Afghanistan News October 4, 2003

October 4, 2003

Six killed in blast near US coalition base in Afghanistan
Fri Oct 3, 4:56 PM ET
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFP) - At least six people were killed and seven others injured in a massive explosion that destroyed several houses outside the US-led military coalition's main base in Afghanistan, the US military and rescue workers said.

"Four bodies were pulled out from the rubble and two bodies were missing," US Army Major David Long said at the site of the blast in Qala-e-Gulai village, less than a kilometre (half a mile) from Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

Long said it appeared that people in the house at the centre of the blast were dismantling a cluster bomb, which exploded.

"The guy had pulled out parts of the bomb," he said.

Four other Russian-made cluster bombs and bomb parts were discovered stacked in the house, he said. US troops later carried out controlled explosions to destroy the bombs.

An Afghan rescue worker also said six people were killed in the explosion.

US military police at the northeast gate to Bagram Air Base said seven injured people had also been taken to the base's military hospital for treatment.

Villager Mohammad Nazim said the explosion occurred when people in the house were attempting to dismantle a bomb to remove the explosives to sell.

Other villagers said many locals were involved in the lucrative but dangerous business of dismantling old munitions to sell the explosives to miners searching for precious stones in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul.

Dozens of soldiers from the US-led coalition sealed off the area and ambulances and emergency vehicles were at the site of the explosion, which destroyed several houses, an AFP correspondent at the scene saw.

One body was seen being removed from the destroyed house at the centre of the blast, with shrapnel scattered around the site.

Earlier US military spokesman Colonel Rodney Davis said the base was rattled by two explosions outside its perimeter gate.

"About 9:45 (0515 GMT) this morning we heard two explosions outside the Bagram gate off-post, it seemed to come from the vicinity of the town," Davis told reporters.

"We are investigating at this time. We are coordinating with the local Afghan authorities."

Afghanistan is awash with weapons after two decades of war. Explosives and munitions stores have in the past been set off by power short circuits and other accidents.

Six people were killed on September 19 in two accidental blasts at an explosives-filled house in the same area and nine were killed on the same day in a similar blast at an explosives dealer's house in Mehtarlam, Laghman province east of Kabul.

Bagram Air Base is the headquarters of the 12,500-strong US-led coalition hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who are blamed for a surge in violence in south and southeast Afghanistan.

US troops and militants Thursday fought each other with artillery and rockets in southeast Paktika province but there were no casualties on either side, Colonel Davis said.

Militants fired up to nine rockets at the coalition's Urgun base near the Pakistan border, some 180 kilometres (112 miles) south of the capital Kabul, prompting coalition artillery and machinegun fire, he said.

Latest deaths will not deter peacekeepers in Afghanistan: ISAF
Fri Oct 3,10:46 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The deaths of two Canadian soldiers in an explosion in Kabul will not deter foreign peacekeepers from their mission in Afghanistan, the Canadian deputy commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

"They (Canadian ISAF troops) have been told that sometimes there's a price to pay for trying to help others," Major General Andrew Leslie told reporters at the Canadian Camp Julien base in west Kabul.

"They were also told that our mission will continue, which is to protect the Afghan transitional authority and the good citizens of Kabul," he said.

The two Canadians were killed Thursday when their vehicle hit an explosive device in a riverbed while on patrol in the hills overlooking Camp Julien. Three other soldiers in a second vehicle were injured.

"As we all know, this is a dangerous mission in a dangerous part of the world but if it weren't dangerous, quite frankly, you wouldn't need ISAF, NATO or Canadian soldiers here," Leslie said.

The latest deaths bring the total peacekeeper fatalities to 82 since ISAF was established in December 2001 to help with security in the Afghan capital after the ousting of the Taliban regime.

Leslie said ISAF patrols were continuing despite the latest deaths.

"It could be argued that the Taliban and al-Qaeda want us, the international forces of ISAF and NATO, to retreat to our camps or to run away when we suffer such tragedies; that will not happen. That is not an option for ISAF soldiers, for NATO soldiers or for Canadian soldiers," he said.

