Afghanistan News February 5, 2003

February 5, 2003

Clashes in southern Afghanistan
Wednesday, 5 February, 2003, 05:00 GMT BBC News
Afghan government forces have clashed with suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters near the southern city of Kandahar.
Local officials said both sides used heavy weapons in the fighting, which broke out in the mountainous area of Shawali Kot north of the city.

There have been no details of casualties.

The clashes were in the province where US-led coalition forces last week attacked a cave complex, near the Pakistani border, which was believed to have been used by fighters loyal to the pro-Taleban warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

A Dutch military official said that two Dutch F-16 aircraft bombed the cave complex on Tuesday as part of a follow-up to the attack.

U.S. Troops Fired Upon on Afghan Mtn.
Tue Feb 4, 5:46 AM ET By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer
BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A week after U.S. forces battled a group of armed men on a mountainside in southern Afghanistan, enemy fighters are still firing at U.S. troops searching the steep terrain, a U.S. military spokesman said Tuesday.

Troops with the 82nd Airborne Division saw a man duck into a cave Monday as they were clearing more than 75 caves in the Adi Ghar mountain. They destroyed the cave with anti-tank rockets, but the man had vanished.

The report of the gunman came a day after the U.S. military said its troops on the mountain saw smoke rising from one of the caves. On Friday, U.S. troops were fired upon by an assailant who also disappeared. There were no injuries.

"There are still people up there in the area," said Col. Roger King. He speculated that whatever enemy forces remain on the mountain might have had their escape routes cut off or may just be dedicated to their cause.

The mountain, some 15 miles northeast of Spinboldak, was the site of a firefight Jan. 27 that killed at least 18 militants. The mountain was pummeled by mortars, helicopter fire and bombs. Two men were captured.

Forty-nine caves have been cleared and 12 have been destroyed since then. King said evidence that hostile forces remain on the mountain indicates that U.S. troops going cave-to-cave may face a final shoot-out with any stragglers.

"That's the crux of their profession. Our soldiers train to fight. Their goal in life as an infantry soldier is to close with and destroy the enemy," King said. "Close combat is the final thing they prepare for. So in some instances they expect it to come down to that."

King said the firefight and cave-clearing process, dubbed Operation Mongoose, has shown that whoever is on the mountain hasn't employed the usual tactics of hit-and-run assaults with small arms or the use of remote controlled rockets.

"It's been a little strange in this campaign in that we haven't found very many of the enemy who were willing to go into that final 20 meters of the battlefield," King said. "We haven't had a lot of displays of that type of commitment."

King also said the U.S. military was aware that leaflets were appearing along the Pakistan and Afghanistan border calling for a holy war against the coalition. The leaflets claimed two Islamic groups had killed numerous U.S. soldiers and that the American military had committed atrocities. King dismissed the claims as "patently false."

"I have heard that there are leaflets being passed out in bazaars in the vicinity of the border. I had heard that they were calling for a new jihad, but this happens about once every two months. There hasn't been a lot of results from it," he said.

Danish F-16s Drop Bombs in Afghanistan
Tue Feb 4,11:47 AM ET AP
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - A pair of Danish F-16 fighters supporting U.S.-led coalition forces dropped bombs for the first time in Afghanistan, the air force said Tuesday.

The Danish planes dropped four laser-guided bombs early Tuesday morning on a cave complex in southeastern Afghanistan. The attack was part of a wider military operation, the Tactical Air Command Denmark said in a statement.

It was the first time since a 1999 bombing raid in Kosovo under NATO's "Operation Allied Forces" that Danish F-16s bombed a hostile target, Capt. Karsten Marrup said.

Since October, Denmark has based six F-16s in nearby Kyrgyzstan. The aircraft have flown more than 260 missions in Afghanistan, Marrup said. No other details on Tuesday's bombing were available.

The announcement came amid a debate in NATO-member Denmark where lawmakers want more openness from the Defense Command that coordinates Denmark's 21,000 military personnel.

