Afghanistan News October 22, 2003

October 22, 2003

Taleban "turn on ex-minister"
BBC 10/21/2003
The hardline Islamic Taleban movement is reported to have disowned its former foreign minister in Afghanistan, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil. The current government of President Hamid Karzai says it is considering whether to hold talks with Mr Mutawakil, the most senior Taleban to have been held in US custody.

There continue to be conflicting reports on Mr Mutawakil's whereabouts and whether he has been set free by the US. Recently President Karzai repeated an offer of an amnesty for all Taleban members deemed not to have innocent blood on their hands.

A spokesman for Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar told the BBC Pashto service on Tuesday that Mr Mutawakil "does not represent our will". He said the Taleban's struggle would continue.

Mr Mutawakil has been traditionally seen as a moderate member of the Taleban which has been increasingly active in south-east Afghanistan in recent months. He surrendered to US forces some months after the US-led operation to oust the Taleban began in October, 2001.

Recent days have seen a wave of reports and denials about Mr Mutawakil's status. On Tuesday a spokesman for President Karzai, Jawid Ludin, seemed unsure himself as to Mr Mutawakil's whereabouts. "I have no accurate information," he told the BBC Persian service.

On Monday Mr Ludin appeared to confirm earlier reports saying that Mr Mutawakil had been released from detention at the US airbase at Bagram, near Kabul. But he has now told the BBC that: "So far as we understand he is still under arrest and not yet released." "I don't know if he is in Kandahar or Bagram," Mr Ludin said.

However other reports say he is under US protection at the Kandahar airbase, fearing attack from his former Taleban comrades. The BBC's Rahimullah Yusufzai says Mr Mutawakil's aides have all along claimed that the US military authorities made two offers to Mr Mutawakil while he was in their custody at the Bagram airbase.

They say he was invited to join the Karzai government as a spokesman and adviser to the Afghan president or to seek political asylum in a Western country. Though the US government has refrained from commenting on the issue, Mr Mutawakil's colleagues say the offers are still valid. They believe Mr Mutawakil would like to stay away from Afghan politics for the time-being and would prefer asylum in an Arab country.

Ex-Taleban minister is free
BBC 10/21/2003
A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan has confirmed that former Taleban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil has been released from US custody at Bagram, north of Kabul.

Mr Mutawakil was the most senior Taleban in custody, and - according to the spokesman - is among a number of Taleban who have made proposals of talks to the government.

The spokesman said the government had yet to make up its mind on the offer. Earlier in the month, aides and family members of Mr Mutawakil said he had been released, although this was denied at the time by President Karzai.

Mr Mutawakil is now at an airbase in his home city of Kandahar under US protection. Reports say he asked himself to be put under US protection.

For two years, nothing has been heard from the Taleban except threats and calls for jihad, or holy war. Now a proposal for talks has come from members of the group, including Mr Mutawakil. This is the first ever offer of talks and comes a few weeks after President Karzai repeated an amnesty for all Taleban who do not have innocent blood on their hands.

It also comes as the growing Taleban insurgency in the south means almost daily attacks on aid workers and American and Afghan troops. The presidential spokesman emphasised that no talks had yet taken place. Clearly the significance of the offer depends on who else is involved, observers say.

Mr Mutawakil was never a commander, never had armed men of his own and was on the moderate wing of the movement. It is not known whether any of the radicals currently at war with Mr Karzai's government are also offering to talk rather than fight.

AFGHANISTAN: EX-TALIBAN MINISTER OFFERS HELP
World Briefing: Asia NYT Published: October 22, 2003
The former Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, has offered to cooperate with the government of President Hamid Karzai in a deal struck while in American custody, a senior aide to the president said. Mr. Muttawakil, regarded as a moderate who reportedly led an attempt to persuade the Taliban leaders to hand over Osama bin Laden to avert a war, has been in detention since January 2002 and made his offer in a letter. The government has not yet replied. The aide said Mr. Muttawakil was still in custody in Afghanistan. Officials have been nurturing contacts with Taliban moderates for some months in an effort to undermine an increasingly violent insurgency in southern and eastern Afghanistan and to persuade influential figures to abandon violence. Umar Daudzai, the presidential chief of staff, said in a telephone interview that a number of Taliban want to leave the fighting lines and "want to have a normal life." Carlotta Gall (NYT)