Leslie said it was not yet known what sort of explosive device it was or whether it was deliberately placed, but results of forensic tests from the site would be known in a few days.

"The site was very disturbing, extremely surreal and it was unbelievable. It looked like something we would set up for an exercise but of course unfortunately this was not an exercise," said Major John Vass, officer commanding the parachute company whose troops were killed.

After 23 years of war, Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world and mines continue to claim both military and civilian casualties.

While the Canadian patrol route went through a mined area, Lieutenant Colonel Don Denne said the route had been tested by engineers in a heavily armoured vehicle designed to withstand mine blasts just the day before the deadly explosion.

The patrol was the first to travel the route after Denne, commander of the 3rd Royal Canadian Regiment, authorized its use.

Denne said his troops were coming to terms with the deaths of their comrades and were continuing their peacekeeping work.

"There's a sombre feeling right now but it's a reflective feeling where our soldiers are thinking about what happened and coming to grips with the tragedy but I have to tell you, in an old American adage, 'they're back in the saddle' and we've got them out there doing what they're here to do," he said.

The bodies of the dead soldiers are due to be repatriated to Canada on Saturday, with one of the more severely injured soldiers due to be medically evacuated as well.

Friday's deaths are the first since NATO took over command of the force in August and the first since a suicide car bomb attack in June which killed four German peacekeepers.

Japan's lower house backs continued support to US-led Afghan military force
Fri Oct 3,10:47 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's ruling coalition rammed through the key lower house of parliament a bill to extend by two years Japan's logistical support for a US-led military coalition in Afghanistan.

The bill is expected to be cleared by the upper house for enactment on Friday next week when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to dissolve the House of Representatives for a general election on November 9.

"The fight against terrorism is not over yet," Koizumi said in closing debate on the bill at a lower house special committee on anti-terror measures. "Japan cannot opt to pull out."

The premier, who reshuffled his cabinet last month after re-election as Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chief, has sought to ratify the bill to show Japan's global commitment prior to an October 17 visit by US President George W Bush.

For that purpose, Koizumi convened a special session of parliament a week ago.

The ruling three-party coalition, led by Koizumi's conservative LDP, used its comfortable majority in the lower house to pass the bill, despite objections from the opposition camp.

The coalition, embracing the Buddhist-backed centrist party Komeito and the LDP splinter New Conservative Party, also commands a majority in the upper chamber House of Councillors.

The bill will take over from a two-year law expiring on November 1 under which Japan sent naval ships to the Indian Ocean to refuel US and other warships in military action following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

The main opposition Democratic Party, which absorbed the smaller Liberal Party ahead of the anticipated general election, demanded the bill be amended to make parliamentary approval mandatory for any dispatch of Japanese troops to the Indian Ocean.

The dispatch of naval flotillas to the Indian Ocean was the first instance since World War II in which Japanese troops were indirectly involved in a conflict, although the country's post-war pacifist constitution bans the use of force in settling international disputes.

Koizumi's pro-US coalition also railroaded a law in July endorsing the deployment of troops to Iraq to provide humanitarian aid and rear-guard medical and supply assistance.

Japan is considering sending an advance party of about 150 Ground Self-Defense Forces (GSDF) personnel to southern Iraq in December, followed by a main contingent of about 550 troops early next year, the mass circulation Yomiuri Shimbun daily said Friday citing unnamed sources.

The December dispatch would only go ahead if the security situation does not deteriorate, and would be preceded by a 40-member GSDF investigation team which would probably go to Iraq in late October, the Yomiuri said.

Afghans to command largest portion of UN refugee effort in 2004
GENEVA, Oct 3 (AFP) - The UN refugee agency was granted a 955 million-dollar (820 million-euro) budget on Friday to help more than 20 million people around the world in 2004, with Afghanistan continuing to swallow the largest single portion of funding, officials said.

The 64 countries in the UNHCR executive commitee gave the UN High Commissioner for Refugees a 120 million-dollar, or 14 percent hike in its regular budget over last year, Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane said after the annual committee meeting.

