Afghanistan News February 6, 2003

February 6, 2003

ISAF chief wants continued world help in Afghan reconstruction
KABUL, Feb 6 (AFP) - General Akin Zorlu, the Turkish commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Thursday called upon the international community to abide by its pledge to rebuild Afghanistan.
Zorlu, who is handing over command of the 22-nation force next week, said rebuilding the war-ravaged country would take many years and a great deal of patience on the part of both the Afghan people and the international community.

"The international community will and must remain committed to this major undertaking," he said at a farewll press conference here.

During the seven and half months that Turkey has led the force, Zorlu said ISAF had undertaken a number of projects relating to peace, security, establishment of a national army and steps to curb terrorism.

ISAF's performance has made "significant impact" on Kabul, he said adding that "the city has become a safer place both for to live and work and life is returning to normal."

ISAF personnel "removed and neutralised" more than 175,000 items of heavy weapons and ammunition including anti-tank and unguided missiles, mines, explosives and anti-aircraft weapons.

Early discoveries of explosives-laden vehicles through intelligence gathering averted significant casualties, he said.

He said ISAF had also been involved in projects aimed at improving health, education and the infrastructure within Kabul.

"So far we have completed 176 projects, there are 44 ongoing with another 38 planned under the Turkish leadership."

"There is full harmony between the objectives of ISAF and the Afghan government."

ISAF's commitment was to provide a secure environment within which the transitional authority may operate, he said but acknowledged that the residents of the Afghan capital need jobs, food and electricity.

"While there remains a lack of jobs, food, water and electricity as well as a shortage of schools and medical faclitis, every day there are new signs of the return to normality."

ISAF was created as part of a power-sharing deal at talks in Bonn between Afghanistan's main factions after the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in December 2001.

Turkey assumed leadership of the United Nations-mandated force last June after an initial six month command by Britain.

Germany and The Netherlands will take over as ISAF lead nations from February 10.

Afghan President to Visit White House
Wednesday, February 05, 2003 2:56 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, will meet with President Bush at the White House on Feb. 27.

The two leaders will discuss ``progress being made toward our shared goals of rebuilding the country's society and economy and securing a nation free from terror, war and want,'' a White House spokesman said.

``The United States remains committed to a bright future for Afghanistan,'' press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

Afghans Want Peacekeepers to Stay Beyond December
Tue Feb 4, 2:45 PM ET By David Brunnstrom
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said Tuesday he would like to see international peacekeepers stay on in the country after December, when their existing mandate expires.

Speaking in an interview with Reuters in Kabul, Abdullah said there was also an urgent need to focus more on a Japanese-led drive to disarm and demobilize regional militias loyal to provincial warlords, an issue President Hamid Karzai would discuss on a state visit to Tokyo later this month.

Asked whether he thought it would be possible to hold elections due in June next year without the presence of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is charged with helping maintain security in Kabul, Abdullah replied:

"We have not discussed it in those terms, but my perception is, my view is, it would be preferable to have ISAF's term extended beyond that date, beyond December 2003."

The mandate of the multinational force, currently around 4,000 strong, is due to expire in December. Germany and Holland are due to take over ISAF's leadership from Turkey for six months from February 10, but diplomats say it is not clear who will succeed them.

"ISAF's role has been very important," Abdullah said, adding that its presence had had an impact far beyond its limited mandate of helping to police Kabul.

"It is important at such a critical time we have the advantage of the presence of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan," he said.

Abdullah said he was certain a successor would be found to the Germans and Dutch, but was not optimistic ISAF's role would be expanded beyond Kabul despite pleas from the government, United Nations and other international organizations.

"We know the international community has been doing whatever possible in that field and we understand the constraints of the troop contributing countries," he said.

STABILITY
The minister said military teams now being deployed in the provinces to assist in post-war reconstruction by a U.S.-led coalition, which has been pursuing remnants of the former Taliban and al Qaeda network, did not amount to an expansion of ISAF but did help improve security and stability.

He said a key focus of Karzai's visit to Japan would be the effort to disarm, demobilize and find alternative jobs for soldiers in regional militias, which have been an obstacle to efforts to extend government control throughout the country.

