February 24, 2003

Pakistan/Plane Crash: Four Bodies Recovered
KARACHI (AP)A small aircraft crashed into the Arabian Sea off the coast of southern Pakistan Monday killing all eight people board, including Afghanistan's Industries Minister Juma Mohammed Mohammedi and a Chinese official of a mining company, a Pakistan Navy naval official said.

Pakistan/Plane Crash -3: Four Bodies Recovered

Wreckage from the Cessna 402, which crashed shortly after takeoff, was found in the Arabian Sea. The aircraft was en route from Karachi to Jazak, near the Iranian border in southwestern Baluchistan.

Four bodies have been recovered so far, said a naval spokesman, Roshan Khayal.

Afghanistan's Industries Minister, Juma Mohammed Mohammedi, and Sun Changshen, the Pakistan representative of China Metallurgical Construction Co., are among the dead.

Earlier reports had named Sunching Fheng, chief executive officer of China Metallurgical, as the Chinese national aboard the aircraft.

The aircraft had been chartered to take a delegation of Afghan officials to inspect a copper mine operated by the Chinese company near Jazak.

It crashed 28 aeronautical miles west of the Southern port city of Karachi, losing contact with the control tower 29 minutes into the 700-kilometer flight, said Pervez George, of the civil aviation authority that governs air traffic in Pakistan.

Two pieces of the plane were found floating on the sea, George said.

Also on board were three other Afghan officials, a representative of Pakistan's Foreign Ministry and two crew members.

The aircraft was owned by Pakistan's largest private welfare organization, Edhi Trust, and had left Karachi International Airport at about 8 a.m. local time (0300 GMT). It was piloted by Col. Sajjad, the welfare organization said.

Mohammedi wanted to see what techniques could be copied by Afghanistan in its own copper mines in its Southeast, officials in Kabul said.

While in Pakistan, the Afghan minister participated in talks on a US$3.2 billion project to build a pipeline to carry natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India.

Mohammadi told reporters Saturday that he wanted an early start on the project and said he had given assurances to Pakistan and Turkmenistan that the pipeline would be "totally safe" in Afghanistan.

In Kabul, Afghanistan's Deputy Industries Minister Mir Mohammed Mafouz Nedai said he was "very shaken" by the news.

The crash was the second in less than a week in Pakistan.

Last week, a Pakistani air force plane on a routine mission crashed into a mountainside under heavy fog in remote northwestern Pakistan, killing the air force chief and all 16 others on board.

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Croatian G.I. Janes gear up for Afghanistan
By Manja Segrt Sunday February 23, 1:56 PM
ZAGREB (Reuters) - Jadranka, Branka, Gordana and Renata have been professional soldiers for years. The four women have just completed new and intense training and are poised for the most challenging task of their career.

Aged between 27 and 35, they are members of an elite Croatian military police squad preparing to spend the next six months enforcing peace, law and order in post-war Afghanistan.

"We are prepared for everything, including chemical and biological warfare," said Renata Matkovic, a 30-year-old single mother. "And if it came to nuclear war, we wouldn't be much safer back home in Zagreb anyway," she added, voicing fears of a conflagration in the Gulf.

The 66th squad, popularly known as the Cobras, is the only Croatian army unit which completely meets NATO standards and has been training for missions abroad for almost two years.

As part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, from late February until September their mission will be to aid the local police, but exact orders and assignments will not be delivered until they arrive in Kabul.

Afghanistan will be the first mission of its kind for Croatia since its 1991 independence from socialist Yugoslavia, and is further complicated by the Islamic world's traditional limitations on interaction between the sexes.

As part of their day-to-day policing duties, the women can expect to come contact into with local people at checkpoints and airports. As female troops, they can carry out physical searches of women off-limits to their male colleagues.

"I have prepared myself for the fact that local men probably won't even look at me, because I will be in uniform and not wear a veil or a burqa," Renata said.

TOUGH PREPARATIONS

The four moved to the military police from the army two years ago. Initial reactions from male colleagues were similar to those in the 1997 Hollywood movie "G.I. Jane", in which a female soldier fights male prejudice and endures tough training.