But the rise was largely due to accounting changes, shifting money from separate emergency funding to ensure more stable resources for the programme to repatriate about 2.5 million Afghan refugees still outside their homeland.

About two million Afghans have gone home so far, UNHCR said.

"The Afghan budget next year will continue to be quite high at 184 million dollars against 195 million last year," Morjane told journalists

But the UNHCR cautioned that it was still short of money for this year despite a round of cost-cutting.

"We will lack 54 million dollars for the annual programme, much of that goes to operations in Africa," spokesman Peter Kessler said.

"The fact that this money has not arrived now hurts refugees," he added.

The refugee agency is also struggling to broaden its financial support beyond a select group of mainly western industralised countries.

"Unfortunately, 80 percent of the UNHCR's budget is covered by eight countries, this is very bad," Morjanne commented.

The United States continued to be the largest single contributor, accounting for a record 30 percent of the agency's overall funding and 307 million dollars of the regular budget.

Top US envoy due in Pakistan today
AFP, ISLAMABAD via Independent Bangladesh
Oct 3: US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is to arrive in Islamabad Saturday on a rescheduled visit to key war-on-terrorism ally Pakistan and Afghanistan, a foreign ministry official said.

Armitage, who will be accompanied by top US envoy for South Asia, Christina Rocca, was originally due in Islamabad on Thursday. State Department officials said illness forced the two-day postponement of his visit.

He will head to Kabul on Sunday for talks with Afghan officials, the Pakistani official said.

After a day's visit Armitage will return to Islamabad to hold talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and senior defence ministry officials on Monday. Earlier this week Armitage questioned the commitment of Pakistan's security forces to blocking fugitive al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters regrouping in Pakistan and infiltrating back into Afghanistan for bloody guerrilla attacks.

"I do not think that that affection for working with us extends up and down the rank-and-file of the Pakistani security community," he told US lawmakers in Washington, stressing that he had full confidence in Musharraf's comments.

Armitage said he planned to discuss the growing problem of Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents crossing the border with Musharraf.

On Thursday, two days after Armitage's criticism, Pakistan's military launched one of its fiercest operations against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the ultra-conservative tribal border district of South Waziristan.

Eight militants were killed and 18 were captured while two Pakistani soldiers were killed and two were wounded in the day-long gunfight, the military said Friday.

Hundreds of Pakistani commandos and troops backed by Cobra helicopter gunships battled the fighters from 5:30 am (0030 GMT) until late Thursday evening. The militants fought back with grenades and gunfire.

The army flew journalists to the edge of the operation to witness the fighting and showed them 10 of the prisoners and four of the dead bodies.

Captured terrorists are Pakistanis and Afghans
ISPR hints at more operations By Behroz Khan The News International, Pakistan
PESHAWAR: Majority of the captured suspected terrorists in the Operation Mizan, launched by Pakistan armed forces in South Waziristan Agency Thursday, are reportedly Pakistanis and Afghans while seven among the killed are believed to be foreigners.

Sources informed The News from Wana, headquarters of South Waziristan Agency, that five among the dead were Chechens while one of them has been identified as Algerian and another as Turkish. Identity of the remaining ones, who were killed in the daylong operation, could not be ascertained. However, some official sources said all those killed in Bagharh area of Birmal district were foreign nationals and had sneaked into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan.

Sources in the political administration said hardly two of the 18 captured persons are believed to be Arabs while the rest are either from Punjab, South Waziristan Agency and Afghanistan. The arrested persons, the sources said, have been shifted out of the agency in military helicopters and were in the custody of the Joint Interrogation Team (JIT).

Locals informed from Angoor Adda, that two truck drivers namely Faizullah and Kashmir Khan have been rounded up and taken along with the captured suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

An official on condition of anonymity disclosed that two of the injured persons were from Swabi district of the NWFP, but the reports could not be verified from the concerned authorities.

Our Bannu correspondent informed that as many as nine bodies of the suspected terrorists were brought to Bannu Airport while military helicopters were seen flying in and out of the airport to shift the dead and the arrested persons to undisclosed places in the country.