Abdullah said the effort was dependent on other factors, including the development of a national army and police force, and the government itself had only just finalized the necessary preparatory work.

"It is not Japan that has moved slowly in that regard, it is a joint effort and there was a natural time for it," he said.

"It is a very urgent and important program for us, and we need as well as our partner in that field, which is Japan and other partners to focus more in this field."

Karzai's trip will also take him to Kuala Lumpur to attend the Mon-Aligned summit, to India, where he is to sign a trade agreement, then to the United States for meetings with President Bush, the Kabul government's main backer.

West must not forget Afghans, envoy says
In Tufts address, he cautions students on threat of chaos
By Marcella Bombardieri, BostonGlobe Staff, 2/5/2003
MEDFORD As Washington prepares for another war in the Islamic world, the Afghan ambassador to the United States yesterday told students at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy that Afghanistan is far too fragile to survive on its own if neglected by the world community.

''Let America deal with [Iraqi President Saddam Hussein]. But let us also secure the victories we have already won,'' said Ishaq Shahryar, a wealthy California entrepreneur who was required to renounce his US citizenship to serve his country of origin. ''If the Western world has a lapse of attention and turns elsewhere, the institutional memory of the region will refill the circle of instability with drugs, corruption, and terror.''

Shahryar praised the United States for its ''heroic and generous'' assistance, particularly the $3.3 billion Freedom Support Act approved by Congress in November, a sum hundreds of millions of dollars higher than President Bush had requested.

But Western countries have not helped enough yet, Shahryar added. Only a fraction of the $4.5 billion pledged at the Tokyo conference a year ago has been delivered. And even if the Kabul government had all that cash at its disposal, it still wouldn't be enough to establish a stable society, Shahryar said.

''You can build a community with $4.5 billion, but you can't build a country,'' he said in an interview before his talk to about 50 graduate students.

At the age of 19, Shahryar was sent by King Mohammed Zahir Shah to study in the United States, where he earned degrees in chemistry and international relations at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then launched into a series of successful business and scientific ventures.

Once dubbed the ''sun king'' by a British science magazine, Shahryar, 66, is well-known for his innovations in solar technology and his contributions to designing solar cells for NASA's Jupiter project.

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Shahryar helped 60 relatives escape. For decades, he led a prosperous life in Southern California, with a wife and two children. As an adviser to Zahir Shah, he received invitations to join the Cabinet of the interim government in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. He turned them down, feeling unsuited for the task.

But when Shahryar returned to Kabul last winter, he found the peaceful, garden-filled city of his youth turned to rubble. ''That's when I made the commitment to do something,'' he said. ''There are times you take and times you give.''

With his business background, the ambassador focuses on preparing Afghanistan for capitalism. He has assembled a task force to implement an ''Asian Marshall Plan,'' with members including Martin R. Hoffman, a former US Army secretary, as well as advisers with expertise in the rule of law, agriculture, and banking.

Shahryar also works to entice American businesses to invest in Afghanistan, touting its reserves of gas, oil, copper, iron, gold, emeralds, and lapides lazuli, blue semiprecious gems. But the vast majority of the investors, he says, express reservations about the security situation in Afghanistan, where warlords still control large swaths of the countryside and terrorist bombings still occasionally rattle the populace.

''The bottom line is that businessmen do not go into a country unless there is security,'' he said.

For that reason, Shahryar called yesterday for the international community to expand the presence of peacekeepers in Afghanistan. The International Security Assistance Force has a deployment of 4,300 peacekeepers, but they are limited to the capital. US and European officials have so far declined to expand the peacekeeping effort to other cities.

In his talk, Shahryar also encouraged the Fletcher students to join a ''benevolent army'' of teachers, doctors, bankers, and lawyers helping to rebuild Afghanistan.

He recited a litany of dire problems, pointing out that one in five children die before the age of 5, one in 10 women die in childbirth, and that Afghanistan is still the most heavily mined country in the world. At the same time, he expressed optimism about a bright future with his country a model for the rest of the Islamic world.