"In the early days, we would run and when you started to lag behind, you'd end up alone. Now, when the guys notice we're behind, one of them runs back to us, encourages us, sometimes they start pulling us ahead," Renata said.

On top of intense training, she had to prepare her eight-year-old son for her absence. "He has accepted that. He is proud of what I do, of the fact that his mother can even be a soldier." The boy will be staying with his grandmother.

Preparations for Afghanistan have been tough an advanced course in English, basic Arabic, mountaineering, target practice, martial arts, computer science, swimming and operating combat vehicles.

"Mountaineering was the worst," Branka Lisica, at 35 the oldest in the group, jokingly whispered so their commander could not hear. "But I passed the course, and that's what matters."

Renata liked physical training. "But then there are days when you just sit around and wait...I hate that," she said.

While Renata said she would feel safe in the mission "because I'll be armed and have my colleagues with me", 32-year- old Jadranka Dragicevic singled out a different threat.

"I do not expect any problems with the people there. But we have been told that Afghanistan is full of minefields, and that almost none of them are marked," she said.

EXPERIENCE OF WAR
All four policewomen joined the army during Croatia's 1991-95 war of independence against rebel Serbs and Belgrade forces, a conflict that has provided indispensable experience.

"If it came to an armed conflict in Afghanistan, I believe we would be in a better position than other Western soldiers, because we have lived through the war in our own country. Most of them do not have that experience," Renata said.

Gordana Gasparic is from the northern Croatian city of Varazdin. "I joined immediately after graduating from high school," said the 27-year-old.

"My country was in trouble and I wanted to help. I considered it my patriotic duty, but also a challenge, since there are so few women in the army."

Not only does it fully meet NATO standards, but the 66th is also one of the few Croatian army units to escape impending cuts in a Defence Ministry shake-up brought on by the Balkan country's NATO membership aspirations.

It is currently a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace and Membership Action Plan programmes.

The government plans to reduce the bloated Defence Ministry and army to around 27,000 from the current 40,700 a sensitive move in a country with jobless rates of more than 20 percent.

Together with Dutch and Italian units, the 66th will be part of the German military contingent and will live inside an army base with access to Western food, personal hygiene supplies and technical support.

Another serious threat to the entire ISAF mission may be the possible war in Iraq, or rather the Muslim world's reaction to a U.S. attack on Baghdad.

"We are going there under specific, pre-arranged terms," said commander Miro Kos. "If the situation deteriorates, particularly if experts determine that it has become dangerous for us, we can leave."

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ADB Reaffirms Support for Afghanistan Reconstruction in 2003
Monday February 24, 1:30 PM
TOKYO, Feb 24 Asia Pulse - The Asian Development Bank [ADB] is planning to provide about US$200 million in financial assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan this year, said Dr. Jungsoo Lee, Resident Director, ADB's Japanese Representative Office.

"ADB is committed to working with the Government and the people of Afghanistan to promote peace and stability in their country, to improve living standards and to reduce poverty," said Dr. Lee in an address to the Conference on Consolidation of Peace in Afghanistan in Tokyo.

Dr. Lee emphasized that efforts continue to build capacity, and improve administration, financial management, planning and project design and implementation.

A year ago in Tokyo, ADB pledged to provide assistance to Afghanistan in the order of $500 million in concessional loans and grants over the first two-and-a-half years. ADB approved concessional loans and grants totaling nearly $200 million in 2002, according to a statement.

Dr. Lee said ADB will provide $150 million to support an Emergency Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project, subject to approval of the ADB Board of Directors. This will focus on rebuilding key infrastructure in the transport and energy sectors, and is designed to help revive the economy

In addition, ADB hopes to provide $50 million to support an agriculture sector program to develop policy and institutional reforms essential for sustainable agriculture sector growth and natural resource management, and $10 million in grant technical assistance, he noted.

Dr. Lee said, "ADB is playing a key role in the international community's efforts to plan and assist in Afghanistan's reconstruction. Working with the Government and other development partners, we are deeply committed to promoting a long-term peace-building process."

