Afghanistan News October 30, 2003

October 30, 2003

Lawmakers Reach Iraq-Afghan Aid Deal
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Congressional negotiators agreed Wednesday on an $87.5 billion aid package for Iraq and Afghanistan that meets a White House demand that none of the money be provided as loans.

Despite rising criticism in Congress over the handling of the war, the package worked out by House-Senate negotiators largely resembles the proposal submitted by President Bush. The House and Senate are expected to act quickly to give the bill final approval before it goes to Bush for his signature.

But both Republicans and Democrats expressed frustration over what they described as the White House's disdainful treatment of Congress on Iraq.

"You bump up to a degree of arrogance over and over," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.

Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said "it is an act of considerable statesmanship for a lot of people in this place to continue to support what the president is trying to do in Iraq given the smidgen of information we're getting in return."

But Republicans, including Wolf, rejected a Democratic proposal that would have required Senate confirmation for Bush's civilian administrator in Iraq, the position held by L. Paul Bremer. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., rejected Democratic claims that this would make the administration more accountable.

"I'm not at all sure that the American people equate accountability with confirmation by the United States Senate," he said.

The bill includes $64.7 billion for military expenses, $18.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction and security forces and $1.2 billion for Afghan reconstruction, according to figures released by the House Appropriations Committee. Bush had requested $65.1 billion for military expenses, $20.3 billion for Iraq reconstruction and security forces, and $800 million for Afghan reconstruction.

The loan issue was the most divisive item as the House and Senate tried to resolve differences between their versions of the bill. A Senate amendment, passed with bipartisan support, would have required Iraq to pay back about half of the $18.4 billion for reconstruction.

Loan supporters said U.S. taxpayers are already spending plenty on Iraq and that the country's vast oil reserves should enable it to pay back some of the money eventually. Under the Senate bill, Iraq would not have had to repay the loan if other countries forgave 90 percent of the debt Iraq ran up under toppled leader Saddam Hussein.

On Wednesday, World Bank President James Wolfensohn called on the United States and other rich nations to forgive at least two-thirds of Iraq's foreign debt.

Bush threatened to veto the bill if the loan provisions were included. He and congressional Republican leaders argued that Iraq was already too deeply in debt to borrow more money and that there was no Iraqi government with the authority to take on new loans.

Domenici said the grants are needed to quickly improve conditions in Iraq and get U.S. troops home.

"America will be recompensed 50 times over if this thing gets ended and they have a strong country," he said. "This money we're arguing about will be a pittance when they become our friends in the international markets of oil."

But Obey noted that much of the new aid pledged by other nations at an international donor's conference last week was made as loans.

"It seems to me that we're asking the U.S. taxpayers to be Uncle Sucker instead of Uncle Sam," he said.

Senate conferees voted 16-13 not to insist on their loan amendment with their House counterparts. All Republicans voted no. Most were absent and their no votes were cast by proxy, including those of Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, who had supported the loans. One Democrat, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, also opposed the loans.

On other issues, the conferees agreed to provide $500 million to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help it deal with recent disasters, including the California wildfires and Hurricane Isabel.

They also agreed to a pilot program to expand the military health insurance system known as Tricare to include members of the National Guard and Reserves who are unemployed or lack health insurance coverage. Activated reservists and Guard members will also be eligible for coverage for a longer period. This change will be in effect only until the budget year ends on Sept. 30, 2004.

The Pentagon had opposed the change.

"We think that's probably not the best way to compensate the reserves," its chief financial officer, Dov Zakheim said at a Pentagon news conference.

All members of the National Guard and Reserves are given military health care while on active duty, and the "overwhelming proportion" have health insurance when they're not on active duty, Zakheim said.

Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said the expansion of Tricare "is "a very productive start," but that more needs to be done to help the National Guard and Reserves.

Conferees also agreed to provide $60 million for programs to strengthen women's rights in Afghanistan and provided $200 million for Liberia, $100 million for Jordan and $20 million for Sudan.

They also agreed to create a temporary position of Iraq inspector general to oversee the spending of the money.

The House could vote as soon as Thursday; the Senate would act sometime after the House does.

Prime Minister in Afghanistan
30.10.2003 New Zealand Herald
Prime Minister Helen Clark has met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and attended a dinner at the presidential palace in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Prime Minister is on a two-day visit to Afghanistan which will include a trip tomorrow to the central city of Bamiyan where about 100 New Zealand troops under a US-led anti-terror coalition are based.

The New Zealand personnel are on a one-year mission to help with reconstruction in Afghanistan following a US invasion last year to oust the country's Taleban rulers and track down Osama bin Laden, believed by the US to have been responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

During a brief meeting today with Helen Clark, President Karzai thanked New Zealand for supplying troops to rebuild his country.

Helen Clark left New Zealand on Tuesday afternoon, giving most news media about three hours' notice through a press statement of her intention to visit New Zealand Defence Force personnel in the Middle East.

Neither she nor Defence would say which countries she was going to.

She is travelling on an Air Force jet with the Secretary of Defence, Graham Fortune, Chief of Defence Force Bruce Ferguson and deputy secretary of foreign affairs Michael Green.

Senators Worried Afghanistan Falling Apart
Wed Oct 29, 3:38 PM ET By Jonathan Wright
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two influential U.S. senators questioned the stability of the Afghan government on Wednesday and warned the U.S. envoy and ambassador-designate to Kabul that the country may fall apart on his watch.

"We are in jeopardy of losing Afghanistan to become a failed state again," Sen. Joseph Biden told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing on the nomination of Zalmay Khalilzad as ambassador to Kabul.

"Are you confident that somehow you are not going to go out for an ambassadorship in which things, I wouldn't say fall apart at the seams, but nevertheless seem to be continually unraveling?" asked Sen. Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the committee.

Khalilzad, an Afghan-born diplomat who has been at the center of U.S. policy in Afghanistan for the past two years, might find that "the engine seems to be falling apart" while he is in Kabul, Lugar added. "That would be a very unfortunate experience for you and tragic for us," he said.

Lugar and Biden, a Delaware Democrat and ranking minority senator on the committee, have long urged a greater U.S. commitment to Afghanistan, which the United States invaded in 2001 to overthrow the ruling Taliban.

The Taliban had sheltered al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the man believed to have planned the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in which 3,000 Americans died.

The Bush administration has given Afghanistan a lower priority than Iraq, as reflected in its request that the U.S. Congress approve $20 billion for rebuilding Iraq and about $1 billion for Afghanistan.

The United States has also pressed other members of NATO to provide most of the troops for an international peace force in Afghanistan. Until recently, it showed little enthusiasm for the idea of expanding the NATO force to areas outside Kabul.

Biden said that even after NATO approved an expansion, he was not sure that the Bush administration fully backed it.

DRUGS AND MONEY
Biden also quoted a report by the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime as saying that Afghanistan was in danger of falling into the hands of drug cartels.

"Either major surgical drug-control measures are taken now or the drug cancer in Afghanistan will keep spreading and metastasize into corruption, violence and terrorism," the U.N. agency's director, Antonio Maria Costa, said in the report.

"The opium framers and traffickers brought home about $2.3 billion -- or about half the country's legitimate gross domestic product -- in 2003, according to this report," Biden said.