A local tribesman, sources said, was also missing and is believed to have either been buried under the debris of the destroyed houses or has been arrested. Name of the missing tribesman could not be ascertained.

"No big fish has been identified either among the killed persons or the arrested ones. We were expecting some thing big," an official said asking not to be named. Arab sources, however, claimed that these foreign nationals were affiliated with Muslim militant groups but had no links with al-Qaeda, as majority of them are believed to be from the hardliner Takfiree Group, which was always at loggerheads with Osama bin Laden and his supporters. Bannu Airport, the sources said, was sealed off and no one was allowed to go near it Friday.

Agencies add: Military intelligence agents have begun interrogating 18 suspects captured after a daylong gunbattle near the Afghan border, officials said. A security official in Peshawar said the men included Afghans and others from outside the region, although details were still being confirmed.

"It is a mixed bag," the official told Reuters. "There are Chechens, Uzbeks, an Algerian and some Arab-speaking nationals. We are trying to determine their exact nationalities." He said investigators were also trying to determine the nationalities and identities of eight men killed in the operation, after police surrounded a suspected al-Qaeda hideout near the border town of Angoor Adda.

"Their photographs are going to be taken and shown to the captives for identification," he said. Military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan said the identity of the suspects was being ascertained but could not be disclosed, "because it could influence the investigations".

He said the possibility of operations like in South Waziristan couldn’t be ruled out in the future as the war against terrorism continues. "The war on terror goes on as it had been in the past, it will continue in future also. Such operations’ possibility cannot be ruled out," the spokesman told CNN.

To a question he said, at the moment it cannot be said whether the terrorists killed or arrested were affiliated with al-Qaeda and Taliban. "I would not be able to say anything at this stage till the time investigations are done," he added.

"I would also not be able to say whether they were really involved in attacks on the coalition forces in Afghanistan," he said adding but there is a possibility that these people could have been involved and having escaped their cordon, they could have come to the hideout.

Asked what the army found from the hideout, he said, the moment army went there, they told them to surrender. At this ten women and children came out and were taken into custody without any harm.

Efforts were made to apprehend them without any casualties or least casualties. Asked how many al-Qaeda or suspected Taliban are in the area the spokesman said, "I would say a very small number, possibility cannot be ruled out if they are hiding. But I would say these people would be shifting from one place to another".

To another question he said, over 25,000 troops are deployed in the area. According to NNI news agency, the bodies of 20 people were brought to Bannu on Friday. Seven Arabic and Pushto speaking people were also brought to Bannu airport in an army helicopter at 2300 hours Thursday and sent them to an army fort. The bodies were shifted to CMH Bannu.

Afghanistan's ancient gold is safe, says Foreign Minister
By Phil Reeves Independent Digital 04 October 2003
The so-called Bactrian Gold, Afghanistan's hoard of 2,000-year-old gold nuggets, silver ornaments, manuscripts and other ancient treasures, has survived intact after years of civil war and unrest, a senior minister said this week.

Dr Abdullah Abdullah, the Foreign Minister, told a meeting of Unesco's general conference in Paris that Afghans were happy to learn the "good news" that the collection - long rumoured to have been stolen - was in the vaults beneath the presidential palace in the capital, Kabul.

Only a few days ago, an official from Unesco, the UN's cultural organisation, told The Independent that there was still no final proof that the treasures were in Kabul. The minister's pronouncement was the latest instalment in an intriguing drama in which the centrepiece is a collection of treasures discovered in 1978.

They were unearthed in the north of the country during excavations of ancient burial mounds by the Greek-Russian archaeologist Victor Sariyannidis in 1978. The find was dated from the period when northern Afghanistan was part of the ancient kingdom of Bactria, conquered by Alexander the Great in 327BC.

The hoard was dispatched to Kabul for safe-keeping but, within months, the Soviet Union's Red Army invaded, beginning a disastrous decade of occupation. That was followed by civil war - during which much of Afghanistan's cultural heritage was plundered or destroyed - and then by Taliban rule and the assault by American-led forces in 2001.