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India to rebuild Afghan highways to Iranian border
Monday, February 24, 2003 3:07 AM EST
KABUL, Feb 24, 2003 (Xinhua via COMTEX) India will rebuild cross-border highways between Afghanistan and Iran as part of its efforts to help the reconstruction of the Afghan transportation sector, a local press report here said on Monday.

A 213-kilometer highway rehabilitation project funded by the Indian government is scheduled to begin next month in Afghanistan' s southwest border area, official Dari-language daily Anis reported.

Among the highways to be repaired under the project is a road link connecting Diel Aram district of Nemruz province in west Afghanistan with the Iranian border, which will give the land- locked Afghanistan an access to the Arabic sea.

An Indian team made a field survey in early December of 2002 in south and southwest Afghanistan for the project, according to the newspaper.

At a Tehran conference last month, commerce ministers of Afghanistan, India and Iran signed an agreement on the expansion of economic and transit cooperations among the three countries, Afghan officials said.

Under the agreement, Iran had committed itself to allocating storage space at and keeping open its Chahbahar border port for Afghan merchants and businessmen, while India agreed to reconstruct cross-border highways between Afghanistan and Iran.

India has been active in assisting the reconstruction of Afghanistan's various sectors since late 2001 when the Northern Alliance overthrew the then-ruling Taliban in the wake of the US air bombings on Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance had been firmly supported by India during its six years of armed resistance against the Taliban regime, sources said.

Meanwhile, nearly 100,000 metric tons of fortified high-energy biscuits, part of the one million tons of flour in aid pledged by the Indian government last December, have been handed over here to Afghanistan in the presence of Afghan transitional president Hamid Karzai.

The Indian biscuits, to be distributed through a nation-wide " food for school" project by the World Food Program (WFP), will benefit around 1 million school children across the country, WFP and Afghan officials said.

India had also granted three Airbus airplanes, 60 buses and 100 trucks to Afghanistan to help rehabilitate the country's transportation system which was badly damaged during the more than two decades of war and conflicts.

Sources here said India is keen to use Afghanistan as a transit route for its goods to the vast Central Asian markets in the north.

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U.S. forces battle assailants in Afghanistan in clashes that leave two Afghans dead
Mon Feb 24, 3:13 AM ET By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. forces battled unidentified assailants in two separate firefights in Afghanistan that left two people dead and two wounded, the U.S. military said Monday.

No U.S. casualties were reported in either of Sunday's clashes, the military said in a statement from its headquarters at Bagram Air Base, north of the capital.

One enemy fighter was killed and another wounded in the first clash at a compound just east of Tarin Kot in the central province of Uruzgan, the statement said.

The same clash also left one Afghan soldier working with U.S. special forces dead and another Afghan soldier wounded, said U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King.

The wounded Afghan soldier working with American forces sustained "multiple wounds to the body and head" and was medically evacuated to a U.S. base in the southern city of Kandahar, the statement said.

In a separate incident, U.S. troops also came under fire near Wazir, in eastern Nangarhar province.

"A U.S. military convoy in the vicinity of Wazir drew small arms fire from two armed men yesterday (Sunday) at approximately noon while attempting to secure a compound," the statement said.

"Close air support was called for and a squad of Afghan militia force soldiers was deployed to search the area. No injuries were reported."

King said coalition air support was called in during both clashes but the aircraft did not open fire on any targets.

Meanwhile, a truck full of American military supplies including sandbags and a generator struck a mine Sunday night just 200 meters (yards) south of Bagram Air Base.

The truck, which was being driven by an Afghan man contracted by the U.S. military, was on its way to a U.S. base near the eastern city of Khost.

No casualties were reported in the incident, the military said.

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U.N. expects another 1.2 million Afghan refugees to return home this year
Sun Feb 23, 7:12 AM ET  By TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - Gearing up for the repatriation of an expected 1.2 million Afghan refugees this year, the United Nations called on donors Sunday to help fund the massive operation.