Khalilzad said success for the United States in Afghanistan was likely. "I think we are making progress. There are some trends that are not positive although I think we are heading strategically in the right direction," he added.

"Those leaders who behave as warlords, I think their future is in some serious question. ... An area that I will focus on would be to assist the government ... to extend its authority and get faction leaders to cooperate and, if they don't cooperate, to find another line of work for them," he said.

But U.S. officials said the National Security Council, where Khalilzad worked as special envoy for Afghan policy, was not unduly concerned about the phenomenon of Afghan warlords, who control whole provinces and run private armies.

Three American Soldiers Wounded in Afghan Ambush
Wed Oct 29, 3:07 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Three American soldiers received minor shrapnel wounds in southeastern Afghanistan when rebel forces ambushed their convoy, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

The convoy of U.S. and Afghan soldiers was attacked by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades on Monday morning near Orgun-E in Paktika province, not far from the Pakistani border.

"Coalition forces responded with small arms and mortar fire as well as close air support aircraft," U.S. military spokesman Colonel Rodney Davis told a news conference. "The fighting lasted about two hours until the anti-coalition elements retreated."

Davis said three Americans received minor shrapnel wounds and have already returned to duty after treatment. The rebel forces retreated toward Pakistan, he said.

The Afghan government blames Islamabad for not doing enough to seal its border and close down Taliban and al Qaeda camps operating in its territory.

The ambush at Orgun-E came two days after a six-hour firefight with Taliban and al Qaeda militants further south in the same province on Saturday, in which the Americans said they killed "approximately 18 enemy personnel."

That clash took place in Gomal district, 44 km (27 miles) south of a U.S. base at Shkin on the Pakistani border, an area where U.S. forces come under attack several times a month and which Davis describes as "the most evil place in Afghanistan."

Two CIA operatives were also killed in an ambush near Shkin on Saturday, but Davis declined to say if this was part of the same engagement.

He did say, however, that there were signs of increasing activity by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the Shkin area.

"A good number of the anti-coalition forces we've killed recently in the Shkin area were al Qaeda," he said, adding that they included Chechens, Uzbeks and others.

Davis said most of the rebel forces confronting the 11,500-strong U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan were thought to be Afghans, and members of the ousted Taliban militia.

Afghan officials in Paktika had given conflicting accounts of the recent clashes near Shkin, but Davis said he was only aware of one fight involving coalition forces in the area in the last week.

9/11 Trial Witness Says Suspect Was in Afghanistan
Wed Oct 29,11:12 AM ET By Philip Blenkinsop
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Jordanian who says he served as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard told a German court on Wednesday he had seen a Moroccan charged with helping the September 11 hijackers at an al Qaeda hostel in Afghanistan.

Shadi Abdalla, who has since turned informant, said he spotted the accused, Abdelghani Mzoudi, both alone and with key figures in the 2001 suicide plane attacks on U.S. cities at lodgings frequented by al Qaeda trainees in mid-2000.

Mzoudi, a 30-year-old electrical engineering student from Morocco, is charged with 3,066 counts of aiding and abetting murder, and membership of a terrorist organization, the Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell accused of carrying out the attacks.

"I saw him in a guest house in Kandahar," Abdalla, with a ring of plain clothes police around him, told the judges.

Wednesday, judges rejected a motion by Mzoudi's defense to have the case dismissed on the basis of testimony by a top German intelligence official last week that the attacks were plotted in Afghanistan, undermining the prosecution's assertion that a German cell led the plot.

Presiding judge Klaus Ruehle said the array of evidence against Mzoudi was strong enough to continue the case.

"There is a strong suspicion that he supported the preparations for the attacks," Ruehle told the court.

Abdalla, himself on trial for planning grenade attacks in Germany, said he had talked to the accused in Afghanistan, although he did not know why Mzoudi had traveled there.

Speaking in Arabic, Abdalla gave a long account of military training carried out, from target practice to explosives and of the periodic appearances of al Qaeda leader bin Laden, whom the tall Jordanian said he helped guard for two weeks.

"'Pray for your brothers, there will be an attack', he told us, but gave no details," the 26-year-old with thick glasses, told the court. Mzoudi barely glanced at the witness, leaning in to his translator, his forehead propped on his fist. His trial at a Hamburg court is the second anywhere of a Sept. 11 suspect after that of Mounir El Motassadeq, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail by the same court in February. Mzoudi could face the same prison term if found guilty.

However, unlike Motassadeq, who unwittingly incriminated himself with testimony that included a detailed description of his training in Afghanistan, Mzoudi has made no comment on his movements or possible links to the hijackers.

Three of the suicide pilots, including Mohamed Atta, who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center, studied in the German port city of Hamburg.

Defense lawyers argue that Mzoudi did little more than help fellow Muslims living abroad and say his paying of student fees and other bills for the hijackers was in no way central to the Sept. 11 plot.

The case continues Thursday next week.

US says scene of CIA agents' killing the "most evil place" in Afghanistan
Wed Oct 29,10:50 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Two American CIA agents were killed during a hunt for terrorists in an Afghan border area described by the US army as Afghanistan's "most evil place."

Americans William Carlson, 43, and Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, former military special operations officers, were killed in an ambush Saturday near the insurgency-hit southeast town of Shkin on the Pakistani border.

Their deaths bring to four the number of publicly acknowledged CIA deaths in Afghanistan since US-led forces began bombing the then Taliban-ruled country in October 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden.

They had been "tracking terrorists in the region", the Central Intelligence Agency said in Washington.

On the same day near Shkin, US air and ground forces and their Afghan allies battled suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents in a fierce six-hour firefight, killing 18 militants, according to the US army.

"Shkin has always been a hot spot ... Shkin is the most evil place in Afghanistan, Shkin is the most hot place," Colonel Rodney Davis, spokesman for the 10,000 US troops still combing Afghanistan for Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants, told a briefing in Kabul.

But he refused to clarify whether the CIA deaths were linked to Saturday's fighting, saying inquiries should be directed to the CIA.

Shkin is crawling with anti-US and anti-government insurgents. More US troops have been killed in Shkin than in any other part of Afghanistan, Davis said last month.
It lies 230 kilometers (143 miles) south of Kabul opposite the Pakistani tribal border town of Angoor Adda, where Pakistani troops have been pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters since early October.

Loyalists of the ousted Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies have been mounting increasing attacks on aid workers, troops and Afghan officials in south and southeast Afghanistan.

The neighbouring district of Birmal has been under Taliban control since August, local officials have told AFP.

On Saturday US A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes and AH-64 Appache attack helicopters zoomed in over Shkin to back up allied Afghan troops when they clashed with up to 25 rebel fighters 44 kilometers (27 miles) south of Shkin.

US and Afghan troops "exchanged small-arms fire" with the rebels for six hours until they retreated, according to a US army statement issued late Tuesday from its Bagram air base headquarters, north of Kabul.

Paktika police chief Daulat Khan told AFP Monday that three Afghan troops and around 20 al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents were killed in Saturday's battle.

The US army said there were no casualties on its side, making no mention of the CIA deaths.