For years, rumours circulated that the gold had been spirited off to Moscow, destroyed by the Taliban, According to Britain's Art Newspaper, the treasure was seen only once in a quarter of a century. That was in 1982 by Mr Sariyannidis - the man who discovered it and compares it to King Tutankhamun's tomb. Some reports say it was shown in the late 1980s to a group of ambassadors in Kabul.

The Taliban apparently tried and failed to gain access to the gold, estimated to be worth $90m (£54m). The interim government's Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani, has said officials "very courageously blocked the codes [to stop the Taliban entering] after they captured Kabul in September 1996, and were badly beaten".

The news the gold is intact has clearly delighted the US-backed Afghan transitional government but it is regarded as a mixed blessing by others.

Afghanistan is still awash with arms, militias and internal conflicts. "Some people think it's better at the moment to keep quiet about the gold," said one Western source.

Poppy Trade Blamed for Afghan Violence
Fri Oct 3, 8:10 PM ET By MARK FRITZ, Associated Press Writer
DARA NOOR, Afghanistan - A relief worker dies in an ambush on a blind curve up a steep mountain road. Around the bend is a poppy field, a prime suspect in a murder spree that's bogging down Afghanistan's rebuilding while its drug trade blooms.

Aid groups are fleeing in terror. They blame much of their exodus from the southern third of the country on its $1.2 billion export drug crop, which purportedly finances Islamic extremist violence, ethnic blood feuds, warlord war chests, provincial property disputes and competing political movements.

The agencies that monitor the pulse of conflict zones point to a rise in ambushes and execution-style slayings that coincide with the southeast's autumn harvest of the opium-producing flora, nature's gift to the world's heroin junkies.

"It's absolutely true that security is worse in places where people are growing poppies," said Diane Johnston, country director for Mercy Corps, which indefinitely suspended operations in the country last week. A member of the Omaha, Neb.-based group was killed Aug. 7.

"Narcoterrorism" has become an increasingly entrenched factor in the violence that's meant to keep southern and eastern Afghanistan — the world's poppy belt — off-limits to outside assistance, said Paul Barker, country director for the charity CARE.

"The revenue from the poppy trade in Afghanistan is more than all the humanitarian aid combined," he said.

Nations have committed roughly $500 million to rebuild this central Asian nation of dusty, gasp-inducing deserts and monolithic mountains. Poppy revenues brought in $1.2 billion last year, according to the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan.

There are about 90 international relief groups operating in Afghanistan, but most have curtailed or avoided drilling wells, vaccinating children, and rebuilding school systems in the deadly southeast.

The September edition of CARE's policy brief — which other relief groups follow closely — said armed attacks on aid workers jumped from one a month to one every two days since September 2002.

Half the country's 32 provinces — most in the south — are too risky to enter. "There are all sorts of movements to keep Afghanistan unstable," Barker said.

Local authorities generally blame all violence on the extremist Taliban movement toppled from power by a U.S.-led force two years ago, but a confounding array of agendas are in play.

"It's impossible to separate out what's factional fighting, what's Taliban activity and what's drug trafficking," said Johnston. "We haven't seen this type of targeting (of aid workers) in the 16 years we've been here."

In March, at the height of the poppy season's spring harvest, gunmen attacked a three-vehicle convoy at a blind curve in a rocky mountain road near Dara Noor, a village 60 miles north of Kandahar and a prime poppy region. The attackers killed Ricardo Munguia, a 39-year-old water engineer from El Salvador working for the Red Cross. He was the first foreign aid worker to die in Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster.

Around a bend is a large poppy field, where men, women and children this week happily harvested the autumn crop of the opiate-soaked bulbs that emerge after the plants burst into a gorgeous array of flowers. They greeted two reporters as potential customers.

Moments later, a taxi driver scolded the reporters for lingering in an area in which a Taliban convoy had passed in recent days.

Last weekend, assailants ambushed a pickup truck in southern Afghanistan and shot to death seven bodyguards of the governor of Helmand province, in the Mir Mundo area 50 miles northwest of Kandahar.