The repatriation begins March 2 and is expected to cost US$195 million, but donors have only provided US$15.4 million so far, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman Maki Shinohara told reporters in Kabul.

Before the former Taliban regime was overthrown in a U.S.-led war in late 2001, an estimated 4 million Afghans were in exile, mostly in Pakistan and Iran.

About 1.8 million Afghan refugees returned home in a similar UNHCR-sponsored program in 2002, Shinohara said. Since January, the UNHCR has helped 7,300 Afghans come back.

The number of returns last year was far greater than expected, Shinohara said. As a result, tens of thousands of returnees - unable to find jobs and afford housing - ended up taking shelter in war-destroyed ruins around Kabul and in the provinces.

The UNHCR is also getting ready to help 300,000 people who have been displaced within Afghanistan return to their homes this year in the same operation, Shinohara said.

On March 2, teams from the U.N. refugee agency will begin the operation by "visiting villages and camps to assist and process refugees who wish to return," Shinohara said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers was due to arrive in Afghanistan Wednesday for a four-day visit.

Lubbers was expected to travel to the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and the northern town of Nahrin to see conditions of returnees and shelter projects, Shinohara said. Nahrin was hit by several earthquakes last year.

Shinohara said returning refugees would receive travel grants of up to US$30 per person as well as basic supplies such as plastic sheeting, soap, and flour.

Meanwhile, the U.N. children's agency said Sunday it would rehabilitate 200 primary schools across the country in 2003 - focusing on areas where large numbers of refugee families have returned.

The US$8.4 million project will also see water and sanitation facilities provided to hundreds of schools, said Edward Carwardine, UNICEF's spokesman in Kabul.

UNICEF estimates about 30 percent of Afghanistan's 7,000 schools were seriously damaged during the last two decades of war. Only half have clean water available to them, while less than 40 percent have sanitation facilities UNICEF considers adequate.

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U.S. faces many challenges in hunt for bin Laden
By Tabassum Zakaria Monday February 24, 2:33 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan is hampered by unfriendly locals, a quarry constantly on the move and a network that is savvy to tracking techniques, key U.S. lawmakers say.

After a stretch of uncertainty about whether bin Laden had survived extensive U.S. bombing of the Afghan mountains following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, U.S. officials are now generally convinced he is alive.

A recent audiotape broadcast by Qatar-based al Jazeera television was determined by CIA technical analysis to be "almost certainly" the voice of bin Laden, probably recorded in the past several weeks, officials said.

The hunt goes on. U.S. officials believe the man who has a $25 million bounty on his head is holed up in a remote mountainous region, possibly in Konar Province in northeastern Afghanistan or across the border in Pakistan.

"We're operating in a terrain that is very hostile," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss said.

"We don't have an awful lot of capacity to operate in that kind of an area," the Florida Republican told Reuters. "We do not have the kind of information you need to survive successfully in those areas to the degree that we're comfortable those are all factors."

CIA Director George Tenet in congressional testimony earlier this month said about one-third of al Qaeda's top leadership had been killed or captured, but he barely mentioned bin Laden.

Tenet said the area of "greatest worry" in Afghanistan was the eastern provinces that abut Pakistan's northwest frontier, where al Qaeda and Taliban remnants continue to operate.

Bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders have adapted to U.S. tracking methods, by changing means of communications and staying on the move, lawmakers said.

"As we get better in what we're doing, and we have we're in far better shape than we were in terms of detection and our assets and our collaboration and our sharing and the foreign intelligence they are also fast learners and they adapt very fast," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said.

Searching for bin Laden involves cooperation with the governments, police, military, and tribesmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Kansas Republican said. "And that is hopefully going to come together and we'll do a better job, but that's a pretty daunting challenge," Roberts said.

CHANGE OF LOOK?
Unknown factors included whether bin Laden was in deteriorating health or had changed his appearance although his height of about 6-feet-5-inches (1.96 metres) was considered a distinctive feature difficult to disguise.