Nato in Afghan security warning
BBC 10/21/2003 By Crispin Thorold
The commander of Nato-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan has warned that security in Kabul may be at risk if stability is not brought to the country's provinces. Lieutenant-General Goetz Gliemeroth was speaking a week after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution allowing the expansion of peacekeeping operations outside the capital. General Gliemeroth's appeal comes as Afghanistan is beginning an ambitious programme to demobilise 100,000 militiamen across the country. The UN-sponsored Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) scheme will be launched on Friday.

International peacekeepers in Kabul have brought relative stability to the Afghan capital, but much of the country is deeply insecure. Aid agencies say half of Afghanistan's provinces are high risk.

Last week, the Security Council authorised the expansion of peacekeeping operations outside Kabul. Initially, up to 400 hundred German soldiers will be deployed to the northern city of Kunduz.

General Gliemeroth, who commands the International Security Assistance Force, told a monthly press briefing in Kabul that further details of the planned expansion were not available at this stage.

But he stressed that current peacekeeping operations in Kabul would not be threatened by the broader UN mandate. General Gliemeroth also said the capital should be demilitarised, with heavy weapons owned by militias removed to cantonments.

Warlords, including Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim, have militiamen, tanks and artillery in the capital. Isaf's call is in accordance with the terms of the Bonn agreement, signed after the US-led war against Afghanistan's former Taleban rulers.

Afghans Hand in Weapons to Launch Disarmament Drive
By Simon Denyer
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Hundreds of Afghans handed in their weapons at a northern military barracks on Tuesday to kick-off an ambitious plan to disarm 100,000 militiamen across the country over two years. But as the pilot project got under way in the largely peaceful northern province of Kunduz, serious question-marks still hang over the United Nations-backed "Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR)" project.

Doubts remain about whether Afghanistan's unruly warlords will really cooperate with the plan, and whether those soldiers taking part will give up for good a life based on the gun. In the 54th Division headquarters in Kunduz, hundreds of Afghan men in civilian clothes lined up patiently in a dusty square to hand in weapons and tick their name off a list.

But the proceedings had more than a hint of farce. Many of these men had surrendered their weapons to their own commanders two years ago and their guns have been in a lock-up in Kunduz city for the last year as part of a locally driven disarmament initiative in the quiet, rural province.

Hussain, a 26-year-old farmer and part-time soldier, came to collect an AK-47 from the Kunduz store Tuesday then handed it over to someone else to be bar-coded and put under a different lock and key.

Hussain will collect the same weapon again Friday, parade in front of President Hamid Karzai and assorted dignitaries to officially launch the DDR plan, be formally demobilized, and then hand it back again.

In return for taking part in this ritual he will receive $200 in cash, some clothing and food allowances, a medal and a certificate. Most importantly, he will receive vocational training and help in starting a new life, which the U.N. hopes will make him turn his back for good on the military life.

"Here it is more about reintegration than disarmament," said Sergiy Illarionov, the senior U.N. official in Kunduz. Like many of those likely to take part in the DDR plan, Hussain was paid infrequently if at all by his commander, but was available to be called upon if trouble started.

So what is to stop him simply going out and spending $100 on a new weapon and secretly rejoining another militia force? "The incentives we are offering them should be enough motivation to stay on the program," said Jim Ocitti, spokesman for the $200 million Afghan New Beginnings Program.

Some of those demobilized will work as de-miners, others may get work building roads or clinics, but most may just get a cow and some tools and return to their farm. "We are tired of weapons," said white-bearded 46-year-old Shukr Ullah, as he gave up the gun he used to fight Soviet occupiers in the 1980s and the Taliban regime in the 1990s. "Now I want the government to help me get on with my life," he said. "But if we remain jobless there may be problems, some people might take their weapons back."

New Police Deploy to Afghanistan's North
By BURT HERMAN, Associated Press Writer
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - A new police force is manning checkpoints on the dusty roads out of Afghanistan's northern capital to keep battling warlords at bay and to exert the authority of the faraway central governmentSome 300 police from Kabul completed their deployment Tuesday in Mazar-e-Sharif, in their first mission outside the capital, controlled by the administration of President Hamid Karzai.