Another firefight between militants and US troops broke out Monday in the same border region, 55 kilometers (34 miles) further north of Shkin at Urgun.

Three US troops were slightly wounded but have since returned to duty, Davis said.

Davis said foreign al-Qaeda fighters have made up the bulk of militants killed by US troops around Shkin in recent operations.

"A good number of the anti-coalition personnel we have killed recently in the Shkin area were al-Qaeda. A mixture of Chechens, Uzbeks or other nationalities," he told reporters.

The United Nations Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, in a damning security report Friday said that the al-Qaeda allied Taliban had taken "de-facto control" of parts of the southeast border region.

The Afghan government issued a strong rejection of his assessment and said he was exaggerating the impact of pockets of Taliban insurgents.

Johnny Michael Spann was the first CIA officer killed in Afghanistan during the two-year-old US Operation Enduring Freedom, slain in an uprising by Taliban prisoners in November 2001. The second, Helge Boes, died in a training accident in February.

U.N. Agency Warns Afghanistan Over Opium
Wed Oct 29, 8:56 AM ET By SUSANNA LOOF, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - Afghanistan, the world's leading opium producer, risks becoming a "failed state" if it doesn't curb its rising trade in illicit narcotics, the U.N. drug agency warned Wednesday.

Afghanistan produces three-quarters of the world's illicit opium — the raw material for heroin — and two-thirds of all opiate abusers use drugs of Afghan origin, according to a new survey by the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Afghan opium farmers and traffickers brought home about $2.3 billion, or about half of the country's legitimate gross domestic product in 2003, the report said.

"Out of this drug chest, some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share. The more they get used to this, the less likely it becomes that they will respect the law, be loyal to Kabul and support the legal economy," the agency's director, Antonio Maria Costa, said in an executive summary of the report.

"Terrorists take a cut as well: the longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country and on its borders," he said.

The country's opium poppy farmers cultivated 197,680 acres in 2003, an increase of 8 percent compared to last year, the report said. Opium production increased by 6 percent to 3,968 tons.

The U.N. agency has surveyed opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan since 1994. This year, for the first time, the study was carried out jointly with the government.

That signals that that things are changing in Afghanistan, Costa said in the summary.

"The preconditions for change are slowly being put into place," he said, pointing to a national drug control strategy and a new drug control law as examples.

However, drug production and trade is so deeply ingrained in Afghanistan that it also endangers the country, Costa said.

"There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists," he said.

"The country is at a crossroads: Either energetic interdiction measures are taken now, and supported by the international community, or the drug cancer in Afghanistan will keep spreading and metastasize into corruption, violence and terrorism — within and beyond the country's borders," Costa warned.

To battle the problem, the country must take "energetic measures" to "repress the traffickers, dismantle the heroin labs, and destroy the terrorists' and warlords' stake in the opium economy — thus enabling the legitimate economy and the constitutional process to move forward," Costa said.

The trade is "fueled by low risk and high profit," he added.

Poppy cultivation is part of the livelihood for 1.7 million people, or about 7 percent of Afghanistan's population, the report said. Though declining prices reduced the average opium grower's income by 15 percent to $594, the figure still is more than three times last year's national per capita income of $184.

The 2003 harvest was the second-biggest recorded since the agency began surveying the country in 1994.

The biggest harvest was recorded in 1999, when 4,565 tons were produced.

Poppy cultivation, which covers about 3 percent of Afghanistan's irrigated arable land, has spread to 28 of the nation's 32 provinces, up from 24 in 2002 and 18 in 1999. The extension is "worrying," the report said.

The agency used satellite images and field work to collect data for the survey.

Afghan, Pakistani, US officials visit disputed frontier
Wed Oct 29, 2:13 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan, Pakistani and US diplomats and military officials paid a joint visit to the porous Afghan-Pakistani border to ascertain where the disputed boundary should lie, the US army announced.

The officials, under the six-month old Tripartite Commission tasked with resolving problems on the 2,450 kilometer (1,500 mile) frontier, toured four border posts in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province on Saturday.

They had visited the area in July to confirm global satellite-determined locations for three other Pakistani border posts on the Pakistani side, according to a US army statement issued from Bagram air base headquarters near Kabul.

"The Commission researched the seven posts in the Khoda Khel pocket region to help settle disputes between the two nations as to the locations of the posts," it said.

"The Commission agreed to take steps to enhance coordination among Afghan, Pakistan, and US security forces in key areas of the border to combat Taliban and al-Qaida infiltration and to deny them sanctuary."

A sub-committee set up in July to investigate demarcation disputes is scheduled to report its findings at the commission's next meeting in Kabul on November 15.

Known as the Durand Line, the poorly-defined border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was drawn up in 1893 by British colonial authorities ruling India, whose borders then stretched to the Afghan frontier.

Countless pockets of the border are disputed and exchanges of fire have broken out between the neighbour's frontier forces, accusing each other of encroaching on their territory.

Early July Pakistani and Afghan troops fired at each other near Khoda Khel, in the Pakistani tribal district of Mohmand.

Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents are believed to slip with ease over the border from Pakistan, where some have regrouped, and back into Afghanistan to stage guerrilla attacks on aid workers, troops and Afghan officials.

Pakistan, the former backer of the ousted Taliban regime, admits to the presence of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in its border regions but denies assisting them, says it is doing all it can to capture them, and wants more help from Afghan and US forces.

The rugged and isolated border is difficult to patrol.

Afghan Court Condemns Beauty Pageant
Wed Oct 29,12:54 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan Supreme Court on Wednesday condemned a woman who is competing as Miss Afghanistan (news - web sites) at a beauty pageant, saying such a display of the female body goes against Islamic law and Afghan culture.

Vida Samadzai, 23, is competing in the Miss Earth competition in Manila, Philippines, and last she wore a red bikini during a public appearance by contestants ahead of the Nov. 9 judging.

She is the first Afghan to participate in the annual contest.

Samadzai reportedly left her home country for the United States in the mid-1990s and has said she is competing in the pageant to show the world a different image of Afghan women — many of whom still wear all-covering burka robes here despite the fall of the hard-line Taliban regime nearly two years ago.

But at a meeting of the Afghan high court shown Wednesday on state TV, judges condemned Samadzai's appearance.

"Women who show their bodies without clothes in front of people are completely against Shariah (Islamic) law, against Islam and against the culture of the Afghan people," the court said, according to the report.

The court said it had made the statement — the first public condemnation of Samadzai by Afghan officials — after repeated media inquiries about her appearance. Samadzai's participation in the contest hasn't been publicized in Afghanistan, where most of the impoverished population lacks access to outside media.

Afghanistan Braces for More Attacks
(VOA) - Afghanistan is bracing for more attacks from militant insurgents, despite hopes that the fighting would ease during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which began Monday. A series of U.S. casualties have marked the start of the holy month.

The pace of life in most Muslim countries tends to slow down during Ramadan, as even the mildly religious refrain from eating, drinking and smoking during daylight hours of the holy month.

But many observers say just the opposite may be true for Afghanistan's insurgency.

Forces loyal to the former Taleban regime and members of the al-Qaida terror network have been carrying out attacks on Afghan government targets and on U.S. and other foreign troops stationed in the country.