Denmark last week offered troops and a submarine for any military action against Iraq, but only if there is a U.N. mandate for such an attack.

US promises cooperation in repatriation of qualified Afghans
Tuesday, February 04, 2003 12:24 PM EST
KABUL, Feb 4, 2003 (Xinhua via COMTEX) The United States on Tuesday promised its cooperation to Afghanistan in encouraging qualified Afghans in America to return when their home country is in need of their knowledge and expertise for its reconstruction.

When meeting with a senior Afghan official, US Ambassador Robert Fienn said his government would try to provide statistical information on qualified Afghan people who are living in his country, Afghan state news agency BIA said.

With the support of aid agencies, the Afghan transitional government had been urging well-educated Afghans living abroad to come back and contribute to the country's rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Around 4 million Afghan people fled their country as refugees during the more than 23 years of conflicts and war, many of them completing their higher education and then working in foreign countries, particularly those seeking refuge in western countries, officials here said.

However, so far only less than 1,000 well-educated Afghans had come back from abroad after the collapse of the Taliban in late 2001, and most of them had been placed at key positions in various governmental offices and local offices of international aid agencies.

Afghan officials attributed the slowness of returning of qualified Afghans to the lack of comfortable living conditions, low salaries and the lingering security concerns in the country.

Pakistan: Dispute endangers thousands of Afghan refugees
ISLAMBAD, 4 February (IRIN) - International aid agencies have expressed concern over supplies to thousands of Afghan refugees in camps in southwestern Pakistan, following a blockade by landlords in protest at the employment of security guards at the camp, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"Our main concern is that food, water and sanitation supplies are being interrupted, putting people's lives at stake," senior media and communications officer for the US-based Mercy Corps NGO, Cassandra Nelson told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad on Tuesday.

Landlords in the area stopped NGOs providing assistance from entering the camps on 21 January following a dispute over the employment of security staff at the facilities. Some 68,000 Afghans are living in four camps, Rogani, Landee Karez, Dara 1 and Dara 2 situated on Pakistan's Chaman border with Afghanistan.

The camps were established for those who fled the US-led bombing in eastern Afghanistan following the events of 11 September 2001. However, the camps have often been described as miserable, with thousands of asylum seekers living in tents on the desert-like land in exposed conditions.

Mercy Corps has been able to continue operating health services at Dara 1 and Dara 2 camps and are receiving referrals from other camps. "The health situation is critical without these services on offer," she added.

"We are only allowed to do emergency screening and we are concerned over the health of the refugees," programme coordinator for Medicins Sans Frontieres-Holland (MSF) for Chaman and Spin Boldak, Jose Hulsenbek, told IRIN from the southwestern city of Quetta. MSF staff was forced to leave the camp by the landlords.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also expressed concern over refugee security. "We do not have access to the camps and our main concern is over protection issues," spokesman for UNHCR, Jack Redden, told IRIN in Islamabad.

Redden said that some agencies had negotiated the delivery of some food and water to the camps, but that supplies were not regular. He maintained that the dispute was between the landlords and Pakistan's Commission for Afghan Refugees (CAR). "We know they are still in discussions but the issues have not been resolved," he said. "There are lives at risk here and this dispute needs to be resolved immediately," Nelson warned.

Blasts Highlight Afghan Land Mine Danger
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) From a western observation post at the sprawling U.S. military headquarters, the boom was audible and immediately recognizable.

U.S. soldiers who guard the Bagram Air Base said they instantly knew a land mine had just been detonated outside the barbed-wire fence. Within minutes, they saw a group of Afghan men desperately pushing a wheelbarrow toward the base.

Inside the wheelbarrow was the latest bleeding victim of a mine.

The man was one of three Afghan civilians injured Tuesday by two separate land mine blasts outside the base, an all-too-frequent occurrence at one of the most heavily mined areas of one of the most heavily mined nations.