Their deployment was a condition of a cease-fire to end feuding between the private armies of two powerful warlords that left more than 60 dead, according to one of the sides involved. It was among the worst factional fighting since the fall of the Taliban nearly two years ago.

"If no one would come from the capital, then this fighting would expand to everywhere," said Gen. Khalilullah Ziahi, commander of the police force. Mazar-e-Sharif, 108 miles north of Kabul across the Hindu Kush mountains, is one of eight cities expected to host international peacekeeping troops after the U.N. Security Council resolved last week to expand the NATO-led forces' mandate beyond the capital.

The city of more than 1.5 million people has its own police force, seen on street corners around Mazar-e-Sharif's famed Blue Mosque taking up the Herculean task of taming the traffic chaos that reigns here.

But the real power is still in the hands of the so-called warlords, who continue to operate their own fiefdoms away from the eyes of Karzai's central government.
The two main powers in Mazar-e-Sharif are Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek who was appointed Karzai's representative in the north, and Gen. Muhammad Atta, an ethnic Tajik who holds more sway in the city itself. Small skirmishes routinely break out between Dostum's and Atta's troops across the north, often in isolated towns.

Earlier this month, serious fighting broke out just miles outside Mazar-e-Sharif, with tanks driving through the city on the way to battle. Tense residents dusted off their family Kalashnikovs and stayed awake at night to patrol their homes.

Trying to bolster a sense of security, the Kabul police now inspect vehicles for weapons and drugs. On Tuesday, Ajmal, 23, an officer who like many Afghans uses only one name, poked a long metal rod into sacks of wheat on trucks arriving from nearby Kod-e-Barq, sniffing for the scent of opium. He said the reaction from residents have reacted well to his presence. "The people say they need the police — not only in the city, but also in villages," Ajmal said.

Drivers passing through the checkpoint also seemed pleased. Akhtar Muhammed, driving a truck filled with logs from the nearby village of Shulgara, said soldiers who earlier manned the checkpoints would ask drivers to pay as much as $20 in "tolls," or bribes.

"It's the first time we see they are checking things seriously," said Abdullah, another driver ferrying passengers from Shulgara in a jeep. "They are the ones who we need." For now, commanders from both sides also welcome the police and say calm has been restored in Mazar-e-Sharif.

But Nasruddin Hamdard, head of security for Atta's army, alleged that Dostum's forces had incited small skirmishes in recent days near the towns of Dar-e-Suf and Sar-e-Pol in the north, injuring two of Atta's soldiers. To prevent further violence, he said international peacekeeping troops should be deployed across the entire north, not just in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Afghan minister, head of EU delegation discuss security, military issues
Hindokosh News Agency, Kabul, 20 October: Italian deputy foreign minister meets Afghan foreign minister

The Italian deputy foreign minister, Mr Margarita Boniuer, the head of [the visiting] EU delegation, met the Afghan foreign minister [Dr Abdollah] and discussed security affairs, military and civil reforms, narcotics and human rights in Afghanistan with him.

The Afghan foreign minister, Dr Abdollah, and the Italian deputy foreign minister then held a joint news conference. Dr Abdollah told journalists: The EU is one of the biggest donors of Afghanistan.

He added: The international community is worried about the situation in Afghanistan and I discussed an international conference on Afghanistan, which is supposed to be held next year, with Mrs Boniuer. The conference will discuss political issues and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Mr Boniuer, who heads the EU delegation, arrived in Kabul yesterday, 27 Mizan 1382 [19 October 2003]. Hindokosh news agency, Kabul, in Dari 1330 gmt 20 Oct 03

Rival warlords likely to be shifted to Kabul
AFP 10/21/2003
KABUL - The Afghan government may pull rival warlords Atta Mohammad and Abdul Rashid Dostam out of their northern strongholds and transfer them to Kabul in a bid to curtail fighting, a senior official said yesterday. "Atta and Dostam could be withdrawn from the north and they'll be given positions in Kabul, that is under consideration by the national security council," the official, who could not be identified, said.