Some say those attacks are likely to increase as the militants, who see themselves as religious warriors, attempt to honor the month.

Senior advisor to the Afghan Interior Ministry, Shahmahmood Miakhel, says the government has been preparing for a possible rise in insurgent attacks.

The start of Ramadan, which varies slightly from country to country, began in Afghanistan at dawn on Monday.

On that day, just hours after sunrise, militants ambushed a U.S. convoy in Paktika province, injuring three soldiers, according to a U.S. military statement issued Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency says two men described as civilian contractors were killed in a separate ambush Saturday in the same province.

The CIA says the two men worked for the agency's operations directorate and had been tracking terrorists at the time of their deaths.

Two other CIA operatives have been killed on duty in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led war to overthrow the Taleban.

Afghanistan election warning
Wednesday, 29 October, 2003, 17:06 GMT BBC News
Violence and intimidation are threatening efforts to draft a new Afghan constitution, Human Rights Watch says.
In an open letter to President Hamid Karzai, the New York-based watchdog called on the Afghan Government to crack down on warlords.

President Karzai: Urged to reign in the warlords
It said they were interfering with the selection of candidates to the loya jirga or grand council due to discuss the draft constitution in December.

A spokesman for Mr Karzai said the government and the United Nations were happy with progress on the constitution.

"The United Nations which supervises the process is satisfied with what has been done, the government is satisfied too," the spokesman, Jawed Ludin, told the AFP news agency.

Human Rights Watch says a climate of fear exists in every region of Afghanistan.

It says some candidates have received death threats and want to stay away from elections due to take place next year after the loya jirga has been held.

It will debate the provisions of the new Afghan constitution, which is due to be made public imminently.

'Assassination attempts'

The rights group collected its material during dozens of interviews conducted over the past three weeks.

These attacks on political freedom are putting Afghanistan's future at risk

Human Rights Watch
It says armed men and military commanders have threatened candidates in provinces in the north, forcing at least one of them to withdraw.

In the western city of Herat political opponents of Governor Ismail Khan have been the target of assassination attempts, the letter to Mr Karzai says.

Similar threats have been reported from Kandahar and Zabul provinces in the south.

Human Rights Watch is calling upon the president to investigate those accused of making the threats and to speak out publicly against the violence.

It is also urging him to bring in legislation disqualifying candidates if they are found guilty of intimidation.

Cdn engineer escapes blast in Afghanistan
CTV.ca News Staff
A Canadian combat engineer describes seeing smoke and a blast when the vehicle he was driving struck an explosive device near Kabul. He escaped injury in the incident.

Sgt. Rene Grignon, 38, was driving a Zettelmeyer front-end loader equipped with a bucket on a heavily-mined track near the Afghanistan capital Wednesday, when it was stopped by the explosion.

"I happened to hit something, and the vehicle all of a sudden came to a stop," Sgt. Grignon told CTV Newsnet. "I saw smoke and I saw a blast."

Grignon and other Canadians were carrying out an intensive mine-clearing operation aimed at reopening the sector to Canadian patrols.

"There were some engineers out in front of the vehicle doing a visual inspection of the track. The vehicle itself was scraping behind them" when the incident occurred Canadian Press reporter Stephen Thorne said.

Grignon, a heavy equipment supervisor and operator with 24 Field Squadron, is a native of Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. He was not injured in the blast. But he was taken to a field hospital at nearby Camp Julien for observation.

The 30-tonne vehicle sustained some damage, including a tire blown at least six metres from the Zettelmeyer. Military officials said the loader could be repaired.

Grignon says he is undaunted by the experience.

"My heart didn't race," he said in an interview. "I always wanted to be in that piece of equipment and have something go off to prove that it is a safe piece of equipment."

An investigation is underway to determine whether the explosion was caused by a mine, or other explosive device.

The incident happened at 12:35 p.m. local time, on the same route where two Canadian soldiers were killed by at least one anti-tank mine Oct. 2.

Sergeant Robert Short and Corporal Robbie Beerenfenger were killed and three others injured when their vehicle struck an explosive device on the track about 3.5 kilometres southwest of the main Canadian base in Kabul.

The soldiers were patrolling in a lightly-armoured Iltis vehicle. In Canada, the incident sparked a national debate about its suitability to the Afghan mission.

A board of inquiry is still investigating that blast.

Sgt. Grignon says efforts are being made to ensure no more lives are lost -- and this incident was just part of that job.

"With all the attention to this, we are trying our best to make the road safer for our infantry," Grignon said. "And in doing such we encountered this."

Canadian troops are deployed in Afghanistan, making up the largest portion of the 31-country International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) created by the United Nations in December 2001.

ISAF is charged with stabilizing the troubled country's capital, Kabul, and also acting as a bulwark for the interim government of President Hamid Karzai.

The only other Canadian deaths in the Afghan operation occurred in April 2002. Four Canadian soldiers were killed when a U.S. F-16 fighter jet mistakenly bombed their position during a live-fire training exercise near Kandahar.

Today's incident comes on the same day defence minister John McCallum is expected to announce the multi-million-dollar purchase of another controversial combat vehicle -- the so-called Stryker.

In a report five years ago, the military concluded the eight-wheeled, 18-tonne, lightly armoured vehicle equipped with a 105-mm cannon would be a poor choice to replace Canada's aging tanks.

But McCallum is expected to announce Ottawa will buy 60 of the Canadian-made vehicles.

Pres. Bush Holds Ramazan Iftar for Muslims
(White House) - Remarks by the President at Iftaar with Ambassadors and Muslim Leaders.
State Floor - 5:50 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Ramadan Kareem. Welcome to the White House. I'm pleased to host all of you, our distinguished guests, during this blessed month of Ramadan.

For Muslims in America, and around the world, this holy time is set aside for prayer and fasting. It is also a good time for people of all faiths to reflect on the values we hold common -- love of family, gratitude to God, and a commitment to religious freedom. America is a land of many faiths -- and we honor and welcome and value the Muslim faith.

I appreciate Secretary Powell being here today, the great Secretary of State of America. (Applause.) There are members of my administration scattered amongst you, and I appreciate them coming. I particularly want to thank the Secretary of Energy, Spence Abraham, for being here, as well. (Applause.)

I appreciate Your Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs for the United Arab Emirates, for coming. I want to thank all the ambassadors who are here, and representatives of the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. We're honored you're here tonight. I want to thank the American Muslim leaders who are here with us today. I appreciate my friends coming. I particularly want to thank Imam Faizul Khan, who will lead us in prayer.

According to the teachings of Islam, Ramadan commemorates the revelation of God's word in the Holy Koran to the prophet Mohammed. In this season, Muslims come together to remember their dependence on God, and to show charity to their neighbors. Fasting during Ramadan helps Muslims focus on God's greatness, to grow in virtue, and cultivate compassion toward those who live in poverty and hunger.

The charity, discipline and sacrifice practiced during Ramadan in America makes America a better, more compassionate country. The family gatherings that break the fast at the end of each day enrich our communities. And the heartfelt prayers offered at this time of year are a blessing in many lives and they're a blessing to our nation.