Two of the men suffered wounds to their faces and one also was injured in the shoulder. A third man injured both hands and had his right leg amputated in another blast. All three men were treated by the military at the Bagram base.

Afghanistan's mines are a legacy of 23 years of civil war and Soviet military occupation. Land mines and unexploded bombs and rockets have killed or maimed at least 200,000 Afghans since 1979, according to the International Red Cross.

Since the beginning of 2002, more than 7,000 mines have been removed from Bagram. The base is located on a strategically important plain near Kabul, the Afghan capital, and was often fought over by competing armies during 20 years of war here.

``These mines are left over from years and years of warfare, which makes them even more dangerous because the explosive can become unstable with age and can maybe react just with someone stomping their foot three feet away,'' said Col. Roger King, a spokesman for the U.S. military.

``The longer they're in the ground, the more camouflaged they become and the harder they are to spot,'' he said.

Even U.S. troops, trained to recognize mines and where they might be seeded, have fallen victim to long-forgotten dangers. Last month, a soldier with the 769th Engineering Battalion from the Louisiana National Guard lost his right foot when he stepped on a mine in an uncleared zone at Bagram. A Polish soldier was slightly injured in the same blast.

Nearly 1.5 square miles of land must still be cleared of mines at the sprawling base. Long-buried mines often resurface when construction projects churn up the soil.

From the base's observation posts, U.S. soldiers routinely see children flying kites and playing among the ruins of surrounding villages still dotted with unexploded land mines. There were eight land mine deaths on or near the base in the past six months.

In one 35-day period from May to June, 25 Afghan civilians were treated for mine explosions near Bagram, King said. The last U.S. death from land mines was Chief Petty Officer Matthew J. Bourgeois, 35, of Tallahassee, Fla., who was killed during a training mission near Kandahar on March 28.

The South Korean army plans to open a clinic at Bagram next week to handle, among other patients, Afghans injured by mines. A section of the base's fortifications is being moved to allow quick access into the clinic.

The United Nations says leftover ordnance still kills or maims 150 to 300 people a month across Afghanistan 70 percent of them civilians despite clearing efforts and education campaigns that include murals of mines on walls of government buildings in Kabul.

USAID connects Kabul with provincial governments
Source: US Agency for International Development (USAID)
Project Will Provide Reliable Communications Between Afghan Capital and Provinces
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has begun an important $290,000 initiative to link the Afghan government in Kabul with its 31 provincial governments through a radio network. The project, which is a collaborative effort by USAID and Afghanistan's Ministry of Communications, will mean that for the first time in the country's history the central government will be able to communicate directly with all of the provinces - a major step in the stabilization of the country and an enormous benefit to the average Afghan citizen who will gain from a more efficient and better connected government.

USAID is providing the funding for the purchase of equipment and training of personnel and the Ministry of Communications is funding operations costs, including maintenance and repair in Kabul and the provinces. The equipment - consisting of "CODAN" radio sets - can send voice messages, e-mails and scanned documents. CODAN radio sets are advanced radio systems enhanced with sophisticated computer digital signals and additional handset hardware to make it operate similar to a telephone. The system will be connected to a local digital phone system and international phone/e-mail system in Kabul. With these sets Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other government officials will be able to contact all of the provinces, and for the first time the provinces will also have a reliable method of communicating with Kabul and each other.

"It is vitally important that the central government establish its connections with provincial authorities, and this project will greatly facilitate this," said Craig Buck, USAID's Afghanistan Mission Director. "It supports the central government's desire to extend its influence and work throughout the country."

The first phase of the project began in mid-December 2002 with the training and installation of radio sets in Kabul and the provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Bamyan, Nooristan and Kunduz. Two sets of equipment have been installed in the Ministry of Communications in Kabul, with three more - including a back-up set - to follow. The six initial provinces to receive the equipment were identified by the Afghan government as their highest priorities. Two of them - Paktika and Nooristan - have never been directly connected to Kabul before. The second phase of the project, slated to begin in early February, will install radio equipment in all remaining provinces. The third phase, marking the completion of the project, will inaugurate the new system.