''We have to be hopeful, and I believe in change,'' he said with a light-hearted tone. ''If not change, we still have flying carpets.''

Canadian troops may not go to Iraq, but to Afghanistan
By JEFF SALLOT
Globe and Mail Wednesday, February 5, 2003 – Page A10
OTTAWA Federal officials are developing a plan for Canada to contribute to a war with Iraq by providing soldiers to relieve U.S. troops in Afghanistan, far away from the political problems of the main conflict.

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has been on the phone to allies in recent days to discuss the Iraq crisis. He has made no final decision on what role the Canadian Forces might play, sources said.

High on the list is sending ground troops back to Afghanistan, where they fought alongside Americans last year to root out al-Qaeda terrorists.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will appear before the United Nations Security Council today to present evidence culled from classified material, trying to convince wavering allies and other nations that Iraq has defied calls to disarm.

If the Security Council authorizes a war to disarm Iraq, "we will be there as part of a coalition in one form or another," a Canadian official said yesterday.

A military mission in Afghanistan might be appreciated in Washington, and would be relatively safe.

Canada faces practical difficulties in sending troops to Iraq. Cash-starved forces are spread so thin that the Senate defence committee said recently there should be a 12-month moratorium on overseas deployments so that exhausted troops can rest.

The military might be able to handle backfilling for American forces in Afghanistan, freeing the U.S. units for combat in Iraq, a military source said.

A crack Canadian infantry battalion wrapped up a six-month combat mission in Afghanistan last summer. Defence Minister John McCallum said at the time that Canadian ground troops might return to Afghanistan as part of the international security force supporting the interim government in Kabul.

That's the kind of role Germany is now playing. The German government has said it will not send its troops to fight against Iraq. But more than a thousand German soldiers are part of the UN security force in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Chrétien and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder discussed the Afghan crisis yesterday.

Mr. Chrétien wanted to talk about diplomatic efforts to disarm Iraq without having to resort to war, an official said.

Germany will hold the rotating presidency of the Security Council for the remainder of February, a period that will include key debates about Iraq.

The key date is not today, but Feb. 14, when Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, is to make his next report to the council, Mr. Chrétien told reporters after a cabinet meeting. "We'll see what Blix will say."

On the possibility the United States might unilaterally use force to disarm Iraq, Mr. Chrétien said no legal requirement exists for the Security Council to pass a second resolution specifically authorizing the use of force. A second resolution would be "highly desirable," he said.

Mr. Chrétien has spoken to U.S. President George W. Bush and Spanish and Italian leaders in the past few days to discuss Iraq.

Meanwhile, opposition parties taunted the government in the House yesterday for failing to promise a parliamentary vote before authorizing any military involvement in support of the United States in Iraq.

"People want to know where we stand," Bloc Québécois MP Michel Gauthier said.

Progressive Conservative Leader Joe Clark said the Liberals are avoiding a vote because their lame-duck leader does not want the country to see how divided the government caucus really is on the Iraq issue.

Fuel truck explodes in Kabul
KABUL, Feb 5 (AFP) - A fuel truck exploded Wednesday in the Afghan capital Kabul near a United Nations fuel supply point, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.
"The truck exploded close to the interior ministry," the spokesman told AFP, asking not to be named.

He said there were no immediate reports of casualties and was unable to provide further details.

UN workers have been the target of a string of attacks in recent weeks.

In the past fortnight a demining team was attacked by an armed gang in the western province of Farah, World Food Programme employees were stopped by armed gunman south of Kabul, a bomb exploded on the roof of an empty UN office in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and a UN convoy was attacked in eastern Nangarhar province.

"The security is not yet stable, we have episodes of violence ranging from inter-factional fighting to crime, terrorism and that is a concern," UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said Sunday.

Last week the UN's special envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi told the UN Security Council that support for the former ruling Taliban militia, ousted in 2001 by an international military campaign, was re-emerging.

"We continue to hear worrying reports that support for the remnants of the Taliban may be growing in some areas of Afghanistan," he said.