"Maybe he looks different, maybe he's changed. I don't think we can obsess on that. They're out looking for him, they're serious about him, but we haven't gotten him," said Sen. John Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The West Virginia Democrat cautioned against overemphasizing the importance of catching bin Laden to the fight against terrorism, saying al Qaeda would remain a threat even if the leader was gone.

Al Qaeda operatives trained at Afghan camps were "taught to operate on their own" in very small cells all over the world, he said, so bin Laden's main function was as spiritual leader rather than hands-on director of specific attacks.

"Al Qaeda I think is the greater danger than Iraq and will continue to be for many, many years," Rockefeller said, because "they're in the business of going after Americans."

U.S. intelligence agencies also have to sift through deliberate false signals sent by al Qaeda, Rockefeller added.

"A lot of intelligence that is set out is for the purpose of denial and deception. People will use cell phones to call each other who would ordinarily use land lines, and they will do it for the purpose of intriguing us or throwing us off base," he said. "It's just so much more complicated."

Roberts said he worries about another attack: "These people are not giving up."

The U.S. government raised its national threat level to orange or high risk this month after an increase in al Qaeda threat information was picked up by spy agencies.

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U.S. troops hunt Taliban leaders in southern Afghan valley, find handful of weapons instead
Sat Feb 22, 2:19 AM ET  AP
BAGHRAN VALLEY, Afghanistan - Waves of U.S. Chinook helicopters carrying hordes of American troops touched down in southern Afghanistan this past week to hunt down Taliban leaders believed to be hiding here.

Initially at least, none were found.

Dubbed "Operation Viper," Wednesday's deployment in Helmand province constituted one of the largest concentrations of U.S. troops in the field in Afghanistan since last spring, military officials told pool reporters. Several hundred American troops took part.

Two weeks ago, U.S. aircraft bombarded suspected Taliban fighters they said had taken up positions in caves on a high-altitude ridge in the area. Afghan authorities are investigating reports that civilians died in the attack, but the U.S. military has said it has not confirmed any civilian deaths.

Before touching down in the Baghran Valley after a voyage on a twin-rotor Chinook from a base in the southern city of Kandahar, 30 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division's 405th Parachute Infantry Regiment were told to expect heavy fire.

None came, and the soldiers stepped out into a field already secured by American troops. The sky was gray, the air was cold.

The troops made a three kilometer (two mile) hike down to a dry river bed and set up camp for the night.

"Am I nervous? Yeah," said Spc. Zachary Yeager, 23, from Spartanburg, South Carolina. "But scared? No."

Capt. Andrew Zieseniss, from St. Louis, Missouri, said that given the large amount of U.S. troops involved, it would be hard to catch any suspected Taliban leaders off guard.

"With the amount of force - 200 plus soldiers - and I don't know how many Apache (helicopter gunships overhead) it would be hard to take them by surprise," Zieseniss said.

But "this is the heartland of the Taliban. This area has not been significantly worked by coalition forces in a conventional sense. Most people here will see us for the first time."

On Thursday at sunrise, the troops were up making another trek that brought them to Engran, a small village of four compounds.

Soldiers set up sniper positions around the village and the troops moved in.

While armed troops stood guard, one soldier explained to village elder Haji Abdul Had that the Americans had come to search for weapons as part of the central government's disarmament efforts.

"We do not want to involve ourselves with trouble," Had said, and said the soldiers could continue.

With chickens, dogs, goats and cows following behind, the troops searched about a dozen clay huts, their floors covered with carpets.

In an orchard behind one compound, soldiers found two AK-47 assault rifles beneath a wet burlap sack.

Had, the village elder, said some families kept guns for their own security, but he knew nothing about these. The soldiers confiscated them.

Through the rest of the day, the platoon of soldiers searched four other villages, but found nothing else. Another platoon searching a separate village nearby was luckier, seizing 27 AK-47s.

Zieseniss said the hunt for Taliban remnants and suspect weapons was a slow one.

"This is just one step at a time. It's not a war where we're fighting a conventional army like World War II. You got guys in civilian clothes. It's old fashioned detective work, digging through hay stacks literally."