Dostam, who holds the post of deputy defence minister, also heads the Uzbek-dominated Junbish faction, while Atta heads the seventh military corps and the Tajik-dominated Jamiat-i-Islami faction. Atta is based in the main northern city Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh province, and Dostam is based in Shiberghan, 120 kms to the west. Both profess loyalty to President Hamid Karzai's central administration but have long competed for control of the north.

Frequent clashes between their militia forces have been the main source of unrest in northern Afghanistan. The most recent clashes early October left at least 10 fighters dead and 30 injured, according to a British colonel based in Mazar-i-Sharif.

Atta's spokesman General Abdul Sabor said a delegation of Afghan, British and US officials who travelled to Mazar at the height of the fighting and brokered a ceasefire had decided to transfer the northern strongmen.

"In the meetings it was discussed and decided that both General Dostam and Atta and some other key personnel of the north should be transferred to the capital," Sabor told AFP by phone from Mazar-i-Sharif.

"The government has appointed a security commission which will discuss the transfer of these two key personnel in the north, and the appointment of some other figures for these posts in Balkh province."

The delegation, led by Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Jalali with British ambassador Ron Nash, US and Afghan officials, made recommendations to the national security council in Kabul on steps to prevent further clashes.

Karzai's spokesman Jawed Luddin said the security council had agreed military and political changes may be necessary in the north. "The only thing that has so far been agreed in the security council is that everything will be done to make sure security comes and that may involve making changes in the military ranks as well as political appointments there," Luddin said.

Pakistanis Cross Border With Ease to Join Taliban
By John Lancaster Washington Post Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A01
QUETTA, Pakistan -- Abdul Zahir and 14 other Pakistani men set out by bus for Afghanistan last summer, determined to join Taliban forces waging a renewed jihad against U.S. and Afghan government troops. It was almost too easy.

Stopped by border guards in the town of Chaman, they said they were Afghan refugees returning home on various personal or business errands, Zahir said. "I said I had sold a water buffalo to someone in Afghanistan and I needed to collect my money."

The guards waved them through. A few days later, he and his comrades joined a Taliban unit in the mountains of Zabol province, where they were issued weapons and spent the next 40 days engaged in sporadic combat -- including the ambush of an Afghan army patrol -- before he and several others returned to Pakistan by taxi in late July. Their commander gave them each 250 Pakistani rupees -- about $4.50 -- to cover the fare.

"It's no problem at all to cross back and forth," said Zahir, a 33-year-old apple grower and self-described Taliban recruiter from the remote tribal district of Qila Abdullah along the Afghan border in northern Baluchistan province. "The Americans have robbed us of the right to live, but still we have the right to die, and we are using that right."

U.S. and Afghan officials say that Pakistan's tribal regions -- the border areas of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province -- have become a logistical and recruiting base for Taliban forces that were driven from power in December 2001 and that have since regrouped.

In recent months, resurgent Taliban forces have stepped up their attacks, particularly in southeastern Afghanistan near Pakistan's border, forcing international aid organizations to limit their operations and raising doubts about the viability of plans to hold national elections in the country next year.

Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda fugitives and deployed thousands of troops to previously autonomous tribal zones with the stated aim of securing its border with Afghanistan. But Afghan and some U.S. officials have suggested that some elements of Pakistan's security forces may be less than enthusiastic about carrying out their orders, particularly with regard to the Taliban.

Pakistani officials deny they are helping the Taliban but acknowledge they have little if any control over the movement of people across the border, even at formal checkpoints. "It is fair to say that at present no immigration controls exist between the two countries," said a senior immigration official in Quetta. "Since forever, Afghans have been crossing the border into Pakistan without passport or visa."

Zahir's story points to the difficult if not impossible task of stopping cross-border movement, given the depth of popular support for the Taliban in Pakistan and the ethnic homogeneity of the population that straddles the rugged, largely unmarked border.

Zahir, a bearded, unassuming man in an embroidered prayer cap who is blind in one eye, agreed to be interviewed on condition that certain identifying details -- including his family name and that of his village -- be withheld. The interview, which took place in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, was arranged by a prominent politician from the border area. The politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is sympathetic to the Taliban and opposes the U.S.-backed government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.