Musharraf Says bin Laden Could Be Alive
Thursday, February 06, 2003 9:37 AM EST
MOSCOW (AP) Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf further backed off his claim that Osama bin Laden was dead, saying the al-Qaida leader could have survived U.S. bombing and be hiding in the Afghan mountains near Pakistan.

But he said the world's most wanted terrorist is definitely not in Pakistan, and al-Qaida was in disarray and unable to mount large-scale attacks.

Musharraf said that he had originally believed that bin Laden had died after the U.S.-led operation in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.

``But now there is some information showing that maybe he is alive,'' Musharraf said at a news conference in Moscow. ``So I will leave it at that. I can't be very sure whether he is dead or alive. But indeed there are indications that he is alive.''

The comments are a further backtrack for the Pakistani leader, who last month told the Italian magazine Panorama that he thought bin Laden probably had been killed, but that there was no way to know for sure.

U.S. intelligence officials say they believe that an audiotape, sent in November to the Al-Jazeera television network and featuring bin Laden's voice, was genuine. The terrorist leader's whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be hiding in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Musharraf said bin Laden's presence in his country was impossible, because he and his entourage would surely be detected.

``We don't give any possibility to sanctuary in our area having been taken by a large body of people protecting Osama bin Laden,'' Musharraf said. ``That would be visible. It cannot remain invisible. So, therefore, I am very sure he cannot be in Pakistan. If he is alive, he must be in Afghanistan.''

Pakistani army and border guard units patrol Pakistan's frontier areas and the tribal leaders had agreed to inform the government of the presence of any foreigner in the border area, Musharraf said.

In any event, Musharraf said, al-Qaida is finished as a significant terrorist organization.

``They are dispersed and they are on the run and they are hiding,'' Musharraf said. ``The only thing they can do is to undertake minor actions anywhere around the world but no major operation capability can be attributed to them at the moment.''

That assessment is not shared by the FBI, which says al-Qaida still represents the greatest threat to launch an attack on U.S. interests.

Musharraf said the issue of al-Qaida and its alleged links to separatists in the breakaway region of Chechnya in southern Russia had been raised during his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Pakistan leader said he had sought to clarify Pakistan's view of al-Qaida to the Russians who in the past have expressed concerns about Pakistan's commitment to fighting Islamic extremism. ``We feel that this element is in many quarters vastly misunderstood,'' Musharraf said, without elaborating.

India, Afghanistan get set to sign Preferntial Trade Agreement
Wednesday, February 05, 2003 9:20 PM EST
NEW DELHI, Feb 6, 2003 (Asia In Focus via COMTEX) India and Afghanistan are preparing to enter into a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA). Under the PTA, both countries would grant tariff concessions to items of export interest, such as dry fruits from Afghanistan.

* The two countries have exchanged lists on which of these concessions would be given, and a ministerial delegation visited Kabul last week to finalise details of the agreement.

* India has bilateral trade pacts with Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and is seeking to wrap up further pacts in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Afghanistan: Focus on communications
KABUL, 5 February (IRIN) - Checking the latest gold prices used to mean a tiring two-day trip to Pakistan for Abdul Wahid, an Afghan jeweller. But now, all it takes is a 50-cent phone-call from the comfort of his shop in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

"Before we had a lot of difficulties - now this makes everything so much easier," he told IRIN. Abdul Wahid is one of 14,000 Kabul residents who have rushed to buy mobile phones since a cell network was set up in Afghanistan eight months ago.

In the cities of Kandahar in the south, Mazar-e Sharif in the north and Herat in the west, another 12,000 Afghans have joined the mobile world. At the Afghan Wireless Communication Company's desk in central Kabul, a scrum of men, jostling, shouting and pleading for mobile phones, is testament to the enthusiasm of Afghans to leap from the telecommunications stone age to the satellite age.

But it doesn't come cheap. A mobile phone and connection costs between US $250 and $310, and a SIM card is $130. In a country where most homes and shops lack telephones because the cables don't exist, it is the only way to do business and keep up with the rest of the world.

Sabir Latifi, the owner of Park Tourism Group in Kabul, has just opened Afghanistan's second Internet cafe and the first to be privately owned. He spent nearly $50,000 installing 20 terminals in a room next to his Kabul hotel.