As we gather during this season, we are mindful of the struggles of the men and women around the world who long for the same peace and tolerance we enjoy here in America. Brave American and coalition troops are laboring every day to defend our liberty and to spread freedom and peace, particularly to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The citizens of those countries have survived decades of tyranny and fear. Now, new leaders are emerging. They're emerging in Iraq in the form of medical workers and teachers and citizens of all backgrounds who are coming together to guide their country's future. They're moving toward self-government and practicing their faith as they see fit.

We will continue to support the people of Iraq and Afghanistan as they build a more hopeful future. And we will not allow criminals or terrorists to stop the advance of freedom. Terrorists who use religion to justify the taking of innocent life have no home in any faith.

As we defend liberty and justice abroad, we must always honor those values here at home. America rejects all forms of ethnic and religious bigotry. We welcome the values of every responsible citizen, no matter the land of their birth. And we will always protect the most basic human freedom -- the freedom to worship God without fear.

Islam is a religion that brings hope and comfort to good people across America and around the world. Tonight we honor the contributions of Muslims and the tradition of Islam by hosting this Iftaar at the White House.

I wish you all a very blessed Ramadan, and may God bless. (Applause.)

Will Afghan militias disarm?
BBC 10/29/2003 By Crispin Thorold
The launch of the UN-sponsored Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme (DDR) is an important step in international efforts to gradually reduce the military power and political influence of Afghanistan's warlords. Nearly two years after the fall of the Taleban, armed militias and mujahideen factions are the most powerful political players in Afghanistan.

Warlords have key roles in the central and provincial governments. The Defence Minister, Marshal Mohammad Fahim, who maintains a militia, is a critical figure.

A senior commander in the Shurya-yi Nazar faction of the Northern Alliance, Marshal Fahim says his men are not part of a private army but are loyal to the administration.

Those assurances have been little consolation to other warlords, who are considering whether to encourage their men to disarm.

Long list

The DDR process was held up for several months until the ministry of defence, dominated by Panjshiri Tajiks, was reformed.

Changes have brought more non-Tajiks into the higher echelons of the ministry although members of Shurya-yi Nazar still fill two of the three most senior positions.

Observers doubt other factions will be very enthusiastic about a disarmament programme run under the auspices of Marshal Fahim's ministry.

But the marshal is not the only faction leader in the Afghan administration.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and Education Minister Yunis Qanooni are also key figures of the Northern Alliance.

The alliance is a loose collection of political parties and ethnic groups, predominantly Tajik, which spearheaded the military campaign against the Taleban.

Then there is General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Mohammad, two men whose militias clashed in northern Afghanistan this month. Both are nominally loyal to the government of President Hamid Karzai.

At the provincial level, the list gets ever longer.

Many diplomats view the accommodation of warlords as a "necessary evil" to ensure the stability of Afghanistan - the last thing needed now is another civil war.

The US-led coalition forces use militiamen in their war against terrorism, fighting Taleban and al-Qaeda elements in the south and east of the country.

Analysts say the security vacuum in Afghanistan, created since the fall of the Taleban, has increased the power of the factions.

Warlords have become entrenched. There are reports that the Panjshir Valley north of Kabul is lined with spotless Russian tanks and rocket launchers.

Disarming Kabul

However, in the run-up to elections scheduled for next June, a number of measures are being introduced to erode the power of the factions.

Mr Karzai recently unveiled the Law on Political Parties.

One clause states that parties shall not have military organisations or affiliations with armed forces.

At face value, a leap forward for democratic principles, but will it be adhered to?

One Kabul-based analyst says political figures may conveniently disassociate themselves from their militias or argue their factions are part of the national military set-up rather than private armies.

The optimists believe the DDR will be a move in the right direction - if the links between the militiamen and their local commanders can be broken, the power of the warlords will dissolve.

But one key question will be what happens to the disarmed militiamen.

Under the DDR they will receive some money, clothes and vouchers for food. They will be interviewed and employed if jobs are available.

Many militiamen have not been paid in months, and the DDR optimists say if they can be given a paid job and shown a life away from the gun, the faction leaders will become irrelevant.

That may be true in the long run but for now there are more pressing issues.

At a recent press conference, the commander of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, Isaf, called for the demilitarisation of Kabul, which was part of the post-war Bonn Agreement.

Faction leaders have tanks and heavy artillery in Kabul, surely far more of a threat to Afghanistan's uneasy peace than the small arms being collected under the DDR programme?

As the first 1,000 weapons collected under the scheme were removed on Friday, Afghanistan took a symbolic step away from the rule of the gun.

But it will take many more years and much hard work to completely remove the gun from Afghan politics.

Washington help in Pukhtunistan issue sought
Hi Pakistan
WASHINGTON, Oct 29: Pakistan is believed to have asked the Bush administration to prevent the Afghan government from reopening the Pukhtunistan issue, sources told Dawn on Wednesday.

"Some Pakistanis see Washington's dark influence behind new agitation for the creation of Pukhtunistan " an attempt to unite the Pukhtun tribes divided by the Afghan-Pakistan frontier," writes Washington-based British journalist Martin Walker in a recent column published in several US newspapers.

The sources say that Pakistan's complaints began after a new map published in Kabul showed NWFP and Balochistan, including the cities of Peshawar and Quetta, incorporated into Afghanistan.

Mr Walker's column also mentions "secret talks" with American blessing, between Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and Khan Abdul Wali Khan, whose father coined the term Pukhtunistan."

Diplomatic sources in Washington say that while the Americans deny any involvement in the Pukhtunistan issue, they are not averse to the re-emergence of Pukhtun nationalism in Pakistan's Pukhtun belt.

"They believe that a secular, nationalist ideology can effectively counter the growing influence of religious parties in Pukhtun areas," said a senior Western diplomat based in Washington.

CBI trying to get Muttawakil, others extradited in IC-814 hijacking case
Press Trust of India (PTI) New Delhi, October 29
The CBI would soon approach the Afghanistan government and also take the help of the US for extraditing some persons, including foreign minister in the Taliban regime Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, in connection with the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1999.

CBI sources on Wednesday said that a request would be routed through Ministry of External Affairs to the Afghanistan government for extraditing Muttawakil, who had acted as a negotiator for the release of the passengers hijacked on December 24, 1999.

They said that during his "interview" by a CBI team, Muttawakil had named some other Taliban leaders who were either in the custody of Federal Bureau of Investigation or were reportedly hiding in Pakistan.

"Muttawakil can be made an accused in the case and his thorough interrogation was needed for exposing other foreign links that had been stonewalled by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan," a senior CBI official said.

CBI had earlier sent an official letter to the Hamid Karzai government after it took over the interim administration in Afghanistan.

The CBI sources said a proposal for his extradition would be soon sent to Afghanistan government as there was evidence with the agency pointing to his involvement in the case.

Muttawakil, during his questioning, had revealed some names of Taliban members of whom some were in the custody of the FBI, they said and added that the agency would send a request to the US agency for handing them over under the bilateral agreement between the two agencies.

via The Hindustan Times

Tribesmen take cash, count 'blessings' from Al Qaeda
By Owais Tohid | The Christian Science Monitor
from the October 29, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1029/p01s03-wosc.html
SOUTH WAZIRISTAN, PAKISTAN - At sunset, a bevy of four-wheel- drive Land Cruisers screech to a halt in a Wana town market. A group of tribesmen with shoulder-length hair wearing belts strapped with grenades and toting their trademark Kalashnikovs jump out and start loading huge quantities of rice, cooking oil, and other groceries onto the trucks. They drive off in minutes.