Zahir's account could not be independently verified. But it was noteworthy for its specifics, as well as for Zahir's lack of bravado. He said that the one time he actually had the enemy in his sights, he missed.

The politician, a former provincial cabinet minister, vouched for the accuracy of Zahir's account, asserting that Zahir and other Taliban representatives in the border areas are openly seeking recruits during visits to madrassas, as Islamic seminaries are known, and at social gatherings such as weddings.

"They are very open," said the politician, adding that he heard one such appeal at a wedding party several weeks ago. "They are offering money and motorcycles to anyone who will go with them for 15 days up to three months."

The Taliban derives its main support from the Pashtun ethnic group that also dominates Pakistan's border areas. It has ideological ties with some of the hard-line religious parties in the six-party alliance -- the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal -- that constitutes the main political opposition to Musharraf's government. The alliance holds power in North-West Frontier Province and is a partner in Baluchistan's provincial government.

"If you talk to us in terms of our sympathies, we are pro-Taliban," said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed Sharodi, Baluchistan's information minister and a turbaned religious scholar who describes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States as "a conspiracy by Jews to start a war between Muslims and Christians."

An Afghan refugee who does political work for the Taliban in Baluchistan suggested that Pakistan's tribal areas have become less important to the movement as it has reestablished its support network inside Afghanistan over the last six months. In an interview here, the political worker said Taliban commanders "used to hide in the borderlands, but now they have established good contacts with the tribal chiefs and warlords in Afghanistan, so they provide them with shelter now."

The political worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Pakistan's side of the border remains an important source of recruits for the Taliban and "if you go to these tribal areas, you will come to know who is ready to go for jihad."

That is more or less the picture sketched by Zahir, a father of six with a 10th-grade education who makes his living off the 30-acre apple orchard he owns with relatives just a few miles from Afghanistan in Qila Abdullah.

A Pashtun tribesman, he said he identifies more closely with Afghans than with Pakistanis and first offered his services to the Taliban soon after the United States launched its campaign against the movement in the fall of 2001. He joined a Taliban unit in the Afghan provincial capital of Kandahar, he said, and was promptly dispatched to the city of Mazar-e Sharif as part of a mission to deliver money and winter clothing to Taliban forces there. But he saw no action, he said, and as the Taliban resistance collapsed he returned to Pakistan four days before Kandahar fell to U.S.-allied Afghan fighters.

"After I came back I was continuously trying to go back, but the jihad had not yet resumed," he said. Then, in February, Zahir said, he succeeded in meeting a Taliban military commander, who "realized I was a genuine person" with ties to the movement and urged him to "go back and convince other people" to join the jihad.

Over the next few months, Zahir said, he rounded up 14 other men from his village and surrounding areas while he waited for further instructions.

Finally the summons came in the form of a visit from an old Taliban comrade, an Afghan named Abdul Hadi, who approached him in his orchard one day last May, Zahir recalled. "He said: 'We are ready to take you. There are different jobs. You can fight at the front line. You can cook. You can be a male nurse. You can give money. Everything is welcome because jihad has started.' "

At their own expense, Zahir said, he and the 14 others caught the bus for Afghanistan, where at one point they were stopped and searched by a U.S.-Afghan patrol. But they repeated the same stories they had told at the border crossing and were allowed to continue on to the town of Qalat in the border province of Zabol.

After hiking into the mountains, he said, they hooked up with a unit of 120 fighters and were supplied with Kalashnikov assault rifles, hand grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition.

As he described it, the group saw little combat, except for one occasion when it ambushed two Afghan army vehicles about a mile and a half outside the town of Maruf, wounding one soldier and capturing one of the vehicles. Zahir said he fired his weapon but missed his target because he was too far away.

After that battle, he said, the Taliban fighters took refuge in nearby tunnels while U.S. helicopters patrolled the area for two days. Zahir said he eventually had to return to Pakistan for the simple reason that he was hungry after more than a month of living on flatbread and occasional cups of yogurt milk. "You don't really have enough to eat, so you become weak," he said.