"As much as you isolate yourself, you damage yourself. It's time - we have to be part of the world," he told IRIN in Kabul. Latifi, who stayed in Afghanistan when the Taliban banned all Internet connections, as well as television and music, said Afghans had fought for freedom and should now begin reaping the benefits.

Over the 23 years that the country was at war, the world's telecommunications train sped off far down the track. But now there are many local people waiting in the queue to get on board.

The company plans to open three more Internet cafes in Kabul soon, and by March wants to have the Internet available in the other main cities, such as Jalalabad in the east, Kandahar, Mazar-e Sharif and Herat. But Latifi is adamant his group will be careful. By stopping people using the computers for sex websites and frivolous chatting he hopes to show the country's religious leaders and government officials that the Internet truly is a valuable tool.

At the moment, the cost of surfing the Internet for an hour is between $4 and $5, preventing most Afghans from joining the Internet age. But Latifi's 24-hour cafe is still attracting more than 50 people a day, and he plans to double its capacity. "Internet is becoming the pillar of any economy, and Afghans can't be deprived of this."

The country's first Internet centre was opened in July 2002 by AWCC, a company owned by the Afghan Ministry of Communications and an American company, TSI.

The AWCC marketing manager, Ahmad Auqeely, told IRIN the company was also keen to expand Internet access across the country. It has already spent $46 million establishing its GSM mobile phone network, which currently operates in four cities. "It helps people doing business, keeps families in touch and helps people feel together," he said.

The current situation is a long way from what it was a year ago when people had to travel hundreds of kilometres to Pakistan or Iran just to make an international phone call.

During the Islamic festival of Eid, the company travelled around Kabul offering free three-minute international calls to poor people who would never otherwise have been able to call relatives overseas.

More than 2,000 took up the offer, including a woman who spoke to her son in Germany for the first time in 18 years, then burst into tears, overcome by the emotion of the moment, Aqueely said. "We are planning to have GSM franchise outlets where people can come into the shop and use a mobile to make cheaper calls without having to buy a handset."

And already another player is set to enter the mobile field. The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development is investing $56 million to set up a network in Afghanistan by the second half of 2003 in a joint venture with the French company, Alcatel.

Tom Austin, the country coordinator for the Aga Khan Development Network, promised its system would be better and have wider coverage than AWCC's, and said having competition was important. "Any profits from this will go back to the company or be spent on social development programmes in Afghanistan. The money will stay in Afghanistan."

Manoel de Almeida e Silva, the spokesman for the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, said rebuilding Afghan communications was a vital part of the reconstruction process. "One of the ways you can have a government performing and keeping in touch with the rest of the country is by having instant communications," he told IRIN in Kabul.

The speed at which new communications technologies were put in place in Afghanistan had surprised him, but this demonstrated the entrepreneurship and initiative of Afghans, he said.

Sitting in a Kabul Internet cafe, Naqib Ullah told IRIN he had got used to using the Internet while living in Pakistan. "Without it I feel cut off from everyone. One day, hopefully, it will just be normal in Afghanistan, just like everywhere else in the world," he said.

Putin Meets Pakistani, Ending Long Breach
The New York Times By MICHAEL WINES
MOSCOW, Feb. 5 — Ending a 30-year diplomatic estrangement, the presidents of Pakistan and Russia met in the Kremlin today and pledged a fresh start to relations after decades of alliances with each other's sworn enemies.

But the reconciliation was tempered by the Kremlin's announcement that President Vladimir V. Putin had telephoned the prime minister of Pakistan's still-bitter enemy, India, apparently to reassure him that today's meeting would not affect their close ties.

Mr. Putin and Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, signed a handful of diplomatic and cultural accords at today's two-hour session, which ran more than twice its scheduled length. Mr. Putin hinted that the two nations would sign new economic agreements on Thursday.

They also discussed the Iraq crisis, and Mr. Putin said afterward that the two had agreed that the United Nations Security Council "should play a central coordinating role in resolving international problems."