"After every week or two they come and go," says a young tribesman, Zahid Khan. "Every person in town knows who these people are and where the food goes."

These tribesmen are the powerful local agents of Al Qaeda fighters, who ferry food supplies to the "Arab mujahideen" in the tribal belt of Pakistan on the Afghan border. Groups of Al Qaeda and Taliban, numbering more than 300 and perhaps including the elusive Osama bin Laden, are buying out local criminals, recruiting unemployed young men, and making the region their fortress against US forces and their Pakistani proxies.

Pakistan's regional commander announced Saturday that more than 230 Al Qaeda suspects have been rounded up since the Army entered the tribal areas following Sept. 11, 2001. Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammad Aurakzai also enumerated the significant Pakistani forces devoted to the hunt: four brigade headquarters, 10 infantry and three engineering battalions, and one special services battalion.

Early this month, hundreds of Pakistani commandos fought a pitched gun battle with Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the village of Baghar, a few miles from the border with Afghanistan. They killed eight Al Qaeda men and captured 18; among the dead were Chechens and Arabs. But local sources say that hours before the raid, a group of 40 Al Qaeda fighters slipped away to nearby towns and mountains.

Officials term the recent operation "successful" but now admit that an Egyptian-born Canadian, Ahmed Said Khadr, believed to be an Al Qaeda leader, escaped the raid. This past week, at least two Al Qaeda men, who had fled the raids in South Waziristan, have been arrested in Pakistan's Punjab region.

Seventy local tribesmen have also been captured in an effort to pressure residents to cut off support and hand over wanted Al Qaeda fighters.

"Waziristan is paradise for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters," says Bukhar Shah, a Peshawar-based analyst. "They have the support of religious tribesmen, the mountains as their hideouts, and finances to survive and regroup. The success of the US-led forces in Afghanistan mainly depends on the success of operation in the tribal belt."

A tribal fortress

The remote and inaccessible terrain of these forbidding mountains renders operations against Al Qaeda logistically complicated. There are few proper roads, and residents travel on narrow trails and paths.

But local support may be the fugitives' strongest defense.

"Osama and his men are heroes for locals," says tribal elder Haji Behram Khan. "They are treated as honorable guests. They don't harm tribesmen, stay for a couple of nights, and pay 10,000 to 20,000 rupees [$175-$350] before they leave."

Hordes of Al Qaeda fighters fled Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban and took shelter with their families in South Waziristan, where they also capitalized on the tribal tradition of defending their guests with the last drop of their blood.

According to tribal sources with ties to Pakistan's intelligence and police services, hundreds of the fighters have used the tribal belt as a corridor to either hide in various cities and towns of Pakistan or flee to Gulf countries via Iran. The sources also say that over 300 have stayed put in South Waziristan to continue their fight against the US-led forces in Afghanistan.

"After the Tora Bora fighting, they were here everywhere," says a local tribesman. "Their red-colored Land Cruisers, satellite phones, horses, dollars - everything was visible. Now they are visible only to the locals."

"Most of the Land Cruisers are painted different colors now, but locals recognize all of them. Even their local agents now have dozens of Land Cruisers and roam around with bags full of cash," he says.

These Al Qaeda local agents and supporters are known as "Pakistani Al Qaeda" among tribesmen. They often wear sports shoes or sneakers, scarves, and have long hair.

Their presence has been a boon to the local economy. "They have a huge quantity of arms and ammunition and are continuously buying arms from the market, where the weapons are readily available. That has resulted in prices shooting up," says a tribesman. "Prices of Kalashnikovs have risen almost 100 percent and a Russian bullet, known as Zahrilla [meaning 'deadly'], now costs 300 percent more."

As the consumption and demand for weapons has increased in the tribal areas, so have the attacks against US and Afghan forces across the border in Afghanistan. "They have set up expensive wireless [phone] sets, [hooked up] computers in the towns for [international] communication, and attack the US forces from the mountains," says a young supporter, Dilawar Khan, who helped them set up the accessories for the equipment.

Despite their largesse, these men also foster a climate of fear. On the slightest suspicion, anybody suspected of passing information to the authorities can end up dead. It is widely believed that these "Pakistani Al Qaeda" men are behind some recent murders, including the April killing of an official of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Sher Nawaz was shot dead in Wana market in broad daylight. Some five months ago a local man, Mohammad Noor, was shot dead in the nearby town of Tara Yawar by suspected Al Qaeda agents. He was believed to have been spying for the Americans.

Local residents also talk about the death of another man, saying a note attached to his body read: "Agent of America. This will be the fate of American agents."

Pakistani officials in the tribal region maintain that the fighters are buying out local criminals to gain strength, but do not have widespread support on the ground.

"It is just a greed of money. Only the drug addicts and [thieves] are attracted to the terrorists," says senior local administrator Pir Anwar Ali Shah. "But we are tightening the circle around the terrorists and their supporters."

Many villagers, however, do not share the global hostility against Al Qaeda and Mr. bin Laden. Some claim to have seen and cheered him and his associates shortly after US forces bombed the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan during the winter of 2001.

"It was when Americans were bombing in Afghanistan. We were all in the fields when we saw Osama walking towards the Suleman Mountains," claims Noor Zaman. "We raised slogans of 'Hero of Islam, Osama, Osama.' He stopped, shook hands with us, blessed us, and continued walking towards the mountains."

Osama as 'woodcutter'

A few suspect that Osama may have been hiding in the disguise of a woodcutter on the mountains surrounding South Waziristan. "Only a couple of months ago, when we went up on the mountains, there were strangers cutting wood and another group of around 30 people were encircling five or six hooded men. They did not let us go near those masked men. We could see their eyes only," says Jhand Karikhel, a woodcutter. "They gave us 5,000 rupees [around $85] each and said 'pray for us.' "

Stories aside, tribal elders say it is highly likely that bin Laden could have hidden in South Waziristan after he fled from Afghanistan, and believe that footage released by Al Qaeda last month, showing him and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was filmed in their tribal region.

"The footage I saw on a local TV channel, looked to me like our area," says tribal elder Haji Behram Khan. "Osama was wearing a Waziristani round woolen cap, shalwar kameez, and a scarf on his shoulder. The dress is of here and the terrain familiar; I have walked these mountains all my life."

For some residents, hosting the foreign fighters is seen as a sacred event.

"A few months ago, an Arab mujahid stayed at my cousin's house. When he left the house, my cousin's family members sprinkled the water used for washing his clothes all over the house as a blessing," says Mr. Zaman. "My cousin is now very well respected among villagers because he provided shelter to a mujahid."

An American meets a mullah
Asia Times (Hong Kong) October 29, 2003 By A Lin Neumann
LARKANA - With some trepidation I step through the narrow wrought iron gate into the largest madrassa, or Islamic school, in this corner of the Indus River Valley in Sindh province. The long, quiet, arched brick hallways and tidy air of hushed reverence occupy another world from the bustling marketplace I just left. The conversation I would be having, with one of the most powerful Islamic religious and political figures in this part of Pakistan, turns out to also be something out of a parallel universe.