Once he got home, Zahir said, he resumed his recruitment drive and soon lined up six more Pakistanis -- four madrassa students, one farm worker and an English-speaking computer expert -- between the ages of 22 and 30. He said jihad is an easy sell where he lives. "We are basically anti-American," he said. "So what I do is I go and tell these boys, 'The door for jihad is open, and let's go fight Americans.' "

In August, he said, a Taliban commander named Aminullah gave the recruits 1,000 rupees -- about $17 -- each to cover their travel costs to Afghanistan. Four have already left, Zahir said, and he plans to join them soon.

"I'm waiting for their call," he said matter-of-factly. "Where I'm needed I'll go. I'm all set." Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.

Afghan court asks UK to extradite warlord
Reuters 10/21/2003
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's supreme court has called on Britain to extradite a notorious Afghan warlord who is facing charges of kidnap and torture in Britain.
Zardad Faryadi, 40, who sought asylum in London after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, has been charged in Britain under new legislation allowing the prosecution of offences committed abroad.

But Deputy Chief Justice Fazl Ahmad Manawi told Reuters Faryadi should be tried in Afghanistan. "Since according to allegations he committed the crimes on Afghan soil, we ask (Britain) to extradite him so he can be tried here," he told Reuters on Tuesday.

Faryadi served as a commander of a mujahideen or "holy warrior" faction in Afghanistan's eastern Sarobi region, where he ran roadblocks on one of the main routes into the capital, Kabul. Among the crimes he is accused of is taking hostages for ransom to be traded for his own captured fighters.

One of his aides, Abdullah Shah, nicknamed "Zardad's Dog", was sentenced to death earlier this year by the supreme court for crimes that included the murder of members of his own family.

A statement from Afghanistan's National Security department, meanwhile, called on Afghans to provide evidence for Zardad's trial in Britain. "We ask Afghans who have been affected directly or indirectly by his deeds to provide evidence," it said. Various Afghan regimes, factions and individuals committed serious human rights abuses during the decades of turmoil triggered by the invasion of the former Soviet Union in 1979.

Child smugglers leave hundreds of Afghan families traumatized
AFP 10/21/2003
KABUL - With tears rolling down her cheeks, Zarghona clutches a colourful dress she stitched for her five-year-old daughter Shabnam and wails that the infant was abducted before she could wear it.

Shabnam went missing almost a year ago from a Kabul neighbourhood and her whereabouts remain a mystery. Zarghona, 28, is one of hundreds of Afghan mothers who mourn for their kids missing over the past one year in a wave of child kidnappings blamed on human traffickers.

"We searched for her everywhere and asked everyone. But it was all in vain," she said. Zarghona and her 35-year-old husband Gul Agha went to a Kabul orphanage after they heard a television report that a group of children had been repatriated to Kabul from Saudi Arabia.

Some 42 Afghan children allegedly trafficked to the oil-rich kingdom in recent past returned home last week, Minister for Social Affairs Noor Mohammad Qarqeen told AFP.

"We went to the orphanage in the hope of finding Shabnam among those children but we didn't see her there," a visibly dejected Gul Agha said. Afghan officials said the children were deported by Saudi Arabia because they were living illegally in the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

But human rights activists in Kabul claimed the children were smuggled for abuse in the rich Arab countries. "Our initial investigation indicates that the majority of these children were abducted and later smuggled to that country" by rackets of human traffickers, spokesman for the independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan (HRCA), Nadir Nadiri told AFP.

The returnees, all boys of four to 10 years age, were abducted from the northern Baghlan province. Another 208 children, including some girls, are scheduled to be repatriated in the coming days, officials said.

Nadiri said some of the children told HRCA interrogators that they were living as slaves of Arab Sheikhs. A human rights activist speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP his group had seen women and young girls who had been sexually abused in Arab countries.

"A woman, who had succeeded to escape those Arabs told us that she had seen young girls sexually abused by their Arab buyers," he said. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) last month expressed serious concern over reports of children being abducted and trafficked in northern Afghanistan.

According to UNICEF, since early this year at least 80 children had been reportedly abducted, apparently to be trafficked to neighboring countries such as Iran and Pakistan, while the HRCA puts the number of abducted children at 332.