The violence has grown with the poppy production in Afghanistan, which produced 12 percent of the world's opium in 2001 and 76 percent last year.

The fact that drug trafficking revenues have soared since the U.S. push into Afghanistan has put the Bush administration on the defensive.

"You ask what we're going to do and the answer is, `I don't really know,'" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said recently.

A U.S.-led force toppled the Taliban for harboring the al-Qaida extremist group that engineered the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. A NATO (news - web sites) force has focused on maintaining security in Kabul, the capital. Humanitarian agencies want to see the force spread into the violent south and east.

A Moscow-backed government ruled Afghanistan for a decade before Soviet troops withdrew, leaving warlords to fight for power. The Taliban won control of most of the country to put an end to the factional bloodletting but then imposed a harsh form of Islamic rule.

The impact the extremist militia had on opium production is in dispute. Though the Taliban stopped many farmers from growing the crop — some of whom were later killed by their financiers — there were numerous reports that no action was taken against people who bought, sold or stockpiled opium, said Mohammed Amirkhizi, the Afghan representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Some skeptics argue the Taliban cut production to drive up heroin prices worldwide. However, at the time the U.N. drug control office in neighboring Pakistan said there was no evidence of stockpiling by the Taliban movement, though some commanders might be doing it.

Amirkhizi said the country's transitional government mounted what it said was a successful attempt to eradicate opium production last year, but there's been no independent confirmation of results. Afghan officials in general play down the role of opium production in the country. But the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban was known to have financed its forces with drug money.

Anti-Taliban warlords in the south, with the tacit approval of the U.S.-backed central government, last weekend sent a 220-man special operations force on an open-ended mission to go after Taliban command posts in Afghanistan.

The fact that such militias frequently travel in civilian vehicles and wear robes over their camouflage fatigues has made the situation more dangerous for civilians working for humanitarian development agencies, CARE's Barker said.

Since the war, the protective Western military presence in Kabul has doubled the population of the city to 3 million, said Maki Shinohara of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. And thousands have begun returning to homes in the relatively secure north. But few will venture to the south or east. "There is just no law and order," she said. "It's the rule of the gun."

NGOs targeted in Afghanistan
Source: Oxfam 3 Oct 2003
In Afghanistan, the security situation is debilitating for NGOs. In the most recent spate of violence, suspected Taliban fighters killed two men working for the Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan (VARA). The attack, along with many others recently, has led to renewed calls for more international peacekeepers to be deployed outside the capital.
The VARA staff were traveling in a vehicle through the Helmand province on their way from Delaram to Kandahar. The attack followed the murder of four Afghans working for a Danish aid agency, The Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR), in the southern province of Ghazni.

The four aid workers were killed by suspected Taliban rebels in one of the worst attacks on humanitarian workers in the country in years. DACAAR said four of its workers were killed when their car was stopped by nine armed men.

"If no effective action is taken to arrest the sharp downward trend in security, particularly in the south and southeast of the country, it will not be possible for NGOs to continue working there," Barbara Stapleton, an advocacy and policy coordinator of the Agency Coordination Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) told the UN.

Nevertheless, Oxfam continues its programs in Afghanistan by:

Helping to increase crop production so people can support themselves. For example, Oxfam is training women to run kitchen gardens; training farmers to use improved farming techniques, such as the use of green manure; teaching local people about basic veterinary skills; introducing improved wheat-seed and setting up seed banks; encouraging crop diversification; and improving irrigation and water systems.

Working to improve educational opportunities for rural communities, including the establishment and support of winter schools, teacher training, literacy classes for women, and education for girls.

Building latrines and wells, and protecting water supplies, specifically for women and children.

Providing humanitarian relief in Hazarajat and Badakhshan. In particular, Oxfam provides food and other help to families in need in return for work on local projects such as building roads and providing potable water. Oxfam is hoping to get supplies to these communities before the winter—when for four months there will be no way to reach people.

Training communities to safely remove mines from their land, which clears it for agriculture and grazing.

Advocating, both within Afghanistan and externally, on issues such as security and new legislation that will benefit the Afghan people.