"Three projects in Afghanistan so far have been very important for our national unity," said Mohammad Haneef Atmar, Rural Reconstruction and Development Minister in Afghanistan's government recently. "[These are] the new currency project, the establishment of a new army, and the CODAN radio communications project."

Bin Laden's not here: Pakistan
ABC News- Australia Moscow February 03, 2003
OSAMA bin Laden is not in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf has told Russia's Interfax news agency on the eve of a visit to Moscow.

"Pakistan is an active member of the (anti-terror) coalition and our border is being monitored in the most comprehensive manner," Musharraf said. "Therefore we can say that he is not in Pakistan."

Pakistan, a leading ally in the US-led war on terror, was once the main backer of the hardline Taliban militia that harboured bin Laden and ruled neighbouring Afghanistan until December 2001.

"There is no possibility of any sensitive material from Pakistan falling into the hands of al-Qaeda or other terrorist elements," Musharraf added in the interview.

Afghanistan: Coalition forces launch reconstruction in Gardez
GARDEZ, 4 February (IRIN) - Last weekend marked the opening of the Coalition forces' first Civil-Military Operations Centre (CMOC) for reconstruction in the southern Afghanistan province of Paktia, marking a strategic shift from battling Taliban and Al-Qaeda renegades to reconstruction work.
"We are not dealing only with security, we want to help the reconstruction of Afghanistan," Robert Finn, United States ambassador to Afghanistan, told IRIN in the provincial capital, Gardez.

According to CMOC, the reconstruction programme had been established as a place for NGOs, international institutions and others to meet, exchange information and facilitate the rebuilding of Gardez and surrounding areas. The PRTs would be a mixture of US civilians and military officers, who would be armed for their own protection.

"We have already completed the reconstruction of 10 schools, three wells and one health clinic in Gardez," Ben Mixon of the Gardez CMOC said, emphasising that the teams helped in planning and prioritising projects and often hired Afghans to work with them.

Asked why the Coalition military was getting involved in reconstruction when the United Nations, hundreds of NGOs, and government agencies like USAID were already rendering assistance, Finn said: "It is just another way of doing it," noting that the reason was because there were ongoing security problems in the Gardez area.

"The idea is to provide an atmosphere of stabilisation that will encourage other peaceful activities," he said, mentioning Bamian in central Afghanistan as the next province for the PRTs. "We will have one province each month," Finn said.

The controversial Coalition initiative has been criticised by some large NGOs working in Afghanistan. A US-based NGO working in Afghanistan, CARE International, raised concern late January, saying the move could have a negative impact on security levels and that it was "not a substitute for security".

"They see this as an indirect way to promote security by an on-the-ground presence. But if you look at the kind of numbers they are talking about, if you evaluate it as a security strategy, it doesn't add up," the advocacy coordinator for CARE International in Afghanistan, Paul O'Brien, told IRIN in Kabul.

Afghan Rehabilitation Minister Mohammad Amin Farhang, who had attended the ribbon cutting ceremony of the CMOC in Gardez, told IRIN the PRTs would help the government focus on larger, long-term reconstruction work.

Pakistan turns to Iran for trade
By Christopher Nadeem Asia Times (Hong Kong) February 1, 2003
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Before a small general store on a busy road in this northwestern Pakistani city, a rickshaw comes to a halt. "Do you have petrol?" the driver calls out in Pashto. The shopkeeper nods and sends out a young boy with a sloshing plastic canister.

Sajjad Khan is one of more than a thousand rickshaw drivers in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Like many other drivers, he has not visited a petrol station for months, preferring instead to tank up at little shops in the city.

It makes good economic sense to them. At 24 to 25 Pakistani rupees (41 US cents) per liter, the petrol from the shops is about 7 rupees cheaper than from the petrol station, a big saving. Sajjad said that his daily expense on petrol has dropped and that almost all the rickshaw drivers use the petrol.