The deeply conservative Jamait-e-Ullema Islam (JUI) political party, the same Islamic party that nurtured - and still supports - the Taliban, runs this school. I sought out the madrassa as a place to gain some insight into the fundamentalist movement in Pakistan and the perception of radical religious leaders here toward the United States' "war on terror".

The cleric I am to meet is Dr Khalid Mehmud Soomro, 44, the Sindh provincial secretary general of the JUI and the coalition party it leads, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). The MMA coalition has grown rapidly in recent years and it is now the third largest national party, controlling the tribal areas of the north and wielding considerable influence in other provinces, especially Balochistan, west of here, where the MMA dominates the provincial coalition government, and North-West Frontier Province, where it has sole control of the provincial assembly. As a politician, mullah and madrassa leader, Soomro is not an underground agent - he is a major public figure.

This is an edgy place to visit. The US embassy in Islamabad advises US citizens that they could be targets of kidnapping or assassination in Sindh and other parts of Pakistan. Four police bodyguards trail my movements in Larkana, and my local hosts, who are not affiliated with the mullah, insist that the precaution is necessary.

"People here have no hope in the economy, no hope in the government. These schools and parties are very serious," said a friend of mine from a wealthy Karachi family. "If I had not been born into the elite, I would have been a fundamentalist, even a terrorist myself. What is there to lose?" The mullah, my friend said, would give me an inkling of what is being taught and believed in rural Pakistan.

Inside, up a narrow staircase in a darkened room, young boys in white robes and skullcaps, most of them from impoverished tribal families, are kneeling and rhythmically chanting verses of the Holy Koran. There are 1,200 students in this school alone, part of a network of five schools in Larkana. Their main task is rote learning of the scriptures in preparation for a life of Islamic preaching.

Outside the gates, a steady rattle of donkey carts, motorized trishaws and perilously overloaded cargo trucks jostled for space on the dusty streets of this major rural trading city, 300 miles northwest of the port city of Karachi, in a region of Sindh province known for tribal rivalries, aching poverty and feudal landowners. This is the home turf of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's very wealthy family, but even their political fortunes have declined as the Islamic parties have risen.

This lush green valley fed by the Indus is also one of the cradles of civilization. At the outskirts of town lie the sprawling ruins of Monjoe-Darho. With its intricate networks of public baths, temples and irrigation systems, it was one of the most developed cities in the world at the time of its prominence 5,000 years ago. Now it is an empty tourist attraction since few travelers are willing to ignore safety warnings to visit here.

Larkana, like much of Pakistan, is also home to a growing movement of Islamic fundamentalism. Officially, US President George W Bush and Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf have forged an alliance to combat terrorism and promote moderation. But in the quiet halls of the madrassa, moderation is not on the agenda.

Soomro, 44, and I sit on an Oriental carpet in a small room with cracked and fading walls. I want to know more about your movement, schools and beliefs, I tell him. As an American, I am disturbed by the ill feelings that the US-led war and occupation of Iraq are creating in the Islamic world.

"We believe that the policies of America and Britain are against Islam and are based on an enmity toward Islam," he says quietly, leaning against a cushion. "Bush and [UK premier Tony] Blair want to destroy Muslims. The war that Bush has launched is against all Muslims."

Soomro says this without rancor in his voice. He is as calm as if he was reciting verses in the mosque. With a long full beard, a white turban, flowing shirt and loose-fitting trousers, he looks directly into my eyes and pronounces that the American adventure is doomed to failure. "This war will be very expensive for Bush. Iraq is now caught in his throat - he can't swallow it and he can't get it out."

I nod and explain that I, too, have my reservations about the Iraq war. I think it ill-conceived and ill-timed. But surely, I ask, you can understand the American fear and anger after September 11, 2001? Can you understand Western actions in Afghanistan? US anger toward al-Qaeda?

"Islam is a religion of peace and we condemn the attacks of 9/11," he says, as I begin to think we may have found room for a real discussion, an exchange of views. "The meaning of Islam is peace. Islam teaches peace. But the attacks of September 11 were not the work of Muslims. Muslims do not have the technological capacity to do this," he says. "We believe 9/11 was staged by the Jews as an excuse to attack Muslims."

Soomro then went into an extensive - and by now disturbingly familiar - account of the events of September 11 that claims that Jewish workers were warned to stay away from the Twin Towers on that day and that no Jews died in the attack. It is a version of the tragedy that has been printed in newspapers, repeated on television and passed by word of mouth throughout the world. It is commonly held among Muslims in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere. I have heard many versions of the tale all over Asia since September 11, but the myth has seemed to grow since the Iraq war as American credibility erodes in the minds of many people.

The purpose of the "stage" attack, Soomro said, was to allow the West to act against the Taliban. "It was an excuse to destroy Islam, and especially Afghanistan, where an exemplary system of justice and peace had been established under the Taliban. This was a threat to America and the Jews."

Similarly, there is no al-Qaeda; Mullah Omar and his Taliban in Afghanistan nurtured no terrorist cells. It is all a plot, Soomro says, his voice never raising much above an intense conversational tone.

By now, deep into what he says he believes about the state of play between the West and Islam, I can find no way into his belief system. There seems no point in arguing about the Taliban system or the existence of al-Qaeda. Soomro is not entertaining a debate; he is preaching the word. I let it go.

Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and recently had himself reconfirmed in office for five years by a questionable national referendum, and other Muslim leaders who support American policy will pay dearly for their actions. They are beyond contempt, traitors to the word of God, says Soomro. "Musharraf is such an obedient son of Bush that he won't even go to the bathroom without his permission. He thinks Bush is Allah."

I understand the anger, I say, but how is it affecting the madrassa? Things couldn't be better on that front, Soomro says as he discusses the logistics of building Islamic culture through the madrassas. Since September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, he and the JUI and other Islamic parties in Pakistan have grown sharply, successfully challenging older secular parties and waiting for a chance to take down Musharraf.

The madrassas in particular are expanding rapidly, a fact confirmed by a building project on site and several conversations with local business leaders and journalists in Larkana. "There is such high demand for places in our school that we have been hard put to cope," says Soomro. Donations come in constantly from local citizens, he says, and there are no problems with funding the expansion of the party and the schools. There is no foreign funding, he says.

Moderate Pakistanis worry about the impact of this burgeoning madrassa system - some 500,000 students are enrolled nationwide - and many fear these students will be sent to fight in Iraq or one day turn Pakistan into a hardline Islamic state. It was inside the network of JUI madrassas in the northern frontier provinces and Balochistan that the Taliban got its start in the 1990s, supported by Pakistani intelligence agents as an antidote to the chaos of war-torn Afghanistan. If anything, local observers say, the radical Islamists of the JUI and their allies are stronger than ever. Diplomats and others believe that elements of military intelligence still back the Taliban through the Islamists. The government denies the connection.

But do not worry, assures Soomro. The schools are not a recruiting ground for terrorists or potential Taliban fighters. Despite repeated published accounts of Pakistanis moving back and forth across the border to fight in Afghanistan with the resurgent Taliban, he says that the party has issued instructions not to send its students to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan.