Lodged in a Kabul orphanage, the 42 deportees are reluctant to speak about their experience. Some claim they had gone to Saudi Arabia with their uncles. But the HRCA activists insist the children were smuggled.

"When you ask them how they went to Saudi Arabia, they say with their uncles, the uncles they haven't met before," Nadir said. Nadiri however said so far there was no indication that the deportees, who are waiting to be reunited with their families, had been sexually abused.

The commission has launched a search for their families in Baghlan and the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, he said. UNICEF is also working with the interior ministry to start a birth registration campaign so that every child under the age of one has a registration card to help parents identify their children.

UNICEF spokesman Edward Carwardine told AFP last week that 50 children had been intercepted by Afghan law enforcement officials in northern Takhar and Badakhshan provinces and safely returned to their families.

Another male teenager, who was kidnapped from southeastern Zabul province, was intercepted by HRCA, Nadiri said, adding that his abductors had raped the child. A six-year old boy was intercepted by police in southeastern Khost province while being smuggled to neighbouring Pakistan last week, local military commander Khyal Baz Khan told AFP. He said two child smugglers had also been arrested.

Like other parents Zarghona and Agha say their search for Shabnam continues. "I have never stopped hoping to find my daughter one day," Zarghona said.

ING consortium plans to open Afghan bank
Reuters 10/21/2003
KABUL - Dutch bank ING said on Tuesday that it and a consortium of Afghan and U.S. investors had applied for a licence to set up a commercial bank in Afghanistan involving an initial investment of $10 million.

Afghanistan's Western-backed government has licensed three foreign banks since unveiling a banking law last month to open the virtually defunct state sector to overseas competition after more than 23 years of war.

They expect to do good business handling transfers for major aid and reconstruction projects and also hope to attract business from Afghan clients thought to be holding billions of dollars in overseas banks.

ING said the proposed Afghanistan International Bank would involve its Institutional and Government Advisory group, ARC Companies LLC, the Constellation Business Group Inc, the Rahmat Group and Marco Polo Gulf Trading FZE.

The Dutch bank said in a statement the Asian Development Bank had expressed an interest in providing equity for the new bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp was considering an application for financing. OPIC was established by the U.S. government in 1971 to help U.S. firms invest overseas.

ING said the bank intended initially to offer trade finance, money transfer and deposit account services to small and medium-sized enterprises. It said it also planned to offer loans for foreign and local businesses and to evolve into a fully operational commercial bank offering automated teller services and Internet banking.

The statement said the new bank would be managed by ING for an initial three-year period with an initial capitalisation of $10 million and would develop a strategy to open branches around the country after a year in operation.

"We expect that the bank will attract strong interest from the local market, due to the proposed combination of local, foreign and multinational shareholder groups and the management expertise ING brings to the table," the head of ING's Advisory group, Peter van der Krogt, said in the statement.

The group is an independent unit of ING Groep NV (ING.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) specialising in working with government, private-sector banks and multinational organisations. It has projects in 40 countries.

Afghanistan has already granted licences to Britain's Standard Chartered Bank Plc (STAN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) , the National Bank of Pakistan (NBPK.KA: Quote, Profile, Research) and the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development's First MicroFinance Bank.

The National Bank of Pakistan has already opened a branch in Kabul and the others expect to follow suit later this year. The banks are the first allowed into the country since before the Russian invasion of 1979, after which all financial institutions were nationalised. Another state-run Pakistani bank, Habib Bank, has been seeking a licence.

Toxins in Kabul 'low'
Study results may block future health claims by soldiers By STEPHANIE RUBEC The Calgury Sun (Canada) October 21, 2003
CAMP JULIEN, Afghanistan -- Toxin levels in Kabul are too low to harm soldiers over the long term, according to a Canadian Forces environmental study which could blunt future health claims.

The Environmental and Industrial Health Hazard interim report could be used by the Defence Department to contradict any claims by soldiers that they're suffering from health problems because of time spent in Kabul.

"We picked up elevated levels of dust in the air, but there was no levels of harmful bacteria," said Capt. Don Saunders, the study's leader.

As for the fecal matter in the air, Saunders said it's been "sterilized" by the sun. Saunders, 31, said the dust will aggravate soldiers' asthma but everyone should return to normal when they head back to Canada.