The fuel, which apart from rickshaws powers a roaring black market in Peshawar, comes from Iran. Pakistanis in the neighboring province of Balochistan, which shares a border with Iran, are familiar with the fuel, but Peshawaris are catching on quickly now.

Ijaz Khan, a businessman, drives to just outside the city once every four or five days to fill the fuel tank in his car. "Petrol prices are going up every month, so having the Iranian petrol is a great relief," he said. Cheap Iranian products - not just fuel - are plentiful in neighboring Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the same products must compete with other goods smuggled in from a dozen countries.

But the low-priced Iranian fuel sells quickly against a backdrop of volatile oil prices and the prospect of another oil crisis - and the fuel is able to make its way to Pakistan through Afghanistan now that the Taliban, which was a thorn in bilateral ties because Islamabad used to back them and Tehran opposed them, are long gone.

Pakistan annually imports oil worth between $3 billion and $3.5 billion, a good amount of it from Saudi Arabia, but it is seeking closer ties with neighboring Iran. A good beginning was made in December with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's visit to Islamabad, the first by any Iranian president in 10 years.

Both countries have been part of economic alliances - as part of the US-led Cold War-era Central Treaty Organization in the mid-1950s, the Regional Cooperation for Development organization of the early 1960s and its successor, the Economic Cooperation Organization.

In the 1980s and 1990s, however, conflicting regional interests between the two countries caused the relationship between them to cool. "Pakistan's backing of the United States against the former USSR, the removal of the pro-Iranian government of Burhanuddin Rabbani [in Afghanistan] and then the emergence of the Pakistan-backed Taliban have remained the main irritants between the two Islamic states," says Adnan Sarwar, chairman of the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar.

What certainly froze was the level of economic activity between them. According to data from the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, Pakistan's exports to Iran were $118 million in 1995-96 and that figure plunged to $11 million in 1998-99.

Following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan in early 1992, however, the bilateral balance sheet is looking much healthier - Pakistan imported petroleum and petroleum products from Iran worth $13 million in 1998-99, and that number has soared spectacularly to $323.9 million for 2000-2001.

The Sajjad Khans and Ijaz Khans of Peshawar, though, are happy with arrangements being exactly as they are, but successive Pakistani governments have tried and failed to prevent smuggling of items like fuel from Afghanistan. Black marketeering exploits the Afghan transit trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the long and porous border between the two countries.

Cheap petrol helps rickshaw drivers through the daily grind, but Faiz Rasool, an industrialist in the NWFP and former president of the provincial Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industries, pointed out that the black market has affected the growth of industries in the NWFP.

A World Bank study showed that in 1996-97 the estimated trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan was $2.5 billion, of which an incredible 98 percent was thought to be based on cross-border smuggling. A large component of that activity now is Iranian fuel, and official estimates place the annual revenue loss from oil smuggling at $85 million. But the official loss is a gain for many.

A businessman in Torkham, the border town between Pakistan and Afghanistan at the head of the Khyber Pass, said that were the smuggling of Iranian oil to stop, Pakistani border guards and customs officials would be the losers. "They get huge sums for allowing the oil in," he explained.

Now, more eagerly than border guards eyeing a rickety old truck, economic planners and businessmen alike are looking to the proposed $3.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline to provide a huge economic boost to the region.

Aliaghi Khamoosh, president of the Iranian Chamber of Commerce who headed a business delegation which accompanied President Khatami, said as much, "We are looking for long-term economic cooperation and relations with Pakistani investors." Sarwar believes that the prospects of improved Pakistan-Iran relations are bright: "Both countries feel their role in Afghanistan has been marginalized by the United States - since the feeling is common - they are closing ranks."