He just wants to be left alone. He angrily rejects a widely publicized government campaign to force madrassas to teach more conventional subjects, like history and mathematics, as part of their curricula in an effort to broaden students' knowledge. "We are not asking the government for anything so they should not interfere in our teaching Islamic culture and Arabic. We are simply training scholars for religious purposes."

Critics, though, say that the madrassas turn out a steady stream of young graduates who are unprepared for the job market or anything other than reciting the Koran and seeking jihad against the enemies of the faith. This is nonsense and propaganda, says Soomro. "Society needs Islamic scholars. They will be better people for it."

But what of the future? I ask, trying to draw an increasingly uncomfortable conversation to a close. How will this conflict play out? "There will be a change," he says. "It is my faith and hope that Iraq and Afghanistan will be a graveyard for Americans. Bush and Blair are mad dogs and they must die or be destroyed. And the same thing will happen to Musharraf. God will punish him."

By now I can only nod. Throughout this, my first real encounter with one of the fabled radical mullahs of Islam, I have looked for a way to make this a discussion rather than a sermon, but it seems impossible. I am obviously a symbol for Soomro, an American who wandered into his midst. It is like any conversation between a true believer and a skeptic, and not unlike similar deadend dialogues I have had with born-again Christians back home. The true believer acquires strength through absolute faith and certainty; the skeptic can only pose questions and listen.

Later, dozens of Pakistanis from all walks of life confirm that the madrassa movement and radical Islam are growing, fed by disenchantment and suspicion directed at American policy. "Every thinking person here believes Bush is an idiot," prominent newspaper columnist and determined secularist Ardeshir Cowasjee told me later in Karachi. American attitudes, he said, are radicalizing vast segments of the Pakistani population. Certainly most observers agree that the views of mullahs like Soomro are, if not yet mainstream, a significant strain of thought in Pakistan.

Finally, our encounter winding down and the vitriol receding, warm cups of strong tea laced with sugar and milk are brought in and the mullah relaxes a little. Sweets are served and the meeting unwinds. Nearby the soft drone of students reciting the Koran continues uninterrupted. I hope you are enjoying your stay in Pakistan, he says finally as he offers me a slice of cake. "But you must be very careful. Americans are not welcome here any more and you are not safe. You must go nowhere without armed protection. It would be too bad if something were to happen to you."

A Lin Neumann is a Bangkok-based writer.

Future of $34M drones riding on thin Kabul air
Unmanned planes will have difficulty in altitude, expert says
Chris Wattie National Post (Canada) Wednesday, October 29, 2003
The $34-million spy drones bought by the Canadian army to support troops in Afghanistan may not be able to fly in the thin mountain air around the Afghan capital, experts say.

The four French-built Sperwer unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are on their way to Kabul this week, along with their control stations and operators, the Canadian Forces said yesterday.

The drones are to be used for reconnaissance and surveillance during the mission in Afghanistan, where more than 1,900 Canadian troops are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The Canadian Forces announced in August it was buying the four Sperwers and rushing delivery of the drones so they would be available for use during the army's year-long deployment to Afghanistan, which began the same month.

Ken Munson, editor of Jane's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Targets, said the Canadians may not have taken the altitude of Afghanistan into account when they chose the Sperwer -- which the army has designated by its English name, the Sparrowhawk.

Mr. Munson said the thin air of the Afghan capital will cause problems for the Canadian spy drones.

"It would have some difficulties at that altitude," he said. "The Sperwer is really quite a tiny aircraft ... it has a two-stroke, two- cylinder engine, which is an air-breathing engine, so it's going to have a hard time.

"At the very least, it's going to be at the very limits of its capabilities."

Downtown Kabul is 6,000 feet above sea level, and parts of the sprawling sector patrolled by the Canadian battle group are as high as 7,200 feet above sea level.

The city is also surrounded by mountains that are even higher and could prove an even more difficult obstacle for the drones.

"Surely if they knew that's where they were going to use it, they would have made some allowances," Mr. Munson said. "At that sort of altitude, it will struggle."

The remotely piloted aircraft has a nominal ceiling of up to 16,400 feet, but its manufacturer lists its "operational altitude" as between 1,000 and 10,000 feet.

Major Paul Romanow, deputy director of the army's UAV project, acknowledged the altitude of Kabul will be a challenge for the Canadian drones, but said he was certain they were up to the task.

"We're doing some flight testing to verify that," he said yesterday. "The theoretical testing, engineering studies and simulations have all been done and they indicated that it could be done at that altitude.

"But there's no flight data ... once we have that, we'll know for sure."

He said the drones have been tested at the altitudes they will fly in Afghanistan, including low-speed flights to simulate their catapult launches. They have not, however, been launched at those heights, he said.

Maj. Romanow said full flight testing will begin next week in Kabul, once the drones and the military personnel who will operate them get there.

"But we're very confident that it will work," he said. "People are working to ensure that the Sperwer provides the coverage that we've asked it to provide."

In addition to the four drones, there are also two ground control stations en route to Kabul, mobile command posts from which the drone's operators control its flight.

Maj. Romanow said the Canadian spy planes come equipped with a high-tech set of "eyes" that will allow them to scan large areas of terrain in all weather and at all times of day. "It's a very capable vehicle."

The $33.8-million contract for the Sperwer purchase was awarded to Oerlikon-Contraves Inc., of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., the subcontractor for SAGEM, the French firm that builds the drones.

The three-metre-long craft is already in service with France, Netherlands, Sweden, Greece and Denmark. It can cruise for up to five hours, sending back images of targets up to 150 kilometres from its operators on the ground.

At the moment, ISAF is using German "Luna" UAVs to patrol the skies over Kabul.

Mr. Munson said the Canadian Forces could have avoided potential problems with altitude by purchasing a newer, "high-endurance" version of the Sperwer.

"The long-endurance variant has a bigger wing, which would help it in the thinner air and a higher [maximum] altitude," he said. "Which might make it more suitable for a place like Kabul."

SAGEM also makes a "high-velocity" version of the Sperwer and is developing a model capable of carrying air-to-surface missiles.

Mr. Munson suggested the Canadian military might have been in too much of a hurry to buy remotely controlled crafts without shopping around first.

"Given the Canadian Forces' general lack of experience with UAVs, I would've thought they would ask the opinion of people who know about these things before sending them off to exotic locations like Afghanistan," he said.

"This is the first time the Sperwer has been sold outside of Europe -- which is the kind of environment it was really designed for."

The drone has yet to be exposed to Afghanistan's gruelling terrain, temperature extremes and ever-present dust, which have played havoc with almost every piece of equipment the army brought to Kabul, from high-tech artillery detection radar to the much-maligned Iltis vehicles.

However, Maj. Romanow said if flight testing does turn up problems operating the drones, there are a number of steps the military can take to correct any shortcomings, including reducing the Sperwer's 50-kilogram payload of cameras and sensors.

But he insisted the army has "every confidence" in the drone. "There's lots of technical fixes that can be provided," he said.

"But we're way too early in the process to say ... whether there's even a problem that needs fixing."

Maj. Romanow said that if all goes according to plan, the Sperwer will make its first operational flight over Kabul in a little over two weeks.