The Canadian Forces began doing environmental impact studies in 2000 on the recommendation of a military board of inquiry which probed health complaints from soldiers who served in Bosnia in 1993-95.

Soldiers who developed problems like intestinal bleeding, aches and even blindness after serving in Bosnia were told by the Defence Department that unless they could link it to the Balkans, they wouldn't get medical compensation.

An outcry saw the government move the burden of proof to the department, which now has to prove that the soldier's illness isn't related to their time abroad.

"Very few countries actually do a very detailed study of how the soldiers are being effected," Saunders said. The German military found two of the four mosquitoes it captured carried malaria.

Mousetraps are being laid to eliminate the food which attracts venomous snakes. A sand viper was caught at Camp Warehouse, a multinational base where Canadians are staying.

Iran agrees "full transparency" over nuclear programme, tougher inspections
TEHRAN (AFP) Oct 21, 2003 -- Iran Tuesday yielded Tuesday to international demands for it to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons, promising Britain, France and Germany "full cooperation" with the UN's nuclear watchdog and bowing to an intrusive inspections regime.

The foreign ministers of the three countries immediately hailed the capping of their unprecedented diplomatic effort here as an important step forward in defusing mounting tensions that have raised fears of yet another Middle East conflict.

"This is a very important day," France's Dominique de Villepin said after the ministers emerged from several hours of hard bargaining with top Iranian officials just 10 days before the expiry of an ultimatum set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Iran to come clean.

"We were facing a major issue. Proliferation is a major challenge to the world, and today we found a solution to the pending issues," he said. For his part, Germany's Joschka Fischer said the deal would help "stabilise the region". Britain's Jack Straw, making his fifth visit to Tehran in two years, said the deal was "an important step forward".

According to a joint declaration, Iran pledged to show "full transparency" to the IAEA, reiterated its commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and vowed atomic weapons had "no place" in its defence doctrine.

"The Iran goverment has decided to engage in full cooperation with the IAEA ... and clarify and correct any possible failures," the declaration said. It also said the "Iranian government has decided to sign the additional protocol" to the NPT. This would allow the IAEA to carry out surprise visits to suspect facilities -- a key tool if Iran can ever be given the nuclear all-clear by the Vienna-based body.

Iran also "decided voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities", bowing to another key IAEA demand. Hassan Rowhani, the secretary of Iran's powerful Supreme Council of National Security, said officials here would fix a date to sign the protocol, but cautioned that Iran reserved the right to resume enrichment if it were deemed necessary.

In return, Britain, France and Germany "recognise the right of Iran to the peaceful use of nuclear energy". They pledged that the additional protocol "is no way intended to undermine the sovereignty, national dignity or national security" of Iran.

Iranian officials fear intrusive inspections could represent a violation of national sovereignty. If Iran fully implements its pledges, the Islamic republic "could expect easier access to modern technology and supplies in a range of areas", the European trio pledged.

Diplomats said that opened up the possibility of Iran receiving nuclear fuel from overseas, therefore keeping the sensitive fuel cycle and the risk of its its misuse outside the country. The flying visit of the three ministers was a climax to months of intense and secretive diplomacy by the three countries.

It comes amid mounting tensions between Tehran and Washington as well as speculation that the United States or Israel could be considering pre-emptive military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Last month, the IAEA gave Iran until October 31 to turn over a raft of information on its nuclear programme after alarm bells were setting ringing following the discovery by its inspectors of traces of highly enriched uranium at two sites.

It says the traces came into the country on equipment bought on the black market, but has been understandably cautious on revealing the source of imported equipment given the imposition of US sanctions.

A failure to meet the conditions before the October 31 deadline could see Iran being declared in breach of the NPT, and the dossier being forwarded to the UN Security Council.

But diplomats say even Washington recognises this is not a satisfactory option, given that it cannot be assured of winning a consensus there because of Russia's multi-million dollar construction of a power plant in southern Iran. The deal also comes despite voices in Iran's powerful hardline camp, which pulls many of the real strings of power, suggesting Tehran follow the example of North Korea and pull out of the NPT altogether.