Musharraf invites Hamid Karzai for Pakistan visit
The News: Jang (Pakistan) February 2, 3003
KABUL: President Pervez Musharraf has invited Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for a visit to Pakistan, a news agency said Hamid Karzai has accepted the invitation but he has not yet announced his schedule for the visit. President Musharraf and Karzai held talks on telephone. Both vowed to continue their joint efforts against terrorism.

Musharraf says Osama bin Laden not in Pakistan
The News: Jang (Pakistan) February 2, 3003
MOSCOW: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that Osama bin Laden is not in Pakistan. He said that Pakistan is an active member of the international coalition against terror and our border is being monitored in comprehensive manner so we can say that he is not in Pakistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Security concerns remain for NGOs
KABUL, 3 February (IRIN) - Aid workers are concerned over the security situation in Afghanistan following a series of incidents involving the beating and robbing of staff, attacks on offices and convoys, and fighting in parts of the country.

"Definitely we are concerned," Paul Barker, the director of the NGO, CARE International, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday. "This is even in advance of any hostilities in Iraq, and that makes us more conscious to expect more of this," he added. Some aid workers fear increased retaliation if the US-led coalition embarks on a war in Iraq.

In an incident on 30 January, two employees of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) were stopped by gunmen as they were driving near Sheykhabad, some 50 km south of Kabul. "The occupants of the vehicle were blindfolded and driven into the nearby mountains, where they were released unharmed four hours later," WFP spokesman Alejandro Chicheri told reporters on Sunday in the capital.

A UN demining team was attacked by an armed gang as it was returning to its base in the western province of Farah on 27 January.

This followed the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) temporarily suspending activities in three separate districts of the eastern province of Nangarhar after an attack on 26 January on a two-vehicle convoy left two dead and one injured. On the same day there was a bomb blast at a UN building in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.

In a press statement, another international NGO, Action Against Hunger, said on 29 January that a device containing TNT explosive was thrown at its office in the southern city of Kandahar. It damaged the building without causing any injuries. In Kandahar on 31 January, a landmine blamed on anti-government forces killed some 18 bus passengers.

"It’s alarming to see this many incidents," Barker said. "Essentially, it’s the depth of winter; you should expect an increase in security incidents only when the snow melts in the spring," he added. A CARE report last month said security remained a fundamental constraint to effective reconstruction in Afghanistan, and also pleaded with the international community to commit more resources to the International Security Assistance Force, currently providing security only in Kabul.

"A general concern is that there is an increase in security risks in parts of the country," Nigel Fisher, the UN Secretary General's Deputy Special Representative for Reconstruction, told IRIN from Kabul. He added that over the past six months there had been an upward trend in security related incidents in the southwest of the country, especially in Kandahar up to the border with Pakistan."

"In the last two weeks there have been about 16 incidents, affecting the UN, Mine Action and NGOs," he said, adding that the upsurge was reportedly attributed to the return of the Taliban and activities of the [renegade] warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

"Our overall attitude to security generally is that we have to continue working here and that in fact continuing reconstruction work is contributing to better security," he said. He explained that the UN was being more rigorous to ensure that all agencies were complying with the existing security standards.

US seeks permission to bomb tribal areas
Source: ArabNews
SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH DAILY

ISLAMABAD, 2 February 2003 - The United States has sought "permission" of President Pervez Musharraf to bomb the tribal areas of Waziristan and Northern Areas, where 10,000 Al-Qaeda terrorists are reported to have taken sanctuary, well informed sources said.

US officials, who sounded Musharraf, were reported to have specifically identified the Mahsoud and Khattak tribes as those providing sanctuary to the Al-Qaeda men who had fled Afghanistan to escape the manhunt by US troops.

The sources said the Pakistani military establishment was concerned about the US move, because it felt the move could lead to a revolt by some 100,000 Mahsoud and Khattak soldiers in the army.

Retired Lt. Gen. Ali Quli Khan Khattak, who was overlooked for the army chief's post by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in favor of Musharraf, had conveyed the concerns of the Khattak and Mahsoud tribes to Gen. Mohammed Aziz, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee, the sources said.

