyone who comes knows there's a war going on."

Nonetheless, Mercy Corps has suspended travel to project sites outside Kandahar and is considering a reduction of foreign staff. And with a possible war in Iraq looming, Johnson said her group and most others are making contingency plans for evacuation of all foreigners.

What has increased Mercy Corps' concern is not only the attacks in Afghanistan, but also activities across the border in Pakistan. The group has a regional office in Quetta, where it recently experienced a sharp decline in attendance at some of its new health clinics. According to Mercy Corps regional director Jim White, the group learned that some mullahs had told worshipers at their mosques to stop using the services of foreign groups and that, in the sometimes fearful climate of Pakistan's border areas, the people had complied.

The security concerns are not limited to relief workers; larger infrastructure and development projects are also being affected. The Japan International Cooperation Agency, for instance, is in charge of several hospital and school projects, as well as one of the signature efforts of international donors: the rebuilding of a section of the main highway from Kabul to Kandahar and west to Herat.

But according to Tomoji Hagiwara, head of the agency's office in Kandahar, security is the group's biggest concern and will make it difficult to work outside the city. Hagiwara, who said he was speaking as an individual rather than as a spokesman for the Japanese government, which funds the agency, said that "right now, there is no way to build the road outside of Kandahar without more security." He said if a war in Iraq appeared imminent, his team of Japanese managers and engineers would leave Kandahar.

Hagiwara recently asked military officials at the U.S. air base outside Kandahar if they would supply security but was told it was probably impossible.

He and others said the security problems do not all stem from Islamic militancy. Banditry and highway robberies have increased, and foreign workers with relatively fancy cars and usually limited security make attractive targets. The threat of bandits is so great that Hagiwara said he couldn't bring money to Kandahar to pay his many Afghan subcontractors, but rather required them to travel 300 miles north to Kabul, the capital, to pick up their funds.

One group now providing relief and reconstruction services that says it definitely won't be leaving soon is the U.S. military, which is planning to bring more civil affairs officers into the Kandahar area within weeks. The military's plan is controversial among relief groups, which have expressed fear that the line between humanitarian and military work is being dangerously blurred. But the officers' presence would ensure that some rehabilitation of the area continues.

And in the event that relief groups do decide to leave the area, the military is committed to helping them get out. "We would never turn down their request for evacuation," said Maj. Greg Liska, who heads the civil-military effort here. "We would go get them if they were in trouble."