While both men said that increasing trade was a primary goal of their meeting, terrorism is clearly the force that has driven the warming in their relations. Pakistan and Russia have found themselves allied with the United States in the effort to curb terrorism in central and south Asia, on Russia's southern flank, and Mr. Putin called today for the two nations' law-enforcement agencies to cooperate more closely on terrorism issues.

General Musharraf addressed a major Russian concern by acknowledging in an interview that fighters from Russia's separatist Chechen republic had been allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that representatives of Chechen guerrillas would not find sanctuary in Pakistan.

"We will not permit anybody who organizes terrorist acts to visit Pakistan," he said in an interview in the Moscow daily Izvestia. "That does not apply to Chechens alone."

Today's discussions were also said to have centered on Pakistan's dispute with India over Kashmir, the India-controlled region claimed by both nations. Mr. Putin was reported to have urged General Musharraf again to stanch the flow of Islamic guerrillas over the so-called line of control, the shaky cease-fire zone separating Pakistan and disputed Kashmiri territory held by India.

Russia and Pakistan have not been friendly for years. But judging by the quips the two men exchanged today, things went well. Mr. Putin said he was not surprised the meeting ran well past its scheduled end. "The last visit of a Pakistani president to our country took place 33 years ago," he said. "We have a vast agenda to discuss."

For his part, General Musharraf — who scrapes bottom in some Pakistani opinion polls — feigned jealousy over Mr. Putin's status as something close to an idol among the Russian masses. A chart-busting song last year by a pop singing group of Russian women, titled "Someone Like Putin," extolled Mr. Putin as a model Russian male.

"I want a man like Putin, who doesn't drink, a man like Putin who wouldn't hurt me," the lyrics wailed.

"No one sings pop songs about me," General Musharraf lamented as talks between the two men began.

Mr. Putin replied, "I have to put up with everything."

Human rights must be integrated into Afghan reconstruction efforts
(Conference discusses U.S. role in building Afghan institutions) (890) By Ghada Elnajjar
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington Numerous U.S. government officials emphasized that a real concern for human rights must and will be integrated into the development of Afghanistan's economic, political, and security institution.

They spoke at a conference entitled "Reconstructing Afghanistan: Freedom in Crisis," which was held January 29 in cooperation with the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and George Washington University Law School.

Addressing policymakers and representatives of non-governmental organizations, Zalmay Khalilzad, President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan said, "Structures for food, jobs and security help build and reinforce the structures that protect human rights."

U.S. support for security, economic development and human rights is reflected in U.S. financial support for Afghanistan, which, Khalilzad said, would reach over $800 million this year. The role of the United States, he said, is to provide aid and support to this process, but Afghan decisions should be made and agreed to by the Afghan people.

"It is up to the Afghan people to develop their own distinctive political culture. But the world and the United States have some lessons to offer, most importantly the overriding importance of protecting fundamental human rights," said Khalilzad.

Through its contributions of $1 million to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and $2.5 million for the Constitution Commission, the United States "actively supports these structures," Khalilzad said. In addition to financial support, he noted that structures established by the Afghan government to promote judicial reform and encourage respect for human rights receive logistical and technical support from the United States.

Established with the blessing of the Afghan Transitional Authority, the AIHRC is charged with monitoring and investigating human rights violations. It also aims to develop and implement human rights education programs and institutions and propose a national strategy to address justice and past abuses. It functions in tandem with a broader effort to introduce human rights into the institutions of government.

According to Neamat Nojumi, former USAID consultant in Kabul, Afghanistan must build a legitimate legal system that embodies the covenants of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in conjunction with Afghan traditions and culture.

Human rights, he said, must be included in the curriculum and training of the law enforcement agents as well as prosecutors, judges, law clerks, and all students at the law schools. "These steps," he added, "would produce significant numbers familiar with the legal system in relevance to human rights."

A Constitution Commission, composed of Afghan experts some of whom were present at the conference, has been appointed to consider a new constitution which includes clear protections of religious freedom and civil society organizations that promote human rights.

Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, USAID assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East, stressed that it is important to integrate the human rights message into vital development initiatives. "In the health sector alone," she said, "90 percent of health programs favor women. The same is for education."

A total of $80 million is provided to assist women and girls in the areas of human rights, education, healthcare and other programs. According to the White House Office of Global Communications, the United States announced $2.5 million during the first week of January for the construction of 14 women's centers, and an additional $1 million for training women on business and NGO management and political participation, and girls' education.

Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian Affairs and current professor of the Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University, cautioned policymakers that security in Afghanistan should be priority for the United States and other donor countries. According to Inderfurth, "security needs to be provided first before human rights and everything else can be protected."

During the all-day conference, panels discussed possible new ways to strengthen Afghanistan's central government and promote security and stability in Afghanistan. Ambassador Peter Tomson, diplomatic associate at the Center for Afghanistan Studies and former U.S. envoy to the Afghan Resistance, said that the United States and its allies should work to expand the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) throughout the entire country. Currently, the operation of ISAF is restricted to the capital of Kabul and surrounding areas. With security spread outside Kabul, said Tomson, more aid and construction projects can be brought to the rural areas.

Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Lorne Craner, urged a broad effort to provide maximum support enforcing institutional and structural reforms within the government. He said that, based on U.S. experience, nation building is not possible when it is the effort of an outside country alone. It is the role of the United States and the donor community, he said, to help the Afghan people build a democratic nation.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent body of the U.S. government created by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1988 to monitor religious freedom in other countries and advise the president, the secretary of state, and Congress on how best to promote religious freedom (for more on the Commission, please visit www.uscirf.gov). Similar domestic concerns are monitored by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (www.usccr.gov).

UNHCR projects in Afghanistan receive additional $15 Million from U.S.
Source: US Department of State Date: 5 Feb 2003
(Funds will assist Afghan refugees, returnees and IDPs) (550)
The United States is contributing an additional $15 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to help fund its programs for Afghan returnees, refugees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in 2003.

According to a media note released February 5 by the State Department, the United States had already contributed $6 million for 2003 to support UNHCR programs for Afghan conflict victims as part of its initial $65 million contribution to the agency.

"This contribution will help the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees continue to provide protection and emergency and reintegration assistance to millions of Afghan returnees, refugees, and internally displaced persons," said the note.

The United States contributed more than $67 million to UNHCR in 2002 for its Afghanistan operations, making it the largest contribution from any donor state, according to the media note.

"Most of those funds helped to assist in the repatriation and reintegration of 1.8 million Afghan refugees and internally-displaced persons, one of the largest refugee repatriations in the last 30 years," said the note.

The media note added that another 1.2 million Afghan refugees and 300,000 IDPs are expected to need repatriation in 2003.

The media note urged other donor nations to continue their support for UNHCR's projects for Afghan conflict victims, saying that continued success "depends on the sustained generous support of the international community."

Following is the text of the February 5 State Department Media Note:

(begin text)
Media Note
Office of the Spokesman Washington, DC February 5, 2003
U.S. Contributes An Additional $15 Million To Assist Afghan Conflict Victims
The United States is pleased to announce a contribution of $15 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for its 2003 Supplementary Program for Afghan refugees, returnees, and internally displaced persons. This contribution will help the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees continue to provide protection and emergency and reintegration assistance to millions of Afghan returnees, refugees, and internally displaced persons. As part of an earlier, initial $65 million contribution to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2003 programs, the United States contributed $6 million to support the programs benefiting Afghan refugees. In 2002, the U.S. contributed more than $67 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for its Afghan operations, the largest contribution of any donor state. Most of those funds were used to assist in the repatriation and reintegration of 1.8 million Afghan refugees and internally-displaced persons, one of the largest refugee repatriations in the last 30 years.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that it will facilitate the return and reintegration of at least another 1.2 million Afghan refugees and 300,000 internally displaced persons in 2003.

The massive repatriation operation in 2002 was possible only with the support of the United States and the rest of the international community. Continued success, likewise, depends on the sustained generous support of the international community. We urge other donors to do their share and support the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in its crucial work to assist Afghan refugees, returnees, and internally displaced persons.