He also warned about the possibility of a revolt by the tribesmen in the army should the government accede to the US request.

While senior military officials would not comment on the exact number of Al-Qaeda activists in Pakistan, they maintained that the figure quoted by US officials was on the "higher side."

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the six-party alliance of religious parties, held nationwide protests in early January against Musharraf's decision to go along with the US in Afghanistan, the joint military operations in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and US plans to attack Iraq.

The protest by the MMA, which emerged as a major force in the country's political scene after the October elections and rules the volatile NWFP, followed exchange of fire between Pakistani and US troops close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.

Addressing a protest rally in Islamabad, Maulana Samiul Haq, a factional leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), warned that there would be an "open war here" if the US attacked Iraq and that "no American will be safe." In Karachi JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman called for withdrawal of support to the US if it attacked Iraq while Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, addressing a rally in Peshawar, urged a change in the foreign policy "which is in favor of the US and against Muslims and does not reflect the aspirations of the nation." (IANS)

Afghan Bakers Challenge Women's Barriers
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) In a crumbling, mud-walled kitchen, a dozen Afghan women are baking their way to financial independence and challenging age-old prejudices.

The housewives and widows who staff the Women's Bakery Project in the ultraconservative southern city of Kandahar are using skills learned at the family's hearth to earn a basic wage, most for the first time in the lives.

In Kandahar, that's slicing against the grain. As in much of the deeply religious Afghan hinterland, women here have traditionally remained confined to their homes, unlikely to leave unless covered head to foot in the sack-like burqa and accompanied by a male relative.

More than two decades of near continuous warfare, desperate poverty and exposure to the outside world have started to chip away at those strictures, and the women workers of the bakery seem anxious to dispense with them altogether. For too long, they say, women have seen their potential squandered while the country collapsed in war and chaos around them.

``Our people are suffering a lot because of the bad economy damaged by 20 years of war. They are so poor and, especially the women, are wasting their time and their abilities,'' said Fozia Salavel, the bakery's 35-year-old supervisor.

``If women sit at home, they would do nothing,'' Salavel said in an interview this week.

Around her, women prepared dough for baking while Salavel took coupons from customers who buy bread at subsidized prices and handed them the still-hot loaves.

The bakery, and 13 others like it, each serve about 2,500 loaves of the long, flat Afghan bread called ``nan'' daily, for a total of about 34,000. While bread on the market costs about 4 Afghanis each, or 8 cents, the price here is just 1 Afghani.

Supported by the United Nations World Food Program, the project has a mandate to run for another two years.

Women workers are paid 3,000 Afghanis, about $65 a month, enough to support a family day to day but not enough to save for the future. Yet, just as important, some say, is the sense of contributing to the reconstruction of their war-devastated homeland and gaining a greater sense of self-worth.

``The main purpose of the Women's Bakery Project is to empower women,'' said Asadullah Mutawakil, 28, the project's managing director.

One of the workers at Salavel's bakery, Sahra, a 38-year-old widow, knows of female relatives living abroad who work side by side with men. She wonders why it can't happen here.

``Women should come out and leave this culture which forces a woman to stay at home. In foreign countries women are studying and working. It should make no difference if women work here in Kandahar,'' said Sahra, who like many Afghan's uses just one name.

It isn't clearly how widely such views are embraced by Afghan women, much less by Afghan men, still strongly beholden to traditional values. Despite the scrapping of many draconian restrictions on women's freedoms under the former Taliban, conservative religious leaders retain considerable influence in the new interim government. Already in some part of Afghanistan, girls' schools have been attacked and the wearing of the burqa remains almost universal.

Sahra says she dreams of a time when gender barriers in the workplace are broken down altogether.

``My dream is that peace and stability takes place in our country and man and woman work together for Afghanistan. I have five kids, I hope my two daughters and three sons get education and can be successful,'' she said.